Month: August 2018

If “Stop the Madness!” would make a great Democratic catchphrase during the current elections, the GOP slogan should be “Cover up for Trump,” given recent disclosures about the list of legitimate investigations that they are determined to prevent.  In light of that, what would it take for the Republicans to seriously consider impeachment?

1.  The payment of hush money to a porn star without appropriate disclosures in order to influence the outcome of an election?  Forget it.
2.  The active solicitation of assistance from a hostile foreign power in order to win an election?  No way.
3.  The active solicitation of assistance from the hostile foreign power in exchange for the promise of significant policy concessions?  I used to think so, but now I doubt it.  Trump supporters are going to rallies wearing t-shirts saying they would rather be Russians than Democrats.
4. #1 and #3, plus some sort of self-inflicted national catastrophe that threatens hundreds of GOP seats in Congress and the interests of the donor class?  That might be it.

Pathetic, isn’t it?

A programming note:  I will be on vacation until 9/10.  Posting until then will be short and irregular at best.

People my age will remember that the leadership of the Soviet Union used to engage in a good cop, bad cop routine revolving around the “hardliners in the Kremlin.”  The idea was that the American government should make concessions on this issue or that to strengthen the hand of the existing “moderate” Soviet leaders, because the alternative was far, far worse.  In reality, there was little or no daylight between the leadership and the purported hardliners, and the gambit rarely worked.

It occurred to me a few days ago that Kim is faced with the same sort of issue with the current US government.  The North Koreans clearly believe that there is a distinction between Trump, who is accommodating and wants to make a deal, and his cabinet members, who are much more skeptical.  Are they right?

In some ways, yes.  It is true that Trump wants “wins” and the spotlight, and doesn’t care about the specifics of the negotiations.  That makes him an easier target for the North Koreans.  It is also true that it has been possible on occasion to persuade Trump to overrule his advisers and make concessions to Kim.  The problem, however, is that denuclearization is a complex process that inevitably requires lots of hard work and expertise, which in turn means that Trump can’t and won’t do it himself.   Mattis, Pompeo, Bolton, and the rest of the hardliner cast have to be involved if anything meaningful is to get done.

Trump himself seems to have declared victory and moved on.  The North Koreans are getting frustrated with the lack of progress, even though they have “won” by looking reasonable to the rest of the world.  How can they cut through this situation and regain Trump’s attention?  By saying or doing something outrageous, of course.  It always worked in the past.

It’s going to happen.  It’s just a matter of time.

The deal with the Mexicans apparently includes a provision which requires auto manufacturers to show that workers making at least $16 per hour built at least 40 percent of their vehicles in order to take advantage of the tariff waiver.  Since the vast majority of Mexican auto workers make a small fraction of that, the presumed purpose of this section is to drive production facilities out of Mexico and back into the US.  On its face, it is a victory for Trump and for American workers.

But is it, really?  There is a serious question about how this provision is going to be enforced.  That aside, put yourself in the position of a CEO of an “American” auto manufacturer (does this concept even make sense anymore?) who will have to deal with this new situation.  Your company has a supply chain with both Mexican and American components.  The new agreement is going to drive up your costs and make your products less competitive relative to those of “European” or “Japanese” car companies.

If you don’t simply elect to try to commit a fraud on the new system, your choices essentially are to: (a) maintain the status quo and pay the tariff, which makes your product more expensive; (b) pay the Mexican workers far more, which probably increases your costs even more; (c) move your Mexican facilities to the US, which has  roughly the same result as (c); or (d) move the entire process overseas, and pay the tariff, but also take advantage of lower labor costs.

If you really want to compete on cost, you’re probably going to pick (d).  Does that really make America great again, or does it mean that larger tariffs on vehicles made outside North America are next?

 

When you think about it, John McCain and Aretha Franklin could hardly have been more different.  The one thing they had in common was that they were both outstanding Americans.  We will celebrate both of their lives this week.

That’s what makes America great, my friends.  It’s not the power of our armed forces, or the size of our economy.  It’s most definitely not hatred and white nationalism.

Life in the time of Trump.

His friends are going to jail.

He’s mad as hell

Despite the smell.

“The system’s rigged!” he wails.

The one’s chasing a pardon.

The other wants a deal.

Who will come off best? you ask.

Manafort, I feel.

Any way you look at this, you lose.

         Paul Simon, “Mrs. Robinson”

That’s a pretty good description of the UK’s Brexit options.  As I see it, there are three alternatives, all of which leave the country worse off than it is today:

1.  The government succeeds in making a deal and pushing it through Parliament.  The deal continues to permit the free movement of goods between the UK and the continent, but it requires the UK to make annual payments and to live with EU rules without having a say on them.  Services are not included in the deal.  The government is then free to make its own trade deals with third parties, but lacks the bargaining leverage of the EU.  This is the best case scenario.
2.  No deal is struck by the deadline.  Chaos ensues.   The government probably (but not certainly) falls in spite of its effort to spin its failure as an act of patriotism and good faith with the more rabid Brexiteers.
3.  The deal described in #1 is reached, but the government can’t sell it in Parliament, and it falls.  Chaos is the result, and Labour wins power in the ensuing election.

Given these unappetizing alternatives, could a second referendum possibly be so bad?

On the ex-campaign manager Paul.

It appears that he’s taken the fall.

He said “pardon me.”

Hopes that Trump sets him free.

But for now, there’s no door in that wall.

On the late maverick senator John.

One can hardly believe that he’s gone.

He served to the end.

He had plenty of friends.

Not including our president Don.

It didn’t exactly work out the way Thomas Jefferson expected.  Even by the end of the nineteenth century, his vision of America dominated economically and politically by small, scrappy yeoman farmers had been crushed by the capitalist colossus.  That is why it is so difficult to say how Jefferson would have responded to today’s unanticipated conditions.  Would he have supported increasing the size of government to deal with a world with Facebook and Amazon, or would he have been an honorary Koch brother?  We’ll never truly know.

Except that there is one place in America that really resembles Jefferson’s dream:  Vermont.  Everything is smaller than life by design in Vermont.  And so it may well be that Jefferson’s intellectual heir isn’t really Sarah Palin, the city-hating Sage of Wasilla;  it is Bernie Sanders.

Two interesting and related pieces of news today:

1. Polls taken shortly after the Cohen plea and the Manafort conviction show no meaningful change in Trump’s approval ratings.  His base clearly just accepts criminal behavior as the cost of doing business with a man who swaggers and is on their side.
2.  Some GOP members of Congress apparently have a lengthy list of potential investigations of Trump if the Democrats retake the House.  As you would expect, it’s a doozy.  Instead of using the list as a basis for conducting its own investigations, however, the Republicans plan to use the fear of it to persuade undecided voters to keep the House Republican.  You heard that right–GOP House members are being told to fight tooth and nail to make sure that Trump is not called to account for his Russia ties, conflicts of interests, etc.

Where have you gone, John McCain?  A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Ronald Reagan was the first GOP president to openly appeal to Reactionaries.  He didn’t actually do much for them, but they knew he was on their side, and at the time, that was enough.  In a similar vein, George W. Bush completely understood the language of the religious right, and used it to great effect, but didn’t make a great effort to push their agenda.  His father did nothing at all.

The Reactionaries thus were a fairly undemanding lot until the latter stages of the 2008 election, at which time the crowds were baying for Palin, not McCain.  The Tea Party, which consisted of both CLs and Reactionaries, followed, with its emphasis on scorched earth legislative tactics and its open contempt for government and the establishment.  Trump was the final piece of the puzzle.

What changed?  In my opinion, two things.  First of all, an African-American was elected president.  That fact, in and of itself, was enough to persuade the white nationalist right that they were in danger.  Second, they have Fox News to whip them up on a daily basis.  That didn’t exist in Reagan’s day.

The bottom line is that Reactionaries viewed themselves as a “Moral Majority” during the Reagan years.  Today, they think of themselves as an oppressed minority.  It is the newly-acquired sense of victimhood that makes them so angry and dangerous.

If Bernie Sanders really wants to make his “revolution” a reality, he’s going to have to do two very improbable things.  First, he has to overcome the checks and balances inherent in our political system that are designed to make radical change very difficult.  Second, he’s going to have to persuade white working people and minorities to put aside their differences and work together in their shared economic self-interest to overthrow the capitalist barons and create the long-awaited American Jerusalem.

To that end, logically, Sanders should be out doing everything he can to:  (a) persuade the Democratic Party to become more openly accepting of white working culture (e.g., don’t be so hostile to religion, patriotism, and guns); and (b) convince poor white nationalists that voting with poor minorities against the wealthy is in their best interests.  It sounds impossible, and it probably is, but my point is that Sanders isn’t even trying.  He appears to think that all he has to do is propose government spending programs that will benefit working people of all colors, and everyone will fall into line.

Centuries of history say he’s wrong about that.  Personally, I would bet the ranch on it.  The Democratic Party is first and foremost a coalition of victims, and class is only a small part of that.

Last Tuesday, Trump’s former fixer confessed that he was guilty of a campaign finance violation involving the payment of hush money at Trump’s direction, while his former campaign manager was convicted of eight counts of various kinds of fraud.  The president went to a rally in West Virginia later that day.  The crowd chanted “Lock her up!”

I was incredulous when I heard this the first time.  Were these people living in some sort of parallel universe?  Later, however, I began to understand the real significance of “Lock her up!”  It scares the daylights out of me.

The message behind “Lock her up!” is that the base will support any effort by Trump to become a true authoritarian.  They have processed all of the information about his incompetence and corruption, and they simply don’t care.  They love his swagger and the fact that he is on their side–that’s all that matters.  If he has to turn the country into Hungary in order to stay in power, he has their blessing.

Don’t think for a minute that he didn’t hear them.

John McCain apparently described himself as a man who made lots of mistakes, but who loved his country and believed in public service.  That sounds about right to me.

I’ve always believed that the country would have been far better off if McCain had won the GOP nomination in 2000 and had been elected president.  He was far better prepared to deal with 9/11 than Bush was.  My guess is that he probably would have launched the Iraq War, just as Bush did, but he would have fought it more competently.

In 2008, on the other hand, he was the wrong man at the wrong time.  If he had been elected, all of his instincts would have told him to cut the deficit, not to stimulate the staggering economy.  He would have been a disaster.  We can be grateful that he didn’t win, and that doesn’t even include the farcical Palin episode.

I didn’t agree with his enthusiasm for overseas military adventures, but at least he advocated intervention for the right reasons.  He believed in human rights, the rule of law, and liberal democratic values.  He supported the ideas that truly make America great.

In so many ways, he was the antithesis of Trump.  He will be missed, badly.

I posted a column about a future Trump presidency entitled “The Accidental Fascist” about two months before the 2016 election.  What I meant by that was that Trump was running as a strongman without ideology who would “drain the swamp” and get things done, and when he inevitably failed, he would have to choose between defeat at the polls and humiliation or doubling down on authoritarianism.   I predicted that he would pick the latter, given his thin skin and pugnacious personality.

I am pretty sure we are going to reach that point after the 2018 election.  Trump is sounding more and more like a beleaguered mob boss.  His legal problems are mounting, former members of his inner circle are turning on him, and his only real “accomplishment” is a tax bill that everyone other than the GOP donor class hates.  He wants to lash out and double down, because that is what he has always done when he has run into trouble.  What better way to do that than to fire Sessions and turn the DOJ into his own personal goon squad after the election?

His base is practically inviting him to do it.  Only the Senate can stop him.  More on that tomorrow.