Policy is No Insurance

That noted man of the people, Jamie Dimon—you’ve probably run into him at the local diner—recently gave an interview on CNBC from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which he had a good deal to say about MAGA voters and Trump himself, but mostly about mean Joe Biden, who has unfairly maligned both.

Dimon, who has described himself as “barely a Democrat,” urged Biden and others in the party to “grow up” and “listen” to Trump supporters, who, he insisted, voted for Trump not out of anger, bitterness, or any desire for revenge against liberal elites, but rather because, after careful examination, they found Trump’s economic policies to be in step with their own.

“Take a step back, be honest,” Dimon intoned. “He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Trade tax reform worked. He was right about some of China.”  Therefore, he observed, Biden and his fellow Democrats, “are basically scapegoating” Trump voters, which, from his perch atop JPMorgan Chase, he concludes, “I think this negative talk about MAGA is going to hurt Biden’s election campaign.”

If one focuses only on policy, as Dimon has conveniently chosen to do, there is some truth in his assertions.  NATO was indeed forcing the United States to foot too much of the bill, the Trump economy seemed robust, trade tax reform (which I defy more than one Trump voter in 100 to detail) did repatriate dollar assets, and China was behaving a good deal more like an enemy than a partner. 

Even setting aside that the United States desperately needs a vibrant NATO, that the economy was heavily weighted to increasing income inequality while the environmental crisis and unequal justice festered, and that China is simply too strategically vital to American interests to turn it into the next Iran, Dimon is still grievously missing the point.

Not only is there clear evidence that the vast majority of Trump voters could not enunciate a single one of his policies—as Trump himself often cannot—beyond keeping dark-skinned immigrants out of the country, ostracizing Muslims, forcing gay and trans children back into the shadows, and shooting rioters on sight (Democrats and Blacks only), but his elevation of policy as the driver of the national mood rather than the other way around is fatally wrong-headed.

And the national mood at the moment is not such that, as Dimon suggests, Biden should be “respectful” of Trump worshipers any more than a homeowner should be “respectful” of an arsonist who is trying to burn down his or her house.

That mood matters more than policy has gobs of examples in American history, none more telling than the aftermath of the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1875.  That law, the most comprehensive the nation had ever seen, was intended to buttress the 14^th and 15^th Amendments and, at long last, ensure equal status to Black Americans in conducting their day to day lives. 

It read, “All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.”  

But most white Americans, North and South, did not want to mix with their Black fellow citizens, and a shrill outcry was the result.  The New York Times, for example, issued a bitter denunciation.  “It has put us back in the art of governing men more than two hundred years…startling proof how far and fast we are wandering from the principles of 1787, once so loudly extolled and so fondly cherished.” 

As a result, the guarantees were largely ignored, as were complaints of violations made to unsympathetic law enforcement agencies.  Eventually in 1883, with Black people hardly better off than they had been before the law’s passage, five challenges—mostly from the North—reached the Supreme Court in what was called the Civil Rights Cases. 

There, reflective of the national mood—and their own—the justices by an 8-1 majority contrived to find the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional.  (Black voting rights would also be abjured in the coming decades, with Jim Crow as the result.)  Only John Marshall Harlan, in dissent, thought to mention that “the substance and spirit of the recent amendments of the Constitution have been sacrificed by a subtle and ingenious verbal criticism.”

The nation finds itself in a similar situation today, with the national mood teetering between a desire to maintain democratic norms, imperfect though they may be, and throwing them over for a new form of government in which a charismatic leader exerts virtually unfettered authority, supported by a chorus of ovine toadies occupying what had previously been separate branches of government.

If this second group prevails, the Constitution, already on shaky ground, will lose all meaning and the promise of liberty and equality that took more than two centuries to work into the system will become mere verbiage, no more applicable to United States law than the lofty phrases of the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

To doubters like Jamie Dimon, who would dismiss this scenario as being overly apocalyptic, it is only necessary to take Trump and his enablers at their word.  And it is those sentiments, the promise of thinly veiled autocracy, that Trump supporters are reacting to, not some arcane provision of tax law.

So no, this is not the time to back off and coddle Trump supporters as misguided but otherwise loyal Americans.  They are not. Besides, Democrats tried that and it fell flat.  Rather Biden should go on the attack and stay there, as he has recently indicated he intends to do.  Never let that thin sliver of the electorate in the six swing states that will decide the election forget what the stakes are.  Biden and his surrogates can certainly acknowledge what Trump was right about—a few things—while continuing to hammer home what he was wrong about—everything else.

This is a war of mood, not policy.  Democrats, message challenged as they often are, will do themselves a big favor by keeping that in mind.