Category: Uncategorized

With the Super Bowl coming up, let’s review where the factions stand on legalized gambling:

1. CLs: Why not? It’s purely a matter of personal responsibility. People should be free to gamble if they want. Keep the state out of it!
2. PBPs: There’s money to be made here. Count us in.
3. CDs: Excessive gambling hurts families and society as a whole. It needs to be strictly controlled.
4. Reactionaries: Same as CDs. We support efforts to maintain traditional morality.

As you can see, there is no consensus position here. Fortunately for the GOP, gambling isn’t nearly as important to the flock as, say, abortion.

Assume, for purposes of argument, that Putin has decided the benefits of taking Ukraine exceed the costs. Given that the number of troops massed on the borders far exceeds what he needs for a minor campaign, and that taking another small slice of Ukraine doesn’t really change his position much, I have to believe that his objective would be to control the entire country. What would the invasion look like?

As with the American invasion of Iraq, it will start with a shock-and-awe demonstration designed to crush the will of the Ukrainians to resist, as well as to impress the rest of the world (and his domestic audience) with his virility. It will probably work. The problem, however, is that the Iraq analogy extends to the period after the “victory;” the ensuing occupation will require a huge number of Russian troops, and a large element of the Ukrainian population will fight back. There will also be numerous terrorist attacks on Russian soil, and plenty of Russian civilians will be killed. Support for the war, always questionable, will plunge, as both sides descend into barbarism, and Ukraine becomes a much larger version of Chechnya.

Iraq was a ghastly mistake, as I predicted from the beginning. Ukraine would be, too.

Strictly speaking, of course, there will be no pro-Trump coup in 2024, because the armed forces answer to Biden. That was discussed as a potential problem in 2020, but it won’t be next time.

But what about the militias? What about red state governors and the National Guard? Could we see some sort of armed uprising on the streets of red and purple states?

Right now, it seems unlikely. The militias are too small and disorganized, and they do not yet have the linkage with mainstream GOP politicians that they need to be a major force in this country. That could change, however. The election is three years away.

There is no chance of a repeat of the January 6 riot; the government will be prepared for that. There is also no chance that Harris will do what Pence correctly refused to do and overturn the election by herself. Is there nonetheless some danger that Congress could go rogue and declare Trump elected over the will of the voters?

Yes, if given the opportunity. Congress would be a critical part of a plot involving the creation of sets of alternate electors at the state level. If the GOP controls both houses in January 2025, the threat of an overturned election is very real.

The remaining PBPs in Congress would do their best to protect the integrity of the system. Would there be enough of them left to prevail? At this point–after “legitimate political discourse”–who knows?

The Chinese-American Chen

Just kept winning again and again.

Last night he won gold.

Does the winning get old?

I just hope it continues, my friends!

Ross Douthat sees a conflict within the GOP between a sniffy, Tory anti-democratic elite and a populist base. On the other hand, he thinks the Democratic Party is dominated by an elitist establishment which kowtows to experts and is also opposed to democracy. Is he right?

Only in part. His characterization of the Buckley/Will Tory element of the GOP is accurate, but that element doesn’t matter much in electoral terms. His description of the reactionary populist cohort of the party, on the other hand, is completely inaccurate; what makes that cohort dangerous to liberal democracy is its knowledge that it does not, in fact, represent a majority of the American people–only a majority of what they consider to be real Americans. Their real objective is to disenfranchise as much of the rest of America as possible, but they lack the will and the imagination to admit it; instead, they rely on “fraud” to make the case against democracy.

The difference between the two elements described by Douthat is, therefore, one of degree. The Tories think that the government should be run by wealthy businessmen and right-wing intellectuals; the reactionaries would expand that group to all white Christians, but would exclude anyone who isn’t a “real American.”

As to the Democrats, if the progressive expert-lovers ran the party, Elizabeth Warren would be president today. Only a portion of the party–and not the largest part–could reasonably be described as “elitist.”

Trump threw all the legal mud he could find on the wall in 2020, but none of it stuck. Is there a theory he hasn’t already tried that could work in 2024?

Maybe. If one or more state legislatures decides to overturn the election result and certify a slate of Trump electors, the Supreme Court would probably take a serious interest in that issue. Based on the election case opinions written in 2020, you would have three justices finding against Trump, three arguing either that the Constitution gives unlimited power to regulate elections to state legislatures or that the issue is a nonjusticiable political question, and three on the fence. The winner would have to get two of the three fence-sitters. How that one turns out, I do not know.

This is another issue that should be addressed in any election reform legislation, although the argument would be made that any limitations placed on state legislatures by statutes are unconstitutional. The real hope, of course, is that no legislature would have the nerve to ignore the result of an election–but are you really confident about that?

It’s December 2024. Biden has just won another narrow victory over Trump–for now. But Trump is screaming about fraud, and right-wing militias are on the streets. We are seeing scattered acts of violence throughout the state. And certification has not taken place yet.

The state elections board and the legislature are dominated by Trump-loving Republicans. They are under tremendous pressure from the base to refuse certification of the Biden victory–in other words, to overturn the results of the election. If they acquiesce, we are in for a constitutional crisis. If they don’t, who knows how far Trump and the militias will go to get their way?

In my opinion, this is the single most plausible way for Trump to steal the election, if it is close, and if the GOP controls state government in enough states won by Biden to make up the difference in electoral votes. Any reform legislation from Congress consequently has to address this scenario to be meaningful.

If I were Putin, and my principal objectives were to solidify my support at home and to divide NATO, I would be looking for the exit ramp right now. The potential costs of an invasion are greater than the benefits, and time is not on my side. The threat of a gas cutoff–my hole card with the EU– is less potent every day we get closer to spring.

I would make a deal with Macron or Scholz. The contents of the deal almost don’t matter. All I would need is a pretext I can use at home to declare victory. The result would be a rift between the Europeans and the Americans, and possibly some serious intra-EU strife between the French and Germans on the one hand and Poland and the Baltic States on the other. In addition, regardless of the agreement, I can turn the screws on Ukraine at any time in the future if I so desire.

But I’m not Putin, of course, so we’ll just have to wait and see. As for a potential American response, I will address that in a future post.

Countless Trump-loving politicians are running for state and local offices relating to the supervision of elections, claiming they want to prevent another “fraud.” Is it possible that these people could steal the 2024 election for the GOP?

It would be difficult, for several reasons. First of all, no individual local elections official has control over an enormous number of votes, so, barring an amazingly close race, several officials would have to be in on the plot. Second, there are multiple actors with influence over the process, including the media, on-site party representatives, state officials, and the judiciary. Finally, it would be very difficult to generate fake ballots without being caught. Any kind of successful massive fraud would have to involve the disqualification of legitimate ballots, not the addition of illegitimate ones.

The bottom line here is that theft by these means is not impossible, but is highly unlikely. A more plausible scenario will be discussed tomorrow.

So the Beijing Olympics are here.

From the last one it’s less than a year.

Will we ever win gold?

Will the losing get old?

Did the Putin-Xi meeting strike fear?

Let’s be clear about this: the voting “reforms” the GOP has rammed through in numerous states have no justification in any showing of “fraud,” and are intended to make voting more difficult for minorities and other economically disadvantaged people. The Democrats are right to complain loudly about them, and to attempt to reverse them. That said, do they really matter that much? Would an otherwise clean election with those “reforms” in place be illegitimate?

All of the available evidence suggests that the “reforms” will only make a difference in an extremely tight election. The answer to the questions is no.

But what about other potential efforts to steal the election? I will address them throughout the week.

I don’t have the technical ability to draw this on my site, but imagine a graphic in which one axis runs from “Self-Interest” to “Values” and the other from “Elitism” to “Populism.” The various groupings in the two parties would fall in the following quadrants:

1. PBPs and CLs: Elitism/Self-Interest
2. Progressives: Elitism/Values
3. The Moderate Left: Populism/Self-Interest
4. Reactionaries: Populism/Values

You might initially object to the placement of Progressives in the Elitism/Values quadrant, but the fact of the matter is that most relatively wealthy members of the left identify with experts and vote against their economic self-interest (their wealth and status derive from factors that have nothing to do with government) in an effort to protect the country from the cultural excesses of the reactionary right. In that sense, they are truly the other side of the coin from the Reactionaries, who consistently vote for GOP members who oppose programs that would help them in order to save, as they see it, the primacy of traditional moral and political values. Members of the moderate left–typically, although not exclusively, workers and minorities–vote for Democrats who promise them real, if limited, economic benefits and protection from the right. Finally, the PBPs and CLs believe that only they have the right and the ability to run the country, and vote for GOP members who deliver them tax cuts and deregulation.

The idea behind the American version of Abenomics was to reduce inequality by running a very hot economy, thus creating labor shortages and driving up wages. The pandemic assisted in this process. American companies have responded, however, by raising prices to protect their profits; the resulting inflation has caused the real value of wages to remain stagnant. The Fed is also threatening to raise interest rates to cool the economy down and reduce wage increases. The attempt to break out of the dollar store economy has, therefore, failed.

What can we learn from this? That simply increasing wages, either through legislation (minimum wage increases) or by creating labor shortages, will not help workers or reduce inequality by itself. Additional assistance is necessary, including changes to the tax code to benefit workers over capitalists, and, in some cases, antitrust action to prevent unjustified price increases.

A well-known author and lecturer at Georgetown Law School has been placed on administrative leave by the school for a tweet complaining that Biden’s Supreme Court choice will be a “lesser black woman” instead of a clearly better Asian-American candidate. Michelle Goldberg argues that he should not lose his job for this fairly stupid statement, and that the liberal left needs to stand up for free speech against the illiberal left; otherwise, the door will be open for the right to use its political power to impose an even more obnoxious form of censorship. Is she right?

Absolutely! The moderate, liberal left has to be willing to stand up to the woke left, or it will have no credibility with the public in its battle with the more dangerous DeSantis right. I’m doing my part. I hope the rest of you will, as well.