The EU has thus far reacted diffidently to Biden’s calls for unity against the Chinese. This leaves an opening for Boris Johnson, who desperately needs some additional leverage against the EU for future trade disputes. Will the US and the UK move closer in spite of Britain’s embrace of Trumpism? Will BoJo play the America card against the EU?
I’ll be astonished if he doesn’t.
There was a school of thought in the 20th century to the effect that the Constitution was the product of wealthy landowners and businessmen who were primarily concerned about protecting their property from the radical redistributive desires of struggling small backwoods farmers. Is there a reasonable basis for this argument?
No, for two reasons. First, the drafting of the Constitution was driven by longstanding concerns that the country was ungovernable, and could never reach its full potential, under the Articles of Confederation. Shays’ Rebellion, often cited as the catalyst for the Constitutional Convention, was actually just a talking point to support it ; Washington, Hamilton, and Madison had expressed their concerns about the flaws in the Articles much earlier. Second, if the FFs had desired a truly reactionary document, they would have limited the franchise for the House in Article I. Instead, they left the voting qualifications issue to the states, and gave the House the exclusive right to initiate money bills, which suggests an analogy to the House of Commons in the UK. The Constitution, in that sense, was neither progressive or reactionary; a more appropriate word would be “normal,” as it neither broke new ground nor turned the clock back.
The right, inevitably, is blaming the energy shortfalls in Texas on the failures of sources of renewable energy. It’s a ludicrous argument, given the concurrent and much more important failures with natural gas production and distribution, but even if you assume it is true, who is to blame here? Democrats don’t bear any responsibility for the workings of the grid in Texas, which is under the complete control of the GOP. Is this an admission by Texas Republicans that they made a serious mistake by relying on renewables, and that they are consequently responsible for the crisis?
On a somewhat related note, Ted Cruz is being mocked for going to Cancun and avoiding his neighbors’ misery. Look for him to try to turn lemons into lemonade by finding some reason to blame the libs for his ill-timed vacation. When in doubt, stoke the culture wars . . .
I speculated two years ago that the combination of the toxic connection between Trump and protectionism and the schedule for the primaries, which put the protectionist states at the end, might lead the Democrats back to free trade. It hasn’t happened. The party as a whole sees protectionism as a vote winner, and workers negatively impacted by trade deals as swing voters. Nothing is going to change very quickly.
Trade issues can be divided into two parts: China; and everyone else. With China, trade presents serious geopolitical issues; as a result, some forms of protection are inevitable, and possibly even wise. I will discuss those in a future post. As to everyone else, protection is basically unnecessary and counterproductive. There is no realistic possibility of creating a united front against China until the Trump days have been buried, and the stupid tariffs eliminated. That should be done as soon as possible.
The Founding Fathers–every one of them, regardless of where they stood on the political issues of the day–were Enlightenment men. They believed in manners, self-restraint, science, and the power of reason. They feared enthusiasms of any kind (including religious), and government by demagogues and mobs.
You might think initially that Jefferson, with his enthusiasm for the French Revolution, was an exception, but you would be wrong. Jefferson was the quintessential Enlightenment man; not surprisingly, he hated urban mobs. He was sympathetic to notions of democracy because he saw America as a paradise for sensible yeoman farmers with a strong stake in the system who would never abuse his trust. His vision of America doesn’t bear much resemblance to its condition today, but it was plausible enough in his lifetime.
In Freudian terms, the FFs were heavy on the superego and light on the id. What would they have made of Donald Trump–a/k/a The Wizard of Id? How would they have felt about a guy in furs and a Viking hat storming the Capitol?
It was their worst nightmare come to life. Remember that when you hear right-wingers talk about how they are fighting for what they erroneously think is the constitutional order.
It is fair to say that both parties supported free trade prior to 2016. In general, the Democrats thought free trade agreements should include provisions ensuring a level playing field on issues such as the protection of workers’ rights and the environment, and that industries and workers which could not survive the increased competition should be compensated, but their efforts in these areas were, in the long run, ineffective. The Republicans, for their part, welcomed free trade as a mechanism to reward both successful businesses (with higher profits) and consumers (with lower prices); businesses that could no longer compete, along with their workers, were simply dismissed as losers.
Trump changed everything with his weird fixation on trade deficits. The GOP mainstream gritted its teeth and went along for the protectionist ride. What happens now?
Free trade is one of the principal issues, along with immigration, which divides the PBP faction of the Republican Party from the Reactionaries. It is likely to be a flash point in the 2024 primaries if Trump doesn’t run again. Most of the candidates will undoubtedly follow the Trump line and support tariffs over the objections of the donor class, because there are far more Reactionaries than PBPs. My tentative prediction at this point is that a candidate who supports free trade, and has the support of the PBPs, will prevail in the primaries, largely because there will be less competition in the free trade lane.
Should the Constitution be viewed as a sort of extension of the ideas in the Declaration, as suggested in the Gettysburg Address and innumerable times thereafter? I would say no, for the following reasons:
In short, the documents are just too different, both in process and substance, to warrant considering them as parts of a single unified whole.
Trump is fully responsible for the riot, according to Mitch McConnell. Somebody needs to do something about it. Just don’t ask him to be part of the solution, because he has too much at stake to take that kind of a risk. After all, who else can hold the mainstream and extremist wings of the GOP together? Better to make empty gestures to appease both sides, and then move on.
If you ever wondered how a small, but ruthless extremist minority can win in the end, this is your answer.
Every day, it seems, I wake up to a new article about the Biden recovery bill which makes the following points:
The bottom line is that there is no dispute anywhere on the left about #1, which means that most of the ink spilled over this issue is pointless. The problem is limited to #2. The checks can’t be justified as disaster relief, because millions of them will go to people who aren’t suffering, and they aren’t helping to win votes from GOP senators, so what purpose do they serve? They are either a form of stimulus, even though the bill isn’t being sold as a stimulus package, or they are just an outright bribe to the electorate. And even if they are just a quarter of the package, that constitutes a huge sum of money that could be spent on something far more useful.
This wouldn’t matter if we could be absolutely certain that the unnecessary stimulus won’t result in higher interest rates. It is possible that it won’t under today’s conditions. But the laws of supply and demand haven’t been repealed, so we don’t know that for sure; what we do know is that higher interest rates will cause the markets to fall and will boost the GOP. Does the benefit justify the risk?
Imagine that you, and not Jefferson, are in charge of writing the Declaration of Independence. How is it similar, and how is it different?
Here is how I would have written it, with the advantage of over 200 years of hindsight:
On the 46th president Joe.
He’s the new FDR, don’t you know.
His plan won’t be cheap;
The price tag is steep.
Will the Congress provide him the dough?
The British constitution, as we know, is unwritten. It includes a variety of statutes, judicial decisions, charters, and generally-accepted norms established over the centuries.
The Founding Fathers had no choice but to create a written document, given that they did not have hundreds of years of precedents from which to work; accepting the British system as a whole was obviously not a viable option in 1787, given the very different circumstances in the former colonies. Today, however, we do, in fact, have over 200 years of experience. Things have changed, and large gaps have been filled.
I would submit to my readers that ideas such as a depoliticized DOJ, which cannot be found anywhere in the written Constitution, but which are essential to the proper operation of our political system, should be treated not just as “norms” which can be broken without penalty, but as a sort of supplement to the written document that should be treated with considerable deference by all three branches of government.
Plato and Aristotle agreed: oligarchy is a decadent form of aristocracy. “Aristocracy” is rule by a small number of virtuous, enlightened citizens; “oligarchy” is rule by a self-perpetuating group of wealthy people in their own selfish interests.
Oddly, both the extreme right and left in this country would agree that our government is an oligarchy, and that the solution is a form of populism. In the case of the right, the “oligarchy” consists of snooty left-wing professionals and cosmopolitan business owners; the solution is white Christian nationalist populism. For leftists, the “oligarchy” is a small group of extremely wealthy business people, and the solution is a populism based on minority identity politics and the financial interests of workers.
Who’s right? How about neither? The right-wing version is more dangerous, since it has no regard for our institutions, but neither is a solution to what ails America. We need more enlightened gatekeepers, not less–an “aristocratic” element (in the classical sense) in an otherwise democratic state.
The Republican leader named Mitch
Gave it out that his vote could be switched.
But it wasn’t, of course.
In the end, he’s a horse
Of a color decidedly mixed.
For the Democrats in 2022, Trump should be the gift that keeps on giving. His activity in the election will help Democratic candidates paint his open supporters as insurrectionists, while the few GOP figures who supported impeachment and conviction will probably face long, expensive primaries from Trump allies. If there is a down side to this for Democrats, it has escaped my attention.
How big a factor will Trump be? I can’t answer that right now, but here are the key known unknowns:
The bottom line is that McConnell and Trump are poised to engage in a very bloody proxy war for control of the GOP in 2022. For what it’s worth, my money is on Mitch, at least at that stage in the process. The presidential campaign is an entirely different animal; it is very possible that Trump, if he actually runs, will only meet with token opposition, since most of the other potential contenders are terrified of him and his base.