Cromwell

Imagine that you are Justice Alito. You could read the returns as a clear rebuke to your opinion in Dobbs, which can’t make you feel too good. Should you moderate your opinions in the coming year in order to help the GOP in 2024, or stay the course and keep waving the reactionary flag?

My guess is you choose Option B, partly because that’s who you are, and partly because you see nothing but gridlock between Congress and Biden over the next two years. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Where a void exists, the judiciary will feel comfortable filling it.

Why did the Democrats nominate an old white guy in 2020? Precisely because he is an old white guy. Trump’s favorite campaign tactic is to focus on identity issues; Biden made that impossible. That’s the single biggest reason he won, and why he should run again in 2024 if Trump is the GOP nominee.

But what if DeSantis is the nominee? He presents a different kind of challenge, because his appeal is based on ideology, not identity. He wants to run against wokeness and socialism. Putting Biden on stage with him would lead to disaster. With that in mind, here are some potential Democratic candidates, listed in reverse order, based on their chances of beating DeSantis:

5. Gavin Newsom: He’s certainly a willing culture warrior, but I’m afraid that the middle of the country might prefer Florida to California, which is how the campaign would be defined.

4. Kamala Harris: She needs to improve her campaign skills before we send her out to slay the reactionary dragon.

3. Pete Buttigieg: He has the intellectual skills to get it done, but he sounds too much like a technocrat, he’s too closely identified with Biden, and being gay doesn’t help in a campaign about wokeness.

2. Amy Klobuchar: She’s an experienced and competent campaigner, and she doesn’t bring much baggage to the table. But the winner is:

Elizabeth Warren. Surprised? She was the worst possible nominee against Trump, but the best against DeSantis. No longer in a position to advocate for massive federal spending programs, but not particularly identified with wokeness, she could make the case for liberal democracy better than any of the other candidates. Notwithstanding her age, she’s smart, passionate, and the best debater of the lot. She could tear DeSantis to ribbons.

As of the time I’m writing this, the GOP election deniers in Arizona are behind. What will they do if they lose? Will they call militias out on the street? Will there be riots? Or will the whole thing just fizzle out?

The answers to those questions matter. Bolsonaro has already set a hopeful precedent. Liberal democracy in America will be in much better shape for 2024 if the losers just slink away quietly.

We’ll know more as time goes on, but here are my first impressions:

1. My prediction from last year is looking pretty good, isn’t it?
2. It was based on the identification of the GOP with unpopular culture war positions. That approach gives the GOP a floor in bad times, but a ceiling in good times.
3. Pennsylvania isn’t the Land of Oz. Maybe it’s New Jersey.
4. DeSantis is the big winner of the night. He is now perfectly placed to take on Trump in 2024. Trump is clearly determined to prevent him from doing so. Will the Hungarian Candidate have the nerve to try? We’ll see.
5. McCarthy is likely to have a small majority, which means the “burn it down” caucus will be in charge. That’s not good for America, to say the least.

The GOP is set to retake control of Congress. What can we expect from the factions on fiscal policy?

There won’t be enough CD members of Congress to matter. As for the rest of the factions, here is where they stand:

1. PBPs: Tax cuts. Tax cuts. TAX CUTS! We would make a deal with Hitler if he gave us tax cuts.
2. CLs: Tax cuts are great, of course, but the priority has to be on massive spending cuts. Spending turns Americans into wards of the state; it makes them lazy and deprives them of their cherished freedoms to be sick and destitute.
3. Reactionaries: We need a strong state to support white Christians and cudgel everyone else. Increase spending on us, but cut it for the bad guys.

These are three very different agendas. How will McCarthy merge them? By proposing to make the Trump individual tax cuts permanent, cutting spending on “welfare,” and leaving white middle-class entitlements alone. That program will maintain party unity, which, of course, is the key to remaining in power.

Reactionaries all over the world long for a bygone age in which burly men doing hard physical labor ruled the roost and made their country great. What makes American reactionaries different from their European counterparts?

Let’s put it this way: Trump 1.0 identified “the other” as illegal immigrants, but Trump 2.0 will say that anyone who voted against him in 2020 is the enemy. Demonizing over half your population, and openly proposing to oppress them, is uniquely dangerous. It’s also hard sledding in elections unless the system itself has been corrupted, which, of course, is logically the next step in the process.

Big Blue has been struggling mightily to find a way to appeal to white workers without college degrees. Since the economic argument hasn’t worked, and changing sides in the culture war is pretty much out of the question, the only remaining option is style. Ryan and Fetterman are white men who bring plenty of swagger to the table, so they embody this alternative.

Will it work? Ryan has a fighting chance in a state that is, at this point, far more scarlet than gray. Fetterman was comfortably ahead, but he is being hobbled by his medical problem, which makes drawing definitive conclusions about the macho white guy experiment more difficult. It may be, in the final analysis, that the GOP gains control of the Senate due solely to his stroke.

Of such accidents are “mandates” sometimes constructed.

I’ve decided not to watch any of the election coverage tomorrow, because nothing good will come of it, and the truly final results won’t be known, in all likelihood, until Wednesday. I will deal with the new reality once it is fully defined.

When I do come to terms with it, here are some of the less visible issues that will be of interest:

1. WILL BIDEN’S PANDERS WORK? In particular, will young people who benefit from the student debt write-off show their appreciation by showing up and voting? I’m guessing not.
2. WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE 2020 ELECTION DENIERS? WILL THEY WIN, AND WILL THEY CLAIM FRAUD IF THEY DON’T? This is a warm-up for the more serious crisis in 2024.
3. BY HOW MUCH DOES DESANTIS WIN? He needs a crushing victory to set himself up as a viable 2024 presidential candidate. He’ll probably get it. If that sets up the GOP for a monumental Trump-DeSantis battle in the primaries, so much the better.

I have previously estimated that Biden’s spending programs are responsible for about two percent of our inflation rate. Most studies have reached a similar conclusion. From the perspective of an economist, then, the pertinent question is whether the rapid recovery and the decline in the unemployment rate justified the additional inflation. Reasonable observers can disagree on that point.

The issue, however, is not being presented that way. The Republicans are suggesting that all of our inflation was caused by spending, which is patently untrue. Worse, they are getting little pushback from the left.

We would still have above average inflation without the spending programs. If that had occurred, the GOP would still be blaming Biden, with no justification. That, of course, shows that the GOP criticism is opportunistic and devoid of any intellectual content, a point that is further supported by the right’s vacuous “solutions” to the problem.

Inflation makes winners as well as losers, as I noted in previous posts. The public’s loathing of it, however, seems pretty universal. Why?

For several reasons. First of all, most Americans who are younger than I am have never experienced it before. The novelty of it bites. Second, it impacts everyone, and on a daily basis. That is not true of unemployment. Third, it is unpredictable, and so makes a mockery of financial planning. Finally, it is natural for people to apply the wrong baseline out of a natural sense of optimism. If your wages go up, but so does the cost of living, you will probably think you were entitled to the raise, and that the increased costs are a form of injustice, not the creation of an equilibrium.

A few days ago, Biden gave a speech in which he warned Americans against voting for 2020 election deniers. The GOP accused him of being “divisive.” Was there any justice in this accusation?

Yes, but in a totally meaningless way. Elections are exercises in division. The unity part is supposed to come afterwards.

It is true that the Democrats are effectively attempting to split the remaining responsible Republican politicians and voters from the “burn it down” caucus. That serves two purposes: to win elections; and to save liberal democracy in America. The two objectives are completely consistent at this point, since the GOP as a whole is willing to let the “burn it down” crowd drive the bus in order to maintain party unity.

This time, unlike last time, Biden did not conflate differences on policy with attacks on liberal democracy. Whether the speech did any good is open to question, but its appropriateness is not.

It has been a big week for reactionary populists. Bibi won, but Bolsonaro lost. This follows on the heels of Meloni’s victory in Italy, and Le Pen’s near miss in France. What can we conclude from these clearly related events?

Reactionary populism is unquestionably a world-wide–not just an American–phenomenon. Traditional conservatives are being eclipsed by populists all over the world. It is happening in both presidential and parliamentary systems, and in countries with vastly different cultures. So what is the common denominator?

Economic failure–in particular, the impacts of globalization, technological change, and immigration on relatively unskilled male workers. Reactionary populism is, at its root, an economic phenomenon.

Bibi, apparently, is back. Hot damn! Just what we need: a norm-breaking right-wing populist who wants to conspire with the GOP to force America to bomb Iran. Don’t we have better things to do right now?

Mostly fortunately for us, the world has changed significantly since Bibi left office. America is already very busy dealing with Russia and China. Israel and Saudi Arabia have an evolving, de facto alliance; neither has done anything for us with Ukraine. Finally, the ayatollahs are in trouble in Iran. There is no way Biden is either going to sign an agreement with the Iranian government or send in the bombers as long as a reasonable possibility of regime change exists.

I think the bottom line here is that events are driving us to disengage from the Middle East. I suspect Biden will tell the Israelis and Saudis to deal with Iran by themselves. We can only fight so many wars at one time.

2011 was the glory day for the CLs. Since the Reactionaries weren’t in complete control of the Republican Party, the locus of opposition to Obama was spending, not culture wars, rigged elections, and illiberal democracy. The CLs combined with the PBPs and the Reactionaries to force the Democrats to agree to spending cuts that hobbled the economic recovery for years. Heady times, indeed.

Today is different, because the Reactionaries are in control, and they have their own agenda. Fighting wokeness is in; spending cuts on programs that largely benefit white Christians are out. Paul Ryan has given way to Marjorie Taylor Greene. And so, while we are probably going to have a repeat (and worse) version of the debt crisis, the ransom will be different, and so will the outcome.

C: So, how do you guys feel about the GOP’s prospects for the midterms?

M: Great! The red wave arrives on November 8!

S: Great! We’re going to change everything! We’re going to burn it down!

M: Oh, God! Not that again!

C: What exactly do you mean by “burn it down?” What will the new GOP majority in the House actually do?

S: Well, first of all, we’ll pass a resolution saying the 2020 election was rigged, and that Trump is lawfully president.

M: Good luck with that. You won’t get a majority of the House to vote for it. You certainly won’t get the support of the Senate. And it would mean nothing, legally.

S: Next, we’ll pass a national ban on abortion. The bitches are out of control. We need to show them who’s boss, and get the blue states back under control.

M: You probably can’t get a House majority for that. In any event, Mitch won’t agree to abolish the filibuster when he knows Biden will veto it. And by the way, the “bitches,” as you call them, have the vote.

S: Next, we’ll start the impeachments, starting with Biden and Garland.

M: Blunders aren’t high crimes and misdemeanors. That would be a political disaster. It will turn all the swing voters against us for 2024.

S: Finally, we’ll demand huge cuts in spending on everyone except white Christians in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling. If Biden won’t budge, we’ll burn the markets down!

M: That’s what really worries me. Are you trying to destroy my investments?

S: They’re not my problem, bro. If rich elitists lose money, what concern is that of mine? It won’t impact me. I don’t have any investments. BURN IT DOWN!

M: I’m a car dealer, not a rich elitist. So are lots of other Republicans.

S: Doesn’t matter. Rich people are all the same to me. They all want to screw me over.

C: Mark, what do you think the GOP should do, once in power?

M: Leverage the debt ceiling to make the Trump individual tax cuts permanent. We need more incentives to get the economy moving.

S: See, you’re just a self-serving RINO. You won’t burn it down because you have too much to lose! Real Republicans don’t act like that. We know the system is completely corrupt, and has to be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch.

M: I think we’re done here.