Love these big-picture articles. Hard to find stuff like this in the mainstream press (it does exist, but often gets buried beneath all the day-to-day news).
Excellent evaluation of current and potential future political situations. Should be required reading for all Americans regardless of party affiliation. Well done, Gabe Fleisher.
I do agree that Trump is sui generis. No one else can mock Jesus and attack the Pope and put out foul-mouthed official statements at all hours of the day (including Easter Sunday) and continue to retain self-styled Christian voters. His very long rope is finite, though, and he seems increasingly bent on finding out just where it does end.
Also, I'm deeply, deeply skeptical of the idea that the DSA is the left wing's equivalent of MAGA, as one questioner stated. MAGA means nothing more or less than loyalty to Donald Trump, which on any given day may involve being pro- or anti-war, pro- or anti-deficit, pro- or anti-free trade. Also MAGA has (by all reasonable accounts) controlled the federal government, and a number of states, for over half of the last ten years. Meanwhile, DSA is a specific political organization that endorses specific candidates and specific policy proposals. Most involved were inspired by Bernie's campaigns, but Bernie is not a member (see above) and the organization predates the 2016 election by decades. There are no particularly powerful DSA politicians on a national or state level; no governors or currently serving senators would identify as DSA, and only a handful of House members would.
Hi Gabe. Thanks again for a great newsletter, with an analysis to be found nowhere else.
I am interested in the Echelon Insights quadrants. I went to their website and found the June 2025 quadrant analysis and was hoping to see the social and fiscal questions that were asked so I could take the test myself. But they do not seem to be available. Do you have any idea where I can find them?
If you go this link — https://echeloninsights.com/tribes — and scroll through the “2025 Political Tribes Briefing” document, the questions are on slides 7 and 8 of that presentation. They also have a website where you can take a quiz and be sorted into a Political Tribe, which are a bit different than the quadrants, as they also include questions on pro/anti-establishment attitudes, and sort you into one of eight political tribe: https://yourpoliticaltribe.com/. It’s fun to take!
Thank you so much, Gabe, for taking the time to get back to me. This is fascinating stuff. I did take the quiz. The results were close what I had expected, but not quite the same.
I'm not sure some of this stands up as well as any of us might hope. If the Biden administration were "deeply unpopular," as you assert, why did it lose by just under a million votes? The Electoral College inflates the actual number of Trump/GOP voters, and I think that throws us off. While I agree the Democrats lost for a variety of reasons, the policies on which Harris ran were more popular than you suggest. Second, in what way was Reagan "transformative"? Having lived through his administration, I can see not much beyond his massive increases in federal debt, from which we have yet to recover or reckon with--the current GOP has just made it much worse--and he was fortunate in his Soviet opponents. He deserves little credit for ending the Cold War--other writers give credit to the then-pope, which I don't fully agree with--I do think the Soviet economy had reached a point of collapse, and Gorbachev was able to make a deal. Reagan was good at projecting an image of strength and wisdom, but I am not sure how much that was really him. And of course there's Iran-Contra.
So transformative? No. FDR and LBJ, yes--New Deal, Great Society, Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts that essentially ended formal segregation in the US--I don't think Reagan did anything that matched that. Viet Nam, to be sure, overshadows the Johnson era, something with which we're still reckoning. But his domestic record is very much still with us. I am happy, BTW, you point out that the deregulation that he took credit for was largely Carter's work.
Hi Michael! Obviously there’s no definition for “deeply unpopular,” but I do think it’s fair to use that term to describe a president who left office with his approval rating under 40%. It’s true that Trump is unpopular as well, which meant that the 2024 election was close — in no small part because many voters on both sides were voting against the other candidate, not for their own — but I don’t think that should change our analysis of Biden. Biden was unpopular, whether or not the Republican nominee was also unpopular enough to make the election a close one.
As for Reagan, in the context of the piece -- describing the movement from the New Deal order to the neoliberal order -- Reagan’s tax legislation would definitely be a big one to note. Going from a top income tax rate of 70% to one of 28% over the course of eight years marked an enormous change to the tax code, one that made it very difficult to create more of the big-government programs that defined the New Deal era and helped usher in the free-market emphasis of the neoliberal era. Neoliberalism is also about freedom of movement for people, not just goods, so another piece of legislation that comes to mind is the 1986 immigration package. You’ve already mentioned deregulation, which it’s true began under Carter but obviously expanded significantly under Reagan (in his book, Gerstle notes the loosening of regulations on media like the end of the Fairness Doctrine as a particularly influential change). And then there’s Reagan’s massive defense build-up, among other policies to add. I think it’s fair to say that all of that added up to a notable shift from the policymaking of FDR-Carter (even acknowledging that Carter played a bridge role), remaking his party and setting a new policy tone for the presidents that came after him, Democrats and Republicans.
Ending the fairness doctrine definitely was a big hit because now we have media basically becoming opinion pieces whispering entertainment under their breath but yelling that they're the truth to the gullible masses.
Gabe--thanks for responding. I suppose my error was in seeing the word "transformational" as having a positive connotation. None of the examples you mention would qualify, in my mind, as positive for the country as a whole.getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine led to the creation of Fox News, which we know had to pay over $700 million to settle a suit over truthfulness. Increasing the debt, reducing the tax rate on the wealthy at the expense of programs to ameliorate the many hardships lower income Americans face, and deregulating without fully considering its consequences, are not unalloyed goods. You also mention the military buildup of the 80s--we forget much of that came to an abrupt halt under the provisions of Graham-Rudman-Hollings limits on federal spending approved around the middle of the 1980s--I was an Army major then and saw its effects in reduced spending, reduced training opportunities for many units, and an overall decline in readiness across the board. Forward deployed units, like the armored division I served in 1988-92 in Germany and the Gulf War, were spared from some of this, but at the expense of other units who were not so fortunate.
I also have lived through the Reagan years and 20 years before that. Reagan was definitely transformative by changing how Americans viewed their neighbors. He was the original basher of the single moms referring them to welfare queens. He introduced Trickle Down Economics, which produced the backlash of economic policy DSA and Populism.
One of the perks of getting old is the long view backwards. After Eisenhower, The Wealthy Industrialists in this Country to steer tax policy and therefore also start to dismantle the social safety nets of the FDR era. Under Eisenhower, the Corporate Tax rate had risen to 90% !The Rich rebelled and have reached their pinnacle hopefully under Trump. I suspect that MAGA and Bernie's Branch Consisting of Progressives and Socialists, is the beginning of a movement back to a more traditional American balance between Capitalists and the Labor.My take on politics and energy is Every Action Creates an equal and opposite reaction!
Trump is like a carnival man. He tried to sell himself with lies, so he probably damaged the right wing populist movement almost as much as he has damaged everything else he touches. After all Putin is quoted as saying "Trump damages everything" when asked why he supported Trump.Take us down from within!
I'd like to think that people are starting to realize that wokeness is not necessarily a broad blanket term for extreme leftism. But it's just being aware that people live lives other than you and you really don't need to interfere because you don't like it.
While I think you did a good job of showing that Trump is more a one-off than a trend setter, I was surprised - maybe disappointed - that you did not mention his penchant for instilling fear as the means to accomplish his goals to be a significant aspect of his personality. The Iran situation we are now in is the most horrible instance, but we have seen it in the threatened excessive (to say the least) tariffs, the threats to primary congressmen who did not support him, and many other instances. I definitely consider this to be an aspect of his personality. For example, I don't think he analyzed alternative ways to accomplish goals with Iran and chose this one. It appears that it is more like an intuitive approach.
You called Trump abrasive. You might consider this inclination to instill fear as a subset of being abrasive. However, most of his many abrasive ways have not had the adverse effects this trait has had.
I think it’s more basic than that: NO ONE is like trump, or can do what trump does, because NO ONE really likes or respects trump in a genuine sense; they all, either:
1) fear his supporters for what their votes or violence can do to them
2) they lust for the power, status, & $$$$$ they desire “supporting” trump
There has never been a politician who has sunk as low as trump, as depraved, and, thank goodness, I believe there never will again. At least, I sincerely hope to heck so.
Set aside the racists & tribalists, he can do no wrong with them. For the rest, those that like him like him for the access he gives them to $$$$, status, power. These sycophants stick with him as long as they think he provides that access. Take those away, and he IS universally disliked, hated, loathed, despised, think of the most wretched terms. Everything is transactional with him, and loyalty is a one-way street: toward him only. The moment he thinks you're not giving him what he wants from you, or worse, you're going against him, he'll cast you aside like used toilet paper.
The final arbiter that will let us know how loved he really is is when he dies, it will be the greatest celebration in modern history, 8 billion in our world will jump up & down creating a seismic earthquake that will swallow up the small group of racists & tribalists who will mourn. I even doubt that the small group will mourn, he is a profoundly loathsome human.
I truly appreciate your detailed research and knowledge. Your style is easier to comprehend (even more pleasant) regarding topics that can overwhelm or bore readers.
Also--the Electoral College must GO. It robs Americans of fairly being able to choose a candidate via the voting process, and forces candidates to focus primarily on those states with large EC votes. When will we wake up and smell the coffee about this ridiculous process?
Love this long-distance, objective view of things - really helpful and insightful as ever Gabe!
Thanks, Lynn!
Love these big-picture articles. Hard to find stuff like this in the mainstream press (it does exist, but often gets buried beneath all the day-to-day news).
Thank you!
Excellent evaluation of current and potential future political situations. Should be required reading for all Americans regardless of party affiliation. Well done, Gabe Fleisher.
I do agree that Trump is sui generis. No one else can mock Jesus and attack the Pope and put out foul-mouthed official statements at all hours of the day (including Easter Sunday) and continue to retain self-styled Christian voters. His very long rope is finite, though, and he seems increasingly bent on finding out just where it does end.
Great overview of what the future might bring. Lot of names I’ve haven’t paid enough attention to. Thanks again for the enlightenment!
Really good article, appreciate this insight thank you!
Bernie Sanders is not a member of DSA.
Also, I'm deeply, deeply skeptical of the idea that the DSA is the left wing's equivalent of MAGA, as one questioner stated. MAGA means nothing more or less than loyalty to Donald Trump, which on any given day may involve being pro- or anti-war, pro- or anti-deficit, pro- or anti-free trade. Also MAGA has (by all reasonable accounts) controlled the federal government, and a number of states, for over half of the last ten years. Meanwhile, DSA is a specific political organization that endorses specific candidates and specific policy proposals. Most involved were inspired by Bernie's campaigns, but Bernie is not a member (see above) and the organization predates the 2016 election by decades. There are no particularly powerful DSA politicians on a national or state level; no governors or currently serving senators would identify as DSA, and only a handful of House members would.
Excellent analysis Gabe.
Hi Gabe. Thanks again for a great newsletter, with an analysis to be found nowhere else.
I am interested in the Echelon Insights quadrants. I went to their website and found the June 2025 quadrant analysis and was hoping to see the social and fiscal questions that were asked so I could take the test myself. But they do not seem to be available. Do you have any idea where I can find them?
Thanks again.
Hi David,
If you go this link — https://echeloninsights.com/tribes — and scroll through the “2025 Political Tribes Briefing” document, the questions are on slides 7 and 8 of that presentation. They also have a website where you can take a quiz and be sorted into a Political Tribe, which are a bit different than the quadrants, as they also include questions on pro/anti-establishment attitudes, and sort you into one of eight political tribe: https://yourpoliticaltribe.com/. It’s fun to take!
Thank you so much, Gabe, for taking the time to get back to me. This is fascinating stuff. I did take the quiz. The results were close what I had expected, but not quite the same.
Oh that was neat. I did find myself kind of in a lot of "well it depends" lol
I'm not sure some of this stands up as well as any of us might hope. If the Biden administration were "deeply unpopular," as you assert, why did it lose by just under a million votes? The Electoral College inflates the actual number of Trump/GOP voters, and I think that throws us off. While I agree the Democrats lost for a variety of reasons, the policies on which Harris ran were more popular than you suggest. Second, in what way was Reagan "transformative"? Having lived through his administration, I can see not much beyond his massive increases in federal debt, from which we have yet to recover or reckon with--the current GOP has just made it much worse--and he was fortunate in his Soviet opponents. He deserves little credit for ending the Cold War--other writers give credit to the then-pope, which I don't fully agree with--I do think the Soviet economy had reached a point of collapse, and Gorbachev was able to make a deal. Reagan was good at projecting an image of strength and wisdom, but I am not sure how much that was really him. And of course there's Iran-Contra.
So transformative? No. FDR and LBJ, yes--New Deal, Great Society, Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts that essentially ended formal segregation in the US--I don't think Reagan did anything that matched that. Viet Nam, to be sure, overshadows the Johnson era, something with which we're still reckoning. But his domestic record is very much still with us. I am happy, BTW, you point out that the deregulation that he took credit for was largely Carter's work.
Hi Michael! Obviously there’s no definition for “deeply unpopular,” but I do think it’s fair to use that term to describe a president who left office with his approval rating under 40%. It’s true that Trump is unpopular as well, which meant that the 2024 election was close — in no small part because many voters on both sides were voting against the other candidate, not for their own — but I don’t think that should change our analysis of Biden. Biden was unpopular, whether or not the Republican nominee was also unpopular enough to make the election a close one.
As for Reagan, in the context of the piece -- describing the movement from the New Deal order to the neoliberal order -- Reagan’s tax legislation would definitely be a big one to note. Going from a top income tax rate of 70% to one of 28% over the course of eight years marked an enormous change to the tax code, one that made it very difficult to create more of the big-government programs that defined the New Deal era and helped usher in the free-market emphasis of the neoliberal era. Neoliberalism is also about freedom of movement for people, not just goods, so another piece of legislation that comes to mind is the 1986 immigration package. You’ve already mentioned deregulation, which it’s true began under Carter but obviously expanded significantly under Reagan (in his book, Gerstle notes the loosening of regulations on media like the end of the Fairness Doctrine as a particularly influential change). And then there’s Reagan’s massive defense build-up, among other policies to add. I think it’s fair to say that all of that added up to a notable shift from the policymaking of FDR-Carter (even acknowledging that Carter played a bridge role), remaking his party and setting a new policy tone for the presidents that came after him, Democrats and Republicans.
Ending the fairness doctrine definitely was a big hit because now we have media basically becoming opinion pieces whispering entertainment under their breath but yelling that they're the truth to the gullible masses.
Gabe--thanks for responding. I suppose my error was in seeing the word "transformational" as having a positive connotation. None of the examples you mention would qualify, in my mind, as positive for the country as a whole.getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine led to the creation of Fox News, which we know had to pay over $700 million to settle a suit over truthfulness. Increasing the debt, reducing the tax rate on the wealthy at the expense of programs to ameliorate the many hardships lower income Americans face, and deregulating without fully considering its consequences, are not unalloyed goods. You also mention the military buildup of the 80s--we forget much of that came to an abrupt halt under the provisions of Graham-Rudman-Hollings limits on federal spending approved around the middle of the 1980s--I was an Army major then and saw its effects in reduced spending, reduced training opportunities for many units, and an overall decline in readiness across the board. Forward deployed units, like the armored division I served in 1988-92 in Germany and the Gulf War, were spared from some of this, but at the expense of other units who were not so fortunate.
I also have lived through the Reagan years and 20 years before that. Reagan was definitely transformative by changing how Americans viewed their neighbors. He was the original basher of the single moms referring them to welfare queens. He introduced Trickle Down Economics, which produced the backlash of economic policy DSA and Populism.
One of the perks of getting old is the long view backwards. After Eisenhower, The Wealthy Industrialists in this Country to steer tax policy and therefore also start to dismantle the social safety nets of the FDR era. Under Eisenhower, the Corporate Tax rate had risen to 90% !The Rich rebelled and have reached their pinnacle hopefully under Trump. I suspect that MAGA and Bernie's Branch Consisting of Progressives and Socialists, is the beginning of a movement back to a more traditional American balance between Capitalists and the Labor.My take on politics and energy is Every Action Creates an equal and opposite reaction!
Trump is like a carnival man. He tried to sell himself with lies, so he probably damaged the right wing populist movement almost as much as he has damaged everything else he touches. After all Putin is quoted as saying "Trump damages everything" when asked why he supported Trump.Take us down from within!
I'd like to think that people are starting to realize that wokeness is not necessarily a broad blanket term for extreme leftism. But it's just being aware that people live lives other than you and you really don't need to interfere because you don't like it.
While I think you did a good job of showing that Trump is more a one-off than a trend setter, I was surprised - maybe disappointed - that you did not mention his penchant for instilling fear as the means to accomplish his goals to be a significant aspect of his personality. The Iran situation we are now in is the most horrible instance, but we have seen it in the threatened excessive (to say the least) tariffs, the threats to primary congressmen who did not support him, and many other instances. I definitely consider this to be an aspect of his personality. For example, I don't think he analyzed alternative ways to accomplish goals with Iran and chose this one. It appears that it is more like an intuitive approach.
You called Trump abrasive. You might consider this inclination to instill fear as a subset of being abrasive. However, most of his many abrasive ways have not had the adverse effects this trait has had.
I think it’s more basic than that: NO ONE is like trump, or can do what trump does, because NO ONE really likes or respects trump in a genuine sense; they all, either:
1) fear his supporters for what their votes or violence can do to them
2) they lust for the power, status, & $$$$$ they desire “supporting” trump
There has never been a politician who has sunk as low as trump, as depraved, and, thank goodness, I believe there never will again. At least, I sincerely hope to heck so.
I think there's more politicians that actually like him than we'd believe, but also more than that dislike him than we would believe.
Set aside the racists & tribalists, he can do no wrong with them. For the rest, those that like him like him for the access he gives them to $$$$, status, power. These sycophants stick with him as long as they think he provides that access. Take those away, and he IS universally disliked, hated, loathed, despised, think of the most wretched terms. Everything is transactional with him, and loyalty is a one-way street: toward him only. The moment he thinks you're not giving him what he wants from you, or worse, you're going against him, he'll cast you aside like used toilet paper.
The final arbiter that will let us know how loved he really is is when he dies, it will be the greatest celebration in modern history, 8 billion in our world will jump up & down creating a seismic earthquake that will swallow up the small group of racists & tribalists who will mourn. I even doubt that the small group will mourn, he is a profoundly loathsome human.
I truly appreciate your detailed research and knowledge. Your style is easier to comprehend (even more pleasant) regarding topics that can overwhelm or bore readers.
Also--the Electoral College must GO. It robs Americans of fairly being able to choose a candidate via the voting process, and forces candidates to focus primarily on those states with large EC votes. When will we wake up and smell the coffee about this ridiculous process?
Can I assume based on this article that you mean to assert MAGA = Trumpism? With the end of Trump comes the end of MAGA?