You guys have seen the map before. I've written it up longer, and I hope more coherent, with new material, and corrected French history (which now looks very poorly done in the old post, especially the art history), so there's a lot to read that you haven't read. It was also a lot of work, which is a reason I haven't been here much, so I hope you'll all read it.
 |
| The Dodo explaining the meaning of "caucus race". Illustration by John Tenniel via [checks notes] Walmart. |
In the context of the discovery by The New Yorker's economics and business correspondent Adam Davidson that Republicans who proclaim a deep devotion to the principle that government should never interfere in the processes of the free market may not be perfectly sincere. Not just that I set Davidson and Rick Pearlstein straight (though Davidson actually seemed to be paying some attention), but I think I came up with something important on the subject of what a political coalition is, that nobody ever quite says:
This tweet yesterday. Was saying if he wants to get educated on what the GOP’s been for decades, he should read your work. https://t.co/VWnrjT6nef
— David (@RollingPrez2390) March 16, 2022
I guess it depends on how you'd define the GOP.
— Adam Davidson (@adamdavidson) March 17, 2022
And how you define racism.
I bought the story you are telling: that it was a coalition of racists, free-marketers, Christians, etc.
I don't buy that story anymore.
1/
2. Someone who claimed free-market as their core ideology but who then quickly accepted an anti-market, state-power, racist program is, IMO, racist. Even if they weren't focused on overt racism (a la John Birch, say) previously.
— Adam Davidson (@adamdavidson) March 17, 2022
3/
So you mean true free marketeers *would* object, no? If they actually existed as a force in political life as opposed to academic departments.
— Yas We Can (@Yastreblyansky) March 17, 2022
 |
| Red-Green, by Eskemar. |
Two years ago Brad DeLong https://t.co/k1silHdHv5 via @voxdotcom I can't imagine Biden managed to read this but it's almost as if somebody did
— Screechy Ill-Speak (@Yastreblyansky) March 21, 2021
Now he's re-upped it, or the link to it, at his SubStack venue: that Vox interview, which I remembered quite well though I don't seem to have written about it at the time, about how old "Rubin Democrats" like himself need to give up and pass the baton to the democratic socialists, because his own way would never have another chance to succeed:
The core reason, DeLong argues, is political. The policies he supports depend on a responsible center-right partner to succeed. They’re premised on the understanding that at least a faction of the Republican Party would be willing to support market-friendly ideas like Obamacare or a cap-and-trade system for climate change. This is no longer the case, if it ever were.
“Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney’s health care policy, with John McCain’s climate policy, with Bill Clinton’s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy,” DeLong notes. “And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years? No, they fucking did not.”