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1. Really compelling essay...highly recommend it. The basic argument here--that we are living through a moment when the reigning socio-economic paradigm is in crisis and on the verge of shifting--resonated with me in a distinctively generational way.
2. I was 12 when Reagan took office. At the risk of oversimplification, that moment signaled the end of the New Deal Order as the reigning socio-economic paradigm. Goldwater had put the first major shot across the NDO's bow in '64. In 1980, Reagan slayed it.
3. The new socio-economic orthodoxy was "government is bad, markets are always good." Over the course of the 80s and the 90s the Democrats accommodated themselves to this new paradigm, producing the "New Democrats" of the Clinton 90s.
4. Obama made gestures toward suggesting that his presidency could be the moment when we broke out of the Goldwater/Reagan/conservative paradigm that had ruled American politics my entire politically sentient life.
5. Obama caught a lot of guff for comparing himself to Reagan in 2008, but what he meant is that he wanted to be a transformational, paradigm-shifting president like Reagan was. He didn't share Reagan's politics, but he shared his strategic goal. huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/16/oba…
6. Ultimately, Obama's presidency did not fundamentally shift the paradigm of American politics...or at least, it's too early to say if it did. Perhaps he (and the political aspirations he inspired) started to move the needle in a more progressive direction. The future will tell.
7. But I agree with @TheTattooedProf that right now feels like an especially pivotal moment in American political history. With both conservatives and progressives talking about economic populism, it's clear that neoliberalism is on the ropes.
8. This is why Howard Schultz's bland centrism seems so out of touch today...like, perhaps, Mondale in 1984 or Jeb Bush in 2016. No shade on Mondale, he was an excellent politician, but there was just not much juice in the old Democratic messaging tank in 1984...
9. ...much in the same way that there's little juice in the old Bush/Reagan paradigm. Trump was, indeed, something new, at least in the way his message was framed. That said, he's governed mostly like an old Romney/Ryan Republican, to the extent he's done any governing.)
10. Like @TheTattooedProf, I have no crystal ball that can tell me what the new paradigm will be...but I feel fairly confident that we're in the midst of some sort of major political realignment/paradigm-shift. Here's hoping it's the good kind.
