Opinion
Here's the real reason Republicans hate the middle class
Americans have figured this out: according to a Fox “News” poll published last week and reported by Newsweek:
“Only 38 percent favored the bill, while 59 percent opposed it, a 21-point gap against the bill. About half of all voters believed the legislation would be detrimental to their families, and just a quarter thought it would deliver any benefit.”
So, why would Republicans want to further reduce the size and wealth of America’s middle class?
Turns out, there are two good reasons that answer that question.
The first and simplest is that ever since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court made it legal for billionaires and big corporations to bribe politicians, the GOP has done the bidding of the morbidly rich to the exclusion of everybody else.
And there’s considerable truth to that argument. The Court opened that door with their Buckley and Bellotti decisions in the late 1970s, laying the foundation for Ronald Reagan’s war against unions and working people and his so-called “Reagan Revolution” on behalf of the wealthy.
As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed out in the Diamond Alternative Energy v EPA case that was decided on June 20 and made it easier for the fossil fuel industry to challenge environmental regulations:
“This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens. … Our ruling will no doubt aid future attempts by the fuel industry to attack the Clean Air Act. … I worry that the fuel industry’s gain comes at a reputational cost for this Court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests. …
“For some, this silence will only harden their sense that the Court softens its certiorari standards when evaluating petitions from moneyed interests, looking past the jurisdictional defects or other vehicle problems that would typically doom petitions from other parties. This Court’s simultaneous aversion to hearing cases involving the potential vindication of the rights of less powerful litigants — workers, criminal defendants, and the condemned, among others — will further fortify that impression. …
“The Court’s remarkably lenient approach to standing in this case contrasts starkly with the stern stance it has taken in cases concerning the rights of ordinary citizens. … The Constitution does not distinguish between plaintiffs whose claims are backed by the Chamber of Commerce and those who seek to vindicate their rights to fair housing, desegregated schools, or privacy. But if someone reviewing our case law harbored doubts about that proposition, today’s decision will do little to dissuade them.”
But while it’s true that Republicans have been naked toadies for rich people and big corporations for a century, there’s a larger reason why Trump and the GOP are working so hard to immiserate and impoverish working class Americans.
That reason has to do with something called “modernization theory.”
Back in 1959, one of the inventors of modernization theory, Seymour Martin Lipset, famously wrote:
“The more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy.”
Lipset argued that industrialization led to unions and higher wages, which in turn funded higher-education opportunities and urbanization, which both grew a larger middle class. As people’s material conditions improved, Lipset noted, their focus shifted from survival issues like food and shelter to more aspirational elements like democratic values, civil and human rights, representation in government, and the rule of law.
In other words, the wealthier the middle class becomes, the more it will demand a vibrant democracy and a government that represents its interests.
On the other hand — and here is the GOP‘s real goal — if you can do away with or diminish the wealth and political power of the middle class, you can more easily loot the government and act exclusively in the interest of the morbidly rich.
As Barrington Moore noted in his book Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: “No bourgeois [middle class], no democracy.”
In 2003, researchers Carles Boix and Susan Stokes found strong evidence that wealthier countries are more likely to be democracies, and once established, democracies are far more stable in richer nations. Similarly, in their book Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy", Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson prove that when economic growth empowers new classes (especially the middle class), those groups will demand political reforms.
Using examples including South Korea, Taiwan, Eastern Europe, and Tunisia, multiple cross-national studies using World Bank income data and Freedom House democracy scores show a strong correlation between per capita income and democratic governance; as people become wealthier they more vigorously demand a small-d democratic political system.
This happens because middle class people have economic security, giving them the time and energy to demand their rights; want property protections, honest courts, education, and fair governance; and typically have relied on meritocratic systems (education, hard work) to achieve their status instead of using corruption or inherited wealth and privilege.
By 1981, the American middle class was at its peak because of a 74 percent top personal income tax bracket, a 50 percent top corporate income tax rate, a strong and healthy social safety net, cheap healthcare (because hospitals and insurance companies were required to be nonprofits in most states), and free or near-free college.
Democracy was also arguably at its peak; for the previous 40+ years Congress had passed, one after the other, bills that primarily benefitted average working people and the middle class. Voting was easy, women and minorities were empowered, and we led the world in education and innovation.
This is not, however, what many wealthy oligarchs want, particularly those who become politically active.
Instead of democracy, they want government to protect their wealth and privilege to the exclusion of “the rabble.”
Instead of paying the cost of a government large enough to guarantee the emergence and sustenance of a middle class, they want tax cuts and subsidies for their businesses. Instead of rights for average people, they want police and courts that will, as Justice Jackson noted, focus instead on their unique wants and needs.
When Reagan came into office in 1981 about a third of American workers had good union jobs, meaning that about two-thirds of all American families lived good middle-class lives on a single paycheck (because the union jobs established the wage and benefits floor for non-union employers who had to compete with them for workers).
That was the year the GOP declared war on working-class people because, in the estimation of the Nixon- and Reagan-era Republicans, our democracy had gotten out of hand.
Workers were demanding good pay and benefits; women, racial, and gender minorities were demanding equal rights; and students demanded an end to the war in Vietnam.
Conservative thinkers like Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley saw these demands as symptoms of a “cultural decay” caused by working class people having more wealth and leisure time than they were “intellectually and culturally capable of handling.”
So, in 1981 the GOP set about dismantling the American middle class with their so-called Reagan Revolution.
Donald Trump, seen in the Oval Office at the White House. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
The result is that today only about 45 percent of Americans are in the middle class, and it takes two jobs to establish that same lifestyle; since Reagan took office fully $50 trillion has been transferred from the homes, savings, and retirement accounts of working class people into the money bins of the top 1 percent.
As the social scientists cited above found, when the middle class shrinks below a certain threshold its demands for democracy are replaced by populist demands for, essentially, revenge.
“Who did this to us?” is the battle cry, and the GOP’s ready answer — first emerging in the 1980s with Rush Limbaugh, going on steroids in the 1990s with Fox “News,” and pounded on by Donald Trump ever since he first came down that escalator in 2015 — is, “It’s the immigrants, Black people, uppity women, college students and professors, and the union bosses.”
MAGA — particularly its white racist base — bought it hook, line, and sinker, leading us to a massive tax-cut bill, court decisions that screw working people and the environment, and an explosion in hate crimes and politically inspired violence.
The bottom line is that the GOP opposes democracy because it interferes with and complicates their very well paid efforts to suck up to — and legislate on behalf of — the morbidly rich. And they disdain the middle class (but love the uneducated poor) because the larger the middle class the louder come the demands for fairness in the distribution of the common wealth and democracy.
So, the next time somebody asks you why Republicans hate the middle class, let them know that, “It’s the democracy, stupid!”
Trump has his fat little foot on Lady Liberty’s throat
We are well on our way to becoming the brutal authoritarian country you used to see on TV and say, "Damn, thank God I don't live there ..."
Things are going to keep getting worse until (and if) we can put a stop to it, good people. Could be it’s already too late: we are a full-blown authoritarian country.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson knows full well the trouble we’re in, and offered this clear-eyed dissent Friday against the high court limiting federal judges’ ability to halt the fascist Trump’s hateful executive orders nationwide:
“The court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.”
AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT …
She wasn’t done:
“It is important to recognize that the Executive’s bid to vanquish so-called ‘universal injunctions’ is, at bottom, a request for this Court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior. When the Government says “do not allow the lower courts to enjoin executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct,” what it is actually saying is that the Executive wants to continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution — please allow this. That is some solicitation. With its ruling today, the majority largely grants the Government’s wish. But, in my view, if this country is going to persist as a Nation of laws and not men, the Judiciary has no choice but to deny it.”
In other words, Trump, the convicted felon … the guy who lies as he breathes … can pretty much ignore any law he doesn’t like.
I really don’t know if after this ruling granting Trump a king’s unchecked powers we will make it to the midterms, which are an endless 17 months away. It isn’t hard to imagine Trump ginning up some crisis and then smothering us in executive orders to halt our elections.
And if you think I’m going too far here, I think you are the problem.
Democrats and/or the opposition to GOP fascism need to be articulating what is at stake right now and emulating Justice Jackson’s courage and conviction. Everybody needs to understand we have entered the beginning of the end of a country where the people used to have the power.
And this is going to get so much damn worse so damn fast …
In my piece last week, We just got a deafening message — ignore it at your peril I warned Democrats of all shapes and sizes that if we make it to the midterms “there is going to be some serious bloodletting at the polls in 2026.”
I added for emphasis: “There will be no such thing as a 'safe' seat anywhere, because America is not a safe country right now. People are scared.”
I concluded: “Nothing motivates voters more than fear and anger, and the politician who doesn’t understand that, better be prepared to find some real work.”
Well, what do you know, guys like Andrew Cuomo aren’t hearing this message. After getting smacked at the polls in New York City’s mayoral primary, word is out that he will stay in the race and run as an alternative to the guy who thrashed him, Zohran Mamdani.
Cuomo is doing this because he’s an arrogant, privileged punk given license and a long leash by the Democratic elite who are completely out of touch with the American voter.
Rather than congratulate Mamdani, and tell him he will do everything he can to help him get elected, Cuomo's going to fight him. This is why so many people argue there’s really not much difference in America’s two major parties these days, and why I take heart most people aren’t affiliated with either one of them.
That last part might be exactly what saves us ...
In closing, I want to take you back to an ancient time, one year ago today.
Back then, a decent, hardworking guy named Joe Biden was our president and he was getting relentlessly hammered by our press, Republicans, and a disenchanted electorate for his inability to completely correct the dreadful economy he inherited from the guy who had attacked the country four years earlier — a guy by the name of Donald Trump.
It was the No.1 issue on the board for the majority of American voters, whose hair was on fire about high prices and inflation.
Well, we know how that election turned out.
As I was guzzling coffee and rifling through several newspapers this morning, I came across this story shoehorned onto the bottom of Page 10 of my local paper here in Madison, Wisconsin:
Turns out, things have gotten worse for the America consumer, not better, but nobody is talking about it anymore, because King Crud and his Crooked Court have given us 20 others things to worry about instead, including our survival.
Our press is flailing, and chasing danger instead of warning us about it.
This is chaos by design, with the goal of unsteadying us, and pushing us all toward surrender. The morbidly obese orange moron has his fat little foot on Lady Liberty’s throat and wants us all to just up and quit.
Well, I’m too goddam mad for that, AND WILL NOT SUBMIT to this clown or his bought-off court.
I am raging and sounding the alarms. I am done looking for leaders where they are supposed to be, and perfectly happy to find ‘em right here in this space.
I say let’s be the answer, and kick some ass.
People. Not parties.
Enough Already.
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)