Category: Uncategorized

Biden never made fighting inflation an overriding priority, probably because he thought there wasn’t much he could do about it; the system just needed to heal itself. If so, he was right. Supply chain problems ended after the pandemic; the world adjusted to the impacts of the Ukraine war; and the two-year rule cited in several previous posts worked its magic. Today, inflation is back to normal. Trump will undoubtedly get the credit for it.

But the experience of 2022-23 was a political disaster for Biden. Would things have been different if he had been more public and less passive in the battle against inflation? Would a constant drumbeat of complaints from the Oval Office about unjustified price increases have helped? Would a more vigorous effort to rein in spending have impressed the electorate, even if it didn’t accomplish much in the real world?

I doubt it, but we’ll never know. In retrospect, it was probably his only chance.

During the first Trump term, the bureaucracy ran a relatively “normal” foreign policy, while Trump ran off on his own, leading to dissonance and uncertainty that the man on golf cart clearly viewed as a positive feature of his system. His appointments to date suggest that he plans to do the same thing this time around, which should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. Is Marco Rubio prepared to have his position undercut by Trump every time he opens his mouth? I certainly hope so.

But the foreign policy appointments have been unobjectionable, at least by Trump’s incredibly low standards. The real test involves his selections for AG and Secretary of Defense. Does he intend to use the military and the legal system to punish enemies and stifle dissent? We will have a much better idea when these appointments are made.

J: Hey, Alex! Happy Veterans Day!

H: Yeah, at least one of us was a veteran, and it wasn’t you.

J: Whoa! Why so grumpy?

H: Did you see the results of the election? Can you believe what our country is doing to itself?

J: Yeah, it’s hard to believe they elected that clown.

H: We spent a lot of time worrying about demagogues and men on horseback during the Constitutional Convention. We thought we might have to deal with a Caesar or an Oliver Cromwell. Instead, we got a narcissistic casino owner whose idea of exercise is riding in a golf cart. It’s absolutely pathetic.

J: You’ll get no argument from me. His vices are mitigated only by his other vices.

H: He reminds me a bit of your friend Aaron Burr, except that Burr was a good attorney and a war hero. He just didn’t have any principles when it came to his ambition.

J: He wasn’t my friend. I had him tried for treason, as you know.

H: Yeah, but he ran on a ticket with you and shot me. Anyway, the American people are mostly responsible for this, but you get some of the blame, too.

J: For what? I was a Renaissance man. Trump’s more of a Neolithic man.

H: That part’s true, but his base hates cities and immigrants, just like you did. They think that only white Christian farmers are real Americans. They want to stick it to everyone else.

J: I admit I thought America should be run by virtuous and independent yeomen farmers, but the country evolved in ways I couldn’t possibly imagine. I wouldn’t be channeling Sarah Palin if I were alive today. Anyway, I think you’re to blame, too.

H: For what?

J: Tariffs. You loved them. So does Trump. They’re a big part of his appeal to the voters.

H: At the time, tariffs were necessary to raise revenue, and to protect infant American industries from unfair foreign competition. Times have changed. Trump’s tariffs have more to do with Juan Peron than me.

J: Probably true. Can we call it a draw and just blame the American people for falling for a fraud who won’t deliver the economy of 2019 with his mass deportations and his ridiculous tariffs?

H: I’m OK with that. The real question has to do with what happens with the public sees it has been deceived. Will Trump respond by crushing dissent and destroying the system we worked so hard to create? Or will he back down and spin his failures as a success?

J: I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

RATIONALE: It’s all Joe Biden’s fault. His spending resulted in inflation. He didn’t do enough to sell the economy to the American people. Then he waited too long to drop out. Harris didn’t have a chance. REALITY: This one contains germs of truth, but nothing more than that. Biden deserves far more credit than he got for bringing the country back after the pandemic; his spending was authorized by Congress, and only caused a small part of the spike in inflation. He wasn’t a successful salesman, partly because he didn’t command the spotlight the way Trump does, but based on the results of elections in the rest of the world, it is unlikely he would have convinced the public even if he had tried harder. As to the timing of his decision to drop out, it still gave Harris a chance, and does anyone believe a different Democratic nominee–even one who wasn’t part of the administration–would have avoided responsibility for inflation? I have serious doubts about that.

THE RATIONALE: The Democrats don’t care about working people. They have become the party of self-satisfied coastal elites that are too progressive for the average worker. THE REALITY: Really? Joe Biden, the most labor-friendly president in history–a man who didn’t go to an Ivy League school–doesn’t care about workers? How do we explain his protectionist measures, his attempts to expand the welfare state for the benefit of workers, and his vast investments in struggling red states?

The reality is that the Democrats have done little but worry about their relationship with workers since 2016. Their failure to connect with them has nothing to do with a lack of effort.

THE RATIONALE: The electorate punished the Democrats for being woke. THE REALITY: There are two major problems with this theory. First of all, Joe Biden, an old moderate white guy, was selected by the Democrats in 2020 precisely because he wasn’t woke. Harris, for her part, ran as a tough cop who didn’t have time for identity issues. Second, the high tide of wokeness was in 2020, when the Democrats prevailed. They also outperformed expectations in 2022. Ron DeSantis ran on fighting wokeness and lost to Trump. Other than a few anti-trans commercials, Trump barely raised the issue, preferring to talk about inflation and illegal immigrants. Why, given this record, would anyone attribute the outcome of the election to wokeness?

If the Democrats pull a rabbit out of a hat and win the House, it will be Hakeem Jeffries. If not, it will be the most visible and effective member of the resistance. That would be Gavin Newsom.

It depends on the public perception of the success or failure of the Trump years. If, against substantial odds, the Trump economy somehow works for everyone, the Democrats will have to lay out a progressive vision based on youth, class, and race and involving significant institutional change; AOC immediately comes to mind here. If, on the other hand, Trump is viewed as a complete failure, the Democrats will play it safe, emulate the Labour Party in the last election, and pick the most moderate white guy they can find–a younger version of Joe Biden. Josh Shapiro would be a logical choice.

For once, I’m going to say something positive about a Trump appointee; Susie Wiles is a good, if obvious, choice for chief of staff. She seems to be able to keep Trump on track and to protect him from at least some of his worst impulses. The nation will be grateful to her if she can do it for the next four years.

Here’s the history: in 2008 and 2012, America chose a liberal black man over a conservative white guy; in 2016, it preferred a reactionary white guy to a white woman; in 2020, it picked an old white liberal man over the reactionary; and in 2024, it elected the reactionary white guy instead of a liberal black woman. What are we to make of this?

Here are three potential theories:

1. America is irredeemably racist and sexist. Trump’s victory in 2024 proves it.
2. The MAGA portion of the electorate is racist and sexist, but the outcome of each election was determined by facts specific to it. In 2016, Trump won largely due to Hillary Clinton’s legal issues and general unpopularity; in 2020, he lost because his response to the pandemic was inadequate; and in 2024, he won because America was unhappy with the Biden economy.
3. America is not irredeemably racist, but it is sexist. It will never elect a woman president.

The identity left prefers #1, but it simply doesn’t fit the facts, because it is inconsistent with the outcomes in 2008 and 2012. #2 is completely consistent with the record. #3 is possible, but there is every reason to believe that Biden would have done even worse, so I would call it unproven.

Another theory of the case is that “the left” only helped Trump by prosecuting him. The prosecutions supported his martyrdom narrative and consolidated support for him among moderate Republicans. One of the other alternatives might have won the primaries otherwise.

The argument that the prosecutions helped Trump in the primaries is undoubtedly correct. “The left,” however, did not bring these cases against him. Those decisions were made by a few specific individuals; I wasn’t consulted. To the extent that “the left” had an opinion on the matter, it was equivocal at best.

In the end, the prosecutors in question had to make a horrible choice between making America look like a banana republic and elevating Trump above the law. They decided the latter was more dangerous, and with good reason, John Roberts notwithstanding. We’re about to find out why.

In 2020, when faced with four more years of Trump, the Democratic Party nominated the least woke alternative–an elderly white man without an Ivy League degree who rejected defunding the police and opening the border. That same elderly white man became arguably the most pro-union president in history. He also helped design legislation that invested huge amount of public funds in depressed red areas. Workers without degrees did better under his administration than their supervisors. Did any of that help him with workers? No! He was hideously unpopular, and was forced to drop out of the race.

Sherrod Brown is a genuine populist who oozes concern about the working class. There is absolutely nothing about him that looks Ivy League. He ran a strong campaign against a car dealer. Did he win? No! It wasn’t even that close.

Never Trumpers are now arguing that the problem with Democrats is that they’re snooty elitists who don’t care about workers without degrees. The fate of Biden and Brown tells us that wasn’t the problem. In any event, which Republicans really care about workers? The editorial board of the WSJ? Elon Musk? The billionaire former casino owner and developer who is going back to the White House carrying a plan to cut corporate taxes and business regulations again?

Elitism wasn’t the problem. Inflation was.

In the end, it came down to this: the American public erroneously decided years ago that the economy was in bad shape, blamed Biden, and demanded change. Other than Biden, Harris was the least credible change agent available to the Democrats. It is no wonder that she failed.

But what if she had tried harder to distance herself from Biden? Here were her options:

1. BE MORE PROGRESSIVE AND DEMAND LARGE INCREASES IN THE SIZE OF THE WELFARE STATE: This would not have been persuasive, because the likelihood of getting such a program through Congress was zero, and the public had already (mostly incorrectly) decided that Biden’s spending was responsible for inflation in any event.
2. LEAN MORE HEAVILY ON THE GENERATIONAL THEME: Older people vote at much higher rates than younger people. That’s why they do so well with the welfare state. This would have been suicide.
3. EMBRACE WOKENESS: The American people don’t much care for wokeness, particularly in relation to trans people. This would have been suicide, too.
4. TRY MORE POPULISM: Harris could have rejected the notion of a united front and spent more time bashing billionaires. Some of that was already included in her commercials. It would not have addressed her perceived weakness on inflation, and it might have cost her more votes than it won.

There are things that Harris could have done better, in my opinion. She could have come across as less rehearsed. She could have tried harder to convince the voters that they were actually better off than they were in 2020. She could have done a lot more with the climate change issue. The bottom line, however, would have remained the same–she had no plausible alternative to advocating for the status quo. That turned out to be a losing hand with an angry electorate, even with an opponent with all of Trump’s weaknesses.

Ron DeSantis was the unquestioned leader of the opposition to Amendments 3 and 4. Both amendments received well over 50 percent of the vote, but neither met Florida’s extraordinary 60 percent threshold. As a result, DeSantis proved that his brand of social conservatism still has legs in the state.

But “winning” by thwarting the will of a clear majority of the public through the expenditure of state funds is not a very impressive accomplishment. In addition, DeSantis managed to alienate the large portion of the reactionary base that is libertarian on drug issues; after all, Donald Trump supported Amendment 3. His “victory” will do him no good when he runs for president again in 2028.

In 2016, the British people decided they had had enough of Polish plumbers. They wanted to build walls and close gates in order to preserve the character of their country. They wanted out of Europe.

When opponents of Brexit told the public that cutting ties with Europe would result in lower or no growth, the voters chose to believe a flamboyant populist who insisted that the UK could have its cake and eat it, too. They then voted him into office to finish the job, which he did, in his shambolic fashion.

By 2024, the British public was suffering from buyer’s remorse. A substantial majority thought that Brexit was a mistake. Their revised opinion was supported by the data, which indicated that the critics of Brexit had been right in 2016. It was unlikely, however, that the wrong could be made right that far after the fact.

Trump’s plans for mass deportations and tariffs are the American equivalent of Brexit. They won’t bring back the economy of 2019, and they will make him very unpopular very quickly. The real question is whether Trump will then back down and spin the program as a success–he has been known to do that on occasion–or respond by doubling down and using the military, the DOJ, and Homeland Security to stifle dissent.

Either is possible. We’ll find out soon enough.