Rightwing radicalism in the Republican Party and neoliberalism among the Democrats

Claire Conner made a useful list on her website last September of important elements in the supposedly libertarian radicalism of today's Republican Party (Why Does the GOP Cling to Trump No Matter What? 09/17/2019):

Trump and today’s radical GOP agree on the basics.

1. Cut taxes on the rich and handcuff the IRS.
2. End most federal programs and privatize the rest.
3. Reduce the safety net and end all welfare.
4. Repeal healthcare reform and let the free market handle the issue.
5. Make it harder to vote.
6. Stop immigration and block all reform that would offer a path to citizenship.
7. Oppose reproductive rights and equal rights for the LGBTQ community.
8. Stack the courts with right-wing judges who will stop any progressive legislation that comes before them. 

Even today, too many Americans have no clue that the GOP really believes these things. And I can understand why. The extremists have gone to great lengths to frame their ideas in sound bites. At the same time, they’ve become masters at telling half-truths and outright lies about the real-world consequences of their radical ideas. [emphasis in original]

One more reminder that even though Trump presents, uh, unique features, his domestic radicalism isn't some aberrant phenomenon. This is what today's Republican Party is. And it's been on this road for a long time.

Trump does it in a crass, caricatured populist fashion. But he's on board with the things in that list.

Part of his populist appeal in 2016 was to promise things like protecting Social Security and a vague promise for a great healthcare system for everybody. Of course, as we also saw in 2010, the Democrats have made themselves vulnerable to accusations that they want to cut Social Security:

Years that Biden pushed for cuts to Social Security:

1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s

That’s a lot of video to doctor. https://t.co/lQDfYpzXNu

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) January 18, 2020

Adopting "third way" neoliberal economics and a general defense crouch was a bad development in the Democratic Party.James Kwak provides one description of that process in (‘Take Back Our Party’ Chapter 3: Bad Politics The American Prospepct 12/16/2019. Although it's kind of unfortunate that the story is illustrated with two different photos of Al Gore. It's true that Gore was a leading figure in the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a party faction that actively promoted this development. But I would argue that his leadership on making people aware of the seriousness of the climate crisis is a major mitigating factor. And, in general, he has been sounding more like a regular New Deal Democrat since the 2000 Presidential election was stolen from him by the Radical Republicans and the Supreme Court.

This is part of how Kwak describes the political effect of the Democrats' corporate/neoliberal approach:

The 2018 elections proved that Democrats can still put up a fight when Republicans go after popular government programs. But the first major weakness of the Democratic economic platform in recent decades has been a failure to talk about the economic issues that most people actually care about. Presidents Obama and Clinton liked nothing more than invoking the soaring rhetoric of growth and opportunity. Schumer, Bustos, and the rest of the leadership seem to think that repeating the word “jobs” will enable them to connect with the working class. But for most people, growth and opportunity are just abstract concepts, and jobs are not what keep them up late at night. Few people setting aside their medical bills because they are afraid to open them think that a larger economy will be the solution to their problems, or that cheaper student loans will turn their lives around. Nor are jobs the answer to all problems. For one thing, the unemployment rate is historically low; it was less than 5 percent when Donald Trump was elected president, and has since fallen as low as 3.5 percent. It is true that many people have given up on looking for jobs and are not counted in those figures (although the broadest measure of unemployment, which includes discouraged and underemployed workers, is also at the lowest level since 2000). But workers without the skills to find employment in a highly favorable labor market are unlikely to think that the existence of more job openings will magically make them better off. The economy has been growing for a decade, and unemployment is low, yet tens of millions of people still face a daily struggle to make ends meet. [my emphasis]

A central feature in Democratic politics right now is a quasi-theological dispute over identity issues, i.e., racism/sexism/gender vs. economics. For the Obama/Biden/Clinton corporate-friendly neoliberal pitch to distinguish itself from the Republican version, emphasizing both symbolic and real measures to protect civil rights while pretending that growth in the GDP stimulated by deregulation and low taxes for corporations oligarchs would take care of economic problems. Trickle-down economics with a more diverse face.

The unemployment rate is a good example of the weakness of the neoliberal a-rising-tide-lifts-all-boats narrative. For decades, the unemployment rate has generally been an excellent measure for the relative strength or weaknesses of the economy. But the weakening of labor laws and the rise of the "gig economy" means more and more that the unemployment rate is now a far less meaningful indicator of economy distress or well-being.