"Cold War II"

"Great powers, then, must not only have substantial populations and resources, but must also use them to support a world-class national industrial base in a prolonged and sustainable way. Neither state socialist crash programs that peter out over time nor bubbles and booms inflated by central banks in liberal market economies are adequate. To date in the industrial era, developmental states, both authoritarian like present-day China and democratic like the midcentury United States, have been more successful than communist regimes and free market liberal regimes."

Michael Lind at Tablet argues that we "are in a new era of global conflict."

"This Is a Truly Epochal Development"

"Constantly replacing old terms with new terms known only to the oligarchs is a brilliant strategy of social exclusion. The rationale is supposed to be that this shows greater respect for particular groups. But there was no grassroots working-class movement among Black Americans demanding the use of 'enslaved persons' instead of 'slaves' and the overwhelming majority of Americans of Latin American descent—a wildly homogenizing category created by the U.S. Census Bureau—reject the weird term 'Latinx.' Woke speech is simply a ruling-class dialect, which must be updated frequently to keep the lower orders from breaking the code and successfully imitating their betters."

Michael Lind at Tablet discusses "the consolidation of a national ruling class."

Impeach, Remove, Indict, Incarcerate

"Schedule an impeachment vote for this very night. Stay 'til dawn. Do whatever is necessary. Avert any potential for martial law. Deny Trump command of the military; withdraw the nuclear codes. Don't wait until the next crossed red line, until the next smashed barrier, until the next putsch attempt. Install Mike Pence right away as the 46th president and work with him to manage the transition on January 20 to Joe Biden as the 47th. Bar Trump from ever again holding office—and get ready to prosecute him for his crimes on January 21."

David Frum at The Atlantic calls for the immediate removal of Donald Trump from office.

And Michael Lind at Tablet writes that the "mob assault on the Capitol is simply another entry in the catalog of American decline."

"A Version of Social Gospel Protestantism Has Mutated into the Secular Religion of Wokeness"

"What we are witnessing is a power grab carried out chiefly by some white Americans against other white Americans. The goal of the new woke national establishment, the successor to the old Northeastern mainline Protestant establishment that was temporarily displaced by the neo-Jacksonian New Deal Democratic coalition, is to stigmatize, humiliate and disempower recalcitrant Southern, Catholic, and Jewish whites, along with members of ethnic and racial minorities who refuse to be assimilated into the new national orthodoxy disseminated from New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and the prestigious private universities of New England."

Michael Lind at Tablet argues that "the Great Awokening is the revenge of the Yankees."

"Attaining New Levels of Political Power and Cultural Visibility"

"Perhaps the essence of left-conservatism is its plea for social cohesion and a concomitant rejection of post-national elites with their one-two punch of economic liberalism and the adversary culture. At root, the New Class/Anywhere elite is attached to a transnational status culture, much like Europe's aristocracy prior to the age of nations. Michael Lind captures this milieu well in The New Class War (2020), contrasting those who 'derive their personal status from their prestigious occupations, not their local or national communities; abandon their low-status class or ethnic or regional accents in order to succeed in metropolitan careers; and jettison ancestral traditions in favor of ever-changing transnational elite fashions.'"

Eric Kaufmann at Tablet describes the "Rebirth of the Left-Conservative Tradition."

"The Difference Between Sanders in 2016 and Sanders in 2020 Is Instructive"

"The tragedy is that the economic agenda of the classic labor left is far better for most people than any alternatives offered by the left-neoliberals of the Clinton-Obama and Blair-Brown schools. It is also better than the agenda of the right-wing neoliberals who dominate the Republican Congress, which has blocked Donald Trump from acting on his populist promises during his 2016 campaign, assuming those promises were sincere. But barring freakish contingencies, the labor left will never be able to stagger to electoral victory with the two albatrosses of socialism and hipster wokeness around its neck."

Michael Lind at Tablet discusses the "Three Lefts."

"The Reassembling of New Democratic and Republican Coalitions Is Nearly Finished"

"Social issues spurred a partisan realignment by changing who considered themselves Democrats and Republicans. Over decades, socially conservative working-class whites migrated from the Democratic Party to join the Republican Party, especially in the South. Socially moderate Republicans, especially on the East Coast, shifted to the Democratic coalition. Now, there's little disagreement within each party on social issues. Liberal Republicans are as rare as Reagan Democrats.
"Like an ebb tide that reveals a reshaped coastline, the culture war remade the parties' membership and is now receding. In its absence, we are able to see a transformed political landscape.
"The culture war and partisan realignment are over; the policy realignment and 'border war'—a clash between nationalists, mostly on the right, and multicultural globalists, mostly on the left—have just begun."

Michael Lind in Politico argues that in this year, "the old political system is crumbling, and a new American political order is being born."

"Members of the Intellectual Professions Are Quite Atypical"

"So it is natural for academics to view a borderless world as the moral and political ideal—natural, but still stupid and lazy. Make-believe cosmopolitanism is particularly stupid and lazy in the case of academics who fancy themselves progressives. In the absence of a global government that could raise taxes to fund a global welfare state, the free movement of people among countries would overburden and destroy existing national welfare states, or else empower right-wing populists to defend welfare states for natives against immigrants, as is happening both in the U.S. and Europe.
"The views of intellectuals about social reform tend to be warped by professional and personal biases, as well. In the U.S. the default prescription for inequality and other social problems among professors, pundits, and policy wonks alike tends to be:  More education! Successful intellectuals get where they are by being good at taking tests and by going to good schools. It is only natural for them to generalize from their own highly atypical life experiences and propose that society would be better off if everyone went to college—natural, but still stupid and lazy. Most of the jobs in advanced economies—a majority of them in the service sector—do not require higher education beyond a little vocational training. Notwithstanding automation, for the foreseeable future janitors will vastly outnumber professors, and if the wages of janitors are too low then other methods—unionization, the restriction of low-wage immigration, a higher minimum wage—make much more sense than enabling janitors to acquire BAs, much less MAs and Ph.Ds."

Michael Lind at The Smart Set reminds intellectuals how they differ from the bulk of the population.

"He's Just a Conservative in Disguise!"

"Some years ago the editor of a left-wing magazine asked me if I would consider writing a regular column. The editor told me, 'We want to move in a more progressive direction.'
"I replied, 'Progressive, in the sense of Woodrow Wilson and Walter Lippmann and Herbert Croly?'
"'No,' the editor answered, 'we were thinking of Bukharin.'
"Moderate American reformers, revolutionary Russian Marxist-Leninists—whatever. We're all one big happy progressive family!"

Michael Lind at The Smart Set defines himself as a left-liberal.

"I Presume the Rich Might Disagree"

"One effect of focusing on economic conflict, as Sanders has done, is that it helps reduce other types of conflict. With his calls for breaking up Wall Street banks and helping young people with tuition, Sanders is uniting people across lines of identity by directing them to a cause that has nothing directly to do with identity. Moreover, while economics cause serious and passionate fights, compromise is possible. Maybe Bernie supporters will have to settle for less tuition help than they wanted, or Wall Street will have to give up more than it expected. But people will be left standing. With economic negotiations, adversaries can arrive at something other than total victory or annihilation."

Inspired by a Michael Lind article in The New York Times, T. A. Frank in Vanity Fair considers Trumpism, Clintonism, and Sandersism.

"The Summer of Trump"

"Trump's establishment rivals, like Jeb Bush, accuse him of not being a true conservative. That is true, if conservatism is defined by the beliefs of the Republican Party's elite donors and the think tank experts whom they subsidize. But if conservatism is defined by what the voters who make up the conservative base actually believe, then it is the deviations of the GOP establishment from right-wing populist orthodoxy that must be explained.
"For years the Republican elite has gotten away with promoting policies about trade and entitlements that are the exact opposites of the policies favored by much of their electoral base. Populist conservatives who want to end illegal immigration, tax the rich, protect Social Security and Medicare, and fight fewer foreign wars have been there all along."

Michael Lind at Politico calls Donald Trump "a classic populist of the right."

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone says that Trump will try to "win with a whites-only strategy."

And Reihan Salam in Slate looks at future of white-minority identity politics.

"Let's Abolish Social Science"

"In my old age, I hope to found a new university, called rather unimaginatively the New University, with funding from one or another imprudent billionaire (a prudent billionaire would turn me down). In contemporary universities and colleges there is often a division among the natural sciences, social science and humanities. In my New University, there would be only two faculties: natural sciences and the humanities. The social sciences would be abolished.
"Social science was—it is best to speak in the past tense—a mistake. The dream of a comprehensive science of society, which would elucidate 'laws of history' or 'social laws' comparable to the physical determinants or 'laws' of nature, was one of the great delusions of the 19th century."

Michael Lind in The Smart Set makes a modest proposal.

"Give an Irishman a Horse and He'll Vote Tory"

"Different variables will yield different predictions.  But it seems likely that the political clout of more conservative regions like the South and Southwest will continue to grow as a result of population shifts.  And because powerful, enduring regional cultures tend to replace dwindling and attenuating immigrant cultures, a growing number of conservative Southern and Southwestern Latinos in the electorate may doom the hope that Latino immigration and fertility will propel a Democratic coalition of Latinos, African-Americans and white progressives to permanent power in American government."


Michael Lind in Salon questions the emerging Democratic majority.

Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen heute "Conservative Economics Tradition"?

"Elsewhere in the world, conservatives are perfectly willing to regulate or sometimes socialize industries or rig markets in the pursuit of social objectives.  Conservative social objectives, however, are different from those of the center-left.  What distinguishes most conservative parties and movements in the advanced capitalist world is their greater degree of nationalism and familism, compared to center-left supra-nationalism and individualism.  Nationalism has often led conservatives in Britain, France and Germany to support protectionism or the nationalization of strategic industries.  And conservative familism leads, in countries like Germany, to a preference for stay-at-home mothers, as opposed to the working mothers in Sweden and France whose careers are enabled by state-provided day-care.
"Thus the puzzle:"


Michael Lind in Salon asks the question.

"Big Change Is on the Way"

"If social liberal attitudes become nearly universal, then today’s conservatism and today’s populism vanish or become marginalized. A four-fold division of the American electorate would be replaced by a simpler binary opposition. In an America which, a generation or two hence, practically everyone is a social liberal, there would be two socially liberal factions that disagree chiefly about economics, even as they share current liberal positions on abortion, gay rights and censorship.
"This realignment of attitudes will not happen by 2020, perhaps not even by 2030. But it has already occurred in Britain and most of Europe, where the local conservatives are social liberals, by American standards. By the mid-21st century, a similar situation is likely to obtain on this side of the Atlantic.
"One of the consequences I predict is the crack-up of today’s Democratic coalition—paradoxically, as a direct consequence of the decline of social conservatism."


Michael Lind in Salon looks to the future.

"Superficial, Juvenile Nonsense"

Michael Lind at Salon goes on a tear against libertarianism.

"Contrary to What Is Often Said, the 'Original Sin' of the South Is Not Slavery, or Even Racism. It Is Cheap, Powerless Labor"

"Northernomics is the high-road strategy of building a flourishing national economy by means of government-business cooperation and government investment in R&D, infrastructure and education. Although this program of Hamiltonianism (named after Washington’s first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton) has been championed by maverick Southerners as prominent as George Washington, Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln (born in Kentucky to a Southern family), the building of a modern, high-tech, high-wage economy has been supported chiefly by political parties based in New England and the Midwest, from the Federalists and the Whigs through the Lincoln Republicans and today’s Northern Democrats.
"Southernomics is radically different. The purpose of the age-old economic development strategy of the Southern states has never been to allow them to compete with other states or countries on the basis of superior innovation or living standards. Instead, for generations Southern economic policymakers have sought to secure a lucrative second-tier role for the South in the national and world economies, as a supplier of commodities like cotton and oil and gas and a source of cheap labor for footloose corporations. This strategy of specializing in commodities and cheap labor is intended to enrich the Southern oligarchy. It doesn’t enrich the majority of Southerners, white, black or brown, but it is not intended to."

Michael Lind in Salon contrasts regional economics.

"The United States Needs a Middle-Class Welfare State that Is Bigger, not Smaller"

"Any rational person, with no personal pecuniary interest involved, would conclude that we should expand the stable, efficient, low-overhead public part of America’s retirement security system—Social Security—while cutting back the failed, inefficient and unreliable parts—tax-favored employer pensions and individual retirement savings accounts like 401Ks. Instead, we are barraged with propaganda demanding that we cut Social Security, the successful public program, and expand the private savings alternatives like 401Ks and IRAs that have failed so miserably.
"Why? The answer is that Wall Street wants to charge fees on as much of our retirement money as it can get its tentacles on."

Michael Lind in Salon opposes cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Heightening the Contradictions?

In Salon, Matt Stoller and Peter Coyote debate whether progressives should support President Obama.

As does Todd Gitlin.

Thomas Frank adds his thoughts.

"As presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have both reflected the priorities of the second New Democrat coalition, uniting donors from Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley with a 'new majority' coalition of racial minorities, immigrants, liberal women and young voters. Because Democratic voters are disproportionately poor, this has produced a Democratic party which, in economic terms, is an hourglass coalition of the top and the bottom. Economic populism frightens the party’s billionaire donors, while social populism, which has often been associated with white working class xenophobia, racism and religiosity, frightens blacks, Latinos, immigrants and white social liberals. The result is what Mike Konczal and others have called 'pity-charity' liberalism—a kind of liberalism which appeals to the sympathy of the rich for the poor, rather than appealing, as the New Deal did, to solidarity among the middling majority. It was a version of progressivism ill-suited to the Great Recession, which demanded the visionary leadership of a Franklin Roosevelt, not the managerial competence of a Nelson Rockefeller."

And Michael Lind predicts the end of the New Democrat.

Land of Divergence

In The New York Times, David Leonhardt reviews Michael Lind's Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States, and Benjamin M. Friedman reviews Timothy Noah's The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It.