Ronald, Donald and Harris

The historical Amnesia that causes the Harris Campaign to embrace Endorsements from Reagan Era Republicans

Ronald Reagan died in 2004. Sadly, twenty years later, his ghost is still alive, in both parties: the Democratic party and the Republican Party. Recently, the Harris campaign touted endorsements from 17 officials who worked under President Reagan. The Reagan-era Republicans explained that they “believe Reagan would have supported Harris’s presidential bid if he were alive today.”

Like with the endorsements of other neocons like Dick Cheney, the Democratic party have wholeheartedly embraced these endorsements. Vice President Harris could have said something like, “I am glad these former Republicans are not voting for Trump, but given their own record and our fundamental policy differences, we would reject the endorsements”. Instead, she has repeatedly touted it with pride.

The embracement of these endorsements betray that the Harris campaign and the broader Democratic party have forgotten who Ronald Reagan was as a President. Ronald Reagan was the original prototype which gave birth to his successors like Donald Trump.

If Donald Trump is a Model A, then Ronald Reagan was the Model T.

Ronald Reagan in Neshoba County Mississippi

Both Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan heavily appealed to racist sentiments in their campaigns. On August 3, 1980, then-candidate Ronald Reagan addressed a large crowd in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where he gave a speech on states' rights. The fairgrounds where Reagan spoke were not far from the site where three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman—were brutally murdered by members of the local Ku Klux Klan in 1964. At this rally, he proclaimed:

I believe that there are programs like that, programs like education and others, that should be turned back to the states and the local communities with the tax sources to fund them, and let the people [applause drowns out end of statement]. I believe in states' rights; I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I'm going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there.

States’ rights was a long used rhetoric among segregationists to show their opposition to any programs for broader equality. Ronald Reagan’s dog-whistle was a signal to the very racists he intended to court for his election bid. He signaled his intention to turn his back on social programs that helped reduce racial inequality throughout the 1960s and 1970s. One Washington Post columnist explained the significance of the speech, “ It was bitter symbolism for black Americans (though surely not just for black Americans). Countless observers have noted that Reagan took the Republican Party from virtual irrelevance to the ascendancy it now enjoys. The essence of that transformation, we shouldn't forget, is the party's successful wooing of the race-exploiting Southern Democrats formerly known as Dixiecrats. And Reagan's Philadelphia appearance was an important bouquet in that courtship.” Given these dog-whistles, it is no surprise that the KKK endorsed Ronald Reagan for both is 1980 campaign and 1984 campaign, which he repudiated.

Where Ronald Reagan employed dog whistles, Donald Trump’s preferred instrument is the trumpet. He, too, began his campaign through racist demonization of Mexican immigrants. He implied that immigrants beget crime. But both heavily leveraged the sentiments of racists in order to win votes.

Donald Trump’s 2015 Campaign Launch

In addition to trumpeting his intentions to racists, Donald Trump has repeatedly shown sympathies to Neo-Nazis. He most obvious example is his refusal to condemn the neo-Nazis who were marching in Charlottesville. He said that “both sides were to blame.” Ronald Reagan used the same “both sides” logic, but with the original Nazis. In 1985, he visited a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where former SS members were buried. He went on to lay a wreath in the cemetery and also implied that members of the Wehrmacht were innocent members, instead of active participants in some of the worst atrocities known to man. He said, “ There are over 2,000 buried in Bitburg cemetery. Among them are 48 members of the SS -- the crimes of the SS must rank among the most heinous in human history -- but others buried there were simply soldiers in the German Army. How many were fanatical followers of a dictator and willfully carried out his cruel orders? And how many were conscripts, forced into service during the death throes of the Nazi war machine? We do not know. Many, however, we know from the dates on their tombstones, were only teenagers at the time. There is one boy buried there who died a week before his 16th birthday.”

Ronald Reagan Laying a Wraith at Bitburg

Bitburg was not the only time when Ronald Reagan praised Nazis and Nazi collaborators. In 1983, Ronald Reagan lauded OUN member Yaroslav Stetsko as the "last premier of a free Ukrainian State”

Most recently, in the previous debate, Donald Trump demonized Haitian immigrants with the preposterous claim that these immigrants steal and eat people’s cats. Ronald Reagan demonized black people with similar baseless and racist claims. In 1976, he spouted an anecdote about an alleged “welfare queen” who lived like a queen through welfare benefits she received by using multiple identities.

Policy-wise, Donald Trump merely continued with Ronald Reagan started. Ronald Reagan pioneered the biggest tax cuts for the wealthy. Under Ronald Reagan, the top marginal income rate had their taxes cut in half, which started a trajectory of the extreme income inequality that we see today. While the top 10% of the earners received unprecedented tax cuts, the poorest in society saw their welfare benefits severely cut, which worsened poverty. Donald Trump continued the Reaganite tradition of benefitting the wealthy with his unprecedented tax cuts during his tenure as President.

Both Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan failed to deal with epidemics under their presidency. Donald Trump had to deal with the covid-19 epidemic, while Ronald Reagan had to wrestle with the AIDS epidemic. According to a Lancet study, 40% of the Covid-19 deaths that occurred could have been prevented with better management. Ronald Reagan’s handling of the AIDS epidemic, he decided that it was divine retribution for people who engaged in immoral lifestyles. His press secretary called it a “gay plague” and cruelly laughed about the people who were withering away from AIDS.

Foreign policy-wise, while Donald Trump enacted a right-wing coup in Bolivia, and attempted regime change in various countries, in line with Reaganite policy. However, nothing Donald Trump did could compare to the damage done by Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan supported Efram Rios Montt’s war against the indigenous population of Guatemala, which resulted in a genocide, where over 600 villages were exterminated including Dos Erres. He supported the Contras, who committed crimes were breathtakingly graphic and evil that Ronald Reagan ended up facing opposition domestically in his support. One of his most famous vetoes is when he vetoed an anti-apartheid bill, calling it an “economic warfare” giving US the embarrassing status of being the last supporter of apartheid South Africa in the world stage.

Of course, we are only discussing Ronald Reagan era Republicans. Kamala Harris has also welcomed the endorsements of other neocons such as Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, who has a 90% Trump voting score from her time in Congress.

This is not the first time that the Democratic Party has embraced neocons and former Republicans. In 2016, Hillary Clinton also touted endorsements of various former Republicans. The reason for this is simple. The Democratic Party has two opposing interests: donors and voters. For the wealthy donors, Republican-lite policies preserves their status quo and it is comfortable. They can choose someone who will not rock the boat, while maintaining a respectable presence on the world stage. For the Democratic Party, embracing moderate Republicans allows them to tack right without having to fulfill the expectations of progressives who may demand more economically populist policies such as Medicare for All and universal education.

For the anti-Trump Republicans, they can endorse a more respectable candidate without having to abandon their policies and philosophies that have guided them for the past 40 or so years. In this end, the marriage between “anti-Trump” Republicans and Democrats is a happy one for the elites. But, what does it say about a party whose tent is so big that they do not exclude people who were responsible for some of the most damaging policies in the past 50 years?