{"id":2349,"date":"2026-06-27T14:06:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T14:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2349"},"modified":"2026-06-27T14:06:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T14:06:03","slug":"the-never-trumpers-are-losing-and-the-gop-establishment-knows-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2349","title":{"rendered":"The never-Trumpers are losing \u2014and the GOP establishment knows it"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I keep getting phone calls from politicians wanting to know what I make of the extraordinary victories at the polls this week of young Democratic Socialists. Here\u2019s what I tell them:<\/p>\n

Read more Swat: Bill Maher says Trump\u2019s embarrassing low approval includes \u2018Zero percent with ducks\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

The most powerful force in both the Republican and Democratic Parties today is anti-establishment populism. It\u2019s roughly similar to the late 19th century when the Populist Party challenged the dominance of corporate elites, national banks, and railroad monopolies, although this time I believe it will stick. <\/p>\n

Among today\u2019s Republicans, this has taken the form of Trump\u2019s MAGA movement against immigrants, Black people, Muslims, \u201cwoke,\u201d \u201cDEI,\u201d and especially Democratic \u201ccoastal elites\u201d who are supposedly enabling these groups to overtake white Christian America. <\/p>\n

Pitted against the Republican populists are \u201cnever-Trumpers\u201d who cling to the older Republican virtues of fiscal austerity and isolationism. <\/p>\n

Among Democrats, anti-establishment populism has taken the form of a movement against economic elites who are rigging the system against average working people. Its major proponents are Bernie Sanders, AOC, Zohran Mamdani, and other predominantly young Democratic politicians \u2014 such as Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, Janeese Lewis George, the presumptive mayor of Washington, D.C., and a bevy of newly-elected members of Congress from New York \u2014 Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Brad Lander.<\/p>\n

Pitted against these economic populist in the Democratic Party are so-called \u201cmoderate\u201d and corporate Democrats who pine after the party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and seek at most incremental reforms of American capitalism. <\/p>\n

In other words, the essential fissure inside American politics today doesn\u2019t run horizontally from \u201cright\u201d to \u201cleft,\u201d as those two poles have been defined since World War II. <\/p>\n

It runs vertically from bottom to top.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s MAGA voters in the bottom view themselves through the lens of white Christian nationalism and believe the top has conspired to make them less dominant in American society.<\/p>\n

Sanders\u2019s, AOC\u2019s, and Mamdani\u2019s voters in the bottom view themselves through the lens of economic class and believe the top has conspired to rig the economy against them. <\/p>\n

Both shifts have left the establishment behind. America\u2019s corporate and financial elites love Trump\u2019s tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks but feel uncomfortable with the white Christian nationalism now at the heart of the GOP. <\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Get over yourself\u2019: Columnists destroy billionaire Trump\u2019s contempt for \u2018elites\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

They\u2019re likewise content to deal with incremental reforms pushed by moderate Democrats but dislike the wealth taxes, rent-controls, single-payer health plans, and other safety-net expansions at the heart of the emerging Democratic Party. <\/p>\n

I expect the establishment will fight to regain control of both parties. <\/p>\n

One way will be to equate the populists with bigotry and extremism \u2014 in the GOP, to condemn the populists as racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, and fascist; in the emerging Democratic Party, to condemn the populists as antisemitic and communist. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s enough truth in both caricatures to cause many voters to back away from populism altogether. <\/p>\n

But I urge cooler heads to see something else in the rising populism within both parties \u2014 a potential <\/em>political alliance against the grotesque inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity that have scarred modern America and fueled the populist anger in the first place. <\/p>\n

The share of the U.S. economy going to working people is the lowest it\u2019s been since 1947; the share going to corporate profits, the largest since 1950. One trillionaire and a brute of billionaires are now, in fact, running much of America. <\/p>\n

Neither income nor wealth are zero-sum contests in which some people\u2019s success can be achieved only at the cost of other people\u2019s losses. But power <\/em>is a zero-sum contest. And as power has gone to the top \u2014 and is has,<\/em> whether we\u2019re talking about the top 0.01 percent or 0.1 percent or 1 percent \u2014 everyone else has lost agency over their lives. <\/p>\n

Both never-Trumper Republicans and \u201cmoderate\u201d Democrats are struggling to articulate a message that isn\u2019t just \u201cwe\u2019re not Trump.\u201d But given the gross inequalities in American society today, that\u2019s a nearly impossible task. <\/p>\n

Both Republican and Democratic establishments would be better served by overtly rejecting racism, xenophobia, and misogyny, as well as antisemitism and communism, while joining with populists to boldly change the system so that none of these were attractive. Make homes affordable, make healthcare accessible, put childcare and eldercare within reach of the average working family, and they won\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at <\/em>https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Texas unleashes sleeping giant as conservatives face reckoning over \u2018truth\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep getting phone calls from politicians wanting to know what I make of the extraordinary victories at the polls this week of young Democratic Socialists. Here\u2019s what I tell them:The most powerful force in both the Republican and Democratic Parties today is anti-establishment populism. It\u2019s rough…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe never-Trumpers are losing \u2014and the GOP establishment knows it - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2349\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The never-Trumpers are losing \u2014and the GOP establishment knows it - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I keep getting phone calls from politicians wanting to know what I make of the extraordinary victories at the polls this week of young Democratic Socialists. 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