Trump's Continuing Strength

Henry Olsen

Henry Olsen's op-ed "The GOP is the party of Trump — but not for the reasons anti-Trump conservatives think" in The Washington Post gives us anti-Trump folks pause. He writes:

No one who runs against Trump will have any realistic hope of defeating him. Polls consistently show 80 percent or more of Republicans approve of the job he is doing. That figure rises to 93 percent among people who voted for him, according to the most recent Economist-YouGov poll.

True, that 93 percent figure includes groups of 2016 Trump voters who support Trump's policies almost all the time (29 percent), most of the time (51 percent), or only about half the time (13 percent). It might not mean that all the voters in these groups will vote for Trump again in 2020.

(Then again, it might mean they all will — see below.)

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I admit to being biased in what I'm about to say: as an "Old-Style Liberal," I'm not on board with some of the ultra-left ideas being floated by Democrats in Congress and/or running for president. I don't like the Green New Deal, "a set of proposed economic stimulus programs in the United States that aim to address climate change and economic inequality." The Green New Deal is ambiguous about imposing a carbon tax to combat global warming, and I think a carbon tax is needed. Worse, the GND expands the reach of power elites in the Nation's Capital beyond their unproven capabilities to command economic affairs effectively.

Even worse: I think quasi-socialist initiatives like the Green New Deal load Donald Trump's "guns" against whatever Democrat runs against him in 2020. All the rhetorical barbs Trump slung against Hillary Clinton in 2016 will pale into insignificance compared with those he'll sling against the 2020 Democratic candidate — even one as moderate as Joe Biden. Trump will allege that putting a Democrat — any Democrat — in the White House will turn America into a socialist state. Most of the very few voters in his base who have questioned his presidency will again turn out for him.

Don't think it can't happen again!

A Nation of Weavers

Our politics and society seem these days to be coming apart at the seams. Discord seems to rule the day. But some of our opinion leaders are trying to do something about it.

David Brooks

One of these leaders is David Brooks, opinion columnist for The New York Times. His recent column "A Nation of Weavers" says, "The social renaissance is happening from the ground up." Brooks tells us about an initiative he began several months ago, at the Aspen Institute, called Weave: The Social Fabric Project. The intent of Weave is to support "people around the country, at the local level, who are building community and weaving the social fabric."

In so doing, they are implicitly addressing the "problem underlying a lot of our other problems": social isolation. The radical fragmentation of our society into tiny like-minded groups and alienated individuals calls for something that can knit the society together again. Something that builds community rather than feeds hostility.

Michael Gerson

Washington Post opinion columnist Michael Gerson heartily endorses Brooks's ideas in "David Brooks wants to weave America’s threads back together." Gerson says, "In the work of lighting candles to push back the darkness, Brooks wants to be a lamplighter."

Thomas Friedman

These ideas about how we ought to respond to the many political crises and hubbubs we see today are echoed to a degree by New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman. In "Why Are So Many Political Parties Blowing Up? (Part 1)" he talks about "complex adaptive coalitions," and he refers to them again in "Is America Becoming a Four-Party State?" The idea here is that "business, labor, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, educators and local government [can] all network together to create jobs, attract businesses, grow housing, fix potholes and improve schools." In other words, improve our lives, the way governments and powerful people are failing to do in today's poisonous political environment.

In an age in which every event in the Nation's Capital drops a nuclear bomb somewhere else in Washington, it's nice to see that this "creative destruction" is making space for local movers and shakers to come together to find inventive ways to rebuild their suffering communities.