Condescension  and the Trump Phenomonon

America was founded on the principle that it was a new nation  with  a classless society,  with no distinction between first and second class citizens.    This principle implies that there is no group of people who are more intelligent or better than any other group of people.

Violation of this principle  lies at the heart of the current political revolution on the left as well as the right.    On the left, it is mostly  about income inequality , as manifest by the rise of the rich on Wall Street.    On the right, it is mostly about  behavioral inequality  in Washington, as shown by failure of conservative politicians to override liberal elites to provide economic relief for the middle classes who are in a bad way.

On both sides,  it is about resentment of the Establishment, that ill-defined term that characterizes those in control of the heights,  whether they  be the economically  rich or the politically powerful, the bicoastals  who look down their noses at the middle and working classes while  demeaning  those who work and slave  in “fly over country,” or the entrenched  Washington “cartel,” to use the Ted Cruz’s favored  term,  who work together to keep things as they are to assure their personal enrichment.

Donald Trump understands this resentment, and is playing it like a Stradivarius.     For this reason,   Mitt Romney’s attack on Trump will fall  on deaf ears.   Romney epitomizes the condescending right , and his 2012 remark about the non-contributing  dependent  47% still resonates to his disfavor.

The American people still believe that everybody puts their pants on in the same way on Wall Street as well as Washington.  They know some people have deeper pockets than others and that some  people are more equal than others, but they believe in the end that the balance between the two will and  must be restored.

On the health care front,  people tend to believe that a single-payer system puts too much power  in the hands of the condescending  government liberal  elite, but they are still not confident  of the attitude and behavior of  marketers on the conservative right.

Trump has just issued a 7-part health care plan to split the difference between left and right, which includes these points.

·         Giving the states block  Medicaid grants, a bow to more equality between Washington and state capitols.

·         Allowing insurers to compete across state lines, thereby assuring marketing equality .

 

·         Expanding  tax-free deductions of health expenditures to all people.

·         Providing  Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), giving all another  bite of the tax-free apple. 

·         Assuring transparency of all provider health care prices.

·         Cracking down on prescription price abuses,  by allowing government to negotiate for prescriptions in Medicaid and Medicare and by encouraging more access to lower priced drugs from Canada and elsewhere.

·         And by ultimately achieving universal coverage so that nobody dies in the streets.

There is something in these points for everybody, most of which are ascending rather than condescending, but the details will be difficult to work out.