Matt Stoller on the election

@matthewstoller: 1. This tweet storm is going to be about why people have such a hard time understanding Trump. It's because they don't understand Obama.

@matthewstoller: 2. Trump is in many ways a pre-1930s Republican, uniting farmers, workers, and big biz behind tariffs and anti-immigration walls.

@matthewstoller: 3. Or at least that's his rhetoric. What he may do is impossible to know. He seems a lot like the anti-Treaty of Versailles irreconcilables.

@matthewstoller: 4. What people don't get is that the Dem Party he's facing is NOT the party of the New Deal. It is NOT the party of the people anymore.

@matthewstoller: 5. The party of the people was assaulted in the 1970s and killed over the next 20 years by the neoliberals. It died with Clinton's election.

@matthewstoller: 6. I documented the underlying ideological change here, from an anti-monopoly party to a pro-monopoly party: https://t.co/IJUV5jwCDC

@matthewstoller: 7. You can see this everywhere if you look. The leaders of the party are from NY and SF, the centers of concentrated monopoly capital.

@matthewstoller: 8. The revolt in 2010, 2014, and 2016 was largely rural. These were the final revolts that started in the early 1980s.

@matthewstoller: 9. Carter and Volcker wiped out farms en masse. Farmers in 1979 tried to shut down DC with tractors over high interest rate policies.

@matthewstoller: 10. Reagan, Bush amplified the financial concentration trend, and Clinton took it global. Obama in 2008 largely ran against this.

@matthewstoller: 11. Obama's campaign in 2008 was organized AGAINST monopoly. He said he'd renegotiate NAFTA. He beat Clinton in Iowa going after big ag.

@matthewstoller: 12. But he governed consistent with the ideology of the neoliberals. He broke his promises to stop this concentration.

@matthewstoller: 13. The foreclosure fraud epidemic caused mass suffering. The failure to jail any bankers were unjust. But they were part of a vision.

@matthewstoller: 14. This vision was that of technocracy, or a set of credentialed people who are smarter and better than you making key decisions.

@matthewstoller: 15. Deplorables, or fake news, or voters as ignorant are ideological statements - part of this vision of people as incapable of self-gov't.

@matthewstoller: 16. But this vision is NOT consistent with populism. It conflicts w/corruption as conflicts of interest, revolving door, privatization.

@matthewstoller: 17. Geithner, for instance, cheated on his taxes. Banks close to him saw a stock price boost when he was appointed. https://t.co/iML9ysIF5j

@matthewstoller: 18. He ran a foreclosure program designed to steal money from people and hand it to banks under the guise of helping avoid foreclosures.

@matthewstoller: 18. He ran a foreclosure program designed to steal money from people and hand it to banks under the guise of helping avoid foreclosures.

@matthewstoller: 19. People who think that Trump was appealing to the working class solely based on their ignorance are ignorant of this track record.

@matthewstoller: 20. This is right. Larry Summers is an autocrat. This is autocratic thinking. 

@matthewstoller: 21. Until people are willing to internalize the policy framework of Clinton and Obama, they cannot rebut the arguments from Trump.

@matthewstoller: 22. Because fundamentally, Trump's pitch is that the rule of law is a joke and that having a strongman on your side is all that matters.

@matthewstoller: 23. This is now the attitude of the financial and business elite. That law is for little people. They can just hire smart lawyers.