Month: January 2019

Imagine that you are AOC and you have finally succeeded in selling the GND to enough people to make it happen. Now the question is, how do we pay for it?

You start with the premises that climate change is an international emergency and that its costs are inescapable, whether you take action to limit it or not; the only question is whether the burden will be distributed fairly or not. Furthermore, there is no plausible scenario in which a large part of the cost will not be borne by individuals as private agents–property owners or consumers–rather than taxpayers. Nevertheless, the subsidies that will have to be part of the program will be paid for with a government check. How will the money be raised?

There are obvious choices: roll back the Trump tax cut or use the proceeds from a carbon tax. The issue then becomes your other spending priorities; there is only so much money to go around. Can you really afford to fund both your red and your green program?

AOC, with some support from prominent figures such as Paul Krugman, apparently believes that the deficit can be ballooned dramatically without increasing interest rates. I don’t agree. Interest rates are a function of investor confidence in the government. A sweeping left-wing program that blows up the deficit is going to provoke a very negative response from the investing public. We may not be Greece or Venezuela, but we won’t be America, either.

And so, I think the GND supporters, in the end, will have to make choices between the red and green parts of their program. Either both will be watered down somewhat, or one will have to be sacrificed.

Fair or not, and regardless of her many undoubted talents, Hillary Clinton always came across to me as an elementary school teacher telling me to eat my vegetables. There was an air of hauteur and entitlement about her that I didn’t really appreciate. Obviously, a lot of other people felt the same way.

In spite of their surface similarities, I don’t get the same feeling from Warren. I think her issues relating to people revolve around her ability to read the room and find the right words to fire up her audience. In that respect, she’s the opposite of Trump.

Warren has everything else she needs to be a successful presidential candidate. She knows policy inside and out; she has a compelling biography, if she can figure out how to feature it; she appears to be able to integrate both class and identity concerns in a single package; and I think she passes the Putin’s dog test. She is a capitalist reformer, not a socialist wannabe, which is another plus.

Can she find her voice during the campaign, or will she just look like a white bread old lady next to the other candidates? I make no predictions. That’s the point of campaigns.

Obama’s cap-and-trade legislation was killed by the combination of energy state Democrats, opportunistic Republicans, and the filibuster. AOC and her friends will face the same obstacles if the Democrats win the 2020 election. How can they be overcome?

Here are some suggestions:

1. SKIP THE HAIR SWEATER: Jimmy Carter’s gloom and doom message about energy consumption only drove the American people to vote for Reagan. Climate change should be discussed as a challenge and an opportunity, not just a source of unavoidable future suffering.
2. TALK LIKE AN ECONOMIST: Many GOP members will argue that the GND will impose costs that will wreck our economy. On the contrary: the costs are already being imposed by nature, and cannot be avoided, so the real question is whether they will be borne systematically, or randomly and after the damage is done. You can also emphasize the number of jobs that already exist in clean energy, and how many more could be created in the future.
3. PROPOSE MARKET-FRIENDLY MEASURES TO ATTRACT REPUBLICANS: No elaboration is needed.
4. TALK ABOUT TODAY, NOT TOMORROW: One of the problems with climate change is that most of its effects will be felt by posterity. Many Americans simply don’t care what happens after they are gone. Deal with that by showing recent footage of hurricanes, rising sea level, and wildfires. The first wave of problems is already here.
5. DON’T BE AFRAID TO WAVE THE FLAG: Is it really safe to concede leadership in clean energy to the Chinese?
6. BE OPTIMISTIC: If the message is that we’re all screwed in the long run, why not party today? The public needs to be told that viable solutions do exist, and everything we can do to help, even now, matters immensely.

All of the putative top tier Democratic presidential candidates except Bernie Sanders have a legal background, which caused me to do some research on past nominees. Do you know who the last Democratic nominee without a legal education was? It was . . . Jimmy Carter. I thought it would be Mondale, but my guess was wrong. Gore attended law school, but didn’t graduate.

With the Republicans, it is a totally different story. Bob Dole was the last GOP nominee with a legal background. The last GOP president who attended law school was Gerald Ford. Republicans prefer businessmen, military men, and over-the-hill actors, it seems.

What does this mean? It makes perfect sense. Democrats like intellectual types, and put a high priority on communications and legislative skills, probably because they believe in an activist government. Republicans see the world more in terms of money and power; they want tough, practical guys who kick butt and make business deals. Trump is only the most obvious example of that.

All lawyers are not the same. Most of the Democrats who are currently running look and sound more like professional politicians than lawyers. Harris is the exception; with her, you’re always aware of her legal background.

How will this play out on stage during the debates? I don’t know, but it will make for interesting viewing. In any event, at a time when the rule of law is under threat, the notion of an attorney president is somewhat comforting.

Thomas Friedman, who apparently coined the phrase “Green New Deal” years ago, believes that the GND can and should occur within a capitalist economy. AOC and her friends, on the other hand, have hitched a social democratic agenda, including a jobs guarantee and a massive increase in the minimum wage, to the GND. Who’s right?

From the perspective of an economist and a historian, Friedman is. The GND depends on innovation; a rigorously capitalist country provides both the incentives and the wealth for that kind of innovation. Just ask yourself: how many innovative products came out of the Soviet Union, as compared to the US? That’s what I thought.

From a political perspective, the story is a bit mixed. Obviously, a version of the GND which includes a large expansion of the welfare state is a harder lift in red states, assuming the typical electorate, than the Friedman version. On the other hand, you could argue that even the Friedman GND can’t get through the system without the “revolution,” and the “revolution” is implausible without social democratic economic measures. As a result, there is a case of sorts to be made for the AOC approach.

For me, the “revolution” is a fairy tale. The electorate in 2020 is not going to be dramatically different than the electorate in 2016, or any previous election. The mixture of regulation, subsidies, and legislation that is necessary for the success of the GND is perfectly compatible with our current economic system; Obama’s green program included the first two, and almost the third. The winner of the debate, therefore, is Friedman.

If there is one thing that Democrats and Republicans agree on, it is that the 2016 election was a mandate for radical change. And so, the Republicans have offered overt white nationalism and protectionism in addition to their usual mix of regressive tax cuts and regulation in order to appease their base, while the Democratic candidates for president in 2020 will apparently be proposing massive new spending programs and tax increases in an effort to win the white workers back.

The reality of 2016 is far more prosaic:

1. Trump won the GOP nomination because he was unopposed in the white nationalist lane;
2. Trump actually received fewer votes than Mitt Romney in the general election, and lost the popular vote to Clinton;
3. Trump’s reactionary base didn’t succeed in electing McCain or Romney, and they weren’t responsible for his victory, either; and
4. Clinton lost in the Electoral College because swing voters in a handful of states were tired of Democrats after eight years of Obama, and because she was uniquely unpopular, largely due to the e-mail issue.

The key to a Democratic victory in 2020 is not, therefore, to satisfy some huge pent-up demand for expensive new federal programs, but to win back the swing voters who held their noses and voted for Trump in the forlorn hope that he was the brilliant businessman he played on TV. The best way to lose the election is to force those voters to choose between a corrupt, inept narcissist and a wannabe socialist. Based on what I’ve seen of the programs of the Democratic candidates, that is a very real possibility.

I too have a dream! A big beautiful wall to keep out brown people! Dr. King would be proud!

Let’s get the actual criticism out of the way first: “Egypt Station” is not a truly great album. There aren’t any songs in it that people will be singing in the shower 50 years from now. The great man’s voice is starting to show the ravages of time. There is a do-re-mi simplicity about some of the songs that can be annoying. Finally, some of the lyrics can be cloying, which has always been par for the course on a McCartney album.

None of that matters in the slightest. The man is 76, for Christ’s sake! “Egypt Station” may not be great, but it’s very good, and you will enjoy it. Even after all these years, McCartney can still make simple, but elegant music, and make it look easy. And if there is too much sugar in some of the lyrics, is that all bad in today’s world?

You can hear the influence of earlier songs in some of the new ones. Probably my favorite is “Happy with You,” which is sort of a bookend with “Mother Nature’s Son;” the two share a wonderful acoustic guitar sound and have similar structures and arrangements, but address the world from the perspective of two different ages. Another winner is “Despite Repeated Warnings,” a mini-suite with different movements similar to “Band on the Run” that was written about Trump, Brexit, or both.

I view it as an act of generosity on McCartney’s part that he continues to put out music at an age when most of us have retired. He won’t be with us much longer, so enjoy him while you still can.

The Green New Deal is all the rage among Democrats. Defining the term precisely is impossible, because there is no consensus about what it means. One can say with certainty, however, that it is an attempt, probably on the scale of the Manhattan Project, to decarbonize the sources and consumption of energy in America through innovation promoted, and in some cases required, by subsidies, regulations, and legislation.

Given the magnitude of the problem, you can’t reasonably say that the supporters of the GND are extremists, unless you work for a fossil fuel industry. There are lots of outstanding issues, however, including the following:

1. Is the GND compatible with capitalism, or must it be combined with socialist measures?
2. How is the GND going to be sold to the American public?
3. How can the legislative parts of the GND be pushed through Congress?
4. Will a carbon tax be included in the GND?
5. What are the plausible timeframes for decarbonization?
6. Will nuclear power be part of the solution?
7. How can the GND work if the rest of the world does not buy into it?
8. How will the GND be financed?

These and other questions will be addressed throughout the week.

Donald Trump is arrogant, ignorant, narcissistic, and corrupt. The Democrats wouldn’t want to reproduce any of that. However, Trump’s unconventional success in 2016 potentially contains some lessons about identity politics and campaign tactics that could be used by the Democrats in future years. How would you go about building a better, left-wing Trump?

Here’s how you would do it:

1. Trump, of course, represents his base, which is predominantly male. The blue base is female, so the perfect candidate would have to be a woman.
2. For the same reason, it would have to be a minority.
3. Trump swaggers. Women don’t. The closest female equivalent would be glamor. As a result, she would have to be young, attractive, and vivacious.
4. She obviously would need the ability to trigger both the right and the left with pithy comments on Twitter.
5. Taking relatively extreme positions and having a minimal regard for the facts is a good way to stand out and win free media.

If you haven’t figured out where I’m going with this, she already exists. Come on down, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!

As I’ve noted many times before, Donald Trump took office with very few ties to the GOP establishment, so he had the freedom to be a genuine populist if he wanted to be. He could have made himself a de facto third party and put his positions up for auction between the Democrats and Republicans. He could have supported a meaningful infrastructure bill and a tax cut directed primarily at his white worker base. Instead, he chose to embrace the parts of the GOP fiscal and economic agenda that are the least popular with the public at large. His association with that agenda will cost him in 2020.

Similarly, the GOP establishment could have treated Trump as a third party, not a true Republican. Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan could have made a far greater effort to distance themselves from Trump’s tweets and white nationalism; they could have made it clear to the public that their relationship with the president was transactional–like, say, our relationship with right-wing dictators in the Middle East. They chose, instead, to tolerate the most obnoxious manifestations of Trumpism in exchange for tax cuts, deregulation, and friendly judges. As a result, the party’s fate is completely tied in with the president’s. If he is shown to be a crook, the public will correctly view them as his accomplices.

Is there a point at which the president and the establishment will realize that they are locked in a death embrace, and let go? My guess is that Trump would have to be polling in the 20s for that to happen.

To Donald Trump, the wall isn’t simply an object–it is tangible evidence of his covenant with his base. It represents strength, virility, and his commitment to protect America from all of those scary external forces that threaten it daily: terrorists; brown people; whatever. Most importantly, at this point, it represents his need to show that he is a winner. It is not enough to trade something for it, because that would reward opposition; the Democrats must recognize that the American people anointed him as their leader and that his will must be done, without question. As a result, compromise is not on the table.

To Nancy Pelosi, the wall isn’t simply an object–it is a proxy for everything that is hateful about Trumpism. It stands for capriciousness, stupidity, white nationalism, and the unwillingness to embrace new people and new ideas. It is the negation of the Statue of Liberty: America’s version of the Berlin Wall, the Maginot Line, or the Great Wall of China. Above all, if Trump is permitted to prevail on this issue by taking hostages, it will just encourage him to do it again and again. As a result, compromise is out of the question.

And so, as with guns, the evolution of the wall into a symbol, rather than an object, makes it very difficult to compromise. A deal will come only when the parties start seeing it as an object again, or if external forces are brought to bear that send an even stronger message.

The Daily Telegraph had a headline today to the effect that Theresa May couldn’t unify the Conservative Party, but Corbyn could. That pretty much sums up where we are.

Corbyn clearly has no interest in Brexit, or even in the welfare of the British people; he just wants power at any price. His plan apparently is to hold his party together and hope that the more pro-business Tory MPs desert the government just before the deadline to prevent no-deal. For her part, May is playing a similar game; she thinks Labour moderates will ultimately abandon the leadership and compromise on a soft Brexit similar to her current plan when push comes to shove.

Sounds a bit like our wall issue, doesn’t it?

I like May’s chances better than Corbyn’s, but if they both manage to keep their respective parties together, we’re looking at a no-deal Brexit, with everything that entails. Tribal loyalties being what they are, that is the most likely outcome.

It occurred to me yesterday that Biden could be the Democrats’ answer to Bush 41; he may be old, white bread, and uninspiring, but he’s also experienced, competent, fundamentally decent, and well-liked on both sides of the aisle. That doesn’t sound too bad right now, does it?

I laid out the cases both for and against him in my fake interview a few weeks ago. Plenty of pundits have weighed in on both sides. I think the important thing to remember is that his weaknesses–most of which relate to non-PC events in his record–only impact his ability to win the nomination, not the general election. Next to Trump, his treatment of Anita Hill, for example, means nothing.

When the dust has settled, it may well be that the Democratic Party as a whole wants something new and shiny. In a rough-and-tumble world, however, qualifications matter, and Biden has them in spades. He is also better positioned to beat Trump than any of the other candidates. I hope he runs.

It’s June, 2020. Far behind in the polls, desperate for a “win,” and fuming about his lack of success with regime change in Iran, Trump creates a pretext for war and orders air strikes without congressional approval. The nation erupts. On the left, demonstrations break out all over the country, and both the MSM and the internet are full of references to a wag-the-dog war. On the right, Fox News is calling war opponents traitors, and demanding legal action against them.

Trump calls in Barr and tells him he wants to use his wartime powers under the Constitution, as well as emergency powers under various statutes, to institute censorship of the MSM, to control antiwar content on the internet, and to arrest demonstrators and other “agitators.”

This is not an idle fantasy. You know as well as I do that it is a perfectly realistic scenario. What happens next? I don’t know. That’s what scares me.