Brad DeLong: “The baton rightly passes to our colleagues on our left.”

Brad DeLong

During an interview with Vox, Brad Delong, Paul Krugman's buddy and professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, said:

Our current bunch of leftists are wonderful people...They’re social democrats, they’re very strong believers in democracy. They’re very strong believers in fair distribution of wealth. They could use a little more education about what is likely to work and what is not. But they’re people who we’re very, very lucky to have on our side.

But here is the kicker, in explaining the growth of the extreme left, he correctly identifies the key factor in its development:

Today, there’s literally nobody on the right between those frantically accommodating Donald Trump, on the one hand, and us on the other...the people on the other side, who are very, very strange indeed.

This is the point I have been making since the day Trump was elected president. The libertarian opposition to Trump is nearly non-existent and thus the extreme left is the only opposition most see, especially the young.

I remind once more, immediately after the election on November 10, 2016, I wrote:

Heading into the election, I felt that for strategic reasons Hillary Clinton was the best alternative for libertarians. Not because she is good on many issues, she is not, but because she would come with a ready-made opposition that would listen to libertarian arguments against her.

It would have been a great opportunity to reach out to Trump supporters and spread the libertarian message. That opportunity is now gone with the Trump victory. Trump supporters are rabid, they will likely follow him down almost any hell hole.

These people are not going to listen to our arguments for smaller government. Their man is in power.

There will be opposition to Trump but it will be coming from the Left, not the Trump right.

The Left is all about expanding the state. Thus, it will be very difficult to reach out to these people and present state shrinking anti-Trump ideas. They are a perfect target for the socialists...

 The socialists are going to experience a boom in followers under Trump.

If Trump could be controlled, I would consider him to be Deep State controlled opposition to liberty. Since he can't be controlled, he is uncontrolled opposition to liberty who is sucking up and destroying true opposition to the state.

 -RW