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Once Kavanaugh has been confirmed, the Supreme Court may overturn Roe, or it may just kill it with a thousand cuts.  The result will be essentially the same:  in red states, abortion will be effectively illegal; in purple states, it will be severely limited; and in blue states, the status quo will prevail.  The result, obviously, will be a patchwork.

The questions for today are:

1.  Will overturning Roe be a poisoned chalice for the GOP?  Will women rise up and vote Republicans out of office en masse in red states?
2.  Will either side accept the patchwork solution?

My responses are:

1.  Based on what has happened in red states to date, the answer is no.  The GOP has not paid any obvious price for supporting very strict limits on abortion as of today, so why should things be any different in the future?
2.  No.  Both sides have principles that they cannot compromise.  For the red side, abortion is murder;  for the blue team, it symbolizes freedom and equality for women.  As a result, if Roe is overturned, both sides will fight for a federal solution governing all fifty states.  The resolution of the issue, therefore, would be tied up with the fate of the filibuster (which would be put in unprecedented jeopardy) and the composition of Congress.  A blue or red wave election, or the abolition of the filibuster, could result in national abortion legislation;  otherwise, it will continue to be regulated at the state level.

It is interesting to note that any federal legislation either permitting or banning abortion throughout the country would have to be based on the commerce clause, and would be challenged legally.  The Supreme Court would consequently be ruling on whether either side could bind the entire country on this issue.  If the Court struck down the legislation, in an odd way, both sides would lose, and the federalist compromise would prevail.

In most of what we anachronistically call the “free world,” reactionaries are on the front foot.  From the UK to the US, from Italy to Poland, the clock is running backwards.  France is the only notable exception.

How can this be reversed?  The short answer is that all governments fail eventually, and reactionary governments, which typically spurn the assistance of experts, are more likely to stumble than most.  The public will eventually tire of them.  The better question is whether reactionary governments will permit themselves to be voted out of office, or will go the full Maduro when faced with mounting opposition.  I don’t think there is a single answer to that;  it depends on the personalities and ethics of the affected politicians.

In the long run, the most significant thing about the Obama speech will be the simple fact that he felt compelled to come out of his Benedict-like shell and make it.  That said, there were elements of the speech which call for further analysis, and I’m just the person to do it.

In the speech, Obama essentially made the argument that the white working class is being hoodwinked by the rich and powerful to vote against its economic best interests.  This is Bernie Sanders country.  It resolves the class/identity question in favor of the former, and it lets the white workers off the hook for their bigotry.

The questions for the day are:

1.  Is it irrational for white workers to prefer their values to their interests?
2. Are the reactionary workers dupes, or accomplices?
3. Will the Obama/Sanders formula help win elections?

My responses are as follows:

1.  No.  People are not simply economic units.  All of us have values we prize above money.
2. The Reactionaries are the largest faction within the GOP.  The GOP is built upon a deal wherein the PBPs get tax cuts, and the Reactionaries get welfare cuts, limits on immigration, and friendly judges.  Both factions know exactly what they want and drive the hardest possible bargain.  The white workers are accomplices, not victims.
3. The Obama formula may help the Democrats pick off a few white workers here and there.  Ultimately, however, the correct approach is to tell the Reactionaries that they have an extremely important role to play in this country, that they don’t have to walk around feeling guilty about “white privilege” every day, and that their interests will be protected, but that they are not the default for America, and they are certainly not victims.

The Democrats in Congress can’t check Trump, and the Republicans won’t.  The judicial system is getting redder every day.  Who else is left to save us from fascism and foreign calamities?  The NYT?

Winter came for Donald Trump in the form of a blue wave election in November, 2018.  Faced with a blizzard of subpoenas, he had three choices:  change his ways; resign; or fight.  There was never any real doubt about which option he would pick.  True to his upbringing and experience, he would fight, regardless of what it meant to the country and its institutions.

While he was ignorant of policy, he had a strong survival instinct and a kind of low cunning that served him well during the crisis.  He saw that he had four great assets:  the power and visibility of his office; the support of the right-wing media, which was too invested in him to let him fail; the ability to weaponize law enforcement; and the open disbelief of his opponents that he would be willing to destroy our political system in order to preserve his ego.

With that in mind, he took the following actions:

1.  He launched a “wag the dog” war on Iran and portrayed the war’s critics as traitors;
2. He fired Sessions and Mueller and persuaded the Senate (still held by the GOP) to confirm a bland-sounding AG who, once in office, replaced all of the incumbents with Trump loyalists and criminalized political opposition.  Spurious charges were filed on a daily basis against Trump critics, particularly in the media.  Many of these prosecutions failed, at least at first.  But they ground down the opposition, and the Trump-compliant Supreme Court weighed in on his side.  Ultimately, for most, opposition was just too costly, and it stopped.
3. Fox News and Sinclair were persuaded, without much trouble, to move from merely triggering and owning the libs to identifying Trump critics, describing them as traitors, and inciting mob violence against them.  Groups of right-wing thugs called the CDT (Committee to Defend Trump) sprung up all over the country for the purpose of silencing opposition by force.  When the left rose in response, Trump called on elected authorities all over the country to suppress them.  They complied.  The CDT owned the streets.
4. While this was going on, most of the country simply refused to believe it could be happening, and so remained silent.

The 2020 election was a farce.  Trump thought about cancelling it altogether, but he ultimately decided to let it go on, because he knew that he couldn’t lose.  And he didn’t.  The country was now, at best, an illiberal democracy, and the terror only increased.

 

Bob Woodward, Ross Douthat, and Anonymous have all painted similar portraits of Trump over the last few days:  an erratic, amoral, ignorant wannabe authoritarian.  A man on golf cart, if you like.  Where they differ is with their predictions for the future.  Woodward just sounds the alarm, at least as far as I know; Douthat argues that Trump has been reasonably contained thus far, but that things will likely get worse; Anonymous assures us that the “steady state” has this under control.

Who’s right?  A genuine conservative (as opposed to a reactionary) knows the best course is to prepare for the worst.  What that is, and how it could happen, will be addressed in my next post.

Everyone will be wondering who wrote the Op-Ed.  My guess is that it was someone who has been part of the Trump administration from its inception with ties to the GOP establishment and interests in both foreign and domestic policy.  The better question, however, is why?

My guess is that the real message of the Op-Ed was that the adults are still in charge, so you can vote for the GOP in November with a good conscience even if you think Trump is a man on golf cart. In my opinion, however, anyone who is counting on the “steady state” to keep him under control for four years is a fool.

If I were in a position to question Kavanaugh, I would focus on the mechanics of originalism.  I would ask him to identify which of the Founding Fathers would be of special interest, and why.  I would ask what documents he would use in this process.  I would ask if published letters were useful in determining intent. He would have to say yes.

Then I would ask a question about Trump’s tweets, and let the fun begin.

It’s the day we reward those who work.

A day off for the drivers and clerks.

Capital’s friends

Surely wish for its end.

For them, it’s a pretext to shirk.

The labor theory of value makes sense for hunter/gatherers, but not for a modern economy, which also runs on capital and intellectual property.  That said, in the final analysis, the economy still can’t run without labor, and we are still living on infrastructure built largely with or ancestors’ muscle power.  We should be more grateful for it.

Labor in the US has never operated under such severe political and economic disadvantages during my lifetime as it does today. Demographics are about to start changing that, at least as to jobs that cannot be easily automated or sent overseas.  As for everyone else . . . there are still lots of underemployed people in India and Africa.

Trump’s greatest weakness with white working people is his contempt for unions.  His announcement of a pay freeze for federal workers just before Labor Day is an obvious stick in the eye for American workers everywhere.  Will the Democrats make him pay the price for it in November?  We’ll see.

Enjoy your holiday!

Who is this Grace chick the black people sing about all the time?  The only Grace I know was a two.  It should be “Amazing Donald!”

It isn’t just that he’s a mercantilist.  They give him arbitrary power over the entire world.  Everyone has to come to his door and suck up to him to avoid being a victim.  He can make or break fortunes at a whim just by citing to “national security”.  He can create a new cliffhanger every day.

Does anyone out there think he would give up that power voluntarily?

If “Stop the Madness!” would make a great Democratic catchphrase during the current elections, the GOP slogan should be “Cover up for Trump,” given recent disclosures about the list of legitimate investigations that they are determined to prevent.  In light of that, what would it take for the Republicans to seriously consider impeachment?

1.  The payment of hush money to a porn star without appropriate disclosures in order to influence the outcome of an election?  Forget it.
2.  The active solicitation of assistance from a hostile foreign power in order to win an election?  No way.
3.  The active solicitation of assistance from the hostile foreign power in exchange for the promise of significant policy concessions?  I used to think so, but now I doubt it.  Trump supporters are going to rallies wearing t-shirts saying they would rather be Russians than Democrats.
4. #1 and #3, plus some sort of self-inflicted national catastrophe that threatens hundreds of GOP seats in Congress and the interests of the donor class?  That might be it.

Pathetic, isn’t it?

A programming note:  I will be on vacation until 9/10.  Posting until then will be short and irregular at best.

People my age will remember that the leadership of the Soviet Union used to engage in a good cop, bad cop routine revolving around the “hardliners in the Kremlin.”  The idea was that the American government should make concessions on this issue or that to strengthen the hand of the existing “moderate” Soviet leaders, because the alternative was far, far worse.  In reality, there was little or no daylight between the leadership and the purported hardliners, and the gambit rarely worked.

It occurred to me a few days ago that Kim is faced with the same sort of issue with the current US government.  The North Koreans clearly believe that there is a distinction between Trump, who is accommodating and wants to make a deal, and his cabinet members, who are much more skeptical.  Are they right?

In some ways, yes.  It is true that Trump wants “wins” and the spotlight, and doesn’t care about the specifics of the negotiations.  That makes him an easier target for the North Koreans.  It is also true that it has been possible on occasion to persuade Trump to overrule his advisers and make concessions to Kim.  The problem, however, is that denuclearization is a complex process that inevitably requires lots of hard work and expertise, which in turn means that Trump can’t and won’t do it himself.   Mattis, Pompeo, Bolton, and the rest of the hardliner cast have to be involved if anything meaningful is to get done.

Trump himself seems to have declared victory and moved on.  The North Koreans are getting frustrated with the lack of progress, even though they have “won” by looking reasonable to the rest of the world.  How can they cut through this situation and regain Trump’s attention?  By saying or doing something outrageous, of course.  It always worked in the past.

It’s going to happen.  It’s just a matter of time.

The deal with the Mexicans apparently includes a provision which requires auto manufacturers to show that workers making at least $16 per hour built at least 40 percent of their vehicles in order to take advantage of the tariff waiver.  Since the vast majority of Mexican auto workers make a small fraction of that, the presumed purpose of this section is to drive production facilities out of Mexico and back into the US.  On its face, it is a victory for Trump and for American workers.

But is it, really?  There is a serious question about how this provision is going to be enforced.  That aside, put yourself in the position of a CEO of an “American” auto manufacturer (does this concept even make sense anymore?) who will have to deal with this new situation.  Your company has a supply chain with both Mexican and American components.  The new agreement is going to drive up your costs and make your products less competitive relative to those of “European” or “Japanese” car companies.

If you don’t simply elect to try to commit a fraud on the new system, your choices essentially are to: (a) maintain the status quo and pay the tariff, which makes your product more expensive; (b) pay the Mexican workers far more, which probably increases your costs even more; (c) move your Mexican facilities to the US, which has  roughly the same result as (c); or (d) move the entire process overseas, and pay the tariff, but also take advantage of lower labor costs.

If you really want to compete on cost, you’re probably going to pick (d).  Does that really make America great again, or does it mean that larger tariffs on vehicles made outside North America are next?