WHO WILL WIN THE FACTION FIGHT TO RULE THE RULING CLASS?

Make no mistake, there is a ruling class, one that, according to Angelo Codevilla, has gotten more wrong than right of late.

Progressivism’s foundational proposition—that the American way of life suffers from excessive freedom and insufficient latitude for experts to lead each into doing what is best for all—is the intellectual basis of the oligarchy’s ever-increasing size, wealth, and power. The theme that the USA was ill-conceived in 1776-89 and must be re-conceived has resounded from Woodrow Wilson’s Congressional Government (1885) to the campaigns of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Barack Obama, and Joseph Biden: “listen to the scientists!” The criticism’s main point has been constant: America’s original conception validated the people’s right to live as they please, and made it hard to marshal them for Progressive purposes.

But the Progressive critique adds a moral basis: the American people’s indulgence of their preferences—private ease and comfort, focus on families, religious observance, patriotism—has made for every secular sin imaginable: racism, sexism, greed, etc. Because most Americans are racist, sexist, un-appreciative of real virtue or refinement (these are somehow rolled together), because these Americans resist knuckling under to their betters, America is a sick society that needs to be punished and to have its noxious freedoms reformed.

That's a series of Complex Propositions, and I hesitate to grant any one of them in full. I suspect, though, that he has as one of the triggers for the current political unpleasantness the relief for Wall Street, first after the financial bubble popped, and again in the patches accompanying the lockdowns, the self-dealing ruling class about right.

During the 2008 financial panic, however, as the Progressive, bipartisan ruling class scrambled incompetently to save itself and its clients’ assets, it fatefully flaunted its united contempt for the rest of Americans. Republican president George W. Bush, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, the overwhelming majority of Republican politicians and institutions, and the literati from the Nation to the (post-Buckley) National Review were of identical minds with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Democrat politicians and institutions regarding measures to be taken—to which three fourths of the public objected, to no avail. United, this ruling class scoffed at popular opposition.

Insult having awakened substantial numbers of Americans to the injuries being inflicted on them, they looked to push back.

They're still pushing back. Donald Trump, who ran a hostile takeover of the Republican party, seems to be on board with pushing back on the coronavirus lockdowns but cannot help but be artless, has some of the insulted Americans but by no means all.  There is still a scrap to come among the Democrats, some of whom are establishmentarian politicians of a certain age, some of whom are squishy Republican beta-orbiters for the time being, and many of whom are the impatient part of the rainbow coalition.

For the ruling class, the electoral problem is that the intersectional coalition’s actions and demands have made far too explicit that crushing Donald Trump is only incidentally its objective—that crushing the spirit of independence in America’s “deplorable” population is its essential objective. How many Americans are willing to join the privileged ones in confessing their neighbors’ sins in exchange for the hope of being counted as “allies” of the folks doing the real oppressing rather than among the real oppressed? How many are happy that their company’s H.R. department now decides promotions, demotions and firings regardless of professional competence? Do most Americans really believe that the authorities ought to have the powers they exhibited during the COVID affair, and do they see the “mostly peaceful protests” as part of a brighter future for themselves?

Since 2016 the ruling class have had the luxury of acting as if the deplorables were lifeless punching bags. On November 3 they will find out to what extent that may not be so. Its leaders have already discovered that their “intersectional” entourages are not entirely controllable. After the election, the politicians bidding for leadership of conservatives will make Trump look like milquetoast. As the ruling class tries to suppress them, it will also have to deal with uncontrollable allies, whose violence will spur the conservatives to fiercer resistance.

Again, that might be hyperbolic, but the tension is there. Here's how two coastal scribes, Sydney Ember and Astead W. Herndon, have it.

Democrats are navigating fault lines in their own ranks over how they would govern as the controlling party. Some Democrats, and not just on the left wing, are increasingly embracing structural changes to the political system — including eliminating the Senate filibuster, ending the Electoral College and granting statehood to Washington, D.C. — while others reject these ideas as norm-busting power grabs that are unpalatable to a majority of voters.

That's certainly what Ben Shapiro, inter alia, fears.

[T]he 2020 presidential race has now become a referendum on the Democrats, not President Donald Trump. Democratic candidate Joe Biden's inherent campaign pledge was a return to stability, not a leap into revolution. But by threatening the institutional architecture, Biden's campaign has become just that. Now Americans will be forced to choose between the vulgarity of Donald Trump -- a vulgarity and boorishness, however off-putting, that has not threatened constitutional rights -- and a vengeful Democratic Party threatening to remold the country from the top down.

Not so fast, note Messrs. Ember and Herndon.

A consummate Washington institutionalist who served in the Senate for nearly four decades, Biden to this day often speaks in fond and wistful terms about Senate customs of yore. From a policy standpoint he has largely rejected calls to eliminate the filibuster, only recently signaling some openness to doing so, or to expand the Supreme Court. He has said he opposes the movement to defund the police and has even proposed increasing funds to law enforcement, with conditions.

That's the hope of some of the Democrat establishment, the more conventional of their court intellectuals, and the Vichy Republicans.  See also this libertarian argument by Jacob Grier.  "[A] vote for Biden is not a vote for the particular policies he may pursue, many of which will surely be unlibertarian and ill-advised. It’s a vote to preserve the institutions that make liberal democracy and normal politics possible."

The woke base, not so much.

The candidate grasps that.

[Sideshow barker Chris] WALLACE: One final question for you, Mr. Vice President, if Senate Republicans -- we were originally talking about the Supreme Court here -- if Senate Republicans, go ahead and confirm justice Barrett, there has been talk about ending the filibuster, or even packing the court, adding to the nine justices there. You call this a distraction by the president, but in fact it wasn't brought up by the President, it was brought up by some of your Democratic colleagues in Congress. So my question to you as you have refused in the past to talk about it: Are you willing to tell the American people tonight, whether or not you will support either ending the filibuster or packing the court.

16:16 [Democrat candidate Joe] BIDEN: Whatever position I take on that, that'll become the issue -- the issue is, the American people should speak. You should go out and vote. We're in voting now, vote and let your senators know how strongly you feel. Vote now, in fact let people know it is your senators. I'm not going to answer the question.

[Republican president Donald] TRUMP: Why won’t you answer the question -- radical left -- well, listen.

[Democrat candidate Joe] BIDEN: Would you shut up, man.

The most charitable interpretation of that "the American people should speak" might be an "It depends." Make him president with a lot of legislative support, get one outcome, make him president with scant legislative support, get another outcome.  Reason's Sam Rutzick sees that.

Biden is often described as a centrist, but he's more accurately described as a reflection of the center of the Democratic Party, whatever that may be at a given moment. The man behind the 1994 Crime Bill is now the head of the party most supportive of racial justice; the man who voted for the bill that created our deportation immigration system is the candidate for immigration reform. He is, to quote Reason's Matt Welch, a "rusty political weather vane."

Does that mean Biden's views on court-packing are now changing as well? His answer on Tuesday night was not substantial enough to tell, but it certainly seems like the Democratic wind is blowing that direction.

Would you expect anything less of a "situational" moderate?  This quote comes from a much longer William Voegeli essay that will reward careful study.

The best thing about Biden, according to Paul Waldman of the liberal American Prospect, is his “malleability.” Over a long career emphasizing accommodation rather than principle, Biden has shown that he has “no purity tests, and no problem with compromise.” Or, as a “senior Obama Administration official” told Osnos, Biden “is very much a weathervane for what the center of the left is.” Progressive Democrats can get the next best thing to a Sanders or Warren presidency, Waldman advises, by making sure that they constitute the prevailing winds that determine Biden’s direction.

In the meantime, the best way to get him elected president is to give contradictory reassurances to different groups of voters. “Biden’s long profile in American politics has given his campaign cover” Klein explains, to “build bridges to the more socialist wing of the party, and to normalize a more progressive agenda, without fearing some of the backlash that other candidates might receive.” Biden’s centrist reputation, Osnos agrees, “could make it easier for him to achieve changes that might seem more threatening coming from a doctrinaire progressive.” After Biden’s half-century of being malleable, there are grounds to assure centrist voters that he won’t be a dangerous progressive in the White House, and other grounds to assure progressive voters (and donors) that he won’t be a disappointing centrist.

"Contradictory reassurances" are a sure road to at least some campaign promises broken and some voters disappointed.  The past few years there has been a struggle between a Trumpified Republican party and a fractious coalition of Establishment grifters and Resistance militants.  In a Biden presidency, the grifters and the militants will have their spats, with Mr Biden playing the part of a college president who pays lip service to the traditional verities whilst caving to the student militants, and the Trump supporters representing a wild card.

Buckle up.