Month: September 2023

The two fighters have battered each other into exhaustion. In the red corner, the Russians have been reduced to begging North Korea for weapons and recycling the grain blockade idea; in the blue corner, Ukraine is still putting its hopes on new and better weapons from NATO. Neither is likely to result in a breakthrough any time soon.

What could break the stalemate? The only obvious answer to that is a Trump victory in 2024. I don’t see anything on the Ukrainian side that will do the trick.

I think we are headed for a Korean “solution.” Both sides’ losses are unsustainable, and are availing them very little. The pace of the war is likely to slow down as the world waits for the 2024 election.

I have often argued that the best way to deal with the autocratic right is to make some strategic compromises on culture war issues in order to buy time for liberal democracy. Most of the extremists are old people; the idea is to make them feel secure until they die out in the fairly near future. As Sarah Palin might say, how’s that appeasement thing working for you?

It isn’t by anyone’s design, but it is happening; the Supreme Court is busy carving out safe spaces for the right, and the red states are adopting culture war legislation as if there is no tomorrow. Will that satisfy the reactionaries? Based on the muted response to DeSantis and the lack of interest in wokeness at the first Republican debate, the correct answer is a ringing maybe.

According to the NYT, the DeSantis immigration legislation is driving Hispanic laborers who are needed to deal with Idalia damage away from Florida.

Thanks, Governor. Consider this another victory in your war on wokeness. Of course, Idalia victims won’t have any money to repair damage as the result of the DeSantis insurance reforms, so in a way, the absence of laborers won’t matter much.

We all know that Trump loves tariffs, so it should come as no surprise that he is now advocating for a ten percent levy on all imports–even from friendly countries. If implemented, this would be an enormous tax increase (supposedly despised by Republicans) that would cause inflation (ditto) and strain our relationships with our allies (of course, Trump doesn’t think we have any, except Bibi, MBS, and Putin). In addition, given our current labor shortages, there would be no way to find workers for the new industrial jobs he contemplates without a massive increase in immigration. So there!

This is about as close to economic insanity as you can get. The base will probably love it, though. So would Juan Peron. Let’s make America Argentina again.

Ben Sasse was wrong: all of the polls indicate that reactionary politics are, in fact, about the weird worship of one dude. Fortunately for us, he’s old and fat, so he won’t be around much longer. But what happens after that? Who carries the torch of Trumpism after Trump? Is it DeSantis, Ramaswamy, or someone else?

Here are my predictions:

1. DeSantis has offended too many members of the base by his presumption in running to be the heir apparent.
2. The base is never going to accept an overcaffeinated Hindu tech bro as the next Trump.
3. The most plausible alternatives in the foreseeable future are two senators who were sensible enough not to run in this cycle. They offer something different: Josh Hawley is an economic populist; while Tom Cotton is a grim authoritarian conservative. Who is the most likely choice? My money’s on Cotton, but it’s too early to tell.

Ronald Reagan is dead; it’s time to bury his ideas, too. The economy exists to serve society, not the other way around, and the American worker is suffering. Inequality is getting worse. The family is collapsing, and deaths of despair are on the rise. We need to harness the state to put an end to rampant, irresponsible corporate power and help real Americans earn a decent wage again. That’s the way to return America to genuine greatness.

Rubbish! The lives of American workers have never been better, thanks to the efforts of hardworking entrepreneurs, multiple rounds of tax cuts (which we supported), and various kinds of transfer payments (which we didn’t, but they help with the argument). The last thing we need to do is bail out shiftless workers and encourage them to seek refuge in the hammock of dependency. America is all about incentives and capitalism, and if creative destruction leads to losers as well as winners, so what? Just win, baby!

Guys! Guys! Can’t we just get along? The real enemy is the woke left! Let’s put this debate aside and focus on what really matters–ending abortion and sticking it to the LGBTQ community! We can argue about that other stuff later!

These are the three conflicting ideas about labor and inequality within the GOP. The first two are mutually exclusive. How does the party reconcile them? Historically, by actually supporting #2, which serves the donor class, but using lots of culture war rhetoric and empty gestures to pick off just enough workers to win elections.

The latest crop of presidential candidates is no different.

The seemingly monolithic reactionary base is actually split on two issues. The first is abortion: the extreme anti-abortion activists want a very tough national ban, but most of the base views the issue with a degree of pragmatism and sees a national ban as political poison. The second is LGTBQ issues: they are catnip for social conservatives, but many reactionaries have libertarian leanings, don’t even know any trans people, and don’t see how oppressing gay and trans people will improve their lives.

What does this mean in the big picture? That any attempt to win over the base by outflanking Trump to the right was only going to peel off a handful of votes.

Trump and the base will undoubtedly make some sort of attempt to prove to the electorate that Biden is the Wizard of Wokeness. They will fail, of course, because nobody will believe that an old white guy is woke. That’s Biden’s superpower. Then what?

You can expect Trump to pound on the alternative argument that Biden is just a frail figurehead, and that Harris is actually running the administration. As a black female, Harris obviously makes a more plausible target on the wokeness issue. VPs don’t typically get that level of attention during a presidential campaign, but this one will be an exception.

The truth is that no one in his right mind thinks Harris has much influence over Biden’s actions. Furthermore, Harris is a sharp, pragmatic politician, not a woke warrior. It will be up to her to prove it over the next year. She had better be ready.

If you think we’ve been here before, you’re right. The Freedom Caucus is making extreme demands, and Kevin McCarthy can’t control them. He’ll either have to make another deal with the Democrats, and thus put his job at risk, or preside over a government shutdown. Should we be worried?

This isn’t the debt ceiling chicken game, because: a shutdown won’t have anything like the impact of a debt default; we’ve been here lots of times before; the Republicans will be blamed for it; and there is no chance that Trump will be the ultimate beneficiary. This is a nuisance, not a crisis.

Are the fears of the base, well, baseless? Let’s look at the evidence supporting the seven propositions listed in my previous post:

1. It is certainly true that white Christian men played an enormous role in the construction of America as we know it today. It is equally true that other groups played a large role, as well. Can you imagine American culture without their contribution today?
2. The belief in entitlement to perpetual power is incompatible with liberal democracy. It is an ideology fit for the Confederate States of America, not the United States of America. Hence, the popularity of Confederate flags and statues on the right.
3. The demographic and ideological changes that so frighten the right are a fact, although reactionaries make them much worse than they need to be by embracing racism and attempting to impose their views on young people by force.
4. The left is, in fact, largely a coalition of women, seculars, and ethnic and sexual minorities who have been the victims of discrimination in the past. As to their objectives, see #5.
5. The reactionary fear here is mostly projection, as the left, unlike the right, actually supports American liberal democracy in spite of its innumerable historical failures. To the extent that the nightmare is supported by any evidence, it consists of the public health measures enacted during the pandemic and the rantings of a handful of activists at the local government level and on Sewer. The former were temporary, and no longer exist, to the regret of no one; the latter do not represent the opinions of any nationally prominent left-leaning figure, including AOC and Bernie Sanders.
6. As with #2, this view is incompatible with American liberal democracy. The interesting thing here is that most of the angry right has evaded the illiberal democracy question by pretending the 2020 election was stolen. Only a handful of activists have openly admitted that the rules of the game have to be changed dramatically in order to give themselves a monopoly on power; the majority still use liberal democratic rhetoric even if they don’t actually believe it because they can’t imagine a better alternative.
7. This is where the base parts ways with DeSantis. Unlike Trump, they don’t trust him not to sell them out, because he has gaudy establishment credentials, and he works to corrupt the system from within rather than burning it down.

On the wannabe Stalin named Vlad.

His Ukrainian venture’s gone bad.

Will he know when to quit?

Will he back off a bit?

If he won’t, he may wish that he had.

Trump’s federal cases went to trial during the campaign. To no one’s surprise, he was convicted in both, but he stayed out of prison pending appeals. The base shrugged it off. Whether the electorate as a whole would do so remained an open question.

At this point, Trump was clearly running, not just to run the country, but to stay out of jail. We already knew from 2020 that he recognized no limits. What would he do under these, more extreme circumstances?

Fortunately, this time, he isn’t in charge of the government, and he can’t count on the support of the military. That said, conditions in purple states are about to get very, very hairy, and sporadic violence is more likely than not.

By any reasonable historical standard, the American economy is doing very well right now. The unemployment rate is extremely low; inflation is effectively down to about 3 percent; interest rates are at historically normal levels; and the markets are doing just fine, thank you. And yet, Biden is getting little credit from the voters for this. Reagan had “Morning in America;” for Biden, it’s around 8:00 PM. Why?

Partisanship is a big part of the public relations problem, of course. The MSM haven’t helped, either; at times, NBC sounds a lot like Fox News when its reporters talk about the economy. I think, however, that the biggest problem is timing and expectations. The Reagan boom was sudden and dramatic, and came after years of grinding stagflation; the Biden boom is none of those things. People today take low unemployment and inflation levels for granted, because that is what they enjoyed before the pandemic.

Here are the articles of faith for the American reactionary right:

1. Their ancestors–white Christians, all–made America great.
2. God and the accomplishments of their ancestors gave them the right to rule America in perpetuity.
3. Demographic changes and the ongoing erosion of Christian faith in America have put their right to rule at risk.
4. The left is an unholy alliance of largely overeducated women, minorities, and seculars who hate them and want revenge for their previous powerlessness.
5. As a result, the left threatens real America with political and cultural annihilation.
6. Real America is entitled to fight back to save itself with any tool at its disposal.
7. Donald Trump is the indispensable man in this existential battle. His personality shortcomings are actually an asset in the battle, because they guarantee that he won’t sell out to the establishment. He has no limits–that’s exactly what the base needs.

Is there any evidence on the ground to support the articles of faith? I’ll discuss that tomorrow.

The McConnell Project, based on the filibuster and a compliant Supreme Court, has been a great benefit for the GOP and a huge liability for America. Mitch will have much to answer for when it is all said and done. So why am I rooting for him to recover now?

Because Mitch doesn’t want to burn it down, and he has a record of keeping the crazoids in the Senate under control. His successor, whoever it may be, probably won’t be as successful. Does America really need another version of the GOP House and a second Kevin McCarthy?

You already know the answer to that.