How Trump Could Have Won in a Landside

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We are fortunate that Trump did not listen more closely to my sometime pal Steve Bannon. He might have actually been re-elected fair and square, rather than being down ten points and hoping to steal it.

Bannon was advocating economic nationalism for real. Not just the racism and the immigrant bashing, but actually doing something for suffering American workers.

Suppose Trump had gotten serious about supply chains, industrial policy, and made-in-USA jobs instead of just relying on head fakes? Suppose he had actually used his power under the Defense Production Act to save us from the worst of the pandemic?

Suppose Trump had been serious about draining the swamp instead of doubling down on the corruption. Suppose he had gotten real about a better road to comprehensive health coverage?

Teddy Roosevelt, at a famous speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910, 110 years ago this week, called for a “new nationalism.” Roosevelt stood for a mash-up of imperialism and strong central government to help ordinary working people and restrain corporate abuses. He would have been re-elected in a landslide had he chosen to run again in 1908.

Too bad for Trump that he never reads history (in fact, never reads at all).

More from Robert Kuttner

Fascism is based not just on a charismatic dictator. Hitler and Mussolini actually delivered for working people.

Hitler ran a terrific welfare state, some of it funded with property looted from Jews.

Hitler sometimes even punished his corporate supporters for mistreating workers. Had a free election been possible in 1937—it wasn’t because he destroyed and terrorized his opposition—Hitler, who cured the Depression faster than FDR, might have been re-elected in a landslide.

In America, at least on the Republican side, pro-worker economic nationalism is a null set. There are no Republicans today like Teddy Roosevelt. As for Trump, he is too much of a chaotic mess to ever preside over any coherent governing strategy.

That’s a blessing. But unless Democrats get real in all the areas where Trump was a fraud, we may not be so lucky with the next Trump.

Bannon may be advising that candidate, from the slam. But executing a Teddy Roosevelt straddle will be a challenge. Even Brother Bannon could not resist the grift and graft at the soul of today’s Republicans.

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