Month: July 2018

As the saying goes, you campaign in poetry, but govern in prose.  Both the balance and the sequence are important.  If you can’t master the poetry part, you turn into Hillary Clinton:  an uninspiring candidate with a laundry list of modest ideas who can’t win an election.  If, on the other hand, you can’t deal in prose, you wind up like today’s GOP;  having made unrealistic, contradictory, and essentially dishonest promises to the electorate, you have no idea of how to keep them once in power, and you accomplish very little.

The key for the Democrats in 2020, therefore, is to nominate someone with sound and politically possible ideas who can nonetheless inspire the voting public.  What would such a platform look like?  Here are some ideas:

1.  Medicare for More:  Obamacare has helped with the cost of health insurance and co-pays, but not nearly enough for many middle- and working-class people.  An actuarily sound program permitting people to buy into Medicare, with higher subsidies, could help a lot.  As I’ve noted before, Medicare for More doesn’t create the same political objections as single-payer, it is based on an existing and popular program, and it doesn’t have the same impacts on the budget.  It has a reasonable chance of passage.

2.  Increase the EITC:  A working class tax cut would have some support from the GOP, and would help to reduce inequality.

3.  A modest increase in the minimum wage:  The EITC is a better way of improving the lives of struggling workers than the minimum wage, since it doesn’t require any interference with the market, but a modest increase, based on the available data, wouldn’t cost jobs, and would be popular.

4.  Greater antitrust enforcement:  Stagnant wages may be tied in some cases to an increase in market power on the part of a handful of firms.

The first two could be paid for by increasing the corporate tax from 21 to 25 percent, and by getting rid of the egregious pass-through entity deduction that serves no obvious economic purpose.  It would not require the complete repeal of the Trump tax cut.

If you think this list is too modest, remember one other thing:  one of the benefits of having such an obnoxious president is that it should be possible to inspire the base in a colorful way without having an irresponsible platform.

Steve Bannon apparently has been ripping the Koch brothers–telling them to get with the program, or else.  The Kochs do not seem overly impressed.  Why is that?

You shouldn’t be surprised.  The Kochs are CLs; they believe in a radically smaller state, which excludes tariffs and stronger immigration controls.  That is obviously in their economic self-interest, but, to be fair, they have also shown strong concerns about issues such as criminal justice reform that have no direct impacts on their bottom line.  Bannon, for his part, is a Reactionary; he wants a swaggering, more powerful state that showers benefits on white native-born Christians and kicks everyone else’s butt.

The two mix like oil and water.  They are only part of the same party because they both hate and fear the libs.

The following statements are, I believe, demonstrably true:

1.  The EU’s tariffs on American goods are, on the whole, roughly the same as American tariffs on EU products;
2.  American trade deficits with EU countries are due, not to disparities in tariffs, but to other economic factors–most notably, differences in savings rates; and
3.  One of the few consistent and genuine (albeit extremely stupid) ideas Trump has espoused throughout the years is the notion that countries with large trade surpluses with America got them by stealing our money.

Some commentators and members of the administration are taking the position that Trump is using thuggish, but justifiable tactics to advance a radical free trade agenda with the EU.  If my premises are true, completely free trade will not in any way eliminate trade deficits and thereby accomplish Trump’s ultimate objective of returning ill-gotten wealth to the US.  As a result, I can only conclude that the argument about Trump being a free trader is false, and that his objective must really be managed trade, not free trade.

I’ve had the privilege (?) of watching GOP campaign commercials in several states over the last few months.  With one notable exception, they are all the same;  they all hit on Trumpian themes, whether they make sense in the context or not.  Illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, and “draining the swamp” should not have any resonance in states that are completely controlled by the GOP.  And yet, there you are.

It has even gotten to the point that the candidates whose opponents have been endorsed by Trump are trying to sound like him.  As you can imagine, that isn’t working too well.

Will openly and emphatically tying yourself to Trump prove successful in general elections in purple states, like Florida?  We’ll see, but it’s telling that even Rick Scott (the exception) is trying to portray himself as an independent voice, not a Trump clone.

As we know only too well, one of the guiding principles of Trumpism is to keep the base motivated by constantly triggering the libs on Twitter.  Hey, it works for Fox News–why not him?

Let’s leave aside whether it is good for the country, and even moral, for him to be as deliberately divisive as he is.  The question for today is, is it a sound electoral strategy?  What happens if you trigger so many libs that they all go to the polls in November and outvote your base?

I guess we’ll find out in a few months.  If the blue wave crashes even with a roaring economy, it’s all on him.

Life in the time of Trump.

He’s built a golden crutch.

He thinks the farmers should be glad.

The farmers–not so much.

The tariff war will stagger on

With no off-ramp in sight.

He thinks the war’s an easy win.

Will he ever see the light?

Having needlessly damaged the economic interests of key members of his base with his tariffs, Trump wants to mitigate the damage by using taxpayer money to bail them out.  Senator Ben Sasse, a Never Trumper, has memorably described this idea as “golden crutches.”

This proves, yet again, that Trump and his allies only object to “welfare” when it goes to people other than hard-working white Christians.  I’m going to make a wild guess here and speculate that the farmers won’t be required to take drug tests as a condition of receiving the subsidies.

If we have a financial crisis and a bank bailout is necessary, the same thing will happen.  Trump will support the bailout, and while some of his CL supporters will howl, they will ultimately go along with it, because the mainstream of the GOP is now whatever Trump says it is.

Much is being made of a recent poll which apparently shows that younger people are suspicious of capitalism, and receptive to socialism.  This has (reasonably) been attributed to their experience with the Great Recession.

Is calling your ideas “socialism” consequently a winning political strategy?  No, because older people, who are more reliable voters, are generally terrified of anything called “socialist.”  That’s my personal experience, and it is supported by another recent poll which indicated that 75 percent of voters would never vote for a “socialist.”

Notwithstanding the drivel one hears on Fox News, expanding the welfare state is not “socialism.”  In virtually every case, therefore, it is a mistake for Democrats to tie their ideas to the “socialist” label.

I’ve got those dirty, lowdown, Donald Trump blues.

You have to be aware of it; it’s all over the news.

Trump really wants to help me out, but the Democrats refuse.

Election’s in November, and the GOP might lose.

 

Sure, I took Crimea, and I hold part of Ukraine.

I did it all with lots of stealth so I wouldn’t take the blame.

I’ve murdered lots of people and inflicted lots of pain.

But that’s the way it works if you want to play the game.

 

I’ve got the blues.

The US sanctions blues.

It feels like I’m still winning

But with every win, I lose.

I’m working hard in Europe.

I’m making lots of friends.

But America still rules the roost.

The battle never ends.

It’s fun to speculate about 2020, and I will continue to do so, but the task at hand is to win in 2018.  There is plenty of angst about divisions in the Democratic Party, but my message is, do whatever it takes to win in your district and provide an effective check on the man on golf cart.  We’ll sort out the ideology later.

2018 is about only one thing:  are you a Trump enabler or a Trump checker?  If you are the latter, it doesn’t matter if you follow the blue dog or the red star.  Just win, baby!

Today’s electability steel cage match features a complete contrast in styles.  In the blue corner we have Joe Biden, the old white guy who has paid his dues, but never won the big prize.  In the red corner we have Kamala Harris, the female minority newcomer with a gift for generating publicity.

LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!

1.  Relevant experience:  No one could possibly beat Uncle Joe here.  Certainly Harris can’t.  Advantage:  Biden.

2.  Skeletons in the closet:  Biden has a minor plagiarism problem.  Harris hasn’t been vetted on the national stage yet, so we don’t really know.  Advantage:  TBD.

3.  Don’t rerun the 2016 campaign:  Neither candidate resembles Hillary Clinton in any way.  Advantage:  Even.

4.  Charisma counts:  The camera loves Harris.  The old white guy has nothing to match that.  Advantage:  Harris.

5.  Play the identity game more shrewdly:  Biden is good with white working men and is broadly acceptable to the entire party.  Harris is best known for her support for illegal immigrants.  Advantage:  Biden.

And the winner is . . . Biden, as of today, but expect Harris to attract a lot of attention during the debates.  She can be a major factor in the race if she can figure out a way to broaden her message and appeal to white workers.

Words that will never come out of the mouth of Donald J. Trump.

If Cohen is serious about wanting to turn over a new leaf, things are about to get really, really interesting.

The web is full of analysis of Trump’s Twitter equivalent of a declaration of war against Iran.  The consensus seems to be that Trump is attempting to use the same tactics that he employed, at least in his eyes, successfully against North Korea.  The formula would be threats of annihilation + sanctions =surrender.

Is this correct?  Of course it is.  Trump is a man of limited experience and imagination.  If something works for him, he uses it until he wears it out.  Just ask his base, or the students at Trump University.

Leaving aside the fact that his North Korea “diplomacy” has actually accomplished less than nothing, the two would-be victims are very dissimilar, for the following reasons:

1.  Trump actually appears to like Kim, and views him as sort of a candidate for the political version of The Apprentice.  The elderly Muslim leaders of Iran–not so much.
2.  Iran doesn’t have any nuclear weapons, thanks in part to the Obama deal, so war with the ayatollahs is a more viable option.
3.  North Korea is diplomatically isolated.  On the Iran issue, it is the US that is isolated.
4.  Kim is in no way accountable to his people.  The Iranian system, on the other hand, has real democratic elements.  That means the Iranians can’t change course on a dime the way Kim can.
5.  Powerful elements of the Iranian system profit from sanctions, and won’t be persuade to change course by them.
6.  Trump’s best international friends–Bibi and MBS–want regime change in Iran.  Our allies in Asia have no plan for regime change in North Korea.

The bottom line is that the threats + sanctions formula is not going to force Iran to capitulate.  Then what?  A limited strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities isn’t going to stop the Iranian government from supporting Hezbollah and the Houthis, which is a big part of the rationale for scrapping Obama’s agreement.  Trump won’t agree to a huge, expensive ground offensive that leads to the occupation of Iran.  That leaves the one alternative that none of the commentators has even dared to contemplate, but will certainly occur to Trump:  a bomb; a parade; and a statue.

If Joe Biden doesn’t run, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will probably begin the 2020 campaign as the frontrunners.  Which of the two is more electable, based on the criteria I posted a few days ago?  Here is my analysis:

1.  Relevant experience:  Both are US senators and are thus equally qualified.

2.  Skeletons in the closet:  Socialism!  Sandinistas!  If Bernie is the nominee, the GOP will have us believing that Daniel Ortega is his running mate.  Advantage:  Warren.

3.  Don’t rerun the 2016 election:  Warren isn’t a clone of Hillary Clinton, but to the average, uninformed voter, she will look like one.  Advantage:  Sanders.

4.  Charisma counts:  Bernie offers a kind of gruff authenticity and a single well-worn speech.  Warren’s speeches are fairly wooden, but she can come up with a good zinger now and then, and she clearly gets under Trump’s skin, which is a plus.  Advantage:  Warren (slightly).

5.  Play the identity game more shrewdly:  In his heart of hearts, Bernie believes that class is the primary source of conflict in American politics, and he doesn’t really accept identity politics.  Warren gets it.  Maybe it’s her Native American heritage.  Advantage:  Warren.

So the winner is . . . Warren!  If these two are the finalists, however, all of us will lose.

The Chinese have opposed the application of the rule of law to disputes involving the South China Sea.  They have resorted to threats, bribes, and divide-and-conquer tactics in order to get their way.  So far, they have been pretty successful.

The Chinese government says it believes in the rule of law at home, but what it means by that is the elimination of local obstacles to the effective use of power by the center.  The government makes the law–it is not bound by it.  Politics will always prevail over legal norms when it really matters.

The Chinese government is currently posing as the defender of international law on trade issues.  In light of the practices described above, should that claim be taken seriously?

Of course not.  The Chinese see trade in much the same terms as Trump does.  They just happen to have a political and economic system that is far better designed for mercantilism than ours.