It’s not hard to understand the cynicism and scorn for the elite. They have earned it. Every ounce of it.
Democrats, as the party of the elite, wring their hands and blame the people. The people just don’t understand the superior intellect and morality of the professors, the career government workers, and the NGO’s. The people must be made to respect their betters. Then all will be well.
The “elite” will never, ever look in the mirror for the source of the problem.
As of 2016, the Government Accountability Office found that federal managers rated 33% of their subordinates as "outstanding", another 27% as "exceeds fully successful", another 39% as "fully successful". Just 0.3% were minimally successful and only 0.1% were "unacceptable." How many private citizens who have dealt with the executive departments would agree with such glowing evaluations of federal employees?
Your last paragraph is the key. If Democrats are the party that believes the government can improve people’s lives, then the job isn’t to defend institutions as they are. It’s to show, concretely, how the government can work better. In ways ordinary people can see and feel.
The measures you cite don’t just say “people are mad.” They say something stronger, the system looks broken in a long-run way. The Pew trust curve is the real key. Trust was high in the late 1950s through mid-1960s, then it breaks in the late 60s/70s and never returns to the post World War II high. Since then we’ve had temporary bumps (Reagan, late Clinton, post-9/11), but no durable rebuild. This includes from 2008 to now where we have had both parties, and vastly different presidents major laws passed like Obamacare. Nothing moved the trust number which tells you that the problem is deep and structural.
That pattern matters because it suggests this isn’t going to be fixed by messaging, or by one charismatic leader, or even by a single policy win. It’s a system problem, probably multiple reinforcing “drivers” failing at once: visible competence, truth lining up with what people can observe, real accountability, rules people can plan around, basic safety/assurance, institutions that lower the temperature instead of raising it.
So yes: Democrats need a vision for reform. But it has to be framed as operational repair. how the system will become more reliable. Additionally it has to be consistent long enough to rebuild trust as a stock, not just a mood. That almost certainly requires reforms that can survive beyond one administration, which means some bipartisan durability whether anyone likes that or not
One would think the party that believes government can improve people’s lives would be even more upset about the existence of major fraud in social services, yet they are circling the wagons and playing their tired old race card. All while the scope of the fraud expands.
You would think , I am not very political so may be completely naive in this assessment but it would seem to me an ideal opportunity for the right Democratic leader to step forward and conduct hearings to hold people accountable and to propose the right changes so money gets to the people who need it and the rest can have confidence in the system they could do it in a bipartisan way so it helps mute the flack that is sure to come their way
Yep instead they are pretending it doesn’t exist and going after the citizen journalists who are exposing it. The sad irony is that I’m sure they believe admitting the fraud exists means Trump wins, when in fact it’s their denial of reality that keeps giving Trump the winning hand.
It was broken in the mid-60's and early 70's by Viet Nam, and fueled by drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll. I was there, and I remember all that quite vividly. Not judging. I was in the thick of some of those things. Just sayin'.
I was there too. In addition to what you cited the chaos in the streets, the three major assassinations, Nixon’s actions or how we handled the oil crisis all went into what occurred during that time frame and I suspect had an impact on trust.
This distrust coincides with the Left's Gramscian March Through The Institutions.
Once non-political institutions become politicized, the victors can no longer demand that people respect them. Second, the way these institutions have wielded their power has been politically motivated and capricious.
The Minnesota situation that ended Tim Walz's career shows that MN politicians were either grossly incompetent or complicit for partisan or pecuniary reasons. Neither situation bodes well for improving institutional respect.
I don't know what the Democrats can do here. The Trump Admin is going to de-politicize these institutions by making the cost of being political too high.
Regarding MN: Just how much effort and resources should MN put towards overseeing the distribution of federal grant money, little of which was provided by the taxpayers of MN? And when some of the alleged (and convicted) fraudsters have political ties to MN officials?
Congress would do well to make States financially responsible for losses incurred by fraudulent misuse of federal grant money. What would the temperature be today in MN if the State now had to give back $250,000,000 (and counting) of stolen federal grant money?
“Hey Ms. State Rep, I’m starting an NGO to study and report on the reasons for homeless children and how we can deal with that. Could you see it possible to fund my NGO at $10,000,000. I could see it possible to donate $500k to your senate race.” “Or to help fund your cousin’s children’s college fund for $X.” Dig deep; follow the money.
Has anyone else seen the stat that 10% of US jobs are now NGO, NGO adjacent or NGO funded? I read it a while ago and have never bothered to verify.
I could easily believe that percentage in CA because many young people seemed to be employed in the space, but it seems high for the entire country, or at least I hope it is high.
Unfortunately it might be hard for either party to seize this moment, given that persistent resentment towards elites naturally breeds political instability, as any political faction that rises to power eventually becomes, over time, 'the elite' that's scheming against the common folk--by dint of having become the reigning political leaders.
That's the common thread that runs between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. It's not policy, its 'outsider-ness'. Hence why many people who cringe at the abstract buzzword of 'socialism' still liked Sanders. (and many of them Sanders AND Trump) When Trump has become the guy in power, he has lost ground with the public; when he has been out of power, running as 'the outsider', he has gained ground. The exact same dynamic was in play with Biden. When you're in charge, *you're* the evil elite.
But since a lot of these trends track globally, I still think the most crucial causes are secular technological and economic ones--in particular, the fact that postwar technologies like television and radio had a homogenizing effect on society that breeded trust in its leaders, whereas postindustrial technologies like the internet and (more powerfully than all the rest) social media have a balkanizing effect that does the opposite. Balkanization also usually dovetails with rising inequality, (exacerbated by the implosion of finance in 2008's wiping out middle class savings) which accelerates the trend.
Notably, political elites who have managed to stay in power, have avoided the trap by essentially using state repression and other illiberal means to gain control of these new communication technologies and centers of power. Putin, Orban, Erdogan, etc. A.) maintain tight control of their polity's social media ecosystems, and B.) use them to persist a narrative of 'outsiders' and 'a globalist elite' trying to infiltrate and infect the body politic, whom they are fighting against in the name of the 'common people'. (and picking their pockets while they're at it)
Scary shades of the pre-WWI world. Let's hope the outcomes are different.
“ Notably, political elites who have managed to stay in power, have avoided the trap by essentially using state repression and other illiberal means to gain control of these new communication technologies and centers of power.”
Yes Europe has become illiberal and people are routinely arrested for social media posts. In one case, a German woman who called Muslim rapists “disgusting rapist pigs” went to prison longer than the rapists themselves.
As JMan notes, below, socialism can only be perpetuated by autocratic repression. At some point, people realize it's failing, and need to be beaten into submission.
Depends on what 'socialism' refers to. If we're talking Soviet communism or Venezeuelan Chavismo, then yeah only the Stalin's and Hugo Chavez's of the world can keep it going. If we're referring to capitalist economies with liberal capitalist markets and robust, well-run welfare states, a la the Nordic countries, then it's completely compatible with democracy.
'Socialism' is really not a useful term 99% of the time because people use it to refer to either, when the two are very different.
It's just a whistle stop on the track to more welfare and unsustainability. Eventually the people with big money will leave (if there's anywhere to go), and the house of cards will collapse. I could be wrong, but my econ major advisor was a guy from Poland who taught comparative economic systems. Smart guy. Got out of Poland in the 60's. I had him as a professor and advisor in the early 70's. If you're right, and if I'm alive, I'll buy you a steak dinner.
Democrats claim to be inclusive, but they don’t seem to appreciate how EXclusive they can be. They’re smug about following the science, but I’m stupid because I think that men can’t become women. They’re smug about how virtuous DEI is, but I’m a white supremacist because I think that any form of race-based discrimination is wrong. They wave signs saying NO KINGS!! while staying mum about protests against a murderous despotic regime in Iran and the courageous people standing up against it.
No ayatollahs? Well…Free Maduro from the river to the sea!!
Meanwhile, our president may have put us into a decades-long quagmire in Venezuela that could destabilize this hemisphere, and Stephen Miller has announced that the US has “a right” to annex Greenland. Our Department of Health and Human Services is rejecting vaccines. Oh, and China is snarling.
Yet Gavin Newsom is doubling down on gender issues with Ezra Klein. And the Dems as a whole refuse to see the role they’ve played in making the stuff in the last paragraph happen. The Democrats have a problem, and like that old saying goes, they have to admit that before they can solve it.
Trust began to decline as the Gramscian "march through the institutions" began.
For those who don't read continental philosophy (and you shouldn't), Marx of course had a prophecy that advanced capitalist nations would lead the charge to communism. When Marx's prophecy failed to come true, it led to a crisis on the left. One branch of leftists said that there is no universal brotherhood of the proletariat. However, similar goals could be achieved in a much more practical way on the basis of nationalism and protecting private property while also creating a large government through heavy taxation. That was fascism.
The other branch said that Marx missed a key point: that material conditions alone would not lead to communism if the entire society was brainwashed with capitalist propaganda like "The American Dream." Antonio Gramsci realized that the left needed to gain cultural hegemony (his term) to control the media, the universities, and other major institutions. Then they would make the case for socialism.
Critical Theorists of the Frankfurt School like Herbert Marcuse ran with this and continued to develop the idea that the Enlightenment was a failed project. Marcuse's One Dimensional Man became the Bible of the New Left that was ascended int he late 1960s. They succeeded in capturing institutions and infecting them with post-Enlightenment post-rational values.
That doesn't really track. In the purely ideological department, the classical economists--guys like Adam Smith--essentially had a very similar 'prophecy' to Marx. They more or less argued that industrial capitalism (and industrial capitalists) would overthrow the rentier classes in favor of a proletarian society. (first by casting off the feudal lords, then by having industry and tangible capital exert control over finance and banking, or 'fictitious' capital) Hence why both Smith and Marx had a labor theory of value. (as did John Stuart Mill and the other classicals, in their own way)
But more importantly, you're mistaking ideological developments as autonomous forces, rather than something supervening on underlying technological (and by extension productive) phenomena.
Look at the biggest drops in the trend-line in the article. They are more tightly coupled to waves of new communication technologies and large economic crises (the end of Bretton Woods and the Stagflation of the 70s inaugurates the first massive drop, Great Depression 2.0 in 2008 marks the beginning of the next, the Pandemic inmplosion the third) than the rise or fall in popularity of any academic school of philosophy. (all of which--the Frankfurts included--lag behind huge technological and economic shifts/shocks)
The Pew chart shows trust increased through the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, and reached 77% at the beginning of the Johnson administrations. For the next twenty years trust dropped every year, reaching the low 20’s at the end of the Carter administration.
The Johnson administration’s flurry of new programs in the ‘War on Poverty’ gave people lots of policies, to either like, dislike, or have suggestions to improve. Policies hit home for millions of Americans as sons and brothers were drafted into the military as the President expanded the Vietnam war. Young men responded in a myriad of ways.
More families had an up front and personal experience when their children were bussed past their community school to distant schools. What started as voluntary local bussing in a few communities in the 1950’s, became mandatory forced bussing in the 1970’s. Family’s responded in a variety of ways.
Americans entered the debate as the favorite TV show in the 1970’s was Norman Lear’s All in the Family, the top rated TV show from 1971-1976. Nixon’s “Silent Majority” found its voice.
There was added discussion as many think tanks were founded at this time; The National Taxpayers Union (1969), The Heritage Foundation (1973), The Cato Institute (1974), the Manhattan Institute (1978), just to name a few.
I’m not judging Johnsons intentions, just that there were a lot of new programs and lots of opportunity for people to lose faith in government. Now 60 years latter, some of his programs have ended (like government built housing) and some are failing in place, like Social Security.
From the trustees report, June 2025.
Based on our best estimates, this year's report shows that:
• The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund will be able to pay 100 percent of total scheduled benefits until 2033, … continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 77 percent of total scheduled benefits.” YIKES
Correction: Johnson didn't create Social Security. He did create Medicare and I meant to point out the current challenge I hope gets addressed. From the 2025 Trustees report:
‘The Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund will be able to pay 100 percent of total scheduled benefits until 2033, …and continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 89 percent of total scheduled benefits.‘
This essay makes a flaw in separating Democrats and institutions. The Democrat party is of the elites, by the elites and for the elites... the same elites that control our institutions.
The radical agenda is a secular elite luxury virtue signaling belief set... a pagan witch twitch that has taken off with the historical hockey stick graph rise in educated chick socioeconomic domination.
The elites are feminized. They are a product of The Great Feminization that infected the education industry decades ago. They have more schooling, so more indoctrination. The crash in public trust aligns with this change. The feminized have the degrees... have the credentials... occupy the Professional Managerial Class... and run our institutions.
Democrats cannot shed this, because Democrats ARE this.
I certainly hope your “why” question was rhetorical, because the answer should be obvious.
Non-existent WMDs as the rationale for a war we didn’t need.
A major economic crash brought on by ending the very sensible, easy to follow Glass–Steagall regulations. Which was followed by bailouts for Wall Street while Main Street was hung out to dry.
The replacement of simple easy to follow regulations with increasingly Byzantine over cumbersome regulations stifling the economy and advantaging large corporations over small businesses.
The Trans-insanity
Not only getting COVID almost entirely wrong but viciously attacking those who got it right (The Barrington Declaration, Sweden, etc.)
The blatant bigotry of DEI.
And those are just the highlights. I grew up in the bottom 20% and clawed my way into the top 5%. From my vantage point, there is no group of Americans as clueless about their fellow countrymen as those who have spent their entire lives in the top 5%.
My move from mostly voting for Democrats starting in the 90s to mostly voting for Republicans by the mid teens was driven by two things.
1. Views on social issues that put me in sync with if not to the left of the Democrats in the 90s were viewed as bigotry by the mid-teens
2. 20+ years of watching Seattle city government exacerbate every problem it attempted to solve convinced me that government is at best incompetent and at worst corrupt.
I’m surprised the trust numbers are as high as they are.
Perhaps Math should concern Dems more than searching for their own Trump. In just 4 years, Blue States will lose 10-12 Congressional seats in the 2030 Census/ Reapportionment. Millions of Americans have fled Blue States and relocated to Red ones.
Had Biden not dissolved the border and stoked Blue State populations with millions of new arrivals unable to vote, Blue States would be looking at the potential of another 6+ net House seats lost, on top of the first 10-12 lost seats.
Should SCOTUS end Congressional Districting based on the Voting Right Acts, due to outdated political assumptions and racial discrimination, Dem could be out another handful of House seats.
Finally, there is the Holy Grail of Reapportionment. In many large cities 15%-20% of the population is ineligible to vote, if not more. Because those legally unable to vote are counted for apportionment, it increases the voting power of Americans residing in those districts, while decreasing the value of votes cast in other districts where every adult can vote.
Congressional Districts average roughly 760K people each. Of course, some Americans are not old enough to vote, but setting that aside, if a District is 18% occupied by people legally unable to vote, there are 136K fewer potential voters. That renders the 624K thousand votes in those districts far more valuable, then the 760K potential votes next door.
The situation also means running for a House seat is easier and cheaper in those districts, because candidates have fewer voters, to which they must appeal. In actuality, it generally means it is easier and cheaper to be elected a Dem House member, then a Rep House member, because traditionally Blue House districts, tend to have larger populations of ineligible voters.
Dems cannot improve people's lives, if they do not hold power. Along with searching for the Democratic Trump, and combating the snob factor, Dems might consider the reality of so many Blue State House districts morphing into Red State districts. Also, how they will answer, if SCOTUS if ever asks how it is fair a CA US House candidate need only win over 3/4ths as many voters, as a Mississippi House candidate.
I have to assume that for right now, the benefits of ignoring public sentiment work out better for the individual politicians. I see little effort by either party to establish restrictions on rent seeking. Republicans favor industry and Democrats favor nonprofits and NGOs.
I keep hoping some ambitious Dem will see the opportunity just as Trump did in 16.
I don’t see how a genuinely populist Democrat could ever win the nomination. Populist Democrat these days means a Bernie Sanders socialist who rolled over on ever bit of identity politics because of “the groups”.
I don't see it either, but at this point they have little choice. The alternative is to hope the economy implodes or similar. Sanders would never get the same amount of crossover votes he would have gotten in 16. The AOC part of the left is simply too extreme.
It’s not hard to understand the cynicism and scorn for the elite. They have earned it. Every ounce of it.
Democrats, as the party of the elite, wring their hands and blame the people. The people just don’t understand the superior intellect and morality of the professors, the career government workers, and the NGO’s. The people must be made to respect their betters. Then all will be well.
The “elite” will never, ever look in the mirror for the source of the problem.
As of 2016, the Government Accountability Office found that federal managers rated 33% of their subordinates as "outstanding", another 27% as "exceeds fully successful", another 39% as "fully successful". Just 0.3% were minimally successful and only 0.1% were "unacceptable." How many private citizens who have dealt with the executive departments would agree with such glowing evaluations of federal employees?
What percentage of government workers receive bonuses (cash or extra leave)? What percentage of government workers were fired?
Your last paragraph is the key. If Democrats are the party that believes the government can improve people’s lives, then the job isn’t to defend institutions as they are. It’s to show, concretely, how the government can work better. In ways ordinary people can see and feel.
The measures you cite don’t just say “people are mad.” They say something stronger, the system looks broken in a long-run way. The Pew trust curve is the real key. Trust was high in the late 1950s through mid-1960s, then it breaks in the late 60s/70s and never returns to the post World War II high. Since then we’ve had temporary bumps (Reagan, late Clinton, post-9/11), but no durable rebuild. This includes from 2008 to now where we have had both parties, and vastly different presidents major laws passed like Obamacare. Nothing moved the trust number which tells you that the problem is deep and structural.
That pattern matters because it suggests this isn’t going to be fixed by messaging, or by one charismatic leader, or even by a single policy win. It’s a system problem, probably multiple reinforcing “drivers” failing at once: visible competence, truth lining up with what people can observe, real accountability, rules people can plan around, basic safety/assurance, institutions that lower the temperature instead of raising it.
So yes: Democrats need a vision for reform. But it has to be framed as operational repair. how the system will become more reliable. Additionally it has to be consistent long enough to rebuild trust as a stock, not just a mood. That almost certainly requires reforms that can survive beyond one administration, which means some bipartisan durability whether anyone likes that or not
One would think the party that believes government can improve people’s lives would be even more upset about the existence of major fraud in social services, yet they are circling the wagons and playing their tired old race card. All while the scope of the fraud expands.
You would think , I am not very political so may be completely naive in this assessment but it would seem to me an ideal opportunity for the right Democratic leader to step forward and conduct hearings to hold people accountable and to propose the right changes so money gets to the people who need it and the rest can have confidence in the system they could do it in a bipartisan way so it helps mute the flack that is sure to come their way
That is actually a good idea, but to do that, Dems have to admit the fraud exits on a large enough scale to warrant hearings.
Dems can't do that. Having spent decades insisting the sky is green, they cannot now, admit it is Blue.
Yep instead they are pretending it doesn’t exist and going after the citizen journalists who are exposing it. The sad irony is that I’m sure they believe admitting the fraud exists means Trump wins, when in fact it’s their denial of reality that keeps giving Trump the winning hand.
Isn’t that the truth
It was broken in the mid-60's and early 70's by Viet Nam, and fueled by drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll. I was there, and I remember all that quite vividly. Not judging. I was in the thick of some of those things. Just sayin'.
I was there too. In addition to what you cited the chaos in the streets, the three major assassinations, Nixon’s actions or how we handled the oil crisis all went into what occurred during that time frame and I suspect had an impact on trust.
This distrust coincides with the Left's Gramscian March Through The Institutions.
Once non-political institutions become politicized, the victors can no longer demand that people respect them. Second, the way these institutions have wielded their power has been politically motivated and capricious.
The Minnesota situation that ended Tim Walz's career shows that MN politicians were either grossly incompetent or complicit for partisan or pecuniary reasons. Neither situation bodes well for improving institutional respect.
I don't know what the Democrats can do here. The Trump Admin is going to de-politicize these institutions by making the cost of being political too high.
Regarding MN: Just how much effort and resources should MN put towards overseeing the distribution of federal grant money, little of which was provided by the taxpayers of MN? And when some of the alleged (and convicted) fraudsters have political ties to MN officials?
Congress would do well to make States financially responsible for losses incurred by fraudulent misuse of federal grant money. What would the temperature be today in MN if the State now had to give back $250,000,000 (and counting) of stolen federal grant money?
“Hey Ms. State Rep, I’m starting an NGO to study and report on the reasons for homeless children and how we can deal with that. Could you see it possible to fund my NGO at $10,000,000. I could see it possible to donate $500k to your senate race.” “Or to help fund your cousin’s children’s college fund for $X.” Dig deep; follow the money.
I think it is also "I'll give your 22-year-old daughter with a BFA a $200k job"
The NGO space is a WPA for political activists with useless degrees.
Has anyone else seen the stat that 10% of US jobs are now NGO, NGO adjacent or NGO funded? I read it a while ago and have never bothered to verify.
I could easily believe that percentage in CA because many young people seemed to be employed in the space, but it seems high for the entire country, or at least I hope it is high.
What the populace doesn't realize is that mcuh of the fraud connected with government is related to government corruption.
Unfortunately it might be hard for either party to seize this moment, given that persistent resentment towards elites naturally breeds political instability, as any political faction that rises to power eventually becomes, over time, 'the elite' that's scheming against the common folk--by dint of having become the reigning political leaders.
That's the common thread that runs between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. It's not policy, its 'outsider-ness'. Hence why many people who cringe at the abstract buzzword of 'socialism' still liked Sanders. (and many of them Sanders AND Trump) When Trump has become the guy in power, he has lost ground with the public; when he has been out of power, running as 'the outsider', he has gained ground. The exact same dynamic was in play with Biden. When you're in charge, *you're* the evil elite.
But since a lot of these trends track globally, I still think the most crucial causes are secular technological and economic ones--in particular, the fact that postwar technologies like television and radio had a homogenizing effect on society that breeded trust in its leaders, whereas postindustrial technologies like the internet and (more powerfully than all the rest) social media have a balkanizing effect that does the opposite. Balkanization also usually dovetails with rising inequality, (exacerbated by the implosion of finance in 2008's wiping out middle class savings) which accelerates the trend.
Notably, political elites who have managed to stay in power, have avoided the trap by essentially using state repression and other illiberal means to gain control of these new communication technologies and centers of power. Putin, Orban, Erdogan, etc. A.) maintain tight control of their polity's social media ecosystems, and B.) use them to persist a narrative of 'outsiders' and 'a globalist elite' trying to infiltrate and infect the body politic, whom they are fighting against in the name of the 'common people'. (and picking their pockets while they're at it)
Scary shades of the pre-WWI world. Let's hope the outcomes are different.
“ Notably, political elites who have managed to stay in power, have avoided the trap by essentially using state repression and other illiberal means to gain control of these new communication technologies and centers of power.”
Yes Europe has become illiberal and people are routinely arrested for social media posts. In one case, a German woman who called Muslim rapists “disgusting rapist pigs” went to prison longer than the rapists themselves.
As JMan notes, below, socialism can only be perpetuated by autocratic repression. At some point, people realize it's failing, and need to be beaten into submission.
Socialism, you can vote your way in, but you generally have to shoot your way out.
I'm going to steal that quote and use it with attribution.
Thanks but I can’t take credit for it. I forget where I first came across it. Sounds a lot like PJ O’Rourke.
Depends on what 'socialism' refers to. If we're talking Soviet communism or Venezeuelan Chavismo, then yeah only the Stalin's and Hugo Chavez's of the world can keep it going. If we're referring to capitalist economies with liberal capitalist markets and robust, well-run welfare states, a la the Nordic countries, then it's completely compatible with democracy.
'Socialism' is really not a useful term 99% of the time because people use it to refer to either, when the two are very different.
It's just a whistle stop on the track to more welfare and unsustainability. Eventually the people with big money will leave (if there's anywhere to go), and the house of cards will collapse. I could be wrong, but my econ major advisor was a guy from Poland who taught comparative economic systems. Smart guy. Got out of Poland in the 60's. I had him as a professor and advisor in the early 70's. If you're right, and if I'm alive, I'll buy you a steak dinner.
Democrats claim to be inclusive, but they don’t seem to appreciate how EXclusive they can be. They’re smug about following the science, but I’m stupid because I think that men can’t become women. They’re smug about how virtuous DEI is, but I’m a white supremacist because I think that any form of race-based discrimination is wrong. They wave signs saying NO KINGS!! while staying mum about protests against a murderous despotic regime in Iran and the courageous people standing up against it.
No ayatollahs? Well…Free Maduro from the river to the sea!!
Meanwhile, our president may have put us into a decades-long quagmire in Venezuela that could destabilize this hemisphere, and Stephen Miller has announced that the US has “a right” to annex Greenland. Our Department of Health and Human Services is rejecting vaccines. Oh, and China is snarling.
Yet Gavin Newsom is doubling down on gender issues with Ezra Klein. And the Dems as a whole refuse to see the role they’ve played in making the stuff in the last paragraph happen. The Democrats have a problem, and like that old saying goes, they have to admit that before they can solve it.
Trust began to decline as the Gramscian "march through the institutions" began.
For those who don't read continental philosophy (and you shouldn't), Marx of course had a prophecy that advanced capitalist nations would lead the charge to communism. When Marx's prophecy failed to come true, it led to a crisis on the left. One branch of leftists said that there is no universal brotherhood of the proletariat. However, similar goals could be achieved in a much more practical way on the basis of nationalism and protecting private property while also creating a large government through heavy taxation. That was fascism.
The other branch said that Marx missed a key point: that material conditions alone would not lead to communism if the entire society was brainwashed with capitalist propaganda like "The American Dream." Antonio Gramsci realized that the left needed to gain cultural hegemony (his term) to control the media, the universities, and other major institutions. Then they would make the case for socialism.
Critical Theorists of the Frankfurt School like Herbert Marcuse ran with this and continued to develop the idea that the Enlightenment was a failed project. Marcuse's One Dimensional Man became the Bible of the New Left that was ascended int he late 1960s. They succeeded in capturing institutions and infecting them with post-Enlightenment post-rational values.
That doesn't really track. In the purely ideological department, the classical economists--guys like Adam Smith--essentially had a very similar 'prophecy' to Marx. They more or less argued that industrial capitalism (and industrial capitalists) would overthrow the rentier classes in favor of a proletarian society. (first by casting off the feudal lords, then by having industry and tangible capital exert control over finance and banking, or 'fictitious' capital) Hence why both Smith and Marx had a labor theory of value. (as did John Stuart Mill and the other classicals, in their own way)
But more importantly, you're mistaking ideological developments as autonomous forces, rather than something supervening on underlying technological (and by extension productive) phenomena.
Look at the biggest drops in the trend-line in the article. They are more tightly coupled to waves of new communication technologies and large economic crises (the end of Bretton Woods and the Stagflation of the 70s inaugurates the first massive drop, Great Depression 2.0 in 2008 marks the beginning of the next, the Pandemic inmplosion the third) than the rise or fall in popularity of any academic school of philosophy. (all of which--the Frankfurts included--lag behind huge technological and economic shifts/shocks)
The Pew chart shows trust increased through the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, and reached 77% at the beginning of the Johnson administrations. For the next twenty years trust dropped every year, reaching the low 20’s at the end of the Carter administration.
The Johnson administration’s flurry of new programs in the ‘War on Poverty’ gave people lots of policies, to either like, dislike, or have suggestions to improve. Policies hit home for millions of Americans as sons and brothers were drafted into the military as the President expanded the Vietnam war. Young men responded in a myriad of ways.
More families had an up front and personal experience when their children were bussed past their community school to distant schools. What started as voluntary local bussing in a few communities in the 1950’s, became mandatory forced bussing in the 1970’s. Family’s responded in a variety of ways.
Americans entered the debate as the favorite TV show in the 1970’s was Norman Lear’s All in the Family, the top rated TV show from 1971-1976. Nixon’s “Silent Majority” found its voice.
There was added discussion as many think tanks were founded at this time; The National Taxpayers Union (1969), The Heritage Foundation (1973), The Cato Institute (1974), the Manhattan Institute (1978), just to name a few.
I’m not judging Johnsons intentions, just that there were a lot of new programs and lots of opportunity for people to lose faith in government. Now 60 years latter, some of his programs have ended (like government built housing) and some are failing in place, like Social Security.
From the trustees report, June 2025.
Based on our best estimates, this year's report shows that:
• The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund will be able to pay 100 percent of total scheduled benefits until 2033, … continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 77 percent of total scheduled benefits.” YIKES
https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/
When so many Americans have been on the receiving end of bad policy for decades, I’m not surprised that trust in government has evaporated.
Correction: Johnson didn't create Social Security. He did create Medicare and I meant to point out the current challenge I hope gets addressed. From the 2025 Trustees report:
‘The Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund will be able to pay 100 percent of total scheduled benefits until 2033, …and continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 89 percent of total scheduled benefits.‘
But a baboon cannot change her bright red ass.
This essay makes a flaw in separating Democrats and institutions. The Democrat party is of the elites, by the elites and for the elites... the same elites that control our institutions.
The radical agenda is a secular elite luxury virtue signaling belief set... a pagan witch twitch that has taken off with the historical hockey stick graph rise in educated chick socioeconomic domination.
The elites are feminized. They are a product of The Great Feminization that infected the education industry decades ago. They have more schooling, so more indoctrination. The crash in public trust aligns with this change. The feminized have the degrees... have the credentials... occupy the Professional Managerial Class... and run our institutions.
Democrats cannot shed this, because Democrats ARE this.
I certainly hope your “why” question was rhetorical, because the answer should be obvious.
Non-existent WMDs as the rationale for a war we didn’t need.
A major economic crash brought on by ending the very sensible, easy to follow Glass–Steagall regulations. Which was followed by bailouts for Wall Street while Main Street was hung out to dry.
The replacement of simple easy to follow regulations with increasingly Byzantine over cumbersome regulations stifling the economy and advantaging large corporations over small businesses.
The Trans-insanity
Not only getting COVID almost entirely wrong but viciously attacking those who got it right (The Barrington Declaration, Sweden, etc.)
The blatant bigotry of DEI.
And those are just the highlights. I grew up in the bottom 20% and clawed my way into the top 5%. From my vantage point, there is no group of Americans as clueless about their fellow countrymen as those who have spent their entire lives in the top 5%.
My move from mostly voting for Democrats starting in the 90s to mostly voting for Republicans by the mid teens was driven by two things.
1. Views on social issues that put me in sync with if not to the left of the Democrats in the 90s were viewed as bigotry by the mid-teens
2. 20+ years of watching Seattle city government exacerbate every problem it attempted to solve convinced me that government is at best incompetent and at worst corrupt.
I’m surprised the trust numbers are as high as they are.
Perhaps Math should concern Dems more than searching for their own Trump. In just 4 years, Blue States will lose 10-12 Congressional seats in the 2030 Census/ Reapportionment. Millions of Americans have fled Blue States and relocated to Red ones.
Had Biden not dissolved the border and stoked Blue State populations with millions of new arrivals unable to vote, Blue States would be looking at the potential of another 6+ net House seats lost, on top of the first 10-12 lost seats.
Should SCOTUS end Congressional Districting based on the Voting Right Acts, due to outdated political assumptions and racial discrimination, Dem could be out another handful of House seats.
Finally, there is the Holy Grail of Reapportionment. In many large cities 15%-20% of the population is ineligible to vote, if not more. Because those legally unable to vote are counted for apportionment, it increases the voting power of Americans residing in those districts, while decreasing the value of votes cast in other districts where every adult can vote.
Congressional Districts average roughly 760K people each. Of course, some Americans are not old enough to vote, but setting that aside, if a District is 18% occupied by people legally unable to vote, there are 136K fewer potential voters. That renders the 624K thousand votes in those districts far more valuable, then the 760K potential votes next door.
The situation also means running for a House seat is easier and cheaper in those districts, because candidates have fewer voters, to which they must appeal. In actuality, it generally means it is easier and cheaper to be elected a Dem House member, then a Rep House member, because traditionally Blue House districts, tend to have larger populations of ineligible voters.
Dems cannot improve people's lives, if they do not hold power. Along with searching for the Democratic Trump, and combating the snob factor, Dems might consider the reality of so many Blue State House districts morphing into Red State districts. Also, how they will answer, if SCOTUS if ever asks how it is fair a CA US House candidate need only win over 3/4ths as many voters, as a Mississippi House candidate.
I have to assume that for right now, the benefits of ignoring public sentiment work out better for the individual politicians. I see little effort by either party to establish restrictions on rent seeking. Republicans favor industry and Democrats favor nonprofits and NGOs.
I keep hoping some ambitious Dem will see the opportunity just as Trump did in 16.
I don’t see how a genuinely populist Democrat could ever win the nomination. Populist Democrat these days means a Bernie Sanders socialist who rolled over on ever bit of identity politics because of “the groups”.
I don't see it either, but at this point they have little choice. The alternative is to hope the economy implodes or similar. Sanders would never get the same amount of crossover votes he would have gotten in 16. The AOC part of the left is simply too extreme.