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Bernie Sanders had a column about the Fed in the NYT about two weeks ago. After you peeled away the tiresome left-wing populist rhetoric, it contained two legitimate points:

1. There is insufficient justification for an increase in interest rates at this point in time:  There is no evidence which suggests that inflation is an imminent problem.  Further interest rate increases will result in a stronger dollar, which will hurt exports and wreak havoc in struggling emerging economies.

2.  Increasing interest rates in response to rising wages exacerbates inequality:  The Fed has taken a lot of unjustified criticism for propping up the stock market, and thereby improving the bottom lines of the 1 percent, at a time when wages have remained stagnant.  What was the alternative–promoting a new Great Depression to spread the misery to everyone?  That said, I would be very concerned if the Fed decides to put the brakes on the economy just because we are starting to see a belated increase in wages, because, whether intentional or not, that would be an act of class warfare.  Trading a slight risk of increased inflation for improved living standards for workers is a sensible gamble at this point in time.

Michael Gerson argues in a column in today’s Washington Post that a Trump victory in the primaries would be a disaster, because it would turn the GOP from the party of Lincoln into a party that rejects racial and religious inclusiveness.

Say what?

Gerson is either living on the planet Zoltan or in a time machine that is stuck in the early 1960’s.  You can reasonably argue that the GOP leadership has not been racist (George W. Bush, to name one, clearly wasn’t), but it is indisputable that the GOP has relied heavily on a core of racist voters for its electoral successes since Nixon’s campaign in 1968.  Trump is simply substituting plain language for code.

If Gerson really wants the GOP to be the party of Lincoln, he has to be willing to forego all of its electoral victories in the Deep South.  I, for one, am not holding my breath.

 

In the short run, you can’t.  Every plausible approach has been tried by the last several administrations, and all of them have failed.

Here are your options:

1.  A preemptive war is not a viable approach because even if you somehow managed to destroy all of the North Korean nuclear weapons before they could be used, the North Korean army has enough men and artillery to level Seoul.  South Korea will understandably never agree to this.

2.  More sanctions won’t work because the country is already isolated, and the Chinese aren’t willing to push any harder.

3.  Engagement has been tried by the South Koreans on numerous occasions.  It always fails, because the North Korean government (correctly) views it as a threat to their regime.

4.  Leaning on China is the current favorite solution.  It is true that the Chinese leadership has no use for the Korean regime, but it is equally true that the Chinese view the status quo as the best of a menu of bad options, most of which would ultimately result in an American ally with troops on its border.  The North Korean government knows this, and is therefore prepared to ignore  Chinese attempts to rein it in.  Don’t expect much help from this quarter.

Two additional observations:

1.  The best ultimate solution to North Korea would be a military coup inspired and controlled by the Chinese.  The North Korean regime is aware of this, which is why anyone close to the throne who is perceived to be too close to China is likely to end up being executed in some particularly gruesome way.

2.  The actions of the North Korean government are perfectly rational if you begin with the premise that it has no interest in the welfare of its people;  it only cares about its own survival.  Occasional flurries of public militarism help keep the people in line.

The bottom line is that, for the foreseeable future, all we can do is remain vigilant without overreacting and hope that the Chinese can help at least a little bit.

The newbie dictator Jong Un

Thought exploding more nukes would be fun.

He threatened to blow

Up his neighbors, you know.

If he does, he’ll have nowhere to run.

Strong

Some think that blunt talking can prove that you’re strong.

I write here to tell you that thinking is wrong.

 

Strong isn’t making glass from desert sand.

Strong is more holding a poor person’s hand.

Strong isn’t showing your neighbor disdain.

Strong’s about healing unbearable pain.

Strong isn’t keeping the refugees out.

Compassion and justice are what it’s about.

Strong isn’t baring and beating your chest.

Strong’s about caring and being your best.

 

If you can’t figure out where all of this led

You’re probably voting for Trump or for Ted.

1. Cruz wins in Iowa.
2. Trump wins in New Hampshire.  Cruz and Rubio finish second and third.
3. Cruz wins a hard-fought battle in South Carolina.
4. Cruz wins the SEC primary handily.
5. Rubio wins Florida.  Bush exits the race.
6. From this point, Cruz wins the red states, while Rubio and Trump divide the blue and purple states.

And your GOP nominee is. . . Ted Cruz!

Ezra Klein posted an article on Vox.com yesterday in which he essentially argued that Trump would ultimately lose as a result of GOP voter pragmatism and some indescribable event similar to what happened to Howard Dean in 2004.  I don’t think the formula is that mysterious.  In addition to voter pragmatism, here are the reasons I think his support will wither quickly after Iowa:

1.  Sooner or later, the GOP enforcers will wake up and start running a barrage of negative ads about Trump’s many past and present left-wing deviations from party orthodoxy:  I have written on this before, so no further elaboration is necessary.

2.  Defeat in Iowa will dent Trump’s image as a winner:  Trump’s appeal is uniquely based on the (completely incorrect) public perception that he is a strong man who never loses at anything.  If and when Cruz beats him in Iowa, this rationale for his candidacy disappears.

If these two things don’t occur, I believe the establishment pundits are wrong and that Trump actually will get the nomination.  If they do, the next question is how he will react, and what it will mean to the GOP.  I will discuss that in a subsequent post.

In this scenario, Cruz wins Iowa due to his superior ground game and evangelical support, while either Rubio or Bush wins New Hampshire (a Christie win, due to the weakness of his campaign elsewhere, is only meaningful in that it is a loss for Trump).  This scenario results in the following:

1. Trump’s support drops rapidly.  He ultimately withdraws, snarling about how the party has treated him unfairly.
2. The establishment rallies around the New Hampshire winner.
3. The winner in South Carolina is the likely nominee.  I would put my money on Cruz, but a Rubio/Bush victory is possible.
4. Cruz will win the SEC primary and many of the Great Plains states, but it will not be enough if Rubio/Bush win in South Carolina.

 

Imagine that you are a businessman and you are forced to choose between Trump and Cruz.  Which one would you prefer?

While they agree on several important points affecting your interests (immigration; tax cuts; deregulation), they have completely different mindsets and personalities.  One of them is a hyperkinetic economic nationalist whose business has accustomed him to dealing with government on a regular basis; the other is a small government reactionary whose views on the economy were last fashionable during the Coolidge Administration.

For me, this would be a difficult (and painful) choice.  It probably would depend on the extent to which your business relied on access to overseas markets and the assistance of the government.  On balance, I hate to say it, but I would give Trump a slight edge in spite of his protectionist leanings, because he at least doesn’t want to bring back the gold standard, and he wouldn’t aspire to recreate some sort of 19th Century laissez-faire nirvana.

If Trump wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, the establishment will have a panic attack.  Efforts to identify a single establishment-backed candidate will intensify, but fail until it is too late.  Trump’s momentum is too great to overcome.  He gets the nomination, and the rest of the party falls into line.

It’s the time of year to make predictions.  Over the next week, I will lay out a number of different scenarios for the primaries. This is the first one.

Suppose, for purposes of argument, the last three serious candidates left standing are Rubio, Cruz, and Trump.  One way to predict the outcome of the election is to look at the constituents of the departed candidates and assign them to one of the three survivors.  How does that look?

In my opinion, Trump has reached his ceiling, Cruz would get Carson’s voters, and Rubio would get the rest.  If you add those numbers to their existing polling, what you wind up with is all three candidates with between 30 and 40 percent of the vote.  It is hard to imagine any of them having a majority going into the convention under those circumstances.  My best guess is that Cruz would be the most acceptable compromise candidate and would win the nomination.

The Washington Post has run two articles about Rubio and his brother-in-law over the last few weeks.  The first of them described the drug dealing activities of the brother-in-law during the 1980’s in some detail (he sounds a bit like a character from “Scarface”); the latter discussed Rubio’s efforts to help him get a real estate license after he was released from jail.

I have two reactions to this information:

1. Articles like these don’t appear for no reason; for the opposing candidates, they are a great way to engage in negative campaigning in a very passive-aggressive way.  Since the events in question took place in Florida, it is probably fair to assume that at least some of the inspiration for the articles came from the Bush campaign.
2.  While I’m no fan of Rubio, he didn’t get to pick his brother-in-law.  The families of other candidates in this race have had legal issues, as well.  I don’t think there is anything in the articles that should make any difference to the voters.

In my opinion, the five most important qualities that should be possessed by our next President are as follows (in order of importance):

1. Courage:  I had a dream one night in which a character told me that courage is more important than intelligence  for a head of state, because you can rent brains, but not balls.  In the conscious world, I believe that was correct.

2. Judgment:  This is not the same thing as pure intellect;  it is the ability to make the correct decision in 51/49 situations, and to evaluate people.

3.  Empathy:  You can’t interact successfully with either your friends or your enemies if you can’t put yourself in their shoes.

4.  Communications skills:  No elaboration necessary.

5.  Patience:  In the real world, problems are rarely resolved overnight. Blustering, throwing temper tantrums, and changing course abruptly in mid-stream are not effective management skills.

Who among our current crop of candidates best exemplifies these character traits?  That will be up to the electorate, but if you read the descriptions carefully, you can probably guess, at a minimum, who should be disqualified.

It’s only OK to execute enemies of the regime by hanging them from cranes in public squares.

The Democrat maverick named Bern

For minority votes he did yearn.

But he talked about class

Like a man from the past

I’m guessing he’s too old to learn.

 

There was more than one reason why “White Christmas” was set in Vermont.