Month: February 2016

A few months ago, I posted a column entitled “Marco and the Two Friedmans” which addressed an argument implicitly made by Rubio during one of the debates.  The gist of the argument was that big government inevitably takes sides with big business over small business, and thus is a driver of inequality.  My conclusion was that this ignored the conflict between capital and labor that is the real source of inequality, but that Marco was at least entitled to some points for creativity.

About two weeks ago, there was an op-ed from Charles Koch in the WaPo  about Bernie Sanders and inequality which said almost exactly the same thing.  It’s reasonable to guess that Marco didn’t come up with this idea first.

In addition, it turns out that the line about Obama that Rubio repeated robotically during the New Hampshire debate comes more or less straight from Rush Limbaugh.

At least we know who his intellectual influences are.  What, you were expecting Burke and Mill?

The senator from my home state.

His Reaganesque shtick’s out of date.

He’s a likable bloke

But his views come from Koch.

Stop him before it’s too late.

We have a running gag in our household in which I attribute events that are clearly out of the control of anyone in this country (e.g., natural disasters, market corrections in China) to a lack of leadership from President Obama.  The point, of course, is that the GOP and the MSM blame him for all sorts of things over which he has little or no influence;  the difference is just a matter of degree.

In light of that, it is only fitting that Ross Douthat puts a portion of the blame for Donald Trump on–you guessed it–President Obama.

Here is his deconstructed argument, and my response:

1. The messianic elements of Obama’s 2008 campaign were a foretaste of Trump’s tactics.  Yes, some of the 2008 campaign imagery was overblown, but Obama ran a conventional race, well within the Democratic mainstream, as an experienced politician offering specific solutions to policy problems.  The overriding theme of the campaign was to bring the country together.  Trump is running as a celebrity with no answers to problems (some of which, such as immigration, are imaginary) other than faith in the vastness of his will and dealmaking talents; in addition, he is deliberately dividing his own party, to say nothing of the country as a whole.  I don’t see much convergence here.

2.  Obama has driven the Democratic Party to the left, particularly on cultural and social issues.  That simply isn’t true.  Obama was a passenger on the gay rights train, not its conductor.  As to his positions on crime, race relations, energy, health care, guns, and so on, they are squarely in the middle of the Democratic Party.  No Democratic Party candidate for President in either the 2008 or the 2016 election could have deviated from them and prevailed.  Please also note that in places like Kentucky and West Virginia, McCain outpolled Bush; that was before Obama did anything in office.

3.   Take our reactionary crazies–please!  Ross appears to believe that the interests of the country were better served when the Democrats were more of a class-based party than a coalition of victims.  As it turns out, there is a candidate who agrees with him, and thinks issues like guns and race are just symptoms of the real problems in this country.  He just lost South Carolina by 50 points.

Is Ross really feeling the Bern?

 

 

You Rush Limbaugh fans should appreciate the irony of this one.

                My Party Was Gone

I went to the debate

But my party was gone.

I could only stand to watch it

With headphones on.

 

We tried to be civil

When we argued in the past.

Now it’s all angry drivel.

The good times never last.

 

I said hey, hee, way to go, GOP!

 

Parody of “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders.

Final note:  Bush 41 looks more like an island of sanity and competence in a sea of GOP lunacy every day.

The sine qua non of Sanders’ candidacy is the “revolution;”  there is no apparent reason to vote for him if he can’t mobilize millions of previously disaffected voters to dramatically change the balance of power in Congress and support his agenda.  I have predicted on many occasions that the “revolution” simply won’t happen, and that Clinton would win easily.

As Sarah Palin might ask, how’s that revolution thing working for ya?

Participation in the Democratic primaries and caucuses has not surged relative to 2008, Clinton has a very large lead in South Carolina, and the race should be effectively over in the next few weeks.

I’m not gloating; that’s just the way it is.  Barring a cataclysmic event, an unimaginably charismatic torchbearer, or (more likely) both, there will be no left-wing revolution, either now or in the foreseeable future.

                The Mess in Texas

The mess in Texas, you could say.

Kasich stands above the fray.

Marco and the Trumpster duel.

Carson just looks like a fool.

 

Ted talks like a man on fire.

Trump, in turn, calls him a liar.

The rest of us just watch the show

And wonder how far down this goes.

 

It is more likely than not that China can succeed in turning the South China Sea into a Chinese lake over the next 10-15 years if it is determined to do so.  But here is the price for that:

1.  More aggressive Chinese behavior will result in much closer ties among its neighbors.  The Chinese have to be worried about encirclement; this will only make it worse.

2.  If the US starts withdrawing from the area, South Korea and Japan are likely to build nuclear weapons.  The US military presence has brought stability to the Far East and has, in its way, facilitated the rise of China, just as the power of the British fleet assisted the rise of the US in the 19th Century.  Conditions on the ground start becoming a lot less predictable, and much more dangerous, if the South Koreans and the Japanese think they are ultimately responsible for their own defense.

3.  Choke points to the south and west of China present a major issue for the Chinese.  It would be much easier for Japanese and South Korean ships to avoid the South China Sea than it would be for the Chinese to avoid navigating in waters controlled by potential adversaries.

If Xi were to ask for my advice, therefore, I would tell him to tread lightly.

1.  Obviously, the dynamics of this one were different, because Rubio came out swinging from the opening bell.
2.  The entire rationale for Trump’s campaign is that he is an alpha male, and his competitors (not to mention the President, his predecessors, the media, and everyone who disagrees with him) aren’t.  As a result, he has to behave like one during the debates, which means talking over his opponents and the moderators any time he likes.  Cruz and Rubio have figured out that the only way to address this kind of behavior is to respond in kind.  We consequently are treated to long stretches in which the candidates behave like dogs competing to pee the highest on a tree.
3.  The moderators look ineffectual when this happens, but they are actually wise to let it go.
4.  I think Trump lost a little ground, but not enough to matter.  It’s too late to completely change public perceptions unless the establishment is prepared to back it up with a huge media blitz over the next few weeks.  They should have done that months ago.
5.  The big winners last night were the Democrats.  Anyone who puts himself on the side of civilized behavior has to think that all of these people are jackasses.
6.  If Trump gets the nomination, I think he will have to rethink his tactics when he debates Hillary in front of a more neutral audience.  I don’t believe bullying will work under those conditions.
7.  From a policy perspective, the most interesting thing about the debate was Trump’s plan to replace Obamacare without eliminating its pre-existing conditions provisions.  Call it the one-legged stool;  it would work just about as well.

It would be perfectly reasonable for the GOP leaders in the Senate to refuse to consider a nomination that could not be processed prior to the election in the Senate’s normal course of business.   That is not the case today, however, which logically leads to a question–where is the new line?  Is it a year?  Two years? Have these nominations become so political that the line is now effectively four years?

Over to you for an answer, Mitch.

In 2010, at the height of the Tea Party wave, Rick Scott, a wealthy hospital mogul with few discernible political skills and some serious legal skeletons in his closet, decided to run for Governor of Florida.  He poured untold millions of his own money into the effort.  He beat a mediocre GOP establishment figure in a bloody primary, won the general election by a nose, and has been Governor ever since.

During the 2015-2016 GOP primary season, Jeb Bush raised and spent a ridiculously large amount of money, only to fall flat on his face, while Donald Trump primarily relied on free media time to build up a substantial lead in the delegate count.

What conclusions can we draw from these examples about the impact of money in American politics? The correct response, obviously, is that the answer is not simple:  it depends on how the money is used.

Here are my observations:

1.  Money is useful to create images and narratives when there is no previous political record to rebut.  Hence, the success of the Scott campaign.

2.  Money can be very helpful to reinforce existing negative impressions of a candidate.  Negative ads that attempt to destroy entrenched views of a candidate will be less successful unless it is clear that they are accurate and fair.

3.  Money can’t change facts.  Jeb Bush couldn’t escape the shadow of his brother’s administration, no matter how much money he spent.

4.  Free media time, if you can get it, is more valuable than paid time.  One of the unfortunate legacies of the Trump campaign is that it will encourage future candidates to say even more outrageous things in the hope of attracting free media attention.

5.  Campaign contributions are a small part of a much larger picture.  Money spent by wealthy individuals and corporations on lobbyists and education campaigns can, and frequently do, ultimately have more impact on legislation and rulemaking than campaign contributions.  That is why the Koch brothers use their money the way they do, and why it is a mistake for Sanders to focus so intensely on contributions in his “revolution.”

 

The GOP candidate Jeb.

His fortunes were at a low ebb.

He finally retired

Before he was fired

‘Cause Trump had him caught in his web.

 

And so a campaign that began with “shock and awe” expired in a whimper–the victim of the Trump steamroller, its own ineptitude, and the poisoned legacy of Bush 43.

Readers of this blog will remember that one of the best insights I ever had about politics came to me in a dream many years ago.  One of the characters in the dream told me that the voters didn’t really expect candidates to solve their problems, but they had to know that their hearts were in the right place.  It occurred to me a few days ago that this is the central concept of Trump’s campaign.

Trump is, above all things, a salesman.  His book apparently references “truthful hyperbole” as a useful sales technique.  My best guess is that the positions he has taken that make him the GOP frontrunner are a great example of that technique.

Trump isn’t stupid, so he can’t possibly believe that he can deport eleven million illegal immigrants, or that Mexico will pay for a border wall, or that the Chinese will sit idly by as he imposes a 45 percent tariff on their goods.  I don’t think his supporters actually believe that, either.  What matters to them is that he understands their grievances against the system, and expresses them in the most pungent way imaginable;  everything else is a detail.

In other words, he feels the pain of the white working class, and he wants everyone else to feel it, too, even if he has no plausible answers to their problems.

The GOP frontrunner Don

Is campaigning hither and yon.

March 1 should be super

Absent a blooper

The voters will likely be conned.

South Carolina was a disaster for Cruz.  He needed desperately to win there in order to establish himself as the frontrunner in the SEC primary; as it stands today, he is only favored to win two or three states on March 1, which won’t be nearly enough for him, given the limited appeal of his campaign outside of the South and the Plains states.

Cruz doesn’t have a Plan B, so the only thing he can do at this point is to double down on his previous tactic of slamming Trump for being an unreliable conservative and hope it works better than it did last week.  That doesn’t seem very likely.

As the field is currently constituted, it would appear that his ceiling is around 25 percent.  He could increase that to about 30 percent if he could get Carson out of the race, since he is the closest ideological match for disappointed Carson voters. Carson doesn’t seem to want to leave, however; perhaps Ted’s dirty tricks in Iowa are coming back to haunt him.

One thing is for certain:  Ted is in it for the long haul.  He has plenty of money, and his prospects in the Senate are worse than grim.  Anyone who bets on Rubio’s chances in a two-man race need to consider that.

There once was a Texan named Cruz.

Right-wing Christians he called on to choose.

He just wouldn’t deign

To go out of his lane.

So the contest he’s likely to lose.