Month: November 2018

The new Democratic majority in the House is unlikely to make any serious attempt to impeach Trump, but they are certainly going to subject him to a very high level of scrutiny.  That will include a demand for his tax returns.  He has made it clear that he has no intention of giving in on that issue.  Litigation will ensue.

Trump is going to put a lot of faith in the willingness of what he will see as his new Supreme Court majority to protect him from the House.  The Chief Justice, on the other hand, is going to remember how Chief Justice Burger managed to get a unanimous vote out of the Court on the Watergate tapes issue.  He is very sensitive to the public perception of the Court as a purely partisan body, and the last thing he needs is a series of 5-4 votes protecting Trump from a variety of public records demands.

Will he succeed?  That will be one of the key questions over the next two years.  On this point, I make no predictions.

We forget this sometimes, but Donald Trump lost the overall popular vote, and ultimately prevailed only by winning several Rust Belt states by a very small margin.  A normal politician would respond to that by focusing his message on swing voters.  Trump is anything but normal, however;  his sole interest is in base mobilization, partly because he thinks it works, but partly because it’s fun.

Last night unsurprisingly proved that base mobilization alone will not produce victories consistently on a national level.  No matter how the GOP spins the facts, the bottom line is that they did poorly in the Rust Belt states that are almost certainly going to decide the 2020 election, and the loss of the House means their legislative agenda is effectively dead.

So how will Trump respond to the new state of affairs?  His options are to:  (a) change his ways and try to govern on a bipartisan basis, probably starting with a new emphasis on a real infrastructure bill; (b) maintain the status quo and hope for a different result; or (c) double down and try to change the facts, which could well include a war, government shutdowns, constitutional crises, and additional efforts at voter suppression and violations of civil rights.

I think you can go ahead right now and write off (a).  The other two are realistic possibilities.  The one I really worry about, obviously, is (c).  If I were a betting man, that’s the one I would pick.

There is an interesting article about the rise of the far right in the former East Germany in today’s NYT.  The gist of it is that the factories closed after reunification, the women moved away and took services jobs in the west, and the men who remained are screaming about immigrants and joining the AfD.

Merkel is a particular hate figure among the angry men because, as a successful woman who left the east, she embodies their loss of status.

Sound familiar?  If you read yesterday’s post, it should.

Life in the time of Trump.

Election day is here.

We’ve waited for this day to come.

It’s been two painful years.

Will the voters restrain Trump

Or will they set him free?

No one really knows for sure.

We’ll have to wait and see.

It is generally accepted that globalization and technological changes are primarily responsible for rising inequality and stagnant wages for workers in this country.  It occurred to me yesterday, however, that the impact of computers has actually been more pervasive than that, and from a political perspective, has been even more toxic.

The increasing use of computers in manufacturing has changed the nature of  work that has traditionally been done by strong, skilled men.  What computers do, essentially, is devalue both physical strength and the kind of craftsmanship and expertise that results from years of experience.  That means the job you had twenty years ago can be done today by a technician or even by (banish the thought!) women.  That in turn results in a loss of status and self-esteem.  Your wife may well earn more now than you do.

What do you do if you’re a man in this position?  You find someone to blame;  complaining about computers obviously isn’t very emotionally satisfying.  Illegal immigrants!  Foreigners!  Feminazis!  Minorities!  They’re all picking your pocket and taking cuts in line!  Something has to be done!

And so you wind up driving a big black pickup truck with a Trump sticker and a Confederate flag and spewing black smoke in the face of everyone else on the road.  You still have your testosterone and your swagger.  It’s all that’s left to you.

 

Ross Douthat is a traditional, moralistic Catholic, so you would expect him to have serious reservations about Donald Trump, and he does.  He calls Trump a “dictator on Twitter,” which is a slightly less punchy version of “man on golf cart.”  He despises his white nationalism, his corruption, and his lies.  You can count him as an ally of the Never Trumpers.

More than anything else, however, Douthat is disappointed in him.  In his view, the Trump presidency presented an opportunity to break from the usual GOP tax cuts for wealthy businessmen and support a truly populist plan which emphasized benefits for struggling workers.  With that change, a slightly more morally acceptable position on immigration, and more discipline on Twitter, Trump could be riding high in the polls.   Instead, he chose the worst of both worlds:  overt white nationalism and authoritarianism in rhetoric and support for plutocracy in actual deeds.  He will pay the price for it on Tuesday in spite of the roaring economy.

Is Douthat right?  No, because he has an unrealistically rosy view of GOP voters, who quite knowingly chose Trump over Marco Rubio, his favored candidate, in 2016.  Trump continues to throw racist red meat to his base because it is what they demand.  He supported tax cuts for business because he has a genuine affinity for other wealthy people and because the GOP simply does not think it can survive without the support of its donor class.

The fundamental premise of the GOP is that the PBPs get tax cuts, deregulation, and lots of official respect for their supposedly unequaled contributions to the nation’s welfare, while the Reactionaries get vocal moral support against real and imagined opponents of white Christian America and friendly Supreme Court appointments.  Trump is delivering both.  For Douthat’s version of the GOP to exist, the PBPs would have to accept Reactionary economic policies, and the Reactionaries would have to give up racism.  It won’t happen unless and until the GOP as we know it evolves into something completely different, which would probably require some sort of national catastrophe.

Michelle Obama famously advised Democrats to take the high road in dealing with Trump.  Opinion within the party is clearly divided on this subject.  Was she right?

Yes, because:

1.  You can’t possibly win a race to the bottom with Trump.  He has no limits.
2.  What does “going low” with Trump mean, anyway?  You don’t have to lie about him, or even try to spin his misdeeds.  The facts will speak for themselves.  Making irresponsible comments about them will just cost you swing voters.
3.  Most importantly, the enemy is Trumpism, not Trump himself;  his engine is fueled by the fear and anger of millions of voters.  “Going low” is not a way to purge the system of this disease.  It will be a long and difficult process, and it has to start with providing reassurance to Trump’s more fanatical supporters that while they are not the American default, they will always have a valued place in our country.

On Tuesday, there will be only one meaningful question for voters in congressional elections–do you prefer a Trump checker or a Trump enabler?  For the Democrats, it doesn’t matter if you support single-payer or just the public option, or whether you want to abolish ICE or not, or whether you think a carbon tax or cap-and-trade is the best way to combat climate change, because none of that is going to happen in the next two years.  It’s just about doing whatever we can to leash the beast and save the country.

The dynamics of 2020 will be very different.  While Trump will be on the ballot next time, paradoxically, the election will be less a referendum on him and more of a choice between two competing visions for America.  The economy will matter more, but it will almost certainly be in worse shape than it is today.  Finally, the GOP will be defending far more Senate seats than it is on Tuesday.

The task of defining the party’s positive vision for America starts with its presidential candidates, and begins on Wednesday.  I will be turning my attention to that issue in this blog, as well.

In the 25 years leading up to World War I, the Germans built a powerful battle fleet in an effort to bully the UK into an alliance against the French and Russians.  The UK responded, instead, by engaging in a naval arms race, which it won.  As for the alliance, we all know how that turned out.

In a similar vein, some commentators have suggested that Trump’s obnoxious behavior towards our allies on trade issues is just an effort to whip them into shape before the main event, which will be focused exclusively on China.  This assumes that Trump’s rhetoric about the evils of the Europeans, particularly on the German trade surplus, is mostly for show.

Is the theory correct, and, if so, will it work?  The jury is out on the first question, but history tells us the answer to the second is no.

You would think that a billionaire casino owner from Manhattan with a well-publicized sex life would be an unlikely hero for the religious right, but there you are.  It isn’t because they misunderstand him;  one doesn’t really hear anything about Trump being a “baby Christian” these days.  No, he’s Cyrus the Great–an unexpected, but vastly important, ally in the battle against their common enemies.

Think about that analogy for a minute.  Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity.  The religious right is telling us that things are so bad in this country, they might as well be in bondage in a foreign land.

In reality, they’re as free as anyone else.  What they actually resent is the fact that they’ve lost the culture wars in the court of public opinion. They are counting on the political and legal system to redress the balance.  Those victories will be temporary; the loss of credibility and moral authority with younger people, on the other hand, will last much longer.

Ron DeSantis, the GOP candidate for governor in Florida, constantly refers to an FBI investigation of corruption in Tallahassee on the campaign trail.  He has repeatedly suggested that Andrew Gillum, the Democratic candidate, is a target of that investigation.  Gillum, of course, denies it.

While I don’t claim to be familiar with all of the facts, there appears to be enough substance to the allegations to be worrisome.  The paradox, of course, is that  Trump and his GOP allies maintain that the FBI is just a tool of the “deep state.”  If that is indeed the case, why should I attach any importance to an investigation of Democrats in Florida?

He was an elderly white guy with a background in the entertainment industry.   As president, he had little interest in policy details.  He cut taxes and increased defense spending, thereby blowing up the deficit.  Abroad, he was viewed as a cowboy and a dangerous blowhard.  At home, he pandered to reactionaries and the religious right to an unprecedented degree.  They responded with unconditional love in spite of past issues with his personal life.

Yes, sports fans, we’ve been here before–Trump and Reagan, on the surface, have a lot in common.  What is more important, however, is what they don’t share:

1.  Reagan wasn’t a habitual liar or a narcissist.
2.  Reagan had relevant political experience before becoming president.
3.  Reagan surrounded himself with competent people.
4.  Reagan actually had an ideology other than self-love.
5.  Reagan’s message was mostly hopeful, not fearful, and focused on the ability and energy of the American people, not himself.
6.  Reagan didn’t present any kind of challenge to our constitutional rights.  No one accused him of being a fascist.

In the final analysis, the most important difference may be that Reagan was a traditional politician who saw the need to win over swing voters in the center.  Trump doesn’t do that;  his model of politics revolves solely around base mobilization.  As a result, he is constantly dividing the country, not uniting it.  That will be a big, and unfortunate, part of his legacy when he is done, regardless of what else he accomplishes in office.