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**JANUARY 16, 2024**
On the Prospect website
How Progressives Went to Pot
In libertarian America, causes like legalizing weed are the easy part.
Reforms to constrain capitalism or enlarge social solidarity are far
harder-and far more essential. BY ROBERT KUTTNER
Uber and the Impoverished Public Expectations of the 2010s
A new book shows that Uber was a symbol of a neoliberal philosophy that
neglected public funding and regulation in favor of rule by private
corporations. BY SANDEEP VAHEESAN
This Modern World
Reasons the Supreme Court can ignore the insurrection clause BY TOM
TOMORROW
Meyerson on TAP
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**** Trump Wins Iowa, Sun Rises in East
An aging, distempered electorate votes for their favorite aging,
distempered candidate.
Flouting the unmistakable admonitions from the Almighty that they should
stay home (what with the temperatures feeling like 30 below with the
wind chill), Iowa's ostensibly pious Republicans turned out last night
to brave the elements and flout America's fundamental democratic
values in the bargain. Just over 50 percent of the state's Republican
caucusers settled what was already settled to begin with: that Donald
Trump will be running against Joe Biden come November.
Aging, embittered, and whiter than the driven snow-which was what they
drove over to get there-the caucusgoers found in Trump a leader as
aging, embittered, and white as themselves. According to the networks'
entrance polls, 45 percent of the rather sparse crowd
of attendees
were 65 and older, while just 25 percent were under 50. Fifty-one
percent were born-agains or evangelicals, and 98 percent were white.
Two-thirds (66 percent) believed Joe Biden had not legitimately won the
2020 presidential contest. Sixty percent favored a nationwide ban on
abortions.
Trump's party is largely rural and working-class, most especially in
Iowa. The entrance poll broke down caucus attendees by levels of
education (never attended college/had some college classes/got a
two-year college certificate/got a B.A./received an advanced degree),
and Trump's vote share dwindled with every successive gradation up the
educational scale (from 76 percent of those never attending college to
25 percent of those with advanced degrees, defying a somewhat risible
New York Times article
out Monday claiming that the college-educated were "warming" to Trump).
In direct contrast, Nikki Haley's support rose with each successive
level (from 8 percent among the never-attendeds to 41 percent among the
advanced degreed).
It was anything but a good night for Haley, who'd hoped to finish
second and knock Ron DeSantis back to attacking Disney and flying
immigrants to the frozen North. Instead, she came in slightly behind
DeSantis. As independents and Democrats can vote in New Hampshire's
Republican primary one week from today, and as the first major primary
after that is in Haley's home state of South Carolina, DeSantis moves
on from Iowa looking at no better than very distant third-place finishes
over the next month. But Haley, no matter how well she'll do in New
Hampshire, will be just going through the motions, too.
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Trump has a lock on the Republican Party, running perhaps most
effectively on his pledge to deport immigrants, which he promised to do
in record numbers during his victory speech last night. "Hundreds of
known terrorists" had already streamed across the border, he said,
characteristically undeterred by the absence of any substantiation for
that claim.
That absence of documentation notwithstanding (indeed, the absence of
Trump's caring that there was no documentation notwithstanding),
immigration may well be the most potent issue he will deploy against
President Biden and the Democrats, particularly if the economy continues
to improve. The division and confusion in the Democratic ranks about
what to do about the unprecedented numbers of asylum seekers coming
across the southern border has made it a nightmare for Biden to address
and a symbol of what many perceive, however wrongly, as his
ineffectuality. It pits an ideal that Democrats wish to uphold-that
America has been and will be the land in which the endangered and
beleaguered have historically found refuge-against the grim reality
that it's politically impossible to muster sufficient resources to
handle so many of these immigrants and refugees. If, through some
miracle, Haley were to become the nominee, she might forgo Trump's
reference to those unknown known terrorists, but she'd still assail
Biden for losing control of the border, and he'd still be hard-pressed
to counter it.
It may be that only a conviction in his trial for instigating the
January 6th insurrection can keep Trump out of the White House, and it
has to be a convincing conviction at that. In the entrance poll, 30
percent of the caucusgoers said they wouldn't consider Trump fit to be
president if he were found guilty, though that number would likely
diminish when party leaders close ranks behind him even if he's
convicted, as they surely will for fear of antagonizing the party base
if they don't. Absent some sort of infusion to the Biden campaign, or
the more improbable ascent of some other Democrat to be the party's
nominee, it's chiefly such hopes as a Trump conviction by which we
putter along.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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