The GOP and its core constituents — conservative corporations — now face two dangers, one in the short term and one in the longer term. They’re currently using their standard playbook to smother both. Whether they succeed will determine our lives for decades.
The short-term danger is that Americans will resist the push from business to get us back on the job and making money for them. Their plan is simple: Starve us out. They know we can’t survive indefinitely without a continuing government bailout focused on regular people’s needs. So they’re going to stop that bailout from happening.
The longer-term danger they face is that we’ll make the government work for us in the short term — and then we will realize we could make it work for us all the time by removing the threat of starvation from their arsenal. This would totally change the balance of power in society. This is their deepest fear, one that’s consumed them since World War II, the first time in history that everyday people gained consciousness that it was possible for them to use the government to create a world that puts them first, not their bosses.
In the short term, they will just say that America is now, sadly, out of money. At a recent press conference, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., still metaphorically drenched from the firehose of cash he sprayed all over Wall Street and big American business during the past month, looked mournful. Money for state and local governments so they’re not forced to lay off massive numbers of teacher and firefighters? Hazard pay for doctors and nurses? Help for people paying rent? Sorry, no. “Until we can begin to open up the economy,” McConnell said, “we can’t spend enough money to solve the problem.” The same thinking prevails in the Trump administration, particularly about money for state and local governments.
The strategy is already bearing fruit, with states such as Florida, Georgia, Texas and Tennessee easing restrictions on business — all to the approval of various presidential tweets.
Alternately, we can follow the heart’s desire of the corporate right, and shove everyone back to work as soon as possible. The problem for the corporate right is that the force-everyone-to-risk-death concept is unpopular.