Mike Konzcal of the Roosevelt Institute sat down and watched Donald Trump’s campaign speeches in search of the rhetoric that turned out to be effective.
Contrary to common belief, working people are not turned off by the rich; if anything, they admired Trump’s opulence and outrageous displays of ostentation. He had made it; they could too. Sort of like Trump University, where the Master of Money promised that you too could get rich by studying his example.
What Konczal realized after a time was that Trump focused on jobs and wages and spoke in simplistic language that fired up the crowds and led them to believe that he could restore good jobs that had been lost to automation and free trade. Trump made promises that he could not keep but did not care. In that sense, he was like other demagogues in history who make bold promises while scapegoating the “others,” the minorities who are to blame for our problems.
He writes:
His speeches are full of virulent ethnic nationalism, to be sure — that’s what I noticed during the campaign — but he also has a way of approaching the economy that sabotages Democratic positions effectively, even when those positions are strong.
There was a time I assumed if the Democrats “moved left” they could win over the working class, even those who don’t usually vote. Now I realize that this move is far more complicated than simply getting past neoliberalism. With Trump at the helm of the conservative movement for the foreseeable future, creating effective agendas and messages that hit home will be even harder.
Trump talked about jobs. All the time. This gets lost in the coverage, which focused on the inflammatory scandals. Listen:
When I win on November 8, I am going to bring back your jobs. The long nightmare of jobs leaving Michigan will be coming to an end. We will make Michigan the economic envy of the world once again. The political class in Washington has betrayed you. They’ve uprooted your jobs, and your communities, and shipped your wealth all over the world. They put new skyscrapers up in Beijing while your factories in Michigan crumbled. I will end the theft of American prosperity. I will fight for every last Michigan job. — Trump, Michigan, October 31, 2016
It’s the first and most consistent thing he discusses. It’s implied that he’s speaking of a specific kind of job, a white, male, breadwinning manufacturing job. He doesn’t discuss “the economy” and how it could work for all, he doesn’t talk about inequality, he doesn’t talk about automation and service work. He just declares that you will have a high-paying manufacturing job when he is president…
Trump never blames the rich for people’s problems. He doesn’t mention corporations, or anything relating to class struggle. His economic enemies are Washington elites, media, other countries, and immigrants. Even when financial elites and corporations do something, they are a combination of pawns and partners of DC elites.
It’s important to watch that trick, it conceals who has agency under runaway inequality. From a June speech in western Pennsylvania: “Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization, moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas. Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.” The rich buy politicians (and Trump, of course, can’t be bought!) but he doesn’t turn around and denigrate those rich people.
Now, as we watch Trump staff his cabinet with billionaires and generals, we must be prepared to hold him accountable for making promises that he has already forgotten. His idea of “Make America Great Again” seems to be to turn the clock back a century, when corporations, working conditions, and the climate were unregulated. That would be the 1920s. In the field of education, he seems to want to turn the clock back two centuries, before there were public schools. At that time, states gave money to religious schools in some communities, like New York City. The idea of public schools, open to all, was a victory for democracy. If he really wanted to make America great again, he would want to make our public schools the best in the world. But he doesn’t. He wants to replace them with vouchers and charters. Back to 1820.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Trump was able to capitalize on the issue of not cutting Social Security. I believe he’s lying but, he carved out that position because of Democratic equivocation?
If Hillary had exposed the Gates/Walton school privatization plot, would she have gained enough votes to win?
IMO, the Center for American Progress and its funders, like the Walton’s, are responsible for the Democratic Party’s Waterloo. And, that may have been the intent.
Trump is lying, just look at the cast of corporate gargoyles which he selected to lead all our departments and agencies. Billionaires who would love to privatize everything and decimate the New Deal and The Great Society. I believe that the despicable GOP will try to do as much damage as possible to all these programs in the first 100 days. This is their big opportunity to turn the great mass of Americans into obedient serfs and indentured servants. Not that we haven’t been headed in this direction for the past 30 plus decades.
Whoops, NOT 30 decades, 30 years.
Easier still to pull this off in a nation where so few could even offer up a definition for the word demagogue.
I would not say he lied. No one asked how he would save jobs. Common sense says that with globalization the way to save jobs is to pay world wages, not what American’s expect. The way to save jobs is to cut regulations so that companies can do whatever they want in order to compete with companies in countries with no regulations, including polluting the worker’s neighborhoods to save money. The way to save jobs is to turn the U. S. into India or China or Africa or Mexico or South America.
Trump supporters did not ask, How are you going to make America great again? His one answer to that question, tariffs, he can’t do without putting thousands and thousands of people out of work.
He did not promise any real innovation which might require support of federal money, he did not promise jobs of the future requiring specific retraining supported by the federal government,
He would not get rid of Social Security. He did not promise not to cut it. He would get rid of Obama Care and replace it, but with what? He did not promise health insurance/care for all. He could see it replaced with voluntary insurance at prices no one can afford.
People are so used to advertising that they will buy anything with no questions asked.
He did promise war to show off out strength militarily. Of course, even that does not provide hordes of soldiers on the ground. We are already winning against the current jihadist group using technology and airplanes.
Meanwhile, the Dems did not counter.
It seems we are quickly returning to a Sinclair Lewis “jungle.”
Linda: No–but someone on the left who supports Social Security wholeheartedly would wring their hands and say something like: “Well, Social Security IS having it’s funding problems. . . .so let’s look at it.”
It’s disturbing how, in the present situation, we are being forced from reasonable, reflective thought and discussion about complex issues into taking extreme stances we really don’t want to take, and that really need more nuanced thought–because it’s the only way the opposition will hear us? Here’s my first (and brief) reaction: Piss on that.
Or perhaps it’s that “we” need to move from thinking our opposition is interested in reasonable discourse (they’re not) to thinking that either bowing and kissing bxxt OR slamming our fist on the table and shouting is the only method of communication available to us. Next: Brute Power.
Perhaps in some commentators’ eyes Donald Trump has rheeally brilliant rhetoric.
But, really, it’s just the same old overblown promises and “chicken in every pot” sales pitches of a political hack whose supporters interpret anything he says according to their own lights and desperate desires.
Remember, at the post-election Harvard gab fest a Trumpster far more informed about the real Donald Trump than his legions of supporters made it perfectly clear that:
[start]
“This is the problem with the media. You guys took everything Donald Trump said so literally,” Lewandowski said. “The American people didn’t. They understood it. They understood sometimes when you have a conversation with people, whether it’s around the dinner table or at a bar, you’re going to say things and sometimes you don’t have all the facts to back it up.”
[end]
One link among many—
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/01/politics/clinton-trump-harvard/
Don’t forget: by his own admission the President of the Divided States of America was an immature 59-year-old in 2005.
Just when did he grow up and care about stuff like facts and decency and honesty? I mean, don’t 700-some jobs = 1100-some jobs?
Must have taken that Trump University course on rheephorm math…
That’s the only way it makes ₵ent¢.
😎
Remember that old saw about “figures don’t lie but liars figure”?”
Just when you think Donald Trump & Co. couldn’t use, misuse and abuse numbers & stats more shamelessly—
Their increasingly desperate efforts to impose Rheeality Distortion Fields on the general public in order to Trumpet his electoral college victory as a “landslide” [among other superlatives] is trumped by the cold hard facts of reality.
Out of 54, his win in the electoral college is number 44.
As in, he’s a lot lot nearer the bottom than the top.
In other words, by his own metrics of success, he is a BIGLY YUUUUUGE LOSER.
😎
P.S. Numerous links…
I heard a “talking head” this morning on the Joey Reid show (Saturday, Dec. 10) say that Obama’s major mistake (all along) was/is to expect that there existed a faithful opposition on the Republican side. I have thought this before: that Obama has been naive about that; over and over again–expecting others to rise above partisanship to consider the good of the country. And over and over again, he has had the door shut in his face.
That expectation of good will for the country apparently was the case before the election when Obama wanted to form a bipartisan group to inform the American people about the evidence for Russian influence, not just in the election, but for the election of Trump. But Republicans, apparently led by Mitch McConnell, said NO, and that they would claim a partisan move by the President if he informed the American people at that crucial time just before the election, and he did not, even in the face of Comey’s finger-on-the-scale influence (from Rachel Maddow but also from later news).
But even if Obama has been naive (and I think he has), the focus is not on that naivete but on the lack of a faithful opposition on the Republican side. Since Obama’s election, it’s been all about politics and none about national interest and security. And since Trump “won,” Mitch McConnell’s wife was given high office (just a coincidence, of course); Goldman-Sachs executives are also given high office, regardless that criticism of Hillary speaking there was shouted on high; Trump is keeping his financial ties to everything in the world, regardless that much of his criticism of Hillary was centered on her involvement with a NON profit; and the EXXON CEO is being considered for State, even though (or perhaps because) he is involved with HUGE oil “deals” with Russia (multi-billions) where Putin gave him a “most friendly” to Russia award.
The basic issue, it seems to me, is what’s in the Oath of Office, and how no one, not even Obama, is paying attention to or upholding the part about being loyal to the Constitution.
I had hopes for the Electoral College; but apparently even if they balked and went with the popular vote (which they should), it still has to pass the House. And they are busy kissing Trump’s a . . . er, . . ring.
BTW, I believe the CIA on this one and expect that at least some evidence will be forthcoming. One little piece of evidence is the answer to the question: JUST WHO WAS HACKED AND WHAT WAS RELEASED? My hope is that we will have an answer to the question about what Trump knew before the election about Russia’s intrusion. As he screamed from the rooftops: “IT’S RIGGED!” You’d think, if he was not involved, he’d want to know.
Not that Trump’s core supporters will give a hoot either way. They’ve given a new meaning to “turn the other cheek.” He hits them on one cheek, they offer the other and more, they remain whipped-up in a state of gleeful adoration for their Ruler-God-King.
The Dem leaders need to talk simple and angry. Then their message might get through. Unfortunately, Ivy League grads have the ingrained habit of verbal precision.
Time to study some speeches by Huey and Earl Long.
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
How Donald Trump fooled the working class that voted for him in Rust Best States. Will he continue to fool them and will they be fooled repeatedly without end?
Lloyd: Some will finally get it; but some others? How long did Hitler’s Brown Shirts last?
Actually, only about 17 months while in power, until the Night of the Long Knives. But the black shirts held out for all 12 years of the thousand year Reich.
This was one of the best passages in your blog. What everyone is missing is that there are elites everywhere — damning our students – political elite, business elite and yes, education elite. The education elite has no real interest in raising standards of a specific child. They are interested in leveling the playing field (except on sports teams – go figure). And that’s the problem with public schools. A student who is good at math in 5th grade is being taught the same way as the kid who needs help. Public school teachers are being taught some seriously bad information. That’s why teachers teach the way they do. It’s the “education elite” with their own agenda of middling the group. The “education elite” believes to help the lower performing students they need to lower the standards of higher performing students. That’s why private schools are so popular with all the elite groups. How many business elites, political elite and education elite send or would send their children to private over public schools? Pretty much everyone would do so if they had a better option for their child than their public school. No matter how much money we give our public schools, it will not be better than a private school that’s right for 20% of our children.
And how do you reconcile DeVos’ and the other “reformers” love in your destruction of public schools, since that’s all the “reformers” use to denigrate public schools.
To monicafeffef: There is some truth to what you say but, of course, also a big “not exactly.” For instance, you say: “‘The “education elite’” believes to help the lower performing students they need to lower the standards of higher performing students.” Often, the motivation for class make up is not to “lower the standards of higher performing students,” but to meet socially-inclusive needs, if not mandates. Especially in the lower grades, social needs are important; but also they flow from a different set of principles and not ONLY from the principles that underpin performance.
And it gets more complex when you consider that, poor(er) performance is commonly and directly related to a child’s familial/socioeconomic situation. Social immersion then holds a key to creating the possibility for kids from different socioeconomic classes to mix and find relationships based on other-than the socioeconomic grounds they happen to live in. I need not tell you what can happen to all sorts of “isms” in such mixed situations; or that such mixing and/or exclusions are ripe for what “education” (or not) means to the whole-child, not to mention that child in a democratic political climate. In the light of educating for the whole child, then, exclusions for principles of performance alone is actually “lowering standards.”
But of course you are right that performance–understood in terms of grades, academics, or knowledge content, skills, etc.–needs to be given its full accounting and deference, especially in our culture where creativity and intelligence are king. However, if you believe that this is so for ALL children, then we (as educators/parents/ policy-makers) should be savvy enough NOT to perpetuate the divided and divisive socioeconomic classes in the classroom and still maintain the range of educational experiences that keep even the best students on their toes. But many “lower-performance” students are intelligent and creative and harbor great potential; but still get left behind and, therefore, need MORE and student-specific help (But this is also why ongoing adult education is so important).
Public education should be able to do this as a well-conceived and implemented idea, and so as well-funded and resourced. Actually, it’s essential. But you are right that merely seeing the whole thing as “lowering academic standards” across the board and forgetting or devaluing the mixing idea will send the higher-performing students to private schools in a red hot minute. Far be it from me to suggest to them and our policy-makers that they are depriving their students of the fullness of an education that they could be provided for in a culture that values the whole idea of a public-democratic education.
Listen to George Lakoff talk about why Trump’s rhetoric is effective and the Democrats’ rhetoric wasn’t. It’s based on the fact that cognitive processes are unconscious.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-the-media-2016-12-02/
Trump led with the basic idea that Hillary Clinton is crooked and untrustworthy, but the Democrats didn’t harp on the idea that Clinton was trustworthy. (Maybe because the general public wouldn’t buy it after decades of Republican harping on the opposite–I personally trusted her to do the wrong thing in foreign policy, as in our destruction of Libya. Anyway, the nuanced approach to policy issues and promoting candidates doesn’t work.
In his “On the Media” interview, Lakoff explicitly states that our message has to be “Charter schools destroy public education.” In order to get this message across, the basic idea that public schools are fundamental to American democracy and American success has to be clearly stated, and repeated. That’s something Diane has been doing for years. Too bad Democrats haven’t picked up the mantra. Add that to the Democrats’ belief that charter schools are public schools, and you have a recipe for the aforementioned destruction of real public education.
The Democrats’ and the national teacher unions’ equivocation on these topics has made the DeVos appointment possible. Listening to Randi Weingarten on the DeVos appointment on MSNBC was hard to take. Instead of, “public schools embody American values, charter schools are not public schools, charter schools destroy American values…” She led with something about how all Americans deserve the choice to have a great school. She led with CHOICE, not with the importance of public education and the how charters destroy it.
Whether you like it or not, Trump knows how to communicate. Democrats and public school advocates had better learn, too. They don’t need to turn demagogue to do it, either.
One way to start is to run a readability analysis on op-ed pieces and blog posts. The lower the score, the easier to read, the more likely to be read, the more likely to be shared, the more likely to be remembered. Diane is a master of concision and directness. The Clinton campaign wasn’t–partly because they were equivocal on most things, except for Trump’s character, but especially on education.
There’s a reason one commenter wrote that Randi Weingarten “couldn’t defend teachers with a baseball bat.” Her off-the-cuff statements and answers to interviewers are always convoluted and wishy-washy. First she cedes 60 to 80 percent of the argument to the opposition, then fights back on the other 20 to 40. And she tries to mask her weak argument by raising her voice. That always backfires. Maybe her track record of accepting too much of the reform agenda in the first place guarantees a weak stance.
In any case, I hope Diane’s readers take a lesson from George Lakoff. Maybe we can get him to speak at the next NPE conference.
I agree that randi is a terrible speaker and debater. Mush comes out of her mouth.