Cromwell

Mitch McConnell argues that Trump should act as an ally of Ukraine, not a mediator. Is his analysis correct?

Yes–it is the same point I have made many times before in this blog. It is worth noting, however, that a good mediator is completely neutral and makes no effort to strongarm any of the parties. In Trump’s case, he often appears to be taking Putin’s side when he attempts to negotiate with the Ukrainians.

We fought through 2025.

The Constitution still survives.

Our politics remain insane

But at least there was no hurricane.

_____________

We had a safe and healthy year.

We cherished those that we hold dear.

Darcy’s fine; she just turned eight.

She’s still a puppy, which is great.

____________

We live a quiet sunbird life.

Just me and Darcy and my wife.

We watch the seasons come and go

And leave BE before the snow.

_____________

We took a trip to the NC coast.

The history there I enjoyed the most

We also drove to the Finger Lakes

Where the past’s alive, and the scenery’s great.

____________

Next year could go either way.

Which path we’ll choose, I cannot say.

Our freedoms still are under threat.

I fear we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Over a million Americans died from Covid-19. Public health officials, faced with conditions not experienced in nearly a century, made mistakes. As a result, experts in a wide range of fields lost their credibility; to Donald Trump and his followers, any anonymous guy on the internet selling snake oil has as much claim to be an expert as someone with genuine credentials. Was this an elite failure?

Yes, but with some reservations. First, the federal government and the CDC were dealing with imperfect information in real time, so it is hardly surprising that they made mistakes. Second, the American experience was not unique. Third, the system succeeded in creating vaccines in record time in response to the pandemic. It isn’t the fault of the experts that foolish people refused to take them.

What do we have to be thankful for today? For the events that haven’t occurred yet. The economy may be struggling against Trump-induced headwinds, but it hasn’t collapsed. The Russians haven’t broken through in Ukraine. Trump hasn’t used the Insurrection Act. We still, for the most part, have First Amendment rights. Taiwan hasn’t been traded for soybeans. The lower courts are still putting up resistance. And so on.

Will I still be able to say any of this next year? I honestly have no idea.

The 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession gave rise to populist movements on both sides of the spectrum. Occupy Wall Street, on the left side, argued that the crash had been caused by bankers, who hadn’t been sufficiently chastised for their greed; the Tea Party, on the right side, insisted that the real villain was a government that was too big and too willing to bail out hapless homeowners. Did the existence of critics on both sides prove the Great Recession was an example of elite failure?

The GR was the result of three massive failures. First, millions of Americans, including realtors, bankers, and homeowners, got too greedy; as the saying goes, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Second, the government, largely as a result of GOP-driven deregulation, was unable to put a stop to the creation of a financial system that was getting out of control. Finally, financial institutions and ratings agencies made mistakes that made it impossible for investors to properly assess risk. The opacity of the system created by all of those actors caused it to crumble.

In short, there was elite failure in 2008 and thereafter, but some blame can also be attached to millions of Americans who cannot reasonably be described as elite.

Ross Douthat thinks the state of the economy is Trump’s greatest political problem; even if the tariffs ultimately reinvigorate American manufacturing, the benefits will likely be felt long after Trump leaves office. I agree. But Douthat has nothing to say about the impacts of the deportations, which is of particular interest in light of the position taken by the Pope and the American bishops. Douthat can’t argue that only a rogue heretic Pope had any interest in protecting immigrants at this point. So what is going on here?

There are a number of possibilities. Perhaps Ross is just too embarrassed by the issue to discuss it in public. Maybe he thinks it is just a sideshow. Maybe he thinks the problems are temporary and that the system will improve over time. My best guess is that he believes Trump has a mandate for his regime, so criticizing it after the fact is inappropriate.

Some Trump-aligned Republicans like to argue that the Iraq War had as much support from Democrats as from Republicans. By that theory, George W. Bush was a proto-Democrat, and the war was another example of the failure of the entire elite, not just the GOP. Is that position justified?

No. Bush and Cheney pushed the war relentlessly on the political class. While it is true that some prominent Democrats voted for the war, it was not their idea, and they did so mostly out of fear of future retribution from the electorate. The only meaningful opposition to the war in its early stages came from the more principled elements of the left; what is now the populist right, including Trump, supported Bush enthusiastically until it became clear much later that the war was a mistake. The responsibility for the war consequently rests with Bush and the GOP, not the entire elite.

The terms of China’s admission to the WTO were negotiated by both Democrats and Republicans. There was an elite consensus that bringing China into the system would make it more democratic and less dangerous. The consensus position, as it turned out, was completely wrong. As a result, you can reasonably argue that some of America’s economic problems were the result of elite failure.

But there are three major caveats to that position. First, American consumers have enjoyed relatively cheap products for two decades, a benefit that is often dismissed today, but should not be. Second, the elite consensus broke down when it came time to compensate the losers of globalization; that was a partisan issue. Finally, the numbers don’t lie; technological change accounted for far more of the loss of American industrial jobs than trade with China. You can even see this occurring in the Chinese economy today.

Three observations are pertinent here:

1. The finding that Halligan was improperly appointed doesn’t have the same emotional appeal as a finding that the prosecutions were vindictive. The practical impacts, however, may well be greater, as these appointment issues are popping up all over the country.
2. The opinion contains lots of citations to writings from Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. You can view this as irony or an attempt to prevent SCOTUS from getting involved.
3. Trump, Bondi, and the DOJ should be embarrassed. Will they be? Probably not.

Left-wing and right-wing populists agree that the apparently unbroken list of American failures over the last few decades are the fault of a self-serving and corrupt elite class that needs to be overthrown. To them, Jeffrey Epstein is the very personification of this class. Hence the need to make the entire record public.

The Epstein emails apparently show lots of trivial and bipartisan efforts at networking, which is hardly surprising; building and maintaining connections has been a staple of cultural and political systems since the ancient Sumerians. It doesn’t account for the supposed elite failures. But is the record really that bad? Is America really the failure that the populists say it is? I will be addressing that issue in a series of posts over the next week.

Marco Rubio may or may not still aspire to be president; I’m really not sure. If he does, he will have to juggle his responsibility to be Trump’s pro-establishment foreign policy good cop with his need to build bridges to the far right. It’s a tough job.

As a result, we see episodes like the one we had last week, when he allegedly told GOP senators privately that the very pro-Putin Trump peace plan wasn’t really an American plan, while he insisted in public that it was.

This won’t end well for him unless he has political skills we haven’t seen yet.

She may well be back, but for now, this is MTG’s political obituary. What did she stand for, and how did this come to pass?

1. She has a coherent, if odious, vision for America. I have called it the New Confederacy. The idea behind it is to let red states be as beastly as they want to be relative to racial and religious minorities–most notably, Jews.
2. She genuinely believes in her vision, and wants to use the state to help white Christians thrive.
3. Until recently, she did not understand that Trumpism isn’t really about that vision; it is about increasing Trump’s powers to behave arbitrarily in order to show the world he is the boss. Usually, but not always, these powers are used to punish people reactionaries hate. That is why the red base supports Trump so passionately.
4. To be a true Trumpist, you have to be able to change your positions on a dime, because that is what the man on golf cart does.
5. MTG was unable to do this. She finally became aware that her vision was not always compatible with Trumpism. When that happened, she had the wisdom and the integrity to jump ship.

Yesterday’s NYT contained a Ross Douthat interview with Yoram Hazony, a right-wing Israeli who is one of the intellectual leaders of the national conservative movement. His views regarding nationalism and right-wing antisemitism make for fascinating, if hardly persuasive, reading.

There are three enormous problems with his views on nationalism:

1. Nations aren’t created; they evolve. America, the land of recent immigrants, is only an extreme example of this phenomenon. The UK, just to use one example, was created by Celts, Romans, Germans, Vikings, Normans, and immigrants from the British Empire. Its culture, language, and religious views are in a state of constant change. Trying to stop that process is a fool’s errand.
2. Identifying a group of people within a nation as legacy members of a tribe means everyone else is, at best, a second-class citizen. Once you have established a right to discriminate against some members of the nation, there is no obvious place to stop. Not every nationalist movement leads to Hitler or Franco, but there is nothing except memory and self-restraint to prevent it from happening.
3. A world of nations motivated purely by self-interest will, by definition, be violent and chaotic. Given today’s military technologies, the consequences of that are too grim to contemplate. That’s why we have the international institutions the national conservatives despise so much.

Trump and Bernie Sanders agree that America has been run into the ground by its elites, who need to be brought under control. Where do they disagree?

Trump thinks the elites in question are cultural and intellectual, and their failings are moral. Sanders thinks they are billionaires, and their sin is greed. As a result, the two have different solutions to our problems. Trump despises experts of all kinds and gets his information from his gut and the internet; he uses the legal and financial power of the federal government to crush the MSM, the bureaucracy, universities, and cultural institutions that refuse to support MAGA. Sanders has no issue with experts; he simply wants to use regulations and taxation to wipe American billionaires from the face of the planet.

They’re both wrong, but based on the numbers, Sanders has the better case. The one percent has become vastly wealthier over the last few decades; the top ten percent is only slightly better off.

Trump is now supporting a peace plan that gives Putin virtually everything he wants. In exchange for territorial concessions that the Russians haven’t earned yet, unreciprocated limits on Ukraine’s military, and a commitment to hold new Ukrainian elections in the near future, Trump is offering American security “guarantees” which are vague to the point of meaninglessness, which was undoubtedly what he was trying to accomplish.

Zelensky and the Europeans can’t possibly swallow this proposal, which makes Neville Chamberlain look like a savvy negotiator. Then what? Does Trump walk away from any kind of support for Ukraine–even the kind that makes American arms manufacturers money–and open the door to a complete Russian victory?

The Ukrainians and the Europeans will try to forestall this by slow walking the new proposal rather than outright rejecting it in the belief that Trump will ultimately either lose interest or change his mind. Let’s hope they are successful.