1. I understand why Barack Obama chose to restore order after the 2008 financial crisis. But the former president’s natural instinct for caution came at a price.
2. His insistence not to seek “Old Testament justice” meant that many Americans channeled their justifiable rage against Wall Street and capitalism run amok in other ways.
3. Those other ways included supporting the so-called Tea Party, thus sending the Democratic Party to the margins of power in states and localities across the country, and, as Joshua Green reminds us, voting for President Donald Trump.
4. @JoshuaGreen: In a democracy, the pitchfork-wielding masses will eventually make themselves heard. The story of American politics over the past decade is the story of how the forces Obama and Geithner failed to contain reshaped the world.
5. Green: The day-to-day drama of bank failures and bailouts eventually faded from the headlines. But the effects of the disruption never went away, unleashing partisan energies on the Left (Occupy Wall Street) and the Right (the Tea Party) that wiped out the political era that
6. Green: came before and ushered in a poisonous, polarizing one. The critical massing of conditions that led to Donald Trump had their genesis in the backlash. And the rising tide of economic populism among Democrats makes it all but certain that
7. the next presidential election, and Trump’s possible successor, will be shaped by it, too. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
8. My hope is that this “rising tide of economic populism” in Democratic circles can be directed in ways, like anti-corruption.
9. This, along with health care, has been a key message to midterm voters in light of the president’s legal troubles, his scandals, and his association with Russia, which is like one big criminal syndicate.
10. In couching economic populism in anti-corruption, I think the Democrats can avoid having to answer a central question about the 2016 election: Was Hillary Clinton’s loss a matter of class or matter of race?
11. There is strong evidence that panic among white Americans living amid great demographic change fueled Trump’s victory, but social status can be rooted—indeed, is rooted—in white supremacy *and* class resentment.
12. Many think class and race can be disentangled. I just don’t think it’s that easy. This is America, after all. Race and class have rarely been disentangled.
13. In focusing on anti-corruption, however, the Democrats can avoid answering the unanswerable while speaking directly to the interests of a broad and racially diverse electorate.
14. Thanks for reading this threaded version of extra features found in the Editorial Board. For less than a cup of Starbucks every day, you get daily insight sent to your inbox. Subscribe today! stoehr.substack.com/p/on-kavanaugh…
