Month: November 2024

In 2020, when faced with four more years of Trump, the Democratic Party nominated the least woke alternative–an elderly white man without an Ivy League degree who rejected defunding the police and opening the border. That same elderly white man became arguably the most pro-union president in history. He also helped design legislation that invested huge amount of public funds in depressed red areas. Workers without degrees did better under his administration than their supervisors. Did any of that help him with workers? No! He was hideously unpopular, and was forced to drop out of the race.

Sherrod Brown is a genuine populist who oozes concern about the working class. There is absolutely nothing about him that looks Ivy League. He ran a strong campaign against a car dealer. Did he win? No! It wasn’t even that close.

Never Trumpers are now arguing that the problem with Democrats is that they’re snooty elitists who don’t care about workers without degrees. The fate of Biden and Brown tells us that wasn’t the problem. In any event, which Republicans really care about workers? The editorial board of the WSJ? Elon Musk? The billionaire former casino owner and developer who is going back to the White House carrying a plan to cut corporate taxes and business regulations again?

Elitism wasn’t the problem. Inflation was.

In the end, it came down to this: the American public erroneously decided years ago that the economy was in bad shape, blamed Biden, and demanded change. Other than Biden, Harris was the least credible change agent available to the Democrats. It is no wonder that she failed.

But what if she had tried harder to distance herself from Biden? Here were her options:

1. BE MORE PROGRESSIVE AND DEMAND LARGE INCREASES IN THE SIZE OF THE WELFARE STATE: This would not have been persuasive, because the likelihood of getting such a program through Congress was zero, and the public had already (mostly incorrectly) decided that Biden’s spending was responsible for inflation in any event.
2. LEAN MORE HEAVILY ON THE GENERATIONAL THEME: Older people vote at much higher rates than younger people. That’s why they do so well with the welfare state. This would have been suicide.
3. EMBRACE WOKENESS: The American people don’t much care for wokeness, particularly in relation to trans people. This would have been suicide, too.
4. TRY MORE POPULISM: Harris could have rejected the notion of a united front and spent more time bashing billionaires. Some of that was already included in her commercials. It would not have addressed her perceived weakness on inflation, and it might have cost her more votes than it won.

There are things that Harris could have done better, in my opinion. She could have come across as less rehearsed. She could have tried harder to convince the voters that they were actually better off than they were in 2020. She could have done a lot more with the climate change issue. The bottom line, however, would have remained the same–she had no plausible alternative to advocating for the status quo. That turned out to be a losing hand with an angry electorate, even with an opponent with all of Trump’s weaknesses.

Ron DeSantis was the unquestioned leader of the opposition to Amendments 3 and 4. Both amendments received well over 50 percent of the vote, but neither met Florida’s extraordinary 60 percent threshold. As a result, DeSantis proved that his brand of social conservatism still has legs in the state.

But “winning” by thwarting the will of a clear majority of the public through the expenditure of state funds is not a very impressive accomplishment. In addition, DeSantis managed to alienate the large portion of the reactionary base that is libertarian on drug issues; after all, Donald Trump supported Amendment 3. His “victory” will do him no good when he runs for president again in 2028.

In 2016, the British people decided they had had enough of Polish plumbers. They wanted to build walls and close gates in order to preserve the character of their country. They wanted out of Europe.

When opponents of Brexit told the public that cutting ties with Europe would result in lower or no growth, the voters chose to believe a flamboyant populist who insisted that the UK could have its cake and eat it, too. They then voted him into office to finish the job, which he did, in his shambolic fashion.

By 2024, the British public was suffering from buyer’s remorse. A substantial majority thought that Brexit was a mistake. Their revised opinion was supported by the data, which indicated that the critics of Brexit had been right in 2016. It was unlikely, however, that the wrong could be made right that far after the fact.

Trump’s plans for mass deportations and tariffs are the American equivalent of Brexit. They won’t bring back the economy of 2019, and they will make him very unpopular very quickly. The real question is whether Trump will then back down and spin the program as a success–he has been known to do that on occasion–or respond by doubling down and using the military, the DOJ, and Homeland Security to stifle dissent.

Either is possible. We’ll find out soon enough.

Most Democrats look at Trump’s performance during the debates and his rallies and wonder how the election could be this close. Matthew Yglesias, on the other hand, looks at the anti-incumbent fever that has overtaken the developed world and wonders how the Democrats still have a chance.

Each question is the answer to the other. If the GOP had nominated someone other than Trump, the Democrats would be done and dusted, based on what has happened all over the world during the past year.

Life in the time of Trump.

Election Day is here.

I really don’t feel great right now;

Trump leaves me full of fear.

Democracy’s on trial today;

The blue team may well lose.

Will we let the founders down?

America must choose.

History tells me that the undecided voters usually reject the status quo and vote for change. The untested shiny object is more appealing than the despised familiar one. How will that play out tomorrow?

In most cases, the challenger would obviously benefit. But in this situation, the apparent alternative to the status quo is a completely known commodity who has dominated politics for the last eight years, while the “incumbent” candidate is younger and is actually more of a mystery to the public. Under these unusual circumstances, which one will be perceived as an agent of change?

I honestly don’t know. We’ll find out this week.

As you watch Trump ramble incoherently in what he insists is “the weave” during his rallies, you are tempted to wonder how in the world he stands on the verge of the presidency again. But don’t underestimate the man; he succeeded in persuading one of our two political parties that a country that is not engaged in any foreign wars and has four percent unemployment and two percent inflation is on the verge of complete collapse, and that the only way to prevent it is to trust him with absolute power.

That may be an appalling “accomplishment,” but it is impressive on its own terms. Who would have thought that a party that nominated Mitt Romney in 2012 would be totally in the tank for Trump today?

In the final analysis, there are three reasons why America shouldn’t even consider electing Donald Trump:

1. HE IS LEGALLY, MORALLY, AND INTELLECTUALLY UNFIT FOR THE JOB: Does this really require any explanation?
2. HIS AGENDA WILL LEAVE AMERICA POORER, WEAKER, AND MORE DIVIDED: Tariffs, large tax cuts for corporations, and mass deportations will leave our economy reeling. Antagonizing our allies in a myriad of ways will leave us more vulnerable to the revisionist powers. As to the “divided” part, his rhetoric speaks for itself; he views half of America as his enemy and wants to inflict as much pain on it as possible.
3. THE PUBLIC IS FEELING NOSTALGIC ABOUT HIS RECORD, BUT IT SHOULDN’T: He basically took the Obama economy and juiced it a bit with tax cuts that were supposed to increase investment, but actually increased demand. His pandemic response was chaotic and pathetic. Hamas’ decision to attack Israel during Biden’s watch had nothing to do with the identity of the American president; it was about the Israelis and their lack of preparation, not us. We don’t know for certain why Putin attacked Ukraine when he did, but he might well have held off during the Trump years because he figured Trump would hand it to him without a fight. Biden didn’t succeed in making fundamental changes to the dollar store economy, but he did bring us out of the pandemic recession much faster, and with less pain, than most people would have predicted in 2020. Did Trump accomplish anything like that? No, he did not.

The Founding Fathers–if you put them on a graph, the line would run from Hamilton on one end to Patrick Henry on the other–disagreed ferociously on the role and power of the central government. The one thing they all agreed on, however, was their fear and disdain for demagogues and men on horseback. They were all familiar with classical history, and they knew the type. They figured that the system they were creating would one day be tested by someone like Donald Trump.

The latest issue of The Atlantic features a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington. I can’t stop staring at it, because it is a truly remarkable face. I can imagine it asking me if I’m ready to do what’s necessary to preserve the government he did so much to create. Are we about him let him down? Are we so weak and subservient that we need “protection” from a man who is only running to keep himself out of jail and to force the half of the country that hates him to kiss his ring?

I will do my part on Tuesday. I hope you will do the same.

Trump may not be a secret CL, but Elon Musk is a very public one, and he is a prominent supporter of the man on golf cart. He has been telling the world that he can find trillions of dollars of waste in the federal budget; one assumes that means everything except the defense budget, the money required to prosecute Trump’s enemies, and subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX. Mike Johnson has also made some comments about putting a blowtorch to the administrative state. Could we actually be seeing the CL revolution in the making–an American Milei moment?

There are just four tiny problems with this hypothesis. First of all, America is not Argentina; we have two percent inflation and four percent unemployment. Second, Trump has no history as a budget cutter. Third, if the Republicans win control of both houses, they will have tiny majorities, and some of the centrists will be unreliable on budget issues. Finally, unlike Milei, Trump has done nothing to prepare the electorate for enormous budget cuts. The public reaction to what Musk insists is just a dash of temporary pain will be intense, indeed.

We are seeing relatively few ads tied to particular candidates. Instead, we are being inundated with commercials supporting or attacking the state constitutional amendments pertaining to recreational marijuana use and abortion. It’s almost enough to make you miss Mark Robinson.

The most interesting thing about the ads opposing the amendments–particularly the ones on the abortion question– is that they focus completely on the fine print, not the gist of the issues. DeSantis isn’t trying to defeat the abortion amendment on the basis that personhood begins at conception, presumably because he knows public opinion won’t follow him on that point. Instead, he’s trying to argue that the amendment goes too far in this way or that (e.g., late term abortions and parental consent); the implication is that a more limited version might be OK and could be on the table in future years.

LOL. DeSantis and his friends are being dishonest here. They know perfectly well that the Florida GOP is never going to back down on what they view as positions essential to the Godly Society. So what else is new?

Franco wasn’t charismatic; in fact, as the story goes, he was so icy that Hitler was afraid of him. He came to power by using the army, not a mass party or a large band of violent thugs. He didn’t create a cult of personality. He didn’t try to make Spain great again by invading South America. And yet, he was unquestionably a fascist.

Most of the definitions of fascism focus on the common characteristics of the Hitler and Mussolini movements and ignore Franco. They shouldn’t. That’s why my definition of fascism is simpler: the pursuit of reactionary goals by extraconstitutional means.