Month: July 2023

One of Trump’s greatest “accomplishments” was to change the electoral model for GOP candidates. Before him, the typical candidate ran hard to the right during the primaries, but moved to the center to pick up swing votes during the general election; Trump, on the other hand, argued that electoral success required nonstop pandering to the base, with no pivot during the general election. The Trump model failed in 2018, 2020, and 2022, but most Republicans still adhere to it. What does that mean for the PBPs?

It means the GOP will assume they have nowhere else to go and take their votes for granted in 2024. And it means, if they want to be heard, they need to unite behind a candidate other than Trump or DeSantis who will take their concerns seriously, and stop talking so much about retribution and wokeness.

Clarence Thomas is a Catholic. So is Samuel Alito. So is Ron DeSantis. So are Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari, Adrian Vermeule, Ross Douthat, and Michael Anton. Rod Dreher used to be one. What else do these men have in common? They are all prominent reactionaries, of course. They are intellectual leaders of the New Right; their opinions will matter to the next Republican president; and they don’t have much respect for American liberal democracy.

Is that a coincidence? It would be absurd to argue that most Catholics are reactionaries, or that most reactionaries are Catholics, but the answer is no. The Catholic Church is authoritarian by design, and has a history of behaving despotically that predates the Declaration and the Constitution by centuries. Its leaders admire Thomas Aquinas, not Thomas Jefferson. Anyone who completely embraces its intellectual traditions and political pretensions is going to have a hard time reconciling them with the checks and balances inherent in liberal democracy.

The practical problem for Catholic reactionary leaders is that only a very small percentage of Americans (including Catholic voters) accept their opinions. They don’t even speak for a majority of reactionaries–the numbers favor right-wing Protestants, whose very different governing style was largely created in opposition to Catholic authoritarianism. As a result, the American Catholic theocracy they really want is never going to happen. The best they can possibly hope for is a loose united front with reactionary evangelical Protestants aimed at suppressing non-believers in which the evangelicals will hold most of the power.

C: The debates are scheduled to start in about a month. How would you assess the campaign so far?

S: Great!

M: Terrible!

C: Let’s start with you, Sebastian. Why are you so happy about the way things are going?

S: Because Trump is way ahead in the polls. He’s kicking DeSanctus ass all over the place. DeSanctus will be back in Florida crying his eyes out in a few months. He’s toast.

C: Why do you prefer Trump to DeSantis?

S: Because he was owning the libs long before DeSantis ever thought of it. Because DeSantis owes him his job. And because Trump is determined to burn it down. I know I can trust him on that. With DeSanctus, who knows? He’d probably just sell me out.

C: Aren’t you impressed with DeSantis’ record on wokeness?

S: I don’t even know what that means. It doesn’t have anything to do with my life. Trump is going to punish the people I hate–that’s all I need to know.

C: Mark, why do you say the campaign has been terrible?

M: Because nobody is talking about the issues that I care about. Trump just wants to burn it down and stick it to the people he hates–including me, I suppose. He doesn’t even pretend to have a program to make my life better; it’s all about him and revenge. And all DeSantis talks about is wokeness. What does that mean to me? Not a damn thing.

S: At least we agree on something.

C: You don’t think uprooting wokeness will improve your life?

M: I’m a car dealer. I’m worried about labor costs, taxes, and regulations. I don’t have any trans employees, and I doubt I have any trans customers. It just doesn’t matter to me.

C: How is your business?

M: We’re doing well, thank you. We’re not selling as many cars as we used to, but with the price increases, we’re making more money than ever before.

C: Some people call that greedflation.

M: I call it the free enterprise system. If you don’t like it, move to China.

C: Do you have a candidate at this point?

M: Not really. Maybe Tim Scott. I just want someone to start talking about the economy in a way that makes sense. The other stuff is less important.

C: Let me change topics completely at this point. Did either of you see “Barbie?”

M: My wife went. She loved it. I stayed home and watched sports.

S: Hell will freeze over before I would go to that movie.

C: Why?

S: All that crap about the patriarchy. The Bible says men are supposed to rule over women. God is a man. That’s all I need to know.

C: Do you think Barbie is a feminazi?

S: Absolutely! Women have way too much power in this country. That’s why we’ve gone completely soft. In my day, that movie wouldn’t even have been made, because nobody would have watched it. That’s why we need Trump–to take us back where we were when we were great.

M: My wife would disagree with you on that.

S: Who cares what she thinks? Or what you think, you RINO?

M: I’m out of here.

Vox failed to meet expectations in the Spanish election, and the reactionaries lost control of the UK when Boris left town, but elsewhere, things are looking up. A reactionary is the PM of Italy; a reactionary will probably go into the next French presidential election as the favorite; the German reactionary party could be in the next government; and, of course, the most dangerous reactionary of all is the presumptive GOP nominee for president in the US. Right-wing populism is a European as well as an American phenomenon. Why?

Europe and the US have three things in common:

1. The replacement of a manufacturing-based economy with one based on services and knowledge, which devalues the strengths of men and consequently threatens their social and economic status relative to women;
2. Large amounts of illegal immigration; and
3. Decreasing numbers of Christians, which troubles the devout greatly.

These issues aren’t going away any time soon, so neither are the reactionaries.

Most extreme right-wingers view Trump as the ideal instrument to burn it down; his anger and narcissism, which are liabilities to most politicians, to them are guarantees that he will stop at nothing to destroy American liberal democracy in his and their interest. Let’s assume they’re right. What happens next? What is the reactionary scheme for America after liberal democracy is dead?

As far as I can tell, there are three separate visions:

1. RETURN OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION: This is the essence of the “national divorce” recommended by MTG. I discussed the logical and practical issues with it in a previous series, but it has the advantages of being grounded in American history and leaving the blue states more or less alone.
2. RULE OF THE TECH BROS: Musk and Thiel have allied themselves with reactionaries in the hope of sweeping away regulations and giving themselves complete freedom to do whatever they want. It is a bargain that is likely to end badly for them, given the nature of the people on the other side of the deal, but they call themselves geniuses, so what do I know?
3. NATIONAL THEOCRACY: Christians will regain the absolute right to govern America as they see fit. We will have a 21st century Test Act and lots of new federal statutes discriminating against non-Christians; the First Amendment as we have known it will cease to exist. The Catholic reactionary leaders of the movement would probably prefer to exclude evangelicals from the ruling class (see a future post), but that will prove impossible, so they will continue their alliance of convenience until an opportunity to break it presents itself.

Which of these visions is the most plausible? I would have to vote for #1.

As far as I can tell, Ron DeSantis viewed Jack Smith as his deus ex machina. He could campaign without laying a glove on Trump and still win, because the GOP electorate would never nominate someone who was under federal indictment. He could stand strong with the base, attack the deep state, unite the party, and have the nomination simply fall into his hands. It was perfect.

Except it wasn’t, because the base isn’t appalled by the indictments, which it views, regardless of the evidence, as more proof of the depravity of the deep state. As a result, Trump is way ahead in the polls. In addition, DeSantis is finding that his laser focus on wokeness is too abstract and remote from the everyday concerns of GOP voters to move them much. So what does he do now?

Plan B, logically, would be an economic plan that sets him apart from the other candidates and actually promises to make the lives of GOP voters better. This could take one of two completely different forms: either a populist-friendly focus on reactionary workers over capitalists; or a dramatic attempt to suck up to the donor class by offering some sort of radically regressive change to the tax system, such as a flat tax. The former has never been tried by any GOP presidential candidate in my lifetime; the latter has been proposed many times, and has always flopped miserably.

Will DeSantis choose one of these two options, or stick with the existing plan and watch his campaign go down the drain? We’ll see.

She said, “Your debutante just knows what you need, but I know what you want.”

—————-Dylan

The Democrats are a coalition of minorities, the well-educated, young people, and women. In an age of identity politics, is it any surprise that they really want a presidential nominee who looks like them: young; charismatic; black or racially mixed; and female or metrosexual? Someone like Barack Obama?

Biden clearly isn’t any of those things, which is why the party is, in Dylan’s words, “stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again.” In spite of his mostly impressive record, millions of Democratic voters don’t really want him to run again. But Biden is the perfect foil for Trump. As an old white guy with a record of moderation, he can’t be credibly accused of being woke or socialist. No one else in the Democratic party has those advantages.

In the end, it is the view of the Rolling Stones that prevails here. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.

By what right do Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg set the rules for speech in America? For Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham, the answer is clear–none. They have proposed to create a new independent, bipartisan agency that would rein in the power and excesses of big tech. Is that a good idea?

It sounds like it, until you consider the following:

1. First Amendment rights are currently adjudicated by an allegedly apolitical body–the Supreme Court. How’s that working for you these days?
2. The new agency sounds a good deal like the FEC, which is completely impotent due to ongoing partisan wrangling.
3. Lindsey Graham’s favorite golfing buddy has already made it clear that he wants to put our existing independent agencies under presidential control pursuant to the unitary executive theory. If you add the legislative proposal to Trump’s ambitions, you are setting the stage for a GOP Secretary of Internet Censorship.

The bottom line here is that the Warren/Graham proposal would only work in a society in which there is general agreement about what is and isn’t protected speech. Without that agreement, leaving the issues to tech giants, while hardly a perfect solution, is probably the least unsafe way to deal with censorship questions.

Spain’s Socialist government had a pretty good argument to make to the electorate: unemployment was low; the economy was growing; and issues with the Basque and Catalonian nationalists were under better control. Nevertheless, the polls indicated that the government was going to lose badly. A right-wing government was a virtual certainty.

Sanchez made the election a referendum on right-wing extremism. It paid off; in spite of his low popularity ratings in the polls, the voters basically supported the status quo.

Does this bode well for Biden, who figures to run a similar campaign under similar circumstances? You bet it does.

If you wanted to describe DeSantis’ ideology in one short phrase, it would be “freedom for me, but not for thee.” The first part of this is libertarian, and plays well in blue states like New Hampshire; the second is reactionary, and is designed to appeal to social conservatives in red states, such as Iowa. As far as I can tell, DeSantis is trying to emphasize the first part in his campaign appearances in New Hampshire, but his war on wokeness is drowning out the pitch to libertarians. Is there anything he can do to fix this?

He needs to understand that his path to the nomination runs primarily through the blue states, and that his message should be calibrated accordingly. Trump is going to win a majority of the reactionary vote no matter what he does; trying to be crimson to Trump’s scarlet is a waste of time and money. If he has any sense, he will spend less time on wokeness and more on freedom.

Biden is trying to enforce a seriously flawed immigration statute with very limited resources in a way that is orderly, predictable, and humane. For his pains, he is being attacked in court by both the left and right. Both extremes are having some success in their respective federal forum of choice. Today’s decision by a California judge favoring the left on the latest immigration rule is a case in point.

What is the guy supposed to do? Without a lot more resources and a clear, reasonable legal standard, there is no solution to this problem. At some point, the posturing has to end, and the two sides need to deal with the practical implications of their preferred outcomes.

Update: I’ve read today’s opinion. It makes absolutely no reference whatsoever to the practical problems of dealing with countless thousands of asylum claims in this country. I’m willing to bet that the judge in Amarillo would see it differently.

Any number of prominent economists have been warning us for months that a nasty recession is just around the corner. Yesterday, The Economist and an NYT columnist made the case that the recession, although long delayed, is still coming. Are they right, or are they waiting for Godot?

The business cycle still exists, so at some point, they will inevitably be right. In the near future, however, the recession will only arrive if the wealthy consumers who are continuing to spend regardless of the Fed’s actions lose confidence and pull back. What could make that happen? I can only think of two things: an unanticipated external shock that crushes the markets and asset prices; or a decision by the Fed to dramatically increase rates and keep them artificially high for an unexpectedly long period of time. The former is possible; the latter is highly unlikely.

There is an important point to be made here: similar to presidential approval ratings, consumer confidence surveys aren’t as relevant as they used to be, because the dollar store economy runs on the spending of the affluent, not what is left of the middle class. Inflation and consumer spending are all tied to increasing levels of inequality in a way that was not true 20 years ago.

For whatever reason, Trump isn’t trying very hard to win in Iowa. He insulted the governor; he offended the anti-abortion activists; and he skipped campaign events. He may well not participate in most of the debates, as well. If he manages to prevail in Iowa in spite of all of this, the rest of the process will be a coronation. Nobody will have the resources and the momentum to stop him.

But assume for the moment that DeSantis takes advantage of the opportunity given to him, overwhelms Pence with grim determination and superior resources, and rides the social conservative vote to a narrow win in Iowa. He’s now roughly in the position that Cruz was in 2016. What happens next?

The DeSantis message of increasing government power to fight wokeness doesn’t resonate in libertarian New Hampshire. Christie, Scott, and Haley help to split the anti-Trump vote. Trump wins here by a fairly large margin even though he doesn’t have a majority.

Trump also wins in Nevada. Pence has already dropped out at this point, and Ramaswamy is a non-factor, since he doesn’t disagree with Trump on anything important. DeSantis doesn’t gain much traction in South Carolina, and Scott and Haley divide the hometown moderate vote. Trump wins, and Scott and Haley drop out, correctly seeing no realistic path to the nomination.

DeSantis is now effectively in a two-man race, which is what he wanted from the beginning. But he’s well behind, and he’s running out of resources. He absolutely has to win Florida to have a reasonable chance. Does he get it?

Probably not.

Maybe I can get Jason Aldean to cover this.

THE BATTLE HYMN OF RED AMERICA

Every morning I drive my truck

A mile or so to the 7-11

And buy up all the beer in stock.

I tell myself, this must be heaven.

_______________

Every day I go to work.

I kick the red clay off my shoes

And dream how Trump will burn it down.

It’s not like I have much to lose.

__________________________

Every night before I sleep

I hit my knees and ask for grace.

I pray to God to keep me free

And keep the liberals in their place.

____________

This is God’s country.

God’s country.

We’ll kick your ass if you don’t believe it.

This is God’s country.

God’s country.

If you don’t love it, feel free to leave it.

Progressives want Biden to spend more time talking about reforming the Supreme Court, and with good reason; the major questions doctrine is going to make it impossible for them to solve social problems with regulations. So far, Biden has refused. Why?

For a variety of reasons:

1. There is no realistic prospect of doing anything about the Court in the next few years;
2. Biden knows what happened to FDR’s ratings after his proposal to pack the Court;
3. He also knows that the Court has inadvertently handed him some important political gifts by overturning abortion rights and eliminating affirmative action; and
4. Most importantly, Biden undoubtedly plans to run as an institutional conservative against a reactionary extremist who suggested terminating the Constitution less than a year ago. He would be muddling the message of safety and stability by proposing any kind of dramatic Supreme Court reform in his platform.

I expect Supreme Court reform to be high on the priority list for the Democratic candidates in 2028. At that point, one way or another, Trump will be out of the picture. For now, however, Biden’s stance makes perfect sense.