Month: December 2018

A:  What you call someone who hires a man who is allegedly “dumb as a rock” to be Secretary of State.

Q:  What is a moron?

On the new AG nominee Barr.

The Don clearly thinks he’s a star.

He’s the man of the hour

‘Cause he sucks up to power.

Can we really have fallen that far?

Sometimes history is driven by apparently insignificant facts.  The primary schedule may well be one of those facts.

Iowa and New Hampshire, both free trading states, come first.  The protectionist Rust Belt states come relatively late in the process.  That means the Democratic candidates will have every incentive to take moderate positions on trade during the 2020 primaries if they want to stay in the race.

Be thankful for small favors.

A:  Thanks to the untiring efforts of this superhero, America’s trade deficits with China and the EU soared last month.

Q:  Who is Tariff Man?

From the perspective of the Democrats, Michigan is a bit like Ohio’s better looking sister; the two have similar demographics, but for some reason, they vote a bit differently.  If Ohio is pink, Michigan is light blue.

Given the colors of the state universities, I guess that’s appropriate.

The issues in Michigan are similar to those in Ohio.  Just expect the Democrats to do better in Michigan.  When it’s over, perhaps you can explain why it happened.

Like Ohio, Iowa is basically a pink state;  Obama won it in 2008, Trump prevailed by a comfortable margin in 2016, and the verdict was split in 2018.  The Democrats don’t have to win it, but it can be done with the right combination of circumstances and policies.

The key to success in Iowa is likely to be the state of the trade war with China.  Protectionism is a major vote loser here.  In that sense, it is the opposite of Ohio.

I think the message here is that trade is going to be an enormously important variable for the Democrats in this election.   A strong commitment to free trade helps in the agricultural states and with most of the blue base, but hurts in the Rust Belt.  The logical choice is to thread the needle in the manner I have described in previous posts and keep everything in play.

As we know, Putin used “little green men” to take the aptly-named Crimea in 2014.  He earned wild popularity in Russia as a result.  As a symbol of the strength of his (and his country’s) commitment to Crimea, he then spent billions of rubles to build a bridge over the Kerch Strait to the Russian mainland.   He is now using Russian control of both sides of the strait to essentially blockade a substantial portion of Ukraine.

The bridge is a sitting duck.  If you ran Ukraine, wouldn’t you seriously consider sending some of your own little green men to blow it up?  Wouldn’t that really piss Putin off?

After all, if the shoe were on the other foot, don’t you think he would do it?

Pennsylvania is not really a Rust Belt state;  the eastern part of the state, from an economic perspective, is indistinguishable from New Jersey and New York, and Pittsburgh has remade itself as a successful tech and medical research center.  Some of the extreme western section of the state looks like the struggling part of Ohio, but the real partisan division within Pennsylvania is the urban/rural split.  Statewide elections are typically won in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

You can make a pretty decent argument that no state means more to the Democrats than Pennsylvania in 2020.  The results of the 2018 election suggest that Trump’s victory there was an anomaly; there is no reason to believe that he can recover his standing with suburban women, or that he even intends to try.  The Democrats’ task here in 2020, therefore, is mostly to stay on a fairly generic message, to direct their appeal to women and reachable white working men, and to avoid extreme or provocative positions on either policy or identity.

A jacquerie, for those of you who aren’t dedicated medievalists, was a French peasant revolt.  They were typically caused by the convergence of bad economic times and higher taxes. Lacking meaningful leadership and any kind of positive and realistic political or economic program, the angry peasants typically killed lots of people and destroyed plenty of property, but ultimately accomplished nothing.  When it was over, life went on as before, but everyone was poorer as a result.

As it was in the 14th century, so it is with the yellow vests today; they have no program except anger.  They don’t even support LePen.  It’s hard to see anything constructive coming out of this situation.

It’s a bird . . . it’s a plane . . . it’s Tariff Man!  He puts up invisible walls to protect us from inexpensive Chinese products, and impoverishes American farmers in the process.

Even Stan Lee couldn’t think up that one.

I suppose it should have been obvious, but it only occurred to me after I posted on Batman and the Joker that Trump already has a domestic arch-villain to deal with after January–Catwoman!  You probably know her as Nancy Pelosi.

There will be interesting times in Gotham City, to be sure.

Sherrod Brown notwithstanding, Ohio is clearly turning into a slightly red state–call it pink.  The reasons for this are undoubtedly demographic.  Unlike blue Illinois, Ohio isn’t dominated by a single enormous metropolitan area, and its population losses have taken place primarily in its medium-sized cities and suburbs.  The rural residents are staying, and they vote for Republicans.

The swing voters in Ohio are white working men.  How do the Democrats reach them?  Here are some ideas:

1.  Down with the plutocrats–up with unions!  Spend lots of time talking about Trump’s faux populism, and how little he has actually done to help working people.  That includes, of course, the tax cut and the composition of the cabinet.

2.  Save Obamacare!  Rising health care costs are a major concern here, as elsewhere.  Talk about drug prices and Trump’s ongoing efforts to sabotage Obamacare.

3.  It’s the Chinese, stupid.  As I’ve noted before, the best way to pander to protectionists without doing any damage is to argue that Trump has made enemies of our friends, and to focus on his tactical failures in combating the Chinese.

The Democrats don’t have to win Ohio.  At this point, it’s a bit of a luxury.  It’s well worth trying, however, particularly if the economy stumbles between now and 2020.

He wanted to make his country a great power, and in his eyes, that meant building a high-tech manufacturing base, from which political and military power would naturally flow.  The infant industries in the country could not survive without help in the face of foreign competition.  So he proposed to protect them to the maximum extent possible, partly by tariffs, but mostly by well-designed subsidies and other, less obvious interventions in the market.

Is it Xi or Alexander Hamilton?  You decide.

The Democrats don’t have to win Florida in 2020; the more plausible path runs through Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  On the other hand, Florida has 29 electoral votes, so victory there would require flipping only one other state of practically any size.  Florida is, therefore, a big prize.

With the exception of 2008, the GOP historically has won statewide races by margins that range from small to positively microscopic.  How can the Democrats turn that around?  Here are some keys:

1.  Shore up the existing welfare state before you expand it.  Florida is older than most states, and protecting Social Security and Medicare is a big deal here.  The GOP has traditionally run, however absurdly, as the champion of the status quo.  Make them pay for their hypocrisy by proposing tax increases to fill the fiscal gaps.

2.  Mobilize the Puerto Rican expats.  Scott and DeSantis ran away from Trump on his treatment of Puerto Rico in November, and probably saved themselves in the process.  Trump himself won’t be able to do that in 2020.

3.  The environment means big bucks here.  Many Florida voters have been impacted financially by blue green algae, red tide, oil spills, and sea level rise.  Trump can’t run away from his anti-regulatory record on these points, either.

These issues will be in the wheelhouse of any possible Democratic nominee; they don’t really require any change in the party’s priorities.  The Democrats’ chances of prevailing in Florida in 2020 are, therefore, better than you might think, based on recent history.

True to form, Trump took a very hard line in public before the meeting, but ultimately settled for a “deal” which did nothing but kick the can down the road.  The Chinese, and the rest of the world, are used to that by now;  he did it with Kim on his nukes and with the EU on tariffs previously.

The real question now is, what does he really want out of these negotiations?  A simple reduction in the trade deficit that he can trumpet as a “win” for farmers and investors?  Managed trade? Real protection for intellectual property rights?  A fundamental change in the Chinese economy to create a level playing field with the US and Europe?  Who knows?  Chances are, even he doesn’t, and there is clear disagreement among his advisers.

As usual, just don’t believe anything you hear or see until he signs on the dotted line–and sometimes, even that is too soon.