Krystal Ball - The Populists Guide to 2020: A New Right and New Left are Rising

The Populists Guide to 2020

A New Right and New Left are Rising

By Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti

WASHINGTON D.C.

Copyright 2020 by Krystal Ball & Saagar Enjeti

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission

from the author.

Cover Design: Jake Nicolella

Book Design by Troy N. Miller

Managing Editor: Troy N. Miller

Created in the United States of America

First Edition

Published by Strong Arm Press

www.strongarmpress.com

Washington, DC

ISBN-13: 978-1-947492-46-2

Introduction

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American Carnage. That was how Donald Trump famously described the hollowed-out Heartland in his inaugural speech, adding: We've made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon. One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores with not even a thought about the millions and millions of American workers that were left behind. Pundits gasped and clutched their pearls. How dare he speak the truth about the destruction wrought in our small towns and small cities and in every working-class community. This devastation was not caused by terrorists or a rival nation or an unforgiving Mother Nature, but by our own elected leaders. Politicians in both parties who for decades prioritized profits, GDP, and the interests of their wealthy donors rather than the promises that they routinely made and then ignored, in those all-important de-industrialized swing states.

This was the part of Trumps pitch, more than any other, that the old party establishment had no interest in dealing with. For Democrats, who had passed NAFTA and pushed for TPP and deregulated the banks and let unions wither on the vine, it was much easier to cry racism! or sexism! or Russia! or Comey! than to admit that their policies over decades had led directly to this moment. For Republicans, who had spent decades doing whatever the Chamber of Commerce told them to do, it was easier to fixate on the cultural excesses of Democrats than to admit that their own hollow trickle-down libertarian ideology had been completely repudiated when Trump won the Republican nomination.

If any of that self-reflection occurred, establishment leaders and the elite media and the army of pundits that churn out the predictable content that the infotainment industry relies on may have been forced to adjust the lenses through which they view American politics. They may have had to deal with the actual world and the consequences of their actions. Republicans may have had to question whether another tax cut to the rich was really where they wanted to spend their political capital. Democrats may have had to question whether propping up a homogenous group of milquetoast centrists was really the way to win back power and do something meaningful with it. Everyone may have had to think hard about whether organizing our entire society and value system around the god of consumerism had really created the type of nation where we would want to live and raise kids.

We are the hosts of Rising at The Hill TV, a daily political morning show thats honestly stunned us both with its rapid success. Our goal at Rising is to challenge conventional wisdom and shift both parties to work in the interest of the working class instead of their current financial masters.

Rising has been a daily experiment in what this kind of self-reflection and challenging of the status quo might yield; an experiment in what a dialogue between the most honest elements of the new populist right and the new populist left might look like. How can we shake off the old thinking of the past 40 years and respond to reality and the needs of the people as they exist today? What new lenses can we develop to understand and evaluate what we see in the news and in our communities every day?

The 2020 Democratic primary has been the perfect vehicle to explore these questions. An historically large field has given us a wealth of tiny daily experiments in American politics. Weve gotten to witness the pathetic flailing of corporate establishment candidates like Steve Bullock, Michael Bennet, Kirsten Gillibrand, John Hickenlooper, Cory Booker, and Seth Moulton. These were all candidates with the right resumes and calculated positions and donor ties that were supposed to make them serious contenders and likely would have made them serious contenders in years prior. None ever really even got off the ground. Weve gotten to watch media darlings like Kamala Harris and Beto ORourke, who the media wish-casted into existence as alleged real contenders, before they collapsed due to the utter emptiness of their message. Weve seen Elizabeth Warren stumble as she tried to be all things to all people. Weve seen the media and the establishment desperately try and fail to snuff out the candidacies of inconvenient outsiders Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang, who both outlasted many more traditional candidates. Weve seen the limits and frightening possibilities of billionaires willing to buy the elections, whether its by funding their own campaigns or through willing vessels like Mayor Pete. Weve watched neoliberals (those committed to the economic and cultural status quo) freak out as their chosen candidates flop, flounder, and fail. And, as we believed would ultimately happen from the beginning, as other candidates rocketed up and fell out, the two ideological poles of the party, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, edged us towards a colossal struggle of generations and theories of change.

Throughout it all, weve watched with alternating frustration and amusement as the media has struggled to make sense of any of this messthe one consistent theme is how wrong they are about everything. Early on, CNNs crack political analysts Chris Cillizza and Harry Enten predicted that Kamala and Beto would be the top two contenders in the race. Of Kamala, they wrote: Her profilean Indian-American and African-American woman with a law-and-order backgroundlooks tailor made for the 2020 Democratic electorate. It would turn out, however, that voters didnt much care about her identity and actively hated her law-and-order background. It was a perfect example of the shallow identity politics framing that has caused so many candidates and pundits to fail in their efforts. That same CNN analysis had Bernie Sanders back in 6th place, of course. These well-paid professional prognosticators wondered whether time has passed Sanders by.

At the same time, elite media has focused like a laser on issues that nobody cares about. While voters routinely tell pollsters and anyone who will listen that they are concerned about healthcare, the environment, immigration, and education, all theyve gotten is hour after hour of in-depth coverage of wild-eyed neo-McCarthyism or Ukrainian national security state bureaucratic wrangling. We would humbly suggest that maybe, just maybe, there were other issues to be covered with greater import. For example, as we write this, the U.S. has edged to the brink of war with Iran. Perhaps we could have spent more energy on preventing another endless war, rather than exhaustively trying to sniff out imagined Russian influence under every rock. This is not to absolve Trump of wrongdoing. Krystal in particular has nothing but contempt for him. But open your eyes. Protesters are burning cities and tossing out governments in every corner of the globe. Have you ever asked yourself why? Or wondered whether our nation is part of that global conflagration?

As we write this today, no one knows how the Democratic primary or the 2020 election will turn out. But as we dive into the thick of this thing, certain consistent themes have developedmistakes and biases of the media, hilarious dissembling by the establishment, clues to what will matter and what wont. We decided that now is a perfect time to pull together some of our best work on these themes; to stitch the learnings and analysis from every day into a more cohesive framework that can hopefully help us all understand and better engage with the incredibly consequential events which are unfolding around us every day.