Month: November 2018

Mitt Romney ran in 2012 as a CD/PBP, not a Reactionary, even though the Reactionaries were (and are) the largest faction within the GOP.  He nonetheless won the nomination for two reasons.  First, he was shrewd enough to appropriate the immigration issue up front and thus make himself minimally acceptable to the Reactionaries;  Donald Trump would learn from this and follow his lead in 2016.  Second, he was unchallenged in his lane, while multiple candidates scrambled for Reactionary votes.  The math was in his favor, and he took advantage of it.

If Biden runs in 2020, he could benefit from a similar dynamic.  He won’t sparkle in debates, and he won’t have the support of young liberal activists.  He will, however, have the Realo/White Guy lane to himself;  there are still plenty of voters in that lane, even if they aren’t necessarily activists.  He’s also at least minimally acceptable to the rest of the party.   It could be enough to get him over the line as a transitional figure intended to heal the damage caused by Trump.

Michael Bloomberg could upset this apple cart, but I don’t think that would happen.  More on him in a future post.

Back in 2008, the Realo/Fundi split on climate change was obvious.  A carbon tax was a tax, and everyone knew that Republicans wouldn’t tolerate new taxes.  Cap-and-trade, on the other hand, was a market-based mechanism, not a tax, and had the support of John McCain.  That was the way to go if you wanted to get something done.

We all know what happened.  The Republicans changed their position and unanimously opposed cap-and-trade.  Obama’s legislation passed the House, but could not survive the combination of the filibuster and opposition from both Republicans and energy-state Democrats in the Senate.  Whatever progress was made during the Obama years was the result of the energy investment component of the stimulus and regulations, not legislation.

Joe Manchin and Jon Tester will never vote for either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade.  The filibuster is still in place.  The likelihood of getting more than 60 Democrats in the Senate is very low.  What are the Democrats to do?

It may be counter-intuitive, but a carbon tax, combined with more regulations and investments, has a better chance of success than cap-and-trade.  A carbon tax is simpler and generates less bureaucracy;  the funds can also be used for Republican-friendly causes, such as the preservation of some of the Trump tax cuts.  Some GOP economists and energy companies have actually supported such a tax.  It’s a long shot, but it’s not impossible.

After all, even Republicans have to understand we are already paying for climate change.  We’re just doing it by picking up the pieces after disasters instead of providing mitigation up front.   Does that really make sense as a national strategy?

The Democrats won back the House by staying on message, disregarding Trump’s provocations, and giving individual candidates the latitude to depart from the usual party line when necessary.   But what now?  What kinds of legislation should they be pursuing?

They should have two broad objectives:  first, to help Americans who really need the assistance, regardless of party affiliation; and second, to make it easier to win in 2020.  This does not particularly mean base mobilization; Trump takes care of that when he throws red meat to his own base on a daily basis.  The emphasis should be on identifying measures to win over swing voters, particularly in the Midwest.

The likely swing voters in 2020 are:  (a) business people concerned about Trump’s incompetence and corruption and their impacts on the market; (b) elderly voters concerned about potential future GOP entitlement cuts; and (c) white union members in the Rust Belt who supported Trump in 2016, but dislike his fondness for plutocrats.

With that in mind, I would suggest that the leadership emphasize the following:

1.  While I have serious reservations about increases in the minimum wage on a national level, they make good politics.  The GOP’s inevitable refusal to go along with this will be difficult to explain to white workers in 2020.  The likely tradeoff in lost votes from business people is probably worth it.  $15 per hour on a national level is too high, however; the final number should be substantially less than that.
2.  Legislation to shore up individual health insurance markets and provide an additional layer of legal protection for people with pre-existing conditions would help average people and might get bipartisan support.  If not, it’s another black mark for the GOP, whose candidates lied consistently about their position on pre-existing conditions in the past campaign.
3.  Rolling back at least the most egregious parts of the Trump tax cut and using the funds to address the deficits in Social Security and Medicare would also put the GOP in a very awkward position.  Republicans would be forced to choose between their business and elderly constituents.  Who would win that battle?  Wouldn’t it be entertaining to find out?

This is the first of three weekly series on the Democrats and the 2020 election that I will be running between now and the end of the year. “Realos and Fundis” will focus on issues other than the welfare state;  “The Welfare State in 2020” will address the various Democratic proposals to expand the welfare state; and “Mind the Gap in 2020” will talk about the profound fissures in American politics and how the Democratic Party can try to heal them.

Free trade, on its face, presents a dilemma for the Democratic Party.  On the one hand, free trade polls well with the blue base, Trump will probably have made protectionism toxic within the party and the country as a whole by 2020, and free trade is sound economics and geopolitics.  On the other hand, it is quite likely that the 2020 general election will be decided in the Rust Belt, where there is strong support for protectionism, as evidenced by the success of both Trump and Sherrod Brown.  That is the reason Hillary Clinton dishonestly opposed the TPP.  It did her little good in the long run.

The Sanders wing of the Democratic Party sounds a lot like Trump on free trade.  Realos oppose protectionism.  Where is the party to go?

Fortunately, there is a way to marry effective opposition to Trump on trade issues with sound economic policy–refocus the debate on China and its violations of international norms.  If I were, say, Joe Biden, I would argue that Trump has been right to take a hard line with the Chinese, but that he has done it in a completely inept way;  in particular, it was a mistake to alienate our allies first.  The best way to deal with China is to work with our partners to create new trade deals and reform the WTO, not to impose mindless tariffs on Europe and Canada which make it vastly harder to present a united front against the Chinese.

In other words, bring back Obama’s positions on trade.  If packaged properly, they square the circle.

To elaborate a bit on Macron’s comments, a patriot loves his country, while a nationalist despises everyone else.  A patriot is willing to sacrifice for his country.  A nationalist wants to bully the rest of the world.

Trump has described himself as a nationalist.  Given that he used bone spurs to avoid military service, became extremely wealthy by screwing people over, and won power by demonizing immigrants and Muslims, for once, I would have to agree with him.

House Democrats now have subpoena power!  Great!  But how will they use it?  One of Trump’s talents is making himself look like a victim, and overreaching could backfire.

Here is a partial list of the issues that will come up, and how they should be handled:

1.  Trump’s tax returns:  Go for it!  This is likely to turn into a long and difficult process, but it will be worth it.  Trump is violating previous promises and longstanding norms by refusing to release the returns, the blue base will insist, there is a sound legal basis for the request, and the returns can provide answers to perfectly legitimate questions outside of Mueller’s scope of work about Trump’s sources of income and how they relate to his foreign policy decisions.

2.  Misfeasance, excessive business influence, and simple grifting within federal agencies:  Absolutely.  That’s the whole point of having this power, and there’s plenty to investigate.

3.  Restarting the Russia investigation:  Only if Mueller is prevented from finishing his work.  Leave this one to the professionals.

4.  Investigating the Kushners:  Probably not.  It’s too collateral, and the risks of a backlash outweigh the benefits.

 

If you ever spend any time driving around France, you will note that virtually every little village has its own poignant World War I memorial.  If you count the number of names on each memorial and compare it to the size of the village, you will have a better understanding of what a catastrophe the war was.  And that doesn’t even include its side effects–Soviet communism, the rise of the Nazi and fascist states, and World War II.

Trump was scheduled to make an appearance at a cemetery full of American war dead at Belleau Wood yesterday.  Instead, allegedly due to bad weather (the other world leaders somehow didn’t have this problem), he spent the day watching Fox News and tweeting.  Why wouldn’t he?  He has no sense of tragedy, or responsibility to anyone other than himself, and he approves of the kind of nationalism that directly led to the war.

It was a disgrace.  Or, as he would say, BAD!

The Democrats won clear victories in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania on Tuesday.  If they can repeat this in 2020, they will win the presidency even if Trump prevails in Ohio, Florida, and Iowa, all of which will be in play.

A generic Democrat would consequently begin the 2020 race as a clear favorite over Trump.  The issue, of course, is that Trump will be running against an actual flesh-and-blood candidate, not Mr. or Ms. Generic.  The party’s task, therefore, is to make sure that it doesn’t nominate someone who is less popular than Mr. or Ms. Generic.

How can that be done?  I’ll be discussing that in three separate weekly series over the rest of the year.

Donald Trump has picked as his acting AG a man with few legal credentials and very unusual ideas about the role of the federal judiciary and constitutional law.  He has already prejudged the outcome of the Mueller investigation on TV.  Finally, he apparently served as a paid member of the board of a company that engaged in fraudulent business practices.

Awesome.  For Trump, he’s the perfect choice.  If this guy didn’t exist, he would have to invent him.

If Whitaker wants to keep the job, and there is no reason to doubt that he does, he will have to ignore his legal and ethical responsibilities to the country as a whole and do his master’s bidding to the nth degree.  Like Kavanaugh, he will probably come out swinging, and go downhill from there.  Look out, Hillary!  Better get lawyered up!

And if Trump tries to confirm him, Lindsey Graham will probably be the first person to support him.  That’s where we are today.  As Trump would say, SAD!

Donald Trump understands perfectly that his base, which is disproportionately elderly, passionately opposes cuts in Social Security and Medicare, so entitlement “reform” was always unlikely during his administration.  He has strong proponents of entitlement cuts in his government, however, and he showed a willingness to screw over his base during the campaign to repeal Obamacare, so the possibility of “reform” could not be dismissed altogether.

If the GOP had maintained control of the House, you undoubtedly would have seen at least some effort to “reform” Social Security and Medicare in order to respond to yawning deficits both in the programs themselves and in the budget in general.  That didn’t happen, and “reform” is now off the table for the next two years.  The new GOP plan almost certainly will be to wait until the funding crisis looms, refuse to raise taxes, and force the Democrats to share responsibility for the cuts when the clock runs out.

How can the Democrats respond to this?  By reversing at least some of the Trump tax cuts and using some of the funds to fill in the financial holes in the entitlement programs.  It’s both a conceptual and a political winner.  I will have more on that topic when I discuss the evolving Democratic positions on the welfare state in a few weeks.

 

Donald Trump has been itching to shut down the government practically from the day he took office.  One assumes that he sees the federal government as a whole as the enemy even if he theoretically runs it, and he thinks he will get kudos from the base for being strong and doing battle with the beast.  Mitch McConnell, on the other hand, has been adamantly opposed to a shutdown.   His theory, which was almost certainly correct, was that the public would blame the GOP for a shutdown, given that they controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.  Shutdowns are also, one hardly needs to say, bad governance.

McConnell has prevailed so far, but conditions will change in January, and there will be some surface plausibility for suggesting the House Democrats are at fault.  Trump will undoubtedly view Nancy Pelosi as an ideal foil.  The newly empowered Democrats aren’t going to give him his wall.  Why not show off your swagger and please the base by shutting it down?

It’s going to happen–very possibly more than once, since Trump doubles down on everything.  One can only hope that the shutdown isn’t accompanied by a debt ceiling crisis, as well.  Shutdowns are a nuisance; debt defaults are a potential economic disaster.

In 2010, the GOP ran largely against Obamacare, and won a smashing victory.  In 2018, on the other hand, the Democrats focused their campaign on protecting Obamacare, and won back the House.  What does this mean?

Very simply, it means the American public is conservative in the true sense of the word–it doesn’t like change very much.  In 2010, Obamacare was viewed by many as a complex, confusing, and unnecessary government intrusion into the health care field.  Today, it’s the status quo, and the public understandably doesn’t want to give it up in favor of some nebulous GOP plan which is almost certain to make things worse, not better.

There are two messages here.  The GOP should finally realize that Obamacare is actually a very moderate, CD-friendly measure which effectively serves as a political shield against a more radical single-payer program.  They should let their campaign against it die without further ado and embrace measures to make it more effective.  On the Democratic side, the proponents of single-payer would have found it easier to make their case in 2020 if Obamacare had been finished off once and for all.  They need to realize that, regardless of what polls tell them, the battle for single-payer will be brutally difficult, and may well be impossible.

Donald Trump is actually right about one thing–he is, in fact, treated differently by the MSM than other presidents.  Of course, that only happened because he lies so frequently and shamelessly.  He left the media with two choices:  they either had to call out his lies or permit themselves to be used on a daily basis as a conduit for “alternative facts.”  They chose the former, and we can be grateful for it.

The other element of this was that, with complete GOP control of the government, there was no opposition figure who could be an effective fact-checker.  With Democratic control of the House, that is no longer the case.  Will the media acknowledge the change of conditions and go back to the old, more comfortable rule of putting the onus of protecting the record on Nancy Pelosi?  We’ll see.

Not surprisingly, based on yesterday’s press conference, the change hasn’t happened yet.

On the 45th President Trump.

He fought for the reds on the stump.

Blue wins in the House

Made him grumble and grouse.

We just hope he’s the next to be dumped.

In one of the least surprising developments in recorded history, Trump fired Jeff Sessions by tweet less than 24 hours after the midterms.  He will now look for an AG who will act, not as the nation’s lawyer, but as an instrument to weaponize the criminal justice system in his own interest.  That’s not speculation.   It’s a given.

The nominee, regardless of who it is, will give the right answers about political influence in the system to the Senate, which will confirm him, just as it confirmed Kavanaugh.  Then we will find out if he was lying or not.  Maybe he will be telling the truth;  some of Trump’s people, like Christopher Wray, actually do have professional ethics.  Maybe he won’t, in which case we will be heading down the road towards a banana republic, and impeachment will be the only remedy.

I don’t know how this turns out.  I just know what’s at stake, and it scares the daylights out of me.