Month: August 2024

It appeared that we were stumbling into oblivion with Biden as the nominee. Harris has brought us hope. I appreciate that.

But don’t be fooled; we are looking at two grim alternatives after the election. Harris is still the underdog. If she loses, we will be at the mercy of a man who has consistently demanded revenge on his enemies–meaning everyone who didn’t give him unqualified support–for the next four years. If she wins, that same man will be calling for war on the streets in order to keep himself out of jail. There is little reason to doubt that the hard core of the red base will respond, particularly since the president-elect will now be a black female, not another old white guy. Then what?

It won’t be pretty, that’s for sure.

After the war and the Spanish Flu came the Roaring Twenties. In the popular imagination, it was a time of of prosperity and hedonism–of Al Capone, Jay Gatsby, and flappers dancing the Charleston. It was the party that would never end, until the Great Depression came crashing down, and it did.

But that is only part of the picture. The Roaring Twenties were a time of furious cultural warfare, as the rural white Protestant majority attempted to regain control of the country. Prohibition was imposed; a new racist immigration law was adopted; the Scopes trial took place; Al Smith was crushed in 1928; and the Klan was revived, even in some northern states.

We’re reliving the second part of the picture. We skipped the first part, for better or worse.

Walz provides identity balance for the ticket. He may win a few votes in the Midwest. He’s pretty good on TV. He comes from possibly the only state in which progressive politics mix with rural residents. He can plausibly accuse J.D. Vance of being a member of the coastal elite. That would be fun.

But the more compelling case for Walz is what he won’t do. He won’t alienate the left or the center. He won’t cost the Democrats any votes in Michigan. Most of all, unlike some of the other candidates for the job, he isn’t indispensable where he is now. Minnesota is not a swing state, and his replacement will be a Democrat. If Harris wins, the blue team won’t pay any price for it.

I agree with the choice.

Under the most optimistic scenario, the Democrats will win the House and keep 50 seats in the Senate. That’s it. A more realistic scenario has the GOP winning a tiny majority in the Senate. As a result, the opportunities for Harris and the Democrats to do much meaningful legislating will be few and far between.

There is one exception to this rule–the Trump individual tax cuts are expiring next year, which would give Harris considerable leverage with the Republicans in the Senate, who will desperately want to keep them. Would Harris look at the deficit and let them expire, or would she make a deal in which the tax cuts for the wealthy are traded for additional spending on social programs such as the child tax credit?

Harris, like most Democrats (and, for that matter, Republicans) doesn’t seem to care much about the deficit. In addition, Congress has been allergic to difficult tradeoffs for many years. My money is on the second option.

Inflation was a worldwide phenomenon created primarily by pandemic-related supply chain issues. Harris had approximately zero percent responsibility for it. Nevertheless, Trump will keep hammering her on the issue, and some of it will undoubtedly stick.

So how should she respond? In three ways. First, by noting the improvement over the last 18 months. Second, by emphasizing the efforts made by Biden-Harris to reduce prices, most notably of prescription drugs. Third, and most importantly, by talking about Trump’s tariffs at every opportunity. The public is not aware of them yet. It needs to be.

The Harris campaign failed in 2020 because, like most of the candidates, she didn’t know how to posture herself as a unique and compelling figure between the extremes of Sanders on the left and Biden on the right. That won’t be a problem in this election; the Democratic Party is united in its opposition to Trump, and Harris doesn’t deviate from it on policy in any meaningful way. As a result, fears that this campaign will be a rerun of the last are misplaced. The task is much more straightforward this time, and Trump is an unpopular opponent with little experience trying to woo centrist voters.

To date, there have been no major missteps by the campaign even under remarkably unusual circumstances. Harris replaced Biden without knifing him in the back. She united the party behind her in a matter of a few days. Her commercials are sharper than Biden’s. The race is now a dead heat even before the convention. Can the good news last?

Yes, it can. Will it? I don’t know.

Trump and the Republicans are basically staking everything on the border issue. To me, it’s a bad bet. Yes, the American public is concerned about chaos and cost; it wants an orderly system, and it doesn’t want to pay for it. But it doesn’t support deliberate acts of cruelty, which are exactly what the Trump campaign has to offer, and it can see for itself that the allegations about immigrants committing massive numbers of crimes and causing inflation are rubbish.

Harris needs to get out front on this issue. It isn’t enough to argue that the situation has improved over the last few months, and that Trump torpedoed a legislative compromise that would have helped sooner. Harris should spend a lot of time talking about the Trump plan, including the unlawful raids by the military, the massive deportation camps, the cruelty of family separation, and the impacts to the economy of deporting so many essential workers. The public has no idea this is on the menu. It needs to know ASAP.

The blue team is feeling much better with Harris as the nominee; she brings hope and energy where none existed before. That’s good, but partisan enthusiasm alone won’t win in November. After all, the red team feels the same way about their guy.

This election will be decided by a handful of undecided voters in a few swing states. To some extent, they will be swayed by the state of the economy in November; Harris has little control over that. The other critical factor will be whether Harris can prove she is the only candidate in the race who is fit to be president. That is an issue over which she does, in fact, have considerable say.

Job 1 for Harris is to make the election a referendum on Trump’s fitness, not on the Biden economy. She can do that by choosing a good running mate, by sounding firm and competent on the stump, by taking reasonable positions on matters of policy, and by pointing out the implications of the Trump agenda for average people. The rest is up to Trump. If history is any guide–including the events of the last week or so–he’s more than ready to destroy himself in the eyes of moderates.

The perceptive reader will see that there are two notable absences from Job 1. It is not necessary for Harris to put forth a detailed and compelling vision for the future, and focusing on Trump’s criminal past is a waste of time and energy. The first is too divisive to attract swing voters, and the second simply emphasizes the obvious.

For some reason, J.D. Vance has decided his name should be spelled without periods. I won’t acknowledge his preference. Why?

For two reasons. First, only successful rappers have the right to use initials without periods. Second, Trump deliberately mispronounces “Kamala” all the time on the campaign trail as a gesture of contempt. In light of that, why shouldn’t I misspell Vance’s name?

Some members of the New Right would attribute the increased economic power of women–and to them, the decline of the traditional family–to the failures of neoliberal economics. Their response is a combination of universal tariffs and deportations. The former is designed to revive dead or dying manufacturing and mineral extraction industries that mostly employ men; the latter is intended to create labor shortages. Put together, the idea is to create additional demand, and higher wages, for men, which will make them more desirable marriage candidates, which will lead to traditional families with one male wage earner, which will bring back the 1950s. Goodbye, childless cat ladies!

I have previously listed the reasons why the tariffs and deportations are likely to fail in their objective, so the return to the 1950s is unlikely to occur; instead, we will have higher inflation, failing businesses, and higher interest rates. In addition, many of the well-educated cat ladies like their lives just the way they are. Is it plausible that they will seek men with manufacturing jobs as mates to avoid working for a living when they actually find their work fulfilling and enjoy their independence? I think not.

So now who will be Kamala’s veep?

It’s a secret she’s managed to keep.

Do you think there’s a chance

He’ll be someone like Vance?

He’ll be white, but he won’t be a creep.

The fake interview continues.

C: I was planning to ask you a series of questions about foreign policy, but I’m going to defer those and concentrate on some matters that have arisen since the convention.

V: OK.

C: First of all, of course, we have the childless cat ladies thing. Do you regret saying that? After all, it was a personal attack on a large percentage of the voting population.

V: It was sarcasm. It was meant as a statement about the Democratic Party and its policies, not as an attack on voters.

C: So you’re saying you should be taken seriously, but not literally?

V: Yes.

C: That works for Trump. What makes you think it will work for you? You have a long paper trail setting out your views–why shouldn’t people believe you mean what you say?

V: It’s a matter of context. Most of the time, I mean exactly what I say. Other times, I don’t. People need to be able to tell the difference.

C: Let’s take your book as an example. If you make a habit of saying things that you don’t really mean for dramatic effect, why should I believe anything in the book, particularly since you have completely changed your views since then?

V: Again, it’s a matter of context. I meant what I said then. I don’t mind if people take what I said literally. That doesn’t mean I believe it now.

C: I ran into a quote from you in which you discussed the rule of law and indicated that conservatives would have to go to some places that weren’t comfortable. I take that to mean you believe a Trump Administration will have to violate court orders to accomplish its objectives. Is that a fair reading of your words?

V: That’s hypothetical. We’ll just have to see how things turn out.

C: Do you think a right-wing government is entitled to violate the law in the pursuit of what it believes is a higher good?

V: Maybe. We’ll see. I hope we never have to find out.

C: I ask this because you insist that you and Trump are not authoritarians. If you claim to have the right to violate the law to save the country, why wouldn’t I believe you would put your political opponents in jail and stifle dissent in this country? Why wouldn’t that meet your standards for violating court orders?

V: We wouldn’t do that. You just have to trust us.

C: Why are you entitled to the benefit of the doubt?

V: Because Trump didn’t do it in his first term. He has a way of expressing himself that may sound authoritarian at times, but that’s just his way of communicating with the base. He isn’t an authoritarian at heart.

C: Are you familiar with a manifesto on national conservatism that was issued by a number of your ideological allies about a year ago?

V: Yes, but I didn’t sign it.

C: Among many other things, that document indicates that Christians have the right to control the public sphere when they are a majority. Is that your view?

V: There are statements in that manifesto that I agree with, and some that I don’t. The manifesto doesn’t speak for the Trump campaign.

C: But the people who signed it are your friends and allies. Why shouldn’t the public believe they speak for you, and that you are just keeping quiet today because you know it will cost you politically?

V: Again, you just have to trust us. Donald Trump was a great president in his first term. He didn’t shut down the New York Times or shoot protesters. He didn’t try to impose Christianity on pagans. It will be the same way this time around.

C: What about his statement that Christians only need to vote this year? It sounds like one man, one vote, one time.

V: I hate to sound like a broken record, but Trump has a special way of communicating with his followers that shouldn’t be taken literally. His actions speak louder than words. He’s not a dictator.

C: Thank you for your time. I will come back to foreign affairs later.

In the 1980s, right-wing Christians were confident enough of their position to call their organization “The Moral Majority.” Today, largely due to the connection between Christianity and unpopular right-wing political figures, Christians concede they are a minority, and a beleaguered one at that. They have responded, not by attempting to convert the pagans by argument, but by embracing anti-democratic views and demanding a monopoly on power. How can they get to their promised land in a liberal democratic society when they don’t represent a majority?

The battle is being fought on several fronts. First of all, the right-wing Christians have been successful in convincing a Supreme Court that is stacked with their allies to overturn precedents and permit open expressions of support for Christianity by state and local governments. Second, Christians in red states typically despise secular public schools, or as Rick Scott likes to call them, “government schools;” they have responded by with voucher systems, book bans, public displays of the Ten Commandments, and curriculum changes incorporating the study of the Bible. Perhaps, in the long run, these “reforms” will result in more Christian children. Finally, they support authoritarian pro-Christian political figures, from Orban to Putin to, in our worst fears, Trump.

The frontier for Christians consists of a test act and the censorship of the views of non-Christians. These ideas aren’t being discussed now due to their complete impracticality, but they will be as soon as the Christians have the monopoly on power to which they believe they are entitled.