I just read something and wanted to share it here as an example of a wedge that we can potentially drive between Trump supporters and the GOP establishment of Ryan, McConnell and company — the fact that significant number of Trump swing voters want liberal policies on trade, govt. spending and basic economics. As Jason Easley, in this essay, drawing on some reporting from the NY TImes, writes,
Mr. Trump won 20 percent of self-identified liberal white working-class voters, according to the exit polls, and 38 percent of those who wanted policies that were more liberal than Mr. Obama’s.”
Compare the desire for more liberal policies with what Trump and the Republican Congressional majority will be acting on in January:
1). A repeal of the ACA that will take healthcare away from 30 million Americans.
2). A massive tax cut and deregulation agenda that will benefit the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.
3). The eliminating of Obama administration action that expanded overtime pay rules.
4). The privatization of Social Security and Medicare.
In other words, class warfare, fully and predictably waged by the GOP on behalf of their wealthy and corporate backers against non wealthy Americans, that is, against the vast majority.
My expectation is that the GOP Congress will rush through as much far right economic policy as they can, starting early next year, and the main gist of this will entail large tax cuts for the wealthy and massive budget cuts on domestic spending programs like Medicare and various safety net programs (like SNAP and other anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs. None of this will be popular, but the GOP will go right along with it, as this is what they are now designed to do.
The question though is what will Trump do? Will he reign in Ryan, or will Ryan reign him in? The answer is, at this point, unclear. There are already signs of potential fissures in the Trump/GOP alliance. We need to be exploiting these fissures and driving a big wedge between them. And one place to do this is on social media, a place where Trump likes to hang out. We need to make the deplorables fully aware that the GOP does not stand for their interests and that Trump is very likely going to stab them all in the backs multiple times. And of course, we need to keep articulating a progressive alternative to Trumpism.