Cromwell

Imagine that you are in a position to advise Darling Nikki on campaign strategy. What is her path to the nomination?

My initial reaction is that it reminds me of the old joke in which two guys are being chased by a bear. One of them pauses to lace up his running shoes. When he is told that he can’t outrun the bear, he responds by saying he doesn’t have to–he just needs to outrun his companion.

In this case, Trump is the bear; Haley can’t possibly compete with him for the “deplorables” vote. The companion is DeSantis; if he trounces him, she can win the nomination regardless of what Trump does, because the “deplorables” don’t represent the majority of the GOP.

How can she dominate the anti-Trump lane? She can’t be tougher on wokeness than DeSantis. She can’t be more of a generational choice than he is, either. What she can do is be more normal and likeable than DeSantis. She can be more moderate on abortion, and tougher on Putin. She can flash more charisma and a better resume. She can appeal to everyone in the GOP and to the independents she needs to win the general election instead of putting all of her cards on the reactionary base, which has been shown to be a losing strategy since 2016.

Let’s be honest here: this probably isn’t going to work. Her chances of winning are slim. They are not, however, zero, particularly since DeSantis has decided to go soft on Putin.

Kevin McCarthy is in his office (the one with “Speaker of the House” over the door, as he notes with approval every morning) with an aide when Marjorie Taylor Greene comes in without an invitation.

M: MTG! What’s the occasion?

G: Just wanted to make sure you were still on board with burning it down.

M: Of course! It has to be done! We have to save the real America by destroying the fake one!

G: But you know that’s just the first step, right?

M: What do you mean?

G: Burning it down is just the first step to creating the America we really want and need. One that real Americans can be proud of again.

M: How will that work?

G: First, we force Biden and Harris to resign and announce that Trump is the true president of the country. That’s the price of resolving the fiscal issue.

M: Then what?

G: We give Trump absolute discretionary powers to do whatever he needs to do to stick it to the blue states. We take control of the military, the MSM, Hollywood, and the universities. We censor the internet in our favor. Only Trump has the guts to do that.

M: What about the Constitution?

G: What about it? It’s been perverted over the centuries, anyway. We need to go back to the America of the Founding Fathers and forget all that nonsense about slavery and the War Between the States. You know that the Founding Fathers were Christian nationalists who wanted the president to be a dictator, right?

M: Absolutely! You’re right on target with that!

G: Just remember that when we’re burning it down. It’s only part of a bigger picture. (MTG leaves)

A: You know that woman’s crazy, right?

M: Yeah, but she’s my boss. I have to humor her, or I lose my job. What else can I do?

A: Well, for one, you could try using your position to protect the American people from crazoids like her.

M: They’re too far gone to be helped. It’s all about me and this office now. I won’t leave until they carry me out. (The aide leaves)

All business owners want the same things: low taxes; unrestricted access to markets; reliable infrastructure; a light regulatory touch; and, above all, a large, well-trained, and docile workforce. By and large, over the last forty years, their prayers have been answered, resulting in soaring profits and asset prices and vastly higher levels of inequality.

The pandemic changed things. Millions of older workers decided to retire, thus leaving a hole in the labor force. Businesses continue to struggle to find qualified workers; at times, they have even been compelled to train them at their own expense! This situation is clearly intolerable. What can be done?

If the retirees can’t be enticed back into the labor force with higher wages, they can be starved out with entitlement cuts. Raising the eligibility requirements for Social Security would be a particularly effective gambit. This is why there will always be a constituency for entitlement cuts in the GOP, even when the PBPs don’t represent the majority of Republican voters, many of whom are completely dependent on Social Security and Medicare for their survival.

In response to a question about Biden’s trip to Ukraine, DeSantis sniffed that Russia was no threat to NATO, and said that Biden should put more effort into controlling the border. This presumably was an effort to find some middle ground between Tucker Carlson (Putin is a great guy, because he isn’t woke) and the mainstream of the GOP on Ukraine. Effectively, it means DeSantis has no interest in protecting Ukraine from Russian aggression; he only promises to defend NATO countries, and doesn’t expect to have to do it.

DeSantis appears to be running hard after the Trump vote, but he isn’t going to get it, at least not during the primaries. By doing so, he is opening up a huge lane to his left for a candidate who will promise to be tough on Putin. Nikki Haley undoubtedly will have taken notice.

Rick Scott is bored stiff in the Senate. He wants to be the CEO of America, LLC, and cut spending to the bone. His decision not to run for president tells us that even he understands that this is not another 2011 Tea Party moment; it is a struggle for power within the Republican Party.

In a way, his decision is a disappointment, because it would be great fun to watch him spend outrageous sums of money to get 2 percent of the vote. Oh, well. We’ll live without it.

Tim Scott, on the other hand, is clearly interested in running. His biggest problem is that his potential lane is already completely filled by Nikki Haley, who has a much larger national profile and a better resume. If he does run, he’s wasting his time, money, and breath.

In this scenario, the Ukrainians drive the Russians completely out of their country. The Russian government obviously doesn’t formalize this in any kind of agreement. The question in this scenario is whether Putin survives, and whether he feels compelled to escalate with NATO. I don’t know the answers to those questions, but nothing can be completely ruled out.

After two weeks of difficult and unpleasant home restoration efforts, we’re not even close to being done, but the internet is back.

The Turkish earthquake has left countless people homeless; some of them have made it clear they blame the government. If you’re Erdogan, why not kill two birds with one stone and put your homeless critics in jail? It’s what comes naturally to him, anyway.

Hurricane Ian left our Florida house a wreck. Against my expectations, it has been improved to the point of being (barely) habitable, so we are going back to finish the job.

I can’t honestly say I know when we will have internet there. Regular posts will resume when we do.

My initial impression was that Biden looked like the proverbial “happy warrior” delivering this speech. Sure enough, that phrase was included in two of the NYT reviews.

For a party that claims to speak for workers, the GOP side of the aisle certainly didn’t applaud much when Biden supported labor over capital.

Ross Douthat opined that the theme of the speech was “What Trump promised, I delivered.” He’s right–including the unapologetic protectionism that I personally oppose. This speech was clearly aimed at the disaffected white workers in red states who always insist that the left is deaf to their cries of pain. Whether they will hear him or not remains to be seen.

The standard of conduct at the SOTU clearly has changed. It is starting to look more like Question Time in the UK Parliament. That’s OK as long as everyone understands the rules. Biden didn’t seem to have a problem with it last night.

This scenario is the status quo ante. On the ground, it looks a lot like Scenario 2, but it means Russia gained absolutely nothing from the war. As a result, it would be much more difficult to sell to the Russian people than Scenario 2, which can be spun as a victory of sorts.

Putin won’t sign anything giving Scenario 3 any kind of permanent status. It would be more of a pause than a Korea-style armistice. Would he survive the failure at home? Probably, because it wasn’t an outright defeat, but the natives would start getting restless.

I have four suggestions:

1. FIGHT FOR OUR RIGHTS–NOT FOR WOKENESS: The more extreme manifestations of wokeness are a wedge issue for the Democratic Party. Fighting right-wing attempts to use government to suppress them are not. Find the happy middle ground and defend the First Amendment against the reactionary censors.
2. THE DEMOCRACY PROJECT VS. THE MCCONNELL PROJECT: The Supreme Court and the filibuster are the two pillars of the McConnell Project. They deny the left power even when it wins elections and holds office. Argue that we need a new round of progressive legislation to bring liberal democracy to full fruition in this country. This would include term limits for the Court and the elimination of the filibuster.
3. CONNECT THE AUTHORITARIAN DOTS: There is a straight line between Putin lovers and supporters of the January 6 rioters. Draw it for the voters in both domestic and foreign policy.
4. SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY; TAX THE RICH: Some elements of the right want to trash Social Security; all of it refuses to fund the program by eliminating or increasing the cap on contributions. The public doesn’t understand that. It should.

At the beginning of 2021, it appeared that the left had a generational opportunity to replace the dollar store economy with something that was much more worker-friendly through a massive increase in the size of the American welfare state. While some progress was made, in the end, the revolution didn’t happen, for two reasons: first, there weren’t enough votes for it in the Senate; and second, the additional federal spending contributed to inflation. It doesn’t make any sense to mandate wage increases if businesses can then just turn around and raise prices by the same amount. So what now?

There is no prospect of enacting any of the left’s agenda in the next two years with a GOP majority in the House. Worse, the Democrats will be defending several vulnerable Senate seats in 2024; their chances of picking up seats will depend solely on Trump’s willingness to split the GOP. As a result, the left will be playing defense for at least the next four years even if it continues to hold the White House.

Where should progressives focus their energy under these circumstances? I will post on that tomorrow.

Scenario 2 is, essentially, the status quo. The front line is frozen more or less where it is today. Neither the Ukrainians nor the Russians have the men and the firepower sufficient to win a major victory.

The most likely outcome here is a resolution similar to that of the Korean War; a negotiated armistice, but no peace treaty. Neither side pretends that the conflict has gone away. Both sides remain vigilant and hope for better things in the future.

Since the Russians have taken a tiny bit of territory, Putin has the opportunity to tell his people that they have won a great victory. His rule at home is unchallenged. But sanctions remain, a disproportionate percentage of the country’s GDP is being used for defense spending, and the Russian economy is in tatters. The future for the Russian people is looking grim, indeed. Ukraine, on the other hand, is being rebuilt by huge amounts of aid from America and the EU. Its future looks pretty bright.

Who is the Chinese head of intelligence–Jules Verne? Don’t they have satellites? That was absolutely ridiculous!

Scenario 1 is an apparently complete Russian victory. Putin uses better tactics and a huge manpower advantage to achieve a breakthrough. The Russians take Kyiv and occupy virtually all of the country. Putin installs a puppet in Kyiv and holds a parade in Moscow. His casualties were enormous, but it was worth it, right?

The “victory” is illusory, because he doesn’t control the western border of the country, and he can’t go into Poland without causing a NATO response. He doesn’t have enough troops to effectively occupy Ukraine, even though hundreds of thousands of them are still there. Russia has the equivalent of an Iraq insurgency on its hands, with no end in sight, and no end to sanctions.

The fact of the matter is that Putin’s dream of controlling Ukraine died when his initial attack failed. The entire Ukrainian nation hates him now. It will never give up. As a result, the campaign wasn’t worth it, even under the best case scenario.