Democrats jumped there headfirst led by Clinton in 1992, and have not, since then, been any farther out of a “neoliberal corner” than they are today (which is not that far, to be sure, but its absolutely not the case that its something they recently backed into in response to Trump.)
Just look at the electoral map. Obama beat Romney by about the same margin as Biden beat Trump. But Obama’s margin in Michigan was 10 points, while Biden’s was 3. Obama’s 7 point margin in Wisconsin evaporates to 1 point.
Where did those other votes come from? To a significant degree, it was from affluent suburbs were the management class lives. Democrats now are utterly reliant on the very people they need to heavily tax to deliver any of their progressive promises. You can’t have a meaningful liberal party which counts among its base Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Fortune 500 executives.
And it shows. Supposed democrats will now happily say we need immigration so we can have cheap strawberries. And they’ll embrace social ideas that alienate non-college educated working class people, because their priorities are different. A Facebook engineer can make whatever theoretical statements he wants about universal paid paternity leave. But at the end of the day, he or she gets 5 months from a big profitable corporation, and has no incentive to make the political compromises necessary to advance such a policy.
Social issues are really the only thing where the party is unified and can push through changes, especially through the administrative state. We didn’t get a permanent child tax credit, or paid family leave, but we did get abortions and DEI in the military.
His core support groups are anti-immigrant groups like CIS, FAIR and NumbersUSA. What is common between all these groups ? They are all founded by John Tanton one of the most pro-abortion and eugenics supporting individual in USA and also responsible for some of the initial Planned Parenthood organizations.
Tucker Carlson was the person who first wrote about this connection 15 years ago.
Trump's key aides like Stephen Miller, Bannon, Lee Cissna, Chad Wolf, Cucinelli all came from the umbrella of pro-abortion Tanton groups.
Arguing this when it was his three court picks that removed the fifty year old right to an abortion in this country is just a bizarre assertion. Whatever his words, personal positions on the issue (I don't doubt he's paid for a few), etc., he's been the single most effective for anti-abortion folks since Roe v. Wade.
Six week abortion bans are a different matter, both legally and practically. That’s where Trump (and many other business-oriented conservatives depart from the religious conservatives). There’s a reason the Mississippi test case in Dobbs was a 15-week ban with exceptions.
Court picks aren't political hacks. Trump elected fantastic SC judges all conservative, recommended by key Conservative and Libertarian think tanks and their judgement is very much rooted in principles. Congress should consider making abortion the rights.
I do not like the judgement either but I think it was a very good judgement perfectly in alignment with the US constitution and law.
Maybe personally and up until he started to run for 2024 maybe even rhetorically. But a lot of that is because other GOP politicians wanted the issue evergreen, as a perpetual carrot to dangle in front of the social conservative electorate.
Trump's the one taking victory laps for delivering on it via the people he put on the Court, and that's not something that just happened randomly or accidentally.
Remember, Roe did not say "abortion should be permissible sometimes." It created out of thin air a right to elective abortion until viability, and made that the law in all 50 states. It was an aberration in the developed world both procedurally (the ECHR has consistently refused to recognize a "right" to abortion, leaving it to legislation) and substantively (few countries allow elective abortion up to viability).
Trump is taking credit for overturning Roe--a case virtually everyone who is still a Republican agrees was wrongly decided. But at the same time, he's advocating substantive abortion laws that reflect the center of public opinion: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/trump-repu....
It cannot be stressed enough, moreover, that the abortion laws Trump is advocating, which generally reflects public opinion, were impossible under Roe.
Trumpism is the modern set of conservative values that appeals more to younger voters. Trump was the one that killed GOP efforts to privatize social security and cut Medicare, and he’s been critical of the party’s more extreme positions on abortion.
We just had an election where the GOP won 3 million more votes than Democrats. Trump and Biden are tied in national polling: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4155482-biden-trump-vi...
Meanwhile, Democrats have managed to fend off Trump only through a coalition that includes AOC, most of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and Liz Cheney. How long do you think that’s sustainable? Democrats have been forced into a neoliberal corner where they can’t actually do anything liberal (raising taxes, criminal justice reform, welfare expansion).