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The shape of the official response to the pandemic is becoming increasingly clear. The GOP will have its way: virtually all of the states will open up completely even without a plausible mitigation plan in place in order to avoid clashes with militant right-wing protesters; and Trump and Mitch will withhold support for a new round of stimulus (this time, that’s actually a fair use of the word) unless and until the Democrats cave on some ridiculous GOP priority.

The bottom line is that by “winning,” the GOP will own the pandemic. The reluctance to provide aid to state and local governments will create a big drag on the economy and result in plenty of unnecessary misery. A large portion of the public will continue to avoid crowds; the failure to solve the public health problem will, therefore, thwart the recovery that the GOP so desperately needs in November.

Trump will, of course, blame the Chinese for this.

Readers my age or older probably remember that there was a time during the sixties and early seventies when the right actually embraced gun control. The reason for that was quite simple; our TV screens were filled with images of left-wing groups, particularly African-Americans, brandishing guns and talking openly about violence. That was not a coincidence.

Today, ostentatious gun ownership is effectively a monopoly of the right. We are currently being treated to the spectacle of impromptu right-wing militias attempting to prevent state and local law enforcement officers in a number of jurisdictions from enforcing virus-related restrictions. This activity is likely to get worse before it gets better; it isn’t too difficult to imagine it extending to polling places during the November election.

At some point, the left is going to get tired of being pushed around by right-wing thugs. If we remain on our present course, we are going to see the left arm in retaliation, and we may even start to see political violence on the streets. I really, really hope that doesn’t happen, but as long as Trump is on the scene egging on his “Second Amendment people” and rejecting the legitimacy of any Democratic government, it could.

Last week’s issue of The New Yorker contained an Evan Osnos article about the devolution of Greenwich, Connecticut from a place dominated culturally by modest, public-spirited Yankee capitalists to a bastion of swaggering Trumpism. The article lays out the symptoms at some length, but does not really attempt to explain why it occurred. I will try to do that for you.

It’s not a coincidence that Osnos finds that the shift started to occur in the late sixties and early seventies. It’s a symptom of the libertarian bent of the boomers, which in turn was the product of genuine social and cultural grievances, unprecedented affluence, and the absence of an overwhelming formative crisis such as World War II or the Great Depression that compelled the entire community to pull together. The positive element of the boomer individual freedom agenda was support for the civil rights movement, gay rights, and feminism against perceived oppression from traditionally privileged groups. The darker side was disregard for the interests of the less affluent; except to the extent that they could be realistically viewed as victims of the culture war, they were held to be responsible for their own misfortune, and left to sink or swim on their own.

Modesty and team play were out; unbridled self-expression, preening, and contempt for losers came into vogue.

And so, Joe DiMaggio was replaced as an icon by the trash-talking Muhammad Ali, Reggie Jackson, and Joe Namath, and the Bush family was ultimately trounced by Trump. On the whole, we are the worse for it, I’m afraid.

I’D DIE FOR THE DONALD

At the start of 2020

Life was looking pretty good.

Economy was running hot

As Trump had said it would.

_____________

The virus ruined everything.

Countless thousands dead.

We locked down in quarantine

And Biden’s now ahead.

______________

Twenty million unemployed.

The public’s grumpy now.

We have to bring the good times back.

I think I know just how.

_________________

Our lives are truly meaningless

If the left’s in power.

Flight 93 is in the air.

This is the fateful hour.

__________

Damn the virus, anyway.

The reckoning’s at hand.

I’m going back to bars again.

It’s time to make my stand.

___________

I’d die for the Donald.

You’re damn right I would.

I’m just doing what I can.

As true Americans should.

____________

I’d die for the Donald.

It’s OK with me.

It’s the least that I can do

To keep my country free.

The legal ability of the House to conduct investigations is firmly grounded in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which authorizes Congress to legislate to the extent “necessary and proper” relative to its enumerated powers. Fact finding is an essential part of legislation. That is the reason the case law on investigations and the separation of powers is tied to the need for legislation.

The textual basis for Trump’s claim of immunity is . . . nowhere in Article II. It simply doesn’t exist. I’m confident there is no basis for it in the debates at the Convention, either. If you’re a right-wing member of the Supreme Court, and you claim to be an originalist, that has to be a source of embarrassment.

Immunity can only be viewed as a judicial gloss, the likes of which have been attacked mercilessly by originalists in the past. As a matter of logic and practice, it does make some sense in limited circumstances. In this case, however, the burdens put on Trump as a result of demands for records that are not actually in his possession are minimal, and there is a reasonable nexus to proposed legislation in the record. The only way for the Court to get around it is to do the kind of examination of the motives of the House that it rejected of the president in the Muslim ban case. That would be a different kind of embarrassment.

These cases aren’t even close. The Court should never have heard them. If the Court ultimately finds for Trump, it will be proof that, no matter what the Chief Justice says, partisan politics rule in our judiciary.

Ross Douthat wonders why we accepted a stalemate with the virus instead of making a commitment to total victory. There’s a one word answer to that; it rhymes with “slump.”

There was undoubtedly an opportunity for Trump to embrace the concept of the “wartime president” and to take firmer measures to neutralize the virus. Handled soberly and energetically, it might well have been a political winner. He didn’t do it, because: the short term economic pain would have been far too great for someone who fixates on the daily movement of the stock market and the polls; and the people running around with assault rifles and complaining about the current version of the quarantine are his base. He wasn’t about to piss them off.

True to form, if not American precedent, Donald Trump didn’t accept the outcome of the November election. First, he filed a blizzard of baseless lawsuits, claiming that his defeat was the result of massive fraud. These went nowhere. He denied the Biden transition team any access to critical information, and ordered his people to destroy records wherever possible in an effort to hamper future investigations. He quietly talked to Barr, key military leaders, and even Putin about a coup, but was rebuffed. Finally, and most destructively, he called on his base to rise up and take power, by force if necessary.

Sensing an opportunity, the endlessly cynical Mitch McConnell told Biden that he would only accept the legitimacy of his incoming government if the new president would agree to shelve his spending plans and respect GOP budgetary priorities. Biden correctly saw this as a bluff, and refused.

On the day of the inauguration, Trump was at Mar-a-Lago, tweeting his brains out. A small number of his followers, armed with assault rifles, attempted to take over city halls and state houses in several red states. It came to nothing, and was a source of immense embarrassment to the GOP leadership for years thereafter.

Biden’s speech called for national reconciliation. It was well received by moderates of both parties. It was clear, however, that the task of reunifying the country would be very difficult.

The GOP convention will mark the end of the evolution of the party into the POT (Party of Trump). For obvious reasons, there will be little discussion of such supposedly immutable Republican principles as free trade, support for liberal democratic allies, and limited government. It is doubtful that any kind of vision of a better future will be on display, because that vision exists at the whim of the man on golf cart, and it changes from day to day, depending on his mood. Why box him in? Just drop the leash and let him run! Wherever he goes, that’s what Republicans are!

Expect a nauseating festival of blame shifting, lib owning, and Trump worship. Still, some questions remain, as follows:

1. Will the party embrace any form of “national conservatism?” That would involve moving away from regressive tax and safety net cuts and towards a more worker-friendly budget and subsidies. It won’t happen; Trump is a true believer in most aspects of Reagan-era economics, and the business community won’t allow it. The menu will still be limited to tax cuts and deregulation at present, although the future is up in the air.
2. Will the party embrace the lockdown protesters, and tell the elderly that their health is a lower priority than economic recovery? My guess is yes, but only in code, given their desperate need for votes from older Americans. It will be up to the Democrats to crack the code and make the message explicit.

Assuming, for purposes of argument, that the Democrats hold an actual in-person convention, how should it be scripted? I would start with the grim reality of today and move gradually to the much brighter future, as follows:

1. Day One: Trump Day! Unrelenting focus on the man’s real history and shortcomings. Key speaker: Elizabeth Warren.
2. Day Two: The pandemic, inequality, America’s lost status in the world, and how the Democrats plan to respond. Key speaker: Bernie Sanders.
3. Day Three: Vision for a new and hopeful tomorrow. Key speaker: VP nominee.
4. Day Four: Why Joe Biden is the man for the time. Key speaker: Biden.

This comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who knew anything about the man, but “The Last Dance” makes it crystal clear that Michael Jordan stoked his unmatched competitive fire by identifying and even occasionally manufacturing personal slights. He didn’t respect people who backed down to him, but if you didn’t openly accept his status as the ultimate alpha male, he would step on your neck, and enjoy it. Winning at everything was essential to him; losing was worse than death. It probably still is, although I hope not, for the sake of his mental health.

Does this sound at all familiar? The difference is that basketball genuinely is a zero-sum game, but politics isn’t. What worked for MJ and the Bulls is a disaster for the country.

Unusually, our small restaurant owner has the sympathy of members of both parties. Can he count on effective help from either one?

The GOP will offer him the usual cocktail of tax cuts and deregulation. The root of his problem, however, is public confidence in the health care system; the GOP formula isn’t responsive to that. The elimination of health and safety regulations is the last thing he wants right now. He doesn’t need faster depreciation (he already has all of the equipment he needs), capital gains are irrelevant to him, and income tax cuts don’t help when you’re not making any money. A payroll tax cut would reduce his expenses somewhat, but it won’t cause him to rehire employees he doesn’t need, and blowing a hole in the finances of the safety net is not sustainable for any length of time. The GOP approach, in short, won’t keep him in business indefinitely.

What about the Democrats? They have no issue with direct subsidies to worthy businesses, which is what he really needs. Unfortunately, his restaurant is not a public utility, and it isn’t too big to fail. There are tens of thousands of restaurants just like his, many of which would go out of business even under normal circumstances; can the government really distinguish between his successful operation and countless others that look, on paper, just like it? Probably not, so it is unlikely it will try.

There is no good answer to this problem. If he can’t adjust on his own, he’s probably going to go under. That’s the harsh reality of the situation. The good news, to the extent that there is any, is that there will be plenty of people to pick up the pieces when public confidence improves. When will that happen? When we have a vaccine, or a much more rigorous regime of testing and isolation than is contemplated today.

Imagine that you are the owner of a moderately successful restaurant. You poured all of your life savings into it. It’s really hard work, with a small profit margin, but it was your dream, and it means the world to you. It’s not just a job; your customers and your workers are practically your family.

Then the virus came, and you had to shut down. You applied for and received a loan from the feds to pay your rent and keep your workers on the payroll during the lockdown. It is becoming increasingly likely, however, that nothing like normal operations will be possible for months, and maybe even years, to come. The current government money is going to dry up, and you can’t survive with your previous operational model on 25 or even 50 percent capacity.

What do you do? Can you effectively keep the business in a sort of comatose state indefinitely until the vaccine arrives? Alternatively, can you change your business model so that you can actually make money at a lower capacity? What would that mean for your workers? Finally, is it realistic to expect the government to help you out in the long run?

The answers to the first four questions will, to a large extent, dictate the direction of the economy, and the outcome of the election. I will address the last one in my next post.

In the nineties, Donald Trump was in desperate financial trouble. He survived by persuading bankers that his problems were really theirs, and by offloading his casino liabilities on to foolish, unsuspecting investors. It wasn’t very edifying, but it worked, and it convinced him that he was invincible. His triumph, against the odds and the polls, over Clinton in 2016 clinched the deal.

His belief in his ultimate victory, as I’ve noted before, is the best guarantee that the election will go forward; if he thought he would lose, he would try and cancel it. But is he destined to pull off another magic act, as he undoubtedly thinks? Is 2020 just the second coming of 2016?

Not necessarily. The key to being a successful con man is to rip people off one time and move on. He can’t do that in 2020. He can blame Obama, and the Chinese, and politically correct liberals, and the socialists, and the illegal immigrants, and the Europeans, and the Iranians, and the Ukrainians, and the deep state, and the MSM, and left-wing judges, and everyone else except himself, Putin, and his trusty base, but the record is what it is, and for the first time, he will have to run on it, not away from it.

Without much discussion or even thought, we seem to have arrived at a middle course: fewer restrictions than the Chinese; less testing than the Koreans; more distancing than the Swedes. The result has been a new equilibrium, with a high number of deaths, but not so high as to swamp our medical resources, and an economy that is running at about 75 percent, due to continued social distancing.

The Phase One regulations are consistent with the new equilibrium, but they won’t last; the momentum to open up appears to be irresistible regardless of the facts on the ground, and Trump will insist in any event. So what happens next? What level of deaths and economic activity do we have when distancing is no longer mandated, but is only self-imposed?

We don’t have anything like the testing regime that we logically need for future phases, so there are two possibilities, neither of which is very appealing. If animal spirits return and we all decide to be Trump’s “warriors,” the death toll will spike again. If large segments of the population remain cautious and refuse to congregate in large groups even in the absence of distancing regulations, the economy will continue to limp along at roughly its current rate. My bet is on the second scenario, but neither is good news for the Trump re-election campaign.

The typical reactionary indignantly denies that he is a bigot. He will tell you that he can’t stand anyone who refuses to work and lounges in the hammock of dependency at his expense. As it happens, most of these lazy slackers picking his pocket and demanding cuts in line are minorities, but he doesn’t have any respect for the white ones, either.

The allegation about minorities and welfare isn’t true, of course, and a lot of this is just eyewash. Not all of it, however. The collapse of the economy has been so sudden and massive that even the GOP has been forced to abandon its sympathy for these Victorian attitudes and support across-the-board safety net legislation. Will that continue?

No. The pendulum is already starting to swing. The GOP is beginning to draw lines between the deserving and undeserving poor. It may prevent any new rounds of stimulus, and it will probably be a battleground in the election.

Given that the current unemployment rate can hardly be blamed on workers, the Democrats should look forward to that debate.