Starting tomorrow, every Wednesday will be Warren’s day! Yes, we’ll be examining the Warren candidacy from every possible angle in the coming weeks, starting with the first part of a two-part fake interview with Queen Elizabeth herself tomorrow!
You can’t wait. I can tell.
Even under normal circumstances, the Democrats would have ample reason to despise Vladimir Putin: his kleptocratic regime; the military adventure in Syria; Crimea and Ukraine. Add to that Putin’s support for Donald Trump in 2016, and Trump’s weird, obsequious attitude towards him, and you have a recipe for conflict ahead.
At a minimum, the Democratic nominee is going to promise to “normalize” our relationship with Russia, and everyone, possibly including Putin himself, will be relieved. The question is, will the Democrats overreact? Will their loathing of the man cause them to become overly aggressive in areas like Ukraine? After all, Putin may be a thug, but he isn’t the devil, and we have to do business with him on occasion.
I don’t think it will be a problem. The Democrats’ default position on foreign policy is to avoid interventions. I suspect that will override their personal feelings about Putin.
Paul Krugman blames policy choices, not automation, for wage stagnation in the United States. Is he right?
Partly yes, but mostly, no. Consider the plight of the coal miner who, like thousands of others, loses his job to a machine. If he lives in West Virginia, his state suffers from poor infrastructure, and the education system is lousy and perpetually underfunded. The national shift to an economy based on human resources isn’t doing him any favors.
If he stays in West Virginia (and he might, as his entire support system is there) he’s going to have great difficulty finding a job that pays him a similar wage. Assume for the purposes of argument that he winds up in a fast food restaurant. Krugman’s theory apparently is that the fast food job doesn’t pay because there is no fast food union. The reality of the situation is that our protagonist is competing for that job with a host of other people, including teenagers, with few skills; in simple terms, low wages in the fast food industry are a product of an oversupply of unskilled labor.
Stagnant wages are a fact of life throughout the developed world, including countries such as Germany that are far more unionized than we are. Legislation is a factor, but automation is a bigger one.
Memories, even incredibly vivid ones, fade with time. And so, it was inevitable that, for younger Americans, the Holocaust would come to seem less exceptional, and the image of plucky democratic Israel making the desert bloom and miraculously surviving in 1948, 1967, and 1973 would be replaced by the picture of a semi-colonial power with its boot on the necks of the Palestinians. Since the Democrats, by and large, are the party of youth, the change is most apparent with them.
But Netanyahu has made this situation far worse than it needed to be. Historically, the Israeli government of the day has always worked to maintain a positive relationship with both American parties in order to protect its interests both in the present and the future. Netanyahu rejected that approach; by treating Barack Obama with contempt, rejecting American peace initiatives, openly aligning his party with reactionaries in the GOP, and attempting to force America into a war with Iran that is against our national interests, he has won the enmity of the Democratic Party. From Israel’s perspective, that’s fine as long as Trump is president. But what happens when he leaves office?
The Democratic nominee in 2020 is going to be more pro-Palestinian than any American president in my memory; it is only a question of degree. If he or she wins, look for the US to re-engage with Iran and use its economic and military aid package to apply pressure on Israel to move forward with the peace process.
Angelina Jolie is smart, tough, and, of course, glamorous. She’s also a political figure of sorts. Today’s thought experiment is, what would happen if she ran for president?
Fox News and the right-wing trolls on the internet would go nuts, just the way they have with AOC, only to the nth power. Angelina has lived with that for entire career, however, so it probably wouldn’t trouble her too much. The real question is, how would American men in general respond to her candidacy?
We can’t know, of course, but my best guess is that they would be supportive for the most part. It’s the middle-aged women who remind them of noisy, bossy Aunt Bea that they can’t stand.
Replace “Angelina” with “Kamala Harris” and you have a real life scenario, only in lower case. It’s a dynamic we’ve never seen in a national election. I have to admit, it intrigues me.
For Theresa May, the fourth time was the charm; her deal passed by a slim two votes, as the majority of the Brexiteers came home, and a few Labour dissenters broke ranks and voted yes. More exhausted than triumphant, she called for unity and reconciliation. In the same vein, Corbyn demanded that Labour rally around him, as he looked forward to a general election that he could fight on his favorite issues of austerity and runaway capitalism.
But for the two of them, it was far too late. May’s “accomplishment” had been to jam a solution that 75 percent of the country rejected down Parliament’s throat. The wounds from that were too deep, and too fresh, to ignore. The ERG demanded, and got, her resignation in short order. Having disregarded the strong preference of his party for a second referendum, and staring at a huge deficit in the polls, Corbyn was forced to follow suit a few months later.
The EU was disgusted by the whole affair, and not disposed to make the new government’s life any easier than necessary during the negotiations on the trade agreement. There was discussion on the UK side of ending the negotiations and simply living with WTO standards. Nothing, it seemed, had really changed.
Following Lenin, Sanders believes that an America that is dominated economically and politically by big capitalists will inevitably have a foreign policy that is aggressive, militaristic, and interventionist. Following Vladimir Putin, Sanders thinks that unchecked American power is mostly a force for evil and instability throughout the world. As you would expect, he is determined to change that.
The pillars of the Sanders Doctrine are as follows:
A shorthand way to say this is that Sanders wants America to look more like Denmark, so it follows that we should have Denmark’s foreign policy, too.
How would this differ in practice from the Obama and Trump Doctrines? I will be discussing that in the next several Sandersday posts.
The British government plans to hold MV3 (assuming the Speaker permits it) next week. How will it turn out? Here is my analysis:
In other words, assuming MV3 fails, much is riding on the decision of the EU. I do not believe they will completely reject an extension, but I make no prediction as to its length.
When I see a picture of O’Rourke, the first name that pops into my head is Robert F. Kennedy. It’s the combination of looks, idealism, and a sort of sheepish youthful charm, I suppose. It is to Beto’s advantage, and he milks it for all it is worth.
The difference between the two is that RFK was qualified to be president when he ran in 1968. He had been the AG and a senator; more importantly, he knew where the bodies were buried, because he had created more than a few corpses himself. He had a well-deserved reputation as a ruthless political operator. That wasn’t entirely to his credit as a man, but as a politician, it meant he would have been prepared to deal with Brezhnev on day one of his administration.
A successful president has to be a combination of idealism and clear-eyed pragmatism. He has to be able to pass the Putin’s dog test. Beto has a lot to prove to me and the rest of the world on that point.
Twelve GOP senators voted with all of the Democrats to overturn Trump’s use of emergency powers to build the wall. This is, of course, being cited as evidence that the GOP is willing to break with Trump and provide appropriate congressional oversight under limited circumstances. Is that correct?
Maybe I’m just a glass half empty guy, but I don’t see it. To me, the story here is that 41 GOP senators voted with Trump knowing perfectly well that the “emergency” was bogus and that any decision to permit the use of emergency powers would be a dangerous precedent, from their perspective, in the hands of a Democratic president. If a large majority of the GOP senators will vote for him on that, when would they break with him? Is an impeachment conviction under even extreme circumstances plausible? Would they stop him if he tried to shut down the internet, cancel the election, and send his opponents to Gitmo?
Not likely. They would be too fearful of the base and Fox News. If we ever have to rely on the GOP to protect our civil rights, we’re in deep trouble.
The woman called Queen of the May
Insists upon having her way.
They’re voting again.
Will the Commons give in?
Or will Parliament finally say nay?
Some pundits are critical of the DNC’s decision to refuse to let Fox host a debate, arguing that Fox has a large audience that the Democrats need to reach, and that the network’s news section is professional and independent. Are they right?
No, because there is plenty of evidence that Fox as a whole operates as an arm of the Trump administration, so the DNC would be giving Donald Trump an opportunity to pick his opponent.
Imagine, if you will, that Trump calls Rupert Murdoch the night before the debate and tells him that he wants to run against, say, Elizabeth Warren. He asks Murdoch to make sure that his reporters ask Warren softball questions during the debate. Are you confident that Murdoch ignores him, or that Chris Wallace disobeys orders and treats everyone equally?
Me, neither.
A left-wing media watchdog group has uncovered audio tapes of Tucker Carlson making misogynist, racist, and other colorfully stupid remarks during a radio show hosted by a shock jock named Bubba the Love Sponge about ten years ago. Far from apologizing, and in true Trumpian form, Carlson chose to lash out at the “outrage machine” and said he would never bow to “the mob.” Fox News, it seems, has his back.
My reactions?
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
It appears that it has become fashionable for the Democrats to make proposals for new, wildly expensive programs without making any effort to identify a plausible funding source. That is a bit like going to a Lexus dealership and announcing you’re going to buy a car with no credit and no money in your pocket, or serving dessert before the vegetables. It makes no sense in the real world. You might as well try to solve a one-sided equation.
But, you say, making unrealistic promises is a good way to fire up the base and win elections. The hard part can always be dealt with later. Look at Brexit, or how the GOP dealt with Obamacare replacement!
Exactly! Look at them now!
So, the May deal was defeated by an overwhelming margin again, Corbyn demanded a general election rather than a second referendum again, and there was much handwringing all around again. We’ve all seen that movie before.
What happens next? The Commons will reject no deal; the vote will not be close. Then there will be a vote for further delay, but no general election, and no referendum. May will interpret that to mean she should engage in more pantomime negotiations and then bring her plan back for one last vote. Will the EU agree to that kind of scenario? I doubt it. I don’t think any meaningful extension will be granted in the absence of a realistic plan for the future.