Marian and I were watching a program on Amazon Prime during dinner when it suddenly froze. When the show started back up the sound was muted and nothing seemed to fix it. So I gave up and shut it off.
When the TV returned to cable it was broadcasting the Republican National Convention. The headline speaker was Teamsters president Sean O'Brien and I felt like I'd been catapulted into a mirror universe.
He started out with the obligatory shout out to Donald Trump as a great human being, which I suppose is the price of entry. Then he switched to a fairly conventional union leader speech—but with subtle changes. The enemies he named were "elites" and "the media," not just big business, and that got the crowd cheering.
Fine. But then he took direct aim at big corporations. They cheat and prevent workers from organizing. Big cheers. Amazon refuses to negotiate. Big cheers. We need to do away with right-to-work. Big cheers. The Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce are the enemy. Big cheers. Unions are the only organizations that protect ordinary workers. Big cheers.
And I'm sitting there wondering: do these people on the convention floor know that they're Republicans? Because this is all stuff that Republicans have fought tooth and nail for decades. Organized labor is bad. The Chamber of Commerce is good. Freedom from union bosses is part of the Ten Commandments. As for right-to-work, Republicans wouldn't support a union shop if Jesus descended from heaven and ordered them to.
But no matter. They cheered for everything O'Brien said anyway. It was eerie. Do Republicans in the era of Trump even have any idea what they supposedly stand for?
R voter -- Big business is holding us down!
D politician -- Let's do something about it
R politician -- That's communism!
I'll add:
R voter- Yeah, that's communism!
They stand for winning and power.
Gee, I’d like to be a fly on the wall in some fat cats’ offices, who gave big donations to TFG … And I’d love to to think this could have been a Dem ratfvcking operation.
I think this is Trump trying to leverage even more control over the GOP than he has already. It suggests he won't be the corporate lapdog they want him to be without proper compensation. What that entails is anyones guess.
No.
Trump is trying to win the elections in November, and thinks that this will help him.
I can't seem to reply directly to your response to me further down so I will here.
No, perhaps it is not that easy to debunk the bullshit about crime, inflation, ,employment, NATO, etc. but it can be done. Imagine Bill Clinton running aginst Trump. Now admittedly he was a uniquely talented politician (despite obvious flaws) but it's not hard to imagine Bill swatting this stuff away like the flies on shit that it is. Biden has shown no capacity for this. Sure, if you dig down into the transcripts there is some there there but that's not how this works. Moreover, I believe Biden's age (and how it manifests itself) show up over and over again in the polls as the biggest thing holding him back.
Isn't it just a little bit possible that 10- and 20-second snippets of this speech and audience reaction end up in micro-targeted posts, and maybe that's the whole point of doing this? That it has only instrumental value and no connection whatever to any policy promises, let alone actual policy follow-through? And that party stalwarts cheer whatever the party overlords decide should be up there for them, because it's supposed to get them pumped and help them win?
Republicans have famously been followers for a long time now. Has that changed with trump, or have they gotten obviously slavish about it?
Forget it, Kevin. It’s MAGAtown.
cue the trumpet: https://youtu.be/egga1aB05nA
The problem with demagoguery is that people love the notion of low inflation and repatriating jobs by way of tariffs, not recognizing that the two are at odds with each other.
But if you're a union boss and the mood is that Biden's definitely going to lose, wouldn't you be running to the RNC and Dear Leader to sell them on unions and reinforce that populism?
Wasn't that the message Dear Leader delivered to billionaires -- get on my side and I'll deliver for you?
O'Brien thinks he can influence Trump to go against his own nature? Besides Trumps populism was and will always be as phoney as his spray on tan and blonde hair.
And still, hundreds of thousands of Americans signed up for Trump University, you know what I mean?
That gets them on a list of potential recruits as henchman and other discardables for evil organizations worldwide.
I think a couple things are at play (but I'm certainly surprised he got any cheers at all unless it was staged/orchestrated - you sure it was real applause and not a track?)
*) he runs a union with a ton of GOP members and is playing as much to his own constituency as the larger GOP at the convention. Also they align with a lot of other things on the platform: traditional family values, fear of refugees/immigrants, "rising crime" He gives them cover to vote for Trump.
*) Some wag on TT suggested that union folk need to be in (semi-) hostile places if they ever want to change America's views of unions so liked the idea of this even tho so many GOP proposals and positions are anathema to unions.
Just listened to Ezra Klein's latest, and I think he covers the "why".