Cromwell

Some genuinely pro-life pundits and politicians are supporting compromises on abortion legislation that wouldn’t find favor with the Catholic Church. Should they be accused of hypocrisy?

No, because there isn’t anything self-serving or dishonest about taking only what you can reasonably get in the real world–that’s called liberal democracy. Where I have a problem with anti-abortion activists is when they pretend to take a position that really isn’t what they want based on principles they don’t actually advocate (e.g., abortion should be regulated by the individual states) and when they advocate policies they know are practically impossible in order to prove their good faith and moderation (e.g., the GOP will expand the welfare state to protect the mothers of unwanted babies once abortion has been outlawed).

Donald Trump was an historically unpopular president. His antics with regard to the virus didn’t help much. Based on history and the polls, the GOP should have been destroyed in 2020. It didn’t happen; the GOP actually gained seats in the House. Biden’s poll numbers are similarly bad today; what, if anything, does that mean for 2022?

As in 2020, not as much as you might think. The blue base will be motivated to vote against the reds on culture war issues–particularly abortion. In spite of his troubles, Biden still polls ahead of Trump, whose association with the GOP hasn’t diminished a bit. The playing field for the Senate in 2022 is tilted towards the Democrats. Finally, increasing polarization creates a floor as well as a ceiling for both parties. It will be just as difficult to create a red wave as it was a blue one.

Yesterday, I posted on the economic impacts of the first 18 months of the Biden regime. Today, I will take on the issues that send the right screaming into the night-crime, immigration, and culture war questions. Where do we stand with those?

On crime, the statistics show that violent crime increased dramatically in 2020–the last year of Trump, and the first year of the pandemic. The increase continued, but at a slower rate, under Biden, and was felt in both urban and rural areas. There isn’t much of a case to be made here, even assuming (absurdly) that either president had much of an impact.

On immigration, while the right continues to howl about the crisis at the border, The Economist is telling us that immigration is down, and the economy is suffering as a result. As I’ve stated many times before, increasing immigration is a good way to fill construction and service jobs and thus to reduce inflation.

As to the culture war, the right has been predicting an apocalypse for white Christians since 2016. Did the 2020 election cause the promised disaster? Hardly. In fact, the right, thanks largely to the Supreme Court and red state legislatures, has had a field day using government to deprive blue people of rights they value (abortion; freedom of speech), while expanding the rights cherished by red people (guns). Wokeness is in retreat. There are no Christian concentration camps anywhere in the country. What’s not to like?

I won’t have an opinion on that subject until I know what the DOJ was looking for, why they were looking for it, and what the agents actually found. You shouldn’t have an opinion at this point, either, unless you work for the DOJ and have inside information.

The bottom line is that anyone who claims to be outraged at this point is talking out of his rear end and should keep quiet until we see what happens next.

It’s the question that Reagan used to devastating effect in 1980. With the midterms coming up in a few months, it is fair to ask it of the first part of the Biden regime. In this post, I will be addressing material concerns; in a second post, I will discuss some of the right’s cultural concerns.

The answer to the question is complicated, as follows:

1. The unemployment rate has fallen from over 6 percent to 3.5 percent. If you were unemployed in January 2021, and subsequently found a job, you are clearly better off.
2. If you had pre-existing debt, inflation has made you a winner. You are paying off your debt with depreciated dollars.
3. If you own your home, it is probably worth significantly more than it was in January 2021. Count yourself a winner.
4. Business interests have had some difficulty adjusting to changed conditions, most notably, supply chain problems and labor shortages. Nevertheless, the DJIA is up from January 2021, and corporate profits have soared. You are probably better off than you were back then, although you have some reason to worry about a recession in the foreseeable future.
5. If you had a job and kept it, or found a better one, the first few months of Biden were excellent, because you increased your savings and received a stimulus payment. Since then, however, your wages probably haven’t kept pace with inflation. You may or may not be better off today than you were in January 2021, based on the state of your savings, but the immediate future doesn’t look that great, barring a decrease in the inflation rate.
6. If you’re trying to buy a house, or renting, you are definitely worse off, due to soaring housing costs.
7. If you’re a retiree, you were protected from inflation to some extent by the indexing of Social Security. Your stocks are still up from January 2021. Your bonds may not be. It’s a mixed bag.

The bottom line here is that there is no clear verdict; it depends on your individual circumstances. There is nothing in the Biden record, however, which suggests that a red wave is appropriate.

Peter Thiel is the quintessential CL: a tech billionaire who thinks the fate of mankind revolves around geniuses like himself, and who consequently thinks he should be completely free of any annoying government meddling in his business. And yet, Thiel is aggressively supporting two candidates–Vance and Masters–who are running as reactionary, business-skeptical populists. On its face, it makes no sense. What is going on here?

My best guess is that Thiel sees the reactionaries (including Trump, of course) as a force that will destroy the constraints of liberal democracy and the rule of law and leave unfettered freedom and power to people like him. In other words, instead of a Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat, he is looking forward to the dictatorship of the tech billionaire.

As the saying goes, Marx turned Hegel on his head. Thiel wants to turn Marx on his head.

Progressives want to use the government to improve the lives of all Americans, including those who routinely vote against them. They believe in liberal democracy, accept the constraints inherent in the system, and take a half loaf when it is the best they can expect. The far right, on the other hand, increasingly rejects liberal democracy, rejects any sort of compromise, and sees government as a tool to punish the left, not as a force for good for all Americans. Its adherents want to burn it down, create chaos, and impose authoritarian rule on the rest of us.

It’s not the same thing at all.

First there was the bipartisan gun bill, which was about a quarter of a loaf, but more than anyone reasonably expected. Then we had the passage of the Chinese chip bill with significant GOP support. Today, it appears that a small, but important, part of the BBB is going to squeak through the system. There is even a possibility that a gay marriage bill could pass the Senate with at least ten GOP votes. What in the name of Donald Trump is going on here? You could almost argue that Biden’s 2020 campaign optimism about the workings of the process had some basis in fact, and that the GOP has become a normal center-right party again.

A reasonably large number (not a majority, of course) of Republicans is actually behaving responsibly for a change, instead of trying to burn it down. Perhaps the pending election has caused them to concentrate; perhaps it is the backwash of the January 6 committee; or maybe it is just one of those inexplicable things. In any event, enjoy it while you can, because it won’t last. If the GOP wins the House, as expected, the next two years will feature a boatload of bogus Benghazi-style investigations, a horrific debt ceiling crisis, and God knows what else, because that’s what the red base wants.

Faced with the mounting list of abortion horror stories, of which the one about the raped 10-year-old is among the most prominent, has the anti-abortion side taken it to heart and tried to clarify the new and revived laws? No! Instead, it routinely calls such stories “fake news,” even when they can be verified by the media.

It would appear that some elements of the Catholic Church have learned their public relations methods from Donald Trump. Given their supposed moral standing, they should be embarrassed, but like Trump, they’re not. The ends justify the means.

As anyone with any sense predicted, doctors are having great difficulty applying the new (or revived) state abortion prohibitions to certain kinds of doomed pregnancies. As a result, women aren’t getting the medical care they need, and the horror stories are mounting. Ross Douthat thinks the way to solve that problem is to somehow make it clear to doctors that they are in more jeopardy from malpractice cases than from a criminal prosecution from an overzealous state attorney. Is he right?

Leave aside, for the moment, the equities involved in putting doctors in this kind of a no-win situation. If you were a doctor, what would you do? That’s right! You would dump patients who put you in peril and tell them to seek treatment in other states. You might even leave the profession altogether. What else could you do?

So, no, terrorizing doctors with civil liability is not good public policy. It only makes things worse.

About two weeks after stating that Hungary, unlike the rest of Europe, would never become a “mixed race” country, Viktor Orban was given a warm embrace by CPAC. And why not? Racism, xenophobia, control of the media, authoritarian rule, a soft position on Russian aggression, and a side of grifting–what’s there for “conservatives” to dislike?

The question Orban should be asked is why, if he so despises the EU, he doesn’t just leave it. The reason nobody asks the question is that everyone already knows the answer: the EU is Hungary’s sugar daddy. Orban has the best of both worlds; he gets to be both a beggar and a chooser.

That needs to stop. In addition, what “works” in some sense in a small and relatively insignificant country will not work in a nation of descendants of immigrants with global interests and responsibilities. American reactionaries would be wise to remember that–not that they will.

Josh Hawley, the consummate cynical insider turned insurrectionist, has thrown in his lot with the Putin-loving minority in the GOP. He alone voted against adding Finland and Sweden to NATO in the Senate. His vote sets him apart from the majority of his party, and the other non-Trump candidates for president in either 2024 or 2028, which clearly was the point.

Hawley is making the same bet that Putin is–that the American public will get tired of the economic costs of the war at some point and will turn on the politicians who supported Ukraine. The odds don’t favor him as of today, but what does he have to lose? The establishment in his party doesn’t like him, anyway.

Think of this vote as the right-wing equivalent of Obama’s position on the Iraq war, except Obama was speaking out of conviction, not ambition, and was correct about the war. There is no good case against Finland and Sweden in NATO.

The combination of inept, extremist GOP candidates, falling gas prices, abortion politics, a playing field that currently operates in their favor, and some recent and prospective legislative successes has given the Democrats some hope of retaining control of the Senate. That result would be consistent with the prediction I made about a year ago. What would it mean in the real world?

The most positive outcome would be the ability to move judicial nominations through the system. Since the House is almost certainly going to roll to the GOP, however, constructive legislation will still be impossible. A crisis over the debt ceiling is a virtual certainty under any plausible circumstances. We will still be subjected to a boatload of Benghazi-style investigations. The inability of the new Trumpist House members to accomplish their agenda may make them more, not less, nihilistic. Finally, Democratic control of the Senate would make it harder for Biden to run against Congress in 2024.

In short, this would hardly be an unmixed blessing.

The result of the Kansas abortion referendum is strong evidence that the polls showing majority support for abortion rights are accurate, even in red states. What will that mean in the real world?

We don’t know if support for abortion rights necessarily translates into more votes for Democrats in November. However, the very high turnout in a primary in which the deck was stacked in favor of the anti-abortion side is a danger sign for the GOP. For canny politicians like DeSantis, this is a very good reason to avoid pushing the abortion issue until the general election is over.

I’m old enough to remember when the vast majority of baseball games weren’t televised. If you were a real fan, you listened to them on the radio; the local announcers were effectively members of your extended family. They were important to you, and to the community.

I didn’t grow up in LA, so I only knew Vin Scully from his work on TV, but even from that limited sample, I can tell you that he was the best. He will be missed, and not just by Dodger fans.

In a somewhat similar vein, I only have vague memories of Bill Russell as a basketball player. I remember him more as an announcer. He was a man of immense intelligence and dignity, but what made him stand out more than anything else was the way he laughed–a sort of raucous cackle. He will be missed, too.