Month: November 2021

Do I really have to talk about 1619 yet again? Yes, because it’s intensely political. It’s a salvo into the culture wars that we will have to deal with for years to come.

The review is written by Adam Hochschild, who apparently is a historian of some repute. In an effort to built credibility with people like me, he says that he had some qualms about the newspaper version of 1619. He then assures us that the book has resolved the vast majority of the original issues, that 1619 is just another useful strand in the national cloth, and that the remaining shortcomings of the book (Hannah-Jones still wants to talk about the Founders fighting the British to preserve slavery; slavery isn’t put in its larger international context; and the positive contributions of white people, including the deaths of 300,000 Union troops in the Civil War, are downplayed or disregarded) are “minor.”

Well, excuse me, but treating the Civil War as if it were a big tornado instead of what was viewed at the time as a gory moment of national redemption is not a “minor” shortcoming. And I will say it once again–1619 is not intended to be just another strand in the national cloth. It says slavery and racism are the national cloth; nothing else matters. It isn’t just the extreme right that objects to that proposition.

Let’s go micro. What are the principal causes of inflation, and what has Biden done to limit them?

Here they are:

1. HOUSING: This is an issue primarily driven by local regulations. Biden supported the eviction moratorium and has endorsed rules tying federal housing funds to zoning liberalization. It’s hard to see what more he could have done.
2. GASOLINE: The problems here are increased demand due to the waning of the pandemic and a lack of investment resulting from the proposed transition to green energy. The investment problem began years before Biden took office. He can’t be blamed for this.
3. COMPUTER CHIPS: These are manufactured outside of the US for reasons that have nothing to do with the Biden presidency.
4. GOODS PRODUCED IN CHINA: Here, we have supply chain issues: problems with the locations of containers; a lack of truck drivers; and issues with port capacity. Biden is doing his best to deal with the port capacity problem. There is nothing he can do with the other issues.
5. GOODS AND SERVICES PRODUCED IN AMERICA: This is mostly about the Great Resignation. The enhanced unemployment benefits and the stimulus payments might have had an impact initially, but the unemployment benefits have expired, and the stimulus has, for the most part, been spent. And anyway, would America be better off if the workers holding out for better jobs were stuck in their previous employment, with no hope of improvement?

The bottom line is that Biden is doing all he can. We just have to grit our teeth and wait it out. It’s not as if the GOP has a better answer, other than to induce enough misery among workers to force them back to their low wage jobs.

The GOP is already blaming Biden’s spending programs for our elevated inflation rate. Is that realistic?

Viewed at the macro level, the answer is no. Aggregate demand is not at extraordinary levels; the problem is that the pandemic has caused consumers to divert expenditures from services to goods, thus artificially increasing the demand (and thus prices) for the latter. This issue should be eliminated over time, as the virus has a waning impact on everyday life. In addition, the only significant Biden spending program that has actually been implemented is the 2021 virus emergency program, which represented a small percentage of GDP, and which has, for the most part, expired. The only lingering effect could be from the stimulus payments, which have probably been spent by now, and how could the GOP complain about them in any event? They were Trump’s idea. Finally, inflation is now an issue throughout the rest of the world. It isn’t just an American problem, which, of course, suggests that Biden is not to blame.

What about the micro level? Could Biden be doing more to address specific problems on the supply side? For that, see my next post.

The Rittenhouse and Aubery trials raise two extremely important legal questions pertaining to self-defense:

1. The system gives the police a great deal of deference as to split-second decisions on the use of deadly force. Should vigilantes be entitled to the same level of deference?
2. For a vigilante, is the fear that an unarmed person might take your gun and use it on you enough to make out a valid claim of self-defense?

The correct answers to these questions, of course, are no and no; otherwise, the law is basically authorizing anyone with a gun to use it on anyone at any time. Whether the juries in the two cases will agree remains to be seen.

Michelle takes note of the latest spasm of book banning from the right and advises the left that it needs the First Amendment, notwithstanding the current qualms of the woke. Without a legal commitment to free speech, censorship operates in favor of the powerful, and that usually means the right, not the woke.

Truer words have never been spoken.

The woke warriors would probably respond by saying that they don’t use the power of the state to control speech; they simply mob heretics on the internet. Is that a meaningful difference? For right-leaning victims, it probably is; they have their own safe spaces on the internet, and they don’t care about criticism from the left. For those of us on the center-left, no. We are the real victims of woke censorship, not the right.

The realo and fundi groupings in the Democratic Party tend to disagree on two different kinds of issues: fiscal and cultural. On fiscal issues, fundis want a dramatic expansion of the welfare state, while realos are only willing to mitigate the worst impacts of the dollar store economy, and worry about deficits and creating an “entitlement society.” On cultural issues, in a nutshell, fundis are woke, and realos are liberal. In other words, the fundis want to shrink the window of acceptable opinion, and move it to the left; realos want to keep it where it is.

Realos have done their best to shrink the Biden human capital bill on the basis that it is political poison–it goes too far for the voters, and drives them into the arms of the Republicans. They are wrong. The thunder on the right comes from cultural issues, not spending programs: Mr. Potato Head and vaccine mandates, not child care tax credits. For the purpose of winning votes, deficits and the size of government are just debating points; no one really cares about them.

If the Democrats really want to persuade the voters to ignore their culture war prejudices by making significant improvements to their material existence, they need to be bold on the Biden bill. Realos, take note, and don’t shoot at the wrong target; the fundis are wrong on wokeness, but they have a strong case on the welfare state.

I don’t know if Josh Hawley has ever been to Argentina, but it’s his spiritual home. He has a vision of America as the manufacturing center of the world, based on local content regulations for every product that has any reasonable connection to national security. It is a variant of Peronism, and a conceptual alternative to the dollar store economy supported by the vast majority of mainstream Republicans.

We’ve seen this movie before, and it doesn’t end well: cronyism; bureaucracy; inefficiency; soaring prices; and retaliation against our exports. It is a recipe for stagnation and misery, except for the handful of well-connected people who benefit directly from the protection of the new regulations.

At least the dollar store economy is efficient, even if it doesn’t distribute wealth fairly. The Peronist economy doesn’t get anything right.

Today’s GOP is a coalition of the elderly, business, and white workers distracted by the culture wars. The white workers tend to get all of the publicity, but the other two groups are equally important.

The Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds are going to run out of money in the foreseeable future. At that point, benefits will have to be cut significantly unless Congress is willing to raise taxes. That, in turn, means the GOP will have to choose between its elderly supporters and its aversion to raising taxes on wealthy businessmen (i.e., “makers” or “wealth creators.”)

To date, the elderly have simply refused to believe that their Republican buddies would leave them in the lurch. If the Democrats have any sense at all, they need to start talking about tax increases to shore up the entitlement programs in order to force a GOP response that can be used to divide and embarrass the party in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Kevin McCarthy apparently wants to strip the GOP House members who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill of their committee seats. By doing so, he sends the following messages to the electorate:

1. The GOP is a tiny tent, with no room for dissenters;
2. The GOP has no interest in actually participating in the process of governing unless it has complete control of the agenda; and
3. The GOP is totally unprincipled, as Trump wanted an infrastructure bill, too.

Mitch McConnell voted for the bill. Is McCarthy going to try and excommunicate him, and all of the other GOP senators who voted for it, as well? Does that make any sense at all?

Of course not. The real lesson here is that the GOP sees itself as an extremist, nihilistic party, and has no place for anyone who wants to do good for America. If you’re a Trumpist, you can say anything at all, and avoid punishment; if not, get ready for Exile Island.

The way forward for the GOP looks clear after Virginia, right? Trumpism without Trump, of course! Culture war 24/7, but without the rough edges of narcissism, corruption, and incompetence–that’s the trick! The electorate will lap it up, and America will be great again.

It will almost certainly work in some constituencies in 2022, but 2024 is a different matter, because the man on golf cart will be on the scene, and he can’t be ignored. If he decides to run, his overstuffed personality and record will be the primary issue in the election, because he’s incapable of having it any other way. If he doesn’t, all of the contenders will be falling all over themselves to kiss his ring. It will be a race to the bottom, and Biden will make sure the voters remember it, even if the winner tries desperately to move back to the center after the primaries.

There is another, albeit improbable, option. I will discuss it tomorrow.

The 46th President Joe

Got shellacked in Virginia, you know.

The omens look bad,

But don’t be so sad,

He’s still got three more years to go.

The central paradox of American politics, as I’ve noted before, is that the Democrats fight for programs designed to assist workers and the elderly, who then turn around and vote consistently for Republicans. This has gone on for a long time, but in the end, it cannot last. And it won’t.

Those young people who bestir themselves to vote are among the Democrats’ core supporters. At some point, you are going to see a generational equity candidate, who will advocate taking money from the well-fed elderly and using it to fight climate change and pay off student debt. We haven’t reached that tipping point yet, so it probably won’t happen in 2022 or 2024. But it is on the way. It is a matter of numbers.

Under the present circumstances, the last thing we need is a lengthy defense of the 1619 Project. And yet, that is exactly what the NYT has given us. Culture wars for everyone! Donald Trump and Steve Bannon will be thrilled.

The author, Jake Silverstein, treats us to a lengthy discussion of the history of American history writing and concludes what is happening today isn’t new, which is clearly true. What isn’t true is the implication that the purpose of the 1619 Project was simply to supplement and correct the record by providing information that is outside the standard narrative. The 1619 Project, on its face, wasn’t intended to supplement anything; it is a complete counternarrative of our history, which tells us the following:

1. America is an evil empire, conceived in racism and slavery, which has never really improved over time in spite of surface appearances;
2. All white people in America since 1619 have benefited in various ways from the oppression of black people, and so are guilty of the original sin;
3. Liberal democracy in this country, to the extent it exists, was created by black people, who are the only heroes in the American story; and
4. Racism is the central, and only meaningful, theme of our history. Nothing else really matters.

Since the 1619 Project is an identity politics counternarrative, not a supplement, it naturally glosses over or distorts facts that are inconsistent with the story. That is its central flaw–one that it shares with the whitewashed patriotism of the reactionary right to which it is supposed to be an antidote.

I will repeat myself, at the risk of boring the reader: slavery and racism are an essential part of American history, and so must be discussed openly and frankly in schools and elsewhere in the public sphere, but they are not the central narrative, let alone the only one. They shaped us, but they do not define us.

It is undeniably true that we are still millions of jobs below the pre-pandemic number. The right considers that evidence that the Biden economic plan is failing. Do they have a case?

Consider the reasons for the continuing deficit. By all accounts, they are:

1. Millions of relatively elderly workers could afford to retire during the worst of the pandemic, and decided to do so;
2. Some workers, particularly in high risk fields, still worry about catching the virus;
3. Some workers are continuing to stay home to take care of their children, given the problems finding affordable day care; and
4. Some workers are taking advantage of the condition of the job market and are holding out for better positions with higher wages.

The second and third reasons are genuine obstacles to economic growth; the Biden plan is designed to address them, over GOP resistance. #1 and #4, however, represent people rejecting jobs in what they reasonably believe is their self-interest. Would we really celebrate if the fourth group found that their opportunities had dried up, and that they were compelled to take any low-paying job that came available? Would that really be in the public interest?

If you’re a Republican, you probably think the answer to those two questions is yes, because you believe in low wages, high profits, and the dollar store economy. For obvious reasons, however, you are unlikely to admit that in public.

Bill Clinton wasn’t a culture warrior–far from it. Instead of defunding the police, he gave them more money. He signed, with considerable fanfare, a GOP bill cutting welfare, and enforced, with gusto, the death penalty in Arkansas. He supported a crime bill that disproportionately, and unfairly, impacted black people. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was his idea. He attacked the left wing of the Democratic Party. And, above all, he won elections with some support in the South and rural areas, even though his considerable personal shortcomings were hardly a state secret.

The Democratic Party could use him as a template for winning future elections. Moving to the right on culture war issues is a plausible solution to its federalism and gerrymandering problems. Will it happen? Probably not, because the Democrats have moved well to the left since his presidency, and because Clinton is viewed as a relic and a failure today. Still, if you are grasping for a different electoral model with a history of success, you could do much worse.