Find all blog entries at A Commoner Manifesto Substack.
Political Resets Since 1970
Now that our Democratic friends are shifting hard left, Because Trump, let’s review similar moments in recent history. To help us understand.
Nixon’s Silent Majority
After the Great Society and the Vietnam War and Hippie-dippie-dom, the American People elected 1940s Commie Hunter Richard Nixon to be president in 1968. In November 1969 Nixon gave his Silent Majority speech. He meant “middle-class, often blue-collar or suburban/rural Americans” who weren’t hippie-dippie antiwar lefty protesters.
But then he went off the gold standard, stoked inflation, and got dumped by the Deep State, because Woodward and Bernstein and Deep Throat. Jimmy Carter got to be president.
Reagan’s Reagan Democrats
Jimmy Carter got skunked by Iran and “stagflation.” So the “amiable dunce” Ronald Reagan got elected, in part by “Reagan Democrats” that switched parties to vote for common sense. Reagan lowered marginal tax rates — called “trickle-down economics” by the Democrats — and got the economy roaring again.
Clinton the “New Democrat”
Reagan was succeeded by his vice president, George H.W. Bush, who got into a war in the Middle East. The Democrats decided to cut the hippie-dippie-dom and shift to the center as “New Democrats.”
Gingrich’s “Contract With America”
As soon as Bill Clinton got into office he announced tax increases and loosed his wife on the nation to construct HillaryCare. It didn’t go down well, so in 1994 GOP Minority Leader Gingrich announced a Contract with America. It resulted in the first Republican Congress in 40 years.
So everyone was a moderate, including G.W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.”
Obama the Non-Moderate Creates Tea Party
President Obama was elected as the First Black President and to bring us Hope and Change. What he delivered was a hard left Affordable Care Act and hard left culture war. You might say it was the end of the moderate New Democrats of Bill Clinton. Obama provoked the organic grassroots Tea Party that helped Republicans win back the House of Representatives in 2010.
Trump the Impaler
Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 without ever having run for political office, and secured a Republican Congress. His election represented a successful revolt of the ordinary middle class that had had it with progressive lefty big government and woke lefty culture war. However, the Democrats successfully won the 2020 election with non-functional Joe Biden, by fair means or foul, and attempted to neuter Trump with wall-to-wall lawfare.
DSA Breakout
The Democratic Socialists of America is a hard-left movement led by the nation’s intellectual elite that is trying to move the Democratic Party hard left. Some experts say that the movement is a consequence of “elite overproduction” meaning anger in the educated elite because of lack of opportunities for educated, credentialed would-be elitists. The movement elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress in 2018 and nearly nominated far-left Sen. Bernie Sanders for President in 2020. Only the powers-that-be stopped Sanders and nominated place-holder Joe Biden in his stead. Since the DSA has elected hard-left Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City and looks to add a bunch more DSA candidates to the House of Representatives in 2026.
Two Movements, Two Parties
So, in 2026 the US is experiencing the emergence of two political movements.
The movement in the Republican Party is a repeated rebellion of the ordinary middle class against an educated elite that has spent the last century subordinating the middle class to the programs and cultural hegemony of the educated class.
The movement in the Democratic Party is a movement of the educated class to make itself relevant again by re-politicizing the party and empowering the government under its domination and hegemony to radically change society, because justice.
And ne’er the twain shall meet.
| Fri, 26 Jun 2026 01:21:39 GMT |
NYC's DSA Political Wave
Reporting on the wins of NYC Mayor Mamdani’s hard-left mostly DSA candidates in the House Democratic Primary on Tuesday, the results include:
7th District: Hard-left DSA Claire Valdez
10th District: Hard-left Jewish Brad Lander over incumbent far-left Dan Goldman
12th District: Hard-left Micah Lasher
13th District: Hard-left DSA Darializa Avila Chevalier.
But whatabout the racism?
7th District: 36.5% White; 35.9% Hispanic (Brooklyn, Queens)
10th District: 48.7% White; 21.7% Asian (includes Lower East Side)
12th District: 65.2% White; 14.1% Asian (midtown Manhattan)
13th District: 52.3% Hispanic; 23.4% Black (upper Manhattan, Bronx)
Isn’t this kinda racist? With whites winning in the white districts and a Hispanic doctoral student winning in the Hispanic district? And whatabout the Asians? But look at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries district:
8th District: 42.2% Black; 27.4% White (west of JFK airport)
I am shocked, shocked that the districts are so race-aligned. I believe in Hope and Change.
Now the question we hard-right racist-sexist-homophobes are asking: is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
My belief is that the left is, and has always been, the faith of educated rich kids. You know: Marx, son of the leading lawyer in Trier. Hey Chuck, why don’t you go get a job, instead of leeching off the son-of-a-cotton-magnate Fritz Engels!
The eternal cry of the left is that “we are fighting for the oppressed against the oppressors.” First it was the workers, then women, then blacks. Then the whole thing turned into a racket with gays and transgenders, as prophesied by the philosopher Eric Hoffer.
But today, I suspect, the educated left is fighting for themselves, due to what Peter Turchin, of Ages of Discord, calls “overproduction of elites.” You know, kids getting useless degrees in “underwater activism” and finding that all the good NGO jobs are taken by rich kids with connections.
Problem is, of course, that the traditional victims — workers, blacks — don’t see any percentage in the new game. Tish James, the scourge of Donald Trump, said:
Some of the candidates that he has supported are individuals who do not understand the politics of New York City, the cultural differences from district to district, who have not been part of the history and the struggle of some of these districts, and are relatively new to the body politic,” James told CNN, pointing particularly to what she said was Mamdani’s lack of understanding of race and class issues that run deep.
Shall I translate? The idea of “differences from district to district” and “understanding of race and class issues” is French for “pay attention to the handouts, buster.”
I don’t know any philosophers and social scientists that might be studying the current stage in the Allyism saga, where the Allies are fighting for the oppressed woke-studies graduates against the white male billionaire Musk-adjacent oppressors. But I certainly will be signing up to read their analyses after it’s all over. One way or the other.
| Wed, 24 Jun 2026 22:01:43 GMT |
Switch to Substack for more blog posts
Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Three Facts of Politics: the political is the distinction between friend and enemy (Schmitt); there is no politics without an enemy (Yarvin); there is no politics without handouts (Chantrill).
I am all in favor of LGBT. I just can’t take it seriously.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: Consequences of Jordan B. Peterson
