Category: Uncategorized

Thomas Friedman suggests that Biden announce in advance of the election his intent to create a cabinet of all of the talents, including Republicans. Would that be a good idea?

No, because:

1. It would be difficult to find a better way to keep the Bernie Bros away from the polls in November;

2. Based on Obama’s experience in 2009, the GOP will view a Biden government as illegitimate, and will refuse to cooperate with it in any way; and

3. To make matters worse, Trump will be screaming about voter fraud and crying for vengeance from the sidelines. The GOP establishment will want to move on without him, but the faithful base will make that impossible.

Biden would be wise to make it clear to the nation, including the far right, that he has more pressing concerns than fighting the culture wars. That should win him some space to work on his real agenda. Realistically, however, feeding the alligators on culture is as far as he can go to create a unity government.

A Harvard Law School professor named Adrian Vermeule has caused a sensation with an article advocating “common good constitutionalism” in The Atlantic. The libertarian right has reacted with horror, but blames progressives for his rejection of historical norms. The left’s reaction can be simply described as “Holy fascism, Batman!”

“Common good constitutionalism” has both legal and political components, as follows:

1. Vermeule’s ideal government consists of a powerful president, supported by a vigorous and ultra-competent bureaucracy; Congress is a minor player in this scheme. The president’s most important task would be to create a virtuous country by stamping out practices that (according to Vermuele) are self-evidently evil, such as abortion, homosexuality, and pornography. Corrupt, tyrannical, or incompetent presidents could be removed through periodic elections. Otherwise, there would be no effective checks on presidential power.

2. Legally, this approach requires a rejection of the prevailing right-wing originalist/textual approach to constitutional law. Judges would rely on natural law instead of history, precedent, and the text of statutes and the Constitution. Vague language in the Constitution, such as the general welfare clause, would be reinterpreted to make this possible.

My reactions to this are as follows:

1. Elizabeth Warren has to know this guy. It certainly would be fun to watch her debate him.

2. The intersection between “common good constitutionalism” and the unitary executive theory are obvious. Bill Barr would approve.

3. Vermeule acknowledges that a degree of coercion would be necessary to bring about his virtuous state. He thinks it would be worth it. It is unlikely that the majority of Americans agree. So how could this happen? He doesn’t lay out a blueprint, but it presumably involves voter suppression on a massive scale, probably during an emergency.

4. Left-wing jurisprudence is not responsible for this train of thought. The left criticizes right-wing originalism, not because it relies on history and the wording of texts, but because it inevitably involves unprincipled cherry-picking, and leaves out too much of the story. To use one painfully obvious example, freezing American values in 1787 means disregarding the outcome of the Civil War and the Reconstruction amendments. That is not a fair reading of the American experience. “Common good constitutionalism,” on the other hand, is a complete rejection of American history; if there is one thing the Founding Fathers all would have agreed on, it was the rejection of a theocratic state with an elected king.

How does this relate to Trumpism and the GOP factions? More on that in a later post.

In illiberal democracies, independent governmental entities and checks on central government power–most notably, a constitution, a depoliticized judiciary and law enforcement agency, free and independent media, and fair elections–still exist on paper, but have been rigged in favor of the government in actual practice. These norms and institutions are eliminated in a truly fascist state. One man is identified as the only authentic representative of the national will, and all checks and balances on his power are removed to permit him to pursue a reactionary agenda intended to make his country great again.

Hungary has been an illiberal democracy for years; with the decision to permit Orban to rule by decree during the pandemic, it may well be slipping into fascism. There are self-admitted supporters of illiberal democracy in America, too. More on that in my next post.

Trump plays all sorts of characters on TV, based solely on his infallible intuition, so why not a doctor? And it’s not as if he’s the only member of his administration doing it–it seems that Peter Navarro is also a doctor, and Larry Kudlow has been playing an economist for years.

Quack, quack.

Trump’s continued political survival depends to a large extent on people he has targeted for abuse over the last three years. So far, they have delivered for America, and, therefore, for him. Jay Powell has thrown all of the Fed’s firepower at the coming depression. Nancy Pelosi agreed to a huge spending package that will permit him to pose as Lord Bountiful shortly before the election without asking for much in return. Now, will the deep state deliver?

What he calls the “deep state” is actually a collection of federal experts and bureaucrats without which modern constitutional government cannot exist. A true populist who prefers his own uninformed gut feelings to norms and expertise, he has done his best to neuter them or drive them away. The recovery can’t take place without their assistance. Are they up to the task? Can they bring the virus under control and send out the Trump Bucks in time to save his bacon? We’ll see.

With the possible exception of the president, everyone acknowledges that social distancing only buys time; it is not, by itself, an end game. So what happens after the curve has been bent?

Going where few would dare to tread, this week’s issue of The Economist features a discussion of the potential trade-offs between additional deaths and a healthy economy. The writers admit that the current social distancing regime is cost-effective, but wonder how long it can be sustained in the future. Painful decisions are inevitable, they maintain.

If you insist in engaging in such a brutal and crass exercise, the key question is how to value the social contributions made by elderly people who are not technically part of the labor force. Do you just view them as unproductive members of society who should die and decrease the surplus population, or do you try to put a dollar figure on the value that they bring with unpaid labor within families?

Two facts are pertinent. First, The Economist notwithstanding, the trade-off is not, in the final analysis, up to the US government, or any government, for that matter; it is a question for each individual person as a producer and a consumer. The government cannot effectively order anyone to go out and spend money in bars if they don’t feel comfortable with the state of public health. Second, there are only two scenarios here. The first is consistent with Ross Douthat’s column in Sunday’s NYT: a half-open world with high unemployment and continued, but milder, social distancing until the vaccine comes. The second involves segregating, with confidence, the people who have the virus from the people who don’t, and letting the latter group get on with their lives. THAT CAN ONLY WORK WITH A VASTLY BETTER TESTING REGIME THAN WE HAVE NOW AND A STATIC POPULATION. Unfortunately, I see no evidence that it is being implemented, or even contemplated, today, so Douthat’s purgatory is by far the more likely option.

Do you remember when the right was outraged when Barack Obama was allegedly “leading from behind?” Doesn’t that seem kind of quaint right now?

Some of Trump’s supporters are now arguing that his attempts to minimize the dangers of the virus were completely appropriate efforts to avoid panic and boost morale during wartime. Think of Churchill before and during the Battle of Britain, I guess.

If you like that analogy, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Did Churchill deny that France had fallen?

2. Did he tell the British public that the Nazis would just disappear magically in a few weeks, and were not a real threat?

3. Did he blame the BBC for the fall of France?

4. Did he take all of the credit for the RAF’s successes, and blame the military and his subordinates for their failures?

5. Did he tell the public that the mobilization of national resources for the struggle wasn’t his responsibility?

Didn’t think so.

Go get ’em, governors! We’ll be behind you every step of the way, cheering you on! With your talents and resources and our thoughts and prayers, the virus will be no match for you!

And you thought my Trump and Pearl Harbor post from a few weeks ago was satire.

The newly unemployed in Florida are finding it extremely difficult and frustrating to apply for benefits. According to Politico, members of the DeSantis administration are blaming Rick Scott for this state of affairs. As the story goes, Scott wanted to deter people from filing for unemployment in order to punish slackers and make his numbers look good. The apparent problems with the system were actually designed with that purpose in mind; they are a feature, not a bug.

Do I believe this story? In the immortal words of Sarah Palin, you betcha. Does it trouble me that Trump and DeSantis may pay a political price for it? Not in the least.

QUARANTINE

Quarantine

Liberty

Is now a dirty word.

Fit for those spring breakers.

They’re spreading germs, I’ve heard.

_______________

Quarantine

On TV screens

They count the sick and dead.

Don’t believe the White House

Or much of what you’ve read.

____________

Quarantine

Gasoline

Is now less than two bucks.

If your money’s in oil futures,

I guess you’re out of luck.

___________________

Quarantine

No TP

As hoarders now hold sway.

What then can we buy now?

Does the store have meat today?

___________________

Quarantine

Appalling scenes

Health workers getting sick.

Is anybody out there?

They need help really quick!

______________

Quarantine

No sports are seen

When’s the football draft?

Will the Dolphins trade for Tua?

Will the Jets do something daft?

______________

Quarantine

Misery

How, then, does this end?

More like months than weeks, now.

‘Till then, stay safe, my friends!

Trump clearly finds his role as “wartime president” to be dull and dreary, and he wants to be done with it. His end game with the virus seems to work something like this:

1. A fairly relaxed regime of social distancing should be applied for a limited timeframe to bend the curve. Government assistance deals with any short term problems.

2. Deus ex machina! The virus just goes away with the summer heat, or a vaccine magically appears, or we develop herd immunity at the speed of light, or something.

3. Social distancing is eliminated. The economy comes roaring back by the early summer. It’s morning in America! Party like it’s 2019!

4. Trump wins in November!

This is a fantasy, of course. There will be no miracle solution in a few months. Large segments of the public will be demoralized by deaths, unemployment, lost investments, and crippled businesses, and the promised government assistance will be too little, too late for most; the likelihood of a V-shaped recovery driven by consumer demand is pretty small. Without a sensible plan to deal with subsequent waves of infection, the virus will come back again, and again. Recovery will be irregular and halting.

What would a fair and plausible end game look like? I will address that in a future post.

Which of the following would you pick as our national leader during a pandemic?

1. A narcissistic bloviator who lies every time his lips move;

2. A shouty old guy whose only speech is about the “revolution;” or

3. A kindly old uncle who will assure us that everything will be OK if we mobilize our resources properly and follow the advice of doctors.

Is that really a hard choice?

Bernie Sanders argues that an America with M4A would be better positioned to deal with a pandemic. Is he right?

Yes and no. No, because the record clearly shows that countries with underfunded single-payer health care systems and timid governments have struggled dealing with the virus. Even the NHS, which would appear to be ideally suited to address a public health emergency, has had difficulty responding to the moment. But yes, in the long run, if large segments of the population think they can’t afford to be tested or get treatment, generating the data to control the virus becomes more of a problem.

The better question is whether America is willing to pay the price to make radical changes to its current health care model to deal with a relatively freak event, given that other countries with single-payer systems have also suffered thousands of deaths. I think the answer to that is fairly obvious.

Ain’t no sunshine when he’s gone.