Cromwell

Joe and Dr. Jill are having dinner in the White House when the subject of his re-election campaign comes up.

JILL: Joe, I know you don’t want to discuss this, but it’s time to deal with the elephant in the room.

JOE: But there hasn’t been an elephant in this room since I won in 2020.

JILL: At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor, but you know what I mean. The re-election campaign.

JOE: Oh, that.

JILL: You know I’ll support you, no matter what you do. But you need to take a hard look at whether it makes sense to run again.

JOE: OK. Give me the pros and cons.

JILL: I’ll start with the pros.

JOE: I always prefer to start with the good news. Go on.

JILL: First of all, you have a very good record, regardless of what the Republicans say. Unemployment is very low. The deficit has been reduced dramatically. Inflation is coming down. The markets are doing OK. Gas prices have stabilized. We’ve made important progress on climate change and infrastructure. Your administration has been stable and totally clean. We’re doing well in Ukraine. What’s not to like?

JOE: I agree, of course.

JILL: And things could be looking significantly better in two years, particularly on inflation. Compare that to the clown car that we know the GOP House will be. And Trump, of course. The party will be united behind you and determined to stop the madness in its tracks.

JOE: I think I’m entitled to that, under the circumstances.

JILL: Above all, Trump will be an even more diminished figure than he is today after the primaries, and you already know how to beat him. As a white guy, you’re ideally placed to do that. Just give him the limelight and let him self-destruct. You know he’ll do it. He can’t help it. It’s who he is.

JOE: Why do I have the feeling that there’s a “but” coming in here?

JILL: The “but” is you probably won’t be running against Trump. You’ll be running against DeSantis. Most of the rope-a-dope stuff you did with Trump won’t work against him. You won’t have January 6 on your side. And he’s fresh and young. He’ll have all the energy in the world to run around the country and complain about wokeness, and you won’t be able to respond. You’ll stand next to him on a debate stage and look really old. It’s a disaster in the making.

JOE: But if I don’t run, who can beat DeSantis? Bernie?

JILL: Bernie’s too old, too. I think he knows that. Besides, the Democratic electorate is too smart to pick him even if he does run. Give them credit for being able to pick winners. They did pick you, after all.

JOE: Then who?

JILL: We have lots of qualified candidates. Don’t worry about that.

JOE: Anything else?

JILL: It’s a lesser point, but if you don’t run, the Republicans will be less likely to beat up on Hunter. He doesn’t need that, and neither do we.

JOE: True.

JILL: So, what do you think?

JOE: I’ll think about it.

He broke from hundreds of years of precedent (a most unconservative thing to do) and retired when he could no longer do the job. My guess is that the new precedent will become the general practice as time goes on.

Benedict as a successful radical reformer! Who would have imagined it?

The relatively reasonable GOP House members have tried both appeasement and empty threats with the “burn it down” holdouts, to no avail. It’s time for something that would actually work. They should identify someone the Democrats can trust and offer him up in exchange for Democratic votes.

Yes, that would divide the GOP, but the events of the last two days have shown that the party is already fundamentally at odds with itself. It would be a step towards proving that the GOP is responsible and capable of actually governing. It would be an act of patriotism at a time when we could really use one.

The other thing worth noting here is that Trump’s open and forceful endorsement of McCarthy this morning got him exactly zero additional votes. That tells you that burning it down has taken on a life of its own; Trump no longer has effective control of this caucus.

Like the Catholic Church, which it resembles more than either would like, the Communist Party maintains that it has a monopoly on the truth. When Stalin turned on his fellow Old Bolsheviks, therefore, they had nowhere to go. They had to be wrong, or their entire lives as prominent members of an infallible organization were a lie, but how? In the end, they were liquidated with minimal fuss, because they weren’t capable of meaningful resistance.

Catholic reactionaries managed to avoid that dilemma as long as Benedict was alive, because they could tell themselves that he was the real pope, and Francis was just a usurper. The obvious historical analogy there was to the 18th century Jacobites. But what do they do now? If they do battle with Francis, they are effectively making themselves a kind of right-wing Protestant. If they don’t, his bright blue papacy could change their beloved Church beyond recognition. It’s a serious dilemma.

I would feel sorry for them if they weren’t determined to impose their values on me, liberal democracy be damned. I’m not interested in living in a theocracy. I’m guessing you aren’t, either.

Most of the GOP leadership is, and has been, convinced that the Republican Party cannot win elections without the support of the extreme right. Nobody exemplifies that more than Kevin McCarthy, who made it clear that he would let the extremists, not the moderates, drive the train during the first two years of Biden’s term in order to maintain party unity. Today, he’s getting his reward. The extremists know he’s a pander bear, not a true believer, so some of them won’t vote for him no matter what he promises them.

Extremists cost the GOP both the 2020 and 2022 elections. Today, they are making the party look like the clown car that is truly is. At what point will the mainstream figure out that a divorce is necessary? Will it be today?

I’m guessing not. The immediate issue will be finessed somehow, and the problem will linger through the 2024 election.

If you ask a reactionary why he gets so worked up about illegal immigration, you are likely to get two responses. Let’s analyze them:

1. THEY TAKE JOBS AWAY FROM REAL AMERICANS AND DEPRESS WAGES: Most of the numerous studies on this subject don’t support that argument, even under historically normal conditions. Today, we have a labor shortage, which has resulted in inflation and declining real wages for many “real Americans”, so the argument has no validity whatsoever.
2. THEY ARE FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT THAN WE ARE, AND THEY WILL SWAMP OUR CULTURE: As the Democrats have learned to their cost over the last two elections, Hispanics are not culturally monolithic. However, as a generalization, it is fair to say that they are socially conservative but believe government should play a large role in improving the lot of its citizens. That is exactly what reactionaries believe, as well. In addition, some parts of Hispanic culture have become embedded in ours, as well. The clear us and them distinction made by reactionaries consequently makes little sense.

The bottom line here is that the purported rationales aren’t very compelling. That leaves you with racism and the annoying sound (to Americans) of spoken Spanish. Those, I’m afraid, are what really motivate most reactionaries.

At first glance, Benedict and Donald Trump appear to have nothing in common. Benedict was highly literate and articulate. He had a well-developed ethical system that wasn’t based on power. He wasn’t narcissistic or corrupt. He gave up power with grace. Above all, he wanted desperately to strengthen the establishment, not to burn it down. All of these factors weigh heavily in his favor if you compare the two.

But Benedict, like Trump, believed in drawing lines and excluding people who did not completely buy into his program. Just as Trump sees a distinction between “Real America” and people like me, Benedict wanted to enforce the line between traditional Catholics and everyone else. In Trumpian terms, he threw red meat to his base and showed little interest in reaching out to anyone else. As a clerical politician, he was a one-trick pony, and a failure, just like the man on golf cart.

Benedict’s papacy did not extend into the Trump years. You have to imagine that he would have been an AAT–appalled by Trump’s personal shortcomings, but grateful enough for his reactionary rhetoric and judicial choices to keep his mouth shut. He would be a DeSantis supporter today.

Paul Krugman thinks the allegedly brilliant Elon Musk is making an obvious mistake by going full MAGA on Sewer and thereby alienating the primarily blue person customer base for Tesla. Is he right?

Yes, and it’s actually worse than that. The average flamboyant right-wing businessman can count on reactionaries to come to his aid by buying his product if he is attacked from the left. In this instance, however, the red base is totally committed to fossil fuels. It is never going to embrace electric cars just to bail Musk out; coal miners and oil executives are much more important.

Musk is in danger of finding himself a man without a country. A man without money would come next.

In commemoration (celebration?) of Former Papal Guy’s death, I’m going to do an entire weekly series on Benedict’s thought and legacy. You may wonder why the life of an old man who hasn’t been pope for ages is worthy of such attention. I won’t leave that question unanswered.

There are two reasons. First, Benedict’s ideology was, and remains, a source of inspiration for many prominent figures of the New Right. The arc of GOP thought is currently bending in their direction, so they can’t be ignored. Second, I am quite certain that Benedict, in a different time, would have had me burned at the stake for insisting upon the primacy of logic and experience over his personal authority. Even Xi and Putin wouldn’t go that far, to say nothing of Trump and DeSantis.

It’s a lot to forgive–way too much, in fact. I will discuss it in more detail throughout the week.

These will be the biggest stories of 2023:

1. RUSSIA/UKRAINE: Both Putin and NATO will escalate slowly and in a reciprocal way, without moving the needle much. By the end of the year, there is some momentum for a reasonable diplomatic settlement, as a total military victory for either side seems less and less plausible.
2. TURKEY: With an election coming soon and the economy in trouble, Erdogan stirs the nationalist pot in order to divert the attention of his voters. A war with Greece looks imminent for a time, but the usefulness of the crisis ends, so Erdogan slowly pulls back from the brink.
3. CHINA: See “Turkey” above, with Taiwan replacing Greece and without the election part.
4. IRAN: Given that Iran is now effectively an ally of Russia, a war to stop the export of weapons, eliminate the nuclear threat, and weaken the power of the regime to control dissent would make some sense on its face. Biden really doesn’t want another Middle East war, however, so it doesn’t happen.
5. NORTH KOREA: With all possible diplomatic solutions exhausted, and an aggressive war unthinkable, the US and the rest of the world quietly faces facts and learns to live with Kim’s nukes.

DONALD TRUMP: To live under an ethical system that isn’t based solely on power.

RON DESANTIS: To develop some empathy for the 50 percent of Americans who don’t agree with him on issues involving race and sex.

PROGRESSIVES: To read the Serenity Prayer every day. Their agenda is going nowhere for the next two years.

KEVIN MCCARTHY: To grow a spine.

JOE BIDEN: Since DeSantis, not Trump, is likely to be the GOP nominee, to make plans for an early retirement. Barring that, to build a time machine.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: To paraphrase Chris Christie during Sandy, to get his ass out of Ukraine.

XI JINPING: To chill out and loosen up a bit. It’s in the best interests of himself, his country, and the world.

THE RIGHT-WING MAJORITY ON THE SUPREME COURT: To keep the counterrevolutionary stuff to a dull roar to preserve what is left of the Court’s legitimacy.

AYATOLLAH KHAMENEI: To die as soon as possible in order to free his people.

JUST ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE: Happy New Year!

Here they are. Don’t take them to Vegas:

1. DEBT CEILING CRISIS: After about a month of excruciating twists and turns, a revolt of the handful of moderates in the House results in a deal with only symbolic gains for Republicans just before the deadline.
2. IMPERIAL SUPREME COURT: The counterrevolution lives! The Court eliminates affirmative action in school admissions (with language likely applying its reasons to other forms of affirmative action), gives federal courts effective jurisdiction over only those election issues that favor Republicans, destroys Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan, and permits the litigation on Title 42 to continue. There is plenty of grumbling about the Court’s legitimacy, and judicial reform emerges as a key issue in the 2024 election.
3. INFLATION/INTEREST RATES: Inflation eases. The Fed continues to talk ferociously, but decides not to cause a deep recession in order to bring the rate down from about four to two percent.
4. BIDEN RUNS: While DeSantis has emerged as the clear GOP favorite, Biden ignores my advice and runs without meaningful opposition from the left.
5. DESANTIS RULES: A large and motley crew of Republicans runs for president, most of them figures from the Trump days. They are still standing at the end of 2023, but it is clear from all of the polls that the race boils down to Trump and DeSantis. Their relationship has gone from strained to poisonous, to the benefit of everyone whose brain operates in the 21st century.

At all points during my lifetime–probably, at all points since the end of the Thirty Years War–the pope of the day has faced a choice: do I embrace modernity, emphasize the softer parts of Christ’s message, and reach out to my ideological opponents; or build walls, enforce discipline, and hang on desperately to what I’ve got? This division corresponds nicely to the red-blue split in American politics.

Francis is a blue pope. Benedict was the quintessential red one. In what he would have considered a better time, he would have burned heretics with gusto. Like Trump, but with less justification, he always sounded fake when he talked about love and compassion. He wanted to kick your ass if you didn’t fall into line. In the end, the world kicked his.

The New Right will be devastated; leaving aside his age and infirmities, Benedict would have been the perfect head of state for the theocracy they want to build in America. Me, not so much. I will miss Benedict about as much as I miss Scalia, with whom he had much in common.

I made six predictions for this year on New Year’s Day, all of which addressed major themes for the year. I was clearly right about three items: the virus gradually became endemic; the Democrats were not wiped out; and a smaller version of the BBB did pass. I was clearly wrong about Trump waiting until 2023 to announce his candidacy. I was debatably right about the state of the economy, although interest rates have gone higher than I anticipated, and will go higher still. I was mostly wrong about foreign policy; there was no war with Iran, but Russia did, in fact, invade Ukraine.

So I’m good, but hardly perfect. That’s not exactly a surprise. Keep that in mind when I post my predictions for 2023 over the next few days.

Consider just the ripple effects of the Ukraine war. Food and gas prices soar all over the world. Inflation results in higher interest rates and imperils governments. Germany and Japan agree to massive defense spending increases. Finland and Sweden apply to join NATO. All meaningful political opposition is crushed in Russia. Extreme American right-wingers support Putin against NATO, partly because the brutal Russian military isn’t “woke.” It’s an impressive list.

And those are just the secondary effects of the war. The main event is the attempt by a small, flawed democracy to retain its independence from Putin’s fascist, imperialist state. A lot of people have expended a lot of energy to analyze the war in different terms, but it really is that simple. This is a battle of good against evil, and evil has to be resisted, or it will continue to push the envelope.

Time Magazine got it right. Zelensky is the Man of the Year for 2022. It was a no-brainer.