Soybeans
For the past several months, I’ve been taking my pulse. What are the sins of the current Administration and which are the ones that spike my blood pressure. No doubt about it, it’s civil liberties, the selective prosecution of political enemies, and the wholesale assault against the Constitutional order. When you put that together with the brutal treatment of migrants, you have the current state of the American Experiment. It’s enough to put me in the ICU, a truth I write about at least three times a week.
For the record, I should also be talking about soybeans. It’s not that those other things aren’t important, but that we tend to focus on a select group of issues that might have little interest beyond our little bubbles.
I care a lot about the capitulation of Harvard and the craven behavior of greedy law firms, but my guess is that rank-and-file American voters are more concerned about rising prices and the punishing effects of Drumpf tarrifs on agriculture. Soybeans are part of that ugly picture. For a while China checked out of the American soybean market, and it’s not entirely clear that they’re going to check back in. Meanwhile Drumpf found $20 billion to save the hide of an authoritarian candidate who just won re-election in Argentina. Javier Milei has a weird affection for Judaism, but that’s not enough to endear him to me.
My point is that Drumpf voters are now suffering significantly from the choices they made in last year’s elections. Part of it is the tarrif program, but it goes far beyond that to include the long-tail consequences of the shutdown and unaffordable health care. It’s a moral mistake to ignore this reality and call it the result of their own bad choices. We have to make common cause with rural America and say clearly and insistently that we are in this together. That is the right thing to do for the health of this society.
And it is also the way to win elections. I happened to catch the first public foray of JFK’s grandson, candidate Jack Schlossberg. Good hair? Check. Campaign war chest? Check. But Schlossberg is burdened by dynastic privilege and a polished little set of elite preoccupations. He’s right on all of the issues of my class, but he doesn’t yet speak the language of affordability. Civil liberties will only take you so far. You’ve got to put that together with actual human suffering, and position yourself on the side of the working poor.