It's too late, Paul. Politics already is worse. Look at the Republicans' smear campaign to ram Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation through, despite him having blatantly lied to the Judicial Committee, despite more and more credible evidence of sexual predation appears. It's just come out that the GOP members KNEW about the New Yorker article several days ahead of its publication, and, in response, tried to speed up moving it out of committee!
Kavanaugh's own roommate has written that he was a mean drunk. I was chilled to read
"She felt that everyone at Yale was very rich, very smart and very sophisticated and that as a Puerto Rican woman from a less privileged background she was an outsider. "
Could anyone be a more likely victim for arrogant, privileged, cliquey White frat boys than a Latina who already felt out of place, and apparently a bit intimidated by their confidence?
And this woman was TRASHED by no less a personage than the President of the United States (albeit after he was laughed at by world leaders at the UN for ludicrous claims and threats)!
Just the fact that Donald Trump is President, despite losing the popular vote, and openly aided by criminal action by a hostile foreign power, indicates just how ugly American politics have gotten.
22
The Republicans have one idea that they can still sell to their rabid base, white supremacy. With every unarmed black person murdered by a cop, with every perceived slight in college admissions, with every confederate monument hauled off to the dust bin of history, with every well deserved allegation against their Racist in Chief. The base just grows stronger in their hatred of everyone and everything that is not in 100% agreement with their racists, sexist views. We'll see what happens in November and in 2020, but I'm no longer hopeful as I know how hate filled the white supremacist GOP base is from sea to racist sea.
7
Other than open borders and trisexual bathrooms, what ideas do the Democrats have? None.
8
The Republican Party - more a criminal mafia impersonating a political party than an actual political party - needs to be voted into extinction in the next two elections. They are all just a bunch of stooges, toadies and lying thieves pushing the agenda of their true owners, the Koch Brothers. They are only their to line their own pockets and turn the country over to their plutocrat masters. All their issues - abortion, guns, so called family values, immigration - are just ginned up nonsense and bluster to fool the rubes, yahoos and religious idiots who constitute their "base". (Is anyone pointing a gun at anyone's head to get an abortion? Name me ONE person - other than a criminal - whose guns were taken away by ATF? And far from people pouring from Mexico, Mexicans are returning to Mexico, after %Republican bigots and racists have made it clear that the American Dream doesn't apply to them.) And they can only win elections by cheating: gerrymandering, voter suppression and intimidation, and having their Russian pals work their GRU magic on social media and hacking the voting machines. (Also known as: TREASON)
We don't want a new Republican Party. We don't want to reform the Republican Party. We don't want to reach across the aisle, cooperate with, or find common ground with the Republican Party.
We want to END the Republican Party, permanently, for once and for all, and put it's corrupt treasonous leadership in jail, where they have long belonged.
November 6, 2018
29
Mr. Krugman,
Robin Hood is a poor comparison. Mr. Hood took from the rich and gave to the poor, however he was not one of the rich. Republicans, on the other hand, take from the poor and keep for themselves.
Robert.
3
If the GOP maintains majorities in both Houses of Congress the American people will revolt. They will know, with absolute certainty that the GOP is the party of cheaters. Whether through voter suppression, gerrymandering, or conspiring with a foreign enemy, they will know that democracy is dead and replaced with an oligarchy that will harm them.
4
It occurred to me after the 2016 election that having the Republicans in control of all branches of our federal government might do one thing quite nicely: reveal just how bankrupt all their ideas are. When they could only talk and not put into practice, they could talk the talk. Now people can see what those policies actually are. And they don't like them.
Trump actually did the country a favor when he signed the tax cuts into law immediately upon passage rather than waiting until January as I read somewhere McConnell et al. wanted. The lauded cuts showed up on everyone's pay in January and amounted to a bunch of nothing. I got $34 more each month, and I am sure I am not alone. For this, the deficit went up over a trillion dollars? We really aren't fools, you know, Republicans.
8
How does gerrymandering affect the Senate races?
2
No they have one idea cut taxes and hope the money magically appears. I wonder if they imagine after two failures Reagan and Bush cuts, the third time will be a charm.
1
When your policy is to take care of rich donors at the expense of your voters, you either have to lie to your voters, appeal to their fears and prejudices, or some combination of the above or lose. Republicans who believe they have "low information voters" have tried to lie and manipulate their voters. Perhaps voters are awakening to the utter disdain the President and Republicans have for them.
5
The G.O.P. doesn't care if a win is ugly. You have to have *some* kind of collective conscience to see that it's ugly.
They just care if it's a win.
3
Trump DID have a new idea : Represent those who lost out in globalization , who saw their factories move to Mexico and China, and those who saw their jobs taken over by immigrants working for less against the liberal elite that profited form it.
So he is disliked by both Republicans that cherish outsourcing because it fattens their wallets and pro immigration, lets have free trade, liberals.
Who should come up with meaningful ideas to help, but instead play the race card
2
do we dems have a platform anymore besides "hate trump"? we've become as bad, if not worse than those we abhor
3
U.S. culture is in a state of deterioration owing to inflammation of conflicts in perception between its sub-cultural components. The dynamics are complex and too readily exploitable by opportunistic demagogues (GOP radicals) who understand the ease with which the most destructive elements of human nature - unreasoned fear and anger - can be manipulated to fuel hatred and hostility.
But here, in the midst of the largely impoverished Memphis metroplex (bluest part of a red state), I see subcultures of decency and deliverance. With predominantly volunteer support, we have:
> the Mid-South Food Bank that offers relief for the deprived
and then aggressively seeks out and answers the needs of hidden, helpless children and invalids.
> the world renowned St. Jude Children's Research Hospital that welcomes the destitute and hopeless and produces breakthrough cures. Despite daily expenses of $2.4 million, there is no cost to their patients.
These are just the more prominent among many smaller groups of good heart and action. We are not unique or alone. Here and beyond, the spirit of compassion, empathy and decency is taking hold across this nation and as we mourn together for lost innocence, we will resolve: We Shall Heal. That was President and Mrs. Obama's vision and their overwhelming approval polls signal the desire and readiness of our ailing culture.
4
Maybe GOP does not have any good policy ideas to help the people. However, they are ramming through a lot of reversals of good policies + implementing many of their bad policies, which means we, the People, will suffer for a long time! The POTUS, Congress & the Supreme Court are colluding to destroy lives, long term job prospects, environment, climate impact, women's rights, children's rights, tax policies for may many generations! It is unbelievable that a country like America has no way to stop this assault on all of us, other than voting and even that is fixed by the GOP! Most unpalatable is that taxpayers will pay this super rich, dangerous, unproductive POTUS & GOP congress members through their retirements and death! There are no Abdul Kalams here in the US government today! Kalam was the amazingly humble President of India who lived with 4-5 shorts & pants all his life even though he was the brilliant mind behind the modern space age in India.
1
The Republican Party is reaping the bounty of what the GOP sowed. Americans have awaken, albeit somewhat belatedly, to the hard core, in-your-face harsh reality that the hollow rhetoric the GOP espouses about 'family values,' 'us v. them,' tribalism, "you're better than them," and "Make America Great Again" is worthless when economic adversity strikes. Feeling 'great again' when unemployed (under employed), being foreclosed upon and evicted, your children unable to attend college due to lack of funds, and the economic base reduced by corporate flight overseas for tax havens, there comes a time when pride goeth before a fall. Mr. Krugman's incisive report is dead on. The Republicans' Faustian bargain with 45 have come back to haunt them. To paraphrase Malcolm X:"The chickens are finally coming home to roost." Rightly so. That said, don't count the GOP out. Taking a page from their 1968 'Southern Strategy' playbook, the 'race card' will be dealt from the bottom of the deck intended to stampede the emasculated 'base' to the polls out of fear of 'those people' taking over. The Democratic Party is the party of inclusion. Multi racial, multicultural, multi immigrant, multi religious, and gender parity candidates are on the cusp of transforming America on November 6th. The party of Lincoln has become the party of 'no ideas' except extreme ideas of xenophobia, racial internecine, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and homophobia. The Republican Party plays on race baiting. Race matters.
7
Editorial comment: "with voters overwhelmingly believing that the tax cuts went to corporations and the rich"
Shouldn't that read: "with voters overwhelmingly understanding that the tax cuts went to corporations and the rich"
Words matter...
5
"The G.O.P. has become the party of no ideas."
That is not quite true, they do have TWO ideas: tax cut for the rich and bigotry sells.
As to the "American public seems to have wised up", we will only know after the mid term election. After all, all indications before the 2016 election date were that the liar-in-chief that now sleeps in the White House seems to go down in a landslide. Then we found out bigotry did sell. Sad!
4
The main point this piece misses is the massive corruption in the Republican party. Nearly every representative and Senator have traded in their responsibilities to their constituents for money in the form of donations from special interests like the NRA or the Koch brothers. Conservatism doesn't mean fiscal responsibility or smaller government anymore. It means dirty tricks and deals made in back rooms. It means gerrymandering, voter suppresion, and racism. And nowadays it means being a sycophant to a President who not only might have obstructed justice, but is a pawn to Russian interests.
Is it distressing that there is this horrible partisan bickering and sometimes outright hatred on the part of voters? Of course. But when one looks at the facts, one can see that both sides feel existentially threatened. I want old fashioned conservatism to come back, but I'm afraid that it's been destroyed. The Democrats are far from perfect, but they hold the keys to our future.
9
My middle class 401(k) sure got some trickle down!
3
There are two types of government: one that serves the people, and the other extracts wealth from them. Republicans put the US in the second category. Some of their scams are in plain sight.
The GOP are deficit hawks when not in office. When they can, they claim tax cuts, paid from taxpayer debt, will bring prosperity, but actually benefit the wealthy.
To pay for it, Rs cut your health care, social security, Medicare, and welfare programs. They cut higher education and profit from student debt.
They privatize, which means sell off public assets, schools, prisons, public lands, and crumbling infrastructure. They insert religion into deregulated, for-profit schools while keeping them white.
Lobbyists, well funded from Citizens United, allow fossil fuel polluters to deny global warming, pharma to keep drug prices high, health care to remain a corporate feeding frenzy, and Banks get bailed out when risky trades fail.
Ratcheted up security is their misguided jobs program. Build WMDs, increase the military, maintain the empire, implement universal surveillance, build huge bureaucracy including homeland security, ICE, detention camps, militarized police necessary because insecure people are now heavily armed.
These all redistribute upward, put many into debt servitude, and make government unresponsive.
http://gopiswrong.net/
3
Having read a few "both sides" indictments of Republicans and Democrats, Let me help:
Ronald Reagan's anti-government attitude re-quoted, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." sarcasm borne of right-wing resistance to the Social Contract.
Republicans work for the wealthy. Tax cuts and pledges to never raise taxes.
Republicans work for world domination with military responses to all problems abroad, while trying to end social programs that assist the vulnerable.
Republicans seek an economic environment of "Buyer beware", working against regulations of workplace, public health and safety and even after a banking crisis are working to dismantle Dodd-Frank and the lessons of the Great Recession.
Democrats seek healthcare and basic needs for every person.
Democrats seek world peace through our international organizations and commitments to the people who face poverty and insecurity wherever they live.
Democrats seek equal pay, treatment and opportunity for women and girls.
Democrats believe in leading the world in humans rights, ending feudal practices and enslavement of minority ansd indigenous people.
Democrats want immigration reform including an identity and status for every single person who is here.
Democrats believe in the scientific method, in best practices, in accepted scientific knowledge- earth science, health science and saving the earth's fauna and flora.
There is nothing to be confused about. "Both sides" are as different as hope and despair.
8
Krugman supported Hillary and her slander of millions of Americans as deplorable. Hillary lost, and she lost very, very ugly. Krugman is back for more of the same ugliness in 2018 and 2020. The Krugman ugliness may play well on the coasts, but Krugman's ugliness sends voters to Republicans in the South and Midwest.
7
What is the key problem with the NFL?
Equating any private business with this country and patriotism or teaching the kids to unconditionally love somebody else’s private property.
From this stage to electing as the president a billionaire that blackmailed the community into constructing a billion-dollar stadium on behalf of his privately-owned property is just a tiny step.
Would any reasonable and independent free press actively participate in such a kind of fraud and deception?
Protesting the national anthem, the symbol of country’s solidarity and unity, is absolutely useless and counterproductive.
If we teach the kids from their earliest age that their happiness is coming from the billionaire owners of the professional sport franchises, don’t wonder later why they preferred the same kind of individuals as their elected leaders.
You taught them to feel, think and act in such a way!
1
Another thing that is obvious to voters is Trump. Bush could smooth the way for tax cuts on the strength of his likeability, he being the-guy-you-want-to-go-have-a-beer-with. But Trump is out there tweeting and holding rallies and you can see what he is or is not doing. Is he confused? Yes. But there is no hiding what he has done. If it’s crass you can’t help but see it, hear it, smell it.
3
It certainly is easier to get people to like policies where someone else pays their way.
3
Trump and the Republicans can brag about how great the economy is going. Basically his “Tax Cut” was really a 0ne Trillion $$$$ Party that they threw for the country while the Stock Market was riding on the Obama Wave.
Enjoy the fun and remember to thank your Great Grandchildren and their descendants for footing the bill,
2
Republican have been fixated on who's face will go on Mount Rushmore?
It’s not that Democrats don’t have ideas. It’s that they don’t have a multi billion dollar propaganda network to promulgate them, and they are not good at all repeating the same buzzwords that are handed down to them, as the Republicans are.
New corporate licensure (Elizabeth Warren). Medicare for all (numerous) are just a couple. And these are good ideas, not lies masquerading as ideas.
5
Trumps victory in 2016 was a repudiation of the established politics altogether. This wake up spreading around the globe is not just a passing phase either, fading in time for the next elections, to bring back politics as usual. The Sun has come up on our world, and forever as far as we're concerned. So once again we are a witness to that gathering together to greet the storm. The song we know all too well, with only the one big difference, this struggle for tomorrow will be carried out in the light.
1
The biggest mistake that Democrats, and in fact the entire populace, are making is that we assume EVERYONE wants to make government better. That is a dangerous paradigm. For Republicans, who's ideology has been taken over by libertarians, their objective is to destroy government. For an exceptionally researched and well documented explanation, please ready "Democracy in Chains" by Nancy MacLean, a Duke University professor of History and Public Policy. Being as everyone is working off of a false assumption, you (and I include Dr. Krugman) have no idea of the extent of the menace, let alone how to respond to it.
4
How about skipping the messaging and try to help regular people who incidentally pay all of the taxes in one form or another.
How have we gotten to a point where messaging is more important than actual actions?
Paul Krugman has outlined one of the critical problems the U.S. faces. Most troubling is that the Republicans might well retain power despite widespread opposition. The "other factors" Mr. Krugman adds to gerrymandering is a key element of possible Republican victories (not successes ... victories, as in war).
Republicans are not simply gerrymandering to unprecedented extremes. They are working aggressively to suppress the votes of those who might oppose them. In states like New York, they are abetted by machine politicians like Andrew Cuomo.
Conservatives are also aided by a propaganda machine funded by wealthy fanatics like the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and the Mercers. That propaganda is spewed forth daily by Fox News. It is invented in pseudo-think tanks like the Manhattan Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation and by academics like Glenn Hubbard, Gregory Mankiw, Tyler Cowen, and Casey Mulligan. These professed thinkers have proved themselves entirely indifferent to fact.
That prompts a question: If they succeed in their suppression of democracy, supported by fact-free ideology, to what lengths will Republicans go when We the People decide we have had enough of their tactics of intimidation and suppression? To what lengths will We the People go?
4
Part of the problem is the reaction to the Ryan / McConnell / Trump tax cut is a marketing battle.
It should be a matter of facts and numbers.
I am in IT and of the professional class. Over the next ten years I expect a total tax break of about $7,000.
At the same time, we are projected to add $12 Trillion to the debt over the next ten years.
That is $80,000 per taxpayer.
These are the numbers.
5
As comedian Lewis Black observed back in 2004 we have a two party system, "The Republicans who have really bad ideas and the Democrats who have no ideas. When those two get together we are really screwed." True today?
2
@mr3 No ideas. The Affordable Care act was a bold Idea. Recognizing the problem of Global Warming and addressing it is an idea. Solutions to the Student loan problem are ideas. Decent and responsible immigration reform. A living minimum wage. Regulations to protect the environment, workers and American Consumers are Democratic ideas. A women's right to choose..... If Democrats have no ideas why does Trump work so hard at undoing their ideas and work. You may not like their ideas, but stop the claptrap about no ideas
8
As an independent, I think during the current times it is the democratic party that is the party of no ideas. The last big idea of the democrats was the affordable health care but its execution was imperfect. Whats the next big idea that will ensure success in the mid term?
4
We shouldn’t forget that the Bush tax cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003 under Senate budget reconciliation rules, were extended for two years in 2010 and made largely permanent in 2012 in the Obama administration. By some estimates, those tax cuts added between $5 and $6 trillion to our national debt in the past 17 years, and they’re still accumulating annual deficits. That much revenue might have paid for the Iraq War or brought our aged infrastructure up to date or at least prevented us from running up our debt so fast. Instead, we got an extra $20 a week or $50 in our paychecks. Was it worth it?
3
@Byrwec Ellison
Actually Obama allowed most of the Bush-era tax cuts to lapse, which increased the top rate a whopping 2% from 37% to 39%.
The howls from the GOP on Capitol Hill could be heard all the way down to Foggy Bottom. Most of them were calling him a socialist.
5
@Byrwec Ellison We would have been a true Utopia without the Bush and Reagan and now Trump taxcuts.
Maybe (maybe just a dream), we liberals can convince some republicans that we actually have a lot in common. I live in California and the vast majority of us are middle and working class. We share the same fears and worries—healthcare costs, affordable housing, high drug costs, stagnant wages, college costs and the preservation of Medicare and Social Security. Maybe the different views about social issues will make this impossible. But at least we could try to reach them.
2
Along with the Republicans I was surprised(pleasantly in my case) by the poll showing what Americans thought of the most recent tax cut for the wealthy, both foreign and domestic. I had assumed a large percentage of middle America bought the Trickle Down snake oil from St Reagan. Two steps forward, one step back.
10
The Republican Party has plenty of ideas, as PK surely knows. They are faithful to their sponsors and have delivered too; the tax cut counts. One should not think the majority of the American population has anything to do with their ideas and efforts. It is true that Trump has gone off track with his Tariffs which do not actually benefit anyone. When they win the coming election they can push through cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, and all other entitlements.
2
The nation's problem isn't the dearth of ideas, although neither political party has offered much new on that score for decades.
The problem is in implementing. The problem is in recognizing that implemented ideas are not working. And, the problem is in throwing what amounts to trillions of dollars into ideas that haven't worked and won't work even if you DO throw more money into the mix.
The problems are in the implementation, management, and the objective assessments of how they are meeting their goals.
Eight years of Obama/Democrats at the helm succeeded only in imposing one new, massive program that has, at best, been mismanaged, and
succeeded in keeping the nation in the economic ditch in spite of the promises to get us out of it.
Right now, the Republicans have the edge because THEY ARE ACCOMPLISHING what they said the would do:
-- They promised and passed a tax package. People might no like the package that was passed, but that's a different subject.
-- The promised to remove a great number the regulations that were restricting commerce. They passed motions to rescind regulatory "law" that usurped Congress' sole and exclusive right to create.
-- The promised to drain the swamp. They got rid of a number of rogue elements in the FBI, and are working their way through the Department of Justice. Other government agencies are seeing their Deep State elements up in arms over having actually to report to their political masters.
Those are but two examples.
1
I disagree that the Republican party has no ideas. Trump has a lot of ideas whatever people's opinions of them are. I just bought a subscription to the New York Times but I am not getting a complete view of politics now or any historical context. Also, it doesn't rise above the primitive thinking of Republican v. Democrat. Diversity is really important and we need more novel ideas to grow as individuals and as a society. Let's step out of the trenches of Republican v. Democrat and pay attention to the organization of other societies that are not trying to imitate the US, past and present. One of the great improvements that we should aim for as a society is to have a rational, open view of ideas that permits curiosity without judgment. We don't have that from either of the popular parties.
1
There is one idea the republicans have fought since 1935 when FDR created it, Social Security. For over 80 years the republican party has tried to suppress and diminish this Act, and with the recent tax cuts pushed through with its taking funds from SS and Medicare, they may have finally succeeded in finding a way to destroy the single program millions of Americans depend on. Who is the private equity firm waiting in the wings to take up the slack? Who will help Americans as we age out of the workforce? Our current crop of congressmen, representatives and senators will live out cushy, protected lives built on the backs of the constituents they have denied the same privilege, but we’ll have their thoughts and prayers to keep us warm at night.
10
The Republican Party has always been the party of no ideas. Sorry, the only idea they have pushed over the decades is tax cutting ourselves into prosperity. The Democrats have always been the party of ideas for the people. The Democrats are responsible for social security, medicare, civil rights legislation, the affordable care act (Obamacare) and regulations that help make our lives better and safer. Those Republicans who voted for Trump and say don't touch my social security and medicare are oxymorons.
13
Actually, they ARE a party of ideas. Their idea is to reverse the New Deal, including Social Security, worker safety regulations and regulation of the financial sector; Brown v. Board and desegregation; the Great Society, including Medicare, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. They would reverse the Fourteenth Amendment if they thought they could.
11
Well if you sell people that they get everything for free, all of your ideas will be perceived as great, until the whole thing comes crashing down. The two very simple ideas that will work but nobody wants to follow is that everybody pitching in to the max of his ability, and government getting out of people's lives as much as possible.
3
@TomSD
"Get everything for free" is the idea of no Democrat anywhere, it's just some nonsense that you made up, or heard on Fox "news".
Government getting out of people's lives? Say goodbye to your clean air, clean water, health care, food safety, workplace safety, libraries, post offices, public schools, roads and bridges, sewage treatment, etc, etc. I'm sure your beloved corporations will take care of all of that for you.
4
@TomSD
Ever visited Scandinavia, France UK, Germany, Austria,....
No? I thought so.
3
Do you realize how insulting you are to the millions of Americans who work hard and are on no public assistance? The biggest freeloaders I have seen are the opioid addicted, pretend to be injured to get drugs and disability checks in the Red states.
2
It is easy to be a Republican politician. Your job is to slow walk most everything, making sure that nothing progressive gets enacted. You must make sure tax cuts are made along with deregulation and funding of the military, but not much else. Supreme Court nominees must be rushed through unless you're a moderate nominated by a Democrat. Sad times we live in.
9
They don't care about policies, their traditional values, or even their public opinion now.
All they care about is controlling Congress and flipping all the circuits up to the Supreme Court.
They only truly represent, in all they're trying to do, perhaps twenty percent of the country, at best.
But if they control the courts, it doesn't matter.
Democratic sponsored laws can be reversed, no matter what they are.
It's no joke about "The 40-Year Plan."
It's already engaged. And it will take years of push back in the voting booth to stop it.
5
In 2014 the Ds in southern states tried to show their independence of the ACA. It seems now the party almost everywhere has realized the potency of affordable health care. The giant tax cuts of the Rs that are totally geared to make wealthy people wealthier seem a good place to draw comparison. The right wing pro Trump corporate enrichment strategy espoused by Trump's Supreme Court picks fit right into the Koch Brother's agenda. The lame brained notion that Trump was a populist who cared for middle class voters was one of the great charades of 2016.
4
The GOP hasn't been a party of actual ideas for decades. They support whatever keeps them in power so that they can serve the nation's wealthy elite. They're able to do this courtesy of many millions of clueless voters - not to forget the good "Christians" - who never seem to tire of playing the role of chump for these charlatans. When was the last time ANYONE heard an idea come out of a GOP mouth that was designed to serve the broad swath of Americans who comprise the nation's majority? Not in my lifetime, and I'm 60 years old. The distressing thing is that they manage to keep doing what they're doing - what a statement about the American voter!
4
They have ideas. Some are ludicrous (mostly Trump's - the wall), some are good - lower taxes, some must be balanced - freedom, less regulation, stronger foreign policy, and some are really good - also mostly Trump's - allies have to pay their fair share - we actually are for Israel, we do want fair trade deals. Etc.
The Ds also have some good and bad ideas, some really good ones and some ludicrous ones. Unfortunately, the youth movement is captured by the idea of some of the worst ones - no borders, no ICE, faux protest through violence and intimidation, free speech means my free speech, socialism and similar ideas that I would call crazy and scary.
Unfortunately for Rs, when Trump won, he had made himself so loathsome to enough Rs that he couldn't use his slim majority, and they run Congress, but they don't really control anything. And, if they want to get anywhere, they not only have to cooperate with their own outliers, like say Rand Paul, and once John McCain, but also the Ds. So forget about their running on their own policies. They can't.
@DHEisenberg
What about alienating allies and sucking up to dictators is "stronger foreign policy" to you? What "fair trade" deals?
You have no idea what the "youth movement" is or isn't captured by. What "faux protest"? Who is threatening violence and intimidation, if not right-wing lunatics waving guns around, while Trump jokes about having them assassinate Clinton? If ICE as an institution cheers for the prospect of locking children in cages, then it has to go, and rebuilt from scratch.
2
Selfish, hate-filled, entitled, emotionally reactive, resentful, non-thinking and uninformed... that's your typical every-once-in-a-while American voter. We should change the country's name because American values- designed to lift people up and help the world - have been trampled.
1
If the republican party is still in control of all branches of government after November the experiment called the United States of America will be over.
There will be no more democracy.
A Supreme Court that is the judicial arm of koch industries is not a good idea anywhere.
A Senate majority leader who tramples on the Constitution is not a good idea.
We had better get out and overwhelm all of the obstacles to voting and let these so called people know We the People mean business.
If you don't you can explain to your children why the are living is a fascist state.
7
Both parties are despicable....both are arrogant, greedy, immoral, and power hungry. Both will attempt to overthrow the other by any means possible. Neither serves the American citizenry. They serve themselves and the money interests.
1
@Shenoa
"Bothsides-ism" is false equivalency. Only one party supports locking children in cages while the president profits off his golf courses, all at our taxpayer expense.
1
They have an idea.
Unfortunately for them white nationalism is not politically correct in today's world so all they can give is winks and nods.
1
American Democracy isn't immortal.
We can only HOPE we still have any politics, good or bad, should this Greedy Obnoxious Party of minority white men is able to gerrymander another electoral college win; keeping their fat, disgusting, slovenly boot heel on the neck of Democracy for another two years.
Ukraine.
Georgia.
Estonia.
United States Of America.
One nation, under Putin, with murder and lies for all. (and a lot of money for his money laundering network of greed underlings:
@realdonaldtrump TrumpTower(x30) Trump Casino Trump University Trump
Postal Annex.
1
The GOP is the party of power via corruption, not ideas.
The Russian Army infiltrated our Presidential election. Mitch doesn't care.
Trump has more than questionable ties to Russia, and his in bed with his BFF Putin, a murderer and our enemy. Paul Ryan doesn't give a rip.
Sessions kidnapped children from their parents under Trump's direction. Even Senator Collins lack of outrage is deafening.
So what do we know about the Grand Old Boys Party? All they care about is power, but they are just the puppets on strings. The real groups in power, foreign and domestic, are the people, corporations and governments who are buying our politicians and our elections.
I guess when you're well funded with oodles of dark money and Vladimir is giving you pointers on propaganda, you don't need to have ideas at all.
6
Of truly horrible people at the head of our nation's governing institutions, we might grit our teeth and say, "This too shall pass," ...except that it might not pass. Fascism is almost impossible to dislodge from within once it is established. Yet the even deeper horror for those of us who *have* studied "civics", and in some depth, is that not only has the Constitution failed to protect us from "faction" and criminality, including treason, at the highest levels, it has actually enabled them. The horror is that the Constitution may be obsolete, yet we have nothing - and can have nothing - with which to replace it, that will not be far, far worse, because any replacement will intentionally, rather than unintentionally, enable the end of freedom.
1
As long as thimblerig messaging works the Right will rule. When folks ignore economics and their general welfare to vote for candidates who hate immigration, minorities, gays, use fancy slogans like "vote for judges who uphold the constitution," and lie about jobs being created with trickle down economics, only then will wisdom as outlined by Krugman prevail.
1
And yet they keep getting reelected and Trump has a 40+% approval rating.
1
It's time for the Democratic Party to become much more progressive. Members will be deemed "socialists" by the GOP no matter what they do, so why not push better taxation, health care, and jobs ideas?
Trying to be the moderate party killed the Dems in the last election. It's time to actually start acting like the people's party.
4
Good, point, regarding ideas. On the other hand, Washington isn't exactly an innovation engine. Certainly, the Democrat's Leftist approach to governance, erecting social monopolies, something that has not produced much more than economic and social statis, is solution that is an idea killer. Monopolies do not proliferate ideas. Monopolies are idea eliminators. Freedom without choice.
In the real world it takes thousands of ideas to find a couple of really good ones. That the government and our politicians think the can find the great idea without the insight of millions is fairly conceited.
Tom Lewellen
CIVIL Governance
Oh they have ideas alright, just not ones they can say out loud. You really can run a campaign, much less a party, by expounding on selfish desires to enrich yourself at the expense of the fiscal health of the country. Nor can you pontificate on you desire to further enrich the top 1%. That is explicitly why they...really don’t say much, but act in ways that underscore the aforementioned. The selfishness employed by the Republican Party is what the end of once great civilizations are made of.
The GOP has one idea: bring back the feudal system.
2
Mr. Krugman is my favorite Times columnist, but I have to wonder how he & almost every pundit at the Times & other legit media outlets can't seem to pin the tail on the donkey???
Fox News, Fox News, Foxs News & other Conservative media that's how the Republicans have been doing it. They've got their own Propaganda Organization that spreads lies, distorts the truth & labels all Democrats as not really True Americans & they do so in an Extremely Nasty way.
Without Fox News turnings things upside down for the past 20 years there is No Way Donald Trump could've been elected. And because Fox & other Conservative media are the only places he gets his information so he is Wrong on far too many issues. The Vast Majority of Scientists know there is Climate Change & Global Warming & that it is caused by US & really the only scientists who don't brlieve are in the employ of Exxon & other oil & coal companies. So the president pulls us out of the Paris Accords, which didn't go far enough but at least it was a start, and acts like he just saved America. he supposedly believes that the Chinese have created the hoax about Global Warming to benefit themselves & he is actually partly right about that because China is positioning themselves to be the World's Leader in alternative energy etc. a position that President Obama was trying to position us for.
Fox News, Fox News, Fox News & other Conservative media without them conning their viewers the Republicans would be lucky to poll 20%.
7
Krugman and other columnists need to come to grips with the fact that what used to be the GOP no longer exists. It has become a tribe or group of fanatics who will follow the leader off the side of a cliff if he demands it. They recognize that he controls the base and that the base is all they have left.
Minorities are gone. More women leave daily. Younger voters and those concerned about the environment left a long time ago. With every new agricultural tariff imposed, more farmers leave. Evangelical leaders hold onto Trump tightly even though, by doing so, they expose their hypocrisy to their adherents. Soon that foundation will crumble as well.
Trump, his base and the political leaders holding on to him for dear life have become the modern day equivalent of the Know Nothing Party. But, in an economy where knowledge is essential to survive, this group can't last long. It is simply the wrong time to be out of ideas and expect old gimmicks to produce electoral victories.
1
Republicans haven't really had any policy beyond running on racial anxiety since 1980 -- well, that and find any way you can to use vulture tactics to steal wealth and capital from everyone else.
It is surprising that enough of the American populace seems to have noted the vast, ugly gulf between Republican propaganda and their own, personal reality that it's finally broken through the media propaganda shield propping it all up these past 40 years, and people, though confused, are now angry -- as they should have been ever since 1972.
The news is not "fake," the way Trump would put it; but it has certainly been complicit with ruling class interest, and has been used as an engine of propaganda far more efficient than Pravda was in its day, or RT is now.
Even popular music -- perhaps especially popular music, and rap, for instance -- holds up the fantasy that you, too, can win the sweepstakes, get sex, money, Benzes if you only try hard enough. You, too, can be an abuser, someone who dehumanizes everyone else around them for profit! That is the real American Dream we're all promised.
Yes, this is a fantasy promoted by both parties; but the Republicans have gone all out on it, and made it clear whom it really serves in the end.
Enough people powerless and in despair now have given up that all they want to do is promote the rape and pillage by voting for Republicans.
Will that give way to full scale revolution? Unlikely. And the GOP knows this.
Totalitarianism next.
Neither racial resentment or economic anxiety played an out sized role in Trump's election. The biggest component was a deeply flawed and unlikable candidate the democrats put up to run against him. Voter turnout was dismal because neither candidate had much to offer in the way of trust. The die hard right wingers prevailed since, in their view, politics and people exist for the purpose of being manipulated.
@LH
Plenty of reasons to not like Clinton (although most of these were false stories spread by right-wing propaganda).
There was no legitimate reason to vote for Trump.
False equivalence doesn't help us here. Clinton's minor shenanigans with emails are in no way comparable to Trump's long, well-documented history of scams, frauds, dishonesty, sexual assault, cruelty, and disloyalty.
1
What's to expect? The GOP is now just the rebadged, pre-Civil Rights Revolution, Southern Democrat Party.
5
I truly miss the Republicans of yesteryear. Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower. These were literate men who had a sense of balance, humility, civility and decency. The present GOP has none of these qualities and more closely resembles an organized crime outfit. Laws of the land are being broken every minute.
10
Sorry. This idea that the Republicans won because they were able to successfully play the race card is nonsense. Yes, there is plenty of racism in the Republican message, birtherism anybody? And gerrymandering? Of course. But did those things flip Michigan? Democrats were and are dazed and confused. They have been on the defensive for decades and have largely acquiesced to the market fundamentalism of the right. And now the game is in the late innings. The bankruptcy of market fundamentalism is more than apparent. And so, Republicans have shed the façade of ideas and have transparently adopted a strategy of domination both at home and abroad. And the Democrats? Can anybody really say they are the Party of ideas? Please…
@KM
Health care, education, scientific research, clean air, clean water, new technologies, shore up social safety net, maintain & strengthen international alliances, plenty of good ideas on the D side.
2
@The Pooch
To my mind those are all good positions but they are not a coherent, well articulated philosophy...
I think it is time to even stop calling the GOP a "[political] party". It is not a party. It is the handsomely paid lobby organization of corporations, finance and the rich. It has nothing to do with the rest of the country, which they regard as a bunch of people to exploit and a land to pillage.
When you only serve the interests of such numerically small (but extremely rich and powerful) group of people, you would have a problem being democratically elected to office. Hence, you need to resort to all sort of lies, deceits, tricks, propaganda to convince an ever increasing gullible populace (made such by decades of neglect of public schools) to vote for you.
This column makes a fine job of exposing this. If only it could reach a larger segment of the USA population....
But, please, let's stop consider or call the GOP a political party. It is not.
2
They have the same idea they've had for the past 50 years: take from the poor and middle class and give to the rich, period.
4
Dems, of course, have ideas ... virtually all of which come from Bernie's corner.
Krugman, a die-hard Hilbot during the campaign, ought to acknowledge those ideas' origins.
2
The Democrats of Schumer, Pelosi, Hillary haven't had a new idea, either. Sanders had, but was declared "to be over the edge" by neoliberal Krugman, and scolded "we are not Denmark" by Hillary.
Until the Democrats move left, the drought will persist
1
@Gerhard - Hillary won the popular vote in 2016. And a great number of states have gone Republican at the state level, so what makes you see a leftward-shift of the Democrats that would entice the many nationally who have instead been enticed by the rightward shift of the Republican Party?
I'm pleased by some signs that the GOP might start lurching back towards the center.
- Kansas voters tossed out useless Tea Partier Tim Huelskamp from Congress, and also dumped a bunch of their state-level Tea Party in favor of more rational Republicans.
- Republican governors and voters aren't so interested in destroying Obamacare these days, esp. as they grapple with opioid addiction that's hit their rural voters (and keeps them from employment, where the GOP pretends all health insurance should come from). Utah and other states are considering expanding Medicaid, because they need to.
- Veterans are among those hit hardest by deVos' decisions to support her buddies in the for-profit school industry, and leave voters (including veterans) stuck with inescapable debts and useless diplomas. At the same time, more veterans seem to be running as Democrats. Hard to tell a decorated veteran running for office that they're soft on defense.
2
You know why the GOP is the part of no ideas? Because they are dominating and aggressive. It's not okay to have an idea. Besides, people like that, tend to be very low affect - as a result, their neural network is smaller than most and thus their brain isn't wired as strongly enough to connect to higher ordered thinking such as innovation, diplomacy, organizational development or emotional regulation. These guys are more animal than evolved.
1
It's not only scary dark people, although that's always a selling point in this state, it's also the fact that a lot of so-called Christians believe that God wants them to vote Republican. They truly believe Democrats are in league with Satan. The scary dark people are further proof, of course, since a lot of my fellow Hoosiers seem to believe they are in imminent danger of being killed in their beds by dark-skinned criminals and "Mooslim" terrorists who want to kill all Christians.
1
Republican Governor Bobby Jindal had it right when he said, "stop being the party of stupid". Republicans didn't listen.
1
Is this a satire piece from the Onion? I guess Mr. Krugman has never heard of the phrase "psychological projection"........
Fool me once shame on you... fool me twice I am a Republican!!
2
Duh Krugman! The racist fear mongering thing is the republican road to power the whole way. We are WAY past that. This is not news or insight. Say something useful or novel or cede your column-inches to someone who will.
So are you angry yet!??!! Do you want to change this?
Then don't just read........ ACT!!!
On Tue November 6th, we need a massive BLUE wave!
Make sure you vote BLUE - and get every democrat you know to vote!!!
Let's remove every corrupt obstructionist republican from power!!!
2
For Republicans, "ideas" are trinkets, shiny objects, or red meat--take your pick. Welfare Queens, flag-burners, gays, Willie Horton, swift-boats, love child, Mexican rapists... Republicans have been so busy being hypocrites and exiling RINOs that they have no gas left in the cerebral tank.
4
No ideas, what's new?
1
Is it just me or is this editorial a nothing burger? My thought is: stop pussyfooting around and tell the unvarnished truth. You have a forum- use it.
If we are to have a two-party system, we're going to have to find another second party because conservatism, which has a philosophical basis, has been completely bastardized and corrupted by today's Republican party. Conservatism used to mean not meddling--laissez-faire--but there's been so much meddling that the belief in the almighty free market has become a parody. Republicans are liars and cheaters and swindlers and hoodwinkers. They seek to control women and gays and people of color in order to extinguish all the gains those groups have made. It's the opposite of democracy. We need an overwhelming majority to get rid of them once and for all. We have to vote in numbers that overrule all the cheating they're planning, all the voter suppression, all the gerrymandering, all the purging from the voter roles.
1
american elections are indeed a fraud. And so, too, is the country.
#calexit
Nobel prize winner as primitive partisan hack.
1
There is nothing but poison in the whole grab bag of single-issue obsessives comprising the party that cheats at every last thing it does. If it doesn't die soon, it will kill the USA.
1
Republicans have ideas! Its simple! 1. Create a huge deficit so social programs and medicare and social security can be attacked and investors at the top can get to that money that is otherwise safeguarded. 2. Citizens United- will allow the ruling class to be governed by the major corporate donors- shrink government and hand over the rule to those entities so they can make the rules such as deregulation for major polluters, maintain tax loop holes, banking practices for the majors and privatize medical and schools so only the upper crust can afford. Workers will be de-unionized so wages will be scraps thrown under the table. And yes how do you get middle and lower class voters to endorse these detrimental ideas that benefit them the least... Yes scare them with this idea of brown and black domination, comin for their guns, and unborn baby killers and socialism that leads to communism. who can save them? a big strong protectionist daddy warbucks who can be their Putin, Stalin, Hitler.... guess who that might be??? hmmm!!
2
Oh, the GOP’s got plenty of ideas. The prob is, it’d be kind of unpopular for them to come out and articulate ‘em.
I mean, who’s gonna cheer for “We’ve grabbed your money, and we’re coming for more!” “Who cares if your kid gets a good education?” “Health care? Buy it yourself, it’ll show you’re fit to survive.” “Want clean air? Buy a gasmask!” “By the way, we’re also gonna grab your retirement and Medicare, thanks suckers!”
Oh, and of course that timeless Republican thought: “Hey! Look over there! That colored guy’s after your daughter!”
2
Paul,
In two years my company added ( 12 ) new workers.
I had to buy three new pieces of expensive equipment.
We had to purchase lots of smaller equipment.
We are buying more supplies for projects.
All of this .........more than ever before.
Some of this has to trickle down.
Don't you think?
Or are you thinking a good idea is for more freebees?
How about a TrumpPhone!!
1
Dear democrats Paul included, Republicans do have an idea. That is to clean up the government from people who attempted a coup and by doing so committed a treason. I am sure there will be truck loads of democrats who can't believe their dear leasders betrayed not only them but the people of the USA the moment the door opens at the gallows.
@MasteroftheUniverse
Trump and his fellow traitors are the coup.
1
It should be no surprise that there is no GOP 'idea' anymore, in that Trump does not embrace what used to be GOP core values. As the leader of the party, his major contribution is enhancing the anger that aging white folks feel about the loss of their America. That nothing has been done to help these people (things have been done to hurt the immigrants, but that does not actually help white people) is besides the point, the majority feel that Trump is their man, facts be damned.
It would help if the media didn't keep engaging in false equivalency and horse race coverage, and acknowledging that this is a long-term problem. Deep discussion of the issues is possible to find, but it is usually buried. When it is brought to wide attention, the GOP will do its utmost to delegitimize it if the conclusions--or even the facts--are counter to their talking points.
I remember this happening in the first years of Bill Clinton's administration, when Hillary was working on universal healthcare coverage. Newspapers everywhere covered Republican opposition to the plan and Republican talking points, but it was maddeningly difficult to find any description of the actual plan.
It is very hard to come to a well-reasoned policy conclusion when the facts are deliberately distorted and obscured. This is why Republicans have been making bank for decades--they have warped the rules of debate such that "facts aren't facts."
2
A few years back, in an interview which stuck in my mind, Paul Ryan admitted that the GOP lacked a "vision". He implied that they would work on it, but obviously thay haven't come up with one; if they even tried. What they do have is an accounting sheet where they move money around, usually from the bottom earners to the wealthier tiers. This is done either by reducing taxes on the well-off or by cutting benefits for the less well-off or a combination of the two.
The other part of their lack of "vision" is to focus their message on divisive cultural issues instead of trying to bring everyone together to advance the country and even the world.
The relevations about a callous Kavanaugh who publicly slut-shamed a female high school student and now lies about that, are a play within a play, a dumbshow in a theater where it's regarded as biased to acknowledge the depraved ideology he now champions. What kind of people attack health care and strike down climate laws? Really sick people. That's what matters most, but their sheer number gives men like Kavanaugh cover. As does a false media model of objectivity, which Krugman has noted.
3
Krugman, do you ever talk to non-phD’s?
Republican action to reduce corporate and personal taxes appear to regular Americans to have stimulated the economy, increased jobs and wages, and brought millions of Americans who had given up back into the workforce. Great idea. Maybe it brings inflation in the future/maybe not. I doubt that whether the drbt becomes $30 billion or $31.5 billion will make a difference. But the size of the economy carrying that debt will
Repblican action to curtail illegal immigration and reduce the number of accepted asylum seekers are broadly supported, even if people wince at the pain it creates. All enforcement of law creates pain for someone
The drive for merit based immgration laws makes sense to anyone with a brain. There has been no dumber law that the 1965 immigration law which its authors promised would not change the make up of America. When every promise proved incorrect no one did anything
Usung our enormous economic power to force our trading partners to honor WTO rules makes total sense, even in the unlikely event that tariffs become permanent. No pain/no gain
Trump wants to take on the cost of drugs, a brilliant idea that democrats did not have balls to attempt with Obamacare. Surely more doable than upturning the entire health care system to single payer
Trump is a horrible human being, and congressional republicans are worse than useless They could destroy our democracy
But no ideas. Total rubbish
@Siple1971
In 2008 the economy was going down the tubes. Obama was the one whose actions turned this around. He had 50+ months of job growth during his 8 years. The current economy is merely following the trend he began. If McConnell had not sworn to obstruct Obama at every turn in order to make him a one-term president there would have been jobs programs and infrastructure improvements.
You are correct that whether the debt was $30 or $31.5 billion would make a difference. But, the current debt is not $30 billion. The current debt is $20 TRILLION. The debt is 104% of the GDP.
I hope you are aware that the "hoards" invading America are people fleeing violence and devastating conditions at home. At the base of the Statue of Liberty is written: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
At one time we were welcoming. It is a very Republican attitude these days to turn our backs on the most vulnerable. It is not a Christian attitude, which is what Republicans make a claim to. Many of the illegal immigrants are people (like students) who have overstayed their Visas. The border wall will do nothing to slow that flow.
What WTO rules were these countries breaking? Trump thinks he can get a better deal - in the same way, he said that N Korea would stop their weapons program. It is a tale told by an idiot.
2
There are millions of us retirees whose taxes actually went up under Trump's tax cut fiasco.
Trump may not have been elected under economic anxiety, but he has certainly created it. Obviously, the GOP doesn't give a damn about those of us who paid a lifetime of taxes getting screwed in our final decades of life. We can't afford the health care we need, and Trump's bright ideas are likely to hurt Social Security and Medicare.
The Republicans know only how to take, and to destroy. They have done nothing for us. Why vote for them?
2
Aw, gee, they have lots of ideas. Some are things they used to blame the Democrats for, like piling on debt in good times instead of rebuilding savings depleted after, say, the 2008 economic crash. Continuing to attack access to healthcare during an opioid epidemic that's hitting their rural voters even harder than urban residents is another.
Then there was the whole list of ideas that the head of Murray Coal gave to Trump (wrapped in a $1 million donation to his super PAC). Those ideas are giving us more coal pollution even now.
And businesses, after stock buybacks, are happily doing what they feel ever more comfortable to do to their employees, in an increasingly union-free nation:
"Your pay is probably going down next year
Despite the improving economy, companies have stubbornly withheld salary increases over the past few years, opting to fatten the bonus pool instead. Now, they're taking those bonuses away, according to a new survey.
Instead, employers are ever-so-slightly increasing salaries, but not enough to make up for the loss."
https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-pay-down-20180924-story.html
Cutting pay while near-record-low unemployment should be driving wages up - now isn't that an idea?
Not a good one, but it's part and parcel of what the GOP's been working hard on - let the "job creators" go wild and do what they want, despite the harm to the rest of us.
2
The "plan" for "Democrats", real ones, never really changes.
Social Security, better medical care, universal education, peace, international cooperation, increase rights, improve infrastructure, improve government services, reduce the negative impacts of industry and business, better wages, better environment, and lately: fight climate change.
The 1% oppose all of these goals. They have instructed their politicians to oppose all of these things. Simple. Hard to write headlines about.
2
I wish Mr. Krugman would like at assumptions behind the decision making and be more balanced in his partisanship. The key assumption behind the large tax cut to corporations was that they would increase wages of their workers. The only data I have seen is that this assumption was false because of the large stock buy-backs. Has anybody looked at wage gains overall? Do they exist in any meaningful way? Second, the tariff strategy is misinterpreted by Mr. Krugman. Trump is using tariffs to bring countries to the bargaining table so he can re-negotiate trade deals. It is too soon to say whether this strategy will work. How long should we wait to see if trade deals are re-negotiated is something Mr. Krugman should address.
@Keith
From what has been reported so far our "former" trading partners are looking to other countries for their needs. Trump promised over $10 billion to farmers hurt by the tariffs as those countries find we have priced ourselves out of the market.
It looks like maybe something might happen with Mexico - but, with all the lies from Trump and Co it is difficult to know what is actually going to happen.
As far as wages- my wife and I both work. We are well educated with multiple college degrees. The big tax cut that Trump promised would be such a gift has given us a 0.1% increase in our take-home pay. Not enough for a once a month lunch.
1
In all of politics, there are but two basic ideas. The Republican Party was founded on one of them:
"that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth"
But it turned away from all that, and for the past century has dedicated itself to the opposing idea:
That a select group of rich white men from expensive private schools (and a few well-chosen subordinates who can easily be blackmailed if need be) must prevent government by the people from ever taking root.
Some of them justify this idea in the same way their founder justified the opposing idea: as the preserving of a divinely-ordained Order, by Law if possible, by war if necessary. Most of them feel no need to justify: preserving their order and perceived birthright is as natural as breathing to them.
Some of them feel the best long-term strategy is to work within the Democratic Party. If we succeed in neutering the GOP at the national level as we have in California, then we will have to defend the first idea on our own territory, as the soldiers Lincoln eulogized did.
1
"But gerrymandering and other factors have severely tilted the playing field, so they would need to win the popular vote by a wide margin to retake the House, and a huge margin to retake the Senate."
People continue to worry about Republican gerrymandering.
I have a question about that. Since that results in a few blue districts with large Democratic margins and many red districts with small Republican margins, shouldn't it be easier to flip red districts than blue ones?
I think, this year at least, that voter suppression and foreign interference are bigger problems.
1
Lack of engagement on global warming is also a glaring oversight by the GOP. If global warming contributed even marginally to the economic damage caused by hurricane Florence, then accountability is due to the GOP political leadership.
For example, early estimates attribute about $44 billion dollars in total economic damages to this storm. With Governor McMaster of SC estimating $1.2 billion in damages for his state, about $42 billion in such damages must have beset NC.
The eight eastern counties in NC most severely affected by the hurricane have a total population of about 844,182, per the US Census Bureau. An early estimate of the per capita economic loss for eastern NC could be made, very roughly, as follows: -$42,000,000,000/844,182 = -$49,752 per person. For 2016, the median income in NC was approximately $50,584. Although a very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, it does illustrate the power, of this storm caused deluge.
In the near future, a common decision under consideration will be: Rebuild in place or rebuild out of the vulnerable flood zone? With such decisions made in an environment where less than 10% of eastern North Carolinians have a flood insurance policy on their homes.
Of course, local leaders will probably be irrationally exuberant about rebuilding "in situ" to avoid a drain of economic resources elsewhere; possibly representing a type of "sunk cost" protection.
[JJL 9/25/2018 Tu 12:42p Greenville NC]
1
True they aren't new ideas but for some odd reason the GOP base keeps buying the same 3 products because all their news/advertising sources remain monolithically the same.
Now we have the same result & if the Democrats win majorities the
GOP can start the same playbook of pinning the blame on the party in power - the Democrats!
So what's our new playbook this time? One thing is that we have to stop playing nice politics, call the GOP out & tie the permanently to their philosophy & like to the "not so silent majority" / forgotten
& Push through strong lasting legislation & more importantly with election reform. We need to make voting easy for all &get corporate, lobby & wealthy donors along with foreign governments out of our elections.
Last but not least we need to educate people & voter participation.
2
Like many commentators Mr Krugman omits one important element regarding the Obama Care opinion polls.
The republicans continually pronounced that with elimination of OBAMA CARE their medical cost and security would improve with just elimination or their undefined replacement. Since most folks were not immediately impacted they only had misinformation pushed by the right wing echosphere and the republican party itself to go by without studying the details. Of course Trump out Trumped them all with his outrageous promises.
Once they actually tried to eliminate it with no replacement (remember that one) people actually had to look at how they would be impacted. After finally paying attention 9 years late they woke up.
3
@Tim Cassedy You are right and it's the same with tax cuts. Professor Krugman writes that Republicans have lost the messaging battle on taxes, "with voters overwhelmingly believing that the tax cuts went to corporations and the rich, and many worried that increased deficits will endanger Social Security and Medicare." Well hallelujah! This has been the Republicans barely-disguised strategy for close to 40 years. While it's easy to blame voters who don't take their responsibility as citizens seriously enough to pay attention, one also must wonder whether the press is going about its job in the correct way. It shouldn't take 40 years for the public to connect the most basic political dots. I think the journalistic ethos of "bothsiderism" contributes to a misinformed public that doesn't understand the basic power relations in our society.
2
Robert, I am skeptical of your claim, "In short, the American public seems to have wised up; voters seem to have recognized the G.O.P.’s reverse Robin Hood agenda of taking from ordinary families and giving to the rich for what it is."
It is not clear to me that the majority of the American public are well-read enough to know what is going on - not be cause they are incapable, but because they are busy.
The simplest message will be the one that cuts through the clutter of their everyday lives. Right now, it seems that the Republicans have a better messaging machine that the democrats.
People like hear, "the best", "the greatest" ,"the biggest", "it'll be great just wait and see", over more practical and honest messaging.
Sound byte rule and people need to have compelling yet simple messaging, just like we always have.
That is the challenge over coming intellectual laziness and busy lives.
2
I saw the headline and of course though of Dems, but after thinking it is Republicans. They have ideas, the rule of law and the constitution being of paramount importance is number one. Next that our interests for our country is number one, not the interests of any other country. We want more jobs and opportunities for our citizens. We want peace around the world. We want better health care, not more expensive health insurance. The dems want more government and socialism, that is their policies which I totally reject.
1
Who needs ideas to run on when they have complete control of all branches of government? When you control it all "you make hay while the sun is shining" (as the saying goes).
The GOP (and Trump) are doing everything in their power to advance their policy agenda while they can. They know this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and they won't waste it. And while the window is open?
Pack the Supreme Court to lock in a further right Conservative majority to last for the next 40 years - check.
Cut corporate taxes 40% - check.
Protect carried interest - check.
Destroy anything Obama created when possible - check.
Return to $1 trillion deficits - deficits no longer matter.
Even if Democrats do retake the House in November, Trump will still have a majority in the Senate, and a friendly Supreme Court. Nothing will change what they've already done.
Results will be that Trump and this GOP controlled congress will be seen as the most successful administration since Reagan in advancing right wing, social, and wealth agendas.
2
Only the tip of the iceberg.
Recommended read for readers interested in a deeper analysis , into what is a world wide phenomena I recommend to read Piketty
Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right:
Rising Inequality & the Changing Structure of Political Conflict
(Evidence from France, and the US 1948-2017)
http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Piketty2018.pdf
If you wish think of Mr. Krugman representing the Brahmin left and Mr. Trump as the Merchant right
4
I find myself in complete agreement once again with Mr. Krugman. I also feel the need once again to emphasize that every voter to the left of far-right must get out in November and vote Democratic up and down the ballot. It is the only way to overwhelm the immense amount of dark money being funneled in by the cabal of oligarchs on the hard right. Finally, I apologize for using those words, which no doubt sounds like the speech of a deranged conspiracy theorist. However, I am not deranged, and sadly, as reported in many articles in the Times, the Washington Post, and other reliable sources, the conspiracy is real. If we cannot retake at least one chamber of Congress, it may well be time to kiss American democracy goodbye.
2
"Trickle Down" has always struck me as a strange idea if it
was supposed to make people feel good. It might make rich people feel good because they would only lose a little bit of the
volume of wealth that is theirs...a little bit would overflow and trickle down to the not so rich. The not so rich would, supposedly, be happy with the crumbs that overflowed the bucket.
4
Gerrymandering doesn't impact statewide elections for the Senate. We're only talking about the House here. However, I agree. Gerrymandering has consistently enabled an unpopular political agenda for at least a decade now. We need to end the practice universally and permanently. Gerrymandering is voter suppression by another name. Your vote is rendered less equal.
Democrats though are surprisingly quiet on the subject. That's because they deploy the same tactic whenever and wherever they can. If you poll voters and ask: Do you support a politician's ability to choose their voters? I guarantee you popular opinion will answer no. Democratic candidates though, even on the far left, keep their mouths shut. Look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Here's the 1st rule about gerrymandering: A politician will never talk about gerrymandering while they are benefiting from gerrymandering.
Here's the 2nd rule about gerrymandering: A politician will never talk about gerrymandering while they are benefiting from gerrymandering.
Next time let's talk about the Democratic primary system. You will be unpleasantly surprised.
1
Mr. Krugman,
If you ask a Trump supporter why you still support Trump, they will reply that "the economy is great." The problem is they don't understand how a huge economy works. They don't understand that the fundamental policies that Obama implemented was the reason for such a healthy economy. They do not realize that Trump's effects will be felt in a few years. And because of their lack of understanding they will continue to vote for Trump and the republicans.
5
@Sherlock: They don't realize that $1 trillion has been charged to the national debt, nor do they understand that the most recent reported quarter was boosted by panic buying ahead of tariffs.
The fakeness Trump projects onto others is really his own.
5
When you have no ideas, you appeal to people who have no idea.
4
The Republican Party has one great idea aka white Judeo-Christian European American capitalist Confederate Evangelical Fox News Freedom Caucus Tea Party Wall Street Journal misogynist patriarchal supremacy forever. MAGA means making white male lives and lies great again.
In the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Presidential elections 55%, 59 % and 58 % of the white American majority voted for McCain /Palin, Romney / Ryan and Trump / Pence. While failing to win the White House until 2016, they won both houses of Congress along with a majority of state executive mansions and legislatures. And denying Barack Obama the power to nominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court of the United States.
2
Well done article, but, you don't need me to tell you that.
Do democrats have any ideas besides writing checks with taxpayer dollars? Just checking!
3
@Rahu
Oh please, after the windfall the GOP just gave to corps and the 1% (adding a trill to the deficit), just shut your face.
1
"In short, the American public seems to have wised up"
You give the American public too much credit. In my many years of watching the political scene I have rarely seen the population “wise up” … and it's unlikely they ever will. Right now ...today … 4 out of every 10 Americans think the guy in the White House is doing a good job. Is that support based on logic, fact, evidence, or concern for the country? Surely not.
3
To be where we are in history and to have not learned any of its lessons is entirely depressing. Whatever issue comes up on either side of the aisle now is, "yeah, but you guys did it first," or "you guys did this or that, so we can too." Revenging/Avenging politics reveals the insanity of the current comic book mentality in politics.
These are not yet supreme court decisions where every historical precedent must be considered. For example, Kavanaugh is to be submitted as a supreme court nominee and then voted on. There are allegations out there that are serious enough that if true, this man should NOT be on the court. So, investigate the claims. Take a few weeks. Make a rational, objective decision based on facts.
CONGRESS! WAKE UP! The country must come first.
3
And what have Democrats got? Third world open borders welfare state. So appealing.
1
@M
How are you going to feel when your Social Security, which you've been paying into for the entirety of your working life, is taken away from you for the purposes of enriching corporate buybacks and fattening the 1%'s stock portfolios? Unless you are someone who is making over 170k a year and are a very sage investor, you are going to need that Social Security money when you are old and can't work anymore. I'm very tired of people crying "welfare state" in the face of social services that are desperately needed for ALL but the wealthiest. You are going to need your Social Security and Medicare down the road, buddy. Please start think like an adult.
1
@M Actually no, that's not it at all.
1
That’s because they have no brains. Right-wing propaganda, paranoia, and conspiracy theories devoured any critical thinking skills in that party long ago.
2
Mr. Krugman, how can it possibly be worse! Will Trumps cesspool grow bigger? Will expressing truths become dirtier? Will the sick, elderly and uneducated become even more fearful then they already are? Will Mitch McConnell tell all woman "she persisted" and turn his back completely on them with his circus side show Kavanaugh? Will the whole world be disgusted with America. Will all evangelicals turn their back on Jesus. Will Civil Rights just be for the white man again ~~ do white men even know what Civil Rights are!!!
Oh my!! I could just go on and on...
Please vote them ALL out!
5
How is it they keep getting elected? Are the ppl as dumb as Trump says they are as they cheer for him?
1
Republicans are the party of morally corrupt...
2
Of course Republicans are not even trying to run on their sad policies. Simply because those policies only work for the 1% who benefit from their stinking "make the rich/ richer" and the rest is all about instilling fear and anger in their wretched base who are so brainwashed they will believe anything from the Dear Leader. As for the 2/3 of Americans who are not part of the grand scheme; well they just hope and pray that on Nov.6 they are so depressed that they will just stay home and not bother to vote. It is the only IDEA the Republicans have left.
2
You really show your bias daily. Democrats have no ideas. That is why they are not in charge and hopefully never will be again.
3
What we are seeing now is not politics, the art of the possible; instead, it is raw 'politicking', and based on Trump's, and republican's resentment towards 'the other', deeply tribal even for the demagogue in-chief, just an opportunist and not a real republican, just a useful idiot the G.O.P. is using to achieve it's goal, serve the 'rich and powerful' so to stay in power...and abuse it. The republican policy of governing by the triad of 'fear, hate and division' is sowing winds that may promote inescapable storms. And if justice has a say, their loss this November.
If the GOP is the party without the ideas, they might learn from the Democrats how to attract the support of the middle class and the poor.
They could try branding the voters as the hillbillies, the racists, the xenophobes, or portraying them as the biased, uneducated and hateful…
All those brilliant ideas were implemented by the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Only the Russian meddling in our elections stopped her from winning the White House with such a great action plan!
The only question is whether the Kremlin really managed to deploy their agents inside the Clinton headquarters to plant such terribly stupid ideas.
If the KGB agents did it, that would completely unlawful and deceptive. It is really hard to believe that the Clinton clan could have come up with something so extremely stupid on their own…
1
Long ago, Mr. Krugman, I was a small child.
And I had dreadful dreams.
I would dream that, as I lay in bed, I saw my Mom's smiling face leaning over me. To kiss me good-night. Tell me she loved me.
And then--a closer look. This wasn't Mom at all. The loving smile I thought I saw--
--was a snarl of hatred and malevolence.
Appalling!
What, Mr. Krugman--WHAT in the Lord's name has happened to the GOP?
A halfway moderate, halfway sane, more or less conservative political party--
--that (so far as I can see) has turned into a self-sustaining, self-perpetuating OLIGARCHY.
"A conspiracy of rich men," to quote Sir Thomas More (half a millennium ago) "to procure their own commodities."
Selfish. Ugly. Brainless. Profoundly malevolent.
What happened to GOP moderates? GOP liberals? Can you believe there WERE such people? Once upon a time.
Fifty eight years ago we had election night. I was eleven. My Mom put me to bed that night.
"It doesn't look good," she told me, "for the Republicans. I don't think Mr. Nixon will pull it off."
And NOW, Mr. Krugman--
--NOW!
--that'd be the best news I'd heard in. . . .in. . . . ..
. .. TWO YEARS.
And I'm waiting.
I'm sitting here waiting.
2
Dr. Paul Krugman for President!
1
Nothing really matters except winning elections. After that you can do whatever you want. The only thing Republican mega-donors wanted was the tax cut.
Democrats need to articulate that lazy Americans cannot have a free ride like their dads and grandpas did. That was all a different world than now. Americans need to go to college, study hard, and write their story afterwords. Ignorant Americans don't believe that college sets you free. Democrats need to work on the language which equates freedom with knowledge. I am a 1st gen immigrant from a family out of the poorest area of the old country. I went to college and wrote my story. It was simple.
American Idiots have no excuse, they live in the best place for opportunity in the world...yet they complain about 'immigrants'. All I can say is that Americans are too ignorant to do the work I do...I know it because I hire people and the only ones qualified are foreigners.
6
To recycle an appropriate characterization of the GOP and their "vision" that has endured over the last 38 years.
Republicans lie..... all the time.......about everything! They are the anti-human party.
1
My congressman Lee Zeldin has one idea. HIDE.
1
It seems the GOP (like far right parties worldwide) know they cannot win a fight fairly, given proper facts the ordinary citizen would never vote for them. And so they must cheat, lie and steal to win elections. What I find interesting is that they don't fight dirty because they have to, they do it because they enjoy it... it's in tbeir DNA. Mitch McConnell didn't just block Garland to try and get a conservative on the Supreme Court, that sort of duplicitous trickery runs through his veins.
2
Sans paroles! Pardon my French.
U.S. adds 201,000 jobs as worker wages accelerate to nine-year high. Jeffry Bartash, MarketWatch. Published: Sept 7, 2018 9:41 a.m. ET
1
How can you say the Republicans don’t have good ideas? O er the past two years ideas like burning coal and laughing off the threat global warming, caging children and separating them from parents, lowering taxes for the rich and race baiting for the poor, arming citizens with assault weapons and calling it a form of free speech, no more abortions.... , these ideas are all we talk about now.
Ideas like these resonate with Americans. That’s why we have elected Trump and his team make to the country great again.
7
For the record I am independent. Okay so what ideas do the democrats have? I hear nothing but resist! resist! resist! Coming from them. No agenda but to roll back what the current government has done. No fresh ideas on how to improve the nation for the people.
It's not just the republicans, it's all of them, and that's a serious problem.
2
@John of Dayton. How about the ideas of protecting the environment, making sure we have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, expanding and strengthening the Affordable Care Act, developing the growth of alternative energy sources, and in general looking to improve the quality of life for we, the people. The Democrats have taken the idea of the phrase “promote the general welfare” in the preamble of our constitution to heart. I think these are fine ideas to run on.
6
I'm so tired of hearing this...
1.) Open browser.
2.) Type candidate's name into Google.
3.) Go to candidate's website.
4.) Read.
2
@Dale Yes fine ideas that have been getting kicked around for the last 20 to 30 years! Same thing different decade. We are fighting the same wars over the decades and while we do that things continue to get worse for the common man and woman as the corporations and insurance companies continue to try to squeeze every last disposable dollar from the commoners that they can. And then blame us for our economic condition.
Republicans have a ton of ideas. All of them involve ways they can put more tax payer dollars into their own pockets. All of them involve ways to lock people in place, erase their options and absolutely control the unwashed masses.
8
Sadly, this headline could apply to either party. I don't disagree with Dr. Krugman about the lack of ideas or solutions within the republican party. But where on earth are the democrats? No inspirational leadership. No ideas. No platform. Nasty and embarrassing infighting. We can't have a strong democratic party by soliciting votes based solely on the community to which an individual belongs. We need candidates and leaders who can identify and articulate meaningful and universal tenets to which individuals across virtually every community can adhere. Then we might get somewhere. The outlook is beyond gloomy.
45
@Neil Dunford
Your stated need for a paladin riding a winged unicorn, wielding a flaming sword, is disheartening.
Real life is far simpler than that. Democracy does not depend on its leaders. That's completely backwards.
Every political issue is merely the echo of a wider, social discussion. Every topic, law, and newsworthy event is simply a temporary manifestation of how our society is evolving, part of a population wide argument about what we think we were, are and should be.
Your denigration of Democrats for simply engaging in that conversation, rather than "leading", represents a misunderstanding of how democracies and American culture actually operates.
Republicans, on the other hand, recognize this. That conversation works against their agenda, which involves a rather narrow scripture, and making sure that the flock adheres to that scripture, no matter what their own feelings and thoughts might be. The tools to achieve their objectives are gerrymandering, voter suppression, dog whistles, fear tactics, and more; it's the polar opposite of leadership. It's oppression.
3
Yep. They pulled this trick on Clinton, too: she gave speeches about specific policies, write books on them, stuck the material up onna websites, spoke about them in interviews—and because they paid no attention, they said there were no policies and Bernie got a raw deal.
Samesame with the way they now yell at “the media;” they don’t read, or watch for five seconds running, or they dislike the facts or the views, so they claim that they were never told this or that.
1
@Neil Dunford You are wrong. The democrats want to protect health care, social security, medicare, regulations for the environment. I could go on but you just aren't informed.
3
Welcome to the club Middle America. Finally sinking in that Trickle Down doesn't work. Now you want to rethink the sainthood status that you assigned to the Union buster Reagan? Trickle Down has always been a cruel joke on working people. It has taken almost 40 years to get the message to your consciousness. Let's take this moment and elect leaders who care about workers and people. Not saying which Party will do this. Forget about one Party having all the answers. Forget your loyal tribalism. Pick individuals who care about people. We need a government that cares about People. Humans. With DNA. Not "people" as defined by Citizens United.
323
@robert21 - As long as the extreme right is in control of the Republican party, electing moderate Republicans is a waste of effort. Because to survive, these rookie moderates HAVE to go along with the rest of their caucus and vote WITH Trump.
Until these "blow-it-all-up" extremists are tossed out, perhaps after 2020, when the districts are reconfigured, the only sane vote is for Democrats.
1
@robert21
The people most affected by GOP policies will soon forget. Because you know, as long as we can ban abortions, who cares right?!?
Decades of indoctrination has ensured the uneducated stay that way, and vote lock step for whomever they are told to vote for...even if they end up dead in the streets because they have no health insurance. Their kids will blame obama, pick up the bodies and carry on the tradition...
"And it might work. After all, studies of the 2016 election clearly show that racial resentment, not “economic anxiety,” was what put Trump over the top."
What studies? I thought that what put Trump over the top (of the Electoral College at least) was the Supreme Court issue. And I think "It is undemocratic to remove important issues from voters' control" is a good idea, though it has been around for 40 years.
@Charlesbalpha: The Constitution limits the powers of government to protect the rights of minorities from the excesses of majorities. The Establishment Clause prohibition of faith-based legislation is only the most obvious example of such a limitation, and sadly, the most obviously neglected.
1
The reason they are out of ideas is because all of their so called ideas have failed all but the rich. In fact, they never had any ideas. Cutting taxes isn't even an idea. It's a giveaway to their wealthy constituents.
Their phoney ideas have gotten them votes because of two issues, guns and abortion. I am convinced that the Republicans really don't want to outlaw abortion. They use it as a carrot to get evangelical votes. It's the promise that keeps on giving.
Guns are the same. Any attempt at the slightest move toward gun control is sold as, they will take all of your guns away!
Well people still have their guns. The rest of us are more concerned with being able to afford a decent place to live and have good food to eat.
It's taken about 40 years but even the most skilled ad campaign runs its course. Even Mr. Whipple, who was on TV for many years, was replaced. It's time to replace the Republican tax cut giveaways for the rich.
393
@Bruce Rozenblit
Brilliant comment Bruce. Wish I could ‘recommend’ it more than once. Republicans are the masters of wedge issues. Abortion and guns are probably the holy grails. But then there’s always flag burning, school prayer, kneeling for the anthem and religious ‘liberty’.
3
@Bruce Rozenblit
I am reading "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer. The first chapter is a bio about Kansas native sons, the Kochs.
The problem with the Republican party is they have embraced the policies of the Kochs and their ilk. They do not believe in government except to protect private property. Their attitudes and policies are right out of medieval fiefdoms.
1
@Bruce Rozenblit If an expanding economy, more opportunity for citizens, and more respect / fear around the world is failure I want more failure. And yet you think that taxes are required so reducing them is a give away? How about you just pay more because you love your government.
I think that Trump’s Trumpiness has shrunk the GOP base to the 25% or so Americans who think blacks and Latinos are their enemy (rather than their coalition) and that (incredibly) rich white people are their friends. The suburbs? Gone. Young people? Gone. Those 3 states that Trump barely won? Gone. Minorities and women? Way gone! Trump has sped up the demographic shift in voters. Hence Beto in Texas. Hence Gillum in Florida and Abrams in Georgia (both quite competitive and quite possibly winners). And Republicans are pushing their...ahem...agenda via TV ads. Who watches TV ads? Practically nobody. Democrats meanwhile are pitching solutions to real problems. Health care, joblessness, crime, guns. Democrats are letting each candidate figure out what works best in their district or state. And I think Democrats have learned that their national ticket better have a minority candidate every single time. One more thing: wave elections tend to be underestimated, not overestimated. I still say we will wake up November 7 amazed by the tsunami that took down the GOP.
9
@RodA Omigosh...I hope that you right-- If America does not vote OUT the horrid contraption that the GOP has become, I feel I should put my husband under temporary anesthesia, throw him into a suitcase--and move.
We may never see the constitution change that would give us equal representation in the President election or the vote for senator. In each case the small rural states have verrepresentation. Our best efforts need to be put in eliminating gerrymandering of state legislatures. But the Republican controlled SCOTUS makes fairness in their monitoring of elections unlikely.
5
@tom Unequal representation in the legislation and implementation of law is unequal protection of law.
The whole US system of semi-autonomous statehood perpetuates unequally protective law. It defies the 14th amendment.
1
Empty promises and a lack of ability to govern- what a shocker!
2
so you link to WAPO and they want a dollar
@duckshots
Bezos doesn't have enough billions yet. Give 'til it hurts.
1
If the country survives the illegitimate presidency of Trump,
I'd like to see him enshrined on Mt. Rushmore.
As long as his head is much smaller than the others, and wearing a dunce hat.
6
The Professor's scenario is playing out all over. Here in PA, my GOP representative, the lame-brained Lloyd Smucker, might be the only congressman who could lose to Louis Gohmert in a battle of wits. His TV ads claim how he is promoting tax cuts to help small businesses while "protecting your Social Security and Medicare". Any thinking person can see that these goals are mutually exclusive. Had the tax heist bill actually been directed at the middle class and taxed the 1% a little more (closing the carried interest loophole like Trump promised time after time in his campaigning would have been a start) the GOP might have an argument. But they don't. They can't get their lying stories straight. Smucker used to campaign on making it unlawful to NOT own an assault weapon in PA, but even that Republican go-to has seemed to have lost its appeal in the wake of Las Vegas and Parkland. The American worker hasn't caught on to Republican lies that have been holding him down since Reagan, himself a union-buster. It should have been obvious the GOP was never the party of the worker. The big question is have those workers finally seen the reality of GOP dishonesty and duplicity, or will more feeble conservative flag-waving and racist dog-whistling fool them once again?
7
Please explain how gerrymandering affects the senate.
You claim that to win the senate, Democrats must win by an even wider margin. As far as I know, all senators are elected by statewide popular vote. Districts don’t matter.
If by “other things” you mean the US constitution, that Wyoming’s senators get fewer votes than California’s, ok, sure. The senate has been the dead letter office for progress since the nation was founded. Nothing new there.
For Democrats to pass legislation, they have to do more than just win. They have to overwhelm the opposition. They have to take the side of the voter we used to call the “working man”, and stop neo-explaining the wonders of the market. They have to stop resignedly mouthing support for retraining, and talking instead about taxing the beneficiaries of globalization and compensation for those adversely affected.
Every Democratic candidate I talk to frankly favors Medicare for All. It’s not even up for discussion. Where are you, and where is the New York Times on that? When will you stop mumbling about the possible and start demanding (and explaining) progress?
3
@James K. Lowden
To your first question/request, a voter in RI votes 2 senators, a voter in CA does the same. The RI voter has 2 or 3 hundred times the senate power of the CA voter. Its awful.
2
The U.S. Senate is not affected by Gerrymandering. Its not based on population. Moreover, republicans have always been the party of no ideas, they always pander to racism and hate. Lets see if the racism, hate and misogyny rule the day in 2018?
1
@tbs The Senate is the original gerrymander. A tiny proportion of rural america controls the show.
6
@odd-1 You may want to look up the definition of Gerrymander?
The GOP is the party of NO.
No you can't have affordable health care.
No you can't vote.
No you can't earn a decent living wage.
No you can't have a quality public school system.
No you can't have clean air or water.
No you can't have 21st century infrastructure, no high speed trains.
No women, you can't have responsibility for your health.
The GOP is all about taking away or restricting the rights of those Americans they do not like or care about. That 'group' happens to be over 80% of the US population. That's a lot of NO and a lot of hate for the majority.
But that allows them to concentrate their wealth and power. They are a very greedy bunch and we all know it is very hard to separate a man from his money. First order of business needs to be overturning Citizens United. Until our government ceases to be purchased by the man with the most bucks, we will be fighting a uphill battle. Time to level the playing field.
17
Ever since Citizens United opened the floodgates of money into politics the "corporations are people too" movement has totally taken control of the Republican party.
In this era of "you're either with us or against us" the GOP obviously has hitched their cart to the largest most powerful constituency in America: Big Money.
You need look no further than the basket of goods and services the Republicans promote solely for this group as proof.
12
Republicans - no ideas.
Democrats - BAD ideas
Congress - total inaction no matter what.
31
@Dr. Sam Rosenblum
you have that twisted for the longest time the GOP was and is the party of bad ideas and dems no ideas. But members withing the dems have great ideas they just aren't messaging it.
@Dr. Sam Rosenblum
It's popular to bash both sides; politics and politicians are easy targets. To be fair, not all their ideas are good. But also to be fair, it's a party with multiple ideas, sometimes even competing ones. Obamacare vs Medicare for all? Two ideas, one party.
1
@Dr. Sam Rosenblum and yet they are still on our payroll.
Essentially, the Republicans lack a unified agenda, save that of greed.
I heard George Gilder speak at Yale Law School in 1981. While a somewhat charming fellow, his supply-side economic "sensibilities" have been scorned by the likes of David Stockman.
So, why do Republican politicians continue to drink supply-side kool aid? Are they still employing the P.R. firm of Do-We-Cheat-'em -and-How? Or, worse, do they show such cynical contempt for their base by assuming that their base remains as consistently ignorant as to continually fall for the same old lies?
It's true that Trump appealed to the baser side of the party's base via racist means. The only way to interpret this piece of the puzze is that Trump and his party supporters do indeed trade on the fact that their supporters are ignorant, because racism is, without a doubt, ignorant.
Ignorance? Delusion?
Better check the halucinogen levels in that kool aid!
1
You might want to actually feel sorry for those trapped in the GOP/Conservative dogma/ideology. I call this trap an illness. It is contrary to all reason. Science is unnecessary.
As is said here though, people are waking up to the effects of this dogma on them personally with respect to income, health, and everything else.
They GOP is attempting now to begin their assault on SS, Medicare, and Medicaid with a bill in the House that will probably pass. Their arrogance knows no shame. It is not so much that they don't know better as it is that they firmly believe they are in control and can maintain that power. Trump and Putin are helping them.
5
Republican party systematically destroyed public education to promote religious (exclusively Christian) fundamentalism and mostly religious private schools since early 1980s as Reagan took charge. That also appeased white supremacy attitude among many European Americans, aka Whites. In a sense, it's the vestige of our unfinished business after civil war. We gave too much leniency to the slave holding, church going Confederate states and its politics of Bible, race and, to some extent, crony capitalism that benefit tiny few in the community while exploiting or coercing most people to support such policy..
It all ultimately created a large number of American voters who are basically imbecile to understand truth/fact based on data and logic. Now USA has about 14% adults who can not even read. America is 2nd worst among all major industrialized countries (only ahead of Muslim majority Turkey) where 38% of college graduate believe in the fairy-tale story that human being was created by God in its present form. That's worst in our own recent history.
Shrewd & opportunist criminals started understanding the opportunity it created for them by fooling that huge number of voters that GOP nurtured so carefully for so long. So Trump could easily outsmart traditional GOP heavyweights and now hijacked the whole party. Now there is no Republican party. Just Trump party and at least few GOP leaders like former speaker John Boehner started understanding that reality.
7
@Bonku The state of our education is quite sad. And the fact they have been demonizing secondary education is even worse.
2
Taxes were already low on the wealthiest. The GOP has been pushing the lie of trickle-down for 40 years. They favor obstructionism, voter suppression, pollution, gerrymandering, harming the poor, harming immigrants, and stripping health care from millions. They favor massive infusion of money from the donor class to taint elections. They rely on propaganda to misinform and mislead. The GOP's bankruptcy of ideas now extends to letting the infrastructure crumble. Better this than the creation of government and union jobs to support the middle-class.
The GOP would love to overturn Roe, yet they turn a blind eye once a child is born. Yet, more vital to the GOP than controlling women's bodies is assuring that Citizens United and radical gerrymandering continue to destroy our democracy. A strong democracy does not favor the party of no ideas.
3
And the Democrats have one idea. TRUMP Unacceptable.
Unfortunately, even when people have a devoutly
held idea, sometimes they don't have enough
perspective to appreciate their own culpability.
THEY MADE PRESIDENT TRUMP possible.
So, hopefully once the "GET EVEN" MIDTERMS
are OVER, the Democratic Party can start
reconnecting to the 80% of all Americans in
the American Rainbow struggling just to get by and/or
keep their heads above water.
And, then give those people an honest candidate to vote for in 2020; or at least some one who can fake
sincerity better than their 2016 leading lady.
The idea is to retain power! Power is the idea!
Ideally, the idea is to maintain governmental power.
Therefore, the Republicans have three powerful ideas.
Thank you very much.
"The G.O.P. has become the party of no ideas."
Hasn't it always been the party of no ideas? The modern GOP did not come up with the assertion that "the government that covers best, covers least."
3
" “If we can’t sell this to the American people, we ought to go into another line of work,” declared Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, last December. "
I don't know if there is a post such as 'garbage salesman,' for which McConnell and his enablers are eminently qualified, but perhaps there are a few open as garbage collector. They certainly have enough experience with the subject matter, having fed at the trough for long years without producing anything worthwhile.
2
The GOP lost its soul when it decided to execute its Southern Strategy, turning the South red by opposing Civil Rights efforts pushed by the Dems to convert the sourhern whites. It was an immoral choice and resulted in cynical decades in which a series of GOP leaders held power but subtly capitulated to the rightness of the move to a more open, civil society that respected differences and protected minority rights. It was inevitable that an organization built on such duplicity would implode. Who knew that it would be those undereducated who would finally see the truth and turn on their patrician leaders. And so they go for a guy who can throw the biggest wrenches into the works. Do as much damage as possible is their goal. Trump is their chosen wrench.
6
Trump has an idea: undo whatever Obama did, even if it means more people will die from dirtier air, lose their homes to rising seas and wild fires, or end up in more pointless wars.
4
Throughout the Obama years, we were told the Republican Party was imploding. But instead, they won the House, then the Senate and eventually the White House while also a large chunk of the state government, which allowed them to gerrymander in their grip on the majority.
While the party of ideas, the Democrats presumably, blew in the wind and could not even repeal tax subsidy for private jet and oil companies that make billions.
The way I see it, this outcome leads to two possible conjectures -- either the Republican voters are very clueless, ignorant and dumb; or the Republican voters like our country the way it is and the party of no ideas are in fact their kindred spirit.
I do think in a democracy, the People who choose the politicians that run our government are ultimately responsible. The politicians' faults are their faults because the People are supposed to exercise care and caution in casting their votes.
So I think instead of lecturing the GOP, our esteem pundits should lecture the American people. But alas, those who really need to read Krugman's writing think NYT is fake news or left wing propaganda and will never read it.
Trump is GOP's Frankenstein. But I think the GOP is the Frankenstein of the Right side of our country.
2
The Republicans do have ideas.
Greed
Selfishness
Sanctimony
Hatred
and
Fear
They worship money above all else.
5
On one side we have the party of no ideas, on the other, the party of bad ideas.
"A plague o' both your houses!"
"voters didn’t see the connections."
These are the same voters who hate "Obamacare" but love "ACA"
10
I would heartily disagree with the assertion that the Democratic Party is somehow rife with good 'ideas'. They are however big on ridiculous 'promises' that they are attempting to pass as 'ideas'. Free College for all, Medicare for all, Open Borders for all, eliminate I C E, etc etc Just Medicare for all would cost $32,000,000,000 for example. Its politics as usual which is NOT a good 'idea'.
1
@NYer Those aren't promises, those are goals. And the realization of those goals is a lot cheaper than the tax cuts for the rich and the corporations that have already gone into effect.
8
@NYer
And also, apply the education aphorism: if you think education is expensive, consider the price of ignorance. Take a look at that MAGA country on the hill where half the people are walking (driving) around fat with diabetes and bad backs and rotting teeth and drug addictions and can't do work if they get it. Is that country Great Again or what?
@NYer This will be the future, with or without you all. Its just a matter of time...
The Republicans’ success is built on one idea, viz., selfishness. It is now led by the most selfish person to scream into a microphone or twit a tweet. The Republicans are at the pinnacle of success and there is only one direction from there.
1
The polling indicates that Democrats will almost certainly receive FEWER votes than Republicans in the midterm elections coming up.
Texas HAD a Democrat history in one Congressional District that went back to the wild west days, but it went Republican last week. People are still telling anyone who asks that they are Democrats but THEN go in behind the curtain and go pro-America every time.
This President has an amazing record with employing black and Hispanic Americans - the best in deades. So much dor the Obama need to get as many people depedent on the government as possible.
But ''No Ideas'' perfectly matches up with Paul's fantasy on Election Day 2016 that the markets would all collapse. Instead, eighteen bucks has become twenty-five (plus dividends) and middle class America is feeling better about those 401-k's than it had ever dared.
Trump is saving the decade for the middle class, even though all the local propaganda is about hate-the-rich.
1
Good luck Mr. Krugman trying to get Trump and Republican supporters to "...see the connection..." between anything except what they refuse to see.
1
This is a great editorial, on the subject of no ideas, if you substitute Democrats for Republicans.
3
Remember, Paul, that as politics is war by other means, the only crime is losing. Winning is the only idea that matters. No one knows this better than the Pope who is featured in the liberal German Spiegel as a chronic liar, a serial transgressor of the 9th commandment "thou shalt not lie." Winning is total absolution of all political sins. In politics, ideas, like religion, are mere means to an end: winning. Trump was elected to go on the warpath against the Left, and the scalps on his belt exceed expectations. Winning is political morality. Another example: the EU is drowning in ideas--the people clamor for action. An idea needs the potency of religion to whip up the crowd, and none today is even remotely close to that. The last one was Marxism. The closest thing today is climate change which has zero following in the street. What works? Rhetoric, rhetoric, rhetoric, ear tickling rhetoric. We are in the initial stages of the Know Nothing Age--ideas are, like, outdated.
1
What went wrong with our country is the two party duopoly. The "two party system" did not come into play until after the constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified by the thirteen colonies.
Read the section on Impeachment, perhaps the most important of the founder's Checks and Balances.
The House may Impeach president Trump, but because of the unconstitutional political parties, there will always be enough Members of the president's political party in the Senate to protect his presidency regardless how fascist un-American Trump's presidency is, how many constitutional violations the president commits daily.
Because of the unconstitutional Two Party structure, the party management chooses the nominees for district, appellate, and Supreme Court.
The two parties control access to our ballots, and have a say in every government from the villages on up except individual voters not affiliated with any political party are the voting majority.
Unless we nullify all political parties connections to elected Members of Congress Trump will be president for life with our constitution, our freedoms, and everything we believe in, destroyed.
http://levalive.live
2
I wonder if part of the unmasking Krugman identifies here is a result of Trump's scorched-earth approach to politics: you are either his supporter or you are his enemy, and we all know how he feels about his enemies. Part of the Republican charade was always pretending to care about everyone, even while slashing services for the many in order to pile up ducats for the rich. But their leaders used to at least pretend they were doing it all "for all Americans." Trump makes it crystal clear his only concern is his base. If you're not part of his base, he's perfectly happy to see you get swept away by a giant, wet hurricane. And that may have helped wake people up to the naked power politics that have always been the GOP's real agenda.
6
@John Hoppe I must disagree that trump's only concern is for his base. The people who make up trump's base are nothing more than "useful idiots" who, once he no longer needs them, he will quickly kick to the curb. That's his m.o. Trump only cares about trump.
3
"But if the G.O.P. does win, it will have won very, very ugly. And American politics will become even worse."
Hey, a win is a win. In any case, I have stopped caring what people with Trump Derangement Syndrome think.
Yet another column from Dr. Krugman slandering half of America as racist and snidely dismissing the steep economic decline in the Rust Belt. It's an annoying shame that the supposedly smart people like Krugman repeatedly waste their pulpit by issuing contempt on the people they need to persuade.
As an economist, he knows better. The half-baked studies he repeatedly references that reduce the causes of the 2016 election were ideologically driven and came to their preordained conclusion by cherry-picking crumbs of data from low-quality polls. The people who didn't support Hillary are not a monolithic group. Her failure in the downscale quarters of this country were an obvious indication of something economic going on. If Krugman or Hillary had actually ever set foot in these places, maybe they'd have a different perspective.
Republicans are going to keep on winning more than they should as long as Democrats like Krugman and Hillary make it clear how much they hate any white person without a degree attached to their name. The gratuitous spite of elitists like Krugman does not help anything.
2
@Chris Gray
Not for one second do I believe that my Trump supporter friends, based on decades of personal observation, do not see others who look or speak differently than they do as less than equal. It just took Trump to give them power, and they are enjoying every second of it.
3
@Chris Gray
Organizations rarely comission surveys for the purpose of acquiring bad news for themselves as you suggest. Read more carefully.
I am really starting to believe that Mr. Krugman is economically and financially illiterate.
Here are his own words: “Democrats have a large lead as the party that’s better on health care as an issue.”
Of course, if you split the issues into two separate parts, one will come up with incredibly stupid conclusions.
If you divorce the benefits from the cost as it happened with the healthcare, then you believe that the additional benefits are free of charge.
Isn’t it great to receive two times more benefits at the same cost? Of course, it is!
Isn’t it great to buy two times larger home at the price of the original footage? Of course, it is!
Is it possible? Not really.
The options like that are possible only in Mr. Krugman’s head…
He is as delusional as the GOP economical experts who want to lavishly increase the military spending while slashing the federal taxes.
That approach is as utopian as the ACA…
It is getting really hard for America to withstand such colossal burden imposed upon us by the delusional economics “experts”…
You're overthinking this one, Paul. "Conservative" means God, Guns, and Capitalism. In other words, no regulations for God (i.e. a white, male Christian God), no regulations for guns, no regulations for businesses. The rest is just calling their political opponent atheists, socialists, communists, terrorist-appeasers, communists -- or some other nasty-sounding -ist words --, and then doing the political dirty work for the wealthy donors (or "owners"?) that financed their campaigns. It's all pretty simple.
5
Again, if things are as bad as you say, and the Democrats are as mad as you say: 100% Democratic participation should do the trick.
2
Excellent column, Paul, as ever, and so timely. As I read Bob Woodward's FEAR, I can only do so incrementally, as the protagonists mentioned in it, and their horrible machinations, fill me with equal amounts of angst and disgust. Despite your great analysis here of #45's administration and what the GOP perennially is up to, the fear itself remains, as with so many members of my own family, sad to relate, that racism and ignorance will prevail over knowledge and equality in the next election. I truly hope that my fears are groundless.
1
If the Republicans win in November then Obamacare will be repealed , this election is all about healthcare, and the democrats have to pound that idea, over and over again, preexisted conditions, and every other safeguard will be lost. The republican will not rest to they destroy Obamacare, so vote accordingly.....vote as if your life depends on it, vote as if your mother's life depends on it, vote as if your child's life depends on it....Because it just might.
8
Krugman is accusing Republicans of lying and cheating to win. Would they really do that?
All I know is that here in Florida our governor, Red-Tide Rick, who has spent the last eight years doing everything he can to destroy the Florida environment and doing a pretty good job of it, is now denouncing his opponent in the campaign for senate for not stopping pollution. It defies belief, but it is happening.
Red-Tide Rick lied and bought his way into the governor's mansion eight years ago and he's trying to do the same thing now to reach the senate.
12
The Party of one idea: oligarchy.
Republicans recognized years ago, under FDR, that democracy would exclude them and their ideas about the “elite”ruling the country were over. The Republicans changed the meaning of elite from those with superior abilities and qualities (aristocrats) to the wealthy with devotion to the acquisition of wealth. They surrendered “noblesse oblige” for greed. Politics took on a “business model” mentality and learned from the fascists how to manipulate the public using race, religion, ethnicity, gender in an unconstrained blood fight to the death. There is nothing that the oligarchs will not do to keep power. And Democrats have demonstrated an inherent weakness when they are confronted: Bush v Gore, Bush v Kerry, Trump v Clinton. All surrenders that the Republicans would never have accepted without civil war. Even now Trump proclaimed that if he were forced from office or not re-elected there would be violence. He means it. What do Democrats say in response? What did they say to the tax cut? The Russian visit to the WH? The threat of nuclear war with N Korea? Dismantling ACA? Helsinki? What did Democrats do as compared to Republican responses to the election of Obama?
Democrats may have ideas, but they are far to passive to get anything done. Only Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren recognize the need to fight like our lives depend on it. Establishment Democrats are already considering reductions to Social Security and Medicare.
3
I think Professor Krugman’s title to this opinion piece is quite misleading. The Republicans have no meaningful legislative agenda but they certainly have several “ideas” that actually resonate with part of the American electorate. These ideas include anti-immigration, isolationism, the preservation of white, European culture, general xenophobia, racism and a subtle toleration of white supremacy. While all of these ideas are quite contemptible they do provide some emotional rallying points for any Republican campaign in 2018. And I wouldn’t underestimate their power to resonate among many frightened, under-educated white Americans.
Hard to disagree w/ Krugman on this one except for one not-so-small "but": BUT the Dems are no better! The Republicrat party running this country is the party of elites (Krugman, Obama, Clinton, Trump, the editorial board of this paper) and suckers (like most readers of this paper and its journalists and staff - yes, even you, the drone who polices this very opinion of mine right now, and who will not let it thru as it speaks too much truth)
1
Yes, Democrats WILL get more votes in November. The reason is simple. Democrats have a powerful, persuasive, unfathomably dogged force working on their behalf to motivate them -- and those who are now realizing they think like them -- to get to the polls and vote.
And that force is Donald Trump and every other member of the Republican party.
Not since Obama in 2008 have Democrats been this fired up. Every time I read where someone suggests they take away Donald Trump's phone, I think, "Oh no! Let him tweet! Don't censure ANY of them!"
So mum's the word. Don't let the Republicans find out how much every bit of slime they're oozing is stoking OUR base. When it comes to motivating Democrats, today's Republicans never make a wrong move!
And keep on tweeting and touting, Donnie. You're providing your country a great service.
2
You say that voters have finally 'wised up' but I don't think that is correct.
Some voters have always been wise to the rigged game the Republicans are playing. And some voters aren't and never will be.
Some percentage of the American electorate run their lives on faith-- they believe what they believe and no fact (or set of facts) is going to change their minds. These people are incapable of 'wising up.'
This is an enormous problem for the country extending far beyond simply having Trump elected. What it means is that when we are done with Trump, however that happens, the same people will still be willing to vote their faith. Having learned absolutely nothing but willing to make the same stupid mistakes over and over.
Republicans have figured this out and are playing it for all its worth--to the detriment of our country, our values and our future.
It's almost like they are traitors.
6
Correction---the GOP's big idea---there only idea---is to cut taxes on the 1% and deregulate the corporations they run--that's it. All the cultural issues---guns, immigration, right to life---are diversionary tactics--masking the real goal--to make boardrooms rich again.
3
I remember when the Republican Party was the party if ideas. Some of them were okay, but most of them were frankly pretty awful, such as the supply-side economics mantra that made you wonder if Cong. Jack Kemp (R-NY), an otherwise good dude, had taken one too many shots to the noggin during his time as a pro football player.
Republicans have run on these pretty awful ideas ever since Reagan, with nothing new or substantive to replace them. Except, of course, gerrymandering and voter suppression,
And THOSE are truly terrible ideas. Of course, that may well be why they are so enthusiastically practiced by Republicans.
1
Republican party systematically destroyed public education to promote religious (exclusively Christian) fundamentalism and mostly religious private schools since early 1980s as Reagan took charge. That also appeased white supremacy attitude among many European Americans, aka Whites. In a sense, it's the vestige of our unfinished business after civil war. We gave too much leniency to the slave holding, church going Confederate states and its politics of Bible, race and, to some extent, crony capitalism that benefit tiny few in the community while exploiting or coercing most people to support such policy..
It all ultimately created a large number of American voters who are basically imbecile to understand truth/fact based on data and logic. Now USA has about 14% adults who can not even read. America is 2nd worst among all major industrialized countries (only ahead of Muslim majority Turkey) where 38% of college graduate believe in the fairy-tale story that human being was created by God in its present form. That's worst in our own recent history.
Shrewd & opportunist criminals started understanding the opportunity it created for them by fooling that huge number of voters that GOP nurtured so carefully for so long. So Trump could easily outsmart traditional GOP heavyweights and hijacked the whole party. Now there is no Republican party. Just Trump party and at least few GOP leaders like former speaker John Boehner started understanding that reality.
I don’t know what you all are complaining about. You got what you wanted, a bid’ness man to run the corporation, hmm, nation.
The lesson here is business people are tertiary participants who will do anything, given their ignorance of democratic norms that might get in the way of their franchise for greed.
Everything is transactional. Lacks principle and CHE, curiosity, humility and empathy. Qualities lacking in the American culture of racism, murder and authoritarianism. For money.
Long way to go down yet. How many are you going to take with you in the grifting culture of class warfare.
The Republicans have lots of ideas:
1) Stack the SCOTUS
2) Loot the Treasury for the rich
3) Disenfranchise voters
4) Kill people who become ill
5) Make sure that this is all well in place before the demographics make the U.S. a minority "majority" nation.
2
In America, Corporations and Banks are our Temples, and CEOs our High Priests. Stop revering them. Regulate them. When they break the law, jail them.
6
I rarely disagree with Dr. Krugman, but I have to take him to task on one point. That being the gerrymandering that to a large extent is responsible for the current makeup of the House of Representatives and the current occupant of the White House. On that part of the gerrymandering comment, I agree. But the Senate is the only elective office which is, in theory, immune to gerrymandering. To the extent that gerrymandering so demoralizes voters they simply give up and stay home, this may have some validity. But, since every vote cast by the citizens of a state carry the same weight as every other vote, the members of the Senate are the most purely democratically chosen.
2
@Glen You forget that each state has 2 senators regardless of the population of that state. So those lonely people in Wyoming or Montana have a vote that is 10 times more valuable then mine in Pa.
@Glen
Of course US Senators are now chosen by state-wide popular vote. But let's be clear that the composition of the US Senate represents a spectacular undermining of American democracy. While two Senators per State, regardless of State population, may have made some sense back in 1789 it now gives the citizens of Wyoming 50 times as much Senate representation and power as the citizens of California. The system should be revised to give Wyoming one Senator and California 20 Senators or something like that.
@Glen
One could argue that the Senate is actually the LEAST democratically chosen. That is because each state gets the same number of senators regardless of population. For example, California has 66 times the number of people as does Wyoming. But each state is represented by 2 senators. So you oculd argue that each vote cast by a (presumably republican) voter in Wyoming is worth 66 votes cast by (presumably democratic) voters in California. In 2016, Democrats won the popular vote for the Senate but are still in a minority. Hardly democratic.
2
Just what ideas do the democrats have, other than resistance?
19
@bsbU mean healthcare plan which they are trying to repeal? or not giving tax cuts in face of looming deficit or not supporting Strong man govt who are not democracies? or not putting tariff's ? Or Cutting budget deficit? hmm I dont think there are any issues .. as far as ur concerned i guess..
3
@bsb decent policies for healthcare and education and a reasonable international reputation.
3
@bsb Medicare for all, stronger unions, high minimum wage, better job protections, more support for education, etc etc etc
2
I think Mr. Krugman's arguments would ring more true if he didn't try to distort the Republican actions. For instance, we all know that the Tax cuts were not just for the rich. Yes rich people get more money back because they pay more taxes to begin with, but nearly everyone gets a tax cut. A more rational argument might be how we pay for the tax cut.
The Republicans never proposed raising insurance prices for preexisting conditions, unless a person drops their insurance. If they have insurance and switch carriers they never proposed allowing a surcharge for preexisting conditions. We couldn't allow people with health problems to drop insurance and then just pick it up when they needed health care. Who would maintain insurance if they could just sign up for it when they were sick?
There are real issues with the Republican agenda. But lets address them with substantive arguments rather than repeating untrue platitudes. This is the kind of analysis that got us the ACA in the first place. Wasn't it Mr. Krugman who told us that we could insure 6 million Americans at no cost to ourselves? Tell that now to everyone who is paying way more for health insurance than they did 10 years ago.
1
@chip what tax cut? Haven’t seen it. Trillion dollar deficit, that’s real.
4
@chip TAX CUTS UNFAIRLY helped Rich .. u make more money u pay more tax as u use more resources .. thats the law of the taxes .. Poor pay less taxes so they can live .. U can call it by Govt support.. Insurance companies are already fleecing american consumers .. instead of fixing the case of existing conditions .. whats GOP idea is just trash everything and then ask the companies to fix it ,,,wow
Of course Republicans aren't trying to run on any of their policies -- their stated policies, anyway. But they have found the winning formula for a good decade now, and they're not about to let it go.
Every Republican in office now understands that he or she must kowtow to Trump voters. What this means is that (a) racism should be rewarded, (b) sexism should be rewarded, and (c) religious bigotry should be rewarded. This is all their voters want.
Good jobs? Professional retraining in the new economy? Affordable healthcare? Affordable higher education? Trump voters don't care about any of these things.
The Left needs to dispense with the notion that Trump voters are voting against their own interests. They're not. Trump voters are only interested in an America where they, as white Christians, are the only citizens for whom Constitutional rights and protections apply.
But what they do care about is having a president, who like themselves, believes that the KKK and neo-Nazis are some very fine people. Having a president who believes that rape is a joke. Having an entirely amoral president and administration shove Christian Shariah down our throats as the "law of the land". They don't care that they've turned this country into an ignorant, racist backwater, as long as they think they're on top. This is all Trump voters want. This is all they've ever wanted.
3
They have no ideas, just retreaded slogans and talking points. The GOP is a scam, their voters fall for it, then we ALL suffer, eventually. In reality, it’s the party of racism, sexism and SPITE. Do onto others, before they can grab your stuff.
Seriously.
1
They got their tax cuts.
They got their deregulations.
They got their first nominee onto the Supreme Court.
They got their president to demonize free press.
They got their president to weaken the FBI & DOJ.
They are going after the constitution because it separates the church from the government.
What else do you want? Overt Nazi salutes?
Oh, they got that too.
3
So, the GOP has "no ideas". Perhaps they're just not YOUR ideas? Liberals (usually Democrats) today find that anyone with an idea that does not agree with theirs, is a horrible person, and probably a sociopath. Perhaps it's the Democrats who are lacking in ideas, and the compensate by vilifying the party that does.
1
@India
Perhaps, looking back 40 years, the only conservative ideas implemented were: borrow money to cut taxes for the rich, unlimited guns anywhere and anytime, anti-abortion policies. and rig elections at any costs to stay in power.
That's it!
Are those ideas so dear to any Republican that they would go to the extreme against Democrats? If so, why do they complain the debt is so high, deficits are so high, and rural Americans are left behind?
I'm already tired of Ted Cruz' racist TV ad campaign. It's sad he can't run on a solid legislative record, and has to rely on fear mongering and demagoguery to rally his white, racist base. I sincerely want to see this man unemployed come Jan 2019.
2
And what pray tell are the Democrat's ideas? The only concrete suggestions I hear are from those fledgling candidates who, even if elected, will remain powerless for years to come in the halls of congress. Pelosi, Schumer and the rest of the neoliberals are in power solely because they suck in enormous amounts of corporate money as their fee for feet-dragging on progressive policy. That also would have been Hillary's mission, under the benign sobriquet of "incrementalism". The Times itself seems to be gearing up for a Bloomberg campaign - first the "rumors" of a run last week, then the Frank Bruni puff-piece on Sunday. Are we really such chumps? Maybe so.
"Senator, my family really needs Obamacare, your tax cuts benefited the 1% while ballooning the debt, and every time I visit Walmart I can see that your tariffs are really just a tax on the poor and middle-class."
"Look! An immigrant rapist!"
2
The Republican party has been plotting and executing plans that have been harming people for decades. See
https://www.legalreader.com/trump-administration-reshapes-judiciary/
And see https://www.legalreader.com/republican-racketeers-violent-policies/
2
The GOP claims that "We've lost the messaging battle". Once again, they don't see the error of their ways. The only problem was that their propaganda arm let them down. More people were hurt then helped, end of message. The legislation was written by greedy pigs to favor greedy pigs. The shade of lipstick you apply should not matter. Since most people saw right through this charade, I would say their message came through loud and clear. I hope they will hear from the rest of us real soon.
1
Instead of the headline "the party of no ideas," just stop at "the party of no."
2
Enquanto isso ,no Brasil
#elenão
Precisamos urgente de um presidente dos Moldes do presidente Americano Donald Trump.
estão desesperados e iludindo o povo.
que o Capitão,#elenão. parece com ele,
Seriamos um povo feliz e convicto.
aqui só pensam em se dar bem,sem preocupação com o povo.Não tem Patriotismo.
ao Rio com Amor
I LOVE Donald Trump.
att Dianna Lorena.
"In Texas, Ted Cruz thinks even a clip of Beto O’Rourke saying perfectly reasonable things to black churchgoers will help his flailing campaign."
And don't forget his claim that O'Rourke wanted to ban barbecue.
1
May be these people you keep referring to will go away.
Besides being "deplorables" there are mostly irredeemables. They will vote "republican" all the way down ticket even if the only thing on the ballot is "Should a republican jump off the cliff".
We will eventually move forward without them. Hopefully they will find lodging and comfort in the Trump library where nobody will come and bother them.
1
How comical this opinion piece is. Employment is at an all time low, ISIS has been neutered . North Korea is dismantling its nuclear program.
NAFTA has been renegotiated. China is being taking to task for its trade oratices. All this has occurred and Krugman calls the Republicans lacking in ideas. When you can't point to facts, you have to resort to Krugman's nonsense.
The Democrats have lost touch with its constitutes, as is evident by the primary losses of their long term congress members to young Socialist. The Democrats have the same old stale message that resonates with no one. Pelosi is still in charge and the old guard is not going anywhere. Obama was a great orator but a below average leader domestically and internationally. Race relations were at an all time low under his watch. The midterms will be a validation of the Republican message of change.
I'm most afraid of election fraud, voter suppression and beyond. We are not prepared.
6
Dr. Krugman, it's not that the Republican Party is out of ideas, it's just that their ideas are unpopular with the most Americans. The Democrats are certainly not "winning" this battle, as the establishment has no answer to Trump other than to attempt to delegitimize him (however noble this pursuit may be). While Democrats claim to have the policy answers to today's issues, it is their lack of coherence that allows for Republicans and Trump to succeed in creating a powerful message based on racial resentment AND economic insecurity. Suggesting that the Republicans are out of ideas is out of touch with how detached mainstream Democrats are today. If all we do is insult and attempt to delegitimize Trump, instead of addressing the deeper issues at play, American democracy is doomed. Trump voters' concerns are real, and all of America must realize this and push for a progressive political vision that works for everyone. Only then will we be able to move beyond Trump and his rightwing cronies. We cannot say the Republicans are out of ideas when we have no alternatives.
60
@Kip Roberts
NUMEROUS STUDIES have shown that what binds most supporters to Trump has NOTHING to do with economic anxiety. Sadly it is the reflection and legitimizing of their own bigotry that attracts them.
We must stop giving them so much credit just because we can't accept that it's all about hating.
No point in giving hate and ignorance a voice.
We don't need them. We are the majority, and for the good of the country and the world, these haters will crawl back under their rocks where they belong.
2
@Kip Roberts
Excuse me, have you been living in another universe. What's Medicare for all as a substitute for the ACA?What's a hike in the minimum wage. What is free tuition for all or for just those students below a certain level of income students and the cancelation of their educational debt so as to reduce the obscene inequality.
What is the elimination of tax loopholes and tax cuts for the rich to fund the above. What is Dodd-Frank and its strengthening so as to avoid another 2008.
If you have not heard about these, you're either a Trump supporter in disguise or a Russian troll. How's Uncle Vlad?
@Kip Roberts
...you need to dig an inch deeper, Kip.
The Democratic Party subscribes to and promotes all of the following ideas and programs on a national basis: 1) an inclusive national heath care policy;
2) education improvement initiatives from pre-school to community college/trade school/corporate partnerships;
3) job creation through desperately needed public infrastructure initiatives including roads, sewer & water, state flood protection programs, improvements to the national electrical grid;
4) low-income housing initiative;
5) a $15 minimum living wage;
6) improving social security by raising the cap on taxable wages;
7) improving and enforcing environmental protection laws;
8) outlawing gerrymandering and attacking voting rights abuses;
9) raising taxes on the 1% Trump-type billionaire families to help pay for these programs.
10) let me know if you run out of ideas.
Meanwhile, more and more States are putting voter mandated ballot initiatives in play to wrest control of redistricting from politicians and create non-partisan committees to create competitive districts that maximize the value of each citizen's vote. Republicans are naturally responding by doing all they can to prevent these acts of direct democracy.
13
Anyone who votes for candidates based on their "policies" deserves what they get. Hillary Clinton had many policies, e.g., TPP, which she celebrated then walked from. Personalities, and an appreciation of the person's character, are the criteria that should be given primary attention in voting decisions.
Policies either are just selling points, or are changed as evidence and context change, but a person tends to be true to type. Remember what Sheridan indicated about the role of noble "sentiments" in School for Scandal. In the final analysis we only have the person, not the words.
1
@San Ta What you're espousing is tribalism not democracy! How can you ever actually KNOW a politician's character never having met them? You're hiring a job applicant- not a babysitter for your children. You cast a vote for a person's record of successes and policies that are the best for us all!
1
@San Ta
Nope, voters should vote policies, not charisma or personal attributes that are often made or assassinated by propaganda. Trump is an exception because he is a mobster, plain and simple. More than 90% of what we were told about Trump in 2016 was true and more than 80% what right wing propaganda told about Clinton was made up, a lie. One had to be pretty well read to make an informed choice. Millions of Americans couldn't.
Policies is WYSIWYG. You know what you vote for. Clinton walked away from TPP because that's what American people wanted. They started to believe that trade is bad and there was no simple way to explain this.
It seems to me that American people tend to blame anyone but themselves. They responded to aggressive right wing propaganda and have made very bad choices last 20 years. Blaming Hillary Clinton is as silly as it gets.
1
Their "ideas" revolve around rigging the system for the wealthy and for their own control of power.
11
The first paragraph seems to imply that gerrymandering has something to do with winning or losing the Senate. I do not understand this. Both Senators and Governors are elected by all of a State’s citizens who honorably exercise their right to vote. The Democratic Party cannot use gerrymandering as an excuse for fumbling these elected offices.
2
@A. S. Rapide--Krugman states gerrymandering affects the House races, not the Senate races. This is absolutely true. Republicans have drawn congressional districts so that they would be safe in the majority of them. The number of swing districts has dwindled over the years and the number of landslide districts has gone up.
10
@A. S. Rapide The senate just naturally favors the republicans because it gives more power to the smaller states. The smaller states' citizens accept the republican lies much more easily.
1
@A. S. Rapide
True. But gerrymandering very much applies to the House, voter suppression, and the SCOTUS rape of the Votiing Rights Act are very relevant.
There is only one party with a wing that wants to reinstitute Jim Crow, and it isn't the Democrats. The real issues in this election are so fundamental to American Democracy that people can't believe it is happening.
This election is about whether government "of the people, by the people and for the people" will perish from this earth. Because the Trump travesty of the GOP is not the party of Lincoln, but it does bear a remarkable resemblance to the parties of Mussolini, Lenin and Hitler in its taste for authoritarian one-man rule, dogmatic dictatorship and contempt for legal principles.
The republicans are running on the current wave of growth measured by falling employment figures, rising markets and a surge in GDP numbers. The question is how long the sugar high from tax cuts, defense spending and cuts in regulations will last. Eventually our economy will slow when the recently administered artificial stimulants wear off and we'll be left with exacerbated versions of the same problems we had before: stagnant wages, rising numbers of uninsured or under-insured, lack of access to quality education, crumbling infrastructure and an aging population with little-to-no savings and a shrinking safety net. By that time the republicans will be out of power to count their ill-gotten gains and leave the democrats to clean up the mess.
19
I heard this at an industry conference two weeks ago. The normal ratio between the value of scrap steel and new steel is 1:2. Since the tariffs the ratio has gone to 1:3. The steel producers have used the tariffs to justify a 50% increase in the price of new steel. Which will increase the cost of just about everything, especially automobiles. Tariffs are a tax on Americans, and one made worse by profiteering from the steel industry.
24
"And it might work. After all, studies of the 2016 election clearly show that racial resentment, not “economic anxiety,” was what put Trump over the top."
Trump supporters don't care about economic anxiety as long as they have their racial resentment. With gerrymandering and voter suppression, racial resentment is more than enough to keep them in power. The red seawall will turn out to be more than a match for any blue wave.
9
The rich simply resent all the little people who take, who need, who want the simplest security.
The rich have no compassion for the poor, but blame them for their plight.
The rich indeed pay a lot in taxes, they have a lot. Of course they want to keep it out of the hands of the needy little people. So, they buy a political party.
It's not a bad idea that everyone pull their weight. But that means those with half the personal wealth should pay half the personal income tax. The remaining 99% could pay the other half. Instead, the middle class carries the weight of the rich and the poor's respective share. No surprise the middle class is shrinking. What is surprising is how easily duped they are by the idea that they could be rich themselves by acting rich -- namely hating the poor and spending money to look rich.
24
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
@larkspur, and those who support trump consider themselves Christians.... I'm still trying to find the place in the Bible where Jesus commands us to despise and keep out those poorer and darker than we, and to cling to our riches for security. And guns. Lots of guns. Can any trump-supporting Christians help me out here?
1
There is 200mile dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Algae consumes the oxygen. The algae is fed from the run off of farm chemicals. Recently the Trump administration removed a regulation that essentially attempted to regulate farm run off. The regulation stated that ALL wet lands and waterways are connected, therefore what happens up stream is connected to what happens down stream. We are poisoning ourselves. When are going to stop?
In the 70’s a business organization was formed to change the national political conversation to favor business over people. This led directly to the Laffer curve and trickle down economics, as well as the “starve the government beast of money” mentality. 40 years later we have an economic policy that focuses on redistributing capital to the already wealthy 1% and corporations. Lower and middle class folks are financing the Rich getting richer.
Meanwhile our freshwater supplies are becoming contaminated with farm run off and industrial pollution. The water situation in Wisconsin is becoming problematic. Drinking water supplies, especially wells are becoming contaminated from run off from Concentrated Animal Feed Operations. This also happening in other parts of the country. In North Carolina rain from Florence has sent rivers over their banks inundating rivers an streams with pig manure.
We are killing ourselves for profit.
Amy Klobuchar for President.
1
Import tariffs scream "Protect!" Free trade urges "Compete!" The pesky thing is, if we fail to compete we end up having nothing left to protect.
4
As I read opinion pieces and comments in the NYT I'm noticing more and more that Democrats are beginning to assert that if they do not win in the mid-term elections that the vote will have been rigged, suppressed, jerrymandered; the election stolen; all three branches of the government will be illegitimate and not deserving of our support or respect; the constitution should be amended to un-do constitutional protections of small states against the power of big states, a compromise that made it acceptable in the first place and makes it work today. Are the Dems starting to have doubts about their electoral prospects in November? Is it their new policy to delegitimize any elections they lose--or administrations or courts they do not control? Is this the method of a party that supports the constitution--a party that deserves our support?
2
What are you reading? The problem is that the Republican Party is overtly trying to make this a permanent 1 party government and destroying as they go along checks and balances. Trying to deny rights. They are destructive and divisive and in fact DJT has questioned the validity of an election he won. The Constitution won’t be amended to minimize small state rights. The Republican Party has crushed minority’s rights by abusing them as the minority party and eliminated cloture rules for SCOTUS appointments. They are ignoring Constitutional obligations and limitations and the majority of the country. They are incompetent governing and want to be. What do you think Democrats should do?
2
@Ronald B. Duke
I categorically reject your premise, sir.
You offer Zero Proof of "Dems having doubts" or calls of "vote rigging".
If you can not provide verifiable proof (and no, breitbart.com nor fox 'news' are not trusted, honest sources) then take your dog whistle elsewhere
1
Paul, you're right in saying that the Republicans are running this year's midterms campaigns without any directions.
Yes, all of their ideas have stumbled at the door of the White House.
With no help from Trump to uplift the G.O.P. voters, all the Republican candidates are just scrambling to find their age old ideas which have already proven to be total failures.
And that is really a paradox for a party which won the hearts of many a White Americans by saying things closer to their hearts : No new taxes. No socialised medicines. Jobs for all. No immigrants. The list goes on and on.
But now when all of their earlier policies have gone bankrupt they're sending their Divider-In-Chief Trump to divide the country more into racial lines.
The gerrymandering tactics that they used earlier to keep their bases intact and helping their own G.O.P. candidates go to the Congress, is biting them right in their back side of the body where it hurts most.
Now this is just the fun part. Actual harm to the Republican party of great presidents like Lincoln, Ike et Al, will come after November 6th when the roof of their party headquarters will literally and figurativelly come crashing down with so many losses of their candidates than they what they're predicting now.
So the question that all the Republican members of their majority led congress and the active members outside have to ask on each day before they head to the midterms,"Is it really worth siding with an obnoxious president ?"
Almost by definition, Conservativism is a worldview which rejects change—even if that change means modifying your own broken ideology.
China has bullet trains; we have Amtrak. What happened to repairing our infrastructure? What happened to Trump's promise of "better, cheaper health care for all?" The only ideas Republicans are running on are adoration for the Dear Leader, hostility to immigrants, dumbing down our education system, supporting tariffs and trade wars that will ruin our economy as well as China's and removal of environmental regulations that will allow industries to pollute our air and water again.
3
This nation is on the cusp of forthcoming momentous events. Wondering how the big events will turn out, I receive the cryptic message from an "interesting source":
A flow will have an ebb.
When a surging tide reaches its high range, it recedes;
When an ebbing tide recedes to its low point, it billows.
Hubris. Nemesis, Reverses. Unsettling crises. Tumultuous Upheavals. Era change. You vadis?
The Republicans say win at all costs. They have lost their soul and with it America has as well.
2
Republicans are less for policies than against. Republicans messages are "anti" messages. Anti-ACA, anti-immigrant, anti-Democrat, anti-globalism, anti-debt, anti-abortion, anti-entitlements, anti-union, anti government, etc. The only positive being touted by Republicans is a booming economy that they misleadingly promote as a credit to themselves.
Apparently voters are more inclined to vote against someone or something rather than in favor someone or something. Witness the last election. Trump was short on policy with a long list of things he was against. In fact Trump discouraged policy discussions in any debate, and replaced discourse with insults. He only spoke of policies at rallies when he didn't have to defend his position. Bernie voters ran to vote against the person whose policies he was most closely aligned with.
This ideology also leads to voting to upend everything. For example the ACA. Republicans campaigned against it telling voters it belonged in the trash rather than refine and/or amending the policy. Or Dems have morphed it into universal health care. Voters do not consider the demand for complete turnaround is an expensive proposition to our economy. Increasingly it would seem the only ones benefitting from these actions are the entities who vote with money. Donors whose aims seem to directly oppose the masses they employ influence policy more and more. What many voters do not realize is in the end they are voting against their own interests.
Lack of GOP ideas for the economy? Not so fast.
They have plenty of ideas. Their basic policy stance is to reduce public programs and privatize where possible. They seek to dismantle the public sphere and turn it over to the likes of Betsy DeVo$ to trash public education and (initially) $cott Pruitt to dismantle the EPA.
Their policy goals seem quite well focused on returning our governing to the 1890s when the plutocrats reigned, women and minorities could not vote, and government had little power to regulate anything. In other words, they intend to rollback the accomplishments of the Populists, Progressives, New Dealers, Fair Dealers, the New Frontier, the Great Society, and particularly Barack Obama. (How dare women and black people think they can run America!)
They have policy objectives all right. They are carefully calibrated to empower the tenth of one percent of the population to complete their conquest of America. Why not? They are the ones funding the GOP effort. The return on their political investment is already substantial.
Imagine if the GOP retains control of Congress in November. Service programs such as Medicare and Social Security will be cut to address the ballooning deficit. The ACA will vanish. Tariffs will reduce international trade and cripple American manufacturing. Wage protections won’t. The result will be downward pressure on the middle class and absolute misery for the poor.
The GOP has policies, just not ones good for America.
3
We need to revive an old idea: If you have to cheat to win, then you really didn't win. If it takes gerrymandering, voter suppression and Russian interference for the GOP to retain power, then they must be very afraid that they will lose. If they were really confident of their positions, they would not feel the need to cheat in order to win.
9
It does not matter if you win "very ugly" . The Republicans do not care what it takes to win or what it takes to serve the people of the United States.
The only answer for America to be rescued is to vote every Republican out of office, in both the Senate and House.
Otherwise things will get worse.
When Chicken Little cried "the sky is falling, the sky is falling" . maybe he was foreseeing our future. The future is here and now and we had better take control in November.
9
The Republicans don’t feel they need ideas. They have control of election technology—gerrymandered districts, a major communications giant called Fox, engineering firms dedicated to getting out the vote in the necessary districts and eliminating or suppressing the vote in threatening districts, and I should add an “etc” here, because the Republican organization is so much more.
Like Will Rogers said—he wasn’t a member of an organized political party—he was a Democrat. The Republicans don’t need ideas, they’ve got organization. They don’t give a hoot about ideas.
It behooves the rest of us (us non-Republicans) to show them what ideas can mean.
1
Well, even the politics of fear and racism needs every possible form of voter suppression to work. And by Jove it's getting it. Thanks, Supreme Court.
2
Trump's 2016 win may well have been due to the same racial resentment which underwrote the infamous January 20, 2009, at the elite Washington, DC steakhouse, The Caucus, meeting of top Republican Congressional leaders in which the Republican agenda over the next four years was set to a single item, to do everything in their power, and obstruct every Democratic overture for cooperation, to prevent a black family from inhabiting a white house for a second four-year term.
While blind hatred of Barack Obama and everything decent that he stands for may have driven the Republican agenda over the next ten years, that's not the whole story. The whole story is much more sinister. It is a systemic waging of war on the entire middle class, from their attempts to repeal universal health care to their passage of the disastrous 2017 tax cuts. It is the unprecedented abuse of power from Mitch McConnell's desecration of due process in denying Merrick Garland his right to a fair hearing to his attempts to shove an increasingly compromised Brett Kavanaugh down the throats of the American people. It is Devin Nunes' persistent attempts to collude with Donald Trump in his attempt to thwart Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian election interference on behalf of Trump. And so much more.
The voters had better put aside their distrust and concerns over Democrats if they hope to clean out the corruption and foul dealings of our Republican-dominated government this November, and again in 2020.
Sadly, Krugman has it backwards. Republicans have ideas and are pretty firm and clear about them. The ideas are all bad from climate denial, disfranchising likely democratic and especially minority voters and erasing women's choice to privatizing everything, eliminating workers' rights and all regulations and obstacles to maximum corporate profiteering.
Democrats at the center, rhetoric aside, aren't much better and are resistant to those who are within their own party. Mostly democrats are opportunists whereas Republicans have (downright evil) principles. History shows that principles, even bad ones, will generally win over opportunism.
If we want something authentically better that what we presently have, the Democrats need to rally around and stick to principles worthy of support.
1
It's pretty obvious that the Republicans never propose anything that enhances the welfare of average Americans. It's also obvious that the Republicans receive fewer votes than do the Democrats but they still manage to win on a regular basis. That was true of George Bush and Donald Trump. Using dirty tricks, the Republican Senate managed to stymie Obama's pick for the Supreme Court and might now manage to place a man of questionable integrity on that court. They seem to simply outplay the Democrats who apparently need to be doing something different like maybe improving their propaganda machine.
1
Republicans no longer have to have any ideas, let alone new or good ones, since they've successfully managed to suppress and deny those who seek to change things for the better. The Republicans can afford to be complacent because they've gotten what they've wanted. American democracy has moved toward American autocracy right before our eyes. The swamp that's always been there has turned into quicksand that's rapidly spreading to engulf anything in its way. The truth is no longer the truth. Ditto for the law. Facts have become 'alternative
facts' and/or 'fake news' as Democrats seem helpless to stem the tide since they've lost the war of messaging and delivering on their
messages. Besides, any rational/beneficial message Dems propose will be turned around and used against them. It's all taken from the Republican playbook and it's already infected Europe.
Yet there's still hope that things can be turned around, provided Democrats can reinvent then redefine themselves ASAP. All that's required is bold, inspired leadership ready, willing and able to take it all on.
Finding that leadership before it's too late is the hard part.
Vote.
Regardless,
14
I'm often reminded of that old Jethro Tull song that starts out "I may make you feel, but I can't make you think." from Thick as a Brick. I think that sums it up, that emotional and visceral appeals are more powerful to a large portion of the voters than actually trying to grasp the thoughtful side of the arguments. Too many are looking at scapegoats: people of darker complexion than they are, or global trade, or "those people" trying to take my hard earned money. Fear narrows the field of vision and reduces the response to survival mode. Higher brain functions are shunted aside while dealing with the perceived threat. This is what the Republicans are counting on to win elections: shut off the thinking and fight against enemies, even if they are shadowy straw men.
It has been telling that the real estate president has not even touched our crumbling infrastructure. I guess that just hasn’t come up with all the dismantling of our government and programs that actually help Americans., the republicans are too busy giving themselves tax breaks, and enriching their contributors and installing conservative judges accused of sexual abuse, and denying that the Russians attacked us in 2016.
The Establishment GOP is the same as the Establishment Democrats, they only care to gain power and pay off their sponsors, and they want to preserve a status quo that serves them, only with different arguments. After all, the Bushes and the McCains voted for Hillary, the Establishment Democrat.
The progressive Democrats and the populist Republicans are almost identical too, and want change the status quo that fails them.
3
Republican policies are crystal clear – they are Hate, Oppression, and God (in the name of). I call it the HOG agenda because in the end a small group will hold an insane magnitude of wealth and the remainder, well they will endure soul crushing poverty.
And the Republican base loves it - I guess many of them do not understand the soul crushing poverty part.
1
Mr. Krugman asks a key question: "Why should anyone expect cutting taxes on the rich while taking health care away from the sick to be popular?"
Then he answers it: "The answer, I think, is that in the past, voters didn’t see the connections."
The answer is a delicate way of putting this solid truth: America is ripe for being plucked because of its vast sea of uneducated and intellectually lazy voters. Right wing plutocrats know that and the Russians know that.
It is more true now than in Mencken's time that nobody ever went broke (or failed to get elected) by underestimating the American public's intelligence.
13
But there is a policy: take from the poor and give to the rich.
16
As an US and EU national who has been voting for the Ds and agreed with you in the past 20 years, I have come to the exact opposite view as you by the time no-ideas HRC emerged as the Democratic candidate against Sanders. Since then I have #WalkedAway, and I am only running faster. I do not envision voting for the Ds again in my lifetime/
Both Ds and Rs are beholden to donors, WS, and what is good for mega share holders who are paying for their costly elections. The very fact that the Democrats decided to attack Trump the person so VICIOUSLY rather than simply offer better economical solutions for ordinary Americans, shows that they have no ideas because they are so beholden to mega corporations. People are pragmatic.
The Ds are masters at saying all the PC things, and doing exact the opposite. It is just a different lying than Trumps who lies by bombast and exaggeration, but it is shameless lying nevertheless. Lets not forget that the financial meltdown that wrecked the USA and the entire world happened in NYC, a Democratic city, under the watch of 2 Democratic senators (HRC was one of them) and a Democratic Governor.
The Rs have borrowed some ideas for Trump. I agree with his idea of building the Wall and the rest, because the ill conceived immigration policy of the USA in the last 40 years have transformed great swath of USA into slums, and made the good parts still left un-affordable even for an upper middle class salary.
1
The Democrats need to improve their messaging, specifically by repeating the truth over and over until it finally sinks in even to the Trump base. You don't need the "liberal main stream media" to tell you the Republicans are lying to us. All you have to do is listen to Fox News for a while and any reasonably sentient being should realize that we are being told one thing one week and the opposite thing a week later. A person of slightly higher intellectual function will also realize that it's not just a coincidence that all the poorer states are run by Republicans and the all the wealthier(and healthier) ones are run by Democrats. Otherwise Republicans will continue to use social dog whistles like abortion, gay rights or illegal immigrants to distract the voters while they push more and more of the wealth towards their patrons.
1
Why aren't Republicans policy driven? Just look at their leader. His only policy is to be showered with applause at his hokey rallies.
19
What does one expect in a society given over to avarice and hooked on More, More, More mindless material consumption at any and every moment?
Our politics are a reflection of our society and it's morality (or lack thereof).
MB
1
*But if the G.O.P. does win, it will have won very, very ugly. And American politics will become even worse*
E Pluribus Unum - America grew to be a beacon of democracy, freedom, and human rights (with apologies to rampant racism). It didn't quite match up with Lincoln's Gettysburg reference to “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” but, it was close.
OK, it wasn't perfect but it was big enough and strong enough and credible enough to lead the way, and set the mark for nations to aspire to.
But, what if this democracy of Lincoln's becomes complacent, and the people lapse, and power brokers elevated by greed and selfishness, deceivers and manipulators, take over the politics? Corruption, treachery, oppression, hatred and divisiveness favour the elevation of demagogues and leave a confused and divided people in a land of lost souls.
So, if a very, very ugly G.O.P. victory emerges and American politics becomes even worse, then this beacon of democracy, freedom, and human rights (with apologies to rampant racism) will sputter out. And America will be the biggest loser.
Democracy, like respect, takes a long time to establish, but once it fails it will decline rapidly.
Is a world-wide loss of belief in democracy desirable?
4
"The question is why such policies were ever popular." Answer: That's not the question. The question is why vast swaths of VOTING white Americans move in lockstep with an entrenched white power structure whose policies are designed exclusively for its own benefit. Answer: white patriarchal tribalism.
1
“The American public seems to have wised up.” Really? The veracity of this statement will only become apparent after results from the mid-terms are in. I hope you are correct, Dr. Krugman. I personally fear that far too many Americans have given up on our national political system and will elect to sit on their couch and watch their evening TV programs on Election Day rather than get out and save our wonderful country from the scoundrels and blatant corruption that now control our government.
Republicans are the party with no new ideas or ideas at all. They are the party of emotions which are what win elections. White dominance, fear of difference, love of guns, hatred of “elites” all convince enough voters to win elections, with the help of a tilted playing field. The elephant never forgets what drives people to the polls.
8
Under this administration, we are not governed by ideas or reason, but the beliefs of the base. As Saudi Arabia seeks to break the egg and struggle into freedom, America is choosing to go the other way. Now and for the next 30 years, we will be governed not by reason but by religious beliefs. In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer, and this will be based on a "survival" algorithm. Then, we will finally learn how we confuse the mind about what exactly is supposed to survive with our ridiculous beliefs. At that point we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity. See RevolutionOfReason.com
1
This is what Timothy Snyder, historian at Yale, calls Sado -Populism. The Republicans have been practicing this for five decades at least. Sado Populism is a set of policies, done willingly and deliberately, to hurt people (thus the term).
Democratic elections are usually about the future. Both sides present their side of the future. Voters choose the option that maximizes the value to the individual voter going forward.
But the Republicans do not talk about a better future in any meaningful way. Instead, they promise to protect voters against "the other"; e.g. black, brown, Asian. It is an explicit play to divide voters with fear and intimidation.
It is what Snyder calls the politics of eternity; nothing will get better, but we (the Republicans) can protect you from "them". Moreover, as bad as you feel, you can take solace in the fact that "those people" are being treated worse. It is how they control the population in Eastern Europe and Russia while they are looting the government, and that is what Trump and his American oligarch campaign contributors doing here.
Sado populism: they are going to hurt you, and you are going vote for it. Is that what you really want?
4
If the majority of Republicans lose on election day, it will send the strongest possible message to our elected officials. Or, as Donald Trump the reality show host loved and still loves to say, "YOU'RE FIRED!"
2
The GOP is dying and has been desperately trying to grip a last handhold. It has no real ideology hence how we got a President named Trump. They are being steered by their special teams interests not by their constituents who elected them. They have now corrupted are Congress, Executive and soon it appears our Judiciary branch of government. It’s time to reclaim our democracy. There is only one way, become informed and vote!
2
If only the majority of the population was capable of reading and critical thought. I did my best; I reached a few. (retired public educator)
1
I've never seen a party with worse ideas, over many years, do so well in elections. It's as if the peope have two different standards for their elected officials: if the Republicans do nothing well, that's good, because it means smaller government and they will be out of my life; if the Democrats do something big, like the ACA, let's complain about the problems in their website and keep them out of power.
The party of guns, gays (anti-gay) and God wins elections while running on fear, greed and governing with fecklessness. Two different standards. False equivalency.
2
GOP has had only one idea, maybe two.
Eliminate taxes for the wealthy while bankrupting the country
in order to eliminate Social Security and Medicare.
It still hates FDR.
2
It's pretty hard to have ideas that appeal to the voters when you only care about pleasing the 0.1% and their lobbies.
We've now slipped to 54th on the health index! We should be ashamed.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/u-s-near-bottom-of-he...
2
Actually the GOP has lots of ideas, mostly lying
and pimping policies that never work and will never
work.
As the joke went, Gingrich had a thousand ideas
every day, all of which were awful.
Tax cuts paying for themselves and cookie crumbs
that have no calories. The GOP Way
2
The Democrats are now the party of the elites, Silicon Valley, most of WS, the entire media, all the writers and academia. The Republicans are now the party of ordinary Americans. The fact that you fail to see why Trump got 30 states while HRC got only 20 when she had all the backing of the media, donors, Obama and his entire administration, not to mention her husband,a popular ex president, shows that you have learned nothing from the last elections Mr. Krugman because your salary pays you not to understand such things.
3
All true points, but any humdrum "columnist" could make these points. Mr. Krugman's expertise in macro-economics/political economy not in evidence.
The GOP certainly has no ideas or coherent public policy but they indeed have an agenda they follow with devotion: Take all three branches of government in order to end Medicare and Social Security altogether. After all, the richest still do not feel they have enough tax cuts.
Unless all "the browns" on Ted Cruz et al ads go out and vote, we will have King Trump. Just look at the Senate, if a Supreme Court Justice is accused of sexual harassment, there is no need for an FBI investigation because he will be appointed anyway. The Trump factor. That is what the president does. And, lying.
2
Until Bernie emerged I don’t recall Democrats having any ideas beyond their precious incrementalism and deference to what the GOP will allow them to do.
In fact the strategy of Democratic Leadership is to use GOP obstruction to their advantage . Say “gee we’d love to do that but those GOP meanies...”
Meanwhile the GOP pushes their hostile and unpopular agenda with vigor and abandon decimating Democrats coast to coast and ruling over our collective misery because Democrats have to be “realistic and pragmatic”. Anything but inspiring and compelling .
Funny how the two parties seem to have a seamless convergence when it comes to aiding wealth and privilege and catering to the desires of power .
I’m finished with lesser evilism and cynically crated excuses. Democrats owe it to their constituents and the restoration of our institutions to run on bold and enticing ideas devoted to the prosperity and benefit of all rather than continue being willing patsies to GOP barbarism and cruelty.
P.S. Start with MedicareForAll. It serves a dire and critical public need and is also the foundation of a Democratic Renaissance and resurgence.
3
Trump appeals to people who are terrified of change. He makes simple slogans in a political movement. That movement is one of misdirection and a giant pigeon drop scam all those working class voter who flocked to Trump were the willing marks. While he does this he and inner circle are raking in money. At the same time he's doing Putin's bidding. Putin understood that America was beyond his ability to challenge directly. However, troll farms are cheap. Buying Trump when he needed financing was cheap, getting him under his thumb was the best investment he'd ever made. Now, for about the price of a single nuclear submarine he's successfully destroying our relationship with the E.U. and NATO, destroying our strategic positions and alliances on the pacific rim, breaking our trade relationships, utterly demolishing our reputation and position on the world stage. Shortly, as the trade war really starts to hurt, our economy will follow. The icing on the cake is Brexit and the hard exit that will crater the UK economy. The champaign is already on ice in the Kremlin.
1
The Party of No Ideas ... I dropped out of the GOP in 2011, when it became clear that the "Tea Party" had no program other than obstruction, fiscal irresponsibility, and thinly-veiled racism. Doubling down on earlier, failed positions and policies.
And it has only become measurably worse.
23
Took me a little longer to bail on GOP. Either 2012 or 2013 it became obvious (finally to me) they didn't want to repeal and replace ACA, only repeal.We can argue how much income redistribution is enough and its impact on work incentive. But all citizens should have affordable health coverage. Finally in 2010, Obama and Dems produced something, even if not close to perfect. But at least was something. Instead of improving, GOP just put up roadblocks.
15
The flaw in the Democratic so called ideas us that we cannot import sll the poor of the third countries as we have done in the last 50 years AND give everyone free healthcate and subsidized housing. The democratic ideas cancel each orher out. It is dishonesy that they fail to make a choice. They have the opportunity wigh Trump, but they miss it.
1
We're living in a "dog caught the car era." Like a dog chasing a car, the GOP has been expert at barking and causing a general ruckus. But also like a dog chasing a car, the GOP has not figured out what it'd do once it caught the car.
Sadly, we're all in the car.
1
It is very difficult for people to admit they made a mistake, and even more difficult if they’ve been conned. They’ll continue voting republican out of shame.
Spot on. Fake news and stoking racial fear is pretty much all the GOP has in the bag these days. Of course, it’s not ideology anyway, it’s the corruption of dark money at the heart of the GOP, so, yes, they’ll do anything to win.
2
Dear Sir: what do you mean 'no ideas'? just look at what the Party of Lincoln has offered up on: the opium crisis, border security, revision of the affordable care act, student tuition debt; social security shortfall; ISIS. (etc, etc, etc). frankly, just as 45 predicted during the campaign i am tired, nay exhausted, for all the winning.
12
Thank you, Paul for this brilliant explanation of utter stupidity! I think we are not just polarized but are becoming two different species. The mouth breathers will thrill to professional wrestling and elect leaders such as King Con. Those who are able to grasp abstract concepts such as "facts" and "reality" and "the future" will prepare for the advent of Artificial Intelligence, quantum computers, virtual space travel, advanced robotics and Bitcoin. I fear that Trump's "base" is a lost cause. Invest in IBM, fuel cells, graphene and nano-technology. There will come a time when we will no longer be able to communicate with the MBs, who will only grunt beneath their MAGA caps.
2
You should stop citing those "racial resentment" claims. They are absurd.
Look at how the studies in question try to measure "racial resentment". They measure no such thing. They just measure differences in personality traits (like conscientiousness).
What pushed Trump over the edge was identity politics on the left, which has infested the Democratic Party, and threatens to cause further losses this fall. Each time you try to claim that Trump supporters are racists, you add to the problem.
3
@Thanny
But in fact many, if not most of trump's supporters actually are racist. I know some of them personally, and have talked with them long enough to know their 'true colors'.
Claim that it's absurd and stick your head in the sand all you want, but it doesn't change reality.
"Republican policies are so unpopular that the party’s candidates are barely trying to sell them."
True enough, but there is one group who apparently find the Republican's ideas appealing: centrist Democrats.
> ACA of course, was developed by the Heritage Foundations and first implemented by Mitt Romney, and like a good little Republican, Obama kicked single payer to the curb in '09.
> twice the Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Obama proposed a quintessential Republican idea, Social Security cuts.
> austerity - the Democrats embraced it with Obama's freezing of federal employee pay, and also, Pelosi has announced that if Dems take back the House in November, she will resurrect the “pay-go” rule that mandates all new spending is offset with budget cuts or tax increases (a huge blunder - see the link).
> Obama's all-of-the-above energy policy is right out of George W Bush's playbook
> Bill Clinton eagerly signed legislation cutting welfare and he signed legislation regulating banks and commodities.
Dem partisans like Krugman can't avoid putting their feet in their mouths.
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/04/nancy-pelosi-2018-midterms-democrats/
1
Deregulation, lower drug costs and transparency in healthcare pricing,
the end of identity politics and affirmative action in hiring in order to favor simply the best candidate, blind of race and gender, are all excellent Republican ideas, borrowed from Trump. So is the end of the Obama mandate to force people to buy expensive health insurance they can not afford, without allowing mechanisms for lowering these costs.
Mr. Krugman you are shilling for a party that in its current form is over the hill.
4
@European in NY
"Force people to buy health insurance....."
Gosh, is having people take care of their own health care cost (as opposed to foisting it on the public at large) really as bad as the GOP proposals for stricter work requirements for food stamp recipients?
You want to ignore one thing, but demand the other???
3
When will the GOP institute those "brilliant" ideas you claim they have? How about these promises: Repeal and replace? Beautiful, inexpensive healthcare for all? Closing the carried interest loophole? I could go on, but any intelligent observer gets the point. These are GOP lies, only used in a bait-and-switch with the American voter. Too bad for us all that so many little fish take the GOP bait hook, line and sinker.
3
If the tactics used by liberal media are intended to promote the Democratic party in any way, it's really puzzling. It's main components seem to be the daily bashing of Trump, GOP and Russia.
If I were a Trump voter constantly called stupid, it wouldn't make me run to the Democrats. And if Russian meddling was a real threat (it isn't, listen to Noam Chomsky and many other sober people) I would certainly stick to GOP, where there are even more foreign policy hawks.
One thing clearly missing is positive marketing of a political program. What will the Democratic party do to win over Trump voters and the rest of the middle class, suffering from 30+ years of neoliberal destruction? And even encourage half of the electorate that doesn't vote?
If I, as a foreigner, would give some impertinent advise it would be to focus on politics. There is a new wave of progressives emerging, some labeling themselves socialists (like the natural talent Alexandria Ocasio Cortez). In Europe they would barely qualify as social democrats, and their political programs are embraced here by most conservative parties.
The progressives offer real solutions to the problems people are struggling with, but the Democratic party establishment is hooked up to the donor class in a system built by legalized corruption. It's not tenable in the long run.
An advice from a social democratic country: reconnect to the politics of FDR, your best president ever. Become more European!
4
@Lars Schaff
"Become more European!'
Europe seems to have reached its limits on Socialism. New Rightist Nationalist parties are springing up in response to the so called "refugee crisis" which has brought crime and cultural conflict to some countries.
You may have missed the point of the election of Donald Trump. If anything Americans don't want to be Europe. They want America to be America, the country founded by our ancestors who started coming here almost 400 years ago to be true to their founding articles. My family left Europe 393 years ago because it stunk. It stinks even more today. Let those who want to be European go to Europe if that is their desire.
I have zero compassion for republicans when I keep seeing people complain that "Trumpism" has hijacked their party. I am sorry, but you (repubs) own this.
The gop has been working on this for 30 years (more? starting with the southern strategy, perhaps?), feeding the disinformation beast, and now it is simply reaping what it has sown.
Trumpism *is* the gop - it's the gop's ID nurtured for a generation.
15
Mr. Krugman's article touches on a significant but perhaps underestimated point: race animus in the US fuels votes in a big way. Race is kind of the emperor's clothes of politics. We all know on some level that racial fear, hatred, and loathing, exists, it's just not appropriate to talk about it in polite society. I have traveled in the South and the racism is palpable just under the surface. They know that it's not effective to express it openly - be nice if you could - it's a practical consideration. But it is expressed privately or tacitly with no feelings of guilt or remorse.
Just funny to see how well it worked for Trump - kind of a no-brainer I guess, which seems fitting for Trump, the no brain part - but nobody expected an Obama bogus-foreign-birth fantasy to catch fire like it did. The Russians surely helped Trump over the hump, but that race bait is always handy in the Republican fishing tackle box.
I'm a goin' fishin' all of the time, baby's goin' fishin' too...bet yo' life, that yo' sweet wife, she's gonna catch more fish than you do...any fish bite if you got good bait...here's a little tip I would like to relate...
13
Besides tax cuts for the rich, massive military spending, and a totalitarian, theocratic-fascist mindset, the only idea the GOP has is that they, and only they, deserve to be in power.
Everything they do is to create a one-party state. The GOP has been waging a war against democracy for decades, and it's escalating. Either the GOP wins this war, or American democracy prevails -- but both can't prevail. For American democracy to survive, the GOP must lose.
Remember in November, and vote!
1
Racial resentment was here long before Trump showed his face, but for better or worse he has clearly shown he is biased. And many other Americans are too, from both parties. Possibly a major driver of this feeling is the manner in which welfare is handed out. It has grown substantially too much, and the waste (payments to non existent people) is in the billions. Pitiful. And naturally continuing benefits when people do nothing to improve their condition, just continue to put their hand out, face up, is unacceptable. At times possibly it is not a race issue, it is driven by people working hard for their dollar, and to see a part of it going to wasteful welfare benefits is just disheartening.
Nothing good can possibly come from Republicans maintaining control of one chamber after November. It's like one of those horror movies where someone is trying to open a gate or a doorway and, if they do, all sorts of evil creatures will escape to earth where they have nothing else to do but make everybody miserable.
7
I think that Republicans are falling prey to "diminishing returns"they have exhausted all the obvious strategies to enrich their oligarchs and cement their power. As they continue to seek out additional means of accomplishing this goal, it is simply getting harder to maintain any credibility at all. They stole a Supreme Court seat (an perhaps, thereby, an election) by denying Obama's candidate a vote. Now they are arguing that Democrats are not playing fair with Kavanuagh . Their gerrymandering is getting so egregious that even the packed courts are beginning to scrutinize them. Short of saying black and brown people can't vote, what sorts of additional Jim Crow laws are left for them to enact? It isn't so much that they have no new ideas, but rather, that they have fallen prey to their own success.
2
Prof Krugmans penultimate paragraph "....studies of the 2016 election clearly show that racial resentment, not “economic anxiety,” was what put Trump over the top."
The GOP race cat is now formally out of the bag and Trump supporters can be racist without fear of criticism from their party leaders.
And that is exactly why the GOP will win. Enough Americans are still racists and that is the gorilla glue that unites this party.
Again....We, the People, are under the Public Control of a chronic Publicized Personality Disorder. As an unimportant 81 year old
Senior Citizen, I only hope for an awakened Voting Public next time in our Sleeping Society.
4
What do you mean "no ideas?"
I am aghast. You are not paying attention, or are too afraid to call it, or making an argument too clever by half (a rather annoying affectation of American elite).
There is rock solid evidence that the republican party, their think tanks, their media machines are driven by one very clear ideology. True, they espouse intuitively appealing mumbo jumbo; i.e., a combination of: "small government, low taxes, low regulations, individual responsibility, pro-business, supremacy of the constitution, responsible spending, no nation building, etc." Heady stuff without real world analogs.
In the real world, republicans start wars, expand government, lower taxes on select constituencies, cut regulations designed to protect people, feed at the federal teat, create a welfare system for businesses and farm, fight the separation of church and state, and run up deficits.
They are for every institution that preserves their power, and against everything that challenges them (today: justice, education, industry, EPA, FDA, FTC).
They get away with it because republicans deliver on the most fundamental promise they make to Americans: "we are a party that of entho-religious supremacists, and we will keep America white and christian - everyone else will live in fear, and as illegitimate occupants of the country at our mercy."
See Bill Clinton for Exhibit A.
All they have needed, Doc, is one good idea. Why would they bother with anything else?
22
In what sense is any of that a “good,” idea?
1
The Republican National Committee's endless mailers supporting their right-wing, Trump-lovin' Republican Senator who represents my state contains nothing but negative ads attacking the Democratic candidate's credibility with lies and distortions...and nothing about what he's actually accomplished in the Senate (because it's nothing) or what he stands for (which is tax cuts, kill Obamacare, and more military spending...and, of course, Jesus aka 'God'). This is not only the party of No Ideas, it's the party of delusion.
2
The Dems are nothing more than an anti-Trump party. Their failed policies of “free everything” soak “the rich” and open borders left us with anemic growth for eight years under Obama’s, even though he was given an economy that had nowhere to go but up. America is already seeing the benefits of low taxes, deregulation, Constitutionalists on the bench, and soon, God willing, sensible immigration laws based on merit. I think Dems are in for a rude awakening in November. Doubling down on Obama’s failures and Bernie’s communism doesn’t do well with Americans.
2
Well Paul .. if the Dem's have so many good ideas they better learn to win some elections.
And please .... don't predict -- you have been so wrong about so much for so long ... my head spins thinking about it.
I really hope the Dems win some this time -- I'm tired of the wining,
Your warning that our politics could turn even worse scares me as well as you, but it gladdens the hearts of the people on the right, who truly do operate on greed and racism and sexism. The darker the better for them.
1
There was a song in the late 1960s with the strange line, "I've been through the desert on a horse with no name." I initially thought there line was "I've been through the desert on a horse with no brain." That, with a bit of an allophonic noun instead of horse, defines today's GOP.
1
Did your hero accomplish anything other than healthcare? Foreign affairs a disaster, increasing gap between the rich and poor, shootings in the schools, increased drug deaths.
1
The Republican Party has a single policy agenda -- maximizing profit for corporations and the wealthiest among us. That's it. Full stop.
Profit trumps everything -- including the general welfare of citizens. The Greedy Old Party will stop at nothing -- literally -- to implement their policy.
Help a president obstruct justice. Done.
Ignore the Constitution to stack the SCOTUS with profit over people justices. Done.
Allow a foreign power to manipulate the political process. Done.
Facilitate corporate pollution and ignore climate change. Done.
The list goes on...and on...and on...
Greed is destroying us from within. It is a blight on our system that needs to be cleansed. We need a blue tsunami come November.
2
Some things don't change much. My letter responding to to a Krugman column dated January 2, 2009: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/opinion/lweb03krugman.html "I applaud Paul Krugman for telling obvious if unsettling truths about the racist strategy behind the G.O.P.’s rise to power — not to mention the racist impacts of its policies."
"When Ronald Reagan railed against welfare queens, the understood enemy wasn’t suburban white women. When Senator John McCain sneered about transferring the wealth, he played to a well-ingrained (and utterly erroneous) perception that the main beneficiaries of government largess are able-bodied, lazy minorities."
"The savage irony will come next year when G.O.P. leaders complain that we can’t afford to address the most basic needs of America’s poor — for health care, education, food, heat and shelter. They’ll count on no one mentioning the trillions they had us collectively borrow to finance tax cuts for rich white people. And unlike Mr. Krugman, the major networks and most newspapers won’t even hold G.O.P. leaders accountable for their hypocrisy. It’s not decades of Republican racism that appall me. It’s a mainstream media so cowed they let them get away with it."
14
You fail to highlight the most important reason for Republican success- racism. It is not "racial resentment." It is open and unabashed racism. As long as the party continues to be the party of hate (for Blacks, immigrants, Latinos, Muslims, LGBTQ's and essentially anyone not a White Christian) Republican voters will pay more taxes, tolerate inferior and unaffordable medical care, ignore higher prices resulting from tariffs and otherwise vote in a manner that is against their self-interest.
11
Republicans win by stoking fear in the electorate both implicitly and explicitly. We lurch from "death panels" to "Socialist takeover of medical care" to "Mexicans are rapists" to denigrating "the worst deals ever" and placing our bets on a man who claims only he can fix it.
Not surprisingly, the GOP can continue to draw from this same well over and over again because fundamentally their policies never change anything for the better for the country.
I am hopeful enough Americans will understand the political communion wafers offered by the Republicans are just ashes in their mouths and vote them out in just a few short weeks.
1
Paul, none of what you wrote here amounts to a hill of beans if Americans don't get off their duffs and VOTE! Gerrymandering or not, voting is a civic duty. Unless we get over our apathy and vote in large numbers, those in power will continue to do what they are doing - nothing.
Here's where to start
https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote#item-212645
Vote November 2018
Take America Back!
1
Grover Norquist founded Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) in 1985, a conservative advocacy group with the stated goal, according to Norquist, of reducing “government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.” In furtherance of this goal, ATR requires that any politician who seeks its support sign a pledge to “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes.” The overwhelming majority of Republican politicians in the U. S. House and Senate have signed this pledge since it was instituted 1986.
The failure of Democrats to make this pledge a campaign issue has made it possible for Republicans to argue that Americans are overtaxed and that all we have to do to provide the government we need is to lower taxes and eliminate government regulations and waste. This argument has stood essentially unchallenged at the center of the American political zeitgeist for well over thirty years now, and the extent to which politicians have come to embrace it is truly terrifying. This is particularly so when you stop and think about what Norquist is saying when he says he wants to drown the government in a bathtub. He’s saying that he wants to destroy the American government! The idea that we can save the country by destroying the government is utterly absurd on its face and totally out of touch with reality. And, yet, Norquist and his conservative friends are well on their way to accomplishing this end. http://www.rweconomics.com/htm/OLPC.htm
3
How can GOP run on ideas when Optics is their strategy. Brett Kavanaugh - wife dutifully next to him and title to story-Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Tells Fox News He Was A Virgin At Time Of Alleged Sexual Assault--Trump Base is Optics Bait.
1
For Paul Krugman to call GOP voters a group largely driven by racial motivations is comically not the way to convince them of the merit of your own ideas.
3
Are nihilism and narcissism ideas or philosophies?
2
Krugman misses the point.
The GOP is a party of hucksters and cheats. They don't need policies, just excuses.
18
More and more the effects of gerrymandering are strangling representative governance. The will of the people has been replaced by the will of the venal and bigoted.
1
All Republican Presidency, starting from Reagan, increased budget deficit and almost all, if not all, Dem Presidency tried to tame it down. Obama presidency and now Trump presidency is no different. https://www.thebalance.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306
Reagan inherited a budget deficit of $41 billion (1979). Budget deficit came down to $22 billion during Bill Clinton era (1997) from Reagan era deficit of $ 221 billion (1986). And then it ballooned during Bush era and gone as high as $1,413 billion (2009) for all the wars and benefits he gave to crony businessmen Bush presidency initiated (start of financial meltdown). Obama managed to bring it down to $438 billion (2015). Then the GOP took control of both senate and Congress and budget deficit started to climb again. 2019 estimated budget deficit is $984 billion and Trump tax cut and other wasteful policies (mainly unnecessary increase in defense spending to benefit defense contractors and military industrial lobbies) making it worse in the long run.
2
Aviators describe disaster as "losing altitude, airspeed, and ideas, all at the same time." That's a good metaphor for where we are under Republican dominance.
9
The Greed over People party has one overriding idea. Strip-mine what is left of the middle class and hand it to the rich.
So, it destroys the country? No matter - at least the important clients are kept satisfied (at least for a while)
9
Republicans and Trump don’t need “succeed” in Krugman’s fantasy arena of liberal ideas. They get results — lower taxes, more jobs, less regulation, respect (even fear) overseas, etc.
Red wave.
13
@Tim Furey Tim, thanks for the best laugh of, given all the horrendous news about Kavanagh, the day. I mean it.
@Tim Furey
The results you Trumpet are spin perpetrated on the public by elite self interest. The developments described are not public benefits or the foundation of a wealthy future for anyone but the donor class.
How much can you afford to donate to the billionaires' campaigns?
How typical of false identity and self exoneration to call facts fantasy and spin results.
2
@Tim Furey
The fact is that the economy did fantastically well after the Clinton tax increases, and collapsed after the Bush tax cuts. Taxes pay for important things like infrastructure, research, security, education and regulations are what advanced countries are privileged to have so that they don't revert to places like China, where the air is toxic and workers are exploited. Sure, it might benefit the economy in the short term if we allow companies to pollute recklessly, but what happens in the aftermath, when the water is poisoned, when the ecosystem is destroyed, when natural disasters have disastrous ramifications because the natural buffers, e.g. flood plains or marshes were no longer there? The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was one such disaster that happened when we ignored the ecological realities and recklessly developed land unsuitable for farming.
The vast majority of Americans do not have adequate retirement savings. The lifespans of working class Americans are going down. If that means that they will be working until they drop dead, and it saves the gov't lots of money as a result, is that a good thing?
1
Dr. Krugman is correct here. The persistent issue that I find most difficult to understand is GOP voters consistently following the dog (or Fox) whistle and voting against their own interest. We still have plenty of fear, hate and ignorance in this country which the Republicans eagerly exploit rather than new initiatives. "I'm gonna be the infrastructure President" – remember that? He's forgotten it and moved on. It was always blather and lies.
16
unfortunately dr. krugman is only half right. it's clear what the republicans have in mind but equally clear that with a robust economy there are plenty of voters that can't ignore that fact.
The part he gets wrong - or chooses to ignore - is the abject lack of a democratic party message - or messenger for that matter. until the democrats have something and someone appealing to offer things won't change much.
2
I have an idea both parties should adopt: There are unprecedented economic opportunities that will result from making the changeover from fossil fuels to green, sustainable power. The US must, instead of denying, make this our highest priority and take the lead in the worldwide conversion that can prevent the disastrous future climate that is soon to become inevitable.
We must act urgently to reorient our worldwide priorities before the window of opportunity closes for good. Both parties must act now with an unprecedented commitment to accomplishing the end of greenhouse gas emissions in the next 30 years. Halving emissions every decade.
15
@Richard Bailey One side already recognizes this. The other refuses to "believe" it. They cling instead to the belief that 'it's in god's hands' and 'how dare you take away our precious oil.'
2
In the last seven presidential elections since 1992 the republican candidate has won the popular vote exactly once - in 2004. Twice in that time a republican won due to the undemocratic Constitutional relic of an accommodation to the slave states called the electoral college. In 2016 this distortion allowed the votes of about 70,000 people in three states to invalidate those of almost 3 million other Americans.
3 million is more than population of Chicago or Houston. It's more people than live in the entire state of Nebraska, or Kansas, or both the Dakotas and Alaska - combined.
Thanks to the electoral college, extreme gerrymandering, partisan voter suppression, our almost completely unregulated campaign finance system, and the fact that 50% of the Senate represents 18% of the population. calling ourselves a democracy or even a 'democratic republic' is laughable.
There is one way the GOP is the party of Lincoln: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
With the political playing field slanted as it is, they realized they don't need to worry about that last part.
37
Dr. Krugman is right. It's worth remembering that the members of the current Republican political establishment are the political heirs (and in some cases the genetic heirs) of the old Southern Democrats, who lied constantly, and not just about race. Also, that the Kochs admitted decades ago in speeches that they were opposed to democracy, and that it would take lying to advance their policies because those policies were unpopular.
21
The GOP keeps telling us we can cut taxes, but we don't have the money for infrastructure, healthcare, education, the social safety net and on and on. Voters are becoming wise to this ploy. How is it that the richest country in the history of the world can't afford things that less well-off countries have? It only makes sense if you don't believe in the common good.
The GOP's efforts to repeal the ACA were the equivalent of Toto pulling open the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. For seven years, the GOP claimed that they would repeal and replace the ACA with something much better. When the time came everyone saw their plan: "let's just go back to the way it was before the ACA" Some plan!
Today's GOP has only one goal: to stay in power. In this regard they are like the ruling party in a corrupt, failing nation.
20
If the people have "wised up", why don't we see Trump's popularity declining? In fact, the widest disapproval-approval spreads were before the tax cut passed; between December and April, the gap narrowed from 20+ points to about 14, where it's approximately stayed ever since. The generic house poll has similarly narrowed (though not as much).
Policy has become almost irrelevant to American politics. The only policies that seem to effect voting results are gerrymandering and voter id laws.
4
Republicans are the party of idea—one idea—but it is very powerful. It serves both to assess and evaluate every possible political or policy action. And it has the virtue of being very concise. It can be stated in nine words: the greatest possible wealth in the fewest possible hands.
30
With respect to the "perceived legitimacy of the federal government", well, all three branches can be perceived as illegitimate. An illegitimately "elected" President, who chooses illegitimate nominees to the Supreme Court, who will be confirmed by Senators illegitimately elected through gerrymandered districts.
What's next? In Bitcoin we Trust?
16
@Anony
Senate seats cannot be gerrymandered since a Senator represents an entire state not districts set up within a state.
The Electoral College is mandated by the US Constitution. There's nothing illegitimate about its work.
The only illegitimacy in the persons he nominates for positions in the government are your own personal perceptions and emotions. They don't qualify as proof. Only evidence proves legitimacy and illegitimacy.
Gerrymandering doesn't work in the senate. Based on the number of people who have severely negative views of Trump , I just can't see the GOP holding the senate. But if democrats do succeed in taking back both houses of congress I still want to see Trump's immigration policies continued. I vehemently disagree with the democratic positions on immigration.
Policies start with an ability to think - more often now, to think outside the box of ideological conformity. And that capacity, or lack thereof, is not simply about neo-cortical ability, it is also about self-insight, empathy for others and cosmopolitanism, or one’s ability to hear what the other side of the isle is saying.
The tribal nature of our politics at this juncture is but a reflection of our emotional immaturity as individuals and a people, and the parochialism we see so well-embodied in the grey, controlling old men of our legislature like McConnell, Grassley, Hatch and too many other post retirement dinosaurs.
I am thankful that these selfish old men, who ought to have more regard for the futures they are bequeathing to their children and grandchildren are - to a small extent at least - being succeeded by more youthful, multi-racial and gender diverse candidates who hold our future!
10
Take away economic fealty to the rich and the GOP has had no ideas this entire century. Everything else has been about gaining the power to do what the wealthy "libertarians" wanted. The only thing one might point to is Medicare part "D". But even there, underfunding weakened the entire program and the "donut" is punitive and senseless.
When the wealthy had a real taste of power under Ronald Reagan, they threw aside their last vestiges of morality. When they gained real power under Trump, they discarded patriotism. As they seek to seal the power over the Supreme Court, they discard democracy.
I lived through and voted during the Watergate era. The vote upcoming in November will be the most important in my life.
30
It is astounding that someone as smart as Krugman still can't see the forrest for the trees.A useful gauge of "ideas" is how they resonate with ordinary Americans.It is true that Obamacare is gaining in popularity and that Republican fisacal policy favors the "haves".What isn't true is that Democrats are doing any better.Too many Americans think Democrats are indiscriminate in their support of immigration,minority rights ,abortion and protection of the environment.The failure to effectively communicate nuance, for example distinguishing legal and illegal immigration or refugee status for those at risk in their home countries Vs their own homes in these countries , mean that messages are too wide-sweeping to resonate with enough Americans to effect highly desirable change in the Mid Terms.
6
@Observer -
Krugman was specifically speaking about Republicans, but you’re right, Democrats have struggled as well. They however, struggle less on big picture items - trade, immigration, tax relief, support of new technologies, healthcare, and social benefits - than they do with consistency of message and trying to create “one policy fits all” candidates.
Conor Lamb (PA) and Doug Jones (AL) both represent major Democratic ideals, but each retains positions popular with their respective constituents - 2 Amendment chief among those.
Part of what went wrong in 2016 was that the Democrats failed, from 2000 onward, to develop new candidates not affiliated with the Clinton administration and its offshoots. This year there are many new candidates with diverse perspectives that are not in line with established dogma.
As Tip O’Neil said, “all politics are local,” and interests vary from district to district. An overarching message around economic development and improved healthcare, without the Democrats’ laundry list of other issues, would go a long way to “mass customization” - consistency with diversity.
5
I concur with much of what you say but think you are ignoring Maslow’s Hierarchy.Much of today’s Democratic dogma is rooted in the 1960s when the US was at it’s economic pinnacle.Today the US is still a major player but many Americans have slid down said hierarchy,making them less receptive to big picture issues.By continuing to focus on them and ignoring what need to be focal areas now (skills and knowledge,not college, accretive immigration,not “we are a country of immigrants”,balancing short and long term environmental goals and economics,not “we are destroying the planet “,and a focus on early abortion rather than the “right to choose”,Democrats will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”.
The Republicans have been morally bankrupt since the Reagan years; Clarence Thomas was the most glaring example initially, but their response to Brett Kavanaugh is likely to eclipse that. The tax cuts to the 1%, the efforts to deny healthcare and cut Social Security show their true colors.
The next time someone in the GOP claims to be a member of "The Party of Lincoln," I hope he/she chokes on the words.
27
Krugman overstates the position telegraphed by his title. True, Republicans generally shy away from running on two policies much stressed as ideological goals and electoral appeals less than a year ago: tax cut and assault on the ACA, but they still trot out their tariffs in some Rust Belt areas and their opposition to Medicaid expansion. Moreover, they still stress anti-immigrant and anti-abortion policies.
Still, perhaps, the GOP's economically counter-productive tariffs inhumane treatment of immigrants children and families and increasingly misogynistic of their SCOTUS card will soon reduce the Republican platform to nativist and strict social control women.
2
So, the corporate tax rates declined 14% (pending actual post-deduction/loophole rates), yet wages have grown a measly 2.3% (pending minimum wage increases).
If wages are responding, then why haven't prices declined in deference to the tax decline?
Was the tax cut only a profit take and stock buy back scheme good for only the 10% of folks who own 80% of corporate equitites?
Why don't folks see that the Republican upward reward scheme had nothing to do with average folks, who benefited meagerly.
The American working class thinks $20 a week in less taxes is awesome, until their future Medicare copays are tripled and SS rolled back. I wish more people valued their public education; we wouldn't be here if they did.
13
@Buffalo Fred Because Hillary is bad...Benghazi...the emails...they're taking away our guns...as long as there is somebody to hate and blame, and they have their guns, Republican constituents are happy.
"I don’t know how it will turn out — or what will happen to the perceived legitimacy of the federal government if all three branches are controlled by people the voters rejected."
That says it all. A democracy is not a Democracy if power does not flow to the people, expressing the will of the majority of people. That can only happen when each citizen has one equal vote.
20
Well I guess it's true that "politicians can only lead people where they are ready to go." So where they are ready to go is: competent government that provides for the common good. That includes making sustainable provision for: health, education, national security, infrastructure for prosperity (now must be sustainable prosperity--working on that) and . . . "justice for all" among other things. We saved ourselves and the world in 2008/9 from worldwide economic collapse. Not perfectly and not inexpensively, but it was done. That more was not done is a missed opportunity. The GOP would now have us tee up another financial crisis, because somehow the well-off always weather these things and remain well-off. So now, the people are ready to change the economic disparity that has been so well-observed lately. Yeah, we're ready. And we're going to vote in increasing numbers.
9
@Gary Pippenger I hope you’re right!
The GOP will lie, suppress the vote and leverage gerrymandering to hold onto power. If people do not want them in office, EVERYONE who is against GOP policies must vote Democratic whether they are in love with the candidate or not. We have Trump because of Jill Stein voters. Learn from this. The opposition needs overwhelming numbers and that must include everyone in opposition to vote one way.
15
"...or what will happen to the perceived legitimacy of the federal government if all three branches are controlled by people the voters rejected."
I fear we are heading toward some kind of revolution where the majority decides to take matters into its own hands. I just pray it doesn't turn violent, as such revolutions have a tendency to do.
3
@Peter "I just pray" ain't gonna cut it. Nobody's listening. You need to DO something. Your fictional god isn't listening and doesn't care about your fears.
Paul, you and/or your survey have things backwards and are confusing cause and effect. Racial resentment is more often than not the outgrowth of economic anxiety or the THREAT of same.
Just because the survey you cite said a lot of Trump voters have jobs now (and shouldn't feel economically anxious), doesn't mean they can't anticipate not having them if we have more bad trade deals, increasing levels of automation, shrinking fringe benefits at work, stagnant wages etc.
When too many people are left competing for a declining inventory of lower quality jobs, you'll get economic anxiety leading to resentment -- whether its of other whites or racial minorities.
7
Republicans have not brought a useful idea to the table since the interstate highway system -- and that was over 60 years ago.
But it stands to reason that a party that thinks "government is the problem" is not going to come up with practical government policies and programs improve the commonweal. Governments around the world are doing better on health, education and infrastructure. American progressives have been thwarted by Republicans at every turn. As it is, Republicans are still trying to undermine great Democrat achievements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. If we want to achieve universal health care and free college tuition, we have to get the GOP out of the way.
Why aren't we campaigning loudly to get rid of the Electoral College?
41
@Ponderer
"Why aren't we campaigning loudly to get rid of the Electoral College? "
Why? Because the other 48 states do not want to live under the dictatorship of our president being chosen by two states, California and New York. Any attempt to repeal the law concerning the Electoral College will result in the civil rebellion so many here keep saying is inevitable.
It's not so much that Trumpublicans have "no ideas," but they have old, very old, ideas. They still thrive on their opioid of tax cuts for the wealthy; "starve the beast" Grover Norquist policy the requires "small government" devoid of services like Obamacare, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security; and now even more regressive tariffs that helped usher in The Great Depression. It's a toxic stew that has led to a voter revolt and a gathering "blue wave." Voters have seen and felt the impact of these policies as the health care premiums increase and the costs of imported good have risen while their wages barely budge; and they realize that they are very "bad ideas."
24
Most want fairness in a tax code, health care and above all civil discourse. It’s more complicated than what voters want, especially with such a huge debt, powerful undemocratic countries and a growing political divide. Present solutions, if you have them. It would help enlist trust in your thoughts.
5
@Penn Here is a basic idea to get started. Re-write the rules governing definition of voting districts so that no political party controls this process. Base the districts on geometric grids. Voters will be better represented.
4
Your first paragraph, Dr. Krugman, is particularly important. If the GOP retains the Senate, it will be in large part due to voter suppression. If they retain the House, it will be due to a combination of suppression and gerrymandering.
But winning elections is not enough; look at what happened when Barack Obama won the electoral college and popular votes. McConnell, et.al., sabotaged every step of the way, culminating in usurping an elected president's right (and obligation) to fill Supreme Court vacancies.
If winning elections is not enough to protect democracy, then voting is only the first step. Activism is also a must.
70
Well, Conservatives have one idea - preserve wealth and power for the well off. The rest is malleable as the situation needs.
25
The GOP is a party of no idea how to deal with Trump. And president Trump is a person full of out-of-date ideas that will not go far at all.
8
Let's not forget Fox News's huge contribution to what Mr. Krugman refers to as the "severely tilted playing field."
In his op-ed piece today, Matt Morrison writes of the woman in Ohio who listens to Fox News all day. As a propaganda arm of the Republican Party, Fox tells her exactly what it wants her--and the rest of it sizable audience--to hear.
How could she possibly know about the tax cuts that benefit only the wealthy? How could she possibly know what the GOP's attempts to "reform" Obama Care really mean...or what damage a tariff war would really create?
Fox doesn't want its audience to know any of that. And in doing so, it undermines the foundations of democracy, which requires a well-informed citizenry.
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@Marylouise Lundquist
So true, its a sickness that Americans can hate each other so well and Fox news makes a mint of money producing ridiculous programs. Fat Sean Hannity andh Bill O'Reilly have nothing to contribute to America. They are rich talking old white men . Roger Ailes died in disgrace and their stories are being written in not a positive manner. There is enough of everything in America for everyone here, however thinking people will not forget the children in
cages and five hundred still have not been reunited with their families. We will not forget what the GOP did to Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands last year. We will not forget that besides the fact that they have no smart ideas they have nothing to offer but hate.
When I look a the pictures of people at the rallies I realize that they will be forever lost they don't want to know the facts. Trump represents hate for the American people especially for them and they don't see it.
When you look at the net worth of those in the Senate and the House, about 80% are worth more than $10 million. How can this be a representative government and how can we expect them to have empathy for the majority of US citizens. We elect them into office but the lobbyists have greater influence. Until we “smarten up” and start electing politicians who want to work for the electorate rather than the party or themselves, democracy will continue to degrade.
54
@Mark The root of the problem is vault-loads of money that are used by the ultra wealthy and corporations to achieve their objectives which usually are in direct opposition to what the majority of Americans want. Our "representatives" spend 80% of their time in office making calls and visits to gather enough baksheesh for the next election. They get most of it from those wealthy individuals and corporations. "Think tanks" that churn out billionaire-funded propaganda and free spending lobbyists complete the onslaught. "Free speech" (as SCOTUS has described the tidal wave of unregulated money) is a great thing, but when the other guy has a bullhorn, it makes it impossible for the average Joe to have a voice in government.
11
To me, the central tenet of these republican policies seems to be a vision of how a vigorous economy works - a fairly cynical vision:
1) If the majority of Americans have their backs against the wall, trying to pay their bills with shrinking incomes, the result is a more productive, hard-working society.
2) And if ambitious people are granted a free hand establishing and operating their businesses, unencumbered by protective regulation, there will be more employment for those hard-working people.
3) And if those ambitious people are allowed to keep more of their income, they will expand their activities and employ more Americans.
4) And if those hard-working Americans are fragmented by media-fueled political animosity, and pitted against one another in a "competitive" jobs market, those ambitious businesspeople will have an added incentive to expand their activities and employ more people.
5) And when those hard-working Americans' most attractive employment opportunities involve keeping their fellow workers' wages low, that fragmentation begins to harden into a social stratification, creating a predictable, passive society and giving more incentives for ambitious businesspeople to expand their activities.
These guys have a shallow, grim idea of the American dream.
27
You got it right. And I would add that if you barely keeping your head above water, you are less likely to be an informed voter. It started with Regan. And Bush made it seems cool that a “real American” should have two jobs. Never mind the jobs do not even pay rents.
Dr. Krugman is simply pointing out the obvious. Republicans haven't had many public policy ideas that impact anyone not already wealthy in my entire lifetime. This speaks to healthcare, taxes, social programs, infrastructure, women's rights, civil rights, income equality, deficit issues and more recently immigration and national security. The GOP's recent embrace of Trump and Russia is truly scary as is the policy of separating children from adults at the border.
The Trump GOP is an extension of Republican policy on just about everything is what is wrong with the country. They rely on fear and bumper sticker slogans along with gerrymandering and voter suppression to win elections, not ideas.
This notion of making America great again is not working. Trump's policies, or the absence thereof, has reduced the nation's standing in the world and weakened us as the beacon of hope in a pretty rough world. Just like the death panels connected to the ACA never materialized, the predicted job losses, socialism and all the fear of progressive thought being so bad for the country, nothing the Republicans have offered up, which isn't much, has ever really been brought to fruition. They are clearly not interested in the greater good, but only the good of their donors who demand control of their bought and paid for politicians. Where's my beautiful healthcare package and the check from Mexico to pay for the wall that no one wants? The GOP is hysterical. Vote in November.
18
I live in the eastern Midwest, and whatever people say, I think it's unrealistic to think that many people who voted for Trump, and regularly vote Republican will switch to voting for Democrats in the upcoming elections.
10
@Iconoclast1956: I agree with you as a son of Western PA. Most of the people I know who would have or did vote for Trump in 2016 are very unlikely to switch their allegiance; they will either double down and refuse to consider that they may have misjudged the election, stick to the party line and hope it gets better, or avoid voting this cycle.
While not switching "teams", a non-vote is essentially 1/2 of a vote for the opponent in a 2-party system, so Trump voter who skips the polls this November is giving half of a vote to the Democrat candidate in places where there is more competition than usual.
9
You're right. The Trump base won't switch. But millions of people who didn't vote in 2016 and those who voted against Clinton and not for Trump, those people will vote Democrat.
@Iconoclast1956 Totally agree. And as anathema as Republicans are, Democrats continue in futility to try to sway them with things like bigger government programs and LBGQ rights that they don't want, instead of reclaiming the center and taking a real stand on issues such as reducing the size of government and military that independents and swing voters care about. Many of us will hold our noses and vote Democrat--but it's not because we support the Democrats "platform." It's really time for a socially progressive, fiscally responsible third party to arise. But it doesn't look like it will happen, so we're stuck with an ineffective two-party system to perpetuate the dysfunction.
This is an important topic but I think you've missed the boat. The Republican's have a clear agenda and it resonates with many:
1. Stop the liberalization of the judiciary. This includes Supreme and Federal court judge appointees as well as policies that support conservative values of marriage (anti gay), abortion (illegal) and self reliance (entitlement programs). 2. Focus on American competitiveness vs the world. Corp tax cuts fit in here as do a tougher stance on previously signed treaties. 3. Enforce the current immigration laws - millions of illegals in this country mean that we haven't been doing a good job of this for many years.
Like it or not, those that voted for Trump and will vote Republican in the mid terms are either voting FOR these policies or AGAINST what they view as liberal policies of socialized medicine, strong unions, expanded entitlement programs, weakness of enforcement of current laws and being overly compromising with foreign countries (including trade and national security).
These are clear policies. Many in this country support the Republican agenda. Many may not agree with this agenda (I for one). But you should not slander those that do. It reflects poorly on you.
5
Putative tariffs on imports, under the preposterous premise that Canada and Mexico are a security risk, is not a trade agenda about competitiveness.
23
@deedubs Liberalization of the judiciary. Yeah we really need to stop those pesky non-white, non-straight, poor and middle class people from being treated equally. That Constitutional business about equality under the law, I know, I can't believe those minority, poor and middle class people think we meant them. HA! By the way, how many generations does it take before your no longer considered the son or daughter of immigrants? 2? 3? None, its actually just racial animus? Yeah they have an agenda, a losing agenda in a democracy.
@deedubs The US repulses manufacturing by holding out against the Metric System and maintaining a judicial swampland of fractured jurisdictions and judges who just run litigants through motion practice until they settle.
The Republicans have been the party of no ideas since 2008. Before that they were the party of no good ideas, about as far back as Reagan's suggestion that Gorbachev "tear down" the Berlin wall (a good idea which was in the end defacto taken up).
Democrats have long been the party of no willingness to really fight effectively for their ideas good or bad.
Many years of suffering under this two headed dysfunctionality in US politics has produced, as antidote to both: Donald Trump, who fights ineffectively for bad ideas.
America needs a better antidote.
9
Trump supporters with their promises made, promises kept is almost laughable if it wasn't so ludicrous and seriously damaging to the US. At least two thirds of the promises kept are half done or less. The remaining one third consist of destruction, roll backs or other revisionist attacks that are political rather than based on logic or science. The general election ads out here have started in earnest and over 90% are attack ads or fear ads about the other party. Less than 5% mention anything they got done in the last two years other than the tax cut (which turned out not to be much of a tax cut at all for working people)
40
I know you know this, but you can't gerrymander a state, unless you argue that the states by nature are gerrymandered (which is a fair enough argument). But rather than "other factors", I would have just said, "the tsunami flows of campaign cash which redound primarily to the benefit of Republicans."
4
You need to look at a Congressional and state legislature district maps of North Carolina before you say a “state can’t be gerrymandered.” In the aftermath of this election, NC is going to lose small-d democratic legitimacy. Democrats are going to trounce Republicans in the state, and NOT get a majority of the Congressional delegation or even a simple majority in the legislature. NC may be the first state in the US to have an officially failed democratic government.
11
@Jeff H
The states are already gerrymandered.
the senate seats for many GOP seats carry far fewer votes than some more populated stated - hence not all votes are equal.
2
Mr. Krugman, Republicans have been able to advance their agenda because they HAVE an agenda, however disastrous it is. The Democrats stand for nothing. It's amazing to watch establishment Democrats and their leadership answer, when asked "What do you stand for?" mumble and fumble with platitudes like "We stand with our values" or "We want everyone to have an equal shot at the American dream" or, and this is a good one, "We want better new jobs."
The progressive wing of the party seems to be the only ones in the party which not only has ideas but is actually articulating them. But it has to battle its own leadership to support and advance those ideas. But once you realize that the Democratic leadership and establishment are paid NOT to promote new or popular ideas by the same donor class as the Republicans all of this makes sense. The majority of Americans, and even a majority of Republicans for that matter, want a single payer medical system, lower drug costs, tuition-free public universities, strong unions, ending the drug war on marijuana and legalizing it, and ending our foreign intervention in wars.
If Democrats would get their act together, throw out their "leadership" that continues to be bought off by corporate interests and actually stand for something and stand with the American people, they would sweep the elections.
41
@FXQ
This comment says it all well. I hardly can stand to read Krugman anymore, after Trump was "elected."
@FXQ The Democrats need to pay attention to all the heavy lifting that Bernie Sanders is doing for them. He has galvanized the People by speaking about specific problems, specific Issues and specific solutions. The Dems ignore him, mock him. The Media ignores him, mocks him. Bernie changed the political landscape by running for President for 1 Campaign. Hillary has been running for 20. And she changed nothing. Hillary won the Primary, but she lost the People. Bernie won the People. The Dems could learn from him, if they were not so stubborn.
@FXQ All we can expect from Republicans is a broken public sector and a depression so deep it will be irreversible.
Taxes need to be raised, not lowered, on business and the very rich. There should be a significant penalty for a business to move to China or Mexico, or at least tax rewards should be given to companies that expand within the US.
This isn't the America of the 1950's, though Republicans are pretending that it is. Then, President Eisenhower could wander around and play golf and things were fine, because business employed Americans at good jobs. Then, the highest tax rates were over 90%, to pay America's debts.
Today, the investor class is reaping billions from producing cheaply in China, and selling at high cost in the US, and that lets there be a rich investor class to buy off politicians, but forces more and more Americans to fight for very low paying jobs.
Me, I am a socialist, so I would vote for a guaranteed jobs program linked to low cost public housing, paid for by all that money that is flowing to the investor class who pay such low taxes.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
82
@Hugh Massengill Hugh, move to China and live the good life that the Communist party has to offer. You'll get your free health care, a job, and low-cost housing. And take Bernie Sanders with you.
To some extent, people believe what they want to believe. During election campaigns, where choices are more or less binary, they also have a tendency to dispense with critical thinking, failing to examine the credibility of candidates' promises while going with what generally appeals to them.
So it was when Ronald Reagan ran for president, promising to reduce the deficit while cutting taxes and increasing defense spending. A critical thinker, or anyone who was thinking at all, would have known that any two of those promises might be possible, but not all three. Nonetheless, Reagan won because people liked what he said, and liked him.
Now, fear and loathing have replaced warm and fuzzy. Republicans have abandoned long-held "principles," such as fiscal responsibility, while shedding the cloak of family values and morality. It is clear that they stand for neither if, in fact, they ever did.
We are left with a party whose core philosophy involves simply peddling fear to get votes from an understandably angry base. It lives to fuel animus and resentment while stoking the avarice and greed of its wealthier donors to pay for its con game, "con" coincidentally being the first three letters of "conservative."
And Republicans wonder why they are in danger of a blue wave in the upcoming midterm elections. Critical thinkers wouldn't need to wonder. They already have an idea.
48
I want to hear Democrats' viable ideas to bring back large swathes of industry from off-shore havens, and to make them competitive VS. China and Mexico. We can not be a nation that continues to lose comparative advantage in industry after industry. Excluding the voices of the working class while the Obama administration was formulating the rules of TPP left a bad impression in the minds of the working people. Just as the administration of former Pres. Clinton had misled the nation about 1 million net jobs would be created by NAFTA, where in actuality it bled jobs from the industrial Midwest, why would anyone believe that TPP would be a net positive for jobs?
13
@KB
It IS difficult because in the US we do not use slave labor- makes it hard to compete with China. Education, job training- that's the way to go- be the designers of the future not clinging to the past aka manufacturing. But that takes work and there is a sense of I will not work too hard and walk out to a great factory job like my GF did- in the 50s. Those days are gone.
13
@The East Wind So how does the nation manage the current account deficit VS. China? With their trillions of dollar reserves, China can buy large companies and the intellectual that goes with it. Germany is able to hold its own against China while we have ceded leadership to China. Tariffs may give temporary relief, but we need long term policies that support indigenization of value /supply chains.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/21/strange-tale-about-wh... Please review the one million jobs argument against Clinton and Nafta. It is not really fair or accurate.
The headline writer seems to not have read the article. The Republicans have ideas, they are just not acceptable to the voters.
The Republicans are winning due to structural advantages they have accentuated by holding state and local offices.
If citizens register and vote, all up and down the ballot, those tactical advantages can be overcome. The Republicans won't give up those advantages. They will have to be taken. By the voters. This November. Then next year, and in 2020. The fix will need to be multi-year.
58
If someone else will do your jobs for less you are overpaid and/or under worked. Jobs are NOT social programs so they pay what your labor is worth to an employer, not what you need to afford the lifestyle you chose.
1
@JMM: Agreed x 10. But the GOP has winning issues that are surely not "ideas." White supremacy enfolds all kinds of racism and xenophobia.
1
Ideas or not, many writers here contend that Trump and the GOP are failing. That's simply not true.
Trump and the GOP are carrying out their mission and doing it very successfully. The mission is to throw America into a state of extreme internal chaos and international isolation. The mission was written by Putin.
Look at what has happened to America since Russia swung the 2016 election to Trump.
- America is out of the Paris Climate Accord - we are not an international partner, instead an obstacle to cooperation
- America has attacked allies as enemies and embraced enemies like Russia and North Korea as friends
- NATO has been threatened and weakened by uncertainty as to whether America is a reliable partner
- Tariffs are turning America into a bully and pariah at the expense of our own citizens' livelihood
- America pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership weakening our position of influence in the Pacific arena and hurting our trade leverage and potential
- America has been divided, thrown into internal angry turmoil on a scale not seen since the Civil War
- America has lost its moral standing and reputation for decency with policies like separating immigrant families and caging children
- America's debt has been needlessly exacerbated - recall that our debt was termed a national security risk by our military
The list could go on. But the bottomline is, the GOP is fulfilling Trump's orders; not orders from Trump, but orders TO Trump.
126
@jabarry
The mission was first written by Ayn Rand and it's called "every man for himself." Putin is an idol because no one can get away with more than he can.
1
If Republicans win, democracy loses. Your point, that we will have three branches of government that are entirely undemocratic is dead on.
First we have an electoral college that punishes the big states. In 2 of our last 5 elections (40%) the minority candidate won.
In the senate in 2016, there were 15 million more votes cast for democratic senate candidates then republican. Yet they hold the senate.
Together they will have combined to place 4 justices on the bench, Roberts. Alito, Gorsuch, and now Kavanaugh. Almost half the bench by illegitimate presidents.
Then of course there is the gerrymandering in the house. Its fun to play by the rules when you write them, that is their only policy. Look at the norms and traditions they have cast by the wayside to advance their agenda. They are no longer a party of ideas or principles. They no longer believe in a rule of law, but a rule of men. What rump does is legal because it benefits them. By extension what they do is legal because it protects and supports rump. The best is yet to come. What they will do in November will shock us all.
33
@David Meli I don't think you grasp America is not a democracy. It is a Federal Republic, and the Electoral College PROTECTS America from mob rule. That is how it was designed, and works perfectly when your party isn't rigging it's own primary elections...
I agree with Krugman's description of the current Republican Party. And I agree that our electoral system is critically unbalanced, under representing Democratic voters.
But I also know intelligent people of good faith who've been Republicans. I would like to hear their ideas and perspectives, even now, in this crisis time, and certainly going forward if we get past it.
8
"Lock her up"; "Repeal and replace"; "Build that wall"; and "Make America great again" are simplistic slogans that are emotionally appealing and require no thought whatsoever to process. Quite effective for large swaths of the electorate.
84
@Dr--Bob
Unfortunately true. If it doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker or a sign at a Trump rally or if you can’t explain it in a 10 second sound bite it’s too complex for many voters.
2
@Dr--Bob The common theme: hatred and blame. Perfect slogans for god-fearing Christians.
@Dr--Bob
Quite biased and repulsive feelings toward your countrymen...
The problem is that too many working people don’t vote, or care to vote because the Democrats have talked a good game but really have failed to deliver. The Democrats have too many career politicians (case in point Diane Feinstein running for re-election at 85) who only care to keep their jobs. Another problem is having elections during the week over one day that does not encourage voter participation.
23
@Gary Cohen, Ever heard of Mitch McConnell or any of a host of other lifelong Republican politicians? Your assertion is misguided at best.
Trump won the electoral college as noted in the article.
Did you notice that the Republicans won the popular vote once since 1992? That was in 2004, shortly after "mission accomplished", and G. W. Bush won the popular vote by the same margin (about 3 million) that Clinton achieved in 2016.
12
A well written article. but again sadly Mr. Krugman is preaching to the choir. With gerrymandering and what looks like a soon to be an even more right wing Republican majority in the supreme court, a fair representation of the majority of American voters is going to be a concept vs reality. Trump became president with a minority of the voters as did George W. Bush.Will anything really change?
12
It should not take being a Noble Laureate to understand that no replenishment results in decrease.
A problem may be that the average voter is so economically stressed that all of their thoughts are on putting food on the table.
Read Upton Sinclair. American Socialists believed in educating voters. Not like the
Education policies of today's Oligarch led mainstream political parties
20
@George, Also, try reading Sinclair Lewis' "Elmer Gantry," a satire evangelical demagogues and "Babbitt " a satire on the true smugness of the average self-satisfied middle class American.
Both are as true now as they were at the time of their publication.
1
Voters have recognized the reverse Robin Hood strategy for years, as well as noticing that they have very little power.
Even many Republican voters notice but believe the Democrats do the same thing, whereas the Republicans will throw them a bone or two.
The difference now--if there is one--is that Americans are becoming increasingly alarmed about their future prospects, and the GOP has ceased any attempt at indexing its policies to anyone but the very wealthy.
Most voters are aware that there is a boom for the wealthy, and a recession for everyone else. The only difference is that Republican voters were able to blame this on Obama (and most probably continue to do so).
16
We must do more. We must fight to protect our vote: 1) Overturn state laws that decertify legal voters by putting them on "nonactive voter lists". 2) Ensure all districts are equally funded; 3) Require Sec. of States ensure enough polling sites are open to accommodate ALL voters and equipment works. 4) Fight voter ID rules that unfairly target the poor, elderly, and minority voters. 5) Provide IDs free of charge. 6) Make election interference a federal crime and take the control of voting systems/data out of the hands of partisan Sec. Of States; 7) Make sure when people register or renew their driver’s license they are automatically registered to vote. 8) Reverse laws that make it illegal to have help to mail in sealed ballots. 9) Ensure voters receive proof of voting. 10) Protect recount petitions filed and entered in court especially if vote tampering evidence is presented. 11) Outlaw gerrymandering and redistricting proven to hurt minorities and thwart the majority’s will, 12) Ensure every vote cast is counted as cast and there’s a paper trail. 11) Press Congress to declare that voting is a national security priority and to set aside enough funds to modernize the U.S. voting system and make it uniform across state. 18) Take steps to safeguard our voting systems again Russian hacking validated. 19) remove voting systems and vote counting software from private control. 20) use paper ballots and count them in public.
18
I guess when it comes down to a choice between a party with no ideas and a party with bad ideas, the no idea party will win. The same philosophy as behind advice to doctors "first, do no harm".
5
@JB It's clear that the GOP has plenty of bad ideas (tax cuts, tariffs, Iraq war, Afghanistan, dropping the Iran deal) and does plenty of harm (tariffs, healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc). That's explained fully in the article.
12
@RLW The tax cuts dropped the average American's taxes by 4%. Our tax income is up, the best in a decade, according to the GAO.
535 members of BOTH parties sent me to Iraq. Don't kid yourself. We found over 5,000 WMD's there, so it was more than justified.
The Iran deal was a sickeningly weak agreement. Iran never stopped weaponizing uranium, it just completed testing of ANOTHER medium range ballistic missile it agreed NOT to finish. This one can reach most of Europe, so now Europe is looking at the Iran Deal differently now.
Funny, our infrastructure is being repaired/grown at a record pace. We haven't seen so much work since before 9/11. Why is it so hard to admit Trump has had some success?
Tax revenue is up 1% from last year, solely on the backs of American workers. Corporate tax receipts are down 28%, individual income and payroll taxes receipts are up 5%. Spending is up 4%. Individuals are actually paying more taxes than before, but they believe they are not. I would have to scour further, but guess that tax revenue from the top 1% is also down significantly.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54339#section1
The GOP has ideas. To be precise, it has three main policy ideas: tax cuts, deregulation and privatization. It also seeks to pack the courts with right-wing judges who will roll back abortion and gay marriage and it seeks to punish poverty by cutting programs for the poor or imposing humiliating/degrading conditions on such assistance.
While Trump has deviated from GOP orthodoxy on a number of things, such as trade, he's following the basic Reagan agenda of the three ideas. The problem is that these ideas, which seemed fresh in the early 1980s, have demonstrably failed. Tax cuts blow up the deficit and do not trickle down, privatization tends to be a windfall for favorite donors and a policy failure on substance and deregulation to all kinds of market failures.
What Trump has done is add three really bad ideas to the already-bad mix: protectionist trade policies, a healthy dose of racism and white nationalism and restrictive immigration policy. None of these are good for the economy and at some point, a price will be paid.
To add insult to injury, they also seek to take away health care from millions and impose draconian cuts in Medicare and Social Security.
So, I beg to differ with the title of the piece. They have ideas. They just happen to be really bad ideas.
137
@Matt You purposely misrepresent the truth: Those protectionist trade policies you call them have added thousands of American jobs, especially in raw material creation where we have been at a national security issue low level since 2004.
We can't build war machines without steel, and we just reopened a steel mill because the tariffs made steel mills profitable in America again.
I would argue the last president did far worse for race relations than any president since Abraham Lincoln.
No one, including Trump, has restricted immigration until recent asylum numbers were dropped. ILLEGAL border crossing is a national security issue, and should be treated as such.
You may not like him, but at least be honest.
After the Bush tax cuts, Republicans crowed about how great the economy was doing as a result. When the driver of the economic growth, the real estate bubble - fueled by ready cash which came from supposedly AAA rated securities - popped, and all the financial instruments related to that overpriced real estate threatened to crash the whole economy, Wall Street, had the nerve to blame a law intended to help some first time home buyers for their reckless behaivor. Republicans also made sure that Fannie Mae got blamed despite the fact that they were followers, not leaders in the reckless buying up of mortgages.
This was important because the whole fiasco was a complete refutation of the claim that the private sector always knows how to spend money better than the public - if they were so smart, how come they invested so heavily in overpriced real estate?
Unfortunately, Obama failed to use the opportunity to portray a different narrative for economic growth, that involved more gov't investment in things that matter for the long term. He conceded to Republicans by not repealing their ill conceived tax cuts, by not demanding a larger stimulus, by not getting angry enough at Wall Street entitlement and greed, by not adequately explaining why the banks needed to be bailed out. He was no drama, but he needed someone with drama to speak for him.
19
@DebbieR And what caused that real estate bubble? Toxic loans forced upon banks by the Clinton Administration. Truth matters.
@Daddukes,
That is nonsense. Nobody forced the investment banks to bundle up toxic mortgages and peddle them as AAA rated securities seemingly making millions. Nobody forced lenders to provide variable rate mortgages to people who put zero money down. The fact that it went on as long as it did was due to the disastrous desire of both sides on the political spectrum to believe in the miracle of clever financing that was as good for main street as it was for Wall street, with Bush seeing it as an example of the market working for all, the left as a way to show Wall Street that they weren't anti-business.
It was a spectacular failure. It turns out that greed, in fact, is not always good and in fact the investment brokers who "advise" people are representing the interests of their firms, and not the interests of their customers.
Actually, Republicans do have one big idea, and we must suppose that they have a very clear idea of where it will lead. The idea is that government can't work, and so when it actually does work with programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and yes, the ACA, then they do everything they can to wreck them. Throw in the GOP's dismantling of the EPA and FEMA, and pretty soon you have a government that doesn't work much for its citizens at all, but does richly benefit a few super wealthy businessmen. If that doesn't sound like a democracy, that's because it's not. It's called an oligarchy, quite similar to the one in Russia.
100
@Bob Chisholm The ACA was an abject failure. Tripiling healthcare costs of 300 million Americans to fund 27 million is NOT a success.
The republican party (if it even exists anymore, since it has been hijacked) stands for things that have adjectives and are in the abstract. However once, any of those ideas, become actual policies, then they revert to opposite of what was promised.
It is impossible (simple math) to offer cheaper, and ''the best'' health care in the world, covering everyone, if it is a private, for profit system. (the radical right want to privatize everything, but in particular profits for the top and costs for everything else)
It is impossible (again simple math) to continuously offer ''tax cuts'' for everyone, but the majority going to the top 1%, and not blow a massive hole in the budget - which cuts back on all services and programs for everyone else - the point actually.
It is impossible to protect the environment (simple science) if you allow more people and businesses to pollute - again added more costs/less programs for everyone else.
It is impossible to say that you ''love women'' (simple truth) when every action you take, every sentence you utter, and every policy/law you initiate is against women in every detail.
The republican party has ideas, but they are only to come up with more lies to fool enough people as possible to win 50%+1 of votes in any given district.
They don't care if they keep losing the popular vote by millions, so long as they keep winning control of you (the electorate) via the electoral college, and keep putting radical judges on the Supreme Court.
6
What strikes me as odd, you read the article about hurricane ravaged poor people that are supposed to be given FEMA money, haven't gotten it, in one case she hasn't been reimbursed from the last one.
But, that's what you get with "smaller government" and these same people vote against their own interests, but this is what the republican party is about, it always has been. And Krugman is right, they are very good at hiding the truth, as in the Bush tax cuts when Clinton left him with a surplus of money, that Bush promptly gave to his ilk.
Of course at the expense of middle class workers. And even now there is a segment of the republican base that truly believes that these tax cuts benefit them, they seem to think that the influx of a trillion plus dollars into the economy will last, well, forever. They also believe that a trade war is a good thing, that they will benefit from that too. They believe that is there is no downside to saddling them with the tax bill that will in fact come due, or that tariffs won't effect them negatively, long term, just as they it did in the Bush era.
Gerrymandering, minority voter suppression, loading the courts, blaming immigrants, and brown people for the reason why those in red states are poor and uneducated. But that because, that's the way the republican party wants it.
2
Of course the Republicans have ideas; all designed to gain absolute power in a monopoly undemocratic unconstitutional government that no longer represents half the nation.
9
Republicans are acting as if they have nothing to worry about as we approach the midterms. Recall the climactic courtroom scene in "The Untouchables." The prosecutor was burying Al Capone under a mountain of incriminating evidence, but the gangster was unconcerned because he had bribed the jury.
Trump has 6 days to shut down the government over lack of funding for his border wall. After that, are Republicans counting on the Russians to hack our state election systems? It appears that the GOP has been turned into a giant Russian sleeper cell. In addition to Trump, how many members of Congress are on Putin's payroll? Can there be any other explanation for their total abandonment of principle?
Will there be a shutdown of the nation's power grid on election eve? Or will Trump simply invalidate the election results, wait for the inevitable riots in the street, and then declare martial law? Will a million men, each armed with an AR-15, march on Washington to oppose the "deep state?"
Republican intransigence on the Kava-naughty confirmation process is a bad omen. Republicans are behaving with way too much confidence given their standing in the polls. This is not likely to end well unless Secretary of Defense Mattis can manage to keep his job and ensure that our armed forces will defend our constitution rather than blindly obey their commander-in-chief.
Has "become the party of no ideas"? For the GOP, it's been dogma and failed nostrums for generations. Ideas are anathema.
5
"Why are Republican policy ideas falling so flat?"
Maybe it's because they're terrible policies?
That's the whole problem with bad ideas: they don't work. The GOP has had no problem with that, so long as it paid off for their corporate and billionaire owners ... but they do have a problem with the electorate starting to notice it.
4
The Republicans starting with the tea partiers have been resisting so long that they have only been fighting the sea change out in America, immigrants, gay marriage, the ACA, raising the minimum wage, infrastructure rebuilding, restructuring or eliminating student debt. They have no ideas. They have no plans. They only know how to say "NO". Sad.
12
Put aside gerrymandering. Put aside appeals to racial resentment. Then look at the NSA leaked memo (the woman who leaked it is in prison) and its references to the hacking of voting machines. Then look at the exit polls in Pennsylvania and the final outcome and try to explain why the gap is 5.6%, virtually unheard of in exit polls in the last three decades. Of course the Democrats can’t take the House or the Senate. It has a lot less to do with gerrymandering and racial resentment and a whole lot more to do with those who own the voting machines and the Russians who hack them. It would be nice to be wrong. But anybody who thinks a blue wave is coming hasn’t been paying attention to polls or exit polls. What was always right suddenly turned wrong (golly, it happened with John Kerry, too, but only in states like Ohio that mattered), and those who take the polls blamed it on their own errors. What else could they say? “We live in a banana republic.” No, none of them were going to say that. Well, actually a couple of statisticians did, and in November, a lot of Americans might. By that point we’re way past a constitutional crisis.
5
The problem is foundational, and starts with your antiquated constitution. But let’s not kid ourselves, short of a revolution you will never make the needed changes. Even something as simple as eliminating the electoral college is beyond your political will.
6
The republican party (if it even exists anymore, since it has been hijacked) stands for things that have adjectives and are in the abstract. However once, any of those ideas, become actual policies, then they revert to opposite of what was promised.
It is impossible (simple math) to offer cheaper, and ''the best'' health care in the world, covering everyone, if it is a private, for profit system. (the radical right want to privatize everything, but in particular profits for the top and costs for everything else)
It is impossible (again simple math) to continuously offer ''tax cuts'' for everyone, but the majority going to the top 1%, and not make a massive hole in the budget - which cuts back on all services and programs for everyone else - the point actually.
It is impossible to protect the environment (simple science) if you allow more people and businesses to pollute - again added more costs/less programs for everyone else.
It is impossible to say that you ''love women'' (simple truth) when every action you take, every sentence you utter, and every policy/law you initiate is against women in every detail.
The republican party has ideas, but they are only to come up with more lies to fool enough people as possible to win 50%+1 of votes in any given district.
They don't care if they keep losing the popular vote by millions, so long as they keep winning control of you (the electorate) via the electoral college, and keep putting radical judges on the Supreme Court.
6
I agree. Just when we need innovation, science, technology and amazing ideas to turn our burning up, flooding out world around, we get a washed up business man turned reality tv star. I remember at the beginning of Trump's presidency having to go to a rally to defend science, of all things. And that there is a large enough segment of Americans to support such drivel is the bigger concern. How have so many Americans become so undereducated? Good country going bad. We will be a third world nation by the time the corporate hungry drains all the public funds from America.
9
We've been a third world nation since the middle class turned a blind eye to the destruction of the working class. Now the middle class is being destroyed. Infrastructure is a joke. We ARE third world. In fact, since more money than ever has been taken from working people to subsidize the rich and the churches, I'd say we've gone back to medieval feudalism.
If Republicans win , America loses and the World will have regrets.
If Republicans win because of Race it will augur badly for the entire Human Race.
2
The Democrats should have addressed the health care issue by pledging that no one who works for a living would lose their homes and savings if they became ill. Instead, they promised that "the least fortunate" would be covered first and foremost. So the working people of America would have to liquidate their assets and take on a lifetime of debt if they became ill. "Save the women and children first" has morphed into "save the drug addicts and drunks first".
No wonder Trump won. If someone is going to rub our noses into the carpet it might as well be the party of winners, not losers.
1
@caveman007 The ACA successfully attacked one of the root causes of bankruptcy. By requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions and coverage limits, the ACA reduced total bankruptcies by 50% — and that’s despite ongoing and blatant Republicans sabotage efforts.
12
@Mark Caveman is not being honest. The ACA has saved regular lives. Don’t align yourself with an enemy. He is talking about repealing the program and frankly all government sponsored healthcare. He picks on easy targets to deride the program and you fell for it.
@caveman007 Harsh way to put it. Most of the poor are not drunks and drug addicts. But the people running Dem messaging were truly from another time and didn't realize that class solidarity wouldn't impress the working poor. The line between those qualifying for subsidies and those not became a line of division Caesar would have been proud of. When Lieberman vetoed the public option the whole ACA was sabotaged. The ability to move forward with it at that point was a trap.
3
That the GOP is nothing but a bunch of corrupt hacks is bad enough, as you point out. But perhaps worse, is that over the past 25 years the Democrats have become what the Republicans used to be: a center-right party, except for a resurgent progressive wing around Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and newcomers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Beto O'Rourke. They are this country's only hope.
3
Interesting- on LI, GOP Is sending out near identical attack postcards about every incumbent state Democratic incumbent, at least in my region. I sit on a district dividing line, so I get more than my share of the stuff.
One side is a red-toned photo of opponent accusing opponent of all kinds of evil spend & tax deads. Usually end line We Can’t Afford (Dem incumbent)
The other, the challenger w/family at times, big US flag in background and all sorts of family and community involvement.
Only hint of challenger’s party is return address I don’t think meets, or if it does, shouldn’t: NYRC, which I think means NY Republican Committee. No Trump slogans, no nuthin - sure to leave many voters confused.
Dem incumbents have sent cards, never mentioning opponent, just lightweight things like X has a plan to cut your property taxes. Almost as shameful as GOP hiding party affiliation, X never says HOW. But at least you know who sent the card.
1
The Republicans have really used and abused the intricacies of our election process. Fox News and Rush et al, blasting from every radio and TV in most areas. Gerrymandering and ID demands. The fossil of the Electoral College stepping in to favor certain states. Two senators for every state, no matter what the population.
This will be hard. They own it all, gained through ruthless focus.
27
Like the rest of Paul's dinosaur ideas, his warning about how we are all doomed due to Trump's tariffs have had no empirical support. Absolutely none.
So, now he has taken to divisive racial rhetoric about "scary dark people" in characterizing Ted Cruz's campaign. Is this same, old, standard, prototypical, tired and divisive rhetoric the best that you have? Please Paul, I read your columns once every 6 months looking for new ideas, but as always I am disappointed, as there is nothing new here.
2
@Dan Ever dig a hole with a shovel? After the first spadeful, the hole wasn't deep enough was it? "Einstein" notwithstanding, sometimes repetition is necessary, even when it doesn't work at first. That's because parameters have changed, impacted in fact by your former insufficient efforts. It's not the same thing, and in fact might get different results.
@Dan
If you only read his column once every 6 months how do you know what he is saying?
Mr. Krugman,
Maybe more people in the heartland are reading your column than suspected! Laugh. Born and raised in Ohio, have lived in Northern California since 1979, moving back to Ohio as my house that bought for $127.5K (2009 downturn) is now $400K, on suburban BART (subway) line, was never far away. Maybe the rest of America will listen to you some day, but wouldn't count on it. Call us Califorinias, we are urban, just like New York, but we are not dumb, just BLUE like you. I see the coast maybe once a year, live however near water, which will not flood. Earthquakes are another story, is the reason am moving back to Ohio. Keep up the good work.
5
The party of anger, that should be their slogan.
4
Republicans have been on the wrong side of history since the 1920s.
Opposing the League of Nations.
Teapot Dome.
Doing nothing as the Great Depression started.
Opposing the WPA and CCC.
Opposing Social Security.
Failing to support England at the beginning of WW2.
Opposing Medicare
Opposing Civil Rights
Tax cuts for people who don't need them.
Opposing the ACA.
Opposing the Lilly Ledbetter Act.
Pushing to get rid of regulations protecting the air and water.
Privatization of Social Security.
Vouchers to replace Medicare.
And now, Donald Trump.
The list goes on and on.
Why would anyone who is not a billionaire vote for them?
Oh, I forgot. Race. I guess that for some people it must feel good to cut off your nose to spite your face.
3
The republican party (if it even exists anymore, since it has been hijacked) stands for things that have adjectives and are in the abstract. However once, any of those ideas, become actual policies, then they revert to opposite of what was promised.
It is impossible (simple math) to offer cheaper, and ''the best'' health care in the world, covering everyone, if it is a private, for profit system. (the radical right want to privatize everything, but in particular profits for the top and costs for everything else)
It is impossible (again simple math) to continuously offer ''tax cuts'' for everyone, but the majority going to the top 1%, and not make a massive hole in the budget - which cuts back on all services and programs for everyone else - the point actually.
It is impossible to protect the environment (simple science) if you allow more people and businesses to pollute - again added more costs/less programs for everyone else.
It is impossible to say that you ''love women'' (simple truth) when every action you take, every sentence you utter, and every policy/law you initiate is against women in every detail.
The republican party has ideas, but they are only to come up with more lies to fool enough people as possible to win 50%+1 of votes in any given district.
They don't care if they keep losing the popular vote by millions, so long as they keep winning control of you (the electorate) via the electoral college, and keep putting radical judges on the Supreme Court.
38
We are seeing the fuition of the lying that the GOP has been perpetrating since Reagan. Their platform has consisted of a series of sound bites that comfort people by making their problems solvable, and not their fault, but have the unfortunate downside of not being true. Or that quietly forward their agenda by making people feel like government is always the problem. Platitudes like “People of color are just welfare queens who are taking your hard earned tax dollars and laughing at you while the take you for granted”, “Taxes on the rich = class warfare”, “The estate tax is nothing but a death tax to take your family’s money away (without explaining that only 5% of households even qualified for the estate tax)”, “Government healthcare will be the ruination of the country”, “Immigrants are bad”, “Education is bad”, “science is wrong”, and on and on and on. Unfortunately, lies are great at getting you elected, but they don’t make good policy. Republicans have pivoted away from true fiscal conservatism and social respect into a monster of divisiveness and self delusion. Until recently, they at least seemed to understand the extent of their own ridiculousness. Now, it’s like they have drunk their own Kool Aid, and the train is off the rails. I’m very glad I live in a blue state right now.
18
It is absurd, bizarre, grotesque and risible that in this great nation a political party that has the less number of votes rules the nation. Democrats should make the amendment of the constitution their top priority. An amendment will ultimately save this nation and make gerrymandering anachronistic feature of the political landscape. A word to the wise enough. The fact that a minority party could rule the nation may be one of reasons why a substantial number of US citizens do not exercise their voting rights.
Democrats are the majority party; flex your muscles, for heaven's sake.
10
Thank the founding fathers. If we'd had the sense to hang that gang of tax evading slaveholders, today we'd have a nice country like Canada. They gave us the electoral college that makes our votes a joke. They gave us a land of privilege, sexism, violence and racism, and threw us the bone of "liberty" for whoever can afford it.
The Republican has one idea, and one idea only: To stay in power at all costs, even if it does irreparable damage to the country. Its money backers want that. Its propagandists want that. Its spin doctors want that. So it will rig electoral districts, distort the truth and fan the flames of fear that it thinks will be enough to get enough voters to keep it in power.
This country is on shaky ground, and what is needed now more than ever is for massive amounts of voters, especially those who see through the muck Republicans spread, to go out and vote in November.
5
Mr. Krugman has this one wrong.
Republicans are a party of bad ideas; Democrats are a party of no ideas. Neither speak for me.
11
Thank you!!!
"Republicans aren’t even trying to run on their policies"
The phrase "Republican policy" appears to be an oxymoron having no actual meaning.
9
"big tax cuts in the face of a budget deficit — and when your own party has spent years warning about imminent fiscal doom"
The fact that until the night of November 8th, 2016 Clinton was expected to win and prevent those cuts from being implemented meant that Republicans had very little time between their deficit hawk rhetoric and the tax cuts being implemented to modify their messaging and to get the people to stop paying attention to the man behind the curtain.
1
The Republican Party hasn’t had a meaningful new idea in 30 years. Tax cuts for the rich and corporations exacerbate social and income inequality and jeopardizes
Medicare and Social Security. Trickle down economics
work only for the wealthy. Ignoring the environment and
climate change will be a disaster.
Hopefully, the American public will waken up and throw this dishonest and dishonorable party of Trump out of power and to the dust bin of history. No more gerrymandering and voter suppression!
47
Tariffs are a blunt instrument and I can't for the life of me understand why they've been slapped on our fellow democratic allies (unless Trump is a saboteur, which is my base case).
Having said all that, I firmly believe we were headed toward an economic reckoning with China no matter who had won the 2016 election.
The promise of a democratic China through engagement never panned out
1
"One thing we do know, however, is that Republicans have decisively lost the battle of ideas."
Want to lose an election, make it over "ideas". Thinking too much either bores voters or alienates them .
"The question is why such policies were ever popular. The answer, I think, is that in the past, voters didn’t see the connections."
To "connect" one has to think. Not what voters normally do.
"In short, the American public seems to have wised up; voters seem to have recognized the G.O.P.’s reverse Robin Hood agenda of taking from ordinary families and giving to the rich for what it is."
To be determined in November and afterwards.
"Of course, Republicans aren’t giving up. If they can’t win on the issues, they’ll try to win on something else — and we know what that something else is....
But if the G.O.P. does win, it will have won very, very ugly. And American politics will become even worse."
So Prof. Krugman, you realize that after all this "wisening up", the GOP might still win. Winning is winning. The commentary on the side does not count.
1
The title of this article made me laugh so hard that a few of my colleagues gave a few weird looks. But, I do have to admit that Republicans' policies are a bit strange, even for me and I am well accustomed to weird ideas that only make things worse...
4
The rich rule the country through the ephemera of their whims. What do they have for us? Mars as humanity's lifeboat when the world blows up. Good luck with that. Throwing money at education: for-profit schools, charters, and religious schools, but not for the working class. No public infrastructure projects because the wealthy get around just fine. Gun violence. Endless wars, for profit. Religious extremism. Misogyny. Racism. Inequality. A world simultaneously flooding and burning up.
We're no longer a democracy with fair elections: money controls our politicians. Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, the ACA hanging by a thread, the dilution and adulteration of the Supreme Court.
Democrats will regain power when things get bad enough. At this point, that means flipping the House but probably not the Senate. Kavanaugh, or someone very much like him, will get in. Things are not bad enough, yet, but they will be, soon enough. When the time comes, Democrats need to be ruthless, or they will have learned nothing. And we will be off the edge of the cliff.
4
It's not the Democrats who need to be ruthless. The voters and taxpayers should become ruthless.
1
If Republicans win the midterm elections, America will be led by three branches of Republican majority power, a monopoly government that ignores fully half the nation's democrat following people. This will be an undemocratic government that the founders did not foresee. There is nothing that can be done except perhaps demonstrations as the Republicans have cultivated the support of the military, police and the nation's gun owners for decades. I don't know for sure, but I believe if that reality comes about, we will change from a democracy to a fascist empire. That is anathema to our principles of representation, freedom and equality.
35
@Waves of Brain What did we have from 2008 to 2012? A government that ignored the Constitution and bypassed Congress while creating the worst race relations since the 1960s.
@Daddukes
Where do you right leaning people get these ideas, Fox News? Obama was a Constitutional scholar and Professor and he was black; something the latent bigots of America led by the Congressional bigoted Republicans couldn't accept.
The Talking Heads' concert film 'Stop Making Sense' never seemed more appropriate, since that has become the de facto slogan of the Trump-era Republican Party. No mere "hobgoblin of little minds here". We are not speaking of foolish consistency now, but of overt and deliberate fabrications intended to fool almost all of the people all of the time.
Stop Making Sense. Trump and his minions don't. Mitch and Paul don't. The NRA and the Russian trolls don't. Fox News is too busy to remember that the phrase 'Fake News' was applied to them long before they seized it. Now their key objective is to make sure that the Supreme Court stops making sense.
Gerrymandering and anonymous money interfere with our election results as much as racism and Russian trolls ever did. Having the majority actually elect our government would make too much sense for a democracy. They have ideas, but the ideas make no sense.
Stop Making Sense.
4
No ideas? How can you think such a thing, Prof. Krugman?
Republicans have plenty of ideas:
On health care: health care, like Maseratis, should be reserved for those that can afford it.
On taxes: cut taxes on the rich. Forget about the deficit.
On medicare and social security: cut them, we need to cut the deficit.
On immigration: Norwegians are welcome, others need not apply.
On sexual assault: don't talk about it; it was probably the woman's fault anyway.
On abortion: outlaw it, even in cases of sexual assault.
On climate change :ignore it; after all, it snows sometimes in D. C. Anyway, it's all a conspiracy by all those scientists (not to mention the Chinese) to make us less productive.
On tariffs: O.K., they weren't really a Republican idea until Trump championed them. (Even now, if you listen carefully, you can hear Paul Ryan mumble platitudes about free trade, but criticizing Trump would be a step too far).
15
Under Reagan, Republicans became the Greedy Oligarchs' Party, exclusively representing corporations and wealthy donors. They embraced an agenda to serve those constituents at the expense of everyone else: Cutting taxes, dismantling legislative and regulatory barriers to greed, eliminating government services for the non-wealthy, and installing loyal partisan judges.
Ever since, the GOP have had nothing to offer the 99.9% of Americans who are not part of their moneyed constituency. But they still need millions of those people to consistently vote for them. So they created and sold an alternative reality in which the wealthy trickle down their tax cuts, welfare queens mooch government handouts rather than working, and the morally-defective poor and sick deserve their plight because they make bad choices. With nothing constructive to offer, the GOP appealed to greed, fear, and bigotry while they gerrymandered and suppressed votes.
That approach was highly successful until recently, when many GOP voters finally realized the system was failing them. They rejected the orthodoxy of Jeb!, Cruz, and Rubio, and fell for Trump's fake populist promises. Then the GOP Congress tried to destroy the ACA (the only "idea" they've offered for 7 years) before borrowing $1.5 trillion to fund yet another tax cut for their constituents.
If they aren't voted out in the midterms, the GOP will consider it a mandate to finish transforming the country into a third-rate banana republic.
13
Trump will continue to win as long as his voters prefer slogans over carefully thought out policy proposals He will win as he blames others for economic insecurity. He will win as he tells them the lies they want to hear about “the other” who are holding them back. He will win as he touts simple answers to complex economic and foreign policy problems. He will win, unless we stop him. There is one sure way. VOTE Democratic Tuesday November 6.
7
And it's also now the party of having no idea about women's rights.
30
But it IS the party of EQUAL rights, and not pandering to minorities just for a vote...@Mark
Republicans don't have honest ideas...........they taxed the vast middle class through tariffs to enrich their wealthy benefactors, then proclaiming "Deregulation", they further enriched their wealthy benefactors. The Tax Cuts also may have been intended to buy votes.
Then Trump's tariffs appeared, last years unpopular "Duties", or taxes on consumers. I'm sure the Tariffs, going to the federal treasury, will offset the wealthy's tax cuts. The tariffs are a massive multi-billion dollar tax in which many millions of consumers will pay for the tax cuts that went to mostly the wealthy individuals and corporations.
The Republicans idea to repeal the Affordable Care Act was sold as a freedom grabbing idea. The public was actually convinced to vote for the Republicans to repeal the law, thus endangering their very lives.
The only Republican idea that works unfortunately is their insidiously artful propaganda techniques they call "Messaging". They rely on their benefactors wealthy subsidies to pay for massive numbers of Television ads to literally brainwash everyone. It works.
All the Republican ideas are sinister.
1
Sadly, voting Democrat since the 1980s hasn't done me much good, either. Both are the parties of higher taxes. I just keep paying and paying and paying. This two party system hasn't done the average person any good at all.
@Stephanie Wood
Another anti-tax zealot. Well Stephanie, without taxes, you'd be driving on rutted dirt roads, never helped by firemen or police, probably dying young without health care and probably ruled by another nation. Think about that.
Explain how gerrymandering affects the Senate races.
2
@RossPhx
What effects our government is that 3 states with less than a million people band together to override the will of the rest of us.
The house has a cap on the number of legislators, but small states get a minimum, meaning their voters have many times more power than the rest of us.
Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and taxation without representation all work to prop up a minority party against the rest of us
We have become a banana republic.
14
@RossPhx The way the Senate represents unequally is technically not gerrymandering, but it's in the same class of anti-democratic systems. A minority has all the power.
9
Sadly the American public hasn’t wised up! Many of the farmers say they’d rather lose money because in their minds they’re fighting the Chinese with Trump. Industrial state voters believe Trump over the news.
I recall seeing a MAGA shirt that read “I’d rather be Russian than a Democrat.” That’s what we are up against.
No matter how lacking the Republicans are in their ideas, Trump has some how locked in his voting block.
6
@Manish
Funny how Trump turned these farmers into evil socialists when he redistributed my tax dollars to them in order to dull the effects of his tariffs.
Do you think they noticed?
@Manish Dems have decided to help with it. They turn to their "friends" and ask "how do I look" and the friends recommend making the costume a little more ghoulish.
@Manish: when one sees traitors with t-shirts that read "I'd rather be Russian than a Democrat." I can only shudder to think these traitors will be first in line to tattle on and turn in perceived dissidents. Remember history classes about Nazi Germany and Soviet totalitarian rule. Having once been instructed to just look straight ahead and carry on as we were apparently being 'observed' by 'neighbors' back in the 'good old days?' as a guest of then-dissidents in former East Germany (German Democratic Republic), it isn't farfetched that such Amerikans wouldn't succumb to the same treachery here. USA has its low points indeed, but the savagery of a fascist/totalitarian state was not one I would have ever anticipated in my lifetime.
“The answer...is that in the past, voters didn’t see the connections.” Oh, Dr. Krugman, how could you have written that? Of course “voters saw the connections.” It was always race.
In 1968, Richard Nixon warned Americans about “scary dark people.” The mask was “they’ll take your jobs.” Not even the deficit-blowing Vietnam War bothered everyday people. The Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) transcended any worries about kitchen table economics. It was “those people.”
The GOP never had any ideas for the betterment of society. It never was serious about deregulation of industries. It was never serious about organized labor. It was never serious about small government. It was only serious about national defense because the military industrial complex lined the pockets of the uber-wealthy and sacrificed the sons of the proletariat to wars and death far away. “Let them die; my kids are worth more.”
Republicans were strong on crime because it meant the incarceration of minorities and the for-profit prison system. Their “war on drugs” was clearly race-and-class-based. They’re afraid that a nationwide healthcare system will lower drug costs. One of the first things Donald Trump said in 2015 was “wages are too high.” His base never heard it; what they did hear was Mexican “rapists and drug dealers” and “war zones in Chicago.” Divide and conquer with fear and hate. Winning.
Not build with ideas. Don’t look forward; just backwards to an empty, ugly past.
3
I hope you're right, Dr Krugman. But I have been amazed for years at the way people vote against their obvious (to me, anyway) self interest. And now it's OK to abandon dog whistles in favour of out-and-out appeals to misogyny, racism, and xenophobia; I'm not sure that those darker angels are ever subsumed by rational thinking about what might be best for oneself or one's family.
LBJ was right, alas.
3
To Trump's credit he realized early on that the Repub base doesn't care about ideas. He kept it simple with inane chants, finding scapegoats and promises to shake up Washington. It worked. And don't be surprised if it works again.
2
The democrats are not much better. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer’s big effort, “a better deal”, is a bust. As the tragedy unfolded at the border, Pelosi big move was to criticize Maxine Waters.
Retire please, get out of the way.
4
Trump does not have "ideas". He has a brand. His brand targets those who distrust authority, those who blame someone else for their misfortune, those who fantasize about the "good old days" when everything was better, those who admire criminals who "get away with it." These self styled outlaws blow a lot of smoke when asked why they support Trump. They will talk about immigration. They will talk about "saving the little unborn babies" (this last is always especially ironic when it comes from a man who does not pay child support). They love to talk about reverse discrimination. But what moves them is not the ideas that Trump sells--low taxes for the rich, no health care for the masses, low paying jobs---it is the Trump brand. They buy a certain kind of truck, drink a certain kind of beer and vote for a certain kind of candidate.
3
"The last time Republicans rammed through big tax cuts, under George W. Bush, they were fairly popular."
Though the Bush2 tax-cuts were not unpopular, it greatly widened inequality. In late 1940s, the top 0.01% household incomes payed about 60% of their incomes in federal income taxes, which dropped down to 22% by 2005 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/US_high-income_effec... inequality reached 1929 level by 2007. This was due to cutting capital gain tax to just 15% and treating $billion incomes of hedge-fund managing commissions as "carried interest" to be taxed as capital gain. Most highest earners had their incomes mostly as capital gain. That was why Warren Buffett complained that his secretary paid at a higher rate than he did.
President Obama managed to raise that to 23.8% in 2013, which still continues despite the Trump tax-cuts.
Fortunately this time around they could no longer fool the public; most believes that the tax-cuts mostly benefit the affluent.
To benefit the middle class & working poor, payroll tax needs to be cut, say like the first $10K to 1% & the second $10K to 2%. Then raise or lift the cap but again cut it to 1% beyond say, $150K to be less unpalatable to the rich. Such a tax-reform has enormous benefit to middle & lower income groups while hardly hurting the rich.
I would also say have another higher marginal rate of 50% only on top 0.05% incomes from all sources, to reduce the deficit & to slow rising debt.
7
Don't count on any such voter enlightenment to last. Being hornswoggled by huckster politicians is a time-honored American voter tradition. And the Republicans have the high ground on topics amenable to fear tactics. Moynihan warned the Democratic Party of this four decades ago, and it still hasn't learned the lesson. Too cozy with Wall Street, it went Rockefeller Republican, convenient (and lucrative) for the limousine neoliberals who've controlled the party. So essentially we have a Republican Party marked with a "D" and a Tea Party of corporate connivers smooching the rich marked with an "R."
8
@Rocky
Politics isn’t only about money. Through the years Democrats have consistently stood for things like equal rights and environmental protection. They have created and expanded programs like social security and Medicare to protect people who can least afford it. Republicans, on the other hand, have fought these ideals at every turn. Why? Because they threaten the pocketbooks of the rich or the advantages of white people. Democrats have certainly cozied up to Wall Street, but on the whole the party stands on the right side of the moral spectrum.
5
The GOP doesn't need to run on ideas because since so many Red states are gerrymandered, they don't have a fear of losing. And they pay almost no attention to the electorate. All attention is paid to lobbyists and campaign contributors. They fear a primary challenge far more than they fear losing a general election.
Until we end gerrymandering and get money out of politics, we will never again have a democracy.
The only positive possibility is on the off chance that Democrats take control of the House, those Republicans who remain might start running scared and walk away from supporting Trump. They might even support impeaching him.
18
The good news seems to be that the "Fake News" game is no longer working very well. A lot of voters are finally putting two and two together and realizing that Republicans are misleading them (to put it politely). And Mexico isn't going to pay for the Wall.
22
@carrobin
That would be very good news indeed.
Here in very liberal Quebec where high unemployment is a perpetual problem and economic growth has been slow , taxes are very high and a strong social safety net has been a conservative nightmare we have some very serious political problems.
We don't have enough workers, the economy is booming and suddenly after 50 years of decline Montreal is boom city. Our election is next week and all our political parties are threatening Dentalcare in addition to our universal healthcare. Our publicly owned financial institution and our electrical are money making machines and our political parties are stampeding in a leftist direction. We are producing new startups at an alarming rate and our Quebec government is looking for new startups to invest in because somehow everything our government touches turns to gold.
In its efforts to keep seniors like myself in my home the government throws hours of free home care at my wife and I which makes living in our home less of a burden. The government even rewards us for using less electricity which is money our government corporation doesn't get.
I don't understand American conservatism. It seems an abject failure in term of what governments with less wealth and power are able to give their citizens.All our towns and cities are desperate for immigrants and refugees for the jobs that are waiting and a job comes with a living wage.We need about a million of you to learn French, we will keep our gates open. Our town has room for about another 10K.
58
@Memphrie et Moi ~ Ah! The friendly attack of the Canadian. Like yourself, I find myself boggling at the sheer perversity of American politics. It is so crooked and frankly absurd ~ tragic might be more accurate. I like our American friends very much, but the way they reel around internally like some deranged punch-drunk paranoiac is baffling and sad. When, oh when will they realise that the rest of the 'western' world is way, way, way ahead of them insofar as caring for their population goes? The Americans are utterly phobic about the words 'socialism' and 'socialist'. They simply replace that word with communism and knee-jerk it to the bad place. Things are looking very grim in the land of the brave and the home of the not-so free. I am truly not being snide or dismissive: I really do like the good old US of A. But it's time to grow some sense, yes?
1
The party of no ideas? They haven't had a one since Kavanaugh was at Georgetown Prep. Nixon (sic!) had some ideas, but since then? The usual Republican policy response to a problem is do deny there is problem. See climate change, health care, etc.
15
Don't worry. The proper votes will be delivrered to the GOP by Diebold and other voting machine's builders.
More reliable than gerrymandering!
Cut out the middle man!
Sorry to give you another late wakeup call.
People with appropriate technical knowledge have tried everything to get the MSM to pay attention, for over ten years. And here we are: a judge just declared that, yes, these machines are bad security jokes; but they will do, as providing a (non-electronic) system to really count real votes is really unrealistic this time.
Like last.
And the one before.
Climate change is not the only serious item that our frivolous minds have chosen to ignore. Oh, let me argue about the royals.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
15
@mbck
Amen! Donald Trump seems abnormally confident that the Republicans will keep their majority in November 2018 because he is in touch with Vladimir Putin (and oddly, so many Republican members of Congress have made a trek to Russia since July 4 (!!!!!) to "visit" but none can really say why they went or what they were doing. Those Diebold/ES&S voting machines have proprietary software that none can see but its Republican owners, and the Russian hackers.
Republicans have been masking their true intentions for decades, and have a finely honed machine that knows how to play to their base. As has been shown since the last election, they don't even have to pretend anymore. Witness Collins and Hunter indicted for felonies, yet they are still seeking public office, with a very good chance of winning. As long as the vast majority of eligible voters refuse to participate in our elections, the minority base of the republican party will be able to call the shots for the rest of us.
15
I can't believe that Congress would get away with gutting Social Security.
I paid into Social Security from the time I was 16 until I was 70. And paid and paid. This is my earned pension, not a government handout. If Congress takes it away, it has to be actionable.
24
@Linda
The money you paid in went mainly to people like your parents. It was not invested in order to pay your benefits. If it had been, that pot of money would have been the biggest pool of investments in the country, and whoever controlled it would have the biggest voice in the economy and could benefit friends and campaign contributors. Not a good idea.
Some of the money you paid in was invested -- in U.S. government bonds, by law. If all the money paid in had to be invested in government bonds, the government would have to issue enough bonds (borrow enough money) to make those investments possible. Also not a good idea.
Your Social Security depends on a moral compact between generations. You took care of the previous generation, and the next generation will take care of you. Be comforted by the fact that old people vote more. If you had a private stock of investments, your well being would depend on the health of the economy at the time you needed the money and the wisdom and honesty of whoever guided your investments. The economy shrinks and crashes periodically and your investment advisors are in it to make money for themselves (by appearing to make money for you).
The moral compact should be more secure, but thinking of Social Security as coming from your private stash makes it less secure. Spreading that thinking is part of the Republican plan to get rid of Social Security.
11
@Linda
They characterize/describe it as "entitlement," thus equivalent with welfare, a fals. They've been taking from my paycheck for many years, too, and they had better give it back.
8
@Linda: there are no plans, current or past, to get rid of Social Security.
The aim of any political party that’s in power should be to see that its foundation is strong. So to say its policies should be people oriented so that it continues to rule by making them happy and not few blessed people happy. Unfortunately I don’t see anything of such a kind happening here.
All the major policies such as huge increase in the military budget, tax reform and trade war have worsened the situation instead of improving. Adding further problems is the very thought of repealing ACA instead of improving upon it.
The trade war has brought a bad reputation to America internationally since it does exactly reverse while having trade talks with the other countries. Further unnecessary prolonged wars have brought no positive results at all. Instead it resulted in the spending of trillions of dollars over a period of time. Not only that plenty of civilians died in addition to your own military personnel. As such American reputation is completely at stake.
6
Republicans have the better circus, better entertainment, better carpeting of all forms of media, better money, better outreach, etc. 67% of Americans have $0 between paychecks, meaning they don't have time to lift their head up, or consider anything but making sure the car doesn't break down, or that health care/insurance bill, that showed up 7 months after the service, is covered. Sinclair Broadcast Group isn't all Fox affiliates. Only about 25% of their stations are Fox. That means that if Sinclair and Fox together hold a majority stake in the airwaves, and that 38% the love Trump, will love Trump.
11
@4Average Joe
Absolutely!
And they have thousands of religious congregations that are politically active and spew the same message as right wing radio.
Dems have none of that! And naive Americans are wondering why Dems are less effective? Give me a break!
"...gerrymandering and other factors have severely tilted the playing field, so they would need to win the popular vote by a wide margin to retake the House, and a huge margin to retake the Senate."
Are you preparing to redraw state lines Dr. Krugman?
2
Either that, or abolish the Senate. It is a non-representative and undemocratic institution.
Wyoming (pop. 0.6 million) gets to elect 2 Senators. So does California (pop. 40 million). So an American living in Wyoming gets to cast 67 votes to elect Senators, while an American living in California gets to cast only 1 vote.
Then, that Senate decides who will serve on the Supreme Court and, thus, if Americans will ever enjoy a right to living wage, basic healthcare, and clean air and water.
How is this democracy?
33
@tanstaafl You don't have to redraw state lines. You just have to end gerrymandering and in the Presidential election, end "winner take all". Or, end the electoral college, which is totally unnecessary.
2
@tanstaafl - you do understand that voting districts are not state lines, right? And you realize that the unfairly drawn lines are used to discount millions of votes? Please look up what gerrymandering means.
2
Good column Paul. Yep, it gets increasingly harder for the rich to keep on with their goal of taking everything when the peasants start to rebel. Unfortunately for them they don't yet have the power to send in the Calvary to put these rebellions down. If they did they would.
Their 'ideas' are all based on making the rich richer and squeezing the rest of us to do it. This is always been the goal of Rich despots and Oligarchs.
Playing the race card this time may not work as well this time as it has in the past. The peasants are increasingly more concerned about diminishing wages, no social safety net, and no access to medical care than they are about immigration and race issues. Are immigration and race issues still good playing cards? Sure - even among liberals these scapegoating ploys tend to work. But income and benefits inequality affects everybody and is rising to the top of critical political concerns.
The Republicans have no where to hide. They are becoming the enemy in the eyes of increasingly high numbers of Americans. And they richly deserve it.
31
As far as health care goes, all congress has to do is put everyone on the FEHB (Federal Employee's Health Benefit) program. It's a better program than the ACA and it's what congress had for themselves forever. I pay as a retired 75 yr old Postal worker about $3000/yr for all the coverage I need and that means no co-pay after Medicare picks up the first part. It's not magic. Just do it. Nearly everyone can afford it and there's lots of selections available. Get real people. Look around at the good alternatives. But no one is listening. I tell people this all the time and all I get is blank stares. Like zombies.
37
I do not think the Republican Party or maybe the conservatives in general really care if the poor get healthcare. People who cannot afford health insurance are too lazy to work for it and it is not their job to help them.
If they do care, then of course, we can "just do it."
2
@DogT: LOL and what DEMOCRAT has ever even proposed this?
Also: YOU pay $3000 a year (plus $1500 in Medicare Part B) but how much does that actual POLICY -- via private insurance -- COST THE TAXPAYERS? do you even know? it's probably about $20K a year for JUST YOU.
There is a fundamental disconnect between the American electorate and their political leaders. While the politicians are motivated principally by greed, the people act chiefly out of spite. Fear, anger and spite adroitly harnessed in the service of greed drives a perpetual motion machine spinning forever in place, lurching occasionally from side to side, never to advance or progress.
18
I have many friends who are ardent conservatives and believe (incorrectly) that the U.S. is successful because the G.O.P. has intervened over the last 150 years to assure Americans they will defend "free enterprise" and will control the size of government to prevent runaway spending on liberal programs to assist American's who can't provide for themselves.
Lately, they have added to their litany the invasion of "illegal immigrants" who take jobs and are also changing the success culture of the U.S.
They don't accept challenges to their argument very easily and they resist funding programs that will broadly benefit society such as access to healthcare, quality education and other programs to ensure that children get an important headstart as infants and toddlers.
Even though it is now very well known that there are some by-products of our industrial system that endanger the health of our fetuses and children, conservatives resent environmental regulations. Seeing the aftermath of the Hurricane Florence, with health-harming coal ash flooding into the Cape Fear River, and the enormous damage to private property/public infrastructure in the flooded areas, it causes me to wonder if the strong denial of global warming is the greatest harm to humankind yet caused by the G.O.P.
Finally, I am certain that minimum wage and workplace safety are not popular with the G.O.P. even though most economists say that stagnant middle-class incomes has reduced U.S. economic potential.
38
The American democracy is not a contest of ideas, facts, or reason. It is a contest of emotions and marketing soundbites. Therefore, it manufactures crises and lurks from one disaster to another, increasingly in peril of collapse into authoritarianism governing poorly educated, ignorant masses. There are plenty of examples abound.
35
It is the great liberal myth that elections are won on policies, facts, logic and assuming voters will pursue self-interest. It is why the liberals and progressives have not done better. Elections are about metaphors and sound bytes. Reread George Lakoff. Of course even if you win an election in the US, a cabal of political hacks may choose someone else.
28
I think it is a 50% GOP keeps control and about 30% it gets bigger. This is way worse than we ever thought. Sorry.
3
@Paul Reagan was right. You can give all the illegal immigrants the vote and they will likely vote … Republican. They aren't fools.
1
You are too kind to the Republicans. You have omitted saying that they are also not running on foreign policy ideas, like bringing the US to the brink of nuclear confrontation with North Korea, or insulting our European allies in our support of Russian imperialism. You've most kindly left out the jewel in the crown of Republican policy initiatives: withdrawing from the Paris Agreement (and revoking Obama environmental executive orders and policies). But the last omission is the easiest to understand. What reasonable person would not feel a little foolish in pointing out that no Republican candidate is boasting that he and his party have hastened the destruction of the environment and the end of organized human society?
Vote!
63
Whatever happened to that former staple of Republican economic genius, the mult- generational construct of “Trickle Down Economics”? Pure, unadulterated snake oil, served up generously by Republican Congressional con artists in service to their wealthy masters. Some things never change. Sound familiar?
26
The Republicans have been using ugly tactics for years. Remember Swift Boat? How about Willie Horton?
64
Re: "...studies of the 2016 election clearly show that racial resentment, not “economic anxiety,” was what put Trump over the top."
Let's look at the last 3 Presidential elections in Wisconsin:
2008 Obama beat McCain, 56.22% to 42.31%
Resentment? Hmm. The more economic populist (at least in election season rhetoric), won.
2012: Obama beat Romney, 52.83% to 45.89%. Resentment? Hmm. Again, the more economic populist, won the general. True, by now Obama wasn't credible as an economic populist, but *anyone* would look like an economic populist next to Mr. "47%" Romney.
2016: Trump beats Hillary, 47.22% to 46.45%. Resentment? Hmm. So, the state that gave Obama a 56.22% to 42.31% victory, is suddenly voting on "resentment"?
There is resentment, all right. But it is directed at the establishment of both parties. Trump (most hated candidate in history) just eked out an electoral college victory over the *second* most hated candidate in history. Trump was the only candidate left standing in the primaries, after Republican primary voters rejected all mainstream candidates - resoundingly.
Voters have been desperate for a new FDR to give them another New Deal, for a long time. Hillary certainly wasn't going to be it. The party establishments have been able to keep populists and pretend populists out of general elections (although many in 2008 mistook Obama for one, and registered their disappointment in the 2010 midterms.)
But no, it can't possibly be about the money...
21
@A Populist
The wealthy - and not just on the right - have disproportionate influence on our politicians. Is it any wonder our government pays more attention to the 1% over the 99%? Curtail big money influence and give us government OF, BY and FOR The People. If the Democrats sincerely championed that concept, republicans would become just another extinct species.
5
@A Populist
"Trump (most hated candidate in history) just eked out an electoral college victory over the *second* most hated candidate in history."
While Establishment Democrats went on and on about Hillary Clinton being the best choice they forgot about 20 years of the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" plotting against her.
Establishment Democrats also were not paying attention to the rank and file Democrats who were supporting and voting for Bernie Sanders in large numbers.
Michigan was supposed to be one of Clinton's firewall states but guess what? Bernie won the Michigan Democratic primary with an economic message.
So what did Clinton do? Instead of adopting Bernie's economic message she kept on going on and on about irrelevant cultural issues like sexism, racism, etc.
Clinton divided Democrats into competing interest groups all fighting for their own pet issues when she should have been getting them to cooperate with each other on issues of common concern, like the economy.
Did that strategy work? Obviously not because sexism was a loser:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-over-white-women/
Racism was also a loser:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/black-voters-arent-turning-out-for-...
Clinton benefited from the DNC's manipulation of the primaries. As well as the Establishment's cadre of super-delegates.
Frankly Hillary Clinton and the Democrats only have themselves to blame for Trump's "victory" in 2016.
1
@Ben Alcala
Bernie lost fair and square, period.
Now, Bernie platform was 90% the same as Clinton's platform, if you cared to read, instead of listening to propaganda. Those who didn't see a difference between Trump and Clinton in 2016 can only blame themselves. they were like ignorant children.
Myself, I think we have one of the most uniformed electorates of any advanced nation, we appear to know little or nothing of economics, history or civics. Conservatives have only one thing to sell and that is fear, if you have any knowledge of the areas I have mentioned it would seem obvious. The republican party has been sold to the highest bidder.
There is a reason the first amendment guarantees the right of free speech, it is so important it was enshrined in the Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately the founding fathers could not foresee the dangerous turn of those of enormous wealth exercising power through this right giving them more of a voice than most others, greatly exacerbated by supreme court decisions allowing unlimited spending on political race.
Which bring us full circle to our irresponsibly uninformed electorate which allows the situation by its tolerance of it.
Do your duty, be informed and vote your conscience
66
Dear Prof.Paul Krugman, In both USA's presidential form of democracy and India's parliamentary form of democracy ,I could witness a common thing of the major parties is not the absence or paucity of ideas but the fear of implementation and the highlight on the degree of variance in privileges among beneficiaries impacting the vote bank in election.
When a communist rule like China struggling to freeze the freedom of expression, the democracies like USA and India largely confused to define a bench mark for a real freedom.
Every idea has pros and cons in implementation and the beneficiary who receives the side of the bread that has butter is happy and the other feels battered. Where is the way out for the ideas in a labyrinth?
4
Dr. Krugman, we know from experience and your many articles, and those of many others, that Tax cuts don't significantly grow the economy. In other words, giving the more money doesn't guarantee that they will invest in capital - human, intellectual or material - that will allow for organic growth.
Please tells us how to get the horse to actually drink the water?
10
What always amazes me is the democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The points you have made are excellent if not obvious. And yet the best slogan the democrats can come up with is A Better Deal, a line you would expect from a used car salesperson.
There are so many really excellent liberal minded creative advertising agencies out there. Find the best and brightest and challenge them to come up with something better than Hal Riney's classic "It's Morning in America, Again", the campaign that swept Ronald Reagan into his second term. Something that resonates better than Make America Great Again to middle America. Because we are at the point that if we cannot win back this country, we are doomed.
It is too late (why did we wait so long) for the mid terms, but this is essential for 2020.
29
@Gary W. Priester Good point, and it reminds me that it baffles me that we can't get anyone in Democrat-ville who knows how to mount an organized video and TV campaign. Why aren't there regular ads from Democrats pointing out the environmental horrors this administration is visiting on us? Where are the spots featuring interviews with old folks who remember how horrible it was to have coal dust blanketing your town every day?
Or talks with the people whose lives have been saved by Obamacare? I don't get why Michael Moore is making movies, for instance, instead of a host of TV spots.
Make some ads around the big issues, run them non stop, and include the slogan: Stop Voting for Republicans. Or something. I don't understand why we're not seeing these things.
3
This is the party of no ideas. It's also the party of "No Help Wanted." The party of nobody's minding the store.
After ten months there are nearly three times as many unfilled federal executive appointments than there are nominees from Trump -- only 204 of the 665 positions that require Senate approval have been filled.
As of last month, Trump has cut 24,000 federal workers across all executive departments and agencies. There are more open federal jobs than at anytime under any President. More federal employees have quit under this administration than any previous one.
During Reagan's first term, nearly 2500 OSHA technical staff were eliminated -- the field inspectors who visit worksites to check compliance with health and safety rules and experts who investigate workplace accidents. It took four years to rebuild because in addition to an Industrial hygiene degree, inspectors must complete three years of OSHA training.
OSHA currently has 2,100 inspectors responsible for 130 million workers at 8 million worksites — about one compliance officer for every 59,000 workers.
The result? An average of 14 workers are killed everyday at worksites, with over 5,000 preventable deaths in 2017.
This is just one example of GOP's systematic destruction of government. The State Department has been gutted, with 40 top positions empty. USDA, DoE, all enforcement and oversight agencies have lost key workers.
They don't need ideas because there won't be much left.
268
@Yuri Asian Your list, frightening as is it, is the best possible response to the government-attacking Republicans. I hope to hear them used by Democrats in debates.
Electing senators shouldn't be affected by gerrymandering but rather on turning people away at the voting booth for expired or no ID's, disenfranchisement of non-violent felons and confusing laws about student voting rights. Since the underpopulated states get more bang per voter and rural states are Republican dominated, they've figured out how to keep control when they only have a minority nationally.
19
I honestly hope I'm exaggerating the impression I have in my mind, but that impression is that Democratic politicians -- and my sample will have been heavily weighted toward Presidents and people campaigning to be President -- will address objections to their policies and proposed policies directly, while Republican politicians simply won't.
A Democratic politician, in my impression, will acknowledge that there will be some disruption due to a trade bill, or that some people will be penalized if they don't get health insurance that they don't really want, or will pay more or get lesser benefits under the new regime.
But Republican politicians insist that the average family will be $4,000 a year richer from their tax cut, and that no one with pre-existing conditions will be unable to get insurance if they repeal Obamacare. There is no reasonable explanation of why this is so, just a refusal to acknowledge the reasonable arguments that their claims are just not grounded in reality.
And, of course, the media too often lets them get away with it. I guess it's consistent with democracy, in which a fool's opinion carries as much weight as the world's foremost experts.
74
@Basho
Most people hear what they want to hear, believe what they want to believe. They bought into Trump's "repeal and replace" without asking what "replacement" he had in mind; they liked hearing him describe big problems that he declared "only I can fix"; they cheered when he led the chant to "lock her up," regardless of rationale; and of course there were those violent, job-stealing, drug-dealing immigrants he would seal off with a big beautiful wall. How so many people actually took him seriously is still one of those mysteries of the human mind.
5
I ama delighted Krugman keeps telling it like it is, not holding back on his confrontation of GOP corruption. I wish, however, he would start advocating for actual solutions -- Bernie, Ocasio-Cortez -- rather than the establishment Democrats who are almost as responsible for Trump and the current GOP as the GOP is.
19
Lately some Democratic Party politicians are proposing Medicare for everyone, and saying that the current system is too complicated and puts too large of a burden on employers. This sounds to me like criticism of the Affordable Health Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. In other words, some politicians on the Left seem to be saying that Obamacare is no good.
I really like the Obama’s, and I respect Paul Krugman, so I would like it if someone could straighten me out and tell me what’s going on. Are liberals also bashing the Affordable Health Care Act?
5
Liberals and even moderates have said for a long time that the ACA is rather complicated and is not the most effective solution to the problem. They were saying this when Congress was debating the bill in 2009! This is not new.
24
@Andrew
The structure of the ACA was always a compromise on behalf of the left. It was a conservative idea first implemented by Mitt Romney as the governor of Massachusetts. It was arguably dreamed up at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Obama governed as a centrist, regardless of the noises that the right made about him. At the time of its passage many Democrats thought the bill to be too conservative.
Despite all that, Obamacare became the rallying cry of the right ushering in the Tea Party movement and, ultimately, GOP majorities in both houses of Congress.
Now, I think the feeling on the left has become, if you're going to call us socialists for implementing a conservative idea, then we might as well be socialists.
132
@Chad This is the closest we could get to single payer as long as republicans had the majority in both houses. However, the opening was created. It can be added to and improved, and hopefully the for-profit middlemen removed.
7
I don't consider myself a pessimist, but this is not a good time for our nation and if the GOP does win we, including the joyous supporters of Mr Trump, will not recover for a very long time, if ever.
61
They have won. We will not recover. But we should go down fighting and make it harder for the "victors" to inflict their hatred and destruction on our children, other countries and planet.
4
I was horrified to learn, while reading Bob Woodward's book "Fear," that the United States spends 50 billion dollars a year in Afghanistan. We've been there 17 years at 50 billion a year. It's a never ending war and Trump's staff made clear to him that it will continue to be a never ending war.
How much healthcare would 50 billion a year pay for? The elderly in America can't even buy a pair of new eyeglasses on Medicare. Congress says they have to keep us safe from terrorists but how many Americans are sick, suffering, or dying from lack of healthcare? Facing cancer with no health insurance is a form of terrorism. Drivers wearing 20-year-old eyeglasses because they can't afford new ones are scary, too.
Congress does not have its priorities straight. They want to make America great again while leaving Americans sick and suffering. You can't be great on the backs of unhealthy people. Fifty billion a year to help Americans or 50 billion a year for a never ending war?
547
@Linda
You mention the money - just follow it. Defense contractors and lobbyists can make much more money off death and fear, rather than common sense initiatives to improve the lives of the citizens they exploit. And the Republicans (and many establishment Democrats) are all too happy to accept their limitless campaign contributions in exchange for keeping the money spigots open.
77
Afghanistan has never been a “nation”, but a place of relatively small villages divided by mountains divided by family, divided by faiths.
You cannot win a war there, there is no there.
The division with the most adherents “wins”, and it simply is not worth lives to try.
Yeh, some will be anti-US, some pro- most consider “democracy “ plentiful food, no bombs and bullets, shelter and some cash left for the occasional luxury.
5
We spend 3.5 trillion dollars a year on health care. Mostly inefficiently. But even with perfect efficiency 50 billion dollars is a trivial chunk of our medical bill.
I also think we've spent more than 850 billion in Afghanistan, and all for naught. They fudge the numbers. Hard to put a price tag on over two thousand dead, ten times that many wounded. What's the cost of PTSD, the suicide rate among our veterans, the amputations, the substance abuse, the ruined marriages? ("Ever since *blank* Johnny B. Goode Soldier was never the same . . . ")
4
There is another reason why the Bush cuts were more popular, boomers were 17 years younger and not nearly as concerned about the solvency of social security. Its a lot easier to tolerate massive tax cuts for the rich if you don’t think it will result in you receiving less money, money that you were counting on
21
This column actually explains why Republican leaders are being so blatant with their greed, misogyny, and climate denial these days. Their mission is to accumulate as much cash as they can in the short term, courtesy of psychopathic plutocrats like Koch, Mercer, Adelson, and even some local Bay Area Tech Titans.
Newsflash: you won’t be comfortable in your villas and giant yachts. Better to look around at the horrors you are creating, and then take a long look in the mirror. It’s not too late- but soon it will be.
101
@Mike Roddy Actually, GOP -will- be very comfortable in their villas and giant yachts. They always have and always will. From their POV, only the "little people" (i.e. you and me and everyone else who has less than a million dollars) are just irritating noise.
5
@Mike Roddy
How many armed guards will the wealthy need to defend their bunkers?
And when the masses are hungry enough, how long will the guards be able to hold them back?
2
The rich will flee to Canada with all their money, and we'll be left behind to die.
No Paul, Republicans have ideas, admittedly just a few and all bad. However they have lots of ideas about how to gain power, mainly by cheating, and they are very good at it. What they lack entirely is ethics and character.
223
The Party has one single aim, survival. If they survive in government, a secondary theme is to further enrich the already greatly enriched, while denying assistance to those in genuine need.
Trump can fire up a rally, but then again so can a singer or comedian. Only issue is that many singers and comedians have a lot more credibility than Trump.
28
Gerrymandering does not affect election of senators, who are elected on a statewide basis. Each senate seat that is up for election could, in theory, be won by a margin of one vote.
9
This is true, but rural states have outsized representation. California has 60x the population of Wyoming and yet the same number of senators.
24
Gerrymandering, when you KNOW your House vote cannot count, suppresses turnout in districts drawn for the incumbent.
The party that does the gerrymandering therefore stays in power.
With the Senate margin as slim as it is, this CAN keep incumbents in place.
Now I’m one of the few who even votes, if possible, in uncontested primaries, often to cast protest write-in votes, not an option in NY.
But the majority of the population? The turnout locally, for the NY Democratic primary was relatively huge, about 400 in each of the three polling districts where I vote.
This may bode well for a Presidential year turnout- which way it goes will depend purely on party GOTV efforts.
7
Republicans have one idea: rigging the economy for the rich and against average Americans.
For 40 years the Republicans have defined the Democrats brand from tax and spend liberals to Nancy Pelosi worshippers. Unfortunately many people vote by brand and not performance.
Most Americans know the booming economy isn't booming for them. It's time for the Democrats to remind them why.
Republicans are rigging the economy for the rich and against average Americans.
Republicans voted against affordable healthcare insurance and for high premiums, high deductibles, low maximums and no preconditions. Republicans are rigging the healthcare economy against average Americans.
Republicans voted to eliminate regulations that were put in place after the bankers crashed the economy but made billions for themselves. Republicans are rigging the banking and investment economy against average Americans.
Republicans voted to lower taxes for corporations and the rich and give the rest of us a trillion dollars of debt. Republicans are rigging the tax economy against average Americans.
Republicans have stacked the courts with judges like Kavanaugh that consistently rule for corporations and the wealthy. Republicans are rigging the legal economy against average Americans.
It's time for Democrats to brand the GOP with the only idea the Republicans have: rigging the economy for the rich and against average Americans.
154
@Mr Rogers -- "Most Americans know the booming economy isn't booming for them. It's time for the Democrats to remind them why."
True. Absolutely. And that is a big problem for Democrats. Voters still remember that corporate Democrats did not help, totally sold out, and that the disappointment is the failure of Trump to be the rebellion they'd wanted *against corporate Democrats.*
What Democrats need is not "reminding" voters.
Democrats need a new message, a real message. They need Bernie, and Warren, and Ocasio-Cortez. They need what they *refused to do* last time, when they lost for it.
17
The economy isn’t booming - increases in the prices at the supermarket and stock market are evidence only of rampant inflation, and 90% of us, or more are effectively losing big as our salaries and pensions shrink in terms of purchasing power.
19
@Mark Thomason:
I'm a lib'. Bernie, though his message is genuine, (and I agree with much of it), is the last thing we need. His doctrine is unsellable to the masses because voters will likely not cast a ballot for one with "the socialist" stigma.
We have been dealing with racial resentment since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Only one politician since was able to overcome that and still win a landslide vicotry for president. Had LBJ made better decisions on Vietnam he would be ranked with Lincoln. He fought for and signed the civil rights act of 1964, before his landslide, and later the voting rights act which the Roberts court and Trump are trying to eviscerate. Where and when will find another Lincoln or LBJ?
78
@James Ricciardi LBJ also gave us Medicare. It was deeply unpopular with Congress. They were dead-set against it, calling it socialism. LBJ was determined the elderly shouldn't suffer and he rammed it through. Today, Medicare is one of the most popular programs the US has.
218
@James Ricciardi -- Lincoln and LBJ were both born to desperate poverty, and they remembered that feeling deep in their bones, even when they dug themselves out of it.
It is the silver spoon candidates who let us down, again and again.
The real exceptions were the two Roosevelts. Why? That is a question that deserves more attention.
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@James Ricciardi
I think LBJ was the last President who truly understood what poverty meant for those living it and cared about ameliorating the effects of poverty on Americans. We've gone half a century without leadership that considered the effects of policy on the least among us. We are certainly not better off for it.
10
I would like to see an ad that asks a few simple questions.
What has the republican party done that has improved your life?
What has the republican party done to ensure that health care needs for you and your children are met?
Do you worry that a medical emergency will result in catastrophic financial costs to you?
Are you confident that republicans will ensure that your children can attend an institution of higher learning to acquire
needed job skills without going into crippling debt?
Are you aware that the recent tax cut will add 1.5 trillion to the national debt and republicans propose to reduce it by taking money from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?
Are you aware that although unemployment is relatively low, that stagnant wages combined with higher consumer costs have more families struggling?
Are you aware that republicans have removed all of the measures put in place to prevent another Wall Street induced recession?
Are you aware of the removal of environmental protections put in place to protect our water supplies, food sources and clean air?
At a recent trump worship rally, he told his supporters that "democrat socialists are going to take away Medicare". They booed.
Last question - what is a socialist?
I doubt his supporters could answer that last one, but they should be asked the others. The truth might hit 'em hard enough to realize they've been conned for years, by pros.
487
@Deb -- Great questions.
Did the corporate Democrats do any better on any of those things? That is how we got to this awful pass.
You are right we've been "conned by pros."
You are right to ask about the "socialist" smear, used to undercut exactly what we need.
12
Those calling themselves “Socialists” don’t even know that what they’re really calling for is fairness in taxation and program funding. THAT IS NOT SOCIALISM FOLKS!
1
@Deb: I would love to see this ad campaign implemented.
Wish Dems had better ad agencies. While waiting in line at the gas station, I realized that two years ago, gas was $1.89 here in Florida. Now, $2,58 with my Sam's Club card. Big difference when wages for my retiree job aren't increasing. In fact, I am in sales, and have lost a slew of Canadian customers between the exchange rate and Trump. Yet, no mention by Bill Nelson or other Dems.
32
@crhcrhcrh58 I wish Dems had better ad agencies too, because there are many reasons to support them. But contrary to the popular belief, the price of gasoline is set on the world market, not by political parties.
9
@crhcrhcrh58
During the Trump campaign, the price was 20 dollars per barrel. Now it is 72 dollars.
2
Will someone please beg James Carville and Paul Begala to come out of retirement?
From the days in which the Republican Party implemented their "Southern Strategy" in the 1960's, other than convince their supporters their plight has been caused by other minority groups along with their continuous mantra that government, taxes and regulation are evil, they have never had any policies.
If there has ever been a policy on their part, it is to make their wealthy friends and campaign donors wealthier and the middle and lower class poorer, all done of course, while they systematically loot the treasury of its revenue while at the same time stating that government is not working.
44
While I agree with you, thou art not “God”, or you would be making calls to the White House, at the least<grim grin>.
Fr those for whom Latin all est Greacius, Deus = the Big Guy. And I probably even misspelled or used the wrong form for “Greek” myself.
Do the Republicans express ideas, or do they present a series of talking points constructed on fallacies, provocations, tales they think the voters want to hear, and will believe. they are not ideas per se, but a series of constructed beliefs, none of which they have originated?
There is nothing new in their spread of GOP beliefs, if they believe them at all, they seem to have connected with the most gullible members of society, those who also do not have any ideas, but wishes hopes and fears. Woodward's book "Fear"is aptly named, it is the psyche of the GOP voter. The GOP meme is to indoctrinate their base with fear. Fear of some nefarious Socialism, of those different than them becoming more than equal, of others taking advantage of them, ad infinitum.
Those farmers, are they really upset? We read they like what Dishonest Donald the Mad is doing and are willing to suffer for a better future, the coal miners that believe coal will come back, not ideas but beliefs in the supernatural, contradictions of reality, the numbing of their minds.
Have a talk with a Trumpster, try to talk facts and you will be discounted as being a Liberal, as if that is an answer to any clash between you and their belief system. Republican beliefs are not ideas, they are simple beliefs, as sayeth MacBeth, "It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." How prescient Will was.
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@David Underwood
Trump voters see prosperity as an elusive magic; They have always bought the snake oil. They will again.
Of course racial resentment put Trump over the top - this is nothing new, it has been putting Republicans in office for 50 years. Their strategy has been to divert economic dissatisfaction to racism, or to link conservative economics to racism. To suppose that no Republican voters are aware of the growing inequality, or that it has no influence on them would be very foolish. Republican voters rejected the big-money establishment candidates in the primary, as phony as Trump's "populistic" promises seemed to non-Republicans. Trump's racial xenophobia was probably a factor, but this is itself a break from establishment Republican policy, as immigration keeps wages down. Black and brown people are not really going to take over the country, nor do they get special welfare, but the 1% is not going to stop taking all the money - the economic situation is only going to get worse if Democrats don't do something about it. They have the power to do it, but they can't satisfy both the 99% and the big donors. Economic issues have the power to unite a real majority.
15
The timing of this tax cut - coming right as the Boomers retire, couldn't be worse. We've paid into Social Security and Medicare our entire lives in addition to paying private insurance premiums. We have 401k's that are not insured in any way and pensions have evaporated.
I can't believe the Boomers are not angry. Really, really angry.
311
@Mel, We are angry but our anger must be channeled into something positive such as shoring up and strengthening these programs. Just being angry and resisting the GOP and trump gets us nowhere but angrier.
4
@Mel We are. Have you been to a protest march since 2003? Seen photos of mass demonstrations, sit ins in the hallways of congress people? Lots of gray hairs there.
@Mel
We are, Mel!
Let amplify on GOP as “the party of no ideas and bad ideas.”
A big GOP idea is repealing “job killing regulations.”
Twenty-plus years ago, I was on a public-private task force, charged with regulatory reform. The idea was to identify regulations that increased business costs with no or inflated consumer benefit. Guess what? We didn’t come up with anything, or at least anything worth talking about. We saw that the big books of regulations we poured over, which were initially certain were sitting ducks under our analytical glaze, overwhelmingly, had logic and purpose.
The distinguishing element of that long-ago effort was, we did not have the chutzpah of today’s GOP. Today it is part of the GOP mantra to decry virtually every people-protecting regulation in the areas of the environment, health care and education as a “ job killing regulation.”
I’ll say it again, a major GOP “idea” is to portray people-protecting regulations as “job killing” regulations, all for the sake of the bottom line over the important public interests the regulations are meant to protect.
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@John McMahon It's not always "job killing"--sometimes it's "national security," a nice multifunctional excuse. Although some people are coming to realize that Trump himself is the true threat to national security.
2
@John McMahon
Thank you, John. You remind me of when I question mhy friends over on the right, "What regulations do you believe 'kill jobs'? What regulations have outlived their usefulness? Specifically, what regulations are stifling American progress?"
As you can imagine, they cannot think of ONE regulation that irks them. But they still buy into the GOP notion of deregulation. Former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan launched the deregulatry campaign since the late 1980s and look where that got us. A thrice-failed trickle-down theory, Wall Street criminality, subprime mortgage foreclosures and The Great Recession.
Republicans are running on empty. Trump won because his voters liked how straightforward he seemed. The great Twitter Chief of Tirades. He said they would hate all the "winning". I think he meant whining.
The Democrats need to up their game too. Politics is too divisive. Most people on either side hate all the fighting and political nonsense. The only platforms worthy of support were those by Bernie Sanders. But he got sandbagged. Bring him back. No one else has brought such excitement to the Democratic Party since Obama.
17
This op-ed and the ensuing comments - including yours - miss the point. Elections in western democracies are won in the center. The U.S. is not ready for Bernie Sanders. The political messaging needs to be simple and the candidate appealing to the larger audience. Bring on Sanders, Booker or Warren in 2020 and Dems will offer a second term to Trump. Reps might not have ideas but they know how to win elections. Maybe Dems should learn a couple of tricks from their playbook...
4
@FCH I think Sanders would have beaten Trump if he had been allowed to run instead of HRC. I am in the center and I supported Sanders.
But I see your point. I also say no to Booker or Warren. Check out Deval Patrick. I liked him when I was in Boston and I hope he runs.
I also think Mitt Romney will run in the Primary against Trump.
@FCH
Absurd when you consider how off the rails into crazy land the far right has gone. They are nowhere near the center.
And the majority of voters support and vote for progressive candidates and ideas - you'll just never see them in office due to gerrymandering, voter suppression, a House of Representatives that is capped and favors small underpopulated states, a Senate that allows a minority of the population to control the rest of us..
My state is resembling a banana republic. My vote is watered down in a district that snakes and slithers across the piedmont in order to cement the power of the republican minority.
If this inequity continues, hastened by the population move to larger cities, how close are we to looking like South Africa before the end of apartheid? Will other countries boycott the US until the minority is freed? Will we overcome
our oppressors before they destroy our nation?
Wake up - we are the majority, and we are progressive - if our voice is silenced by this extremist right wing governmemt, then what choices do we have?
Americans eventually get things right after we try everything else first. We now know from experience what the Republicans priority is. It's not that they have no ideas, it's that their ideas only serve the top 1%.
The question is what are we going to do about it. I suspect that the next few elections will tell us. People are running for office who wouldn't have in the past with the mindset that they want to make their constituents lives better. They're refusing corporate money so that they are only beholden to their voters.
We've tried Reaganomics for the last few decades. They don't work. FDR showed that investing in everyday Americans was a much better way to build a stronger America. Time to get back to the New deal philosophy that actually works.
29
I agree with Mr Krugman's conclusion that a Republican win this fall will be based on identity politics rather than policy substance. White backlash is a curious thing. It seeks to deny an obvious past while simultaneously declaring that bygones should be expunged from the record. All these women and brown shaded people, and gay, trans, or otherwise different people clamoring for rights that they don't have to clamor for clearly indicate special privileges being seized. The Republican movement to abandon policy and run merely on fanning resentment is dangerous. They deserve a resounding loss, and more to follow, until their think tanks and political leaders get focused back on how to run an egalitarian society.
17
@Some Dude, "focused back" is a misconception. They never, ever wanted an egalitarian society; it would have no room for political control by multi-multi-billionaires.
12
Instead of writing that The Republicans are the party of no ideals, let's just sop at "the party of no." This is what they were for 8 years of the Obama administration, whether it was extending unemployment benefits, raising the minimum wage, coming up with immigration legislation, or refusing to give Merrick Garland a hearing or even an interview.
23
I disagree. Republicans have ideas -- very simple ideas. Much like the "hedgehog" their simple idea or ideas can be boiled down to this: less government and regulation, lower taxes. Everything else is in service of those simple and easily expressed and understood goals. And they are making good every day at implementing policies to those ends and destroying any policies (or enforcement) that might impede the greed.
The Democrats, on the other hand, are more like the "fox". Their ideas are more diffusive and harder to express concisely or to enact into policy. The Democrats also have been unwilling, unable or ineffective at making the connections between Republican policies and long-term effects for most people that the electorate needs. We can speculate why they have been so unwilling, unable or so ineffective. Perhaps they serve the same master as Republicans, maybe with just a bit less obedience.
When the time draws near to a presidential election year, my hope is always that we will finally have a national conversation about the many ideas and urgent issues we must. But then we don't. Ever. Why? And what will change the situation?
8
@Pontifikate I think "impede the greed" would be a great slogan!
2
@Pontifikate
I am sorry to point to you such an obvious answer to your question “why Dems are so ineffective”.
Because they don’t have a propaganda arm, as GOP has. MSM do not report on Democratic policies, they report on she said/he said.
When will it occur to many Americans that conservatives have TV stations, hundreds of right wing radio stations and thousands of religious congregations spewing the same message 24/7 to more than 50 millions of adult Americans?
2
@Jeoffrey
You are assuming folks know what "impede" means.
Big mistake.
A surge of new ideas from the GOP given Trump just isn't in the cards. The GOP repudiating Trump even more unlikely. Relief from him and ushering in new policy shifts rely solely on the midterm results.
Trump fatigue might overcome all Republican election advantages. His act has become predictable and boring.
4
I think the GOP are onto a winning policy. It's called 'Divide and Conquer'. Its works for GOP voters and their gerrymandered jurisdictions that RED States' had methodically crafted since Obama got elected.
15
Trump voters wanted a "businessman", a non-ideological pragmatist. They thought he was rich and that meant he was smart and that was good enough. But even if that had been true, a business is not a democracy. A business is not run with the long term in mind. A business seeks to externalize costs. None of that works as public policy.
These voters were willing to give up the complexity and frustrations of democracy if Mr Trump could only use his "successful businessman" magic to deliver an immediate boost in their prosperity. Here. Now. They were, in fact, eager to trade their democratic birthright for a mess of pottage.
You say intellectual sterility of the GOP has been exposed, but would people willing to vote for this in the first place really be aware of what has been risked or may be lost? Would they bother themselves to understand why the promised universal health care or middle class prosperity has not materialized? I do so very much hope so, but...
83
@Susan Watson No. They wanted someone who played to their racial bias. Nothing more, nothing less.
2
The Republicans have had only one political agenda for the past 50 years. Cut taxes on the rich and pay for it by getting rid of Social Security and Medicare. The got the first part done, now they are working on phase two.
386
To pat myself on the back a bit, I'd say Bob Dole won the nomination in 1996 because he was the candidate with no ideas, while all the other candidates for the GOP nomination had bad ideas. We've had about 20 years of clamoring for bad ideas, and I'm glad to hear that there's enough distaste for bad ideas now to turn the public off on them. Hope they'll turn off on the entire GOP.
21
FDR: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
GOP: "The only thing we have to sell is fear itself."
The country we once were, and the country we are now.
1108
I like this. Also GOP: “The only thing we have to fear is other people themselves.”
1
@jimline
I fear you are absolutely right.
@jimline Nothing new here:
Bush I: Willie Horton
Bush II: Beslan
His Unhinged Unraveling Unfitness lies so profusely and with such alacrity, that the 1 or 2 Big Lies GOP'ers used to campaign on have gotten subsumed in the avalanche of falsity - even the adept GOP'ers can't change lying talking points fast enough to keep up with the liar-in-chief/condo sales guy.
Focusing on a single aspect of Dr. K.'s litany of Trumpism, voters are wise to the fact corporations aren't repatriating their $3.1 Trillion$ in overseas profits at a very fast rate, and what they have repatriated is going into the pockets of the already well-off:
https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/investing/business-spending-tax-law-tru...
The one time bonuses that some workers received - in lieu of raises - didn't fool them, and they know the party on Wall Street is not indicative of the actual economy, except for those who have hefty 401k's.
The various Google Trends charts for each state seem to indicate people are concerned about immigration, and healthcare.
We suspect voters are also wise to what the Trumpists will do in the Lame Duck Session, trying to further shred the social safety net in order to lessen the deficit caused by handing out tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy, and corporations - corporate tax cuts which Dr. K. has pointed out hugely benefit foreigners, not Americans:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/opinion/trump-taxes-wealthy-foreigner...
24
And, yet, Trump supporters speak in glowing terms of "all the wonderful things he is doing for America" or even, as a NYT letter writer recently said, "Trump's economic miracle." Sadly, much of the damage this POTUS is doing mostly through Executive Orders will take years, if not decades, to do the clear damage they will cause.
The GOP in Congress is not only policy deficient but also completely lacking a single spine among them (McCain seems to have taken their allotment of backbone to his grave). Some of them will run on Trump; Trump (in the places where he is popular) will push the issue that he needs the GOP to continue 'making America great again.' We'll see, but your right - they've got nothing in the way of real ideas.
96
"The G.O.P. has become the party of no ideas." The GOP is a party of ideas. Those ideas continue to have a hold on them and quite a few Americans. Cutting taxes is usually a sure fire way to keep people happy. Only when the GOP put this "tax cut" through they raised taxes for more people than they realized. Some of those people are their supporters. Saying that they'd repeal and replace the ACA was big with more than a few Americans until they realized what might happen to them without the ACA. So the GOP, after flailing around for about 6 months decided on death by a thousand cuts. They'd make the ACA fail and blame Obama. Much easier to do that than to tweak it.
When Clinton was in office their main mission was to obstruct him. When W was in office they supported him no matter what. Then came Obama and they dragged out every racial stereotype they could to scare white Americans. The GOP had an 8 year temper tantrum thus allowing the country to fall farther behind the rest of the world. Now we have an incompetent white supremacist constantly cranky toddler in the White House. And the GOP isn't finished ruining the country. There's still more work to do.
They are the party that wants to wreck America for most Americans. They have the Adelsons, the Koch Brothers, and other uber rich people feeding them money to do just that. There's no shortage of ideas out there to make America a failed democracy: just ask the oligarchs who hate to share.
514
@hen3ry
Agreed: the US has failed, as a mature, progressive nation-state.
Exhibits: Citizens United, loss of judicial control over gerrymandering, endemic racism, Electoral College, gun control, the last two pointing to a systemic problem -- the difficulty in changing an 18th-century Constitution, the outdated assumptions on the basis of which it was drawn up.
Life-forms become extinct, if they fail to adapt. The US and its vaunted values are due to become a natural political history museum piece, something from which more enlightened populations might learn.
7
@hen3ry And their temper tantrum is not yet over.
2
The downside of globalization: job loss, was much worse than the tiny benefit of cheaper goods at Walmart. Democrats did not recognize this and continued to be apologists for globalization.
If they have learned their lesson, they may have a chance.
10
@Ron, I suppose you could make the same case for automation, which has eliminated more American jobs than globalization. Wealthy countries simply can’t compete for unskilled and low-skilled labor as China is now discovering with jobs migrating to Vietnam, India and Sub Saharan Africa. The way forward for American jobs would be to focus on our strengths but that would require effective grade school education and China has us beat there as well.
29
@Ron. Correction: The Democrats are not the party of globalization. You may claim the Republicans are not. We can leave that to an unsurprising POV difference. But one thing is crystal clear, the bankers, the global bankers, are globalists. They are rich. They are powerful. They control the flow of money, and the money flow of all the countries in the world. They sprinkle largesse where they want. They can and do reduce swathes of the world to economic desserts if that serves their one and only goal: profit. The globalization of what was once American's mighty manufacturing sector was done by rich and powerful. If banking had not financed off-shoring, it wouldn't have happened. And if our banking laws had not allowed it, it wouldn't have happened. As our banking laws unravelled to allow the banks to gamble as they saw fit, to finance as they saw fit without any regard for the millions of people impacted by their decisions, as bankers chuckled all the way out of the offices of our government officials and straight to their banks...and so it goes. This is not a left/right battle. Until everyone understands that those of us who are not the rich and powerful must stand together to put our country back on track to server ALL of us, we will continue to be blind to the real cause and effect. You cannot solve a problem that hasn't been accurately defined. Can the Dem name calling. You're going to need us when the revolution comes...and we're going to need you.
16
@Ron
I consider Clintonesque democrats to have had a planned approach to globalization that included people. Republicans are not stopping it. They are letting behemoth corporations do it their way without government interference.
12
Two of my sons, one in NY and the other in CA might disagree a little with you Paul. See, their going to get hammered this year on property taxes, thanks to one "super bad idea" capping the property taxes at $10k. They now will pay more taxes this year.
No ideas, yes, if you include the bad ones too.
32
No they have a few ideas. The GOP is the party of few ideas, most of them bad, all of them Hobbesian. Their big idea as I have stated before is that the poor have too much money and the rich not enough.
The Dems have too many ideas and would do better to focus on a few important ones and accept the fact that the human being by its very nature is out-of-joint, unwell and in no way fits into this world.
Voting would be another good idea they need work on.
Giving up optimism as a political mechanism and adopting pessimism “would” be their best idea, but like a baby needs it’s binky, Dems need an illusion to get them through the day, generally this comes in the form of humanism.
A pessimist would have never assumed DJT couldn’t win, and would have not slept in that day in Nov but voted and often.
24
To be fair the Republican Party is not the party of no ideas; it's merely the party of bad ideas, or more precisely bad ideas from the 1920s, repeated over and over again with the same disastrous results.
571
At Trump rallies there are banners 'promises made, promises kept'. On cable networks that tend not to be favorable to Mr. Trump I frequently hear that he has been checking off the boxes of promises in the campaign. If that is true someone seems to have misplaced a few boxes. Recall that during the campaign Trump was referred to as a populist where that amorphous term was used to mean something more than racial resentment. Let us take a tour through his populist programs and see if these are promises kept.
1) Infrastructure, this was to be an area where the Democrats could work with Trump & where a stimulus program could be put in place. While it can be argued that we don't need a stimulus program we do need higher wages, but there is no infrastructure project even suggested.
2) Family leave, this was supposed to be a sign that, possibly through Ivanka, Trump was really was concerned about the everyday life of women, not a peep.
3) Lower drug prices, Trump promised that he would use his great ability at the Art of the Deal to negotiate lower drug prices, this was dropped weeks into the adm .
4) Increased taxes for hedge fund managers, that was supposed to show that Trump was some sort of "occupy" candidate. When was the last time you heard about that?
5) And of course some magical health care program that would go twice as far as the ACA at half the costs, then repeal and replace became repeal alone.
So just where is the populism?
1028
You forgot his promises to give everyone healthcare cheaper and better and not to touch Social Security or Medicare!
9
@Greg Jones
Here are the ways Trump is fulfilling his promises:
1. Infrastructure: Build the Wall. Build the Keystone XL pipeline. Use expensive military munitions to rearrange rocks and sand in the Middle East.
2. Family Leave: ICE project at our southern border, grab the kids and deport the parents.
3. Lower Drug Prices: not necessary, since so many patients are dying in the opioid epidemic, the overall cost is decreasing.
4. Tax on hedge fund managers: everyone gets LOWER taxes, even these hard-working guys and gals.
5. Healthcare: see #3 -- fewer people on the healthcare rolls.
In addition, full employment and world peace can be achieved by increasing the number of people in the army from 450,000 to 500,000 in the next few years.
8
@Greg Jones Look Greg, the man is a liar. Why would anyone believe him?
1
in the TN senate race, a hard right serial liar is running against the former governor and the tv ads from the right are using the words "single payer" and "socialized medicine" the way former AMA spokesman ronald reagan did in "operation coffee cup," as a paid shill
Reagan describes Representative Cecil R. King of California as the successor to Congressman Forand in his support for a bill that would provide senior citizens with medical care. (The 1962 King-Anderson bill is often described as a precursor to the Social Security Act of 1965, which established Medicare.) Reagan cites the expansion of private health insurance and the passage of the 1960 Kerr-Mills Act, which provided federal funds to states to cover the "medically needy," as evidence that King's legislation is unnecessary. Reagan concludes that the new bill is "simply an excuse to bring about what they wanted all the time: socialized medicine." Reagan warns against the danger of encroaching on the relationship between patients and doctors, and of an attack on doctors' freedoms.
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And, for the first time, we had numerous GOP Congressmen telling us they voted for the tax bill for the 1% and corporations....because they needed to pay back/keep sweet their donors. This included my Senator, Susan Collins...the one who claims it is unfair that $1.5 million has been raised for her opponent if she approves Kavanaugh (in mostly $20.20 amounts).
In other words, the GOP has told us plainly their TRUE constituents are the ones who vote with dollars, not votes.
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@Susan
Many thought of Collins as a moderate but she has amply demonstrated that she's just as obedient to McConnell & Trump as the rest of her woebegone GOP colleagues. So, now people have found another way to reach her.....campaign funds, for her eventual opponent, that is. If she rubber stamps Kavanaugh, I will happily contribute to her future opponent.
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@Susan I'm beginning to wonder if our "moderate" Senator is starting to live on borrowed time. I remember when she claimed she would only serve 2 terms in the Senate. That was a long time ago. If Kavanaugh comes up for a vote in the Senate and she votes yes I think she will pay the price in 2020.
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Dr. Krugman should leave humor to Gail (and me). He doesn’t do it well.
Republicans, who have been fairly steady with ideas as major initiatives must be over time to get enacted, are “losing the battle of ideas”, yet over all that time they incrementally destroyed the electoral relevance of Democrats at every level of our governance down to town dog-catcher. Republicans hold Congress and the presidency, and hold two-thirds of our governorships and partisan statehouse chambers. And you can’t gerrymander a gubernatorial or U.S. Senate election, because ALL the voters of a state vote for these offices. The Senate is testimony to how split down the middle we really are. I know that Dr. Krugman argues, as many commenters here do, that we should be governed by California but, thankfully, states COUNT in this country – ALL our states -- and his ideological fellow-travelers simply will need to find a way to impose their will by the rules our Constitution sets out. Heaven knows, Krugman’s side certainly lacks the power to amend it.
Clearly, the party that has been losing the battle of ideas over multiple election cycles has been the Democratic Party. Their messages for a long time now have been too extreme when they haven’t involved mere “resistance” to anything elephant-like.
This is simply another sour grapes column about a Constitution that Krugman rejects, largely because his side can’t change it as they would have liked to change the rules in 2000’s Bush v. Gore to …
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… barely lose an election yet still win it. Keep spending your time merely complaining about that and not only won’t you achieve change but readerships will tire of reading the kvetches.
Moderate your messages and get your firebrands under control – muzzling Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who hasn’t even been elected yet) would be a good start. A more moderate Democratic Party could make excessively conservative Republicans not only run for cover but moderate their actual policies in self-defense.
But some people just like to kvetch, when they realize that they lack the power to simply impose their convictions.
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@Richard Luettgen this is funny. The reason the GOP keeps winning is because they practice gerrymandering. Trump did not win the popular vote. As for firebrands, I'd rather have Elizabeth Warren than Ted Cruz any day.
You can cheer for the GOP all you like but I see nothing worthwhile in a party that tries to control women's reproductive lives, take the vote away from minorities, continuing to support an incompetent fool as president, and putting through a tax "reform" that hurts working Americans.
Thanks for the laugh. I needed it.
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@Richard Luettgen. We've seen the peak of the GOP's success in this era. Trump's legacy won't be tax cuts or deregulation, it will be to have led Republicans into the abyss. Deficits, anyone? Trade war? Recession? Next up, let's watch as McConnell and Grassley overplay their hand on Kavanaugh.
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It is terribly wrong to say the GOP is the party of no ideas. That's because their ideas are not about implementing policies for the people. When you look at intent and what Trump, his cabinet and Congress have been doing, then one realizes that the idea is to undo, repeal regulations, roll back laws, destroy the U.S. government with the express intent to funnel all moneys saved back to the oligarchy.
The most visible of these actions was the Tax Scam Bill. Most voters know about it.
Everything else is out there for people to judge for themselves.
This is about reversing the osmosis of the common good, for the good of the most powerful and wealthy among us. That is how oligarchies work.
Want ideas? Elect progressive politicians. Everyone else, to one degree or another does the bidding of corporate America and the billionaires out there.
We have an oligarch in power. He and his mafia of oligarchs are in control. These primaries have included other oligarchs and they are not in the same clique as Trump. In my county, there is an oligarch, Tom Steyer, who has been supporting progressive candidates. Soon, we will see Michael Bloomberg run as a Democrat.
Do any of these people have the kinds of ideas that benefit you? When is the last time they were hungry, worried about housing or the cost of gas?
Think, people... Think! There is no such thing as a benevolent oligarch.
===
Things Trump Did While You Weren’t Looking https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2ZW
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If confirmed, Brett Kavanaugh will have a vote on healthcare, women's issues, economic issues as they pertain to disputes between various parties and the government and, as such, our economy.
Kavanaugh's defense on the accusations of attempted rape and sexual assault?
""We’re talking about an allegation of sexual assault," Kavanaugh said in a clip released from his interview on Fox News Channel's "The Story with Martha MacCallum."
"I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone," Kavanaugh said. "I did not have sexual intercourse or anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years thereafter ... The girls from the schools I went to, and I, were friends."
"Through all these years that were in question, you were a virgin?" Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked.
"That’s correct," Kavanaugh replied, adding that he did not have sex until "many years after" college."
He said these things on Fox News tonight
https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2ZW
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@Rima Regas The only ideas the GOP has concern money, how to get it, how to cheat others out of it, and who will give them the most. That's why they avoid most of their constituents. They don't want to see how 99% of us live. They prefer the rarefied air of the 1% who never have to worry about mundane things like paying the bills, getting a job, helping to put the kids through college, saving for retirement while being underpaid.
It must be simple to be a Republican. All you have to do is worship Donald Trump, court the Adelsons and the Kochs, and suspend reality.
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@Rima Regas, that is what Krugman means by "no ideas". Tearing things down does not involve ideas.
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