Middle-Class Nightmares: How the GOP used Trump to turn the idea of hope into a Billionaire's Fantasy

Donald Trump and JD Vance, like most politicians from both parties, love to invoke the American Dream.

When billionaire Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2015, he said:

“Sadly, the American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again.”

When multimillionaire hedge fund manager JD Vance accepted his nomination for vice president at the RNC, he similarly said:

“Some people tell me I’ve lived the American dream, and of course they’re right. And I’m so grateful for it.”

But when Republicans talk about the American Dream, what do they mean? And how does their view of the American Dream differ from that of that of Democrats?

My next book, The Hidden History of the American Dream: The Demise of the Middle Class―and How to Rescue Our Future, is about this topic and now, as we head into this year’s pivotal election, is a great opportunity to explore what both parties mean when they invoke this touchstone of the American psyche.

When Democrats invoke the American Dream, they mean something very specific, pioneered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. They understand that a middle class is not a “normal” thing that naturally evolves in nations; the first more-than-half-of-us American middle class came about post-1940s as a result of specific policies put into place by FDR. Thus, Democrats argue, the American Dream includes the opportunity or ability to:

Move into the middle class with a good union job so a single wage-earner can support a family
Buy a home for a reasonable price where the mortgage doesn’t exceed a third of post-tax household income
Live safely without fear that your home will be broken into or your child can be shot at school or on the playground
Have decent healthcare that won’t bankrupt you if somebody gets sick
Every few years get a new car and cover the cost of maintenance and gas or electricity
Put your kids through school and college
Take an annual family vacation
Save enough (or have a pension) for a comfortable retirement, augmented by Social Security, and
Pay reasonable taxes to fund programs that support the existence of a middle class.

When Republicans — particularly billionaires and multimillionaires like Trump and Vance — invoke the American Dream, they largely ignore the middle class. Instead, that phrase to them means the ability to:

Get rich beyond the dreams of King Midas
Own multiple mansions from Florida to Colorado to Switzerland (and Trump added Venezuela on his Monday night call with Musk)
Cavort with nubile young women and investment bankers on your very own superyacht or Lolita Express private jet
Have private concierge doctors and nurses on call at all times
Employ private security to guard your mansions and wield weapons of war to keep you safe from the masses
Buy judges for the Supreme Court to get decisions that make your life easier
Legally bribe judges and politicians at every level from the county commissioners to Congress and the president, and
Avoid paying taxes so successfully that the average American billionaire today pays less than 8 percent in income taxes.

We see this difference in the two parties’ understanding of the phrase “American Dream” most clearly when we look at the policy positions of the two parties. Here’s a partial list.

UNIONIZATION:

Democrats want every American working for a medium- or large-size company to have the right to form or join a union. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt first put this right into law with the 1935 Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act) and Democrats have defended unionization rights ever since. Every other developed country in the world has imitated that initial effort; most European nations have over 70 percent unionization. Blue states regularly exceed 20 percent unionization.

Republicans, on the other hand, pushed the cruel Taft-Hartley Act through Congress over the veto of President Harry Truman in 1947, allowing states to opt out of many of the provisions of the Wagner Act. In a genius act of marketing, they call states that choose to use the provisions of Taft-Hartley “Right to Work” (For Less) states. When Trump and Musk were talking Monday night, Trump — who has never allowed his employees to unionize — congratulated Musk on keeping unions out of Tesla and Twitter/X, as PBS noted: “I look at what you do. You walk in and say, ‘You want to quit?’ I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone.’” Musk said, “Yeah,” and laughed while Trump was talking. Many Red states have union membership levels below 5 percent.

HOUSING:

Democrats believe housing should be a right rather than a privilege, and to that end have supported public housing, housing vouchers, and government subsidies and tax breaks to developers who put up low-income housing. They are increasingly calling out the relatively new Wall Street practice of buying up millions of single-family homes and flipping them into rentals, provoking an epidemic of homelessness.

Republicans think the thing they ironically call the “free market” (a marketplace owned by the richest people and corporations, who are then “free” to set the rules for the rest of us) should decide who gets housing and what it costs. They have opposed all federal and state support for housing for over 100 years, and most recently threatened to shut down the government if they didn’t get “steep spending cuts to domestic programs, including HUD’s and USDA’s vital affordable housing and homelessness programs.”

HEALTHCARE:

Democrats believe healthcare should be a right rather than a privilege and have worked to extend universal, affordable healthcare to all Americans ever since President Harry Truman first proposed a national single-payer system in the 1940s. Universal healthcare programs have been proposed by Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Obama.

Republicans have fought tooth-and-nail against every healthcare proposal Democrats have put forward, and continue to try to destroy the existing systems Democrats succeeded in putting into law. George W. Bush got Medicare privatized with the “Medicare Advantage” scam and almost a dozen Republican-controlled Red states continue to refuse to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, even though they’d only have to pick up 10 percent of the cost. They say it’s the principle of the thing: people won’t value healthcare unless they have “skin in the game” by paying for it themselves.

EDUCATION:

Democrats have embraced free public schools for over a century and today are fighting to expand and better fund the nation’s public school system. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz got free breakfast and lunch for all public-school students in his state, and argues that program should go national. Democrats also believe public colleges and universities should be free or affordable to all students.

Republican governors are working hard to dismantle their public schools systems, offering taxpayer-paid vouchers for students to attend private, for-profit or religious schools instead. They regularly trash-talk teachers, calling them “groomers” and other epithets, and former Republican Congressman and Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten “the most dangerous person in the world.”

WOMEN’S RIGHTS:

Democrats trust women to make decisions about their own bodies, to have full agency in the business world, and to decide for themselves if they want to divorce an abusive husband. They support the right to abortion and birth control, while encouraging women to participate in the Democratic Party; more than twice as many women serve in Congress as Democrats than as Republicans. The Party’s presidential nominee this year is a woman, as in 2016 (and Hillary got 3 million more votes than Trump that year).

Republicans want women barefoot, pregnant, and confined to the bedroom and kitchen. They’ve outlawed abortion in every Red state as a way of disempowering women, have proposed multiple state laws outlawing or restricting birth control, and openly advocate enforcement of the Comstock Act, which would outlaw all drugs and surgical instruments that could be used for an abortion. JD Vance argued divorce laws should make it hard for women in abusive relationships to separate from their husbands. Several Republicans and their billionaire funders have gone so far as to argue that America began going downhill when women got the vote in 1920. A jury of his peers found that their Party’s nominee had raped E. Jean Carroll, and over 20 other women, including one 13 years old, have also accused Trump of rape or sexual assault.

CRIME AND GUNS:

Democrats understand that unemployment and poverty are major contributors to crime; when cities are thriving and unemployment is low, so are crime rates. Crime rates go up when factories move overseas and unemployment explodes. Therefore, they want to bring our factories home (which has happened for the first time since the 1980s under President Biden) and help people get good pay and benefits. They also know that the more guns — particularly weapons of war — are on America’s streets, the more frequently we’ll have shootings and gun deaths.

Republicans claim that crime is the result of moral failings and a lack of strict discipline in the home, also arguing that single-parent families help cause crime. They say that the best way to reduce shootings is to have more guns in circulation, an idiotic argument whose logical extension leads them to propose arming teachers. That they take massive amounts of cash from the weapons industry may play a role in their thinking.

RETIREMENT:

Democrats brought Social Security into being in 1935 and have defended it against Republican attacks ever since. They argue that if millionaires and billionaires paid the same percentage of their income in Social Security taxes as working class people, the system would be solvent for the next 70 years and benefits could increase substantially.

Republicans have fought against Social Security ever since 1935, calling it “socialism” and a “Ponzi scheme.” Privatizing Social Security was a cornerstone of George W. Bush’s candidacy when he first ran for Congress and he tried valiantly in 2005 to turn the system over to the nation’s biggest banks. He failed, but did succeed in partially privatizing Medicare. Reagan cut Social Security benefits (prior to the 1980s, people could retire on it safely), raised the retirement age to 67, and made Social Security benefits taxable. Republican-aligned business leaders famously gutted or bankrupted most of the nation’s employer-based pension systems.

CORRUPTION:

Democrats see holding public office as an opportunity to serve their communities and the nation. They disagree with the ruling by five Republicans on the Supreme Court that giving money to politicians in exchange for favorable legislation is merely “free speech,” and the recent ruling by six Republicans on the Court that paying politicians for giving them lucrative government contracts is merely a form of “tipping” rather than bribery. They want to see Citizens United, which legalized political bribery by the morbidly rich and giant corporations, overturned.

Republicans defend Citizens United and are happy to exchange legislation and regulation for campaign contributions, free vacations, and other gifts and benefits. Donald Trump has been explicit about this, recently telling a group of fossil fuel barons that if they’d pony up a billion dollars for his campaign he’d change the laws and federal subsidies to favor them. Clarence Thomas has taken over $4 million in naked bribes from billionaires and the Republicans in Congress defend him while his peers on the Court appear to also have their hands out.

TAXES:

Democrats pioneered a 90 percent top income tax rate on the morbidly rich: Democratic President Woodrow Wilson put that into place in the nineteen-teens; Republican President Warren Harding dropped it to 25 percent kicking off the Roaring 20s when the rich became fabulously rich while working people lost income; and then Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt raised it back up to 90 percent in the 1930s and 1940s. The main benefit of this high tax rate was that it encouraged business owners to keep money in their companies (rather than have it taxed at 90 percent) and pay their workers well. It literally built the middle class. When Reagan gutted the top income tax rate in the 1980s, wealth at the top exploded and worker wages began 40 years of stagnation.

Republicans see taxation not as a way of funding the operation of government but as a form of theft from hard-working billionaires and multimillionaires. The tax cuts of Reagan, Bush, and Trump collectively have sucked out of our federal coffers the vast majority of the nation’s current $34 trillion national debt.

And this doesn’t even begin to address other fundamental issues where the two parties are vastly different like climate change, foreign policy, religion in government, minority rights, or democracy.

So far, the American Dream is still alive, although it has been under forty years of assault by Republicans and neoliberals. President Biden returned the Democratic Party to its pre-1992 embrace of Keynesian economics, using the power of government to rebuild both our national infrastructure and our middle class.

This election provides the greatest contrast in philosophy since 1980 and will determine the fate and future of the American Dream. Will it survive? That will depend on how many of us show up to vote this fall.