Month: March 2020

Did you ever wonder how America would have been governed under the Articles of Confederation? You’re getting a glimpse of it right now. The battle against the virus is being fought on a state-by-state basis, not from Washington. Trump, who should be making clear statements and taking the lead on creating and allocating essential medical resources, is preening and lying at press conferences, sending out mixed messages about the severity of the problem, taking credit for any (mostly illusory) successes, and attributing failures to Democrats and state and local officials.

That’s the way federalism works in the Trump era: continuous, undeserved, fawning praise for the man on golf cart; and hard work and criticism for the people in the trenches. Credit flows up, and blame trickles down.

Joe Biden is telling Sanders supporters he agrees with Bernie on the ends, but not the means. Is he right?

Mostly, yes, but not completely. Here is my analysis:

1. Some disputes are not about ends or means, but whether the goal is realistic. M4A is a perfect example. Biden, like Obama before him, undoubtedly would agree that single-payer would be the best available system if you could start from scratch. The best way of funding such a system is not the issue–it is whether you could actually get the system through Congress. In Biden’s eyes, the answer is no, and there is no point in trying, regardless of its merits.
2. The Sanders/Warren wealth tax is a good example of a dispute over means. Biden accepts the proposition that we need to reduce inequality and provide a better safety net through tax increases on the wealthy; he just doesn’t think a wealth tax is the best way to get there.
3. Some foreign policy questions could be described as being more about ends than means. Biden clearly envisions an America that is more engaged with the world, and has a stronger military presence, than Sanders.
4. It is probably fair to say that Sanders wants America to look like a much larger version of Denmark, while Biden wants America to be a more just and equal version of its current self. The difference is one of degree, but it relates to ends, not means.

It is ironic, I suppose, that such a large and diverse pool of candidates should dwindle to two old white guys. For some identity-oriented Democrats, it is worse than that–it is a tragedy. Should they be so concerned?

My advice is to be patient, because things will be very different in 2024. Sanders will be too old to run then. If Biden wins in 2020, it is unlikely that he will choose to run for re-election, and we already know he will have a female VP. If he loses, he will be out of the picture in any event, and the field will be clear for Harris, Klobuchar, Booker, et. al.

And, of course, AOC will be eligible to run by then. She has a good chance of being the nominee if we have to suffer through a second Trump term.

So does the Class of 2016 have a chance in 2024? I would say no. Rubio will still be young enough, but he was emasculated by Trump in 2016, and no one is goin to forget it. Cruz has been completely (and painfully) loyal to Trump since the election, but he will always be remembered, and never forgiven, for his apostacy at the convention. The younger generation will have learned all of Trump’s tricks, and will use the ones that work for them. One of them will prevail.

With his shiny, shaved head and goggle eyes, Rick Scott looks disconcertingly like a shark. He has the personality of Ted Cruz, minus the charisma. He has plenty of legal and ethical baggage from his days in the private sector. He may very well be the worst public speaker I have ever seen at any level of government. He barely managed to scrape out three victories in Florida. And yet, he clearly plans to run for president in 2024, based on the fact that he is running pro-Trump commercials in states outside of Florida. One imagines he is doing this because he is used to being a CEO, and the role of junior senator from Florida bores him spitless.

Scott appears to be trying to make a name for himself on a national level by attacking the newly unemployed. Under the current circumstances, it’s hard for me to see that issue as a vote winner, even four years hence.

Does he have a chance to win a national election? In a word, no. He spent plenty of his own money to make a name for himself in Florida, but that won’t work on a much larger scale. Michael Bloomberg could tell you that, and Scott doesn’t have anything like Bloomberg’s money.

Historically, no single faction has represented a majority of the GOP, so contenders for the nomination have been compelled to create coalitions. How will this work in 2024? Here are the likely contenders:

1. Romney Coalition (PBPs and CDs): Marco Rubio.
2. Goldwater Coalition (Reactionaries and CLs): Ted Cruz; Rick Scott.
3. Reagan Coalition (Reactionaries and PBPs): Tom Cotton; Josh Hawley.
4. “National Conservatives” (Pure Reactionaries): Cotton; Hawley.

As you can see here, the real question is whether either Cotton or Hawley would have the nerve to reject PBP-friendly tax cuts and deregulation (and the campaign contributions from business that follow them) in favor of an economic plan that favors workers. I have my doubts, but we’ll see.

The problem with being a strongman is that there is no one else to blame when things go wrong. Trump’s need to whine and shift responsibility to his opponents and the MSM, therefore, may well be our best guarantee of maintaining our political and free expression rights.

Whether Barr agrees or not is another matter.

Unless Trump succeeds in emulating his idol Putin and making himself president for life, the GOP will need a new candidate in 2024. My best guess is that you will see something of a generational divide at that time. On the one hand, you can expect Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz (Class of 2016) to come back and try again; on the other, there will be new faces, such as Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, and Rick Scott, in the picture.

Which generation will prevail? I will be addressing this question from a variety of angles in a series of posts over the next day or two.

From their perspective, GOP members of Congress basically sold their souls to the devil by voting for the $2 trillion relief package. They can justify it by telling themselves that it was necessary to keep Trump in office and the free-spending Democrats out of power. But what happens after the election? What will they say in January, 2021?

If Biden wins in November, history tells us that the GOP will immediately start screaming about the deficit and demanding spending cuts. It is consistent both with their ideology and their desire to sabotage growth under a Democratic president. But what if Trump wins? No longer subject to the will of the electorate, will he continue with opportunistic “national conservative” economic policies, or will he swerve back to the CLs and support radical spending cuts?

I don’t know the answer to that one–only that it will come up, and be the source of serious debate within the GOP.

When the virus hit, he was reluctant to impose strict limitations on social and economic activity for fear of damaging the economy. Instead, he decided to shut the barn door after the horse had bolted by protecting the borders against outsiders from infected areas. Predictably, this approach was a failure.

Is it Trump or Ron DeSantis? You decide.

Andrew Cuomo rarely makes any direct comments about Trump, presumably for fear of inviting retaliation against the people of New York. It would be, in any event, unnecessary. Cuomo brings consistency, compassion, and a reliance on the best information to the fight against the virus. It is the exact opposite of the sewage that flows from the White House on a nightly basis, and everyone knows it.

Cuomo is clearly the leader of the blue team in the current political battle. Is that a problem, given that Biden is the presumptive nominee? Not really. Biden isn’t even the nominee yet; he doesn’t have any power to fight the virus at this point; and the election is over seven months away. There will be plenty of time for overt partisanship between now and then.

The elderly are among the GOP’s most reliable voters. The party also professes to be “pro-life.” The suggestion by GOP politicians and supporters that the elderly should sacrifice themselves for the GDP (a false choice, given that consumer confidence in the face of millions of virus deaths would be zero) is consequently all the more striking.

What does it mean? In a nutshell, that Trump’s crass materialism and worship of the stock market has taken over the GOP, and that the man on golf cart’s political survival is a matter of greater concern to GOP leaders than the health and well-being of the American public. Can there be any greater indictment of the party than that?

Young socialists believe it, and aren’t afraid to say it: Barack Obama was a failed president. With the advantages of a supermajority in the Senate and an economic crisis, he bailed out the system instead of bringing about “the revolution.” Inequality was worse when he left office than when he came in. His legacy is a source of shame, not pride.

The vast majority of Democrats feel otherwise, of course, which is why Bernie Sanders will never be heard saying any of this. His attempt to finesse the issue instead of confronting it was a rare act of political realism. It also tells you that, deep in his heart, even he knew that he couldn’t beat the Democratic establishment unless they handed the nomination to him on a silver platter. When it was all said and done, the electorate chose the man who most obviously personifies the Obama legacy, and Sanders had no answer for it.

The excellent John Harris of Politico calls Trump an “authoritarian weakman” for his failure to amass and use extraordinary powers in the current crisis. I personally prefer the term “man on golf cart,” but the meaning is the same. Is he right?

Yes. I predicted this years ago when I posed the question about a man on horseback who couldn’t ride a horse. Being a successful strongman takes discipline, focus, and hard work. Trump is incapable of any of that; he just wants to spend his time in office rewarding himself and his friends, punishing his enemies, and soaking in public adulation.

Does that mean we can let our guard down? No, for two reasons. First, he is rotting the foundations of our system with his divisiveness, indifference to liberal democratic norms, and corruption; the next GOP president will undoubtedly be made of sterner stuff, and he may be able to destroy the system with one final shove. Second, Trump is going to get more desperate as the election gets closer. The prospect of defeat could drive him from being a dictator on Twitter to the real thing, particularly if the emergency continues. Stay tuned.

Socialists hate Joe Biden. Hell, they even hate Elizabeth Warren. They won’t settle for anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders. Some of them are prepared to stay home, or vote for third party candidates, because they are playing the long game. In their eyes, there is no meaningful difference between Trump and Biden, and Trump is their most effective recruiter, so why vote for Biden?

The virus is the answer why. The long game consists of an infinite number of short games. If you don’t survive the present, discussions about the future are meaningless. A socialist ash heap is just an ash heap with a red flag.

My advice to them is, vote as if your life depends on it, because . . . it does.