Yascha, a long and seemingly round and round argument which fails to understand exactly what the American Constitution says about the power of the President. You are also falling into the TDS trap, you said you and your editorial staff would avoid, concerning joining the Leftist "resistance" against the democratically elected POTUS.
A counter POV is offered by Francis Menton who received his B.A. in Economics and Mathematics summa cum laude from Yale University in 1972; and his J.D. degree cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1975. In 1975 he joined the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP as an associate, becoming a partner in 1984, and retiring after 40 years in 2016. He writes on Substack aswell. His article;
The Left Not So Happy With The Monster They Created — Manhattan Contrarian
and the readers comments are worth viewing.
The pervasive talking point of the Left since President Trump returned to office is that he is trying to make himself into a “dictator.” Starting in the early weeks of his new term, the main evidence for the “dictator” claim was said to be Trump’s actions to make the government respond to his policies, via actions like large-scale lay-offs, issuance of Executive Orders, and cancellation of grants and contracts.
The very first line of the Constitution of Article II, Section 1, which states that “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” If that doesn’t mean that the President can “dominate the policy making of all institutions in the executive branch,” it’s hard to know what it might mean.
The problem with all the MSM propaganda is that the Left thought that they had gotten around the Constitution with decades of progressive-inspired legislation designed to create a government of permanent experts that would tie the hands of any President who might have different policy ideas.
For multiple decades, the Left thought they had achieved a perfect model for unbreakable left-wing governance. When a Democrat was President, he could exercise all executive functions because the commissions and bureaucracy would support him as part of their team; but when a Republican got elected, he would be boxed in by the commissions and bureaucrats who would assure continuance of the policies of the progressive groupthink.
Actually, that’s what the Constitution provides. If you don’t want a President with so much power, it would have been much better not to have created so many agencies and delegated so much power to the executive.
The MSM is screaming that Donald Trump is a "dictator" only because his opponents do not like what he is doing. The "swamp," that he argued should be drained, includes the agencies many of which are funded by the government. Trump has forced them on to the defensive.
Biden the previous "dictator" cancelled pipelines and lease sales, cancelled mining, mandated EVs, mandated renewables for electricity generation, removed land from mineral exploration (including uranium), attacked the fossil energy industry, and ignored the law on numerous issues.
One could say that the current Republican "dictator" makes him appear more like a liberator, than his previous Dems opponent. 😐
If Trump is to be described as a "liberator" then it follows that the liberation is from reality. To describe tariffs as anything else than an act of self harm is delusional and to impose tariffs on allies while letting Russia off the hook shows a departure from reason.
The dictatorship claims come from precedents, which is how our system operates in the absence of black letter law. Trump, through his presidential orders and personnel changes is trying to implement policy change much as FDR did. But FDR made substantial use of Congress in achieving his change. That is FDRs changes were made with 2/3's of the government and backed by landslide electoral victories. In 1937-38 FDR's party controlled more than 3/4's of both Houses of Congress. Trump has a narrow margin in the House and cannot overture a filibuster in the Senate. As a result he is trying to enact change with 1/3 of the government, that is, a minority. Not only that, but it is widely expected by Republicans that Trump will lose the House next year. making his power even less and conferring lame duck status on him.
This timeline creates urgency, hence the speed at which Trump as acted. But this very speed creates a message of desperation. If Trump really had the support of the people as he maintains he would be able to move more deliberately, less impulsively to try to achieve his objectives. He is not doing this, which leads one to suspect he is trying to put something in that the electorate will not like before they can vote to stop it.
Michael, good points, but Trump has to deal with the majories that the electorate has given him. The Constitution still remains whatever is written. The Constitution only stipulates percentages in few cases, and does does stipulate majorities or percentages that Trump has to achieve to determine how or how not the Constitution can be used to legally govern America. Surely?
The majorities he has define the strength of his mandate. By choosing to circumvent Congress using executive orders instead of of persuasion he acknowledges that he has too little of a mandate by trying to establish facts on the ground before the next election makes him a lame duck.
I'm happy to see that you see through the MSM propaganda. It is that old, dead story of democracy versus dictator which even casuals aren't buying anymore. But, it's how they framed it, so the media must stick with it.
Regarding constitutional powers of the President, you may be right, but oh how the world has changed since 1787! Trump, with the executive powers and institutional structure granted to him in the Constitution, cannot succeed in the modern world of complex governance networks.
Imagine a map of the world, with all major cities linked together by a line to make a spider's web of connections. Now imagine the United States highlighted on that map. This is Trump's jurisdiction. He can stand there with a hammer and whack some elites' heads in New York, D.C. or San Francisco, but this is merely whack-a-mole. They go under, play dead for a while, but their networks are still active. Their money, their international partners, their businesses, or even their own persons can move across a line in the network to another major city in a jurisdiction outside of the United States. Think of Jason Stanley moving from Yale to the University of Toronto to propagandize from there. And elites from all sectors of society can do this. The most powerful people on the planet are connected through global networks, and they can transfer their power to other cities (hubs) through the communication and transportation lines if they wish (spokes). It is this networked system that has created so much wealth for the US, because currently, as they say, all roads lead to Rome. That is, the United States' major cities are the most centralized hubs in the system. They have the most connections (spokes). Where is democracy, or, "consent of the governed" in this world, you might ask. That is a good question...
If you live inside the propagandized narrative of "democracy versus dictator," you might see a lot of hypocrisy in the media and call it out. But what the MSM is trying to defend is that global networked structure. The Republicans may succeed in destroying it because they wish to regain agency within their borders, but this would be a United States that is much poorer and much weaker.
Citizens of the United States should at least know the true stakes before deciding.
Very well said and well argued. IMHO the power of the "Anywheres" is immense and likely to increase if the Western democracies move further towards Statism. The Anywheres will be needed to influence the academic and the ruling classes of other countries, so as to build up what you suggest are the Elitist "spokes." The growing dissociation of the “Progressives”, who want to dominate as the elite ruling classes, is that they will move more and more away from the needs, desires, health and wealth of the citizens that elected them. “Modernism” has to teach the principles that should guide and enlighten the western world such as ; objective truth and reason, science, individualism, democracy, capitalism, free speech, and sovereign countries that preach equal opportunity- not equity or social justice, and meritocracy. Human nature - yes human nature - is just not going to be able to be changed, what ever the Progressives want us to believe. The seeming failing of the Globalist dream of Globalism, for now at least, is a point in question. For what it's worth. Please correct me if that is not what you infered.
I like Goodhart's book and his distinction between the "somewheres" and the "anywheres," but network power is not quite that simple. The spokes are neutral, not only "elitist"; you can imagine them as the plumbing that things travel through. They simply connect two dots, or "actors." And elites are not a unified block. I would consider Trump an "anywhere," even if he is loyal to his version of the USA. He is certainly connected worldwide, and a part of many elite networks. If you reimagine that world map with the spider's web from above, it may help to color some of the lines red and some of them blue. Maybe you can image the blue lines as thicker, as more resources travel through their spokes (information through MSM global broadcasts, money wires because they're richer, their people travel more, etc.), and maybe the blue network is larger because it has more connections, but the red network is definitely global. You can imagine Trump's connections to Putin, Bolsonaro, Bukele, and all the other nationalists as being red. But both blue and red spokes enter the same countries, the same cities, the same buildings, and even the same households. The West is really quite polarized, down to even the family. You can imagine blue and red lines beaming out from the same house as different family members connect to different networks through the Internet.
Anyway... I'm probably rambling by now...
I won't argue with the rest of what you wrote. Just wanted to clear up that it is not only a unified, global elite who take advantage of network power. You and I also have done so. We met at a hub (Yascha's blog) from our own places. We sent our messages (information) through the spokes (the world wide web). We comment and try to influence more people to see things our way and cooperate with us (a form of power).
Thanks. All one has learnt from the passing of the years, is that we are very unlikely to influence, let alone convert those of another political stripe, to our POV concerning our political positions. However good information and from one who most likely has much more brain power than I. Good conversation.
An equal number of words which also fail to make the point. Blaming the left or the libs or whatever fails to recognize, among many other things the utter capitulation of the Republican congressional bloc to the only president in our entire history to so totally disdain and to disavow our electoral process, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
One can prate on about the expansion of governmental agencies acting as unelected and 'dictatorial bodies’ unresponsive to ’the people’ until the bovines return to the large red structure, but until one also explains that no large scale government has been able to exist without such bodies since the Sumerians invented them nearly five thousand years ago, this is only half an argument. And the answer to the problem is not Elon Musk’s chain saw Department of Government Evisceration.
One of the Founders’ greatest concerns was that a Republic of the kind they designed might not work on a large scale, and that was back when the US was a comparatively small and relatively homogeneous (at least in terms of those holding the franchise) group of states clinging to the Atlantic Ocean.
Another was that the growth of what they called ‘factions’ (political parties) would lead to a situation in which party loyalty trumped (pun intended) loyalty to the country as a whole.
A third was the nature of the national executive, remembering that they had just fought a protracted and very close run war to free themselves from an executive. In the end, they agreed to create one in part because they knew who the first occupant would be, a man who had already proven himself to be completely trustworthy. They had to hope that we would continue to elect such men. Our record in that regard has been spotty, but none have attempted to stretch their power anywhere near the blatant extent that Trump has.
Finally, of course, this country and the world are a very different, far more complex, and far more intertwined place than in the world of 1789. The Founders, for all their political wisdom could hardly have foreseen the economic, political, and technical forces that now encompass us. Jefferson’s yeoman farmers and Hamilton’s nascent industrialists and financiers were babes in the woods compared to what inhabit the world now. Potential enemies are not months but only minutes away, and the power they have utterly dwarfs the primitive artillery, or the smooth bore muskets envisioned in the Second Amendment.
In the movie, The American President, Michael Douglas in the role of President Andrew Shephard, notes that ‘America is advanced citizenship’. Indeed, it is the most advanced in the world. And far too many of us simply do not understand what that means. He also notes that ‘we have serious problems and we need serious people to solve them’ My knowledge of American history is probably a bit better than most as I have taught it for over 40 years, and with one exception (Andrew Johnson) I cannot think of a less serious set of problem solvers than Donald Trump and his collections of lickspittles, incompetents, liars, vengeance seekers, security risks, barn burners, health cranks, and drunks.
Above all the noise, one fact stands out with unmatched clarity. In re-electing Donald Trump in 2024, his supporters have willingly and knowingly chosen a man who after November of 2020 proved beyond a shadow of a doubt his contempt for the nature of our Republic. There are no excuses here. No wriggle room. No evasions. If they did not recognize that, simply didn’t care about it, or worse yet accepted and agreed with it, then the blame for where we are now rests primarily with them.
When I think of the "swamp" I think of corruption. Does anyone doubt that Trump is the most corrupt President we've had since Warren Harding, 100 years ago? The deep state is not democratic, but I do not think it's corrupt. Based on my personal knowledge of several people in the Justice, the NIH, FDA, and the National Parks, our civil service is full of honest people who could earn a higher salary in the private sector but stayed because they believe in the mission. I don't think Trump has any understanding of why a person would do that.
Without in any way defending Trump's actions, I find it bothersome that the author looks to other countries but fails to consider the Biden administration's heavy use of executive orders, ignoring of Supreme Court decisions, lawfare, and so on, which were plenty anti-democratic.
The Biden administration's purported authoritarianism went unmentioned because it didn't exist. There is a world of difference between executive action that stretches the boundaries of what courts have ruled permissible in the past on the one hand -- every president takes such actions -- and Trump's approach on the other.
This is in two ways: (1) The sheer number of baldly unconstitutional or otherwise unlawful orders is unprecedented. His order on birthright citizenship, which calls into question the citizenship of every person born in this country but not born to citizens, even if born to immigrants here legally, even if they have every intention of staying indefinitely and seeking citizenship, is the most dramatic case in point. (2) Even more alarmingly, he has indicated an unprecedented willingness to ignore court orders. He and the courts have played a bit of a dance where the courts avoid dialing it up to 11 with, for example, contempt orders and the administration, so far, eventually backs down and kinda sorta does what it's told only after snide winking, foot-dragging, and countless bad-faith excuses, but there's no denying that he is flirting with the sort of dire constitutional crisis Mounk describes -- outright defiance of the courts -- as no other president has done since FDR's court-packing bill was defeated in his own otherwise friendly Congress. FDR at least had the excuse of a national economic emergency, something Trump can't claim despite his constant and dubious invocations of emergency powers.
Biden tried to forgive student loans he didn't have a right to forgive, the Supreme Court said no, and Biden said okay. That's what a well-functioning system looks like. He never would have purported to defy that decision, as Trump has done with respect to due process rights for deportees. He never would have had federal agents pick up a legal immigrant just for writing an op-ed he didn't like, or imprisoning a legal immigrant for his otherwise lawful protest, or shake down specific law firms or universities on his enemies list like a gangster thug, threatening their very existence. That's what democratic backsliding looks like.
One metric that cuts right through the whataboutism here: As Mounk notes, courts are ruling against the administration's actions at a furious pace. And you can't chalk that up to a friendly Democratic judiciary because the judiciary is not as a whole one of those elite liberal institutions, filled as it is with Republican appointees and headed by a 6-3 conservative majority Supreme Court. Many conservative judges, including Trump appointees, have ruled against him, sometimes with deep expressions of alarm. His latest loss at the tariff court led Trump to decry the conservative Federalist Society, which is Trump-friendly on presidential control of their administrations but not Trump-friendly on presidents acting outside their authority, which is the bulwark against an elected dictatorship. It's no wonder he hates conservative and liberal judges alike -- because they take their job seriously and aren't partisan hacks as they are in other countries.
As for "lawfare," Trump was indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election because he tried to overturn the 2020 election -- even after all legal avenues had been exhausted and with no good-faith basis, even after every reputable advisor told him he had no fair chance. His actions in that regard correctly had him impeached and should have seen him convicted and barred from office. Sometimes when they go after you, it's because you did it.
Speaking for myself the most troubling aspect of Biden's presidency in terms of authoritarianism were the criminal charges brought against Trump. I suspect they were leveled with the intent of interfering with the election.
Yes, and what was the consequences of that use of executive orders? A one term presidency in which everything he tried to achieve is now going to be destroyed.
For me there are two fundamental issues here, the first being demographics. For decades now white collar professionals have been migrating from the Republican Party to the Democrats while their working class counterparts move in the opposite direction. Educational polarization is probably the best predictor of party preference today. In that context Trump's gains among minority voters is not too surprising. Black and Hispanic voters are disproportionately working class and they are merely following white blue collar workers into the GOP.
The second is the rise of populism around the glove. Trump is merely the American expression of a worldwide phenomenon: Orban in Hungary, Melon in Italy, Brext and Johnson in the UK and now Farage and the Reform Party, Milei in Argentina, Duterte in the Philippines, Afd, LePen, Bukele, etc. etc.
The peculiar issues specific to each country vary. For Duterte, Bolsonaro and Bukele it was crime. For Europe it's been immigration. For the US economic decline due to offshoring. But at its heart the real issue is the widening gulf between elites and the rest of the population. Secure in gated compounds the well to do are largely immune to the ravages of ordinary crime or the disruption brought on by unchecked immigration. In the meantime in the US those same elites profited from globalization even as individuals employed in manufacturing saw their standard of living plummet as their jobs were offshored.
In such a circumstance conflict between the classes is inevitable. If Trump did not exist it would have been necessary to invent him, just as populist movements from Europe to Asia produced populist leaders to channel popular discontent.
Trump was subject to an unprecedented barrage of dubious legal charges with the clear objective of influencing the electoral process, as compared to seeing justice done. That "lawfare" was instrumental in arousing Silicon Valley to his defense.
The real danger with respect to looming authoritarianism in the United States is a scenario of escalating provocations as both sides seek to bend the law to retaliate against their political opponents. Eli Lake laid it out in the Free Press by referencing the historical precedent of the Gracchi in Rome's Republic period (link below).
To his credit Trump has promised not to retaliate in kind, perhaps avoiding a step down the slippery slope that Lake blames for leading to the collapse of democracy in Rome. Time will tell whether he keeps his word.
This is an important point. Yascha all too conveniently overlooks all of the undemocratic moves by left politicians in the US and Europe. The EU is a comically undemocratic supranational government, and yet opposing it is usually construed as an attack on "democracy."
I also have to wonder if countries like the US are better off because actually putting a populist government into power acts like a safety valve releasing steam.
OTOH France and Germany may just be bottling the pressure up, until an inevitable explosion.
I agree. Especially concerning given that they are at the jailing their opponents stage of "saving democracy," and the banning the most popular party stage, respectively. And then there is Romania. But none of this fits Yascha's narrative, so it goes unmentioned.
The author is intelligent and clearly really wanting to understand the Trump populist movement. It's painful to see so much time and effort going into such a fundamentally flawed essay - flawed by underlying blind bias against Trump personally, not affirmed by any measure of reality. So much wasted brain power. It's hard to break out of the elitist ivory tower but the author must, if he wants to understand 2025 America. The Democrat Party and so-called Progressives left the average American behind,10-15 years ago, and now represents probably about 30% of the country. I know because I was a Democrat all the way through the Clinton years; the party left me and has been moving further and further away ever since.
well said and backs up my point that Yascha said after Trump's election that articles of this type were counterproductive and he and his editorial team would have to change their direction on how they have to view Trump, in the light of his resounding win over Harris and the result of the popular vote numbers. They obviously haven't succeeded. However it is difficult to get a leopard to change it's spots.
When I look at civil rights era protests (1960s) I don't see the protestors lighting fires or throwing rocks. These protestors were hugely successful. They wanted a particular result, not an opportunity to damage anything or anybody. Many of today's protestors don't seem to realize turning a protest into a riot hurts their cause.
I totally agree with your ultimate point, I don't think you're right about the 1960s civil rights protests. For example, the Watts Riots in 1965 were way worse than that we're seeing today - I think at least dozens of people died in those riots. (Of course the discrimination they faced was much worse in those days too...). You also had the Back Panthers and the Weather Underground openly advocating for violence - I think the Weather Underground may have even bombed government buildings.
That said, we have ubiquitous cameras today, so everyone basically sees everything!
Watts was a riot, not a protest and came after the Civil Rights Act). I'm thinking of the actual organized protests with leaders like King, Lewis, and Marshall that helped enact the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Yes - that's true. It was a remarkably disciplined protest movement - especially given the truly brutal violence that African Americans were facing throughout the South. I just wanted to make we look at the whole picture - but you're right that much of the violence I mentioned came a bit later.
That's a very long article. I'm not sure there is anything in it that has not been said many times before. Just to mention, also you said there were tens of thousands of people out on No Kings Day- it was at least in the hundreds of thousands, if not in the millions. Over 1,400 separate demonstrations, in the large cities with large numbers. Even if it means little, and progressives, the left etc are causing a lot of problems, still, no point downplaying the numbers, is there?
Great article summarizing and gathering in one place a lot of what well might have been said already by Mounk and others. But I found this overview extremely helpful.
This is a great piece. It is one of the best descriptions of where we currently stand, how we got here and where we’re likely headed – – albeit with uncertainty about the future. The analysis shows why it is so important for democrats to overcome the far left agenda that has become a reason why so many mainstream Americans stick with Trump, despite their discomfort with many of the things he is doing. It also shows the importance for Democrats to speak to the aspirations of mainstream middle class Americans, rather than only the need to beat back the negative things that Trump is doing.
Thanks for this very thoughtful overview of what may lie ahead. I realize that you can't cover all bases, so take the following as additional perspectives and factors at play, rather than criticism of all the ground you do cover.
1. To hark back to Clinton and Company's insight: It's the economy, stupid. So much of our political future hinges on whether and to what extent it fails under Trump, whether through his own foolish policies or otherwise
2. Trump need not explicitly defy the courts to largely get his way. The Supreme Court may nibble around the edges of constraining Trump. But as indicated by its immunity decision last year and many other rulings, it will largely cave and will not ride to the Constitution's or America's rescue.
3. Some of the damage Trump does may be like trees falling in a forest without anyone hearing them. That is, the majority of Americans won't care or be aware of some of the damage Trump is doing or the validity of protests against him, since they either don't follow the news at all or only get it from Fox and other right-wing "news" and social media outlets.
4. Similarly, Trump may be able to change the subject or blame others (Dems, immigrants, coastal elites, the woke, China, etc.) for problems he creates or exacerbates.
5. One big and potentially positive X factor here is whether or when a charismatic opposition leader comes to the fore.
6. One big and potentially negative X factor here is whether Trump can manufacture a Reichstag moment that enables him to crack down suddenly rather than undercut democracy gradually.
7. A lot hinges on whether even a few key Republicans in the House or Senate rise up to challenge all the damage he's doing. So far, and for many years, they've proven to be cowardly.
8. The close of the piece offers a thoughtful alternative to all-or nothing analysis, but still may shade toward being too optimistic in thinking that Trump and whoever follows in his footsteps can lose once they secure the levers of power.
I think the heavy Pro-Maga or Trump Apologist comments in this substack reveal that when such "Heterodox" thinks like Yascha begin flirting with fascism via "anti-wokeness" in brings out these kinds of folks. Its very frightening to see how far right this segment of the country has moved all because of a red-scare type panic over a few trans athletes and annoying HR lessons about microagressions...
I agree with Lauri, below, that this is a long post in which Yascha Mounk is playing his best hits from the last seven or eight years -- first on his podcast and Persuasion newsletter and now under his own name on Substack.
I realize, of course, that he is summarizing his views for a Chinese audience who are not au fait with the phantasmagoria that is US politics but to inflict it on his regular readers was perhaps unnecessary.
At one point, Mounk refers to himself as a political scientist. But whether he is a political theorist (as I thought he preferred to be known as) or a political scientist this essay does not validate either claim. Yes, he disarmingly says that he is looking at "proximate" causes, a weasel word which means "I am going to play the journalist because I am only looking at the last mile in the long road of American history."
I have one particular bone to pick with Yascha Mounk, so I will stick to that. He quotes Summers and Furman who are trying to salvage their ragged reputation by claiming they "called it right" on inflation. and that the Dems didn't listen to what they had to say. That's disingenuous. With the inflation spike of 2022-23 behind us we can now see that the pandemic was indeed a huge supply-side shock and that both Trump and Biden fuelled it with generous bailouts to American households. The Fed worsened it by setting off a tsunami of liquidity. No one comes out of this episode looking good. The disreputable duo continue to insist it was a demand shock. And they conveniently omit the second part of their recommendation. That unemployment would need to rise to between 6% and 8% to bring inflation down to normal levels. The Fed would need to raise rates to as high as 10% to bring that about. None of that actually needed to happen.
Inflation did prove highly destructive to the Biden/Harris campaign but, counterfactually, with Trump as president in 2020-24 it would have been much worse. But no one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people, as someone famously said.
"Having lost the popular vote, Trump also lacked a sense of deep legitimacy. ... And in 2024, Trump won the popular vote, giving him a much more powerful mandate."
Winning the popular vote in 2024 (with a plurality, not even a majority) was just enough to remove the stigma of lacking a sense of legitimacy, whether deep or shallow. That's not a mandate. As for "a much more powerful mandate" than having lost the popular vote, such a comparison is meaningless.
Many political commentators have started making similar use of the word "mandate", which properly refers to a resounding command from the electorate. Please remember that simply nosing out the opposition doesn't qualify.
Yascha, I like the topics you submit for discussion. When I disagree with you, it usually is because your argument largely comes from the elite perspective, even when you try hard to dissociate yourself from it.
Effecting a change from an elite dominated society that only offers palliative solutions (like welfare) to the “victims” in our society to an aspirational one that offers more opportunities to dig themselves out is hard. The elite group that largely benefits from the status quo (globalization) will fight hard against forces trying to effect change.
The media - a part of the elite - will use its formidable ideological machine to try to convince the general public of the errors of this change, exaggerating every change move as “anti-democratic” and “dictatorial.”
The country does have problems, but it is still the best country in the world. I would love to see both parties working together to solve these problems, instead of demonizing those from the opposition.
Wouldn’t the country be better served if the Democratic Party and our political commentators offered counter solutions to Trump changes instead of resorting to “democracy ending” arguments and fanning the “resistance”?
Could you, Yascha, add a discussion about these two areas: 1) what are the most critical problems we need to solve? and 2) what are the proposed solutions that have a chance to pass?
Both parties may have to compromise, but the country would have made steps to solve the problems.
Thanks Yascha. I just want to say, on behalf of wokeism/equality, I'd rather have people erring on the side of fixing inequality, than people who want to do away with equality altogether.
Jason Furman? Larry Summers? The main advisors to Obama and helped prolong the Great Recession? The Biden admin and US did the right thing ignoring those two
Yascha, a long and seemingly round and round argument which fails to understand exactly what the American Constitution says about the power of the President. You are also falling into the TDS trap, you said you and your editorial staff would avoid, concerning joining the Leftist "resistance" against the democratically elected POTUS.
A counter POV is offered by Francis Menton who received his B.A. in Economics and Mathematics summa cum laude from Yale University in 1972; and his J.D. degree cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1975. In 1975 he joined the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP as an associate, becoming a partner in 1984, and retiring after 40 years in 2016. He writes on Substack aswell. His article;
The Left Not So Happy With The Monster They Created — Manhattan Contrarian
and the readers comments are worth viewing.
The pervasive talking point of the Left since President Trump returned to office is that he is trying to make himself into a “dictator.” Starting in the early weeks of his new term, the main evidence for the “dictator” claim was said to be Trump’s actions to make the government respond to his policies, via actions like large-scale lay-offs, issuance of Executive Orders, and cancellation of grants and contracts.
The very first line of the Constitution of Article II, Section 1, which states that “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” If that doesn’t mean that the President can “dominate the policy making of all institutions in the executive branch,” it’s hard to know what it might mean.
The problem with all the MSM propaganda is that the Left thought that they had gotten around the Constitution with decades of progressive-inspired legislation designed to create a government of permanent experts that would tie the hands of any President who might have different policy ideas.
For multiple decades, the Left thought they had achieved a perfect model for unbreakable left-wing governance. When a Democrat was President, he could exercise all executive functions because the commissions and bureaucracy would support him as part of their team; but when a Republican got elected, he would be boxed in by the commissions and bureaucrats who would assure continuance of the policies of the progressive groupthink.
Actually, that’s what the Constitution provides. If you don’t want a President with so much power, it would have been much better not to have created so many agencies and delegated so much power to the executive.
The MSM is screaming that Donald Trump is a "dictator" only because his opponents do not like what he is doing. The "swamp," that he argued should be drained, includes the agencies many of which are funded by the government. Trump has forced them on to the defensive.
Biden the previous "dictator" cancelled pipelines and lease sales, cancelled mining, mandated EVs, mandated renewables for electricity generation, removed land from mineral exploration (including uranium), attacked the fossil energy industry, and ignored the law on numerous issues.
One could say that the current Republican "dictator" makes him appear more like a liberator, than his previous Dems opponent. 😐
If Trump is to be described as a "liberator" then it follows that the liberation is from reality. To describe tariffs as anything else than an act of self harm is delusional and to impose tariffs on allies while letting Russia off the hook shows a departure from reason.
Roger's reasoning seems remarkably untethered to reality.
Well said. Those screaming about dictatorship have supported anti-democratic moves for years.
The dictatorship claims come from precedents, which is how our system operates in the absence of black letter law. Trump, through his presidential orders and personnel changes is trying to implement policy change much as FDR did. But FDR made substantial use of Congress in achieving his change. That is FDRs changes were made with 2/3's of the government and backed by landslide electoral victories. In 1937-38 FDR's party controlled more than 3/4's of both Houses of Congress. Trump has a narrow margin in the House and cannot overture a filibuster in the Senate. As a result he is trying to enact change with 1/3 of the government, that is, a minority. Not only that, but it is widely expected by Republicans that Trump will lose the House next year. making his power even less and conferring lame duck status on him.
This timeline creates urgency, hence the speed at which Trump as acted. But this very speed creates a message of desperation. If Trump really had the support of the people as he maintains he would be able to move more deliberately, less impulsively to try to achieve his objectives. He is not doing this, which leads one to suspect he is trying to put something in that the electorate will not like before they can vote to stop it.
Michael, good points, but Trump has to deal with the majories that the electorate has given him. The Constitution still remains whatever is written. The Constitution only stipulates percentages in few cases, and does does stipulate majorities or percentages that Trump has to achieve to determine how or how not the Constitution can be used to legally govern America. Surely?
The majorities he has define the strength of his mandate. By choosing to circumvent Congress using executive orders instead of of persuasion he acknowledges that he has too little of a mandate by trying to establish facts on the ground before the next election makes him a lame duck.
I'm happy to see that you see through the MSM propaganda. It is that old, dead story of democracy versus dictator which even casuals aren't buying anymore. But, it's how they framed it, so the media must stick with it.
Regarding constitutional powers of the President, you may be right, but oh how the world has changed since 1787! Trump, with the executive powers and institutional structure granted to him in the Constitution, cannot succeed in the modern world of complex governance networks.
Imagine a map of the world, with all major cities linked together by a line to make a spider's web of connections. Now imagine the United States highlighted on that map. This is Trump's jurisdiction. He can stand there with a hammer and whack some elites' heads in New York, D.C. or San Francisco, but this is merely whack-a-mole. They go under, play dead for a while, but their networks are still active. Their money, their international partners, their businesses, or even their own persons can move across a line in the network to another major city in a jurisdiction outside of the United States. Think of Jason Stanley moving from Yale to the University of Toronto to propagandize from there. And elites from all sectors of society can do this. The most powerful people on the planet are connected through global networks, and they can transfer their power to other cities (hubs) through the communication and transportation lines if they wish (spokes). It is this networked system that has created so much wealth for the US, because currently, as they say, all roads lead to Rome. That is, the United States' major cities are the most centralized hubs in the system. They have the most connections (spokes). Where is democracy, or, "consent of the governed" in this world, you might ask. That is a good question...
If you live inside the propagandized narrative of "democracy versus dictator," you might see a lot of hypocrisy in the media and call it out. But what the MSM is trying to defend is that global networked structure. The Republicans may succeed in destroying it because they wish to regain agency within their borders, but this would be a United States that is much poorer and much weaker.
Citizens of the United States should at least know the true stakes before deciding.
Very well said and well argued. IMHO the power of the "Anywheres" is immense and likely to increase if the Western democracies move further towards Statism. The Anywheres will be needed to influence the academic and the ruling classes of other countries, so as to build up what you suggest are the Elitist "spokes." The growing dissociation of the “Progressives”, who want to dominate as the elite ruling classes, is that they will move more and more away from the needs, desires, health and wealth of the citizens that elected them. “Modernism” has to teach the principles that should guide and enlighten the western world such as ; objective truth and reason, science, individualism, democracy, capitalism, free speech, and sovereign countries that preach equal opportunity- not equity or social justice, and meritocracy. Human nature - yes human nature - is just not going to be able to be changed, what ever the Progressives want us to believe. The seeming failing of the Globalist dream of Globalism, for now at least, is a point in question. For what it's worth. Please correct me if that is not what you infered.
I like Goodhart's book and his distinction between the "somewheres" and the "anywheres," but network power is not quite that simple. The spokes are neutral, not only "elitist"; you can imagine them as the plumbing that things travel through. They simply connect two dots, or "actors." And elites are not a unified block. I would consider Trump an "anywhere," even if he is loyal to his version of the USA. He is certainly connected worldwide, and a part of many elite networks. If you reimagine that world map with the spider's web from above, it may help to color some of the lines red and some of them blue. Maybe you can image the blue lines as thicker, as more resources travel through their spokes (information through MSM global broadcasts, money wires because they're richer, their people travel more, etc.), and maybe the blue network is larger because it has more connections, but the red network is definitely global. You can imagine Trump's connections to Putin, Bolsonaro, Bukele, and all the other nationalists as being red. But both blue and red spokes enter the same countries, the same cities, the same buildings, and even the same households. The West is really quite polarized, down to even the family. You can imagine blue and red lines beaming out from the same house as different family members connect to different networks through the Internet.
Anyway... I'm probably rambling by now...
I won't argue with the rest of what you wrote. Just wanted to clear up that it is not only a unified, global elite who take advantage of network power. You and I also have done so. We met at a hub (Yascha's blog) from our own places. We sent our messages (information) through the spokes (the world wide web). We comment and try to influence more people to see things our way and cooperate with us (a form of power).
Thanks. All one has learnt from the passing of the years, is that we are very unlikely to influence, let alone convert those of another political stripe, to our POV concerning our political positions. However good information and from one who most likely has much more brain power than I. Good conversation.
Cheers, Nickerus.
An equal number of words which also fail to make the point. Blaming the left or the libs or whatever fails to recognize, among many other things the utter capitulation of the Republican congressional bloc to the only president in our entire history to so totally disdain and to disavow our electoral process, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
One can prate on about the expansion of governmental agencies acting as unelected and 'dictatorial bodies’ unresponsive to ’the people’ until the bovines return to the large red structure, but until one also explains that no large scale government has been able to exist without such bodies since the Sumerians invented them nearly five thousand years ago, this is only half an argument. And the answer to the problem is not Elon Musk’s chain saw Department of Government Evisceration.
One of the Founders’ greatest concerns was that a Republic of the kind they designed might not work on a large scale, and that was back when the US was a comparatively small and relatively homogeneous (at least in terms of those holding the franchise) group of states clinging to the Atlantic Ocean.
Another was that the growth of what they called ‘factions’ (political parties) would lead to a situation in which party loyalty trumped (pun intended) loyalty to the country as a whole.
A third was the nature of the national executive, remembering that they had just fought a protracted and very close run war to free themselves from an executive. In the end, they agreed to create one in part because they knew who the first occupant would be, a man who had already proven himself to be completely trustworthy. They had to hope that we would continue to elect such men. Our record in that regard has been spotty, but none have attempted to stretch their power anywhere near the blatant extent that Trump has.
Finally, of course, this country and the world are a very different, far more complex, and far more intertwined place than in the world of 1789. The Founders, for all their political wisdom could hardly have foreseen the economic, political, and technical forces that now encompass us. Jefferson’s yeoman farmers and Hamilton’s nascent industrialists and financiers were babes in the woods compared to what inhabit the world now. Potential enemies are not months but only minutes away, and the power they have utterly dwarfs the primitive artillery, or the smooth bore muskets envisioned in the Second Amendment.
In the movie, The American President, Michael Douglas in the role of President Andrew Shephard, notes that ‘America is advanced citizenship’. Indeed, it is the most advanced in the world. And far too many of us simply do not understand what that means. He also notes that ‘we have serious problems and we need serious people to solve them’ My knowledge of American history is probably a bit better than most as I have taught it for over 40 years, and with one exception (Andrew Johnson) I cannot think of a less serious set of problem solvers than Donald Trump and his collections of lickspittles, incompetents, liars, vengeance seekers, security risks, barn burners, health cranks, and drunks.
Above all the noise, one fact stands out with unmatched clarity. In re-electing Donald Trump in 2024, his supporters have willingly and knowingly chosen a man who after November of 2020 proved beyond a shadow of a doubt his contempt for the nature of our Republic. There are no excuses here. No wriggle room. No evasions. If they did not recognize that, simply didn’t care about it, or worse yet accepted and agreed with it, then the blame for where we are now rests primarily with them.
When I think of the "swamp" I think of corruption. Does anyone doubt that Trump is the most corrupt President we've had since Warren Harding, 100 years ago? The deep state is not democratic, but I do not think it's corrupt. Based on my personal knowledge of several people in the Justice, the NIH, FDA, and the National Parks, our civil service is full of honest people who could earn a higher salary in the private sector but stayed because they believe in the mission. I don't think Trump has any understanding of why a person would do that.
You missed “mandated vaccines."
Say it with me again: every bit of criticism of the Supreme Leader is TDS. Everyone who calls him out for his BS is a “leftist”.
Do you have a link to The Left Not So Happy With The Monster They Created — Manhattan Contrarian? I’ve searched without success.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-6-12-the-left-not-so-happy-with-the-monster-they-created
Thank you!
I should add I don't agree with the views expressed on that site.
Without in any way defending Trump's actions, I find it bothersome that the author looks to other countries but fails to consider the Biden administration's heavy use of executive orders, ignoring of Supreme Court decisions, lawfare, and so on, which were plenty anti-democratic.
The Biden administration's purported authoritarianism went unmentioned because it didn't exist. There is a world of difference between executive action that stretches the boundaries of what courts have ruled permissible in the past on the one hand -- every president takes such actions -- and Trump's approach on the other.
This is in two ways: (1) The sheer number of baldly unconstitutional or otherwise unlawful orders is unprecedented. His order on birthright citizenship, which calls into question the citizenship of every person born in this country but not born to citizens, even if born to immigrants here legally, even if they have every intention of staying indefinitely and seeking citizenship, is the most dramatic case in point. (2) Even more alarmingly, he has indicated an unprecedented willingness to ignore court orders. He and the courts have played a bit of a dance where the courts avoid dialing it up to 11 with, for example, contempt orders and the administration, so far, eventually backs down and kinda sorta does what it's told only after snide winking, foot-dragging, and countless bad-faith excuses, but there's no denying that he is flirting with the sort of dire constitutional crisis Mounk describes -- outright defiance of the courts -- as no other president has done since FDR's court-packing bill was defeated in his own otherwise friendly Congress. FDR at least had the excuse of a national economic emergency, something Trump can't claim despite his constant and dubious invocations of emergency powers.
Biden tried to forgive student loans he didn't have a right to forgive, the Supreme Court said no, and Biden said okay. That's what a well-functioning system looks like. He never would have purported to defy that decision, as Trump has done with respect to due process rights for deportees. He never would have had federal agents pick up a legal immigrant just for writing an op-ed he didn't like, or imprisoning a legal immigrant for his otherwise lawful protest, or shake down specific law firms or universities on his enemies list like a gangster thug, threatening their very existence. That's what democratic backsliding looks like.
One metric that cuts right through the whataboutism here: As Mounk notes, courts are ruling against the administration's actions at a furious pace. And you can't chalk that up to a friendly Democratic judiciary because the judiciary is not as a whole one of those elite liberal institutions, filled as it is with Republican appointees and headed by a 6-3 conservative majority Supreme Court. Many conservative judges, including Trump appointees, have ruled against him, sometimes with deep expressions of alarm. His latest loss at the tariff court led Trump to decry the conservative Federalist Society, which is Trump-friendly on presidential control of their administrations but not Trump-friendly on presidents acting outside their authority, which is the bulwark against an elected dictatorship. It's no wonder he hates conservative and liberal judges alike -- because they take their job seriously and aren't partisan hacks as they are in other countries.
As for "lawfare," Trump was indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election because he tried to overturn the 2020 election -- even after all legal avenues had been exhausted and with no good-faith basis, even after every reputable advisor told him he had no fair chance. His actions in that regard correctly had him impeached and should have seen him convicted and barred from office. Sometimes when they go after you, it's because you did it.
Speaking for myself the most troubling aspect of Biden's presidency in terms of authoritarianism were the criminal charges brought against Trump. I suspect they were leveled with the intent of interfering with the election.
Yes, and what was the consequences of that use of executive orders? A one term presidency in which everything he tried to achieve is now going to be destroyed.
For me there are two fundamental issues here, the first being demographics. For decades now white collar professionals have been migrating from the Republican Party to the Democrats while their working class counterparts move in the opposite direction. Educational polarization is probably the best predictor of party preference today. In that context Trump's gains among minority voters is not too surprising. Black and Hispanic voters are disproportionately working class and they are merely following white blue collar workers into the GOP.
The second is the rise of populism around the glove. Trump is merely the American expression of a worldwide phenomenon: Orban in Hungary, Melon in Italy, Brext and Johnson in the UK and now Farage and the Reform Party, Milei in Argentina, Duterte in the Philippines, Afd, LePen, Bukele, etc. etc.
The peculiar issues specific to each country vary. For Duterte, Bolsonaro and Bukele it was crime. For Europe it's been immigration. For the US economic decline due to offshoring. But at its heart the real issue is the widening gulf between elites and the rest of the population. Secure in gated compounds the well to do are largely immune to the ravages of ordinary crime or the disruption brought on by unchecked immigration. In the meantime in the US those same elites profited from globalization even as individuals employed in manufacturing saw their standard of living plummet as their jobs were offshored.
In such a circumstance conflict between the classes is inevitable. If Trump did not exist it would have been necessary to invent him, just as populist movements from Europe to Asia produced populist leaders to channel popular discontent.
I would not call Milei a populist. He is far too principled.
Afuera! (Chainsaw optional.)
I'm not sure if you are calling me "outside" for a fight (chainsaw optional) or noting that Milei is an outsider. :-)
Milei's background is economics and I would argue that his governance has been grounded in economic theory.
But at the same time his antics are unabashedly populist and he has gone out of his way to embrace fellow populists like Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Fair enough. I would still choose Milei over Trump and anybody else.
I like him too. Here's the origin of the "Afuera!" bit if you're not familiar with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8MtgMGJ8KA
The chainsaw was brought out at CPAC if I am not mistaken.
Trump was subject to an unprecedented barrage of dubious legal charges with the clear objective of influencing the electoral process, as compared to seeing justice done. That "lawfare" was instrumental in arousing Silicon Valley to his defense.
The real danger with respect to looming authoritarianism in the United States is a scenario of escalating provocations as both sides seek to bend the law to retaliate against their political opponents. Eli Lake laid it out in the Free Press by referencing the historical precedent of the Gracchi in Rome's Republic period (link below).
To his credit Trump has promised not to retaliate in kind, perhaps avoiding a step down the slippery slope that Lake blames for leading to the collapse of democracy in Rome. Time will tell whether he keeps his word.
https://www.thefp.com/p/republics-unravel-rome-america-trump-jan-6
This is an important point. Yascha all too conveniently overlooks all of the undemocratic moves by left politicians in the US and Europe. The EU is a comically undemocratic supranational government, and yet opposing it is usually construed as an attack on "democracy."
I also have to wonder if countries like the US are better off because actually putting a populist government into power acts like a safety valve releasing steam.
OTOH France and Germany may just be bottling the pressure up, until an inevitable explosion.
I agree. Especially concerning given that they are at the jailing their opponents stage of "saving democracy," and the banning the most popular party stage, respectively. And then there is Romania. But none of this fits Yascha's narrative, so it goes unmentioned.
Spoiler: In a world of complex interdependence and networked governance, we all live in a comically undemocratic supranational government.
The author is intelligent and clearly really wanting to understand the Trump populist movement. It's painful to see so much time and effort going into such a fundamentally flawed essay - flawed by underlying blind bias against Trump personally, not affirmed by any measure of reality. So much wasted brain power. It's hard to break out of the elitist ivory tower but the author must, if he wants to understand 2025 America. The Democrat Party and so-called Progressives left the average American behind,10-15 years ago, and now represents probably about 30% of the country. I know because I was a Democrat all the way through the Clinton years; the party left me and has been moving further and further away ever since.
well said and backs up my point that Yascha said after Trump's election that articles of this type were counterproductive and he and his editorial team would have to change their direction on how they have to view Trump, in the light of his resounding win over Harris and the result of the popular vote numbers. They obviously haven't succeeded. However it is difficult to get a leopard to change it's spots.
When I look at civil rights era protests (1960s) I don't see the protestors lighting fires or throwing rocks. These protestors were hugely successful. They wanted a particular result, not an opportunity to damage anything or anybody. Many of today's protestors don't seem to realize turning a protest into a riot hurts their cause.
I totally agree with your ultimate point, I don't think you're right about the 1960s civil rights protests. For example, the Watts Riots in 1965 were way worse than that we're seeing today - I think at least dozens of people died in those riots. (Of course the discrimination they faced was much worse in those days too...). You also had the Back Panthers and the Weather Underground openly advocating for violence - I think the Weather Underground may have even bombed government buildings.
That said, we have ubiquitous cameras today, so everyone basically sees everything!
Watts was a riot, not a protest and came after the Civil Rights Act). I'm thinking of the actual organized protests with leaders like King, Lewis, and Marshall that helped enact the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Yes - that's true. It was a remarkably disciplined protest movement - especially given the truly brutal violence that African Americans were facing throughout the South. I just wanted to make we look at the whole picture - but you're right that much of the violence I mentioned came a bit later.
Paging David Shor...
Aside from Shor's socialism and apology for criticizing BLM (which failed to prevent his cancellation), I take this as a complement.
I mean Shor was fired for posting about research from Omar Wasow that indicated that riots actually result in more votes for law and order candidates.
That's a very long article. I'm not sure there is anything in it that has not been said many times before. Just to mention, also you said there were tens of thousands of people out on No Kings Day- it was at least in the hundreds of thousands, if not in the millions. Over 1,400 separate demonstrations, in the large cities with large numbers. Even if it means little, and progressives, the left etc are causing a lot of problems, still, no point downplaying the numbers, is there?
And for all that we still don't have a king; Trump remains President. We'll celebrate again on July 4th.
Great article summarizing and gathering in one place a lot of what well might have been said already by Mounk and others. But I found this overview extremely helpful.
There are varying estimates as to the size of the demonstrations and obviously protest organizers have a motive to inflate attendance counts.
This is a great piece. It is one of the best descriptions of where we currently stand, how we got here and where we’re likely headed – – albeit with uncertainty about the future. The analysis shows why it is so important for democrats to overcome the far left agenda that has become a reason why so many mainstream Americans stick with Trump, despite their discomfort with many of the things he is doing. It also shows the importance for Democrats to speak to the aspirations of mainstream middle class Americans, rather than only the need to beat back the negative things that Trump is doing.
Thanks for this very thoughtful overview of what may lie ahead. I realize that you can't cover all bases, so take the following as additional perspectives and factors at play, rather than criticism of all the ground you do cover.
1. To hark back to Clinton and Company's insight: It's the economy, stupid. So much of our political future hinges on whether and to what extent it fails under Trump, whether through his own foolish policies or otherwise
2. Trump need not explicitly defy the courts to largely get his way. The Supreme Court may nibble around the edges of constraining Trump. But as indicated by its immunity decision last year and many other rulings, it will largely cave and will not ride to the Constitution's or America's rescue.
3. Some of the damage Trump does may be like trees falling in a forest without anyone hearing them. That is, the majority of Americans won't care or be aware of some of the damage Trump is doing or the validity of protests against him, since they either don't follow the news at all or only get it from Fox and other right-wing "news" and social media outlets.
4. Similarly, Trump may be able to change the subject or blame others (Dems, immigrants, coastal elites, the woke, China, etc.) for problems he creates or exacerbates.
5. One big and potentially positive X factor here is whether or when a charismatic opposition leader comes to the fore.
6. One big and potentially negative X factor here is whether Trump can manufacture a Reichstag moment that enables him to crack down suddenly rather than undercut democracy gradually.
7. A lot hinges on whether even a few key Republicans in the House or Senate rise up to challenge all the damage he's doing. So far, and for many years, they've proven to be cowardly.
8. The close of the piece offers a thoughtful alternative to all-or nothing analysis, but still may shade toward being too optimistic in thinking that Trump and whoever follows in his footsteps can lose once they secure the levers of power.
I think the heavy Pro-Maga or Trump Apologist comments in this substack reveal that when such "Heterodox" thinks like Yascha begin flirting with fascism via "anti-wokeness" in brings out these kinds of folks. Its very frightening to see how far right this segment of the country has moved all because of a red-scare type panic over a few trans athletes and annoying HR lessons about microagressions...
I agree with Lauri, below, that this is a long post in which Yascha Mounk is playing his best hits from the last seven or eight years -- first on his podcast and Persuasion newsletter and now under his own name on Substack.
I realize, of course, that he is summarizing his views for a Chinese audience who are not au fait with the phantasmagoria that is US politics but to inflict it on his regular readers was perhaps unnecessary.
At one point, Mounk refers to himself as a political scientist. But whether he is a political theorist (as I thought he preferred to be known as) or a political scientist this essay does not validate either claim. Yes, he disarmingly says that he is looking at "proximate" causes, a weasel word which means "I am going to play the journalist because I am only looking at the last mile in the long road of American history."
I have one particular bone to pick with Yascha Mounk, so I will stick to that. He quotes Summers and Furman who are trying to salvage their ragged reputation by claiming they "called it right" on inflation. and that the Dems didn't listen to what they had to say. That's disingenuous. With the inflation spike of 2022-23 behind us we can now see that the pandemic was indeed a huge supply-side shock and that both Trump and Biden fuelled it with generous bailouts to American households. The Fed worsened it by setting off a tsunami of liquidity. No one comes out of this episode looking good. The disreputable duo continue to insist it was a demand shock. And they conveniently omit the second part of their recommendation. That unemployment would need to rise to between 6% and 8% to bring inflation down to normal levels. The Fed would need to raise rates to as high as 10% to bring that about. None of that actually needed to happen.
Inflation did prove highly destructive to the Biden/Harris campaign but, counterfactually, with Trump as president in 2020-24 it would have been much worse. But no one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people, as someone famously said.
Thank God someone here is sane. ChatGPT did a better job of comparing the One Big Beautiful Bill to Project 2025 than Mounk did.
"Having lost the popular vote, Trump also lacked a sense of deep legitimacy. ... And in 2024, Trump won the popular vote, giving him a much more powerful mandate."
Winning the popular vote in 2024 (with a plurality, not even a majority) was just enough to remove the stigma of lacking a sense of legitimacy, whether deep or shallow. That's not a mandate. As for "a much more powerful mandate" than having lost the popular vote, such a comparison is meaningless.
Many political commentators have started making similar use of the word "mandate", which properly refers to a resounding command from the electorate. Please remember that simply nosing out the opposition doesn't qualify.
Yascha, I like the topics you submit for discussion. When I disagree with you, it usually is because your argument largely comes from the elite perspective, even when you try hard to dissociate yourself from it.
Effecting a change from an elite dominated society that only offers palliative solutions (like welfare) to the “victims” in our society to an aspirational one that offers more opportunities to dig themselves out is hard. The elite group that largely benefits from the status quo (globalization) will fight hard against forces trying to effect change.
The media - a part of the elite - will use its formidable ideological machine to try to convince the general public of the errors of this change, exaggerating every change move as “anti-democratic” and “dictatorial.”
The country does have problems, but it is still the best country in the world. I would love to see both parties working together to solve these problems, instead of demonizing those from the opposition.
Wouldn’t the country be better served if the Democratic Party and our political commentators offered counter solutions to Trump changes instead of resorting to “democracy ending” arguments and fanning the “resistance”?
Could you, Yascha, add a discussion about these two areas: 1) what are the most critical problems we need to solve? and 2) what are the proposed solutions that have a chance to pass?
Both parties may have to compromise, but the country would have made steps to solve the problems.
Thanks Yascha. I just want to say, on behalf of wokeism/equality, I'd rather have people erring on the side of fixing inequality, than people who want to do away with equality altogether.
Jason Furman? Larry Summers? The main advisors to Obama and helped prolong the Great Recession? The Biden admin and US did the right thing ignoring those two
Trump is blessed by his opponents.