Month: November 2021

The loss in Virginia comes with plenty of warning signs for 2022 and even 2024. What are the models for electoral success for the Democrats in the coming years, and will they work?

The current model, which has the support of a substantial majority of the party (progressives and moderates alike), is to win the base, and then to expand it, by making the party more attractive to workers through legislation and administrative actions that are openly pro-labor. This means abandoning, or at least mitigating, the dollar store economic model that has prevailed in this country for decades.

Will it work? The real questions here are: (1) can the Biden program get through Congress in some recognizable form? (2) if it does, will it make a significant difference in the lives of workers? and (3) if the answers to the first two questions are yes, will the Democrats get credit for it?

Right now, to be honest, I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. The infrastructure bill is now law, but it is the human capital bill which matters most, and its fate is uncertain. Worse, it has already been watered down, and the partisan divides in this country are so stark that many voters who would benefit from it may give the credit to the GOP.

So, we’ll see. There are two other models which could be used that put less emphasis on workers and tangible results. I will discuss them over the next two days.

Ignore, for the moment, my argument that it is patently unfair to require anyone to pay taxes on money he is legally obligated to pay (and not by choice) to another government. Disregard the fact that the limitation on the SALT deduction was a gratuitous slap in the face inflicted by red state representatives on blue state citizens. How do the politics of this issue shake out?

Imagine you are a moderately affluent resident of a blue state. You pay a hefty sum to your state and local governments in property taxes, because your state’s tax rate is high, and so are property values (think New Jersey or California). The Trump tax cut consequently increased your taxes. What are you going to do about it?

If your House and Senate members can’t reverse the impacts of the Trump legislation, you are fuel for a tax revolt in your state. That is what the GOP wants–to turn blue states red, by requiring them to cut taxes and services. From the progressive perspective, is this a risk you’re really ready to run? Is it really “progressive,” in the big picture, to encourage a reduction in the size of blue state governments?

The Progressive Caucus consists of well-meaning people with a fairly sound grasp of policy who suffer from delusions of grandeur as to their leverage over moderate Democrats and their support from the population as a whole. The Freedom Caucus is a bunch of nihilists who believe it is their mission to blow up the system and see what happens next. For them, it’s all about posturing, not policy.

The two groups are often compared, but as you can see, they’re very different.

No, seriously, this time it really is. Six progressives can go home and explain how they voted against something their constituents want in an obviously doomed effort to get the moderates to move on the human capital bill, while the moderates can try to explain why the deficit only matters relative to the human capital bill.

As for me, I’m just glad it’s done. Wake me up when the other bill is finished.

Left-wing woke warriors in universities and on the internet attempt to censor newly objectionable traditional opinions by economic means–typically, by trying to get the unpopular speaker punished or fired by his employer. Right-wing culture warriors use the power of the government to prohibit more progressive opinions in public schools. Some of them go so far as to engage in madcap insurrections, both at the state and federal level, when they don’t get their way through legal means.

While both groups want to censor opposing viewpoints, the clear difference between the two is that the right wants to use the government to get its way, and has had some success in red states. The woke left has neither guns nor political power; it relies solely on public opinion and the fears of businesses and institutions to accomplish its objectives.

Neither illiberal group is admirable, but which one is more dangerous? Do you really think the side with Twitter trigger fingers is worse than the side with guns?

Believe it or not, there is one! It sent representatives to Glasgow to argue that, while climate change actually does exist, any efforts to mitigate it, other than the increased use of nuclear power, smack of extremism.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to drive my environmentally friendly nuclear car.

One theory has it that it was the failure of Congress to pass Biden’s infrastructure and human capital bills that killed McAuliffe in Virginia. If that theory is correct, both the progressives and the moderates have a case against each other, although the progressives, unlike the moderates, patently lack the leverage to get what they want. A second theory is that McAuliffe lost because the GOP successfully ramped up the culture war on schools. If that was the case, any blame rests with woke activists in local government and on the internet, not on anyone in Congress, as there are no real left-wing culture warriors in any position of power in Washington. Finally, a third line of thought has it that McAuliffe’s failure was personal; he didn’t inspire anyone with his repeated attempts to tie Youngkin to Trump. There is probably some truth to that.

The bottom line is that blame cannot realistically be attached to any single grouping in Congress, as two of these scenarios don’t involve Congress at all, and responsibility for gridlock on the infrastructure and human capital bills rests with both factions. The best thing the Democrats can do is pass the two bills in some form and find a better way to deal with the culture war issues. I will be discussing their options next week.

The price of transitioning from a dollar store economy to a more worker-driven system (if it can be accomplished, which is very questionable at this point) is likely to be lower share prices and higher consumer prices. The price of moving quickly from fossil fuels to completely clean energy will be intermittent shortages of electricity and higher energy costs. The ultimate benefits of these systemic changes will exceed the costs, but it would be a mistake to behave as if the costs do not exist.

So far, I have seen no evidence that any Democratic leader is willing to level with the American people on these matters. The electorate is responding by complaining about rising prices for gas and consumer goods. There will be problems at the polls if the party doesn’t develop a more sophisticated message between now and 2022.

Popular opinion has it that there are only two positions in the culture war. The left supposedly consists solely of young wokes who view America as an evil empire and want to cram deference to racial and sexual minorities down the throats of guilty, privileged white people, while the right is a bunch of fanatical authoritarians who will stop at nothing to repress minorities, uphold outmoded religious values, and protect the ideological and financial interests of the white Christian patriarchy. Those positions clearly do exist, and get a disproportionate amount of attention from the media. They do not, however, represent the majority of Americans.

My guess is that the left-leaning culture warriors are about ten percent of the population, while the right-leaning types make up about twenty percent of Americans. The rest of us embrace traditional values and standard historical interpretations, but do not believe in imposing these ideas by censorship, and firmly reject discrimination against racial and sexual minorities. Most of us will side on a situational basis against the team that appears to be the aggressor. As a result, if the left is trying to indoctrinate our children with CRT, we are against that; but if the right wants to prohibit teaching about slavery, we are against that, as well.

The GOP is doing a better job of selling itself to the center as a collection of culture war victims than the Democrats. Hence, the outcome of yesterday’s elections.

First, if you are planning to rely on legislative accomplishments and improving conditions to prevail over right-wing culture war politics in a year without Trump at the top of the GOP ticket, you had better have some actual accomplishments to crow about.

Second, Trump is a wasting asset for the Democrats in elections in which the GOP candidate keeps his distance from the man on golf cart.

Third, as I have noted in several recent posts, it is far from clear that the public as a whole embraces the notion of transitioning from the dollar store economy to a more worker-friendly version, or from fossil fuels to more expensive and less reliable clean energy. The Democrats have a major selling job to do on these points. They didn’t win on those issues in 2020, but they might have lost on them yesterday.

Fourth, Joe Manchin is going to dig in even more, and the left has no leverage over him.

Finally, the election, of course, wasn’t rigged. Will that stop the right from saying that it was? Of course not!

Using the literal language of the Constitution to ascertain its meaning is simply normal legal practice. So is investigating the legislative history of disputed sections when they are ambiguous. But there are two serious problems with relying solely on text and historical practice: first, it is rare for either the text or the history to be crystal clear; and second, dramatically changed conditions over two centuries can make it impossible to ascertain the intent of the Framers in any meaningful way. What did James Madison think about the internet? Why would anyone even attempt to answer such a stupid question?

Well, we’re on the verge of engaging in a discussion like that with regard to guns. As I’ve noted before, the Court deliberately obfuscated history in order to find a personal right to bear arms in the Heller case. It is just a matter of time before the Court decides that an AR-15 is the contemporary equivalent of a musket, and therefore cannot be regulated by any level of government. Is that true, by any reasonable standard? Given the vastly increased destructive power of an AR-15 relative to any weapon existing in 1788, isn’t it fair to say that the understanding of the Framers with regard to muskets has no relevance to modern conditions?

You know the answers to those questions, but the Court doesn’t. Expect the worst.

Ezra Klein is on paternity leave, so the last episode of his show featured Ross Douthat interviewing another one of my extreme right-wing idols: Sohreb Ahmari. If you get a chance to listen to it, and you need something to increase your blood pressure, by all means, do it. Otherwise, I will fill you in.

Ahmari sounds almost sane in the first part of the interview, in which he talks about his early life in Iran (irony alert here!) and expresses admiration for Christian Democratic parties and ideas. His particular interest seems to be in reinstating blue laws, for the benefit of workers and society as a whole. There’s nothing particularly obnoxious about that.

In the second half, he goes off the rails and makes it clear that he is every bit the illiberal democrat/fascist that I thought he was. In a nutshell, his position is that we live in a left-wing totalitarian state that is effectively governed by woke corporations-most notably, of course, the big social media companies. Since these corporations, and therefore the left as a whole, stifle dissent and refuse to expose the truth, liberal democratic norms do not actually exist here. As a result, the right is entitled to engage in any tactics it likes in order to bring justice to America. There are no limits, other than those implied by Christian ethics. Oh, and if his ideal society sounds a lot like a Christian version of the Islamic Republic that his family fled in his youth, if it happens, it will be the fault of the left, just as the Shah is responsible for what happened in Iran.

This is, of course, completely absurd. Mark Zuckerberg is a ruthless businessman who wants desperately to get out of the censorship business, not a left-wing fanatic. The left dislikes him at least as much as the right does. The right has its own expansive media space that is not being censored by anyone. The “left” voted for Joe Biden, not some woke fanatic, much less Zuckerberg. The right has gained far more from social media than the left since Obama was elected in 2008. And it is the right that has all of the guns, and certainly appears to be willing to use them.

As to the limits imposed by Christianity, that shouldn’t reassure you very much. Franco was a devout Catholic. It certainly didn’t stop him from engaging in extermination tactics. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Ahmari and his friends, given power, would do exactly the same thing.

The Supreme Court has for years been aligned with the PBP faction of the GOP on the issue of corporate rights. The Court has been skeptical of regulations on business, and has acknowledged that corporations have rights under the First Amendment–even rights relating to the freedom of religion, no less! In historical terms, that puts the Court in complete alignment with the wishes of the GOP as a whole.

But the times, they are a-changing, and the Reactionary faction of the GOP is now in charge. There is plenty of angst within the party about “woke capitalism.” Big corporations, once viewed as party stalwarts, are now under suspicion as being agents of social liberalism. Unrestrained capitalism is now seen by many on the right as being bad for white Christian workers–i.e., “real Americans.”

Will this power shift within the party be reflected in a change in jurisprudence? We’ll see. My guess is that it will take some time; the Court doesn’t move that fast.

It is highly likely that the Supreme Court decided to give the case an expedited review in an effort to prove the justices aren’t unprincipled, partisan hacks. It is equally likely that the effort will fail.

The chances that the majority opinion will say anything meaningful about the constitutionality of the statute are very low (some of the individual opinions will be a different matter). I don’t even expect the Court to say much about the appropriateness of the bounty hunter aspects of the statute, which are its most obnoxious features. I think we will see a very narrow opinion which only addresses the standing question–whether abortion providers and the DOJ have the right, at this stage in the process, to challenge the statute, or whether standing will ultimately be limited to a party who is successfully sued and appeals in the ordinary course of business.

My best guess is that the Court will hold that the case is premature as to the providers, and that the DOJ does not have standing under any circumstances. That decision will have a reasonable legal basis. The real problem here, however, is the fact that the Court did not temporarily block the enforcement of the statute for the reasons set out by the Chief Justice when it considered the matter in the first place. If, as I suspect, the Court refuses to consider either the constitutionality of the statute or its bounty hunter provisions this time around, it cannot then turn around and argue that it is behaving in a nonpartisan manner.