Month: June 2017

The Senate bill is, of course, a substantive disaster–more on that subject over the weekend.  For today, the question is, will it pass?

There are four conservatives with “concerns.”  Rand Paul is the only one of them with any principles;  I expect him to vote no.  The others will hold out for additional concessions until the last minute, but McConnell will correctly perceive them as yes votes, and will refuse to make any significant deals.  They will capitulate.

I can’t see Susan Collins voting for the bill without significant changes that are unlikely to occur.  The other “moderates” will be bought off with McConnell promises that are unrelated to health care.  The vote will be 50-50.  Pence will break the tie, and the bill will pass.

                   Asset Mountains

(Chorus)

Oh, to live with asset mountains.

Piles of cash lying everywhere.

Investors happy with asset mountains

But the country isn’t getting anywhere.

 

Life is good at the exchange.

A billion bucks is pocket change.

Our tax cuts are on the way.

The cat is gone; the mice will play.

 

(Chorus)

 

We’re disposing of Dodd-Frank.

Screw the people!  Free the banks!

Working people made their choice

But the Trumpster hears our voice.

 

(Chorus)

 

Parody of “Sugar Mountain” by Neil Young.

It’s November, 2017.  The Conservative-led coalition has fallen apart as a result of internal battles over Brexit and natural attrition through by-elections.  After the general election, Corbyn took power at the head of a coalition that also included Scottish and Welsh nationalists and the Liberal Democrats.  What did the government look like?

Here’s my guess:

1.  Scotland:  Corbyn had to agree to a new referendum on independence, on a date established by the SNP, in order to get the SNP to join his government. Playing the long game for once, he didn’t object, because he figured that the referendum would fail, and that the disgruntled SNP voters would then drift back to Labour.  He was right.

2.  Brexit:  Corbyn had no emotional attachment to the EU, but the logic inherent in his political position drove him to support the softest possible Brexit.  British business sighed with relief, and the negotiations, while difficult, went more smoothly than one would have expected.

3.  Donald Trump:  Corbyn’s coalition partners prevented him from doing anything really stupid and left-wing on the economy, but he managed to keep his true believer supporters on board by lashing out at Trump at every possible moment.  His new-found political orthodoxy was consequently masked by his anti-American rhetoric.  This worked, as well.

And so, it is just about possible to believe that a man who clearly isn’t fit to be Prime Minister could have success leading a coalition government.

To me, Nancy Pelosi was one of the unsung heroes of the Obama Administration. Whenever Obama needed votes in the House, she managed to get them, no matter how difficult the issue was politically.  If you think that’s easy, go talk to Paul Ryan.

The GOP machine is fueled by hatred and anger towards blue America.  Since Trump is an embarrassment, and Obama and Clinton are gone, who could possibly make a better lightning rod than a liberal woman from San Francisco? In that respect, the Georgia special election is undoubtedly a harbinger of what is likely to be the GOP’s principal talking point in 2018.

Everyone knew who Obama and Clinton were, but my guess is that there are millions of casual GOP voters who have no idea of who Pelosi is.  Given her record of accomplishment, and further given that hating her can only take the GOP so far, I don’t think it is time to talk about replacing her.

By the end of his administration, Barack Obama had more or less washed his hands of the Syria problem;  he continued to fight IS, but he no longer believed it was practically possible to broker a political deal that removed Assad from power.  Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was more sanguine;  she supported a no-fly zone even though it created the potential for conflict with the Russians. Candidate Trump, for his part, suggested a deal with Assad and the Russians to focus on the destruction of IS.  You could call that position foolish or heartless, but you couldn’t say it was logically incoherent.

But that was then, and this is now.  Trump’s missile attack on the Syrians could be dismissed as a one-off effort to impress everyone with how tough he was without running any real risk of conflict.  Shooting down a Syrian plane, on the other hand, creates the potential for war with Syria and Russia.  It is a very big deal indeed.

There is a case to be made for what amounts to the Clinton position on a no-fly zone.  The problem is that Trump hasn’t made it, either to the world or to the American people.  No one can tell exactly what his position is, which is the way he likes it.  That could result in the US and Russia stumbling unwittingly into war.

The only thing dumber than starting a superpower conflict over an issue that doesn’t affect our vital interests, without really intending to, would be to deliberately start a war to prove that you aren’t a Russian puppet.  That could be on the table, too.

 

The Moral Majority was riding high in the early eighties;  they had a powerful ally in Ronald Reagan, and he was extremely popular.  It appeared that the sky was the limit. Today, fundamentalist Christians have been reduced to engaging in a cynical tactical alliance with a man who repudiates all of their values in order to protect their ideological interests.  Church attendance is falling, and the talk is not of a “moral majority,” but of the “Benedict Option” of withdrawal from an overwhelmingly pagan society.

What went wrong?  Two things:

1.  The connection with the Republican Party boomeranged.  The alliance with the GOP created three very serious problems.  First, Christianity became connected in the eyes of the public, not with love and public service, but with angry Trump and Cruz voters screaming about immigration and socialism, which was not exactly a selling point to younger people.  Second, the libertarian wing of the GOP was only too successful in convincing the public that the government, and by extension other forms of authority, should give way to the desires of the individual, who knew what was best for him.  If the government had no right to be in my business, what right did it have to be in my bedroom? Third, by rejecting science, particularly with regard to climate change, the GOP and the fundamentalists made themselves look ignorant.

2.  The treatment of gay marriage by the courts was a serious blow to the right.  The gay marriage decision essentially told Christians that thousands of years of tradition and moral teachings were now worse than useless, and that anyone who believed as they did would be dismissed as a bigot.  This transition was jarring, to say the least;  it made Christians feel unwelcome in their own home.  Is it any surprise they voted to “Make America Great Again?”

That would be Paul Ryan, who keeps pushing his border adjustment tax even though he has been told repeatedly that it can’t pass either the House or the Senate.  Why?

There are three potential reasons:

1. He thinks it is the best way to head off more damaging protectionist measures;
2. He genuinely believes that, leaving political concerns aside, it is good for American business; or
3. He truly believes that some reasonable attempt should be made to keep the massive corporate tax cut that is coming revenue-neutral.

I’m agnostic on the merits of BAT.  For once, however, all of these explanations do some credit to the king of the magic asterisk.  In today’s environment, that means BAT is doomed;  if you don’t believe it, just keep your eye on the progress of AHCA, the product of unvarnished legislative cynicism.

At first glance, Bill Clinton looks like a much luckier and hornier version of Jimmy Carter:  both were southern governors whose limited enduring domestic accomplishments (welfare reform; deregulation) were GOP-friendly.  Clinton, of course, had the good fortune to be president after the end of the Cold War and during an economic boom;  Carter had no such luck.

One major difference between the two is that Clinton tried and failed to create a more or less universal health care system, while Carter didn’t even try.  In fact, Carter’s lack of ambition, given the Democratic majorities that he enjoyed in Congress in the post-Watergate years, is quite striking.  The key to this is the massive difference in the political climate between 1976 and 1992.  In 1976, while the evolution of the GOP had begun, it was still more of a modest than a conservative party, while the Democrats still ruled the southern states.  As a result, just having a Democratic majority didn’t necessarily mean much in terms of the likelihood of liberal reforms.  By 1992, on the other hand, the evolution was close to being complete;  the GOP had been transformed by Reagan into a swaggering, tax cutting party, and it controlled Congress throughout a substantial portion of the Clinton presidency.

The bottom line is that Reagan made a dramatic change in the political landscape of this country, and his cold hand is still being felt even in times that present completely different challenges.

Given the obvious similarities between the recent events and Watergate, but a very different political climate, it is fair to ask what would have happened if Nixon had enjoyed the support of Fox News and the rest of today’s right-wing media.  How would American history have been different if Nixon had succeeded in retaining the support of his base, and had consequently survived the impeachment process?

Carter would still have been the Democratic nominee in 1976.  On the Republican side, Gerald Ford would have run, not as the incumbent president, but as Nixon’s unelected sidekick.  Reagan undoubtedly would have run against him and promised a new, cleaner, and much more conservative version of the GOP.  It is likely, under these changed circumstances, that he would have prevailed.

And so, the Carter/Reagan race would have occurred in 1976, not 1980.  Instead of being a discredited incumbent, Carter would have looked fresh and new, while Reagan would have been saddled with the ugly legacy of the Nixon years, and a public looking for change.  My guess is that Carter would have won fairly easily, and there never would have been a Reagan Revolution.  George H.W. Bush would have been elected in 1980, and the GOP and the country would look very different today.

5.  How about that big tax cut!

4.  The good part is in legislation that hasn’t been written yet.  It’ll be great.  Believe me.  Believe me.

3.  Obamacare is imploding, so any change would be an improvement, right?

2.  We need a win, any win, to prove our party is capable of governing.

And the number one is. . .

1.  If we don’t win one for the Trumpster, he’ll bury us with tweets.

 

If you could find anything in there about improving the health care system for the American people, call me.

On the new special counsel named Bob.

It would seem he’s the man for the job.

Will the Trumpster go down?

A sad end for a clown?

He sure acts like the head of the mob.

Donald Trump assured us repeatedly during the campaign that he would use his unparalleled negotiating skills to liberate us from the innumerable bad deals struck by previous administrations with the rest of the world.  Given that he was completely unfamiliar with the foreign leaders in question and the issues, and had actually collaborated on a book laying out his favorite negotiating tactics for the whole world to see, this was clearly implausible from the beginning, but, like the unscrupulous salesman he is, he managed to get the public to buy into it.

Naturally, things aren’t working out as planned.  He has already essentially agreed to make America the tip of the Saudi spear against Iran in response to some clever flattery and a promise to buy American weapons. In addition, he has naively placed his hopes of imposing a nuclear agreement on North Korea on Xi, who is almost certainly going to string him along with promises and token gestures in exchange for real substantive concessions from the US.  Even some members of his hapless administration are said in today’s NYT to be concerned about this.

And so, the driving force behind Trump University is taking a graduate course himself at Xi University.  What’s next?  A tutorial on fake news at the Putin School of Journalism.

 

Czechoslovakia split in two with minimal rancor and no violence.  The breakup of Yugoslavia resulted in a ghastly war.  Brexit will fall somewhere between those two poles; the point is that the secession process can be whatever the parties decide it should be.

My best guess is that the process will be nasty, brutish, and long (in a diplomatic way), for the following reasons:

1.  The British government is wobbly, and doesn’t really know what it wants:   Should the 2017 election be viewed as a mandate for a soft Brexit?  I can’t tell; neither can the government.

2.  The EU’s position is a lowest common denominator, and it’s unreasonable:  Getting everyone on board with a negotiating strategy means giving every member what it wants, which is likely to cause major conflicts during the negotiations.

3.  The matter is very complicated, from a legal perspective:  It may well be that splitting a sovereign nation into two parts is legally simpler than seceding from the EU.

The process is likely to take more than two years.  As it becomes more and more obvious that the interim “solution” will be the default WTO trade relationship, the trickle of multi-national businesses moving to the continent will become a flood. The pound will plunge, growth will stall, and things will start getting really ugly in the UK.

A good man with a gun can stop a bad man with a gun.  GOP congressmen should carry even during baseball practice.

Bernie Sanders isn’t really a socialist (he wants to break up the banks, not nationalize them), but he clearly does see the world through Marxist, class-based lenses.  In his view, Wall Street financiers are responsible for all of the country’s ills;  issues involving racism, sexism, religion, and other matters of identity are either the result of false consciousness or are red herrings created by the cunning financiers to divide and conquer.  His plan for the Democratic Party is to reject support from the wealthy and to turn the party into a vehicle for working class people by vastly expanding the welfare state.  As a result, hordes of previously disaffected nonvoters will begin participating in the political process, white and minority voters will hold hands and march as one, and the Democrats will start to win elections again.

As if.  This approach did not win him the Democratic nomination, as the army of the disaffected predictably never showed up, and it certainly had nothing to offer Republicans and independents.  The hard facts are that identity politics drive the American electoral system, and are not the product of a Wall Street plot;  that Americans are generally suspicious of the welfare state, and only support expanding it when the benefits appear to be “earned” through work; and that issues of culture, barring a conspicuous change of heart from the party, are likely to prevent the Democrats from winning many rural votes in the foreseeable future.

We definitely need a more effective welfare state attuned to the demands of the 21st century, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be larger.  The Democrats also need to reach out to rural voters by showing that they accept their culture.  What we don’t need is candidates who propose a bunch of poorly-considered new government programs just for the pleasure of making rich people pay for them.

And oh, by the way, someone should tell Bernie that Corbyn might have outperformed his dismally low expectations, but he lost the election by a large margin.