Republican outrage about Donald Trump's Epstein Files betrayal gives Democrats the chance to find the cause of this cover up without acting political

Echo opinion published in the Seattle Times by Matthew Yglesias

Right wing maga conspiracy theorists are betrayed.....by Trump❗ Who knew❓ Bipartisan outrage over Epstein

The controversy over the mysteriously evil “Epstein Files,” which  Donald Trump’s administration first pledged to release and then decided not to, has Democrats back in touch with one of America’s great political traditions: anti-establishment conspiracy theories. 

Not only is this good for the party, it is also — dare I say it — healthy for U.S. politics. (This theory is likely the reason why Trump's monotonous mantra of a "hoax" is not sticking.)

Theories of this type differ from the more extreme Russiagate allegations against Trump (or Trump’s infamous charges that former President Barack Obama was secretly born in Kenya) in that they are not narrowly partisan. 

As such, they are especially appealing to the kinds of people who are disengaged from politics and alienated from mainstream institutions. In other words, just the kinds of people who’ve flocked to Trump’s banner over the past decade.

These sorts of views used to be distributed much more evenly across the political system, or even primarily on the left. When I was a kid, the kinds of people who believed the government was covering up evidence of extraterrestrial life also tended to believe that the government played a role in the spread of crack cocaine.

A classic pop-culture work of conspiratorialism such as Oliver Stone’s 1991, film “JFK” did not exactly endorse the Democratic Party’s criticisms of President George H.W. Bush. But the general thrust of the film — that oil interests, Cuban exiles and Cold War superhawks conspired to murder the president in order to escalate military involvement in Vietnam — was certainly left-wing. 

After all, when the movie came out, conservatives had held the presidency nearly continuously for two decades. Why shouldn’t people on the outs with the system gravitate toward the left?

Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami political scientist who studies conspiracy theories and politics, emphasizes that conspiratorial thinking is typical of the politics of outsiders. It’s normally seen on the losing side. 

Shortly after “JFK’s” movie release, Bill Clinton was elected president. (Hmmm❓Not sure I agree with this correlation...😞😩😧- the movie "JFK" had nothing to do with Clinton's election, BUT, the photo with young Clinton shaking JFK's hand on July 24, 1963, probably had a nostalgic influence)

Nevertheless, so the leading conspiracies of the 1990s, often attracted a right-wing gloss because a Democrat was in the White House. Then came George W. Bush’s term, full of dark whispers regarding the real truth about 9/11 and Michael Moore’s popular documentary suggesting the whole thing was part of some scheme to build a pipeline through Afghanistan.

What’s unusual about Trump is that he leveraged conspiratorial thinking in a very explicit way for a politician. He overcame the Republican establishment with outsider support in 2016 — and then managed to retain his outsider status even while he was (still trying to be 🙄) president.😞

Which is not to say that Epstein conspiracy theories will deliver the midterms for Democrats. But, it is worth thinking about how they can build on the Epstein story, which continues to dominate the news cycle. Uscinski and eight co-authors published a 2021, paper suggesting a two-axis organization of American politics. 

Rather than the conventional political compass, with economic issues on one axis and cultural issues on another, they put essentially all ideological conflict on one axis and an establishment/anti-establishment on the other.

They show that both parties used to have large anti-establishment wings, with Bernie Sanders gaining a lot of support in 2016 not only from left-wing Democrats but also from a bigger tent of anti-establishment Democrats. Across the next several cycles, those less ideological Sanders voters became Trump supporters. The Epstein controversy has fractured Trump’s movement in a more profound way than any number of seemingly more substantive issues precisely because some of his supporters are basically anti-establishmentarians with vague or disorganized policy views.

Democrats, especially Democrats who aren’t socialists, need to relearn the habit of standing up for the little guy, versus the establishment, in ways that go beyond the distributional tables of a tax bill. 

A core reason that Epstein conspiracy theories are so widespread is that the public is broadly cynical about the way rich people are treated by the state and the legal system.

These themes complement standard Democratic Party policy goals, but many voters understand them in terms of personalities. 

When Barack Obama first ran for president, he was the fresh-faced outsider who was going to bring new people into government and fix the mess in Washington. He was in office for eight years. But who have been the party’s nominees since? A former first lady and secretary of state followed by two vice presidents in a row. It’s not hard to see the party as a closed circle of establishmentarians.

The kind of change many people want is not necessarily dramatic policy change, but change in personnel — the elevation of outsiders uncorrupted by ties to the system, either the party’s or the government’s. To maximize the opportunity provided by Trump’s various stumbles, whether on policy or personal corruption or Epstein, Democrats need to do more than pound the table. They need to find people who can constructively channel the kind of anti-establishment outrage that made Trump president, and is now testing his presidency.

Matthew Yglesias: is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A co-founder of and former columnist for Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is author of “One Billion Americans.”