Dreaming about DACA or Divide and Conquer?

OK, this is great. Brilliant actually. Clearly The Trumpster has brushed up on his Macchiavelli.

As you may know by now, President Trump has “ended” DACA, Obama’s unilateral rewriting of law which granted a temporary amnesty to the “children” of illegal aliens. More accurately, he has sent it to the Congress ordering them to deal with it legislatively.

This was a brilliant maneuver on several levels. First, it honors his campaign pledge to end it, thereby pleasing his nationalist base. Second, it puts the onus on the Congress to “fix” it (which is the Constitutional thing to do). Third, it increases his leverage over the Congress in that it forces both Democrats as well as Republicans to come to the table, something which neither want to do. All of these are key moves in the jiu-jitsu we just saw.

Make no mistake, we’re going to see some Bismarckian sausage-making here and it won’t be pretty. But in the final analysis, it’s going to make it hard for the Democrats to maintain their Orange Hitler fantasy as they’re going to be part of the solution from this point forward.

Are there risks for the America First strategy that propelled Trump into office? Yes, but I believe they’re calculated. Let me explain. Or better yet, let Scott Adams (the comedic genius behind Dilbert) explain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33yIbDW09iw

OK, that’s his take. His emphasis is on how Trump gained huge leverage. I’ll talk about that as well but from other angles.

But first, we have to back up a ways. Here’s my take on the whole meta-narrative of Trump’s election: First of all, Trump upset the entire globalist narrative with his election. It wasn’t supposed to happen. By winning, he didn’t merely throw a spanner in the works, he burned down the whole edifice.

Second, the globalist left still doesn’t know what hit them. Like Rocky Balboa, they’re punch drunk but hoping that if they still are standing at the end of the fight, then the people will rally to their side. They’re still flailing about, hoping that those risque pictures of Trump and Putin from the Moscow Ritz finally see the light of day. Hope however, is not a strategy.

Third, it’s clear that after eight months, the narrative tables have turned. Some of the indications are subtle; Mark Zuckerberg going on an ideological safari in the Midwest is a hint that at least some big guns on the left understand that trans-nationalism is a spent force. Others are more transparent: the clumsy rolling out of the Democrats’ “Better Deal” is a case in point. And when even a person as senile as Nancy Pelosi can see how dangerous Antifa/BLM is to their side, then you know the tide is turning.

Fourth, on the day in which the Attorney General announced the ending of DACA, the screams from the left were frightening. “Bannon’s revenge!” some of them yelled. The next day however, the Democrat leadership spoke glowingly of the president. Even Cuck-in-Chief Lindsey Graham called Trump “a good man”. He basically got down on his knees and asked Trump to “work the phones”.

Trump baited the Democrats and they took it. He calculated that their Fabian tactics of sitting things out wouldn’t last forever and he was proven right. He also recognizes that DACA is a tar-baby.

So why did they take the bait? How did they come to the realization that the old post-American narrative was no longer operative? My guess is that someone with half a brain at the DNC got rid of the old pollsters and hired some outfit that wasn’t beholden to the neoliberal, internationalist mythology peddled by the Clintonistas. I fervently believe that the electorate has been subject to a sophisticated disinformation campaign the likes of which would put the Soviet Union to shame. Yes, I’m gonna say this until I’m blue in the face: the pre-election polls were rigged from the outset. At best, the pollsters were incredibly lazy.

All that ended on November 8th, hence my suspicion that a new crew has been brought in to the DNC to realistically assess the damage. Hillary can caterwaul about sexism and Bernie and Putin all she wants but I believe that cooler heads are prevailing. There simply have been too many well-placed people turning Trump’s way to believe otherwise. The complete one-eighty on Charlottesville is but one example.

While it’s still to early to see how this works out, I’d still place my bets on Trump mostly getting his way.

This requires more in-depth analysis. As in most things, demography is destiny. While Trump has to worry about his base wavering, the Democrats have an even bigger problem. And that is, who’s side will they come down on?

It boils down to this: African-Americans or Hispanics? Right now, the Democrats are overplaying their Hispanic hand, especially in regards to DACA. If they truly believe that their black base will reward them for pandering to Hispanics, then Trump will increase his share of the black vote in 2020. And like Bush 43, all he had to do was get 8 percent of the black vote to win. (I predict that as long as the economy improves, he’ll easily increase his African-American vote share to 15 percent.)

One of the problems that partisans on the left have is believing their own press releases. This isn’t a problem for the right as our natural pessimism leads us to believe that we are not a natural majority. (It takes great courage to be a College Republican. Certainly more than I could scare up thirty-some-odd years ago.) In other words, we know we’re unpopular, hence our natural proclivity to see both sides of any argument. This works out in ways that are self-defeating for the GOP in that the left always acts in their collective self-interests; the right on the other hand is always horrified by identity politics.

But now this has come to bite the Democrats in the arse. In the pre-Trumpian political system, identity politics only worked for one side as long as there were only a few, fairly large identity groups. Moreover, these groups had to act according to long-standing custom and be fairly discreet about it.

The base of the Democrats for a long time has been Jews, blacks and single women, with a smattering of non-white ethnics and homosexuals, all of whom operated under the principle of gibmsedat. These groups “understood” that they were to keep within the bounds of proper discourse and that they would be rewarded. Unfortunately, their base expanded to include Hispanics who were given a pass regarding how to mute their demands. In 2016, it was “all LaTEENo all the time”. We Republicans on the other hand were expected to pledge allegiance to Emma Lazarus’ nonsense and lose gracefully.

Add to this toxic mixture a smattering of snarling Moslem women wearing hijabs at every political rally, and the Democrats thought that they had found the electoral Holy Grail which could add to Obama’s margin in 2016. However, shoving aside blacks from the upper reaches of the Democrat coalition was a strategic error in that it angered just enough blacks to sit 2016 out. As for the subtle anti-Christian/anti-traditionalist message on incessant display, it drove disaffected whites to the Trump.

Under the old system, Republicans were the default “white party” and operated under the principle of individualism. Instead of acting in their own collectivist self-interest, they foolishly honed their message along free-market lines. This only benefited the upper middle class, further disaffecting white working people. Trump recognized this and forced the GOP to become nativist. In doing so, he staved off an inevitable electoral defeat in 2016 (and possibly forever after).

This needs to be reiterated: the Democratic coalition held remarkably well when it was just these groups –i.e. blacks, Jews, single women and assorted non-white minorities. Indeed, in 2008, they could cobble together a slim majority to elect the incredibly charismatic junior Senator from Illinois as president. However, with Obama not on the ballot, this became difficult.

The question therefore is why?

And this is where the incredibly intricate dissection of the political corpse comes in. Yes, Hillary did get an overwhelming percentage of the black vote, almost the same percentage that Obama got in 2008. Obama on the other hand got a larger overall number of the black vote. Think of it this way: do you want 95 percent of $100 or 90 percent of $1,000? In Obama’s case, the (black) denominator was larger than it was for Hillary.

This begs the question however: would Obama have won a third term? Or was the depression of the black vote which Hillary experienced inevitable?

I’m going to speculate here, so please forgive the ramble but I believe that the Democratic Party is caught on the horns of a dilemma. (As is the GOP but that’s worthy of its own installment.)

All things being equal, the Democrats will always need a charismatic black politician on any future presidential ticket to get the necessary massive numbers of African-Americans to the polls. Hence the wistful eyes being cast on Sens Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Unfortunately, thanks to the ineptitude of Obama, the American electorate has “played out” its white guilt card. Even worse, African-Americans may not be so keen on another Obama.

Let me be more specific: African-Americans will gravitate towards another Obama in the massive numbers and percentages needed provided he’s not as beholden to open borders as Obama was.

There are reasons for this; in fact, I saw it first-hand in January of last year, right at the start of the actual primaries and caucuses. If you’ll permit me a personal insight:

My wife and I had been given two free tickets to attend a literary event in which the author had been awarded a significant prize. This fellow is a well-known African-American on public television and as appeared on FOX and CNN as a commentator.

It was very well attended –over two hundred I’d say. There were very few of us (how shall I say this?) of the Caucasian persuasion. We stood out like a sore thumb. Anyway, everybody there was unfailingly nice. (In the South, blacks and whites get along remarkably well.)

Long story short: the speaker was being awarded for writing a book on the state of African-Americans during the Obama Administration. The picture he presented was not a pretty one. Shocking actually. In fact, things had gotten progressively worse for black folks during Obama’s administration. Early in Obama’s first term, this author had issued some gentle criticisms in public of Obama but as he put it, he had been taken aside by members of the black elite and told to play them down. “Give the Brother a chance” he was told, “there’s still too much racism in America to expect him to turn things around” (I paraphrase).

To me –a white man–this was preposterous on several levels. Not only had a black man won the presidency (not once, but eventually twice), but his two Attorneys General were black as was the Director of Homeland Security. By every measure, African-Americans were occupying the highest levels of government, academe and entertainment. I for one didn’t see it. In any event, his biting critique, were warmly received. And it was at that moment –eleven months before the election–that I thought that Trump actually had a chance to win.

Part of the displeasure with Obama was due to a sense of betrayal in other words. Not only had the rich gotten richer during his tenure but the malefactors of Wall Street were untouched. Even more subtle was the feeling that by enacting DACA and preaching incessantly about illegal aliens, he was further alienating his African-American base.

The sense of hostility towards Hispanics by blacks is a very real one (as is their hostility towards Jews but that’s another story). Part of this is economic: the problem with gibsmedat is that there’s only so much gibs that can go around at any given point in time. To put it in stark terms: black people, who were brought here in chains, have no sympathy for those who crash the border and expect to be the new blacks, competing with them for Federal largesse. It’s not fair.

I agree. And those in the upper reaches of the Democrat Party also knew this in some inchoate manner.

Thus the dilemma: put an African-American on the ballot again after stoking up Latino anti-Trump resentment or put a Hispanic on the ballot, thereby alienating African-Americans? Instead, they opted for a milquetoast non-entity like Sen Tim Kaine of Virginia and hoped for the best.

So now we come to DACA.

Not only did Trump turn the tables on the Democrats, he also turned the tables on the Republicans. By meeting secretly with Sen Schumer and Rep Pelosi, he not only placed DACA in the Congressional lap, he erased once and for all the Orange Hitler facade which had been foisted upon him by the Corporate Media. He did a “Nixon goes to China” and surprised everybody (and I mean everybody), thereby enhancing his leverage.

For many of us on the right, the risk is that he will turn into Bush 41, who famously reneged on his “no new taxes” pledge. It’s possible but I don’t think it’s probable. Trump will get something out of it, possibly even funding for his wall. In the meantime, he essentially destroyed the two-party duopoly in that there’s no way that the Republicucks hold the whip hand any more.

As for the Democrats, they’re still on the horns of a dilemma and will be confronted with the choice they didn’t want to make: placate African-Americans with more immigration restriction or Hispanics by standing up to Trump?

I’m placing my money on the former. And it’s not because Trump has too much invested on the wall; it’s because Hispanics didn’t drink the Democrat Kool-aid as 30 percent of them voted for Trump. In fact, we are seeing a subtle shift in the Hispanic identity as we speak; that is to say a divergence between mestizo and Iberian. The “Aztlan” and La Raza nonsense is blessedly over. Some form of DACA will pass, but so will more immigration restriction.

It’s called Divide and Conquer. Trump cut the Gordian Knot of electoral politics. Well-played Mr President, well-played.

Comments

  1. Wow!!! True love! That’s quite a bromance you’ve got going there, George.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Cyp, you’re totally missing the point. As an anti-globalist, I’ve come to admire and respect President Trump because he’s actually enacting an anti-globalist agenda. At the end of the day he may fail but for now, he’s the only game in town.

      • That’s it in a nutshell. “Only game in town.” Just think’n what things might have been like by now had Hillary won and Bill back in the White House as first “gentleman? .. gentleman?” Anyway “Regime Change” politics picking up where it left off more ensuing chaos in Middle East while shenanigans taking place in both wings of White House. Hillary would appoint judges where you can forget it, if you are 501 c3 you have to let women in the altar. Everything back door secrecy they would trot her out for short speeches and whisk her away after two or three questions from CNN MSNBC before any epileptic seizures take place. Bill would step in and take a few more questions. She would have skipped Irma and Harvey altogether kind of like how Obama went AWOL with the Macondo oil spill in the Gulf, “why don’t they just plug the damn thing” puts too much of a crink in the White House schedule of events the celebrity fundraisers Obama had to meet with almost anyone and everyone in sports and entertainment world, Trump does not have that problem.

        • If anyone ever had any doubt about Hillary’s unfitness for the Presidency, her recent work of fiction What Happened should eradicate any and all doubts for all time.

  2. Anyone who has participated on this forum for any length of time should know that I am far from being a racist. I actually care about the plight of people of color, so anyone who might be tempted to conclude that this comment is colored by racism needn’t bother going in that direction.

    What George writes…

    “Part of the displeasure with Obama was due to a sense of betrayal in other words. Not only had the rich gotten richer during his tenure but the malefactors of Wall Street were untouched. Even more subtle was the feeling that by enacting DACA and preaching incessantly about illegal aliens, he was further alienating his African-American base.”

    …of blacks in general when it comes to President Obama’s terms in office assumes a reasonably educated black electorate that understands how its economic bread is buttered. Unfortunately, this assumption is false. Feelings of racial kinship always override economics in a way that immunizes black candidates from reality.

    Richard Gordon Hatcher, for example, was elected mayor of the thriving city of Gary, Indiana in 1968. He was the first black (sound familiar?) mayor of a major city. In spite of the fact that each year of his tenure consistently brought progressively worse economic devastation to his constituents, he was consistently reelected, serving until 1987. The same is true of most, though certainly not all, black elected officials.

    Bottom line: If a white candidate is on the Democratic presidential ticket economic realities are magnified coupled with the feeling that he/she “doesn’t understand,” and black turn out suffers. If a black candidate is on the ticket these realities become meaningless; the feeling that he/she “understands us” is magnified beyond any rational measure, and black turn out is high. It is unfortunate and makes no sense in terms of economic self-interest; but it is true.

    As George writes, however, this does put the Democratic Party in a somewhat awkward position with blacks as a reliable, high turn-out voting block. Only a black candidate is immune from eroding the support of the black electorate if they are to achieve their objectives with other voting blocks. The vast majority of blacks who vote will vote for a Democratic candidate regardless, but fewer and fewer will bother to vote at all.

    • George Michalopulos says

      I’m glad you brought up the point about Mayor Hatcher and the black proclivity in Gary to continue to vote for him even though the return on investment dwindled each and every year of his tenure. The same could be said of Coleman Young of Detroit. The picture you paint of racial solidarity at all costs is true –as far as it goes. Once the polity in question crumbles (like Detroit) then all bets are off.

      Let’s look at this another way: Detroit, Gary, East St Louis, etc., could continue to elect black mayors ad infinitum but these are discreet polities with overwhelming black populations. What makes the US so different is that because of Hispanic/Third World migration, there is an additional demographic pressure that is not operative in the “closed” African-American cities mentioned earlier.

      I think we are seeing this play out in Chicago where the Hispanic population is now 30% and growing. For whatever reason, black people are leaving Chicago in droves. This has long been the case in Southern California where Central Americans are squeezing out black people (often violently) and taking over their resources.

      In situations like these, any African-American politician who goes the full La Raza risks political suicide. They’re not doing it on the local level so I can’t see it happening on the State or national level. Remember, Obama did not campaign on “making the Southwest Mexico again”. In fact, he didn’t campaign on racial issues at all. Had he done either one of these things he would have suffered a Mcgovern/Mondale type of wipe-out.

  3. cynthia curran says

    I’m placing my money on the former. And it’s not because Trump has too much invested on the wall; it’s because Hispanics didn’t drink the Democrat Kool-aid as 30 percent of them voted for Trump. In fact, we are seeing a subtle shift in the Hispanic identity as we speak; that is to say a divergence between mestizo and Iberian. The “Aztlan” and La Raza nonsense is blessedly over. Some form of DACA will pass, but so will more immigration restriction.

    Good point, but the Democrats opposed limiting legal immigration if Daca passes, they can’t bring in relatives under the Hart-Caller act.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Cynthia, it was especially delicious to watch Nancy Pelosi get yelled at yesterday by the profession grievance-mongers.

      This was a huge tactical error on the part of the left in that it highlighted what the Dems really want: complete amnesty for all 11 million illegal aliens, thereby giving Trump more ammo to tighten the screws on any deal (or simply walk away from it). After all, it’s in Congress’ court now.

  4. Ok George, Now I’m impressed. Trump extents sanctions on N. Korea to include any country that does business with Rocket Man, and now China blinked. China will halt business with North Korea. Chinese banks have received a document by their leader not to do any transactions with new or old clients in North Korea.