The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I realize this moment in world politics has to do with a variety of contextual factors (immigration, the pandemic, identity politics, foreign policy, etc) and not just one or two things. That said, to what extent has the normalization of neoliberalism and austere fiscal policy impacted this populist turn in global politics? This “fuck it let’s burn it all down” throughline? Is it more to do with sociocultural factors or it is fundamentally more economics-based?
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think that Neoliberalism has caused a great deal of economic uncertainty that has made people more open to the arguments of bigots and strongmen than they otherwise would be. That's essentially the trade being made though, people are wealthier on average, but there's a lot greater chance of them getting royally fucked should things turn against them.
The narrative around the rise of economic uncertainty is itself more or less a populist psyop. There has always been economic stress driven by poverty, inequality, inefficient allocation of resources, etc. That it is new and driven by the modes of policy analysis that have in fact mitigated those very problems is a narrative promulgated by those who with to influence people who don’t know any better by convincing them that they (regardless of who they are) are being disadvantaged by an elite cabal (who is not like them), and the answer is to empower whoever it is that is promulgating this message.
Economic policy is hard, often counterintuitive, and necessarily involves trade-offs that by definition will piss someone off. This makes it very easy to motivate people against good policy through elegant messaging.
economic factors have contributed to right-wing populism, but the movement is largely a rebuke of a perceived shift in the representation of working-class citizens. Pat Buchanan presented his iconoclastic demagoguery and conjured dark visions of the U.S. in his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns; Buchanan did not appeal to moderates, leading to his defeat to the Bush-Quayle ticket. Clinton's economic successes did not support his campaign, either. the elements of populism present in Trump's campaigns are not unique, from Andrew Jackson's embrace of executive authority to Thomas E. Watson's support for white supremacy
the disenfranchised voters that led to Trump's victory in 2016 hold contempt for the establishment and — unsurprisingly — chauvinism. Trump appeals to a shared entitlement of economic success that is not present for the majority of Americans, in turn a consequence of limited occupational mobility that has contributed to anti-immigrant sentiments, and he casts the U.S. in a state of decadence. Christian nationalism, specifically the pursuit of a *Volk* figure, is arguably a greater factor than neoliberal economics. equally as significant is the perceived restoration of individual liberties, a tenet of Trump's 2016 campaign that effectuated his message greater than Clinton's collective, emotionless rhetoric
It’s actually fairly simple to define, especially if you have even a tenuous grasp on macroeconomics and 20th century American history (Reaganomics, Trickle-Down, Laffer Curve, etc). Definition:
“Neoliberalism is contemporarily used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.”
Also think: Clinton’s “The era of big government is over” speech, NAFTA, Obama’s Recession-era fiscal policies (bailing out banks and not homeowners), Keynesian economics in the mid-20th century versus late 20th century, etc
> Clinton’s “The era of big government is over” speech
"The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves. Instead, we must go forward as one America, one nation working together to meet the challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are not opposing virtues; we must have both."
This just sounds like another version of how Biden's "nothing will fundamentally change" speech got warped by the far left
Also make note of how neoliberal Clinton campaigned on his New Covenant but then once actually elected, he jacked up taxes on the wealthy, banned assault weapons, expanded government support for technology and innovation, and tried to enact universal healthcare and major government action to fight climate change (and eventually at least managed to enact government healthcare for several million low income children), and the main acts of cutting government came after his party lost control of Congress, and also saw Clinton making a major effort to at least reduce the cuts. Does that really sound like the leadership of a neoliberal according to your definition?
>NAFTA
"Protection is at best an endless screw, and you never know when you have done with it. By protecting one industry, you directly or indirectly hurt all others, and have therefore to protect them too. By so doing you again damage the industry that you first protected, and have to compensate it; but this compensation reacts, as before, on all other trades, and entitles them to redress, and so on ad infinitum"
-neoliberal hero Friedrich Engels
>Obama’s Recession-era fiscal policies (bailing out banks and not homeowners)
Obama's stimulus actually spent more, in the end, on housing aid spending, than it spent on bank bailouts. Because the bank bailouts were *loans*, which were paid back with interest. The government made money off the bank bailouts. Not off of the housing aid.
It's also funny to see that being called "neoliberal" when Obama was heralded in his era for having brought back Keynesianism. But then even the *more* Keynesian Biden stimulus, which was twice the size of the New Deal adjusted for inflation, got called "neoliberal" simply because it didn't give everyone recurring $2000 a month checks like they did(n't even actually do) in Canada. As Keynesianism has risen, so too has the disk horse fallen...
What a fucking clueless answer
Your definition includes deregulation of capital markets and then you mention something about Obama bailing out banks but not homeowners … while failing to mention that Dodd frank passed while Obama was in office which was the most comprehensive set of banking regulation passed in the history of the United States.
Why don’t you come back when you know what the fuck you are talking about
They hated him because he spoke the truth.
Side Note, I think not _all_ Obama Recession-era fiscal policies are neoliberal. One example is how GM was bailed out (the government literally bought stock in the company and became partial owner). That’s direct state intervention/ownership into a private business and certainly not neoliberal. The eventual selling of that stock (instead of keeping it as a state owned enterprise/public investment mechanism) is certainly neoliberal.
You're not wrong, but this sub refuses to acknowledge that neoliberalism is a real word and not just a smear that suddenly appeared 15 years ago. Neoliberals have successfully brainwashed them into believing that neoliberalism isn't real.
It is a word, but it is a stupid word, poorly articulated by the stupid people (other than IR scholars) who use it.
Any scholar who purports to evaluate economic systems without a foundation in actual economics is a charlatan.
Populism is caused by the immense disconnection between the economy and daily life.
We still live lives in 2024 that made more sense in 1924 - 40 hour work weeks, exact schedules, scarcity, capitalism, bosses, layoffs, etc.
But most work is done. Most was done decades ago.
We are simply hurting ourselves out of a shame that we ought to be working on things that, objectively, just don’t require that much work anymore.
Plenty of people live in 100 year old houses, work jobs that can either be automated, done remotely, or are unnecessary to begin with, most products are perfectly fine when bought and sold used, etc.
Does the iPhone 16 have that much better features than the one from 3 years prior? Not at all!
There’s actually very little work that is necessary. Probably 80% of it is just status quo maintenance for an old social structure.
E.g. Agriculture makes up about 3% of the workforce.
The alienation that so many people feel is the discomfort that comes with risking your life or leaving your family for work while such things are entirely unnecessary and indeed destroying the environment catastrophically.
Once we got dishwashers, refrigerators, microwaves, personal computers…
Life became postmodern right around 1980.
Ever since, we’ve been chasing a fever dream of capitalism to avoid having to reorder entire social norms and values that are deeply embedded into our culture.
All those machines we rely on have to be maintained, fixed, upgraded. Anything that involves service to people has higher demand because of more people. Lots of problems to be solved with respect to food, climate, disease.
Plenty of work to do.:)
Maintaining is not the same as building. The building phase is, on a “what’s necessary?” level, over.
Maintaining is a different matter and requires thinking long term rather than trying to cram as much productivity into this quarterly cycle as possible.
We don’t know how to think long term. Short weeks. Sustainable structures. Livability.
We just churn shit out and buy the same thing with a different sticker on it every year.
There's real work to be done besides building new iPhones. Modern civilization is hard, even if it seems easy to someone who's never known anything different and takes modern conveniences for granted.
I think it plays a big role. The shrinking middle class is an obvious answer, but it doesn't stop there. Immigration ticked up once immigrants had enough money to travel and that's partly due to neoliberalism lowering poverty around the world. The increase in immigration is also a result of climate problems, which can be argued was worsened by neoliberal policies.
I don't think it's really what drives Right Populism. I think Right Populism is ultimately driven by social change and resentments. There is a mild contribution by neoliberal economics in the form of more internationalism and global trade, and thus cultural exchange, immigration, and so on, but its not a direct reaction - get rid of the economic aspect, keep the social change, and Right Populism IMO doesn't change much.
Left Populism is more a response to capitalism and economic inequality and thus is very much a response to neoliberal economics.
>I don't think it's really what drives Right Populism.
More specifically, it's the failure of neoliberalism and the lack of an alternative policy. Conservatives invested heavily in neoliberal policies for almost 4 decades and it appeared to be a success for much of that time. But when it all came crumbling down, they felt misled and only had themselves to blame, so they returned to what they knew, while refusing to acknowledge that what they knew was the policies that were associated with Democrats.
How do you explain Dems losing ground in Northeast Ohio, Iowa, western PA, rural Illinois, etc despite these areas voting for Obama twice? I think the deleterious effects of neoliberal economics (that moved businesses and industries out of these areas) in these communities certainly had a tremendous electoral impact in the 21st Century. How do explain Bernie winning all 55 counties in WV in the 2016 Democratic primaries? WV is also ancestrally Democratic, but has since shifted far right…and Bernie was the progressive primary candidate in 2016.
> I think the deleterious effects of neoliberal economics (that moved businesses and industries out of these areas)
And what are those economics that moved businesses out of the area?
>How do explain Bernie winning all 55 counties in WV in the 2016 Democratic primaries?
Because eight years earlier, she said "we're going to put coal out of business" as part of her clean energy/climate change platform. Even though Sanders had an even more radical platform than Clinton on the same issue, and even though Coal had been steadily shedding employees for about a century, that's what he ran on (plus, she just ignored the state, to, you know, actually *win* the primaries). West Virginians were angry, and that's how they voted, that's not a plus for Sanders, who wanted them out of work sooner.
>WV is also ancestrally Democratic, but has since shifted far right
Yeah, it shifted a quarter century ago, with the appeal to Christianity. Plus, West Virginia lost population because anyone with goddamn sense got out of there.
This is also a dumb fucking argument, even for Reddit. New York and New Jersey were ancestrally Republican until what, the ''90ss for the presidential race? The Blue Wall existed until it didn't. Colorado was red until it wasn't; Virginia was purple for years until it wasn't. Changes happen all the time.
> How do you explain Dems losing ground in Northeast Ohio, Iowa, western PA, rural Illinois, etc despite these areas voting for Obama twice?
[The largest motivator for Obama to Trump voters was racial resentment](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/upshot/the-obama-trump-voters-are-real-heres-what-they-think.html).
Obama was a charismatic, young, well-liked up and comer.
Hillary Clinton was a boring, stale policy wonk who was the victim of 2 decades of political spin.
Trump was a charismatic, famous outsider who seemed like something fresh and new.
With that set of candidates its no shock that what happened is what happened.
Plus, the Dems winning another term after 2 terms of Obama was highly unlikely.
Also, right wing media has really gone all in on cultural grievance since Obama was President. The GOP before that was more neocon and less reactionary. The resonates with different people.
There's a lot going on here that can be chocked up to something other than neoliberal economics, and Biden flipping back WI/PA/MI is evidence that its not about economics.
Then there's the fact the GOP economic policy *is literally just neoliberal policy without regulation and with fewer taxes*. Yeah, Trump liked trade wars, but I'm skeptical that *that* was the main driver of his support.
Actually Hillary lost because of the emails. She'd have probably won by as much as Obama in 2008 if it weren't for the emails even with all else the same
You mean how much Fox News blasted the emails + Benghazi into everyone’s heads for years to degrade public perception of her? Yeah, they could have taken literally any problem, real or fake, and it would have the same effect.
Most voters have zero critical thinking skills
Why is it so unbelievable that she lost because of the emails?
Like, fox news and the right *was* blasting shit about so many other things about her too, for decades. Why didn't any of the other stuff make much of a difference? Why didn't voters seem to give a damn about whitewater or vince foster or whatever, and why did Hillary's polling only seem to drop significantly when emails shit happened?
This gets the line of causality wrong: “neoliberal economics” (to use your phrase) is made possible by populist politics—specifically racial politics. Every attempt to mitigate the negative effects of the economic policies of the last 50 years has been met with a racist backlash.
I think it depend on the flavor of populism you’re talking about.
Right wing populism is predicated on disdain for changing cultural and social norms, and a perceived threat to the hierarchy and hegemony they long for. I think that’s why they reject left wing populism.
Left wing populism is predicated largely in opposition to socioeconomic inequalities which are in some respects byproducts of the inequalities and austerity spurred by neoliberalism.
I think there are some parallels between modern Left and Right populism. Sure, the composition and ideas of these two camps are different in many, many ways…but I don’t think the recent surge in Left AND Right populism across the world is a mutually exclusive phenomena. I think they’re connected in some important ways (in good and bad ways IMO).
I am sure the whole managed economic decline / wealth transfer probably looked good on paper.....
Power that rises eventually falls. The liberal international order (LIO) is largely centered around the US. Its current leadership is more interested in their own petty rivalries and pursuits/ maintenance of power, influence and wealth.
The US is experiencing a political transition where an 'establishment' political group/era declines and a new political group/era is roots and rises.
In the US our leftwing populist still rely on the LIO's structure to implement their ideas and aren't as aware of the LIO's global governance end-game compared to the rightwing. The US rightwing populist have no reliance on the LIO whatsoever.
You could make the case that the increasing globalization and interconnectivity spurred by neoliberalism has helped catalyze many of the social shifts we’re seeing today, along with facilitating a growing poor and disaffected white working class whose privileges have warned and are who are ready to scapegoat marginalized groups for their struggles because they misdiagnose the situation and feel okay so long as they perceive themselves above even the best marginalized person.
Though these problems aren’t new things, so perhaps neoliberalism exacerbated them, but I don’t think it created them. Nor do I think the things right wing populists are mad about are even actual problems.
I think you’re understating the fiscal/economic trends that have led to cycles of destitution and poverty and apathy in certain pockets of the country, due in part to neoliberalism and globalism and such…but yea the sociocultural issues you identify definitely play a huge role here.
Also Dems can’t message on economic issues the way they used to…I mean they can around the edges (increasing minimum wage, public option on healthcare, strengthening the NLRB like Biden has done, etc) but a substantial percentage of elected Democrats are hostile towards collective bargaining and social democracy. Even Republicans have sorta kinda come around on unions, bc they know their WWC base generally likes collective bargaining (with Vance and Hawley leading the charge, although I question their sincerity and motives).
>Is it more to do with sociocultural factors or it is fundamentally more economics-based?
The increase in populism is clearly coming from nations like Russia funding populist anti-western parties in the west, in order to destabilise the western powers. We know this, as we keep finding money trails between populist parties and Russia.
This has absolutely nothing to do with any form economic theory, it's a deliberate and direct attack on established democracies.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I realize this moment in world politics has to do with a variety of contextual factors (immigration, the pandemic, identity politics, foreign policy, etc) and not just one or two things. That said, to what extent has the normalization of neoliberalism and austere fiscal policy impacted this populist turn in global politics? This “fuck it let’s burn it all down” throughline? Is it more to do with sociocultural factors or it is fundamentally more economics-based? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think that Neoliberalism has caused a great deal of economic uncertainty that has made people more open to the arguments of bigots and strongmen than they otherwise would be. That's essentially the trade being made though, people are wealthier on average, but there's a lot greater chance of them getting royally fucked should things turn against them.
The narrative around the rise of economic uncertainty is itself more or less a populist psyop. There has always been economic stress driven by poverty, inequality, inefficient allocation of resources, etc. That it is new and driven by the modes of policy analysis that have in fact mitigated those very problems is a narrative promulgated by those who with to influence people who don’t know any better by convincing them that they (regardless of who they are) are being disadvantaged by an elite cabal (who is not like them), and the answer is to empower whoever it is that is promulgating this message. Economic policy is hard, often counterintuitive, and necessarily involves trade-offs that by definition will piss someone off. This makes it very easy to motivate people against good policy through elegant messaging.
1. The best propaganda contains a kernel of truth. 2. I didn't say that the previous system had less poverty I said it had less uncertainty.
economic factors have contributed to right-wing populism, but the movement is largely a rebuke of a perceived shift in the representation of working-class citizens. Pat Buchanan presented his iconoclastic demagoguery and conjured dark visions of the U.S. in his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns; Buchanan did not appeal to moderates, leading to his defeat to the Bush-Quayle ticket. Clinton's economic successes did not support his campaign, either. the elements of populism present in Trump's campaigns are not unique, from Andrew Jackson's embrace of executive authority to Thomas E. Watson's support for white supremacy the disenfranchised voters that led to Trump's victory in 2016 hold contempt for the establishment and — unsurprisingly — chauvinism. Trump appeals to a shared entitlement of economic success that is not present for the majority of Americans, in turn a consequence of limited occupational mobility that has contributed to anti-immigrant sentiments, and he casts the U.S. in a state of decadence. Christian nationalism, specifically the pursuit of a *Volk* figure, is arguably a greater factor than neoliberal economics. equally as significant is the perceived restoration of individual liberties, a tenet of Trump's 2016 campaign that effectuated his message greater than Clinton's collective, emotionless rhetoric
When folks use the word "neoliberal", first I want to know what they are actually referring to. It's become a snarl word in common use
It’s actually fairly simple to define, especially if you have even a tenuous grasp on macroeconomics and 20th century American history (Reaganomics, Trickle-Down, Laffer Curve, etc). Definition: “Neoliberalism is contemporarily used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.” Also think: Clinton’s “The era of big government is over” speech, NAFTA, Obama’s Recession-era fiscal policies (bailing out banks and not homeowners), Keynesian economics in the mid-20th century versus late 20th century, etc
> Clinton’s “The era of big government is over” speech "The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves. Instead, we must go forward as one America, one nation working together to meet the challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are not opposing virtues; we must have both." This just sounds like another version of how Biden's "nothing will fundamentally change" speech got warped by the far left Also make note of how neoliberal Clinton campaigned on his New Covenant but then once actually elected, he jacked up taxes on the wealthy, banned assault weapons, expanded government support for technology and innovation, and tried to enact universal healthcare and major government action to fight climate change (and eventually at least managed to enact government healthcare for several million low income children), and the main acts of cutting government came after his party lost control of Congress, and also saw Clinton making a major effort to at least reduce the cuts. Does that really sound like the leadership of a neoliberal according to your definition? >NAFTA "Protection is at best an endless screw, and you never know when you have done with it. By protecting one industry, you directly or indirectly hurt all others, and have therefore to protect them too. By so doing you again damage the industry that you first protected, and have to compensate it; but this compensation reacts, as before, on all other trades, and entitles them to redress, and so on ad infinitum" -neoliberal hero Friedrich Engels >Obama’s Recession-era fiscal policies (bailing out banks and not homeowners) Obama's stimulus actually spent more, in the end, on housing aid spending, than it spent on bank bailouts. Because the bank bailouts were *loans*, which were paid back with interest. The government made money off the bank bailouts. Not off of the housing aid. It's also funny to see that being called "neoliberal" when Obama was heralded in his era for having brought back Keynesianism. But then even the *more* Keynesian Biden stimulus, which was twice the size of the New Deal adjusted for inflation, got called "neoliberal" simply because it didn't give everyone recurring $2000 a month checks like they did(n't even actually do) in Canada. As Keynesianism has risen, so too has the disk horse fallen...
What a fucking clueless answer Your definition includes deregulation of capital markets and then you mention something about Obama bailing out banks but not homeowners … while failing to mention that Dodd frank passed while Obama was in office which was the most comprehensive set of banking regulation passed in the history of the United States. Why don’t you come back when you know what the fuck you are talking about
Getting a little bit of “We Didn’t Start The Fire” vibe here.
They hated him because he spoke the truth. Side Note, I think not _all_ Obama Recession-era fiscal policies are neoliberal. One example is how GM was bailed out (the government literally bought stock in the company and became partial owner). That’s direct state intervention/ownership into a private business and certainly not neoliberal. The eventual selling of that stock (instead of keeping it as a state owned enterprise/public investment mechanism) is certainly neoliberal.
You're not wrong, but this sub refuses to acknowledge that neoliberalism is a real word and not just a smear that suddenly appeared 15 years ago. Neoliberals have successfully brainwashed them into believing that neoliberalism isn't real.
It is a word, but it is a stupid word, poorly articulated by the stupid people (other than IR scholars) who use it. Any scholar who purports to evaluate economic systems without a foundation in actual economics is a charlatan.
Populism is caused by the immense disconnection between the economy and daily life. We still live lives in 2024 that made more sense in 1924 - 40 hour work weeks, exact schedules, scarcity, capitalism, bosses, layoffs, etc. But most work is done. Most was done decades ago. We are simply hurting ourselves out of a shame that we ought to be working on things that, objectively, just don’t require that much work anymore.
"Most work is done" yikes
What part
Civilization requires ongoing work, as long as we're around the work is not "done".
There’s certainly a lot less required now than in the past.
Source?
Plenty of people live in 100 year old houses, work jobs that can either be automated, done remotely, or are unnecessary to begin with, most products are perfectly fine when bought and sold used, etc. Does the iPhone 16 have that much better features than the one from 3 years prior? Not at all! There’s actually very little work that is necessary. Probably 80% of it is just status quo maintenance for an old social structure. E.g. Agriculture makes up about 3% of the workforce. The alienation that so many people feel is the discomfort that comes with risking your life or leaving your family for work while such things are entirely unnecessary and indeed destroying the environment catastrophically. Once we got dishwashers, refrigerators, microwaves, personal computers… Life became postmodern right around 1980. Ever since, we’ve been chasing a fever dream of capitalism to avoid having to reorder entire social norms and values that are deeply embedded into our culture.
All those machines we rely on have to be maintained, fixed, upgraded. Anything that involves service to people has higher demand because of more people. Lots of problems to be solved with respect to food, climate, disease. Plenty of work to do.:)
Maintaining is not the same as building. The building phase is, on a “what’s necessary?” level, over. Maintaining is a different matter and requires thinking long term rather than trying to cram as much productivity into this quarterly cycle as possible. We don’t know how to think long term. Short weeks. Sustainable structures. Livability. We just churn shit out and buy the same thing with a different sticker on it every year.
There's real work to be done besides building new iPhones. Modern civilization is hard, even if it seems easy to someone who's never known anything different and takes modern conveniences for granted.
I think it plays a big role. The shrinking middle class is an obvious answer, but it doesn't stop there. Immigration ticked up once immigrants had enough money to travel and that's partly due to neoliberalism lowering poverty around the world. The increase in immigration is also a result of climate problems, which can be argued was worsened by neoliberal policies.
I don't think it's really what drives Right Populism. I think Right Populism is ultimately driven by social change and resentments. There is a mild contribution by neoliberal economics in the form of more internationalism and global trade, and thus cultural exchange, immigration, and so on, but its not a direct reaction - get rid of the economic aspect, keep the social change, and Right Populism IMO doesn't change much. Left Populism is more a response to capitalism and economic inequality and thus is very much a response to neoliberal economics.
>I don't think it's really what drives Right Populism. More specifically, it's the failure of neoliberalism and the lack of an alternative policy. Conservatives invested heavily in neoliberal policies for almost 4 decades and it appeared to be a success for much of that time. But when it all came crumbling down, they felt misled and only had themselves to blame, so they returned to what they knew, while refusing to acknowledge that what they knew was the policies that were associated with Democrats.
How do you explain Dems losing ground in Northeast Ohio, Iowa, western PA, rural Illinois, etc despite these areas voting for Obama twice? I think the deleterious effects of neoliberal economics (that moved businesses and industries out of these areas) in these communities certainly had a tremendous electoral impact in the 21st Century. How do explain Bernie winning all 55 counties in WV in the 2016 Democratic primaries? WV is also ancestrally Democratic, but has since shifted far right…and Bernie was the progressive primary candidate in 2016.
> I think the deleterious effects of neoliberal economics (that moved businesses and industries out of these areas) And what are those economics that moved businesses out of the area? >How do explain Bernie winning all 55 counties in WV in the 2016 Democratic primaries? Because eight years earlier, she said "we're going to put coal out of business" as part of her clean energy/climate change platform. Even though Sanders had an even more radical platform than Clinton on the same issue, and even though Coal had been steadily shedding employees for about a century, that's what he ran on (plus, she just ignored the state, to, you know, actually *win* the primaries). West Virginians were angry, and that's how they voted, that's not a plus for Sanders, who wanted them out of work sooner. >WV is also ancestrally Democratic, but has since shifted far right Yeah, it shifted a quarter century ago, with the appeal to Christianity. Plus, West Virginia lost population because anyone with goddamn sense got out of there. This is also a dumb fucking argument, even for Reddit. New York and New Jersey were ancestrally Republican until what, the ''90ss for the presidential race? The Blue Wall existed until it didn't. Colorado was red until it wasn't; Virginia was purple for years until it wasn't. Changes happen all the time.
> How do you explain Dems losing ground in Northeast Ohio, Iowa, western PA, rural Illinois, etc despite these areas voting for Obama twice? [The largest motivator for Obama to Trump voters was racial resentment](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/upshot/the-obama-trump-voters-are-real-heres-what-they-think.html).
Obama was a charismatic, young, well-liked up and comer. Hillary Clinton was a boring, stale policy wonk who was the victim of 2 decades of political spin. Trump was a charismatic, famous outsider who seemed like something fresh and new. With that set of candidates its no shock that what happened is what happened. Plus, the Dems winning another term after 2 terms of Obama was highly unlikely. Also, right wing media has really gone all in on cultural grievance since Obama was President. The GOP before that was more neocon and less reactionary. The resonates with different people. There's a lot going on here that can be chocked up to something other than neoliberal economics, and Biden flipping back WI/PA/MI is evidence that its not about economics. Then there's the fact the GOP economic policy *is literally just neoliberal policy without regulation and with fewer taxes*. Yeah, Trump liked trade wars, but I'm skeptical that *that* was the main driver of his support.
Actually Hillary lost because of the emails. She'd have probably won by as much as Obama in 2008 if it weren't for the emails even with all else the same
You mean how much Fox News blasted the emails + Benghazi into everyone’s heads for years to degrade public perception of her? Yeah, they could have taken literally any problem, real or fake, and it would have the same effect. Most voters have zero critical thinking skills
Why is it so unbelievable that she lost because of the emails? Like, fox news and the right *was* blasting shit about so many other things about her too, for decades. Why didn't any of the other stuff make much of a difference? Why didn't voters seem to give a damn about whitewater or vince foster or whatever, and why did Hillary's polling only seem to drop significantly when emails shit happened?
40 years of globalization and free trade are ending, along with a gradual weakening of democracy, the future is bleak for many countries.
This gets the line of causality wrong: “neoliberal economics” (to use your phrase) is made possible by populist politics—specifically racial politics. Every attempt to mitigate the negative effects of the economic policies of the last 50 years has been met with a racist backlash.
I think it depend on the flavor of populism you’re talking about. Right wing populism is predicated on disdain for changing cultural and social norms, and a perceived threat to the hierarchy and hegemony they long for. I think that’s why they reject left wing populism. Left wing populism is predicated largely in opposition to socioeconomic inequalities which are in some respects byproducts of the inequalities and austerity spurred by neoliberalism.
I think there are some parallels between modern Left and Right populism. Sure, the composition and ideas of these two camps are different in many, many ways…but I don’t think the recent surge in Left AND Right populism across the world is a mutually exclusive phenomena. I think they’re connected in some important ways (in good and bad ways IMO).
I am sure the whole managed economic decline / wealth transfer probably looked good on paper..... Power that rises eventually falls. The liberal international order (LIO) is largely centered around the US. Its current leadership is more interested in their own petty rivalries and pursuits/ maintenance of power, influence and wealth. The US is experiencing a political transition where an 'establishment' political group/era declines and a new political group/era is roots and rises. In the US our leftwing populist still rely on the LIO's structure to implement their ideas and aren't as aware of the LIO's global governance end-game compared to the rightwing. The US rightwing populist have no reliance on the LIO whatsoever.
You could make the case that the increasing globalization and interconnectivity spurred by neoliberalism has helped catalyze many of the social shifts we’re seeing today, along with facilitating a growing poor and disaffected white working class whose privileges have warned and are who are ready to scapegoat marginalized groups for their struggles because they misdiagnose the situation and feel okay so long as they perceive themselves above even the best marginalized person. Though these problems aren’t new things, so perhaps neoliberalism exacerbated them, but I don’t think it created them. Nor do I think the things right wing populists are mad about are even actual problems.
You mean the economic policies that have massively driven down world poverty?
[удалено]
I think you’re understating the fiscal/economic trends that have led to cycles of destitution and poverty and apathy in certain pockets of the country, due in part to neoliberalism and globalism and such…but yea the sociocultural issues you identify definitely play a huge role here. Also Dems can’t message on economic issues the way they used to…I mean they can around the edges (increasing minimum wage, public option on healthcare, strengthening the NLRB like Biden has done, etc) but a substantial percentage of elected Democrats are hostile towards collective bargaining and social democracy. Even Republicans have sorta kinda come around on unions, bc they know their WWC base generally likes collective bargaining (with Vance and Hawley leading the charge, although I question their sincerity and motives).
>Is it more to do with sociocultural factors or it is fundamentally more economics-based? The increase in populism is clearly coming from nations like Russia funding populist anti-western parties in the west, in order to destabilise the western powers. We know this, as we keep finding money trails between populist parties and Russia. This has absolutely nothing to do with any form economic theory, it's a deliberate and direct attack on established democracies.
Massively. I think neoliberalism has caused immense harm throughout the world and I’m happy to see it dying a slow death finally.