The right-wing Republican Congress will dominate domestic and budget policy. Trump will continue to waste lives and resources in endless wars without victory across the greater Middle East. He will continue to rack up massive trade deficits, undermining wages and security at home. And he'll likely continue to go full Bannon on issues of race and immigration.

::::::::

From Our Future

After Steve Bannon departed the White House on August 14, he contacted The Weekly Standard to make a bold proclamation.

"The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over," the administration's now-former chief strategist said. "We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It'll be something else."

Like all propagandists, Bannon has a tendency to exaggerate. But in this case, he does have a point: His departure marks the culmination of Donald Trump's bait-and-switch presidential campaign.

Trump won, in part, because he portrayed himself as an economic populist who would not seek to police the world. Bannon played a key role in pushing those policies, though they never gained much traction in the Trump White House.

His departure now confirms President Trump as an interventionist Wall Street Republican. Worst of all, Trump will clearly retain the toxic racial politics that Bannon ... also championed.

The Party of Davos

The "Party of Davos," as Bannon calls it, has won the influence battle inside the White House. Trump's economic team consists primarily of billionaires, former financial-sector honchos, or both: people like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and others.

Meanwhile, former generals wield nearly unprecedented power in the White House: National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and John Kelly, the president's new chief of staff.

Bannon prided himself as the "keeper of the promises" and tracked Trump's major campaign pledges on a whiteboard in his office. But it is clear that Bannon wasn't very successful.

He reportedly pressed Trump to keep his campaign promise to avoid foreign entanglements and focus on the need to rebuild America, but Trump has now recommitted himself to the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan by ordering a troop surge that will begin immediately.

Trump also escalated the U.S. presence in Syria, redoubled our support of Saudi Arabia's ugly war against Yemen, has been gearing up for a face-off with Iran, and randomly threatened U.S. military involvement in Venezuela's internal affairs.

On Trade

On trade, Bannon championed Trump's campaign posture against the failed trade policies of the past. He insisted, correctly, that our trade deficit with China was a real security threat, and that the issue shouldn't be dropped in return for Chinese cooperation on North Korea.

But Trump ended up adopting the establishment position and abandoned his charge that China was a currency manipulator. Instead of scrapping NAFTA, Trump has agreed to renegotiate it. His commerce secretary has even suggested that the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- which Trump trashed for over a year straight on the campaign trail -- might be a template for those negotiations.

Bannon was reportedly skeptical about the bills to repeal the Affordable Care Act that emanated from the Republicans in Congress, arguing that they were "written by the insurance industry." He wasn't wrong, but Trump still championed the unpopular legislation, which would have stripped health insurance from millions of people.

On Taxes

On taxes, Bannon voiced support for raising taxes on the rich. The Trump tax plan -- such as it is -- promises to skew the tax code even more in favor of the very wealthy. And Trump's budget is simply a blueprint for the kind of austerity that House Speaker Paul Ryan has repeatedly urged: deep cuts in programs for the vulnerable -- "everything from student aid to affordable housing -- while throwing more money at the Pentagon.

To be clear, Bannon was no liberal. With characteristic bombast, he championed the "deconstruction of the administrative state" and was complicit in Trump's shocking assault on federal regulatory agencies. Nor should we mourn his departure.

Mainstreaming Racism

Bannon's most dangerous contribution to American politics over the past year was to help mainstream the racist ideas of the alt-right and give them an official spokesperson inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

This, more than anything else, will be Bannon's legacy. While his positions on the economy and foreign relations were ignored even before he was fired, the racist and nationalist themes in the Bannon playbook are certain to survive his departure. Trump, after all, is the president who saw "many fine people" among the neo-Nazis marching and chanting in Charlottesville.

Inflaming far-right racism will continue to be a key political strategy for the Trump White House. In what turned out to be an exit interview with The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner, Bannon described the strategy that he and Trump both embrace.

"The longer [the Democrats] talk about identity politics, I got 'em," he said. "I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats." Having stripped out a lot of the economic nationalism he ran on, Trump is apparently fine carrying on with just the latter.

The Worst-Case Scenario

This is, in many ways, the worst-case scenario. The Party of Davos has won on foreign and economic policy. The right-wing Republican Congress will dominate domestic and budget policy. Trump will continue to waste lives and resources in endless wars without victory across the greater Middle East. He will continue to rack up massive trade deficits, undermining wages and security at home. And he'll likely continue to go full Bannon on issues of race and immigration.

With any luck, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has noted, the malevolence of the administration will continue to be tempered by its incompetence, and Trump's evident instability will not result in utter calamities.

He will keep training his fire on Muslims and immigrants, and use race-baiting politics to do real damage when it comes to voter-suppression laws and immigration enforcement. All the while, he will preen about corporate plant openings and make the occasional empty gesture toward an economic populism that would help workers, while signing off on policies that "undermine them.

Bannon, for his part, will return to the Breitbart website from whence he came, and will presumably continue to peddle nativist and racist slurs as news while attacking many administration officials as globalist sellouts. Though Trump did indeed surrender on economic populism, Bannon helped build this horrifying Frankenstein.

Cross-posted from The Nation

Authors Website: http://www.ourfuture.org

Authors Bio:

Robert L. Borosage is the president of the Institute for America's Future and co-director of its sister organization, the Campaign for America's Future. The organizations were launched by 100 prominent Americans to challenge the rightward drift in U.S. politics, and to develop the policies, message and issue campaigns to help forge an enduring majority for progressive change in America. Most recently, Borosage spearheaded the Campaign's 2006 issues book, StraightTalk 2006, providing activists and candidates with distilled messages on kitchen table concerns, from jobs to affordable health care. Borosage also helped to found and chairs the Progressive Majority Political Action Committee, developing a national base of small donors and skilled activists. Progressive Majority recruits, staffs, and funds progressive candidates for political office.


Mr. Borosage writes widely on political, economic and national security issues for a range of publications including The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is a Contributing Editor at The Nation magazine, and a regular contributor to The American Prospect magazine. He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including Fox Morning News, RadioNation, National Public Radio, C-SPAN and Pacifica Radio. He teaches on presidential power and national security as an adjunct professor at American University's Washington School of Law.


A graduate of Yale Law School, with a graduate degree in International Affairs from George Washington University, Borosage left the practice of law to found the Center for National Security Studies in 1974. The Center focused on the tension between civil rights and the national security powers and prerogatives of the executive branch. It played a leading role in the efforts to investigate the intelligence agencies in the 1970s, curb their abuses, and hold them accountable in the future. At the Center, he helped to write and edit two books, The CIA File and The Lawless State.


In 1979, Borosage became Director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a research institute that drew its inspiration and fellowship from the major democratic movements of our time -- anti-war, women's, environmental and civil rights movements. Borosage helped to found and guide Countdown 88, which succeeded in winning the congressional ban on covert action against Nicaragua. Under Borosage's direction, the Institute expanded its fellowship, launched a successful publications program, and developed a new Washington School for congressional aides and public interest advocates.


In 1988, Borosage left the Institute to serve as senior issues advisor to the presidential campaign of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. He traveled the country with Jackson, writing speeches, framing policy responses, and providing debate preparation and assistance. He went on to advise a range of progressive political campaigns, including those of Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, Barbara Boxer and Paul Wellstone. "