We all know about RINOs, the Republicans In Name Only that routinely betray the Republican Party's base and truckle to the Democrats. Hello Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY).
But now Edward Ring at American Greatness wants us to think about the DINOs, Democrats In Name Only. I know what you are saying: If Only.
DINOs are Democrats from California:
They see a dismal reality—unreliable energy, water rationing, traffic gridlock, unaffordable housing, out-of-control homelessness, rampant and unpunished crime, burning forests, and an increasingly worthless system of public education—and all of it is a consequence of progressive politics. They’ve realized that the progressives will do nothing but make these problems worse.
Hey, fellahs. You think?
Ring is talking about chaps like Joel Kotkin the writer, and then two Dem politicians, Michael Shellenberger and Kevin Paffrath. Shellengberger ran for governor of California in 2018 and Paffrath is running right now in the Newsom recall.
Now I think that there is a fundamental difference between RINOs and DINOs.
RINOs like Liz Cheney are people that say to themselves: "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." And I understand that. Why be
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
Get a clue and get your share of the loot! Right Liz?
But the DINOs are different. I think that they are starting to realize that there is no happy ending to the current Democratic Party lurch to the left. Better get off the bus before it's too late.
You could call them rats leaving the sinking ship. But I will not.
Instead I will call the current Democratic Party the inevitable consequence of the over/under political formula of all center-left political parties since the gradual emergence of the middle class starting in 1500.
What I mean is that, back in the feudal era, politics was top-down. A hierarchy, just like Jordan B. Peterson's lobsters. Occasionally, a feudal vassal would challenge his liege lord. But not too often. Meanwhile the lobsters peasants knew their place, unless the word turned upside down in a famine or a plague.
Today, I would argue, a ruling class has two options, It can champion the middle class against the lower class or it can champion the lower class against the middle class.
Do you see that for the educated class immediately below today's rulers the option of championing the lower class against the middle class is a much better option? Why? Because there is more loot and plunder for the educated class in various bureaucracies, corporate, government, and activist. No surprise that Americans with advanced degrees tend to vote Democrats. Advanced degrees are credentials that you need if you want to advance in the bureaucracy.
A government that champions the middle class against the lower class does not have much to do because the middle class just wants to get on with their ordered lives, and doesn't want the government taking a lot of money from them to give to the poor and the bureaucrats. No angle for the educated class.
And, of course, all the projects that any government gets into tends to Make Things Worse, as in the quote above and as I have been arguing in my Making Things Worse series.
Why does government keep Making Things Worse? Because all government is a violation of my Four Laws: trying to game the price system; trying to fix things with government bureaucracies that just don't have the bandwidth to act effectively; ignoring the fact that all regulation ends up in "regulatory capture;" and lastly, that all government is loot and plunder, anyway, and therefore amounts to taking stuff from A to give to B without any value in exchange.
Of course, there is also Stein's Law: "if something cannot go on forever, it will stop."
The DINOs are starting to realize that Houston We Have A Problem. To coin a phrase. In other words, things cannot go on forever.
The problem is that for the lower class, for now, the system works. They get a lot of free stuff as supporters of the ruling class, and don't get to experience the heavy hand of taxation and regulation experienced by the ordinary middle class.
But this may change as the Afghan debacle continues, with inflation, rioting renters and borrowers when Biden finally ends the rent and mortgage moratoriums, and the increasingly aggressive vagrants and beggars of the homeless encampments. Pace the BLMs and AntiFas, the lower class does not want to "defund the police."
The DINOs just have a feeling in their bones that is telling them that it's time to fix things before they spiral out of control. Because Literally Hitler.
See, I think that our noble global elite misses the point when it determines Never Again: never allow another Hitler to rule.
They are missing the point. The middle class wants a government that makes the trains run on time, and keeps the economy on an even keel, so that ordinary middle class people can wive and thrive and save and indulge in hope about the future. When the government fails in this basic task, and things spin out of control, that is when the middle class turns to a populist nationalist who blames everything on The Jews or The Rich or The Blacks or The Woke.
(You know, just as nice liberal ladies all vote for nice progressive candidates that say that racist-sexist-homophobes are to blame for everything).
A Trump is a signal that the ruling class is not doing its job. If you want to be a successful ruling class, then Job One is to make sure that the middle-class sheep can safely graze. If you ignore the signal, or use state power to neutralize it, then you are asking for trouble right here in River City.
Because the guy that the middle class elects after you chaps have dumped Trump is not going to be a guy that merely makes Mean Tweets.
And the DINOs are starting to get it.
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