Month: December 2019

Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Pete are the most conspicuously intelligent Democratic candidates for president. Can’t you just imagine a scenario in which Warren unleashes the full fury of the Socratic method on Mayor Pete (possibly even using a little bit of Latin) during a debate, and Mayor Pete responds IN NORWEGIAN! Wouldn’t that be great!

Actually, no. That kind of display alienates more voters than it attracts.

The qualities we need most from a president are empathy, communications skills, and, above all, judgment. Judgment is not synonymous with the ability to master extremely difficult tasks or solve abstract problems; in fact, they’re barely related. Judgment is primarily a function of experience. That is the public’s legitimate concern with Mayor Pete, and one of the reasons that Biden, in spite of his other shortcomings, retains his lead nationally.

The Trump impeachment resembles the previous Andrew Johnson impeachment in the following ways:

1. Both men had inflammatory, unbending personalities, and were suspected of authoritarian leanings;

2. Both insisted that they had done nothing wrong in the face of plenty of evidence to the contrary;

3. Both were sympathetic to white supremacists; and

4. Both were tried in the year of the general election, which complicated the political calculations for everyone.

It is the differences that get your attention, however:

1. Johnson was basically a man without a party. Unlike Trump, he didn’t have a base to rely on, and he wasn’t nominated by either party in 1868;

2. While white supremacy is about as odious a principle as you could get, at least it is a principle of sorts. Trump stands only for his own ego and ambitions; and

3. The vote on removing Johnson was a cliffhanger. The vote on Trump won’t be. The only question is whether any Republicans will vote for conviction. At this point, the smart money says that even Collins will vote no.

The most important feature of liberal democracy isn’t written in a constitution or a statute–it is forbearance. The minority permits the majority to rule, because it believes that the majority has a right to do so, and because it thinks it has a fair opportunity to prevail at the next election. The majority respects the legal rights of the minority, because it knows it could lose the next election, and because all-or-nothing politics turn your country into Iran or Lebanon. Everyone ultimately accepts that no one has a monopoly on truth, and that the marketplace of ideas has to remain open for progress to be made.

Both the right and the left agree that the right has lost the culture war. For the most part, this was not due to the exercise of political and legal power; the system itself is neutral, and permits both Christians and non-Christians to worship and associate as they please. To the extent that the left’s victory has roots in anything other than the intellectual superiority of its arguments, they can be found in its dominance of popular media. Under our system, that is a phenomenon that is outside the political sphere, and not subject to the control of any level of government.

Having lost the battle for hearts and minds on cultural issues, and viewing the left’s ideas as irredeemably false and corrupt, a portion of the reactionary right openly intends to impose its values on the majority by winning and exercising political power. Can that work? Not under our system, as it currently exists, but that could change if forbearance goes out the window and the right no longer accepts traditional limitations on its right to regulate free speech. Since this is a minority position, in order to prevail, it inevitably leads to large scale voter suppression, massive gerrymandering, censorship, and illiberal democracy at best, and fascism at worst.

My wife and I spent the Thanksgiving weekend in New York City. We had not been there since 2004, so I was looking forward to seeing how the city had changed, and how it compared to other great cities of the world, most notably London, Tokyo, and Shanghai.

Here are my impressions:

1. Given the sheer size of the buildings, the number of people on the street, and the vast number of different languages you could hear, NYC feels like the center of the world–even more than London.

2. The city makes you feel small. I don’t really sense that anywhere else.

3. The police are ubiquitous, and you are always aware of their presence. That doesn’t even happen in Shanghai.

4. The predominantly stone buildings around Central Park haven’t really been in existence that long, when you look at the big picture, but they feel timeless.

5. The same cannot be said for the pencil thin new glass and steel residential buildings going up on the south side of Central Park. They are changing the skyline forever, and not in a good way.

6. That said, the essence of NYC is dynamism and constant change, unlike Paris. These kinds of developments are inevitable. You have to accept the negative with the positive.

7. The new development at the WTC is grand and neoclassical, and I think it works. In a purely American way, it is a fitting tribute to the victims of 9/11–even the skyscrapers.

8. If you have a chance to see either “Hadestown” or “Moulin Rouge,” go. The paradox is that two vastly different musicals have remarkably similar characters and plots. There is a message in there somewhere about the power of art.

Given its location close to the Middle East and Russia, its size, its shaky commitment to liberal democratic values, and its predominantly Muslim population, Turkey was always going to be both an important and a difficult NATO ally. Today, as a result of Erdogan’s authoritarian leanings, it is particularly so.

There are essentially two ways to deal with Erdogan: give him what he wants; or cut him off at the knees. Donald Trump doesn’t appear to be capable of doing either of those things consistently.

Trump’s enthusiasm for strongmen would suggest that Erdogan should be his friend. That does appear to be his inclination; however, the right-wing base doesn’t much care for Erdogan, so Trump frequently changes course and makes flamboyant public threats upon which he has no real interest in delivering. Erdogan has learned how to play this game; he basically ignores Trump and does whatever he wants.

So where does the blundering end? I don’t know, but it’s nowhere good.

Historically, the GOP has been united in support of “trickle-down economics.” By that, they mean they support reducing taxes on capital in the hope that it will ultimately be invested in new or expanded businesses. The increase in business activity leads to greater demand for labor, which in turn leads to higher wages for workers in addition to higher profits for capitalists. Hence, the popular name for the concept.

While the theory is not absurd, and may even work under some circumstances, it hasn’t worked for many years, for the following reasons:

1. Improvements in transportation and communications have made it possible to move manufacturing activities, and even some service work, away from areas with high cost labor. Globalization effectively means that the supply of workers is no longer limited to your own country, which in turn means that wages in many fields do not respond to what appear at first blush to be domestic labor shortages.

2. Demographic changes have resulted in a decrease in consumption, and an increase in savings.

3. Successful Chinese mercantilism means that globalization hasn’t necessarily resulted in an explosion of high-paying jobs in industries specializing in exports, at least in the US.

4. These three phenomena collectively mean that there is a glut of available investment capital throughout the world, and limited demand in the US. With a hollowed-out middle class, and more elderly people who can’t afford to put too many resources into consumption, why would American businesses invest in new capacity?

5. Investment, instead, has gone into share buybacks and purchases of securities sold to finance the budget deficit. Tax cuts on capital are, therefore, a form of right-wing recycling for the benefit of the wealthy; they don’t create new jobs or increase wages, but they increase the value of assets owned only by the affluent.

6. Tax increases on the wealthy and redistribution programs which are designed to increase consumption among the less affluent can address the existing imbalance and consequently result in increased growth under current conditions. All of the Democratic candidates appear to agree on this point, and they are right. It is about growth as much as fairness.

Two pundits on very different sides of the ideological spectrum are pushing the idea that Bernie Sanders could unite the Democratic Party and win the election. Ross Douthat is promoting the idea because he wants the Democrats, and the entire country, to turn right on cultural issues; Ed Kilgore, for his part, wants M4A.

Are they right? Of course not. Bernie is not a uniter. His whole campaign is a take it or leave it affair.

Douthat has hopes for Bernie because he puts less emphasis on winning the culture wars than on class warfare and the “revolution.” He’s right about that, and I think he should even go a step further; the only way to sell the “revolution” is to win over reactionary workers by moving the Democratic Party to the right on cultural issues. Bernie is making zero effort to do that, however. Just because he would rather talk about benighted workers and Wall Street oligarchs doesn’t mean he rejects the wokeness agenda.

As for M4A, it is an inherently divisive issue, even within the Democratic Party. To me, the only way to sell it is to be brutally honest with the American people about the level of disruption that it would cause, and to say that the system is so bad, there is no other viable choice. After all, the insurance industry and a large percentage of providers are going to oppose the public option just as ferociously, so you might as well go for the whole enchilada. Sanders isn’t doing that, either. He just attributes all of the problems of the system to a handful of greedy interest groups, when, in reality, the pain of M4A would be felt in some way by everyone, and doctors and hospitals in particular.

2019 was OK.

I haven’t got a lot to say.

The president is being impeached.

Our nightmare’s end is within reach.

_____________

We flew to Greece this April last

And wallowed in our culture’s past.

Santorini was just great.

With all those views, what’s there to hate?

______________

We went to Philly; Cleveland, too.

Saw my home town–what’s old and new.

We just returned from NYC.

Saw all the shows that we could see.

__________________

Our mountain home has come along.

Just a few things have gone wrong.

We love the views and mountain air.

Next year we’ll spend more time there.

_________________

This time next year, we’ll be done.

We’ll ditch our jobs and have more fun.

When it comes to working stress

More is definitely less.

__________________

My wife’s hip has now gone bad.

When it’s fixed, we’ll both be glad.

Darcy’s two; she’s doing fine.

She keeps us running all the time.

______________

2019 was all right.

The denouement is now in sight.

It’s only one year till he goes

So keep the faith, and hold your nose.

The GOP leader named Mitch

Got down with the Don in a ditch.

He’ll vote to acquit.

There’s no doubt about it.

So there’s no point in making a pitch.

Historically, the GOP (think Mitt Romney in 2012) has been tougher on the Russians than the Democrats. It is a tribute of sorts to the power Donald Trump wields over his party that this situation has completely changed; GOP members of Congress now routinely parrot Russian talking points about Ukraine in order to defend him. Putin has to be thrilled.

When they are called on this, they get very defensive. In particular, Mitch McConnell clearly hates being called “Moscow Mitch.”

So how should the Democrats deal with this state of affairs? By keeping it up. Call Moscow Mitch “Moscow Mitch” at every opportunity. Try to think of a catchy nickname for Lindsey Graham. I haven’t come up with a plausible contender to date, but perhaps someone with more imagination than I have can succeed where I have failed.

If they hate it, too bad. They’re effectively selling out their country in their desperate effort to keep the man on golf cart, and themselves, in power. They have to pay the price for that.

Just what you need to brighten the holiday season!

WE’LL IMPEACH BY CHRISTMAS

We’ll impeach by Christmas.

You can count on us.

You must know

That Trump will go.

He fills us with disgust.

___________

Christmas Eve will find us

Ramping up for trial.

We’ll impeach by Christmas.

It’s just a little while.

There is apparently a split of opinion among the proponents of reparations. The mainstream view is that they should be paid only to the direct descendants of at least one slave; the minority opinion is that all African-Americans are entitled to receive them.

You can see the appeal of the mainstream position; tying reparations to slavery is an appropriate response to the argument that people who voluntarily accepted the burdens of discrimination in exchange for the benefits provided by this country aren’t entitled to compensation. In addition, the focus on the unique evils of slavery, and not discrimination, eliminates the concern that the logic of reparations would also apply to Native Americans and Asian-Americans, as well. It is, in some respects, a politically astute position.

The down sides, from the perspective of reparation proponents, are that there is no obvious reason why white people whose ancestors did not own slaves should have to pay anything under this theory, and that the more widespread effects of discrimination after the Civil War (limited housing choices, bad schools, etc.) are logically not subject to the payment of compensation. That would be a problem for someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wants to throw a blanket of guilt over the entirety of white America.

It’s a fairly close call. Let’s hope the two sides beat each other to a pulp and consequently leave the rest of us alone.

It’s November, 2020, and Donald Trump has just lost the election. Naturally, he’s not taking it lying down. Blaming the outcome on fraud and the votes of illegal immigrants, he has filed a blizzard of lawsuits and is calling on “his” Supreme Court to save his bacon. More ominously, he is calling his supporters out in the streets to do battle with the authorities and keep him in power. Will they come?

Not this time. There is still enough faith in the system–barely–to prevent that. The rest of the GOP finally edges away from him, however tentatively, and the results of the election are respected, even if the Trump wing of the GOP openly considers the new Democratic president illegitimate.

This time, the system works. Next time, with a real man on horseback, maybe not.

In the end, Kamala Harris, for all of her impressive political skills, was doomed by two things: her inability to convince the African-American community that she was a winner; and her failure to define where she was on the ideological matrix. Was she an identity or a class politician? Was she a realo or a fundi? She ran a general election campaign in a primary, hoping that she could win votes from all sides. It might very well have worked against Trump, but it didn’t work against Biden or Warren.

Harris is still young, and she most likely isn’t done. She would balance a Biden ticket quite nicely, and the job might appeal to her, as Biden might choose not to run for reelection in 2024. Nothing she said about Biden during the debates, in my eyes, disqualified her for the job. Don’t be surprised if it happens.

It’s November, 2020. Elizabeth Warren has just been elected president, and has a small majority in the Senate. If you’re a billionaire, what do you do?

You have nearly three months before she takes office, and the process of passing the wealth tax, if it happens at all, will take at least several more months. You will immediately hire, if you don’t already have one, an army of attorneys, accountants, financial advisers, and appraisers to deal with the potential impacts of a wealth tax. You will start moving money to places the tax can’t reach as soon as possible. And Warren can’t stop you from doing it.

Even if she has a plan for that, she can’t actually do anything until it is too late. And that is only one of the many problems with the tax.