Month: March 2016

Observations on the race after Super Tuesday II:

1.  As I stated on several occasions, most notably in a poem called “Old Wine in New Bottles,” there was nothing “moderate” about Rubio; he was running as Bush 43 on steroids.  The hope obviously was that a fresh face could make tired and dangerous ideas palatable to the general public.  It was plausible, but it failed, and we can be grateful for that.
2.  Rubio’s departure doesn’t really change the dynamics of the race; now there are two anti-Trumps instead of three.  Unless Cruz and Kasich are willing to work together to bring us the brokered convention, they will continue to split the anti-Trump vote, and Trump will continue to win delegates with pluralities.
3.  My Marco Monday feature is retired as of this week.

The senator from my home state.

His bubble was bound to deflate.

He’s hanging his head

‘Cause his campaign is dead.

The White House just wasn’t his fate.

The Friedman column on the TPP in today’s NYT should be required reading for all of the candidates.  The voters, too.

Please vote for me, red America.

We’ll build a wall together.

And tariffs, too.

It’s all for you.

We’ll keep the world out.

That’s what I’m about.

 

Parody of “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

There is nothing in Donald Trump’s background as a semi-successful developer, reality show star, and product pitchman that qualifies him to be a man on horseback, or suggests that he is a passionate bigot (misogynist, I will grant you). He has said nothing during the campaign which suggests that he rejects the democratic process.  And yet, the outbreaks of violence at his rallies over the last week or so could be the beginning of a dangerous new phase in his candidacy. Why has this happened, and where is it going?

In my opinion, it is the logical result of his decision to run for President.  He can’t run on his qualifications, because he doesn’t have any.  He can’t run on his mastery of policy, or his ideology, because he doesn’t know anything about policy, and he makes up his positions as he goes along.  His success is based on two things: he learned from the 2012 Romney campaign that you can’t be too far to the right on illegal immigration; and you have to project swagger to the nth degree. Everything else is a detail.

Once you have decided that your only chance to win is as a bigot and a strong man, where do you stop?  How can you deal with the inevitable protesters, except to beat them up?

In the likely event that he gets the nomination, the next question, of course, is whether he will surround himself with party regulars and default to the GOP norm during the general election, or double down on his Captain Outrageous routine.  I addressed this in a previous post.  If it is the latter, and I think it will be, the violence is only going to get worse with time.  Whether that would work to his benefit or detriment is an open question.

No, this isn’t a post about his ridiculous ideas on monetary policy, although I plan to address that at a later date.

Cruz is running as an unusual sort of combination of insider and outsider candidate:  insider enough to prove his competence, but outsider enough to attract voters who are completely repelled by the status quo.  As I’ve noted before, he shares this concept of his candidacy with Bernie Sanders, but at the other end of the ideological spectrum.

So far, you wouldn’t say this approach has worked, because Trump has dominated the outsider lane.  If Rubio and Kasich are driven out of the race tonight, however, it is conceivable (maybe even likely) that the establishment will be forced to embrace him, and he will have the best of both worlds going into the remainder of the campaign.

There once was a Texan named Cruz.

The voters in NC he woos.

He hopes that Missouri

Will withstand Trump’s fury

And Marco and Kasich both lose.

The Democrat maverick named Bern.

To the Midwestern states he now turns.

He hasn’t a path

If you check out the math

And no hope that I can discern.

Rubio dismissed the notion that he would quit the race and join Cruz as the junior partner on a unified anti-Trump ticket last week, saying that it sounded like something out of “House of Cards.”  He was right;  it isn’t a decision he can make without considering the interests of his supporters.  That aside, however, the question for the day is whether the unified ticket makes sense for either Cruz or Rubio.

The advantage of the ticket for Cruz is that it would essentially guarantee him the nomination if the convention is brokered and Trump loses even though he knows he is unpopular with the party leadership.  The disadvantages are that it would saddle him with someone he doesn’t like as a running mate, and he is likely to be the choice of a contested convention in any event.  On balance, if I were Cruz, I would probably take that deal.

For Rubio, the deal means that he trades whatever slight chance he has of being chosen as the nominee at a brokered convention for the virtual certainty that he would be the junior member on the ticket under those conditions.   Given that his relationship with Cruz is not exactly warm, the best case scenario would be that he would be attending lots of funerals for the next eight years, and would be the heir to the (probably unpopular) Cruz legacy in 2024, while the worst (and most likely) case would be another defeat and more damage to his brand.  To me, that is an offer I could refuse.

The process is in a new phase.

The Rubio camp’s in a daze.

Can Marco or John

Make a deal to stop Don?

If they can, they’ll earn plenty of praise.

Consider this:  unemployment is below five percent; inflation is essentially non-existent; the price of gas is down; the deficit has been cut in half from its recessionary high; and we are not engaged in a large scale ground war anywhere in the world.  In spite of that, both the right and the left are bitterly dissatisfied with the status quo, as evidenced by the successes of the Trump, Cruz, and Sanders campaigns.  Why?

I would suggest three reasons:

1.  Part of American exceptionalism is the naive belief that everyone’s life in our country is always destined to get better simply by virtue of the superiority of our system.   This view is held by both the right and the left.  As a result, any suggestion that things could actually get worse for some substantial number of our citizens will be resisted forcefully.

2.  The white working class is, in fact, being left behind.   Neither the right nor the left has had a workable answer for this, so both are looking for scapegoats. In the case of the right, it is illegal immigrants and inept and corrupt Washington politicians; for the left, it is greedy Wall Street bankers.

3.  Both sides put more value on their losses than their gains.  The right has succeeded in reducing discretionary federal spending, as a proportion of the budget and GDP, to levels not seen in 50 years, but it sees itself primarily as the loser of the culture wars.  The left, for its part, disregards its culture war victories and focuses primarily on increasing economic inequality.

When Hillary is asked about the Sanders plan for free public college during debates, her stock response is to say that she doesn’t want to pay for Donald Trump’s kids to go to college.  Given the time constraints during debates, that is about as clear and vivid an answer as you could expect, but the issue requires a more comprehensive analysis, so here it is:

1.  The plan is practically impossible without dramatically increasing federal authority over state-run and controlled institutions.  The states fund public colleges and set the required level of tuition.  If the federal government decided to make them “free,” the states could respond by either cutting their support through taxation or by jacking up tuition.  The only possible response to that would be what would amount to a partial federal takeover of these institutions, almost certainly over the objections of the states.  Good luck with that.

2.   College is not an essential part of the welfare state.  While it is certainly true that a college education is more important today that it was in the past, it is perfectly possible to make a reasonable living without one, and millions of people do.  Would my lawn guy do a better job, and make more money, if he had a college education?  Should he have to pay to educate Trump’s kids?  I don’t think so.

3.  College, on the whole, is still a good investment.  As a result, most people will still be willing and able to pay for it on their own.  There is no reason to subsidize a decision that already makes economic sense.

4.  It would be a mistake to further subsidize an enterprise with a broken economic model until the model is fixed.  The costs of college, like health care costs, have skyrocketed over the last 20 years.  The market is starting to respond to that, and the federal government is beginning to demand more transparency and accountability, but it is too soon to throw vast additional sums of money into a broken system.

The bottom line for me is that I would have no problem paying more in taxes for universal health care, which I view as an essential part of the welfare state, but for universal public college?  No thanks.

         Sunshine State

Sunshine State decides it all.

Marco’s heading for a fall.

Cruz has put the state in play.

Kasich fights on miles away.

 

Trump could have the votes in hand.

His foes grope for another plan.

Can he be stopped at the convention?

Disbelief requires suspension.

1. Horatio Alger is back!  He can be pretty eloquent at times, too, even though many of his positions are just awful.
2. Cruz does a wonderful job of completely ignoring questions and sticking to his talking points.  He landed the only blows on Trump, but they were just jabs.
3. Trump’s ignorance of policy matters really shows up in debates like this.  He is much more comfortable when he gets to sling insults at his rivals.
4. Does anyone really believe that the protesters at Trump rallies, who are outnumbered by 1,000 to 1, are initiating violence?
5. It was nice to hear some real questions about trade, climate change, and education, even if the responses ranged between unsophisticated and downright stupid.  Tariffs are not the reason American companies have trouble selling in China and Japan.  Common Core was not imposed on the states.  There is no factual basis to say that any legislation addressing climate change will be completely ineffective, while destroying jobs.
6. Perhaps the most interesting exchange occurred when Trump had to admit that “strong” is not a synonym for “good.”  If he is the nominee, you can expect further discussions on that point during the general election.
7. Nothing happened last night to bend the arc.  The only remaining question is whether we are heading for a brokered convention, or not.

To an American, opposing Brexit would appear to be a no-brainer.  The consequences of Brexit could include a renewed push for Scottish independence, new problems with the status of Northern Ireland, reduced foreign investment, and reduced growth, based on new difficulties in exporting to the EU.  In exchange for that, the UK (or what would be left of it) would be able to stop the inflow of a relatively small number of immigrants, who are probably adding to growth, not decreasing it.  That isn’t much of a bargain unless you are Donald Trump.

Boris Johnson’s London is arguably the most cosmopolitan city in the world.  He always seemed to take pride in that.  As a result, I can only attribute his support of Brexit to political ambition and opportunism; there is no other plausible explanation, and it does him no credit.