Tag Archive for: politics

America Isn’t Falling Apart. It’s Still the Land of Opportunity

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More than 840,000 green card holders became citizens last year, the most in a decade. Over 10 percent of the American electorate was born elsewhere, the highest share in a half-century. All of Donald Trump’s huffing and puffing could not stop this demographic evolution; nor could an endless stream of stories about what an unequal, unfair, and no good place America has supposedly become.

The ground-level integration of America—what my friend Sergio Munoz calls “the multiculturalism of the streets”—continues with ever greater mingling, epitomized by the rise and acceptance of interracial dating, up 40 percent since 2003, and marriage.

What Trump and his most dedicated opponents have both had trouble appreciating is that, rather than a chaotic future defined by racial conflict, most Americans want both order and justice. Most Americans initially supported the George Floyd protests but soon overwhelmingly rejected the violence and looting that accompanied them. Racial minorities, like other Americans, are increasingly heterodox in their political views.

This was evident in Trump—an unpleasant and unprincipled man frequently labeled as a “racist” in the mainstream media, a term also applied to his voters— improving in 2020 on his 2016 results with most minorities, including a significant gain in the Latino vote, particularly in Florida and Texas, and among Black men. In California, Asian voters also didn’t flock to Trump, but they helped reject an affirmative action measure bankrolled by the tech oligarchs. In heavily Asian Orange County, Biden won comfortably but the affirmative action measure lost 2-to-1, and two Korean American women replaced Democratic congresspeople. The measure was also crushed in heavily Latino interior counties.

Another issue where elite support and popular opinion diverge is defunding the police, a position that the vast majority of Americans—including millennials and minorities—do not favor. As my colleague Charles Blain points out, when the Houston city council was swamped with testimony from residents pushing for the dismantling of the city’s Police Department, Black council members and Mayor Sylvester Turner pushed back, saying that these people clearly didn’t spend time in the communities that they claimed to support. A similar dynamic played out in New York, where Black City Council members held the line against a push to slash the NYPD budget by $1 billion.

Economics account for some of Trump’s gains among minority voters. Before the pandemic, most minority workers had done better in terms of income under his administration than they had under previous administrations from both parties. Like working-class people in general, most African Americans did worse economically under Barack Obama despite the enormous boost in political power and influence for portions of the African American upper class on his watch.

Latinos, suggests former California state Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero. have been devastated by the state’s more extreme lockdowns, and angered to see their putative advocates, like Gavin Newsom or Nancy Pelosi, flaunt their privilege in luxury and even violate their own rules as “ordinary people have literally been arrested and even thrown in jail for opening their businesses to just survive and feed their families.”

Read the rest of this piece at Daily Beast.

Joel Kotkin is the author of the recently released book The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute — formerly the Center for Opportunity Urbanism. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin

Homepage photo credit: Angelsharum via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.

Joel Kotkin talks with Dan Proft About The Green End Game

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By: Dan Proft
On: The Dan Proft Show at Omny radio

Joel Kotkin joins the Dan Proft show to discuss how the green end game runs through Biden. Outside of those dismissed as far right, there is virtually no serious debate about how to address climate change in the U.S. or Western Europe outside the parameters suggested by mainstream green groups.

 

 

Related:

The End Game

Dissecting Biden vs. Trump from a Former RNC Staffer

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In this episode of the Feudal Future podcast, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky talk wth Kevin Shuvalov about the 2020 election, demographic trends in the electorate, and the impact of media on future elections.

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The Grand New Party

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Given the likely defeat of President Donald Trump, a functionally headless Republican Party is destined for a period of reflection. Trump himself, for all his rudeness and often unnecessary, divisive rhetoric, has transformed the Republican Party from being a bastion of the establishment to a voice for America’s working and middle class.

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The Real Winners

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Progressive ideologues often like to evoke the idea that they speak “truth to power,” but this year it’s their leaders who are consolidating their clout. Although Democrats did far worse on the whole than expected, control of the White House assures greater influence for those already occupying what Lenin referred to as “the commanding heights” of both society and economy. Read more

Elite Democrats Could Destroy the Middle Class if Biden Wins in 2020

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It’s been a long time since the Democrats were considered “the party of the people” and the GOP the party of the fat cats. This year Joe Biden and even more so his running mate, Kamala Harris, are raising record sums from the corporate elite, notably the tech giants and their Wall Street allies. These wealthy donors dominate the party, own much of the media, and can manipulate the social-media platforms where a growing proportion of Americans get their news.

Meanwhile, the Republicans find themselves largely castigated in the press and overwhelmed by a torrent of oligarchic wealth at the Senate and local levels. This wealthy oligarchy is not just liberal; many members also support a thorough remaking of our country. Some, like former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, are so committed to progressivism that, as he said recently, those who don’t get with the program should “face a firing squad.” Currently led by CEO Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gone so far as to block The New York Post’s account after it reported on the unsavory foreign business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter.

If these Democrats win both houses of Congress as well as the White House, things could get far worse for the already beleaguered middle class, which has been rocked by the pandemic, with an estimated 100,000 small firms going out of business. Particularly hard-hit by the recent urban unrest are inner city and minority businesses.

The other big winners have been the professional managerial class, including top levels of the federal bureaucracy, academia, and the mainstream media. These are, for the most part, people who can work from home, or, in some cases, the safety of their country houses. Meanwhile, they have achieved power at a level never before exercised outside of wartime and are as likely to surrender this control as the oligarchs are to give up their money.

If the Democrats win on Election Day, the future for the middle class could be bleak. As a lifelong Democrat, this is not easy to write, but most of the party’s initiatives — such as the Green New Deal — are directly harmful to those in the middle and working classes, who’d be forced to face increased housing and energy prices and fewer upwardly mobile jobs in industries like manufacturing.

A Democratic landslide could prove particularly devastating to owners of small businesses, particularly those in the energy, agriculture and manufacturing sectors, who were all critical to electing Donald Trump and seem likely to follow him again this year, despite the recession caused by the pandemic.

Read the rest of this piece at NYPost.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Homepage photo credit: ptufts via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Democratic Prospects & The Plural Generation with Morley Winograd

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In this episode of the Feudal Future podcast, Morley Winograd joins hosts Joel and Marshall on Feudal Future Podcast to talk about the 2020 election, and the prospects for a democratic administration should they win.

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Making the Middle Class Wealthier: A Conversation with Joel Kotkin

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With: Walter Russell Mead
On: Hudson Institute

Join Hudson Institute for a discussion with Joel Kotkin about building middle-class wealth and housing opportunities. Described by the New York Times as “America’s uber-geographer,” Joel Kotkin is an internationally-recognized authority who has published reports on topics ranging from the future of class in global cities to the places with the best opportunities for minorities. His newest book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, was published in May 2020. Hudson Institute Distinguished Fellow Walter Russell Mead will moderate the conversation.

For most of American history, housing has been the key to middle class prosperity. Starting with the original settlers, ordinary Americans have been far more likely to own their homes than their counterparts in other countries. Homesteaders on the frontier tended to own their own farms and urban workers began moving to the suburbs for inexpensive housing before the Civil War. As the Industrial Revolution brought more people to work in cities, suburban housing became vital for the working class. Today, concerns about “urban sprawl” and the environment have made some policymakers concerned about continued suburban growth, potentially jeopardizing the next generation’s pathway to homeownership and wealth accumulation.

This conversation is part of a series entitled, “The Future of the Middle Class” by Hudson Institute’s Center for the Future of Liberal Society. In this series, Hudson Distinguished Fellow Walter Russell Mead will moderate discussions with thought-provoking policy experts about some of the most pressing challenges associated with rebuilding the economy and promoting the prosperity of America’s middle class.

Click to Hudson Institute to Watch the Video Event

 

Related:

Beyond Feudalism: A Strategy to Restore California’s Middle Class
Preserving Opportunity for the Global Middle Class
The Two Middle Classes

Joel Kotkin talks with Rod Arquette About How the GOP Can Win Over Millennial Voters

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By: Rod Arquette
On: The Rod Arquette Show at iHeart radio

Joel Kotkin joins the Rod Arquette show to discuss how the GOP can win over millennial voters. Upward mobility is a key issue for millennials, and problem solving at a local level (rather than a federal level).

 

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Democratic Civil War

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The three heads of the Democrat Hydra will soon start biting at each other.

Donald Trump may still sit in the White House, but America seems increasingly submissive to the rule of the Democrats. The Party now enjoys predominant influence over mainstream media, rising influence among wealthy elites, a stranglehold over education and entertainment industries, and the domination of the burgeoning non-profit world. Remarkably the self-styled “party of the people” now accommodates the big Wall Street firms and tech oligarchies alongside the progressive, neo-socialist, activist base and an ever-diminishing remnant of traditional working-class voters.

This powerful coalition is also a fundamentally unstable one—a three-headed hydra whose heads, particularly after Trump leaves, will soon be biting each other furiously. One faction, the corporatist elite, genuflects and even profits from the progressive mantra on climate, gender, and race. Some, like former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, are so committed to gentry progressivism that he recently suggested those who don’t get with the program could “face a firing squad.” Others, like the Marxists and rioters of BLM, seek a total social revolution and increasingly speak of ending “racial capitalism.”

Many on the Right, having learned nothing since Reagan, simple-mindedly identify each of these two dominant groups as “liberal.” A more accurate assessment would be “corporatist” and “socialist.” Largely left:  the constituency that once drove the Democratic Party—middle-of-the-road voters, many of them in unions, who constitute roughly half of party members. Only 15% of Democrats consider themselves “very liberal.” Along with older African-American voters, these suburban voters, also mostly older, were critical to nominating the lackluster former vice president. They could very well get him into the White House itself.

The Corporatists

The tech oligarchs and their Wall Street allies were clear winners of the Democratic primaries. The so-called “party of the people,” Biden and other Democrats now can count the wealthiest individuals on the planet among its ranks, including former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz, Zynga’s Mark Pincus, Steve Jobs’s widow Lauren, as well as media moguls Michael Bloomberg and Barry Diller.

This pattern, already notable in 2016, can also be seen in 41 of the 50 wealthiest Congressional districts that Democrats now represent. It is now wealthy donors who dominate the party, not the grassroots youth movement agitated by Sanders. This point bears repeating over and over again. This is particularly true in the key battle for the Senate, where most Republicans find themselves overwhelmed by a torrent of oligarchic wealth.

Some oligarchs, such as Jeff Bezos with his mouthpiece the Washington Post, are following along not out of enthusiasm, but at least partially out of naked fear of socialists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But it’s doubtful even an unhinged San Francisco billionaire like Costolo has much interest in having his wealth and market power disrupted by radicals, who feel, justifiably in my mind, the largely unrestrained oligarchs, and their Wall Street allies, devour far too much of the nation’s wealth and should have much of their property confiscated by the state. After all, both Sanders and his acolyte Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believe that billionaires “should not exist.”

Read the rest of this piece at American Mind.

Joel Kotkin is the author of the just-released book The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute — formerly the Center for Opportunity Urbanism. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin

Image credit: SilviaP_Design via Wikimedia, in Public Domain.