Month: July 2020

My predictions from a week ago regarding the Lewis service were right on track. Obama connected the dots between the sixties and today, as he was bound to do. As with most of his speeches regarding race and civil rights, it sounded a lot like a sequel to the Gettysburg Address, with the emphasis on the never-ending struggle to perfect the Union. The best part of it, for me, was his description of the forces that the young Lewis was facing in the sixties; he, unlike us, had no idea that victory was inevitable. It is both chilling and inspiring to consider that.

The most consequential speech, from a political perspective (and make no mistake about it, this was always intended to be a political event) was that of George W. Bush. Why was he even there? For two reasons: to send a message to the country that Trump doesn’t speak for all Republicans on issues of race; and to reassure swing voters with ties to the GOP that voting for Biden is OK. That matters, a lot.

Let’s hope the message got through.

Mark Zuckerberg had a dream: to transcend national boundaries and bring the entire world together to share happy talk on his social media platform, while making a ton of money. How is he doing? Well, one for two gets it done in most sports.

As I have noted before, Facebook is so large, and plays such a significant role in the political process, that it is effectively a worldwide public utility which is accountable only to Zuckerberg. That is a business model which cannot be sustained. All Zuckerberg can do is promise reforms and hope no one notices when he doesn’t deliver, or at least that Facebook’s many critics are too ideologically divided to agree on a remedy. The rear guard action is doomed to fail at some point–probably fairly soon, although not as a result of yesterday’s circus in the House.

BUY OR SELL? Sell, sell, sell! Facebook will ultimately either be severely regulated as a public utility or broken up. I’m guessing the former.

Stuart Stevens joins an increasingly long line of prominent GOP figures who have concluded that the image of a party primarily concerned about low taxes, free trade, and limited government was a fraud. He thinks the party needs to lose big in November to return to its intellectual roots. Rich Lowry, on the other hand, notes that the GOP is beholden to its reactionary supporters, and consequently sees no point in a demolition. Who is right?

Lowry is definitely correct when he notes that a large percentage–maybe even a majority at this point–of GOP voters enthusiastically support Trump’s authoritarian populism, not a freedom-oriented Reagan agenda. That is the problem, not just Trump himself. On the other hand, Lowry doesn’t give adequate weight to the influence that Trump, other GOP leaders, and, above all, Fox News has on reactionary voters. For example, Russia used to be viewed as the enemy; today, Trump says that Putin is a friend, and they believe him. Free trade was always identified as a GOP objective; today, the GOP is largely protectionist, because Trump has decreed that it should be so. The faithful have fallen in line. And so on.

Good, clear solutions to this problem are hard to find, but I don’t see any way the GOP becomes a respectable center-right party unless Fox and the thought leaders of the GOP conclude that authoritarian populism is a dead end, and dramatically change the message they send to the rank and file on a daily basis. The only way that happens is if the GOP loses big in November. My conclusion, therefore, is that Stevens is right. Bring on the blue wave!

Amazon is a colossus of innovation. It uses its tech expertise to revolutionize everything it touches, much to the benefit of consumers and the detriment of other producers and middlemen. It is relentless. What does its future look like?

Because Amazon’s MO is to expand horizontally into fields in which it has lots of competitors, it is not particularly vulnerable to antitrust action, barring an implausible and dramatic change in the law. Unlike Google and Facebook, it doesn’t play a large role in shaping the political discourse in this country. In legal terms, it is in better shape than some of its brethren.

Amazon’s points of vulnerability are its manipulation of third party sellers on its platform and its treatment of workers. With the latter, however, the relevant question is, compared to what? Is there any credible information which suggests that Amazon’s employees are treated significantly worse than workers in comparable positions in competing companies? I’m not aware of any. As to the former, even if the federal government had the ability and the will to force Amazon to choose between its platform and its own producers, which is highly unlikely, it would hardly be fatal to the company.

BUY OR SELL? Buy. Amazon has plenty of friends and resources to use against its political opponents, and its commitment to innovation is very impressive.

At first glance, the GOP Senate stimulus package seems politically and economically foolish; if you’re unkind, you could even call it insane. It isn’t nearly sufficient to get the economy roaring back to life and improve Trump’s chances of re-election, but it is way too large for Republicans who at least like to pretend that they care about the deficit. So what’s the point?

McConnell is a PBP, so his greatest interest is in protecting the donor class. The package may be politically obtuse, but it undeniably addresses some of the biggest concerns of small businesses; it extends financial support for business, effectively cuts the minimum wage by reducing UI payments, and creates new safe havens for premises liability relating to the virus. Who could ask for more?

The rumbling about the package on the right tells you that the CLs and the Reactionaries have realized that Trump will probably lose, and that they want to start positioning themselves as critics of large deficits for the Biden administration. In other words, the Tea Party is back, baby! Expect to see a lot more absurdly hypocritical screaming from these Trump enablers about spending in the near future.

How do you break up an algorithm? That, in a nutshell, is the antitrust challenge presented by Google.

Google dominates in its field and inevitably influences the political landscape with the preferences that it creates. That makes the company a legal and political target for both the right and the left. The problem, however, is that competitors do exist, consumers don’t have any beef with Google, and there is no obvious legal solution to its dominance. The remainder of its activities are just a sideshow.

Buy or sell? I’m neutral on this one. Google’s trajectory looks fairly flat to me. There is no reason to believe that its core competency will be challenged in the foreseeable future; conversely, there is no reason to believe that it will become a diversified behemoth, like Amazon.

I don’t want to be fair to Tom Cotton, because if America ever generates its own Franco, it is far more likely to be him than the shambolic Trump. Nevertheless, it’s my duty, and I’ll do it.

The uproar about Cotton’s latest interview has two parts. The part that has received the most attention is the quote about the Founding Fathers viewing slavery as a “necessary evil.” This statement was probably a little bit too glib; many of the FFs didn’t own slaves or approve of slavery, and those who did viewed it with plenty of doubts and a measure of guilt. However, it is fair to say that the FFs who did own slaves believed (with some reason) that they could not survive economically without them, and that a united America could not exist, as a practical matter, without the slave states in 1787. That is probably what Cotton meant to say. The broader context of his statement makes it clear that he was not defending slavery just because some of the FFs owned slaves, which is what he is being made out to say.

The bigger picture is his attack on the 1619 Project, which he views as being “divisive” and “fake news.” Well, slavery, the Civil War, and the South’s subsequent version of apartheid were pretty divisive, too; on this point I am more sympathetic with the 1619 people than Cotton in spite of my frequent criticism of their work. What we have here, unfortunately, is a battle between people who think that the entire American story revolves around slavery and racism, and people like Cotton who prefer to gloss over those chapters and talk only about how great we are. The truth is in the middle; slavery and racism are a major theme in the American project, but they are not the only theme.

If you’re a huge fan of Apple products, like my wife, the good news is that the company doesn’t share the legal and political liabilities of its tech brethren. It doesn’t dominate the market with regard to any particular product, so antitrust is not a problem, and it doesn’t shape the political debate to a dangerous degree. Nobody really hates Apple–at least not like Facebook or Amazon. It’s just a well-run company with plenty of cachet and a mountain of cash.

But Apple has two different, and very serious, points of vulnerability. First, it has exposure to China that the other tech companies don’t. Losing the Chinese market would be painful; being forced to make major changes to the supply chain would be far worse than that. Second, Apple appears to have lost its mojo as a product developer. The company is basically living off its past glories at this point.

BUY OR SELL? Sell. Apple is a mature, profitable company that hasn’t shown the ability to revolutionize anything for the last several years. It’s all downhill, albeit slowly, from here.

On the Democrat candidate Joe.

His VP choice, nobody knows.

Is Kamala queen?

The left won’t be keen

‘Cause Warren’s the way they would go.

Normally, at this stage of the campaign, we would be engaged in a tolerably rational debate about policy–how to improve the economy, reform our health care system, etc. That simply isn’t happening. Why?

Part of it is due to the overwhelming importance of the pandemic, of course, but it is also caused by the interests and personalities of the candidates. Trump has no policy ideas; he is running purely to disrupt the system for four more years in the ostensible interest of “real Americans.” He portrays himself as a real life Batman protecting Gotham City from evil outsiders (Chinese; Mexicans) and left-wing looters and rioters. There is no vision of a better America here; the message is to hang on to what little we still have. Biden, for his part, has lots of ideas, but he has no incentive to discuss them, because he wants the election to be purely a referendum on Trump. The more he talks about policy, the more he exposes himself to criticism; why not just let Trump hang himself, instead?

The Biden plan is working. Don’t expect any major changes in the formula between now and November.

One of the Tennessee GOP Senate hopefuls is a reactionary doctor (this is a trend–more on that later) named Manny Sethi. Ted Cruz is actively campaigning for Sethi, whose commercials feature the allegation that his opponent gave lots of money to Mitt Romney. That should tell you everything you need to know about his politics.

The latest Sethi ad includes the usual footage of cities being burned and statues being toppled. Sethi’s comment on this is that these people hate America. He, on the other hand, loves America. That, apparently, is reason enough to vote for him.

What Sethi is actually saying in these ads is that conservative, gun-loving, white Christians with at least one foot in the Confederacy are America, and the rest of us are just interlopers. If that is your idea of what America is, it is no surprise that the hundreds of millions of people who are being excluded aren’t fans.

There will be no peace in this country until people like Sethi are convinced, one way or another, that the rest of us are real Americans, too.

The two best words to describe the outlook of big American tech companies are “libertarian” and “globalist.” In the context of American politics, these terms cut completely different ways. The tech companies, like most other businesses, approve of Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation; they also appreciate Trump’s willingness to treat them as national champions in their dealings with the EU. On the other hand, they despise Trump’s tariffs, culture wars, and immigration restrictions; they are also concerned about chaotic government and the practical impacts of rapidly declining relations with China. Which way will the mop flop in November?

Mark Zuckerberg has tried very hard to maintain a connection to Trump without offending his left-leaning employees, with mixed success at best. A few tech titans are uncompromising libertarians who will support Trump, in spite of his obvious incompetence. Most of the others, however, will give their donations to the moderate left; they will see slightly higher taxes and some additional danger of antitrust actions as an acceptable price to pay for reasonable social policies and an end to the chaos.

When it is all said and done, they will probably be rewarded.

The election is 100 days away. The original Hundred Days resulted in Waterloo and Napoleon’s abdication. You can be sure that Trump intends to do everything in his power to make certain he doesn’t suffer a similar fate. What can we expect between now and then?

Lots of banging on the culture wars drum, of course. That won’t be enough to change the trajectory of the race, based on the results to date. We know that he has no respect for liberal democratic norms and a desperate desire to avoid looking like a loser. What else can he try?

Two things come to mind. The first, of course, would be a war with Iran. For whatever reason, that doesn’t seem to appeal to him. The other possibility would be vote suppression on a scale we have never seen before. The pandemic will provide some excuse for that, but something more would have to be attempted.

My greatest fear is that we will see armed right-wing militias appearing at polling stations and intimidating likely Democratic voters, in some cases with the support of local authorities. I really, really hope, for the sake of our country, that it doesn’t happen, but it is where we are heading.

Just as John Lewis can be viewed as a sort of left-wing version of John McCain, McCain’s funeral should be treated as a template for Lewis’. Obama should speak, the virtues of liberal democracy should be extolled, and there should be plenty of references to America and the arc of history. It should look like a pep rally for the blue team. Above all, the speakers should connect the dots between the struggles of the sixties and today. The opponents of the civil rights movement in the sixties are the same kind of people who are running commercials attacking rioters and celebrating “law and order.” That needs to be put in its proper historical perspective.

The commercials for GOP House and Senate candidates in Tennessee are angry, edgy, and all alike. They proclaim their love for guns, the police, and traditional values. They promise unconditional support for Trump and his efforts to drain the swamp and bring law and order to the country. They worry about how Christianity is being criminalized. They emphasize their lack of experience and ties to the establishment. Finally, and above all, they hate rioters, looters, and arrogant liberals (particularly Pelosi and AOC) who want to take their guns and call them racist.

What is noteworthy here is that there is no mention–none–of the pandemic, the recession, or rising inequality. Class is simply not an issue for these people, or their voters. It is 100 percent about the culture war. It’s not the economy, stupid.

Bernie Sanders’ supporters should be required to spend a day watching these commercials. To the left, it is so self-evident that they are correct on culture war issues, they refuse to acknowledge that another side has any right to exist. They will never get anywhere until they do.