When Republicans win elections, they go hard right in the policies they push, even more than they campaigned on. Even when they win with the slimmest of majorities or even after they lose the popular vote (in the cases of George W. Bush and Donald Trump), they immediately claim to have a mandate and push the most extreme policies. In the case of Trump, someone who is by any definition an East coast elitist, he now governs like a conservative evangelical fundamentalist, pursuing policies on contraception, abortion, and LGBT social issues that you can be sure that he and the people in the social circles he moved in before he became president were opposed or indifferent to.
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Tennessee senator Bob Corker gained some fame in liberal circles when it seemed like he was objecting to the recent tax giveaway on principle (a commodity that has long ceased to exist among Republicans), because he has long stated that he opposes increasing the debt. But he then made a sudden switch and voted for the bill after it turned out that the bill writers inserted a provision at the last minute that greatly benefited those who had real estate business like him and Donald Trump. I showed a chart earlier with those who profited the most and by how much and, Lo!, Bob Corker’s name led all the rest.
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There is sycophancy and there is Mike Pence level of sycophancy. Watch this cringe-inducing video of vice president Pence shamelessly sucking up to Donald Trump at a recent cabinet meeting. We have seen this kind of obsequious fawning to Trump at cabinet meetings before but Pence raises it to a whole new level, especially considering that he knew that the news media were recording it. Watch if you have the stomach for it. If you don’t, you can read the transcript.
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Cornel West published an article in the Guardian where he criticized Ta-Nehisi Coates for as representing the neoliberal wing of the black freedom struggle and failing to take a sufficiently strong stand against the predations of US capitalism and imperialism and Barack Obama’s complicity in them.

This wing reaps the benefits of the neoliberal establishment that rewards silences on issues such as Wall Street greed or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people.

The disagreement between Coates and me is clear: any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading. So it is with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ worldview.

Coates rightly highlights the vicious legacy of white supremacy – past and present. He sees it everywhere and ever reminds us of its plundering effects. Unfortunately, he hardly keeps track of our fightback, and never connects this ugly legacy to the predatory capitalist practices, imperial policies (of war, occupation, detention, assassination) or the black elite’s refusal to confront poverty, patriarchy or transphobia.

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