Month: December 2020

The new trade agreement with China looks like a pure win for the EU. EU businesses will no longer be subject to the technology sharing and joint venture requirements that the Chinese imposed as a condition of doing business in the Middle Kingdom for years. Why would the Chinese government make that unilateral concession?

Because, for them, the significance of the agreement is geopolitical, not economic. China is more or less self-sufficient on tech issues at this point; it no longer needs the old technology sharing requirements. What it does need is EU neutrality in the battles to come with the United States. What better way to keep the Europeans quiet than to create political and economic leverage by making doing business with China more profitable for their companies? And what better time to do it, before Biden takes office and tries to ally himself with the EU against China on trade issues?

It’s a preemptive strike–a Trojan Horse with Chinese characteristics. Unlike Mr. America First, Biden is worried about it. He should be.

I have vivid memories of the night in March when I finally realized the severity of the problem; it was the day the sports world started shutting down, and it was announced that Tom Hanks and his wife had the virus. Prior to that, I was perfectly aware of the virus, but it wasn’t impacting my life, and it seemed too remote to matter that much. I thought it was a blip, not a chasm.

I wasn’t the only one. Donald Trump, with much better information, initially did the same thing. I could forgive him for that. The issue with him was that he refused to learn anything afterwards. He was entrenched in his view that he was going to win the election by looking strong and boosting the economy, so he consistently downplayed the virus, insisted that it would disappear, demanded that states be opened up regardless of the evidence, and made refusing to wear a mask a culture war issue. He made things much worse than they needed to be.

His complete insensitivity to the chaos and misery caused by the virus, even more than the incompetence of his response, cost him the election. If there was a silver lining to the pandemic, that was it.

Things will improve in 2021; the question is, how fast? Once the vaccine has been widely distributed, there will be a mountain of private savings to be spent by wealthy people on travel, entertainment, and other consumer experiences. Confidence will return, and life for everyone will get better. That is, if you’re still alive to enjoy it.

According to Politico, a group of newly-elected GOP House members, most of them women or minorities, has formed to do battle with the Squad and socialism. They are calling themselves the Force. Is that good news?

Yes, because AOC and her friends have spent far more of their time and energy attacking the mainstream of the Democratic Party than Republicans, whom they apparently view as being unworthy of their consideration. It would be nice to see them engaging in a battle with the GOP over the merits of socialism. If they prevail, so much the better for them; if not, they will have no justification for attacking Biden and the rest of the center-left.

(It’s December, 2020. The pandemic is raging. Infections, hospitalizations, and deaths have reached new heights. In the meantime, Trump is sulking at Mar-a-Lago and refusing to do any work. He has actually gone so far as to lock the door to his bedroom, and he won’t come out.

Mike Pence arrives and bangs on the door.)

P: Mr. President, please come out! The country needs you! You alone can put an end to the pandemic!

T: What’s it to me? America betrayed me! I made the country great again, and they made me a loser! A LOSER! I’m not a loser, no matter what they say!

P: Mr. President, thousands of people are dying!

T: They’re probably all Democrats. That’s fine with me. They don’t respect my pain. They even rejoice in it!

P: But if you come out and solve the vaccine distribution problems, you’ll be a hero! History will vindicate you! Isn’t that enough?

T: Not if I’m a loser. I’d rather be dead. Leave me alone.

P: Well, if you won’t come out, at least authorize me to deal with the distribution problems. Someone has to save America!

T: All right. Do whatever you think you have to do.

(Pence leaves. A few days later, a White House aide bangs on the door with terrible news.)

A: Mr. President, the Vice President has died from the virus!

T: I’m sort of sorry to hear that. He did suck up to me most of the time.

A: Now we really need you! Please come out and fight the virus! Do it for Mike!

T: Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should do it. After all I alone can save the American people. I could do it again! They’d be sorry they voted for Biden! Maybe they’d even change their minds and put me back in office!

Nah. They’re not worth it. But I’ll tell you what–I’ll go play golf instead! Bring me my clubs at once!

Joe Biden had a simple theory of the case: Twitter was not the Democratic Party, let alone America. Moderates, many of them elderly, were a majority of the party, if not the activists. If he united them, he would win.

It was clear even after Iowa that he was right; the real question is whether he had enough support, and could perform well enough, to be the last man standing in the moderate lane. Things were looking grim after Nevada. However, black voters in South Carolina saved his bacon. Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg dropped out within a matter of days after learning that they didn’t have meaningful support in the minority community, leaving Biden in a one-on-one battle with Sanders. After that, everything fell into place, and the rest of the campaign was a formality, particularly when the pandemic intruded.

Even red Americans were appalled by the video footage of the murder (I can’t call it anything else) of George Floyd. That episode, in addition to some others and Trump’s insensitive and opportunistic response, dramatically increased support for Black Lives Matter and public consciousness of racism in general. It appeared to some optimists that a transformative moment on race had arrived.

As I anticipated, the left overplayed its hand. Calls to “defund the police” went nowhere with an American public raised on cop shows and inundated with local news about violent crime. Most Americans concluded that racial problems with law enforcement were confined to a few bad apples, and were not systemic. Calls for reparations fell on deaf ears. The 1619 Project, which portrayed America as an evil racist empire redeemed only slightly by the courage and faith of people of color, became a talking point for the right, not the left, during the campaign.

The GOP cranked up the culture wars, and would have won but for Trump’s refusal to take the pandemic seriously. So where does BLM go from here? Acknowledge that the problems are different in different state and local jurisdictions, organize to solve them where they exist, and focus as much on winning hearts and minds as on political action. Favorable portrayals of minorities in the media are more effective ways of generating public sympathy from the white majority than in-your-face gambits like the 1619 Project.

A prominent young GOP activist named Charlie Kirk created a bit of a sensation by implicitly arguing that Biden’s victory was illegitimate because he carried a small percentage of counties in this country. The logical conclusion from this, of course, is that the votes of blue Americans in urban and suburban areas should be worth less than the votes of real (i.e., white Christian) Americans in rural areas.

From the Republican point of view, this truly is an outrage. Fortunately, there is a solution: give livestock 3/5 of a vote! That will restore the balance and give rural residents the political primacy they so richly deserve!

If you think that’s ridiculous, just remember that slaves had no more rights than farm animals prior to 1865, and they were counted as 3/5 of a person under the Constitution. This helped to maintain the voting strength of the South. Are the situations that different?

Trump’s most consistent persona is a right-wing talk show host; grifter-in-chief is who he is, not what he plays. Occasionally, however, he digs into his bag of tricks from “The Apprentice” and gives us a dose of reality TV. So it was with the Covid relief bill, which he has now decided to sign after creating a completely unnecessary cliffhanger over the last few days.

This latest episode is not likely to endear him to anyone, including his most devoted fans. He would be wise to stick to channeling his inner Rush Limbaugh in his remaining days of relevance.

It feels like an eternity ago, but at this time last year, I was composing parodies of Christmas carols about impeachment. Doesn’t that seem hopelessly quaint now?

There was never any possibility that Trump would be removed from office regardless of the magnitude of his crimes. The Democrats’ objectives consequently were: (1) to make the necessary stand for constitutional government; (2) to dig up and publicize as much information as possible about Trump’s dirty dealings with Ukraine; (3) to get some level of GOP support for removal; and (4) to avoid a backlash. On balance, they accomplished all of these objectives.

In a normal year, impeachment would have been a hot topic during the campaign. In 2020, it barely made a ripple. The year was dominated by the pandemic and the corresponding recession. More on those in future posts.

My wife is fond of referring to “Rick DeSantis,” an amalgam of the past and present governors of Florida. The idea is to point out the continuity between two basically odious GOP administrations. The two men in question, however, are more different than similar.

Rick Scott is a CL. He really, really, really hates all levels of government. Like Grover Norquist, he wants to reduce the size of government to the point where it can be drowned in the bathtub; unlike Norquist, he probably wants to put it on the rack and torture it first. Scott, predictably, is bored in the Senate and wants to be the CEO of America, Inc. He will try to get there by promising massive reductions in federal spending–particularly for what GOP voters view as the undeserving poor.

Ron DeSantis is a more easygoing Trumpist. Like Scott, he is desperately ambitious for higher office; unlike him, he craves popularity. In the first phase of his administration, he actually took some steps to protect to the environment, because he wanted to respond to what was clearly a public priority. He has bungled the pandemic, however, unlike Scott, who actually did a fairly good job of dealing with hurricanes. Whether he can recover in time for the next election remains to be seen.

They have one thing in common: neither is going to be president. I sometimes refer to Scott as Ted Cruz, but without the charisma. When he took office, I used to joke that he would securitize Florida’s non-working (i.e., unproductive) population and sell them to unsuspecting German investors. His toughness will fly with the base, but his lack of personality won’t; in any event, the base doesn’t really care about spending as long as too much of it doesn’t go to minorities. DeSantis, for his part, will struggle to be re-elected in 2022, and has no national following. If the base wants a Trump clone, there are lots of other, more interesting choices available.

Day after day, year after year, Rush Limbaugh owns the libs. He tells his millions of devoted followers that the corrupt, self-dealing coastal elites look down on them, and that their way of life is in danger. He tells them to hate blue people. And they do.

It makes perfect sense that Trump gave Limbaugh an award during the last State of the Union, because the two have the same message. The difference is that you can choose not to listen to Limbaugh. Trump is on all of the time, and we can’t get away from him–at least not until January 20.

Imagine that you are a prominent PBP politician, and that it is the middle of 2023. The economy is stuck in neutral, Biden has announced he’s not running for re-election, and Harris is being challenged from the left. Things are looking up for you and the GOP.

Except, of course, for Donald Trump. It appears that he is serious about running. His campaign is focused on avenging himself on the RINOs who accepted the results of the 2020 election. He has as good as promised to be a true authoritarian next time around, and to ignore the Constitution whenever he sees fit. The polls say he has substantial support among GOP voters in spite of his ongoing legal and public relations problems, and he has no meaningful primary opposition as yet.

You know as well as anyone that Trump isn’t fit to be president–hell, he wasn’t fit last time. But you are afraid of his base, and he starts with vast advantages in resources and public support. So, what do you do? Do you rush to kiss his ring in the hopes that he will forget about your past disloyalty, even though you know he will destroy the country if he wins? Or do you stand and fight for the soul of the GOP, even with unfavorable odds?

This could happen. If it does, the answer to the questions will have a major impact on the fate of our country.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese migrant workers pack cold, overcrowded trains to return to their ancestral homes every Chinese New Year. Once there, they reconnect with family members they left behind, watch a bad TV program, honor their ancestors, and celebrate their roots and traditions at a time when the pace of change in their country has to feel overwhelming.

If you strip out the Christianity (on one side) and the crass commercialism (on the other) from Christmas, the experience which remains is actually very similar to the Chinese holiday. The universality of the need to embrace family and traditions should make you feel better about the holiday, not worse, particularly if you are a conservative in the true sense of the word.

Merry Christmas!

Dolly Parton has been ubiquitous this holiday season. Every time you turn on the TV, one of her specials or movies is on. She’s almost as big a part of Christmas as snow, the Rockettes, and Penatonix.

Dolly wears her Christianity on her sleeve, but it never grates. She is loved and admired by blue as well as red America. Why?

Because Dolly represents the Christianity of the Christmas carols. She offers compassion, tolerance, and inclusion, not anger and Trumpist bile. It’s a refreshing change, to say the least.

There is a message there for the religious right–not that they will pay any attention to it.

The Brexit deal is done–just a few hours before Christmas. Here is my evaluation of it:

1. From the EU’s perspective, the most important issue was to prevent the British from deviating substantially from EU rules. That will be accomplished through an arbitration process. The UK could, of course, try to ignore or sabotage the tribunal (think the US with the WTO here), but if it does, the EU can impose tariffs. It’s hard to see any gain for the UK here.
2. The agreement doesn’t include services, which means hard times for the City.
3. The soft border in the Irish Sea will remain. That’s not a good outcome if you think Northern Ireland is an integral part of the UK.
4. New paperwork requirements will cost time and money for both sides.

It’s hard for me to see how the UK will be better off with this deal in place. But, hey, it’s great if you’re a British fisherman!