Cromwell

Elizabeth Warren didn’t lose in the 2020 primaries because her plans were bad, even though some of them were. She didn’t lose because she equivocated about paying for her health plan, although it obviously didn’t help. Finally, she didn’t lose because she couldn’t figure out if she was a bridge between the moderates and Sanders or a Sanders substitute, even though that was a serious tactical error, too. She lost because the electorate in the primaries understood that an elderly, sharp-tongued female Harvard professor was the perfect target for a Trump campaign based on identity and cultural issues. For those voters, Biden was the obvious choice; they were proven right.

For such a brilliant woman, Warren can be incredibly obtuse when it comes to culture war issues. She simply refuses to take them seriously, and takes it for granted that blue culture war activists are on the correct side of history. In that respect, she differs from Sanders, who has come to appreciate that tens of millions of blue collar Trump supporters cannot be reached by an approach based on economic self-interest. His attitude on that point is far more sophisticated than hers.

To put it more simply, a right-wing insurrection based on culture war issues? She didn’t have a plan for that.

Biden apparently is giving serious consideration to breaking the infrastructure bill into two parts: one with GOP support; and one without. Is that a good idea?

From a purely partisan perspective, definitely not. It gives the GOP a share of the credit for a part of the bill that is almost universally popular. Better to make them choose between accepting the bill as a whole or taking the hit for objecting to the popular bits.

But partisanship isn’t everything. Biden wants to use carrots as well as sticks to make the GOP a responsible center-right party again. It might not work, but what else can he do, other than trounce them in elections?

This is a close one, but personally, I would do the deal with the Republicans, hope that the carrot will work, and fight the remaining battles over the issues that really divide the parties. The national interest in maintaining a viable liberal democratic system has to prevail over narrow partisan advantage in this instance.

Capitalism is synonymous with creative destruction, which is the very negation of conservatism, because it promises endless change and perpetual insecurity. Nevertheless, Ross Douthat argued in Sunday’s NYT column that the American historical record shows that the neoliberal embrace of a fairly raw version of capitalism can’t be the reason for the decline of Christianity in this country. Is he right?

He makes a strong case. I would say that the history of American Christianity reflects a pattern of periodic booms and busts, with the line generally trending down over the last two centuries. The loss of ground over the last 20 years is too obvious to be ignored, however, with unfortunate implications for our political system. What is causing it, if not the dollar store version of capitalism?

I would say two things. First, the impacts of cable TV and the internet, which have resulted in the replacement of a genuine sense of community with an ersatz social media version based on shared loathing of the enemy; and second, the increasing identification of Christianity with the right wing of the GOP. Why would millennials flock to a religion whose members offer anger, hatred, bigotry, insurrection, and science denial instead of hope, redemption, and love for your neighbor? What reasonable person sees Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump as modern day prophets?

It was 2000, and America was riding high. The Cold War was over, and the US had prevailed (or, at least, the Soviet Union had imploded). American economic and military might was unmatched in the world. In the opinion of some, we had reached the end of history, and liberal democracy had won.

Today’s world is, of course, very different. What happened?

Here is the list:

1. The GOP stopped being a reasonable, decent, center-right party and became a threat to liberal democracy. The causes of this have been laid out in numerous previous blog posts, but include the end of the Fairness Doctrine, the advent of social media and Fox News, the election of a black president, and demographic and ideological changes which persuaded white Christians that they were a threatened, victimized minority who were entitled, if necessary, to destroy liberal democracy in order to maintain control of the country. Today, the GOP is a mouthpiece for reactionary cultural ideas and the dollar store economy.
2. Due partly to failed GOP trickle-down economic policies, partly to rising Chinese economic power, partly to technological change, and partly to the unrestrained short term interests of American business, the middle class was hollowed out, which led to higher inequality and both political and economic instability.
3. The Iraq War proved at great cost that while America was capable of defeating Communism, it was far less adept at imposing liberal democratic values on the rest of the world.
4. China provided a compelling alternative model to liberal democracy.

So, what now? Can Biden save the country from the Orban Option, either by uniting us against the twin threats of climate change and Chinese dominance, or by reshaping our economy to bring back middle class prosperity? We’ll see.

Donald Trump has suggested that Ron DeSantis could be his running mate in 2024. If you were DeSantis, is this an offer you can refuse?

Heavens, yes! Consider what happens to him if he accepts. If Trump gets the nomination and loses, which is more probable than not, part of the blame will fall on his running mate. If Trump wins, DeSantis will be required to show infinite loyalty, while receiving nothing in return. He will also be stuck with Trump’s record, without having any meaningful influence on what it is, and will have to deal with eight years of Trump fatigue on the part of the voters.

Or, to put it more simply, having seen what happened to Mike Pence, would it really be a good idea to follow in his footsteps? Just say you’re too busy ruining, er, running Florida to consider taking the job.

In summary, here is a description of fascist America:

1. It begins when a GOP president, with the ultimate assistance of the right-leaning Supreme Court, uses an emergency as a pretext to override the Constitution and assume dictatorial powers.
2. Democratic leaders throughout the country are jailed, and the military, having been first purged of unreliable elements, occupies blue states.
3. Strict censorship is imposed. Religious tests are created for voting and officeholding. All left-leaning teachers and professors are fired.
4. Red states are permitted to govern themselves, subject to the above-described censorship and religious tests.
5. Business is required to accept more regulation, but is not nationalized. Unions are outlawed, and strikes are forbidden.
6. A list of reliable existing religions is compiled. All of them are tolerated and incorporated into the new tests. New and left-leaning religions are prohibited. After some debate within the regime, Jews are subjected to severe discrimination.
7. Blue states experience Reverse Reconstruction. They are ruled by a combination of military officials, carpetbaggers from red states, and collaborators. Elections and politics as usual disappear.

In short, fascist America is less like the highly centralized examples of the 1930s than an updated version of the Confederacy. Those people who actually took the advice and saved their Confederate dollars are thus finally rewarded.

None of this is inevitable, or even likely, but all of it is possible. They are the stakes of the Biden presidency.

Stat of the day: according to CNN, one out of every three new stores opened in America in 2021 will be a Dollar General.

That’s the economy the GOP system of regressive tax cuts and deregulation has given us. And now, for something completely different . . .

Yesterday’s jobs report was both surprising and disappointing, relative to the increased level of economic activity that has occurred over the last month. Republicans see it as evidence that the widespread stories are true: millions of minimum wage employees would rather collect enhanced unemployment compensation than go back to work. For once, they may be right. How big a problem is this?

I’m not overly concerned, because:

1. Part of the rationale for the enhanced benefits was to give employers an incentive to raise wages. The system is working as planned; the problem goes away if wages go up. The real issue here is that employers feel entitled to low wage labor, based on their experience over the last few decades. That is a choice in which all of society has a voice–not just them.
2. In any event, the issue goes away when the enhanced benefits disappear in a few months. At that point, we will know if there was any real basis to the lazy worker anecdotes.
3. Anyone who prefers temporary enhanced benefits to the security of a job is running a big risk that neither will be available when the benefits expire.
4. Unemployment is generally a proxy for misery. Today, it’s not. Is that such a bad thing?

In concept, for a fascist, the nation is the organism, and each individual (other than the leader, of course) is just an equally replaceable cell. Consequently, Mussolini started his political life as a socialist, and organized his Fascist Party along socialist lines. The Nazi Party, too, was nominally socialist. It set Hitler’s movement apart from the traditional conservative parties.

The reality, of course, was very different. Fascists value businessmen as a source of wealth and expertise, and fear them as a potential point of opposition. Fascist countries, therefore, typically embrace capital and repress labor. What about American fascists?

It would be the same story. Regressive tax cuts would be paired with a warning to shut up and dribble. Labor would be bamboozled with propaganda and nationalism. Business would find that deal acceptable, and life would go on more or less as before.

Paul Krugman can’t understand why Larry Summers would say that an increase in interest rates in response to an overheated economy would result in a recession. I haven’t read Summers, but I’m pretty sure the answer is that low interest rates are baked into the expectations of investors to the point where any significant increase can cause a “taper tantrum.” Substantial losses in the stock and bond markets will lead to a decline in discretionary spending among investors, which will cause a recession.

The theory is based in recent history and makes sense. Let’s hope it is never tested.

Yesterday, in our North Carolina community, there was a memorial service for two police officers killed in the line of duty. Thousands of people attended, including police representatives from three states. Prominent religious leaders spoke. The service was broadcast by at least two TV stations from a large city located about 100 miles away. It was a really, really big deal.

Yesterday, in any number of American cities, black teenagers who weren’t being paid to protect the public were shot and killed. Their deaths were barely noted on the local news.

All of these deaths were tragedies, but the public only cared about the police officers. The implicit assumption is that they matter far more than average citizens even though they, unlike most of us, are supported by the taxpayers and voluntarily assume the risks of their job. I don’t accept that. It’s just not right.

In a rigorously fascist regime, the relationship between the leader and the nation is viewed to be organic, so elections are unnecessary. But the model for American fascism is more the Confederacy than the Third Reich, so the issue is more complicated than you might initially think. Would there be elections in fascist America?

In red states, yes. With the religious tests and censorship in place, there would be room for some political debate.

In the blue states, no. Even with the tests, censorship, and the occupying army, the population would be viewed as being too unreliable for elections. Reverse Reconstruction would take decades.

Bret Stephens looks at Biden’s proposals to expand the welfare state and frets they will turn us into . . . France! Sure, it’s a great place to visit, with its cafes, museums, and all. But the French are miserable! They have high unemployment, lots of right-wing extremists, low growth, and an ineffective government. This is all due, of course, to the massive size of their welfare state, which we would be highly unwise to emulate.

Is any of this true? The relatively high unemployment figures probably have a slight nexus to the size of the welfare state, although they are more attributable to unnecessary, stifling labor regulations that are not really part of the safety net (see, e.g., Denmark). The rest of Stephens’ concerns either aren’t logically tied to the size of the welfare state or are common to other countries, including ours. So, by and large, the answer is no.

But there is a larger point here. Stephens appears to believe that national happiness is tied to chronic insecurity. With no welfare state, almost everyone is always a few small steps from destitution throughout their lives. The Stephens theory is that if everyone hustles every day out of a sense of perpetual desperation, high levels of growth and personal excellence ensue, and everyone is happy.

As the resident of a nation with a very limited safety net, does that sound right to you? Is the story of America over the last 40 years one of rising growth levels and increasing satisfaction with life and our political system? How willing to take risks is someone who lives on the edge of disaster? You know the answers to those questions only too well.

Fascist regimes typically offer big business a deal: business gets low taxes and protection from labor unrest and nationalization, but agrees to accept direction (some of it arbitrary) from the government, and to remain silent on political and social issues. Historically, the deal has been accepted, particularly if the threat from the left is viewed as being substantial and credible.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It is roughly where the Trumpist GOP is today.

American fascism would, of course, particularly impact the tech companies, of whom the right is extremely critical. Ironically, the imposition of government censorship of the left would resolve the free speech issues that currently bedevil Facebook and Twitter; they would consequently be free to pursue their business models without further interference from the government. The fascist government, having accomplished its objective of shutting off political debate, would have no incentive to break up the tech companies, which would probably be viewed as national champions in dealing with China and Europe. Censorship, however, would silence both outrage machines; the left would be outlawed, and the right would thus have no reason to exist. As a result, the social media companies would be forced to return to their original concept of uniting the world through cute cat videos, and their profits would be reduced accordingly.

Republicans claim to be terrified of cancel culture, but they are firm believers in it for their own purposes. It isn’t just attempts to prevent schools from using the 1619 Project as a teaching tool; now they are excommunicating anyone, including lifelong conservatives, who doesn’t profess to believe that Trump won the 2020 election.

The GOP is turning into an openly insurrectionist party before our eyes. The Democrats need to remind the electorate of this repeatedly in 2022 and 2024.