ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ARE HARD. SPITE IS EASY.

What do Democrats want? An economy that work for all people, not just the rich. A justice system that's fair to everyone. Equal rights for all regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. A way out of the climate crisis. An end to the gun violence epidemic. Affordable healthcare. Affordable housing. And on and on.

What do Republicans want?

Spite.

As The Bulwark's Jonathan Last notes, Trumpers aren't driven by the pursuit of justice for themselves, because their lives are pretty sweet:

Most revolutions are borne of dissatisfaction. Some revolutions are motivated by ethnic or religious hatreds. Every once in a while, you get a revolution propelled by a belief that something better lies on the other side....

The Trumpian revolution, on the other hand, seems to be the product of decadent boredom commingled with casual nihilism.

Circumstances for our revolutionaries have never been better. They are so flush that they parade on their boats. And fly upside-down flags outside of their million-dollar suburban homes. And put stickers depicting a hogtied president on their $75,000 pickup trucks. All while posting angry memes to Facebook on their $1,000 iPhones.

We are not talking about les misérables Américains.

Many Democrats are comfortable and fortunate but want to improve conditions for people who aren't like themselves. But there's no evidence that privileged Republicans want to help anyone who's not in their tribe. The central point of Republicanism is precisely that people who aren't in your tribe are unworthy of basic rights and decent treatment. They shouldn't have health insurance if they're working shit jobs with no benefits. They shouldn't be treated decently by the cops. It's intolerable if beer companies, department stores, and Hollywood studios sometimes market to them, even if they usually market to other groups.

Republicans are driven by spite -- and that makes a Republican politician's job much easier than a Democrat's. It's hard to fight for economic and social justice -- vested interests will fight back with all the power they have, so it's hard to win more than partial victories that leave genuine justice elusive.

Spite is much easier -- and even a partial victory in pursuit of spite feels satisfying to spiteful voters. Donald Trump didn't need to build his entire wall in order to satisfy his base -- just building part of it angered Democrats, and that was spiteful enough. The mere fact that Trump ran and won the nomination in 2024 is satisfyingly spiteful for Republicans. Every day that he remains in the race, especially after four indictments and a felony conviction, is pure spite. And his ongoing campaign to discredit the results of the 2020 election is also seen by his base as a welcome act of spite.

Trump doesn't really have to do anything if he's elected president in order to satisfy his voters -- just being elected, fairly or otherwise, spites us. Everything he does to us, or to people whose lives we think should be made better, is satisfying spite, even if a court rolls it back. And he doesn't have to do any of the big things on his agenda if small, easy things make us angry.

This isn't purely a Trump phenomenon. Nearly every Republican makes owning the libs a priority, and lib-owning alone can make a Republican politician seem like a success in office. Whereas Joe Biden looks like a failure if his supporters are in any way dissatisfied with the economy, the war in Gaza, the degree of homeless or crime in America....

In other words, it's much easier to be a Republican politician, as long as you concentrate on spite.