Cromwell

David French has a lot to say, none of it flattering, about a J.D. Vance interview on YouTube. Given my interest in all things J.D., I naturally took his advice and watched almost all of it. On balance, I would say you needn’t bother.

French is particularly critical of Vance’s comment that right-wing neoliberalism made sense in the 1980s because Christianity was still powerful enough at that time to put guardrails on its social impacts. French notes that Vance is too young to remember what the times were really like; it was, after all, the era of Gordon Gekko. Crime, drug use, and divorce rates were much higher then than they are now. Vance’s false sense of nostalgia about the strength of Christian guardrails during his infancy simply has no basis in reality.

What Vance really wants to do, as so many conservative politicians have in the past, is to make war on the 1960s. If he wants to take us back to the Godly Society, he needs to cite the 1950s, when the top marginal income tax rates were vastly higher than they are now, instead of the 1980s.

What do Adam and Eve, “Faust,” “Jurassic Park,” the atomic bomb, and AI have in common? Given our intellectual and moral shortcomings, the quest for some kinds of knowledge isn’t always going to end well.

Recent reports indicate that some AI models are escaping their guardrails. The resemblance to “Jurassic Park” is obvious, no?

Rightly or wrongly, Biden’s presidency is viewed as a failure by most of the American public. Where did he go wrong?

Here is the list:

1. His excessive spending added to, even if it was not the principal cause of, inflation;
2. He didn’t do enough to control illegal immigration until it was too late;
3. He didn’t use his leverage to restrain Bibi in Gaza; and
4. He did an inadequate job of communicating his successes with the public, largely because of his age and poor health.

The first two items had the complete support of the left. The fourth was purely personal. The third marked a break with the left, but plenty of centrists, including me, agreed on this point. What does this mean for 2028?

If the progressive candidates portray the Biden years as a flop because his agenda was insufficiently ambitious, don’t believe them. There is a good reason why Bernie Sanders fought to keep Biden’s 2024 candidacy alive when everyone else had abandoned ship; the Democratic Party, including Biden, accepted most of the progressive agenda during the pandemic, with consequences that were both positive and negative.

Two thoughts on the results of the primary:

1. Donalds easily won a plurality over a large field, but not a majority. You shouldn’t assume that the voters who supported other candidates will fall in line behind him. There is a reasonable possibility that an unholy coalition of Democrats, disgruntled independents, and racist Republicans could win the election for Jolly. I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it, but it could happen.
2. The Democratic candidate wasn’t going to beat Moody, anyway, so why not try an extreme progressive? If she outperforms her expectations, which will be very low, it will provide inspiration to the left. If not, nothing much is lost.

On the once-again President Trump.

The Iranians made him a grump.

We’re blockading the Strait

With results less than great

And his poll number’s still in a slump.

Todd Blanche gave an unremarkable speech to his DOJ underlings after his confirmation. He didn’t rant about Trump’s priorities and threaten to fire anyone who wasn’t on board with them; instead, he thanked his attorneys for their professionalism and assured them that he valued them. Does this mean Blanche can be trusted to run a normal DOJ? Is he prepared to be Becket to Trump’s Henry II?

Don’t hold your breath. Blanche is smart enough to recognize that it would be a public relations disaster to broadcast his partisanship after an awkward confirmation process. In addition, he’s already reshaped the DOJ in his own image over the last several months, so his confirmation doesn’t represent any change in course.

You have to admit, however, that the implicit identification of Melania with Eleanor of Aquitaine is highly amusing.

Tech barons famously believe in moving fast and breaking things. That makes them natural allies of Trump, who wrecks everything he touches. Restoring order is a job for lesser people.

The tech ethic works fine if the items that are broken belong to the barons and their business associates. But what right do they have to cause harm to the rest of us? We never gave our consent; it was never even requested.

The bottom line here is that the Pottery Barn rule should apply to AI. Right now, it clearly doesn’t.

Imagine that you are one of the tech barons who stood behind Trump at the inauguration. You promised to be loyal to him; in exchange, he said he would have your back, and he delivered. You would gladly vote for him in 2028 if you could.

But he isn’t on the ballot, and you have to make an awkward choice. You don’t completely trust J.D., given his populist rhetoric; you know only too well that he tells radically different stories to different groups. Still, he has plenty of personal history with people like you, so that is somewhat reassuring. On the other hand, all of the Democratic candidates want to impose new guardrails on you; it’s just a matter of degree. You don’t like that at all.

The polls suggest that the Democrats are going to win. What do you do? Do you go all in for J.D. and suffer the consequences if he loses, or do you hedge your bets?

It’s a tough call. My guess is that the barons will more or less split down the middle on this choice if they are faced with it.

I did a little research this morning, and guess what? Donald Trump, by J.D.’s definition, is not a “Heritage American.” He didn’t have any direct ancestors living here at the time of the Civil War. In fact, his maternal grandparents never lived here at all.

If he’s not a “Heritage American,” then by what right does he run the country? Someone should ask J.D. about that.

Two things will distinguish the 2028 election from the midterms: first, the Democrats will have to propose an agenda of positive change to the electorate, as opposed to simply opposing Trump; and second, the condition of the country at the time of the presidential election is unknowable. I simply cannot predict the extent to which it will be necessary to use Trump’s autocratic powers to restore liberal democracy after he leaves office. As a result, the Democrats need to have a vigorous debate about their candidate and their platform in 2028, and while I would be leaning towards a centrist, I haven’t closed the door to anyone at this point in time.

The task between now and then, however, is to reimpose as many guardrails as is realistically possible on Trump. What I fear is that the progressives will make a display of opposing Trump at every turn to appease the blue base instead of picking their battles carefully to win over the electorate as a whole. The important things for the next two years are unity and effective opposition to right-wing autocracy, not publicity and pointless controversies that alienate swing voters.

Gas prices are bad, but they seem to have hit a bit of a lull, and the world has adapted, at least for now. Trump appears to believe the political price of continuing the blockade is worth it, because the alternatives are debatably even worse. In the meantime, the Iranians are neither giving in nor escalating. We seem to have reached a shaky equilibrium.

What could change it? The Iranians will lose some of their leverage after the midterms, which are now less than three months away. The collateral effects of the Ukraine war could get out of control. The most obvious possibility is the popping of an AI bubble. The American economy is being kept afloat by the spending of the affluent, which in turn is fueled by the soaring stock market; a dramatic fall in the latter would put an end to the former.

It started with Trump’s inauguration. The presence of all of the leading tech barons was the clearest demonstration possible that they were all in for him. He has delivered for them, too; he cut their taxes, treated them as national champions in negotiations with foreign countries, and did his best to prevent states from regulating them.

The message to the rest of America is that we have the power, and you don’t. We will impose AI on you whether you like it or not. If you are concerned about the impacts of data centers, or if you worry about losing your job, or if you believe our hype about destroying humanity, too bad. AI is unstoppable. You will just have to live with it, no matter how dire the results are, because we say so.

Is it any wonder that a large majority of Americans, including parts of Trump’s reactionary base, are outraged by this message? Will the barons respond to their anger by encouraging Trump to become even more autocratic? Probably.

According to the NYT, Todd Blanche refused to say that his DOJ would be “independent” on today’s “Meet the Press.” What conclusions should we draw from that?

Not many. The DOJ is part of the executive branch. As such, the president has some right to establish its priorities. For example, if he wants to emphasize dealing with organized crime or businesses committing fraud, as opposed to, say, immigration enforcement, that would be a perfectly legitimate use of his authority.

What is not legitimate is to pressure, in one way or another, the DOJ to engage in legally and factually frivolous investigations and prosecutions against the president’s political and legal opponents. The DOJ has an obligation to push back against those demands. For the past two years, it has not done so, and there is no reason to believe that the next two years offer anything better.

The NYT published a graph showing inflation rates and increases in average wages over time in an article yesterday. The graph showed a significant decrease in real wages during the peak inflation period in Biden’s term, which accounts nicely for Trump’s victory in 2024. The bad news for Trump, however, is that the graph indicates that real wages have fallen again in 2026 as a result of his tariffs and, above all, his stupid war.

Can the GOP overcome Trump’s self-imposed economic problems by ranting about crime and trans people? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Sam Altman has apparently said that he would be willing to flip a coin knowing that there was a 49 percent chance that humanity would be destroyed if he also knew that there was a 51 percent chance that our well-being would be doubled. After all, the odds would be in his favor.

How many of you would make the same bet? I’m guessing Altman would be in a small minority.

The premise of Altman’s statement, of course, is that he, not you, would be flipping the coin. You would have no say in the matter. You would simply have to trust him.

The decline in our birth rates is being driven by two things: increased female economic independence; and pessimism about the future. If you had reason to believe that you and your putative progeny could be wiped out at any time at the whim of some tech baron, how excited would you be about having children?