Once you strip away all the hysteria and madness surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency, you’re left with the political agenda of a populist, big-government Republican. Whether you have moral or personal arguments against Trump himself, the president’s stated policy positions fit neatly into the contours of established right-wing politics.
Can the same be said for Democrats? Sorry, but across-the-board tax cuts, despite the panicky reaction we’ve seen, aren’t particularly dramatic. Every Republican president since Warren Harding has enacted some kind of tax cut. So has Trump’s stated position on circumscribed foreign involvement, which is popular with huge factions of both parties. Trump’s pro-Israel stance has long been a GOP position. And it enjoyed bipartisan consensus before President Barack Obama.
Higher tariffs, which many of us consider destructive and counterproductive, have been part of our economic debate forever. We also shouldn’t forget that while knee-jerk anti-Trumpism may have turned many Democrats into short-lived free-marketeers, most progressives share Trump’s protectionist instincts. Hillary Clinton, for example, was forced to change her long-standing positions on NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the 2016 campaign to please her left flank. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s recent trade proposal not only makes Trump look like Milton Friedman, but also allows environmental groups and labor unions to dictate terms.
Debt? Unfortunately, no one cares.
During a CNN debate in Detroit, presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg warned that no matter what policies Democrats adopt, Republicans will continue to call them “crazy socialists.” Until recently, there was no need for any qualifier, because Democrats feigned outrage at the mere mention of socialism. But now that Democrats are openly embracing collectivist policies—one of their leading candidates is actually a socialist who could easily be the party’s presidential nominee in 2016—(SET ITAL)sane(END ITAL) socialism is apparently OK.
And let’s be straightforward, leading candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders oppose free enterprise as anything other than a mechanism to fund their state social engineering projects. They see capitalism as an evolutionary stage, so to speak. In debates, both argued for the total mobilization of society to achieve their political goals.
Warren argued that insurance companies do not have a God-given right to “suck all the money out of health care.” However, she does believe that the government does have a God-given right to nationalize entire industries, dictate what Americans can buy and sell, and impose confiscatory taxes. I’m not sure if that qualifies as “crazy socialism,” but it’s certainly un-American and dictatorial.
Democrats want to get rid of your private health insurance. Every single one of them. They want to do it immediately, through “Medicare for All,” or gradually, by creating a “public option” that would destroy your private plan by forcing it to “compete” with an institution that can print money.
Perhaps this kind of economic populism will give socialists the muscle to win elections. Or perhaps this kind of etatism is destined to become the dominant ideology of both parties. But the absence of the profit motive is why government-run businesses are wasteful and bloated. Without profit, there is no incentive to improve efficiency, services, technology, or anything else. So mock Trump all you want for his word salad or lack of political knowledge, but he certainly understands this basic idea.
He’s not alone. Socialists spent much of their time brushing off the concerns of low-scoring candidates last night. At one point, Sanders — whose speechwriter once celebrated Venezuela’s “economic miracle” — recited some of the fantastic aspects of socialist medicine, and Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan responded, “But you don’t know that, you don’t know that, Bernie.” To which Sanders shouted, “I know that. I wrote the damn bill.”
That empty answer excited the crowd, but you almost certainly have to be a socialist to believe that the government can control all the costs, services, technological advances, and human interactions in a $3 trillion industry just because it’s written into law.
“The Green New Deal, every American guaranteed a government job if they want it—it’s a disaster at the ballot box. You might as well FedEx the election to Donald Trump,” warned John Hickenlooper, another member of the logical coalition.
Warren responded that Hickenlooper was parroting GOP talking points. She was wrong. At the heart of the Green New Deal is a call to eliminate all fossil fuel energy production within 20 years. The Green New Deal would also get rid of all nuclear power and 99 percent of cars, gut and retrofit every building in America, and offer every citizen a government-guaranteed “family-living wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement,” “safe, affordable, adequate housing,” and “economic security” for all who are “unable or unwilling” to work.
If that’s not crazy socialism, what is?
Democrats will surely withdraw some of this bait before the election. But judging by the election debates, Trump will be the voice of moderation.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist and author of First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History With the Gun.
