Republicans are Democrats now
Jamelle Bouie explains why President Trump did better than expected:
At the end of March, President Trump signed the Cares Act, which distributed more than half a trillion dollars in direct aid to more than 150 million Americans, from stimulus checks ($1,200 per adult and $500 per child for households below a certain income threshold) to $600 per week in additional unemployment benefits. ... But voters, and especially the low-propensity voters who flooded the electorate in support of Trump, aren’t attuned to the ins and outs of congressional debate. They did not know — and Democrats didn’t do a good enough job of telling them — that the president and his party opposed more generous benefits. All they knew is that Trump signed the bill (and the checks), giving them the kind of government assistance usually reserved for the nation’s ownership class.
I think there's something to this, but I'm also kind of amused. The conservative critique of social spending has often been that amounts to Democrats buying political power -- votes -- by bribing voters with government goodies. Remember Romney's "47 percent"? Remember "Obamaphones?" Republicans have even argued against universal health coverage because it would "revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."
At the end of March, President Trump signed the Cares Act, which distributed more than half a trillion dollars in direct aid to more than 150 million Americans, from stimulus checks ($1,200 per adult and $500 per child for households below a certain income threshold) to $600 per week in additional unemployment benefits. ... But voters, and especially the low-propensity voters who flooded the electorate in support of Trump, aren’t attuned to the ins and outs of congressional debate. They did not know — and Democrats didn’t do a good enough job of telling them — that the president and his party opposed more generous benefits. All they knew is that Trump signed the bill (and the checks), giving them the kind of government assistance usually reserved for the nation’s ownership class.
Trump tossed that line of thinking away, and honestly, maybe that's valuable in the long-term. Except: Republicans will rediscover their fiscal rectitude when Biden takes power, of course.
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