Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine argues that the GOP's tax cuts for the super rich — deductions for Americans who own private planes! tax hikes for everyone else! — are a disaster for the country. But unlike the damage Trump, et al, is doing to the courts and our democratic norms and the Doomsday Clock, the tax cuts are reversible and highly likely to be reversed:
Indeed, the passage of the Trump tax cuts will help lay the groundwork for their undoing by increasing the chances Democrats regain control of Congress. The moment Trump won his election last November, he immediately forfeited his most potent advantages: He no longer had the deeply unpopular Hillary Clinton as his opponent, and he lost the advantage of Democratic complacency (which tends to build up over time when their party holds the White House.) An anti-Republican wave of some size was always inevitable. But Trump compounded the problem by surrendering another potent advantage: his brand as an economic populist loathed by the financial elite and planning to raise taxes on rich people like himself....
Democrats have nothing to fear from making repeal of the Trump tax cuts for the rich a defining party plank. On the contrary, they have a great deal to gain. The bill is a cash grab by the wealthy, driven by the demands of the Republican donor base, and stuffed with targeted favors for insiders with lobbyists. Many more are sure to surface. The more they talk about it, the more Democrats can drive home the message that Trump’s economic populism was a fraud.
But David Roberts at Vox complicated that triumphant picture with a deeply disturbing tweet storm this weekend. It's too long to embed in its entirety... but here's the depressing gist:
1. A note on the politics of this tax bill, which is so absurd & horrendous it can scarcely be believed — like, really.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
2. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, GW Bush & GOP put together an "economic stimulus" bill in response. It was (brace yourself) ...
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
3. ... a huge tax giveaway to the rich. So grotesque a giveaway to the rich that even the WSJ acknowledged as much! Paul Krugman wrote:
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
4. "It was so extreme that when political consultants tried to get reactions from voter focus groups, the voters refused to believe that they were describing the bill accurately." https://t.co/vNMlrT6CD4
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
5. "Voters refused to believe." Remember that. Now fast forward to 2012 and the Romney/Ryan tax plan, which would have (brace yourself) ...
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
6. ... slashed social spending to pay for giant tax cuts for the rich. Priorities USA, a Dem super PAC, ran focus groups on it. Here's what happened:
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
7. "When Priorities informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan — & thus championed 'ending Medicare as we know it' ..."
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
8. "... while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing."
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
9. Again, when GOP economic policy is accurately explained to voters, they simply cannot believe it's true. https://t.co/AXRqCiAFVF
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
10. Lots of people have used this as a kind of punchline, but I think it's worth taking some time to think about it seriously.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
11. Most ppl have other priorities & are woefully ignorant about politics. Research has confirmed this again & again. *Boundless* ignorance.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
12. Average people absorb politics piecemeal, through osmosis. What they generally see is a haze of pettiness, squabbles, & conflict.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
13. Viewed from this distance, most people conclude that "politics" is hopeless, all politicians are venal, & the whole game is corrupt.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
14. Unless you're willing to put in serious time & work to suss out the details, "pox on both houses" is kind of the default destination.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
15. So when voters are confronted by the idea that one party wants to take from the poor & sick & to fund tax cuts for the rich ...
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
16. ... and the other party doesn't, it simply doesn't fit the hazy "both sides suck" model. It *sounds* like an unfair partisan attack.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
17. The truth about the GOP sounds like an attack on the GOP, so people dismiss it as such. It is a perverse form of immunity.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
18. And here we come to the true, twisted genius of the decades long RW strategy. They have fractured trust in mainstream institutions ...
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
19. ... so there is no widely trusted person or institution who can tell the truth about the GOP in a way that will be broadly accepted.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
20. There are no more trusted referees or arbiters, so the media atmosphere is filled with "both sides" yelling, w/ no way to resolve.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
21. In that atmosphere, everyone can just comfortably believe whoever is saying good things about "their side." Epistemological bubbles.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
22. Which brings us to this current tax bill, which is even more comically malign & grasping than past GOP budget plans. Any attempt ...
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
23. ... to accurately describe it sounds like a f'ing comic book villain revealing their evil plot toward the end of the movie.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
24. But it is surrounded, in the media atmosphere, by the *exact same* haze of both-sides charge-and-countercharge as ever.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
25. So your average citizen, just going on instinctual heuristics, isn't going to believe an accurate description. It sounds too ludicrous.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
26. An accurate (horrific) description sounds like what "one side" says, and we all know the truth is in the middle somewhere, right?
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
27. In this way, the GOP, whether through design or accident, has stumbled on a brilliant political strategy for advancing kleptocracy.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
28. They exploit public & media heuristics that make us highly averse to asymmetry. They exploit the folk wisdom of "both sides do it."
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
29. They do their deeds right out in the open, trusting (accurately!) that a good chunk of the public won't believe it is what it is.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
30. Journalists understand the model of "finding & exposing hidden information" — the pre-internet-age core of journalism — but ...
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
31. ... they have not yet solved the dilemma of how to help the public focus on & understand *already public information* that is surrounded...
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
32. ... by a fog of misinformation, bullshit, and distraction. This ludicrous tax bill is a real-time test case. Can the media convey ...
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
33. ... that it really is as cruel & plutocratic as Dem critics are saying it is? Can they convey that the GOP has become something ...
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
34. ... more unhinged & venal than even its worst critics charge? I doubt it. I'm not sure there's *any* econ policy that could break through.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
35. Remember: "respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing." And that's how they get away with it.
— David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
Whoops. I embedded the whole thing. I hope David Roberts doesn't mind. This has to be the most depressing thing I've ever read... and I read the news every damn day.
We obviously can't defeat the GOP if we aren't able to convince voters — average, ordinary voters, voters who are only half paying attention, voters who distrust all politicians and have been by trained to discount whatever the "liberal media" has to say — that the GOP quite literally has it in for them. That the GOP would rather see your kid die than a see a billionaire go without a tax break for his private jet. It is such cartoonish evil, as Roberts says, that it beggars belief. And Dems are lousy at communicating with voters because Dems go in for nuance and complexity while the GOP is always doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on big lies, racist dog whistles bullhorns, and attacking scapegoats.
TL/DR: We're fucked.