Month: April 2019

Bernie Sanders argued at a recent town hall that prisoners should have the right to vote. He acknowledged that this was not a popular position, and that he was probably writing a campaign commercial against himself, but he didn’t care.

There are two ways to look at this. A Bernie bro would say that he is displaying great moral courage and authenticity. Anyone else would wonder why on earth he would choose to commit electoral suicide on such a minor point.

If your overriding objective is to beat Trump, is this the kind of man you want to bear your standard? And for the record, giving people who don’t even have the right to decide when to brush their teeth the right to vote is stupid.

According to an article in Politico, the barons of the center-left are worried about Bernie’s “momentum” and are trying to figure out how to stop him. I obviously share their concerns, as Bernie figures to be George McGovern for the 21st century. My thoughts are as follows:

1. You absolutely don’t try to stop him by manipulating the rules. That only divides the party and makes defeat in 2020 more likely.
2. Sanders doesn’t have momentum–he has a well-defined floor and ceiling. He can’t win a majority of the delegates unless the center-left is completely and hopelessly divided. You can’t rely on him to implode, however. He’s been through this process before, and he knows what he stands for, so you’re not likely to benefit from a series of gaffes from him.
3. The key to this is for the center-left to agree on a favored candidate prior to the primaries and stick with him/her. It would be premature to do it now; you need to see how the realo candidates perform during the debates and on the stump for several months before you can determine who is the most electable. If you wait until after Super Tuesday, however, it will be too late. You can’t afford to have a Bush/Rubio style split going on too long in the process.
4. Go negative on Bernie, but with some restraint, and always as an independent effort. You don’t want your candidate to be held responsible for your actions.
5. If you’re feeling really Machiavellian, consider giving some money to Elizabeth Warren to make sure that Bernie has competition in the fundi lane as long as possible.

A note to my readers: I will be on vacation until May 6. Postings between now and then will be irregular at best.

BEING GOD IS HARD

You think that I’m omniscient.

Well, to you, I guess I am.

‘Cause with your faulty intellect

You can’t perceive the plan.

_____________

You bitch about the way you live.

I hear it all the time.

You whine about injustice, too.

As if the fault were mine.

____________

Tsunami killed some people here.

Two kids died in a crash.

Tornadoes, quakes, and hurricanes

You’re always low on cash.

___________

What’s all that to me? I ask

I made the world for you.

It’s up to you to make it work.

There’s nothing else to do.

________________

Do you think that it was easy

To construct the universe?

While it may not be the best of worlds

It could be so much worse.

_____________

Being God is hard.

Being God is hard.

Donald Trump is a notorious liar, and he expects complete loyalty from his staff. If you want to get ahead in his administration, therefore, you have to be able to keep your public statements consistent with his lies. For most people, that means being a liar, as well; for the more gifted, particularly those who are concerned about their reputation, it just means resorting to spin.

William Barr, whose job supposedly is to be the nation’s attorney, is an accomplished spinner. Nothing he said in his letter, or at his pre-release press conference, was an outright lie. Everything he said and did, however, was intended to portray the president as a completely innocent man who, at worst, periodically lashed out at his tormentors in a way that any reasonably empathetic person could understand. As I predicted weeks ago, that is decidedly not what Mueller found, and the issues in his report aren’t going away anytime soon.

I speak of the man they call Barr.

As a spin doctor he’s quite a star.

He spoke to the press

Tried to clean up the mess

But his legacy’s surely been tarred.

Cory Booker has complained that supporting something called “reparations” has become nothing more than a box for the Democratic candidates to check off. There is a reasonable basis for his complaint, and not just because he, unlike the others, has actually approached the racial wealth gap as a problem to be solved through sound public policy, not a matter for guilt and apologies. The root of the problem is the class/identity split.

If you’re an identity politician within the Democratic Party, you probably genuinely support reparations. If you’re a class-based candidate, you view reparations as a check you hope will never be cashed, because you know it will cost you millions of votes from white workers in 2020. That’s the kindest spin I can put on Bernie Sanders’ support for legislation creating a process to discuss reparations; it is otherwise totally inconsistent with his approach to politics and his plan for the “revolution.”

As I’ve noted before, the Democratic Party is essentially a coalition of victims; as such, unlike the Republicans, they don’t typically disagree on matters of policy. There are, however, two major exceptions to this, both of which are consistent with the class/identity split. One of them is immigration.

If you’re a class-based politician, like Bernie Sanders, you can’t possibly support anything like open borders, because it will cost you the votes of white workers. If, on the other hand, you’re an identity-based politician, like Kamala Harris, a large part of your appeal is to people who support abolishing ICE and providing better treatment for immigrants.

This is going to be a hugely important issue during the debates. Harris will actually be to the left of Bernie on this point. Who wins? I make no predictions; it’s too early.

David Brooks insists that America is spiritually sick, and that its politics cannot be fixed until the illness is healed. Americans have become too individualistic, he says. True happiness lies in the old-fashioned values of family, patriotism, community, and service, not the discovery of a better self.

Ignore how ridiculously pompous this is. Leave aside the fact that Brooks had nothing to say on this subject when Reagan ruled and greed was good. Disregard Brooks’ failure to support Obama’s efforts to bring the country together. The question for today is, is he right about our politics?

No. The problem with the American political system is that we no longer have a responsible center-right party. That is due to a variety of factors, including the rise of Fox News, the failures of George W. Bush, and legal decisions on social issues that have made reactionaries feel like strangers in their own country. Without a responsible center-right party (i.e., one in which CDs have considerable influence), consensus is impossible, and progress is extremely difficult.

Will the Democrats respond by rejecting the center-left and becoming the mirror image of the GOP? We’ll know in two years.

She grew up in Oklahoma. Her parents worked in retail, and were on the bare fringes of the middle class. She didn’t go to Ivy League schools. She first made her mark as an academic doing research on bankruptcy. She has fought for the interests of people who have been screwed over by the system all of her life.

He grew up in New York City. His father, a wealthy developer, made him a millionaire before he was a teenager. His dad got him out of financial trouble as long as he was alive. He went to the Wharton School, and used what he learned there, and from his dad, to exploit people who were foolish enough to trust him. When he was elected president, he filled his government with billionaires. His signature piece of legislation was a tax cut that disproportionately helped the wealthy.

You would think, under the circumstances, that the voters would see the difference between a real and a fake populist, but you might well be wrong. If Warren is the nominee, Trump will attack her as a snooty, over-educated Ivy League professor who, unlike him, talks down to the voters. That’s the real class struggle here.

The tragedy is, it would probably work.

If you’ve been to Europe, you’ve seen it–Catholicism wears a different face in different countries. In Italy, the churches are colorful and joyful. In Spain, the atmosphere is grim and determined–the Reconquista continues! In France, it’s mostly about anger and bitterness. The Church lost the Revolution (the ultimate in the culture wars), and they don’t want you to forget it.

Notre-Dame was different. It was treated as a symbol of national unity; everyone was welcome, and felt comfortable there. There was no hint of bitterness.

That’s part of what makes this so painful.

Notre-Dame survived centuries of neglect. It survived the Revolution, two Napoleons, the Commune, and the German invasions. In the end, it couldn’t survive a restoration job during Holy Week. There is a story there about the arbitrariness of life and the futility of human aspirations, but I’m not in the mood to go there right now.

In a sense, Notre-Dame is completely and quintessentially French. In another sense, however, it belongs to all of civilization, including you and me. We are all a little bit poorer today. At least, it certainly feels that way to me.

Frankly, I’m in shock. I can’t wrap my brain around the thought that Notre-Dame is probably going to look like Tintern Abbey the next time I go to Paris. It will most likely never be the same again in my lifetime.

Donald Trump is hardly the first American president to embrace Middle Eastern autocrats, although it is fair to say that his genuine enthusiasm for them is unprecedented. True to form, he sees right-wing strongmen as a guarantee of stability in a region that is otherwise alien and full of dangerous characters. The problem, of course, is that time refuses to stand still, and the autocrats eventually die, or get displaced. Then what?

It’s not hard to imagine Trump using American troops to reinstall, say, Sisi or MBS if a second Arab Spring comes to town. You can even imagine him doing it as a joint venture with the Russians. If he does, all hell is going to break loose, both domestically and internationally.

Remember–you heard it here first. The issue is going to come up. It’s just a matter of time.

According to Paul Krugman and David Roberts, government guarantees of high-paying jobs in clean industry, free health care, and so on are what is required to sell the GND to Congress and the general public. Krugman refers to the concept as a “Christmas tree.” Is his tactical judgment correct?

Not exactly.

I have no objection to Christmas trees as such, but this one won’t work. To illustrate the point, imagine that you are a worker in the oil industry making, say, $80,000 a year. A Democrat approaches you and tells you that your job has to disappear to save the planet, but that you will be given a new job paying $15 per hour installing solar panels for the government as compensation. Does that mollify you? Are you buying into the GND concept at this point?

Of course not. You have no faith in what you consider to be a “socialist” piece of legislation, and you grumble that climate change is just a device by which the far left is attempting to assume control of the economy.

The GND, as it is being sold, has no chance. I agree with its proponents that subsidies and regulations have to be part of the package, along with a carbon tax. Some of this is possible under the current system, assuming Democratic control of the White House. The bottom line, however, is that the GND has to be packaged as a way of encouraging innovation and boosting the economy, not creating the socialist Jerusalem. That in turn means that sober businessmen, not Al Gore style evangelists, have to be the salesmen for the plan to get any public traction.

As I understand it, “Hey Jude” was written for Julian Lennon, so in a way, I’m bringing it back to its roots.

HEY JULES

Hey Jules

Your life’s gone bad.

Such a sad song–it won’t get better.

Remember, you had a glorious past.

It didn’t last.

Now you’re a prisoner.

_______________

Hey Jules

You’re Putin’s stooge.

You’re a leaker, but just for Russia.

You did it! You managed to make Clinton lose!

But now prison blues

Are yours to ponder.

_________________

And if your life should be a pain

Hey Jules, refrain

Don’t carry the press upon your shoulders.

Cause don’t you know that it’s just you.

Hey Jules, you’ll do.

Your war with our system just got colder.

___________________

Hey Jules

We’ve got you now.

No more hacking and leaking secrets.

The sooner you’re in a supermax jail

Then we’ll all hail

Lenin Moreno.

_______________

Na na na na na na na

Na na na na

Hey Jules! (repeat over and over)

Parody of “Hey Jude” by Lennon/McCartney.

Bernie Sanders put Netanyahu on his list of odious right-wing authoritarians, along with Putin, Duterte, and Orban. That seems a bit harsh, given that Israel, in spite of its flaws, remains a vibrant democracy. But only a bit, given Bibi’s many Trump-like qualities and his enthusiasm for obnoxious nationalists–even some who are pretty clearly anti-Semites.

If Bernie wins in 2020, the party is over for Bibi. Sanders will undoubtedly move America back to its traditional role of even-handed mediator between Israel and the Palestinians. I suspect he will seriously consider using American aid as a lever to stop settlements and annexations. Above all, he will have no interest in fighting Iran to the last American. And when Bibi, in accordance with his usual practice, inevitably calls Bernie an anti-Semite and a concentration camp guard, no one will believe him, because Bernie is Jewish.

There aren’t many good reasons to vote for Sanders, but that would certainly be one of them.