Month: October 2019

I missed large parts of the debate due to a lousy internet connection, but here are my reactions to what I actually saw:

1. Bernie looked and sounded much better. Good! He deserves a chance to lose on the merits, not on his health.
2. I don’t think we will see any major shifts in the polls until the field is cut to, say, five or six.
3. The principal battle was between Warren and the moderates. I just wish Biden could be as effective as his potential replacements—particularly Klobuchar.
4. I will be commenting on a number of Warren’s statements in the coming days. For now, I will simply say that I wish someone had slid in the knife when she (accurately) argued that Beto’s mandatory gun buyback plan was unrealistic and an obstacle to real progress. What happened to having the guts to fight for big, bold ideas? That’s the entire basis for her candidacy.

According to the WaPo, there is a viral video on YouTube featuring Elizabeth Warren ripping a supporter of traditional marriage a new one. Warren fans love it, and why wouldn’t they? St. Liz slays the dragon of bigotry! What could be more thrilling! Over to you, Trump and Biden!

This video will be a Trump campaign commercial if Warren is the nominee. There are probably a hundred million Americans who agree with that guy, and they have thousands of years of history on their side. To treat them with contempt—as the new “deplorables”—will convince lots of them that Trumpian fascism is a better alternative than the coming PC dictatorship.

It isn’t a good way to win an election. Still less is it a good way to run a badly divided country.

And so, we have withdrawn from Syria in the most sudden and chaotic way imaginable, thereby leaving our former allies in the lurch. Trump is now threatening to impose sanctions on the Turks, which would anger them without actually accomplishing anything. What has the Great Negotiator won for us in return? As far as we know, the answer is nothing—not even the usual promise to buy more weapons. The whole episode is such a disgrace that even the right is appalled.

Many pundits are predictably arguing that we are destroying our credibility with present and future allies by selling out our friends. To me, the question is a bit different—why would any sane person put any faith in America’s commitments as long as it is run by a man who lies as easily as he breathes? This is just a case of the chickens coming home to roost, and it won’t be the last such episode.

A completely fictional, yet essentially true, account of an exchange with Elizabeth Warren:

C: The nation is more divided now than it has been in fifty years. There is even talk of a second Civil War. What will you do as president to bring the country together?

W: I have a plan for that. I will fight divisiveness everywhere I see it. I will use the bully pulpit every day to heal the nation’s wounds. I’ll take the fight to Fox News. I’ll never give up.

C: That sounds more like the problem than the solution to me.

I advised Bernie Sanders not to run long before the effective beginning of the campaign. He ignored me, and the results are plain for all to see. He’s stuck in the polls, he’s bleeding support to Warren, and now he’s had a heart attack. His only chance of winning is a colossal recession. Things could hardly be worse.

What if he quits? Does that hand the nomination to Warren?

Not necessarily. Bernie may despise identity politics, but a large number of his followers are identity voters who would support Biden over Warren. It would probably be a net gain for Warren, but not a huge one.

Paul Krugman is exactly right; if the system survives this episode, it will be due largely to Trump’s laziness, egotism, and lack of political skills. I would go a step further and say that means the system is failing, and we need to make changes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

In the long run, there is only so much you can do with legislation, but we have to try; reliance on longstanding norms hasn’t worked. We need to start by depoliticizing the Supreme Court and the DOJ, because they are the last line of defense against the authoritarian state.

It sounds like a worthy project for President Warren.

His protestations notwithstanding, Richard Nixon really was a crook. He did, however, have at least some sense that the national interest was larger than his own. He resigned rather than put the country through a painful and divisive impeachment trial.

Would Donald Trump do the same? Of course not. Trump can’t conceive of any interest that could possibly exceed his own. America, to him, is nothing more than the stage on which he exercises his genius. We’re all just extras in a drama in which he is the one and only star.

Stonewalling the impeachment process is a typical Trumpian tactic. It is also a ghastly mistake, for the following reasons:

1. Trump is effectively preventing friendly witnesses from testifying at the hearings. Only people who are willing to resign and testify against him will appear. As a result, the House will have to find that there was a quid pro quo, and the GOP will have to defend him on the basis that the quid pro quo was perfectly acceptable behavior, not that it didn’t happen.
2. Trump clearly intends to defy subpoenas in this process. The Democrats will attempt to enforce the subpoenas through the judicial system. Trump is going to lose that litigation; even his Supreme Court won’t save him. Then what? He will be in the same position that Nixon was in with the tapes. If he then ignores the court order, he will unquestionably be committing an impeachable offense, based on the Nixon precedent.
3. The most likely outcome at that point is a vote for acquittal, but with several GOP senators voting for conviction. That is the record he will have to rely on during the campaign. No one will believe that the process was a purely partisan witch hunt. The voters will respond accordingly.

I hate to agree with Ted Cruz about anything, but I would have to concur with his comments about the NBA’s willingness to suck up to the Chinese. Of course, like the rest of the GOP, Cruz has no problem selling his soul to Trump, but that’s a story for another day.

What this episode illustrates is that there are two economic powerhouses in the world, both of which use coercion to get what they want. In our case, the primary tool is economic sanctions; in theirs, it is the threat of consumer boycotts. Both work, but only up to a point. There will always be some who can either game the system or defy it.

On the DOJ head known as Barr.

In Trump’s firmament he’s a big star.

He’s searching for crooks.

He really should look

In the White House, ‘cause that’s where they are.

But it’s not here yet. Enjoy the fall. It’s beautiful, and poignant, and it’s what we’ve got, at least for now.

Bernie is having heart problems. Should the electorate hold that, and by extension his age, against him?

Yes and no. Yes, his health, and the health of the other candidates, is clearly a legitimate issue in the campaign. Yes, I would prefer a younger nominee in order to emphasize the contrast with Trump if everything else was equal. But no, all of the first tier Democratic candidates, as well as Trump, are in their seventies, so age in and of itself should not be a factor after the rest of the Democrats have fallen away.

A note to my readers: I will be on vacation until 10/18, so posting will be irregular for the next two weeks.

David Brooks interviews a fictional “Flyover Man” in today’s NYT and discovers, to everyone’s surprise, that he sounds like a blue collar version of–wait for it–David Brooks! He’s a sociologist, not a bigot. He’s worried about his job, and about the crumbling social infrastructure in his red state. He credits Trump for caring about him, and blames uncaring liberal elites for the decline of his community. He’s going to vote for Trump again in 2020 in spite of the man’s obvious shortcomings.

A more realistic interview would go something like this:

C: Why do you support Trump?

FM: Because he’s on my side. He knows white Christian men like me made America great. He’s fighting the illegal immigrants and the lazy minorities and the noisy women who want cuts in line. He’ll keep me safe against those people.

C: But Trump doesn’t care about you. He tried to take away your health insurance. He stuffed his cabinet with billionaires, and gave the wealthy a big tax cut. He’s never been a real Christian. He inherited a huge fortune from his dad, and screwed workers over on his way to the top. Why do you support him?

FM: Because he’s on my side. Just like I said.

C: But what exactly has he done for you? All he’s done is eliminate regulations that help working people and give money to rich people.

FM: Are you #@$#@ deaf? He’s on my side. He knows who the enemy is, and he’s fighting as hard as he can. That’s all that matters.

Brooks takes the position that the Democrats don’t say anything to address Flyover Man’s problems; they’re all just obsessed with Trump. In reality, the Democratic candidates for president have done little but talk about Flyover Man’s issues, and are proposing to address them through progressive changes to the tax code, new spending programs, and vastly increased protections for labor, including a higher minimum wage.

The real issue here is that the Democrats view Flyover Man’s problems primarily in economic terms, and Brooks doesn’t accept that, because he’s a Republican. He thinks America is spiritually sick, and that the illness is largely the result of liberal values. That’s the reason he says the Democrats aren’t doing anything to help the poor guy against all of the evidence to the contrary.

Historically, Communist leaders have typically preferred dealing with hardheaded American businessmen and right-wing politicians over left-leaning idealists and intellectuals, because they found the former group to be more predictable, more willing to reach mutually beneficial agreements, and less annoying over human rights issues. As a result, a fairly substantial number of people in China looked forward to Donald Trump’s presidency; for all of his obvious foibles, here was a man who enjoyed doing deals, and could be easily manipulated.

That was then, and this is now. In practice, the Chinese have found that Trump is completely capricious, largely because he himself has no idea what he wants. Hence, the long and pointless trade war, and the danger of worse to come.

Would the Chinese rather have Warren or Biden? It’s a mixed bag. Trump is discrediting American leadership with our allies and making their system look more attractive to the rest of the world. In addition, Warren in particular would undoubtedly make human rights a much bigger irritant in our bilateral relations. On the other hand, the trade war is undoubtedly hurting their economy, and a Democrat might put an end to it. The likelihood of stumbling blindly into World War III would also be much lower.

My guess is that they choose not to choose, and will remain neutral, both in private and in public. That’s what I would do in their position.

William Barr is a right-wing ideologue, a master of spin, and a pusher of envelopes. He answers, in theory, to both the president and the American people, but for his purposes, only the former really matters. As a result, he is running around the world trying to get friendly foreign leaders to provide evidentiary support for a conspiracy theory about American intelligence services and the 2016 election that is ridiculous on its face. He is unlikely to succeed, but Trump will give him credit for trying.

Barr has some sense of ethics, so he quickly had the DOJ respond negatively when the rough transcript of the Ukraine phone call indicated that Trump would make him available to cooperate with the “investigation.” And there have been no purely political, frivolous prosecutions of Trump’s opponents yet. The operative word is “yet.”

Our system will not work properly with a politicized DOJ. Barr has already moved us several steps in that direction, but the damage, to date, is manageable. Will he at some point cross the line and destroy the very foundation of our system by weaponizing justice in the manner of a latter-day Stuart monarch? We’ll see, but if Trump wins a second term, the danger will go up exponentially.