Month: September 2020

The unloved product of an unsuccessful war, the Weimar Republic ultimately died because it was too timid to provide genuine solutions to the Great Depression. The center collapsed, and the voters were ultimately left with the choice of a Nazi dictatorship, a Communist dictatorship, or a “republic” consisting of the military and lots of awkward work-arounds. Their decision was a disaster for themselves and the world, but the alternatives weren’t too great, either.

Today’s America differs from Weimar in that it still has a viable center-left alternative. The problem is that 30 percent of the country considers it illegitimate. Given that we no longer have a principled center-right party–only a Trump cheering section that openly cares more for its own interests and values than liberal democracy–this is very worrisome. If Biden loses, or wins and then fails to put the country back together, we are looking at some very dark times in the foreseeable future.

Biden is outspending Trump on TV in most or all of the swing states. The Trump campaign, in all likelihood, is not worried. After all, Trump was outspent in 2016, and he can count on all sorts of free media coverage that isn’t available to Biden. He can dominate the airwaves without spending a dime.

That’s a two-edged sword, however. Trump isn’t capable of making a case for himself with swing voters when he’s unscripted. Every time he appears on the evening news, he helps Biden, not himself.

While I am undoubtedly on the center-left of the American political spectrum, I agree for the most part with Milton Friedman’s position that corporations should be in the business of making money–period. My rationale is that running a successful business is a difficult proposition, and requires a different skill set than making and implementing public policy. Politics is about balancing interests; imposing that approach on business typically results in confusion and failure. That’s why nationalization rarely works.

That said, Friedman wrote at a time when business interests held little sway in Washington. You don’t have to be Sanders or Warren to see that conditions are very different today. Regulatory capture is a serious problem whenever the GOP is in power, and Republicans have pursued the same anti-tax and anti-regulatory agenda for the last 40 years in spite of drastic changes in circumstances.

So how does one reconcile Friedman’s concept with current conditions? By voting out Republicans and thereby limiting the influence of business on the making of policy, of course.

William Barr has already made it clear that he views intervening in favor of Trump’s friends as part of his job. He makes no apologies for doing so. To the victors go the spoils, even in the criminal justice system, according to him.

The final barrier to a complete politicization of the system, and thus a descent into the realm of a banana republic, is frivolous prosecutions of Trump’s enemies. Will he try that before the election? Based on today’s headlines, he’s clearly thinking about it.

A party so committed to the death penalty, military adventures, and cuts to essential social programs never had much of a claim to be “pro-life.” The pandemic and climate change, however, have taken this hypocrisy to a much higher plane.

The GOP’s unstated but real position on climate change is that deaths due to wildfires and hurricanes are an acceptable level of collateral damage in exchange for preserving the economic benefits associated with the use of fossil fuels. The party’s stance on the pandemic is that the poor, elderly, and sick should sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the economy and Trump’s electoral success. “Pro-life,” indeed.

Are the party members aware of this contradiction? Most likely, they just don’t care. Potential life is more attractive to them than actual life. It certainly causes less trouble.

Trump’s plan was to ride a roaring economy to re-election. Given that masks help keep the virus under control and thus boost consumer confidence, you might well wonder why the man on golf cart refused to wear one. The answer is simple: being an angry, tough-talking, swaggering man is the core of his political identity, and unless you’re a comic book superhero, you can’t swagger in a mask.

The wearing of masks, as a result, is now associated with the Democrats. The GOP is the party of testosterone and death. Is it any wonder the polls show that the gender gap has turned into a chasm?

It isn’t the regressive tax cut, deregulation, and climate change denial. His ideology is shared by other Republicans for the most part. We’re used to that.

It isn’t even his personal shortcomings. We’re appalled and depressed by his narcissism, lack of empathy, corruption, gracelessness, invincible ignorance, and authoritarian leanings. We still wonder how in the world such a man could be elected president. But these are reasons to pity him, not to hate him.

No, the reason we hate him is that, unlike any previous American president, he gets up in the morning every day and reminds us that he hates us. We have no place in his America. He is president of his base, not a country that includes us. If we all died tomorrow, that would be just fine with him, because we didn’t vote for him. We’re in his way. We’re the swamp. We don’t recognize his infinite genius. We need to go.

Yesterday, Trump told us that the California fires could be avoided by leaf raking. He also said that cooler weather was coming–just trust him.

What will he tell the victims of Hurricane Sally? To avoid flooding by draining their pools?

Here’s a vintage Trumpian square circle for you:

1. Trump’s brand is fighting illegal immigration;
2. Trump is a climate change denier;
3. It is likely that the single biggest reason for illegal immigration in the future will be climate change.

Go figure. He hasn’t.

So why is Ross Douthat minimizing Trump’s culpability on the virus? My guess is that he still views Trump as the means by which the GOP is converted from stale beer Reaganist economic thinking to something fit for the 21st century. A party that puts the interests of workers ahead of business, and supports industrial policy instead of tax cuts and deregulation. An American version of today’s Tories.

Will that happen? I doubt it. The GOP is still strongly opposed to organized labor–the disorganized version is OK. The WSJ is still on the job to enforce the party line. And, most of all, the pure flame of Trumpism includes economic thought that hasn’t changed significantly since 1980. Anyone who says he is picking up that torch in the future–and I suspect that means almost all of the GOP candidates–will have to accept that burden.

Ross Douthat has no illusions about Trump as a person or a leader, but he continues to minimize the man on golf cart’s culpability for virus deaths. Does his analysis hold water?

It has three parts. Let’s deconstruct them:

1. TRUMP IS A PRISONER OF THE RIGHT, NOT ITS LEADER: Douthat uses the term “folk libertarians” for the Reactionary faction of the GOP: right-wingers who oppose government intrusions into normally private behavior, not on principle, but because they think the government actively works to undermine their status and values. He thinks their opinions drive Trump, but the reality is that the lines of communication run both ways. Let’s put it this way: if Trump had worn a mask from the beginning of the crisis, and Fox News had told its viewers to be responsible, do you really think we would be where we are today? Of course not. Fox News viewers and rabid Trump supporters, by and large, believe what they’re told, even when the “truth” changes on a dime, as it frequently does.
2. THE ESTABLISHMENT FAILED, TOO: It is true that public health leaders made mistakes early in the crisis due to a lack of information and, in the case of testing, some rank incompetence. They corrected those errors in time. Trump is still holding dangerous rallies and disparaging people who wear masks.
3. HE’S NO WORSE THAN THE EUROPEANS: Douthat is misusing the data here. The most analogous country to the US in a geographic, political, and cultural sense is Canada, which has fared much better than we have. Most of the EU countries have also done much better, after a rocky start. Spain is the one outstanding ongoing failure, if you look carefully at the numbers.

So why is Douthat going to so much trouble to defend someone he despises? That will be the subject of my next post.

Trump’s theory is that the polls don’t accurately describe his level of support, because many of his voters are reluctant to be associated with him. Is he right?

Two observations are pertinent. First, if you’re embarrassed to vote for someone, you probably shouldn’t. Second, the Trump voters I know are militant in their support; they fly flags and plaster their pickup trucks with bumper stickers. They’re about as far from shy as you can get. It’s the Biden voters who are shy, at least in public.

Like most of what he says and apparently believes, I think this is a delusion. We’ll see.

Conservative Libertarians are a relatively principled group, but when confronted with facts which contradict their beliefs in extremely limited government and individualism, they tend to retreat into denialism. And so, if you talk about the booming Chinese economy, they will tell you that its implosion is imminent, because, according to their logic, it just has to be. The CL response to the pandemic, which can only be resolved through collective action, is to file lawsuits alleging the unconstitutionality of lockdowns (Reactionaries seek the same end by demonstrating with guns.) With climate change, of course, the easiest approach is to deny that it exists, and so they do.

The thing about climate change is that you cannot avoid the costs; you either pay the price in prevention, or in the cleanup afterwards. The ongoing wildfires are a classic example of that phenomenon. CLs really should be getting behind a carbon tax, because it is the most individual and market-friendly mitigation measure that is available to us. Will they? As of now, they would rather just deny.

Florida infection rates having fallen from appalling to merely bad, Governor DeSantis is declaring victory again. He is opening bars and planning to lift restrictions on indoor dining in restaurants. One assumes that he thinks deregulation will lead to a boom and a GOP triumph in November. Doesn’t it always?

We’ve seen this movie before. The coming influx of seasonal residents, combined with the looser restrictions, the opening of schools, and cooler weather, is going to lead to another wave. DeSantis probably just hopes that it won’t happen until after the election. It isn’t up to him.

Is the glass half full or half empty? That is the essence of the skinny bill question.

Six weeks ago, this was a matter of the utmost importance. McConnell’s theory was that offering $300 per week would be perceived as the glass half full by grateful unemployed workers, and that the corresponding stimulus would help the Trump re-election campaign. The Democrats assumed that the public would see $300 per week as a 50 percent cut, and had no interest in assisting the Trump campaign. They were only willing to provide additional stimulus if it would make a meaningful difference in the lives of unemployed workers, and if aid could also be provided to reeling state and local governments.

Today, the issue has less political significance, because the early voting process has already started in many states, and it would take several weeks for state unemployment bureaucracies to adjust to the new system. There would have been no Election Day stimulus even if the bill had somehow advanced in the Senate. Trump and the GOP will have to settle for what they have.

Don’t be surprised if this comes up again after the election, when the politics are less toxic. There will still be millions of unemployed workers, and they will still need help.