The Restoration of the Democratic elites

‘The shouting and the joy expressed has passed all imagination… all the world in a merry mood because of the king’s coming.’

These lines from Samuel Pepys’s 1660 diary could easily apply to the sentiments of the next Restoration, as Donald Trump and his GOP go down to ignominious defeat in the Midterms. Like the royalists who welcomed the return of Charles II after an austere regime that banned theatre and fretted even about Christmas celebrations, the greatest ‘joy’ will be felt among those long dominant in America’s key institutions. The king’s return came as the Cromwellian Commonwealth devolved into chaos. Like the aristocrats and churchmen under Cromwell, today’s American elites have been waiting for their moment.

The artless Trump may have used his bully pulpit to attack his opponents, particularly in the media, and forced the academic elite to curb their leftist enthusiasms. Yet in the end, the very forces that have dominated America for decades remain largely intact, despite Trump’s lust for vengeance against those who oppose him.

Take the judiciary. Despite two Trump terms, much of the judiciary retains a left-wing bias that comes naturally through progressive control of the bar and especially law schools that churn out activist, woke judges. Similarly, nothing Trump has done has fundamentally altered the almost total subservience of the education system to the ideologies of the left.

Even the corporate elite, notably Wall Street and Silicon Valley, will likely welcome the Restoration with glee. Even though some genuflected to Trump, their hearts were never in it. Certainly, the AI megagiants like Anthropic and Meta have continued to pour money into the Democratic Party. Their employees, reliably progressive, will be singing hosannas as they donate to left-wing candidates. The much-ballyhooed tech shift to the right, suggests the San Francisco Chronicle, turned out to be ‘a mirage’.

Most of the media will also breathe a sigh of relief. Even with the Ellisons’ capture of CBS and CNN, which has terrified progressives, the bulk of major outlets – NBC, ABC, the New York Times, the Washington Post – remain firmly committed to the Democratic Party’s various agendas, even including that of the Democratic Socialists of America.

To be sure, in the Trump years, the cultural monopoly of Hollywood and New York has been successfully challenged. New studios are opening in places like Austin, Fort Worth and Atlanta, even as Hollywood continues to shrink. Taylor Sheridan, whose series are based on the stories of ranchers and oil riggers rather than woke navel-gazers or heroic anti-racists, has found a niche, if not the respect of Hollywood grandees. Woke movies like the Academy Award-winning One Battle After Another did poorly, while Tom Cruise’s eco-radical Digger proved a mega-flop. People liked him better in a fighter-pilot uniform.

The enduring power of progressive elites owes much to the idiocy of Trump. He came to ‘drain the swamp’, but he, his family and retainers ended up plumbing the depths of corruption and self-dealing. Inconsistent economic policies, a poorly planned war with Iran and his mendacity have done more to doom the populist cause than anything his enemies could inflict. His haphazard tariff policies and investments in key companies also alienated Republicans’ small but influential libertarian constituency, as evidenced by the generally hostile coverage of Trump from the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and The Economist.

The Restoration, particularly if the Democrats take the White House in 2028, will also enhance efforts to control the media and censor the internet. Trump may have been a strutting ass in his denunciations of the media, but he never managed to impose controls on thoughts or the internet. Aided by their traditionally progressive allies (Google, Apple, Anthropic, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft), there could be a renewed drive to combat ‘misinformation’, which, as in the Biden years, frequently meant anything that violated the proclivities of the progressive clerisy.

Even now, the main news feeds – Apple News and Google – favour centre-left outlets like the Guardian and the New York Times while largely ignoring centrist or conservative ones.

The oligarchs no doubt will welcome a revival of Biden’s efforts to make AI a private preserve of a few politically correct companies. This tie will be strengthened by an ever-growing flow of cash into left-of-centre non-profits, even those that oppose the construction of data centres.

Looking ahead, a full Restoration will also adopt policies that favour the parts of the country – the Northeast, the West Coast and some pockets of the post-industrial Midwest – that have steadily lagged in job creation and domestic migration. At the same time, moves to squash the energy boom – so vital to keeping the US the world’s strongest economy – will cause pain from Ohio and West Virginia to Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota, all traditionally pro-Trump states.

With power now in reach for the Democrats, the political battle to watch will be between the mainstream, pro-capitalist wing and the ascendant socialist wing, epitomised by the cultish Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA leadership recognises that pushing a purely socialist agenda – much less a Marxist-Leninist one – is less effective than the more subtle strategy of infiltrating and taking over the party.

Like the Communist parties of Stalin’s ‘Popular Front’ strategy in the mid-1930s, they beguile gullible liberals, at least until they seize total control. But the outlines of their policy goals are clearly Marxist-adjacent, as Democrats such as former Clinton labour secretary Robert Reich become openly red. Reich recently called for the nationalisation of SpaceX and Tesla, while Bernie Sanders wants the government to own the AI firms.

Tech elites and Wall Street never objected to the Democrats’ sometimes wacky cultural causes and embraced draconian climate-change policies. They loved the progressive mass infusion of foreign workers and happily abused H-1B visas, which allowed them to lay off and replace American workers with cheaper foreign ones. The DEI and ESG policies unceremoniously dumped during the Trump years will return. The AI elites will be sure to settle for a regulatory regime that allows them to maintain oligarchic control of the new technologies.

It’s unlikely that the oligarchic elites will worry much about future political repression, as long as it doesn’t hurt the bottom line. For all the progressive claims about facing ‘fascists’, the Restoration, like that of the Stuarts in 1660, will have a repressive agenda for its hated opponents. Encouraged by Trump’s own actions, they will wage lawfare against anyone who supported Trump and his policies. Michigan senator Elissa Slotkin has openly threatened retributive action against even young people who might want to work under Trump. Others talk openly about ‘re-education’ camps for Trumpistas and massive new waves of lawfare. The Florida Democratic candidate for governor, a DSA member, has suggested the right place for her MAGA opponent is a prison cell.

Meanwhile, in academia, the reign of terror against even mild dissenters has resumed as the existing powers reassert their authority. As in so many areas, our expensive elite colleges continue to prosper even as their models fail, overall enrolments drop and their reputations sag. Elite places like Harvard pile up wealth at enormous rates even as they trash their own once-high standards. Once Trump is gone, expect academic arrogance and disdain for alternative views to resurface in all their splendour.

The big dividing line, however, will be about money. Corporate Democrats are unlikely to welcome policies that would limit their cynical manipulation of the tax code. They also must fear attempts to limit data centres and place more restrictions on AI development, which has provided a torrent of profits on both Wall Street and in the Valley.

A future confrontation with the socialists seems inevitable. Seizing on rising inequality and dubious job prospects, particularly for the young, the socialists back an agenda that targets the elite business class overall. After all, the DSA and its allies advocate such things as public ownership of the means of production. Ironically, this call to revolution hardly fits Marxist notions of a proletarian rebellion. It remains largely a movement of educated professionals. As sociologist Musa al-Gharbi notes, DSA members are 85 per cent white and 80 per cent college-educated.

To the DSA, big companies – if they are allowed to exist – are just giant geese to be plucked, sliced and quartered to support their dreams of an ever more expansive welfare state. Their natural constituency comes from the holders of one-third of all jobs tied to government spending.

Oligarchs may be convenient targets even in moderate states. But ultimately, the real targets will be the large upper-middle class, roughly one-third of the population, many of them owners of successful small businesses. These people, including homeowners, are really where the biggest pots of money can be found.

If it continues, the leftward push of the Democrats could open the door for the GOP. Even now, the donkeys are less popular than the Republicans. Yet the Republicans under Trump are a lost party. Trump may have been good for many Americans – certainly better than the current sour mood would indicate – but open corruption hardly attracts followers. Latinos, the rising force in the country, have also been turned off by the brutal stupidity of Homeland Security, particularly during the disastrous reign of the bimbo Kristi Noem.

Creating a viable post-Trump GOP may prove difficult. Many of the party’s most respectable figures, particularly in the Senate, have been driven from office by Dr Demento. Even the Bush family has backed Democrats in protest at Trump’s flawed candidate picks, such as Texas’s Ken Paxton. The question is whether Republicans can recover before the Democrats alter the political balance by reopening the borders, legalising the undocumented en masse and getting statehood for Washington DC and Puerto Rico.

On the global level, America’s enemies – China, Russia and increasingly the European Union – will also jump for joy at the Restoration, much as they celebrated the victory of the corrupt Lula in Brazil. But they will be unable to alter the basic reality of America’s economic and military supremacy. Trump is not leaving the country or the economy in tatters, as business investment soars. Even the Chinese challenge seems to be unravelling under the failures of planning and demographic decline. And when it comes to the EU and UK, it’s not even a close contest any more.

Given the unpopularity of many Democratic policies, such as transgender advocacy, open borders, leniency for criminals and racial quotas, the Republicans can still remain competitive, perhaps as early as 2028. For over a decade, people have been moving en masse to the red states, which are expected to gain as many as 11 electoral-college seats after the 2030 census, while California, New York, Illinois and Michigan all lose seats.

Then there is the high probability that Democratic rule will prove itself, at least in the big cities, utterly incapable of effective governance. The fiscal difficulties of places like Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles – places that middle-class people and their money are fleeing – will not be great ads for Democratic rule. Trump may be odious, but it may not be long before people miss his nationalist focus and economic achievements. As royalist poet Andrew Marvell wrote about Cromwell shortly after his death and the Stuart Restoration:

‘Though his government did a tyrant resemble,

He made England great and his enemies tremble.’

As happened with the Stuart Restoration, people may soon tire of the progressives. In the 17th century, when change was slower, it took less than 30 years for the nation to boot out the Stuarts – with their absolutist pretensions and Catholic sympathies – in favour of the more reliably Protestant and less autocratic House of Orange. As long as the American constitution remains intact and party tyranny limited, we could experience our own Glorious Revolution and a return to sanity.