Cromwell

The Supreme Court has delivered on the reactionary Christmas list from 2016. Abortion as a constitutional right–gone. The left-leaning administrative state–shackled. Christian culture war carve-outs–created and expanded. Gun ownership rights–unleashed. Affirmative action–eliminated. What more could a reactionary want?

Quite a lot, actually; the terms of the argument are about to change. Up until now, the reactionary agenda has been to limit government actions which negatively impact straight white Christians; if Trump or DeSantis is elected, however, we will see attempts to strengthen the powers of the government to oppress sexual and racial minorities and to limit “woke” speech. There will be plenty of discussion about incorporating “common good constitutionalism” into our jurisprudence; originalism will be out of style, at least for the far right. There is plenty of reason to believe that Thomas and Alito will support this. Can they get three more votes? I doubt it, but it isn’t out of the question.

A botched campaign rollout. A horribly misguided decision to chase committed Trump voters instead of undecideds. Another horribly misguided decision to emulate the failed Cruz campaign by running to Trump’s right. A refusal to take positions that are popular with the electorate as a whole. A foolish passive-aggressive approach to the campaign. Sagging polls. Lost influence with Fox News. By any account, the DeSantis campaign to date has been a DeSaster.

Can he turn it around? He still has some time, plenty of money, the debates, and some lingering connections with Fox News on his side. In order to do it, however, he’s going to have to make his case forcefully and unequivocally against Trump from this point forward regardless of the sensitivities of a portion of the base. That case is that Trump, in spite of what the right would say were good intentions, was a complete failure as president due to his innumerable personal shortcomings, and an irresponsible loser afterwards. He will inevitably lead the party to yet another loss if he is the nominee as a result of his unpopularity among independents. Hence, the need to try something new.

Will this work? Probably not at this stage, but the alternatives are worse. Parroting Trump’s views, refusing to launch meaningful attacks on him, and hoping that someone else (Jack Smith? Chris Christie?) will destroy the man on golf cart for him has been an abject failure thus far. There is no reason to believe that will change between now and the middle of 2024.

Per the NYT, PepsiCo increased its profits significantly even though its sales, by volume, decreased. The reason: price increases well in excess of inflation. Or, if you like, greedflation, the phenomenon The Economist says doesn’t exist.

I have no idea why consumers view Pepsi products as premium products, but for now, it appears they do. Greedflation will continue as long as it works. At what point will consumers wise up and switch to equivalent, cheaper products? Your guess is as good as mine, but I don’t think it will take too long.

Being ideologically aligned with business interests, and desperate to justify its most recent price increases, The Economist argues in its latest issue that the current level of inflation is caused by excessive government overspending, not greedflation. As evidence of this, it points to falling profits in America and European energy subsidies. Is the argument valid?

No. American profits are still very high, historically speaking; the stock market reflects this. The European energy subsidies just had the effect of offsetting what would have been the equivalent of a large tax increase. They did not provide the opportunity for a wave of increased consumer spending on other goods and services.

The reality is that the two principal drivers of today’s inflation are a tight labor market and greedflation. The latter is only possible because wealthy people in America and Europe have plenty of savings, partly due to the enforced inactivity during the pandemic, and the willingness to use them. That condition will continue indefinitely unless there is some sort of massive external shock that destroys asset values and consumer confidence. What would that be? Other than a massive surprise increase in interest rates, it would be something that is unforeseeable and beyond our control.

The facts and the controlling law in the social media censorship case are not much in dispute. The difficulty derives from the application of the facts to the law. I have skimmed the lengthy opinion, and find large parts of it unpersuasive.

After you separate the wheat from the chaff, there are two fundamental questions posed in the case:

1. Did the government’s use of its unquestioned First Amendment right to express opinions on social media posts it viewed as creating a danger to the public health and safety cross the line into coercion of the tech companies?
2. How much legal protection are posts which spread dangerous factual misinformation entitled to under the First Amendment?

As to the first issue, the record clearly shows a long list of attempts by various government officials to persuade the tech companies to do more to stop the spread of misinformation–most notably, on the virus. With the exception of a few scattered comments about amending Section 230 and looking at antitrust action, however, I don’t see anything in the lengthy record that approaches coercion in the opinion, and those issues were already on the table, anyway. The judge doesn’t really focus on the second point; he appears to think that the dispute between the CDC and people spreading medical misinformation about masks, vaccines, and alternative virus treatments, for example, is a mere matter of opinion in which the truth is unclear and the views of dissenters are entitled to equal weight.

I expect this opinion to be substantially modified when it is considered on appeal. Will it be completely overturned? Probably not.

Bruce Rattner argues that we need to embrace AI, as it is the key to increased economic growth in the foreseeable future. He acknowledges, however, that AI will create millions of losers, and notes that the previous wave of globalization and technological change that started in the 1990s led to higher levels of inequality and a dangerous populist backlash. He consequently thinks we need to plan to redistribute the wealth added by AI in order to prevent another backlash. Is he right?

In order to answer that question, we need to consider why efforts to redistribute the wealth created by the last wave of change were a failure. The GOP was, and still is, essentially a coalition of businessmen and retirees. The former group views taxation as theft and any effort, however paltry, to redistribute wealth as socialism; the latter group lives on existing government transfer payments and investments and is consequently insulated from the impacts of creative destruction. Neither has any incentive to support programs that help the victims of technological change. Together, they fought off attempts to expand the welfare state by using culture war issues to flip the votes of just enough reactionary white workers to win elections. The losers fought back; hence, the growth of right-wing populism in America and in Europe.

What part of that equation has changed? If anything, it’s worse today than it was 20 years ago. What Rattner is proposing makes economic sense, but is impossible in the real world, at least in the absence of a major change in the GOP.

The central dilemma of the GOP is that its extremists turn off moderate swing voters, but it does not think it can win without them. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them, in other words.

How is the party dealing with this dilemma? By preparing to nominate the guy who cost them the last three elections, of course.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Exhibit A.

Suppose you were trying to design a candidate who would have no chance of beating Donald Trump. How would you do it?

First, you would make sure he had a grim, humorless, off-putting personality. Think Ted Cruz without the charisma, if such a thing is possible.

Second, you would tell him to emulate Cruz by attacking Trump from the right. This is a tried and true way to lose the election. If you really want to stack the deck, you could make sure the Cruz wannabe lane is already occupied by someone–say, a former Vice President.

Third, you would advise him to go after the voters that Trump already has locked up instead of the undecideds. Call it the Sisyphus approach to campaigning.

Fourth, you would make sure he got off to a really bad start in order to make a poor first impression with GOP voters who weren’t familiar with him.

Finally, you would tell him to pull his punches with Trump in order to keep the party united for the general election.

Step right up, Governor DeSantis!

The Florida governor Ron

Said he’d bring the far right a new dawn.

But the right prefers Trump

So his poll numbers slumped

And his chances to win may be gone.

The Democrats have a variety of identities; the party is a coalition of women, minorities, young people, liberals, and some workers. The GOP, on the other hand, is a party of a single identity–old and white. When it wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror, it sees Donald Trump.

This makes it difficult for the younger and more vigorous Ron DeSantis to gain any traction with the electorate; an apparent advantage is really a disadvantage for him. It also means the rest of the candidates in a surprisingly diverse field have very little chance of success.

The Democrats always want their nominee to be JFK or Obama–young, vigorous, articulate, and charismatic. For their part, the GOP thinks every election is a rerun of 1980; their candidate is the always optimistic Ronald Reagan, who believes that cutting government at home and projecting power abroad will lead to an American Renaissance, while the Democrat is the weak, ineffectual Jimmy Carter. How is that working in 2023?

If the Democrat wins, he will be the oldest president in history. The GOP nominee is likely to be an angry man with no respect for constitutional norms who wants to take America back to the past from a grim present by oppressing half the country. In addition, Biden refuses to play the Carter role; inflation is subsiding, and we are more than holding our own in Ukraine.

Is it any wonder nobody is excited about a Biden-Trump rematch?

Biden ran as a relative moderate in the 2020 primaries. As a result of the pandemic, he portrayed himself in the general election as FDR for the 21st century. While he had important legislative successes during the first two years of his term, inflation and the Senate killed his attempts to follow through on his ambitions to replace the dollar store economy with a more worker-friendly version. Today, with a GOP majority in the House, he is by both temperament and necessity a Clinton-like triangulator. So how will he run in 2024–as a moderate with bipartisan support protecting us from a right-wing extremist with no regard for liberal democracy, or as the visionary who wants to finish the job of remaking America?

I think you will see some of both, but the predominant theme will be the first one, because it has a better chance of success with swing voters. This time, he will be more Eisenhower than FDR.

Trump has a cult of personality, so why doesn’t DeSantis? The answer is simple: you can’t have one if you don’t have one.

David French knows that we see the anger and hatred at MAGA rallies, but he wants us to know that the participants are having a really good time and bonding together. He thinks the joy at a Trump event sets the man on golf cart apart from DeSantis. Is he right?

Quite possibly. It all goes back to my previous post about how the GOP has to choose between a cult leader and a guy who has nothing to offer America except punishment for the left. Right now, Jesus is beating Torquemada like a drum.

Americans in search of cheap land illegally immigrated to Mexican Texas, rebelled against the government, declared independence, and won. Lacking the men and resources to protect themselves against the Indians and Mexicans, they then asked to be annexed in the US, and got what they wanted. The American government then provoked a war with Mexico over the location of the new border, won it, and gained control of several states, including California, in the process. Would any of this have happened if the Revolution had failed?

The illegal immigration part was inevitable, but the rest was not. Great Britain would have had zero interest in provoking a war with Mexico. Large parts of what is now the US might still be included in Mexico today but for the success of the Revolution.