Eat The Rich

This is an interesting response to Josh Marshall's collected thoughts on the rise of authoritarian oligarchy.

Marshall's point was that a rich and largely out of touch 1% are simply incapable of taking responsibility for their mistakes in the wake of 2008. The increased calls of "eat the rich" come from both sides of the partisan divide. Warren's wealth tax polls REALLY well among the WWC voters that routinely vote for Republicans.

What the GOP has done is wed racial and social anxiety with an agenda that largely services the 1%.  As the response above notes, that's a little backwards from Russia and China, where the state creates the oligarchs through statist policies. If you want to be rich in Russia, know Putin. If you want to be rich in China, embrace the Party of Xi.  In the US, the political powers in the GOP are simply letting the malefactors of great wealth have their way.

Matthew Yglesias has observed that maybe Democrats should soft pedal the social justice and racial politics in favor of more bread and butter issues.  Ross Douthat (of all people) suggests that nominating Bernie Sanders is actually a reasonable tack to take for Democrats who want to reach out to Rust Belt workers and farmers.

Right now, the GOP has largely wedded itself to white racial and Christian social resentment. To the degree the GOP have a positive agenda it is in providing money for the rich and removing regulations from industry.  Its politics are almost entirely about "pwning the libtards." 

If - and it's a HUGE if - the Democrats could ever convince half of the white non-college voters that the Democrats are trying to help their economic status, the GOP would be well and truly screwed.  Because the GOP is unpopular with minorities, the college educated and the young, they are relying on vote suppression and natural and artificial gerrymanders to remain in power.  A failure to win supermajorities among that demographic is the end of the GOP.  To do that, you would need to find someone with Warren and Sanders' policies, Biden's appeal to minorities and Obama's charisma.  I thought that was Cory Booker, but I guess I'm alone in that.