Month: November 2022

I was looking at an NYT map which showed the margins of victory in all of the House races this morning. What I found, at least for my home states, was that there were only a few races in which the loser was even in shouting distance of the winner. What does that tell us about our system, and the future?

The combination of natural sorting, gerrymandering, and the predominance of culture wars means that wave elections are an endangered species. The pandemic and the resulting economic slump didn’t do it in 2020, and inflation didn’t do it this time. There just aren’t enough marginal seats, and enough voters willing to support change for economic reasons, to make it work.

Bill Clinton was famous for the statement “It’s the economy, stupid.” That was true when he was running, but it isn’t anymore. The result of this election proves it.

What could change the equilibrium? A decision by Trump to burn down the GOP if it doesn’t fall into line. It could happen. I will discuss that further at a later date.

Ross Douthat thinks that Dobbs is best understood as an opportunity for the pro-life side to persuade the rest of us that abortion is both wrong and unnecessary. I agree. However, his dream will never come true, for the following reasons:

1. As I have noted innumerable times, the genuinely “pro-life” component of the opponents to abortion is relatively small. Reactionary red state politicians interested only in making the lives of “wayward” women miserable consequently are not politically compelled to pay any attention to pro-lifers who want to make them better. That is why the states with the most restrictive abortion regimes typically have the flimsiest welfare states.
2. Douthat imagines a scenario in which the pro-lifers join the left to expand the welfare state to improve the lot of pregnant women. Because, in addition to being a numerically insignificant group, the genuine pro-lifers are typically absolutists, there is no way they will ever reach a grand bargain with the left, which would have to include permitting abortion under some limited circumstances. So long as that kind of deal is implausible, the pro-lifers will never have any leverage with the rest of the reactionaries.

Imagine that you are a resident of Georgia. For months, you have been subjected to an unrelenting barrage of political ads about crime, inflation, and abortion. You know more about Herschel Walker’s sex life than you ever hoped to learn. You thought your ordeal had come to an end. But no! Now you are looking at another month of the same ads, quite possibly with control of the Senate at stake. The pressure will be unendurable. Will no one put you out of your misery?

You don’t need this. Neither does America. So pray that Cortez Masto takes the pressure off you by finding about 800 votes in Nevada. That would make a victory in Georgia nice, but not essential.

The news indicates that inflation is ebbing slightly. The markets rejoice. Wealthy people with money in the markets breathe a sigh of relief, and resume spending. Inflation goes up. The Fed raises interest rates. Markets slump. Inflation drops. We begin again.

The bottom line here is that, to the extent the Fed has any real control over spending that is fueled by the savings of the affluent, not borrowed money, it will be relying on its ability to crush confidence by driving down the markets. That probably means interest rates will have to rise to a level beyond what the fundamentals would say are necessary to put an end to the cycle.

No, it’s not Trump. It’s Rick Scott, who clearly believed this was another Tea Party moment that would propel him into the White House in 2024. Instead, he’s almost certainly going to be an unpopular member, on the outs with the leadership and his side’s rising star, of the minority party in the Senate. Boredom and insignificance looms for a man who undoubtedly thinks he should be the CEO of America, LLC.

Runners-up: Trump and Vladimir Putin, who also lost Kherson this week. Talk about a guy having a tough year!

Jonathan Chait described “Ron DeSanctimonious” as a “low energy nickname.” I agree. Trump uses one-syllable words; “sanctimonious” sounds like something he got out of a thesaurus. It isn’t as punchy as “Sleepy Joe” or “Lyin’ Ted” or “Crooked Hillary.” It just isn’t authentic. I’m not even sure his followers know what it means.

My advice? Go with “Ron the RINO.” After all, anyone who doesn’t openly agree that the 2020 election was rigged can’t be a real Republican, can he?

Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by around 3 million votes against a highly unpopular opponent who essentially represented the status quo after two Obama terms. He only won the election because he was lucky enough to squeak out tiny victories in swing states.

In 2018, the Democrats flipped 41 seats in the House even though the economy was in relatively good shape. In 2020, Trump lost by 7 million votes even though the GOP won seats in the House and fared surprisingly well in the Senate races, where the deck was stacked against them. Now this.

Will the Republicans ever learn that Trump is a loser? That he is effectively a drag on their party? That he is the weakest possible nominee for them in 2024?

Given that they still profess to believe that tax cuts and deregulation are the solution to every possible economic problem, probably not.

On the 45th President Trump.

A bad midterm continued his slump.

A brand new nickname

Sounds to me rather lame.

Will DeSantis cause him to be dumped?

Imagine that you are Justice Alito. You could read the returns as a clear rebuke to your opinion in Dobbs, which can’t make you feel too good. Should you moderate your opinions in the coming year in order to help the GOP in 2024, or stay the course and keep waving the reactionary flag?

My guess is you choose Option B, partly because that’s who you are, and partly because you see nothing but gridlock between Congress and Biden over the next two years. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Where a void exists, the judiciary will feel comfortable filling it.

Why did the Democrats nominate an old white guy in 2020? Precisely because he is an old white guy. Trump’s favorite campaign tactic is to focus on identity issues; Biden made that impossible. That’s the single biggest reason he won, and why he should run again in 2024 if Trump is the GOP nominee.

But what if DeSantis is the nominee? He presents a different kind of challenge, because his appeal is based on ideology, not identity. He wants to run against wokeness and socialism. Putting Biden on stage with him would lead to disaster. With that in mind, here are some potential Democratic candidates, listed in reverse order, based on their chances of beating DeSantis:

5. Gavin Newsom: He’s certainly a willing culture warrior, but I’m afraid that the middle of the country might prefer Florida to California, which is how the campaign would be defined.

4. Kamala Harris: She needs to improve her campaign skills before we send her out to slay the reactionary dragon.

3. Pete Buttigieg: He has the intellectual skills to get it done, but he sounds too much like a technocrat, he’s too closely identified with Biden, and being gay doesn’t help in a campaign about wokeness.

2. Amy Klobuchar: She’s an experienced and competent campaigner, and she doesn’t bring much baggage to the table. But the winner is:

Elizabeth Warren. Surprised? She was the worst possible nominee against Trump, but the best against DeSantis. No longer in a position to advocate for massive federal spending programs, but not particularly identified with wokeness, she could make the case for liberal democracy better than any of the other candidates. Notwithstanding her age, she’s smart, passionate, and the best debater of the lot. She could tear DeSantis to ribbons.

As of the time I’m writing this, the GOP election deniers in Arizona are behind. What will they do if they lose? Will they call militias out on the street? Will there be riots? Or will the whole thing just fizzle out?

The answers to those questions matter. Bolsonaro has already set a hopeful precedent. Liberal democracy in America will be in much better shape for 2024 if the losers just slink away quietly.

We’ll know more as time goes on, but here are my first impressions:

1. My prediction from last year is looking pretty good, isn’t it?
2. It was based on the identification of the GOP with unpopular culture war positions. That approach gives the GOP a floor in bad times, but a ceiling in good times.
3. Pennsylvania isn’t the Land of Oz. Maybe it’s New Jersey.
4. DeSantis is the big winner of the night. He is now perfectly placed to take on Trump in 2024. Trump is clearly determined to prevent him from doing so. Will the Hungarian Candidate have the nerve to try? We’ll see.
5. McCarthy is likely to have a small majority, which means the “burn it down” caucus will be in charge. That’s not good for America, to say the least.

The GOP is set to retake control of Congress. What can we expect from the factions on fiscal policy?

There won’t be enough CD members of Congress to matter. As for the rest of the factions, here is where they stand:

1. PBPs: Tax cuts. Tax cuts. TAX CUTS! We would make a deal with Hitler if he gave us tax cuts.
2. CLs: Tax cuts are great, of course, but the priority has to be on massive spending cuts. Spending turns Americans into wards of the state; it makes them lazy and deprives them of their cherished freedoms to be sick and destitute.
3. Reactionaries: We need a strong state to support white Christians and cudgel everyone else. Increase spending on us, but cut it for the bad guys.

These are three very different agendas. How will McCarthy merge them? By proposing to make the Trump individual tax cuts permanent, cutting spending on “welfare,” and leaving white middle-class entitlements alone. That program will maintain party unity, which, of course, is the key to remaining in power.

Reactionaries all over the world long for a bygone age in which burly men doing hard physical labor ruled the roost and made their country great. What makes American reactionaries different from their European counterparts?

Let’s put it this way: Trump 1.0 identified “the other” as illegal immigrants, but Trump 2.0 will say that anyone who voted against him in 2020 is the enemy. Demonizing over half your population, and openly proposing to oppress them, is uniquely dangerous. It’s also hard sledding in elections unless the system itself has been corrupted, which, of course, is logically the next step in the process.

Big Blue has been struggling mightily to find a way to appeal to white workers without college degrees. Since the economic argument hasn’t worked, and changing sides in the culture war is pretty much out of the question, the only remaining option is style. Ryan and Fetterman are white men who bring plenty of swagger to the table, so they embody this alternative.

Will it work? Ryan has a fighting chance in a state that is, at this point, far more scarlet than gray. Fetterman was comfortably ahead, but he is being hobbled by his medical problem, which makes drawing definitive conclusions about the macho white guy experiment more difficult. It may be, in the final analysis, that the GOP gains control of the Senate due solely to his stroke.

Of such accidents are “mandates” sometimes constructed.