Cromwell

This is the relationship that really matters. It is the one that will define the 21st century, and even determine the future of the planet.

Trump could never figure out what he wanted from China. Were the Chinese an existential threat to our system and way of life, with regime change the only possible solution? Was the objective just to reduce the trade deficit? Or should he just use China as a convenient punching bag for the purpose of winning illusory battles and picking up domestic political support? The answer seemed to change from day to day.

The two most critical questions in the relationship are as follows:

1. Can China’s legitimate concerns about sovereignty be accommodated without endangering the interests of its neighbors?
2. Can America keep a strong enough position on tech issues to remain secure?

I will address these issues, and more, in my annual China series during the week of Chinese New Year.

Here’s how the GOP factions will respond to a Trump candidacy in 2024:

1. CDs: Seriously? More divisiveness, corruption, and incompetence? That’s the last thing we need!
2. CLs: The wall, excessive spending, corruption, and contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law were too much for us, even with the tax cuts and deregulation. It’s time to move on.
3. PBPs: Only if a socialist is the only other choice. We hated the tariffs and the capricious interventions in the economy. Disaster was always lurking around the corner. There has to be someone better than him.
4. Reactionaries: MAGA! MAGA! SAVE AMERICA AND OVERTURN THE STEAL! ONLY TRUMP STANDS BETWEEN US AND THE ANNIHILATION OF OUR CULTURE!

Unfortunately for us, the Reactionaries probably make up a majority of the GOP at this point. CDs have mostly left the party; CLs are a tiny minority; and the PBPs historically kept quiet in the face of his outrages. As a result, even though the man’s defects are obvious to everyone, he will be the favorite to win the GOP nomination if he runs in 2024.

Would anyone play Eugene McCarthy to his LBJ in 2024? I will speculate on that issue tomorrow.

Justice Alito reportedly gave a full-throated culture wars speech to the Federalist Society a few weeks ago. The contrast between this public display and Barrett’s confirmation hearings is extremely stark. It gives the lie to the idea that Supreme Court justices put their religious views in a box when they analyze cases–not that we ever really thought they did.

Ordinarily, I would find this kind of public statement by a justice reprehensible, but in this instance, I think it brings clarity to two issues:

1. It refutes the idea on the left that right-wing culture warriors are just poor illiterate saps who vote against their economic interests for the benefit of plutocrats; but
2. It also makes it clear that the right’s claim to be powerless in the face of the blue cultural onslaught are also false. Alito is, after all, one of the most important men in the country, because of, not in spite of, his reactionary Catholic beliefs.

Paul Krugman says we should learn to love debt. Is he right?

Mostly, but not completely, as follows:

1. He is correct that at the current microscopic interest rates, there is little danger in incurring more debt. Virtually any government expenditure that isn’t laughably stupid will pay for itself under those conditions.
2. Furthermore, investments in green technology should be financed through borrowing, as most of the benefits will inure to future generations, and costs will be incurred whether we make the investments or not.
3. Finally, there are plenty of reasons, both here and elsewhere, to expect that interest rates will remain low in the future.

But what if conditions change? Increases in rates would be a disaster. They would sink both the stock and the bond market and would make financing the deficit much more expensive. A period of savage austerity would follow. It’s a contingency which needs to be considered.

Interest rates are a function of a variety of factors, including the overall health of the economy, the level of savings on both a national and international level, and confidence in the government’s ability and willingness to pay its creditors. The last is a particular concern. Just to cite one example, it isn’t hard to imagine Mitch and his cronies engineering another debt ceiling crisis during the next four years to crash the economy and reap the presumed electoral benefits. The ripple effects of that kind of government failure would last for years.

America was divided. One side had a vibrant, growing, state of the art economy; it was socially progressive, and embraced (albeit sometimes grudgingly) people of a variety of ethnicities. The other side depended to a large extent on commodities. It was growing much more slowly, and viewed the progressive ideas of the first side with suspicion. To a majority of its residents, the natural order of things was for white men to rule. It reacted violently to anyone who suggested otherwise.

Is it 1860 or 2020? You decide.

As with Cuba, Trump’s policy towards Venezuela was mostly driven by domestic political concerns–the desire to keep Marco Rubio and the exile community happy. As with Iran, the response was to apply “maximum pressure” to try to force regime change. The ensuing campaign against Maduro was well-intentioned and run with a reasonable degree of competence, but it failed. Today, Maduro is still in power, and the Venezuelan economy has collapsed, with no end in sight. It is clear that only a large scale military intervention by the US or Colombia would topple the regime, and there is no appetite for it on the part of either country.

The message should be clear: economic sanctions don’t lead to regime change when the government in question is united, indifferent to public suffering, and prepared to do anything to stay in power.

Biden will be left to pick up the pieces. My guess is that he will put more emphasis on ending the misery than regime change. Look for him to try more carrots, and fewer sticks, to stop the conflict, even if it costs him support in Florida.

Joe Biden and the Democrats supported a substantial increase in the minimum wage at a national level; Donald Trump opposed it. Trump won Florida. A state constitutional amendment increasing the minimum wage passed, with over 60 percent of the vote. How can this be?

Identity politics and culture wars, of course. The Florida electorate prefers the Democrats’ position on virtually all issues relating to taxation, spending, and the economy, but won’t vote for Democrats, because they are they are supposedly the party of socialism and political correctness. That prevails over mere economic concerns under all but extreme circumstances.

So how do the Democrats deal with this? By confronting the culture war issue directly, instead of ignoring it, as they have in the past, including this year.

American policy–or, rather, policies–towards Ukraine during the Trump era are the other side of the Russia coin. On the one hand, the foreign policy establishment pursued a wholly conventional approach of supporting Ukraine against Russian ambitions and pushing for reforms to make the government more effective; on the other hand, Trump raged against Ukraine and tried to blackmail its government into investigating his political opponents. The dissonance was deafening.

As with Russia, the conflict disappears the day Biden takes office. The new administration will only pursue the State Department line. The Ukrainian government will undoubtedly breathe a sigh of relief; it will no longer be a football in the world of American politics.

Maintaining national unity in a liberal democratic state is far easier in the face of a compelling, dangerous external enemy. I don’t think it is a coincidence that politics in this country started to become more polarized shortly after the demise of the USSR. So what could replace the Russians in the foreseeable future?

It could have been, and should have been, the virus. If Trump had possessed an ounce of sense and intellectual flexibility, he would have worn a mask and made fighting the virus an overriding national priority. Americans would have responded favorably even if he had failed. He didn’t try, however, and the rest is history.

The Chinese? Maybe. Getting tough with them is popular with both parties; to the extent that China is a partisan issue, it involves means, not ends. The question is whether Trump has already irrevocably divided us on foreign policy. That remains to be seen.

Boris Johnson has clearly identified his brand of populism with Trump’s. The British are worried that this will damage their relationship with the US after Trump’s defeat and departure. Is their concern justified?

No. Unlike, say, Netanyahu, Boris never crossed the line by openly advocating for Trump’s re-election. In addition, he took positions on issues like climate change and Iran that conflicted with Trump’s. Finally, the links between the two nations are very strong. They will survive the transition easily.

The better question is whether the UK will have the same degree of influence on the US, regardless of who is in power, after Brexit. The most likely answer is no. The UK was a useful cultural and ideological bridge between the US and the rest of the EU; in less than a month, that will be gone, and the UK will find its new isolation to be less than splendid.

As I’ve noted before, Trump’s greatest “accomplishment” in office has been to convince his own party that he alone stood between them and cultural (and possibly physical) annihilation. As a result, surveys show that Cruz voters from 2016 supported him even more strongly than his own primary partisans as his term went on.

But what happens now? If he runs for president in 2024, how is he going to convince GOP voters that no one else can save them, when they somehow managed to survive four years with Biden? It’s going to be a tough sell.

Erdogan and Putin have more in common than I suspect they would like to admit. Both are, of course, strongmen with little regard for liberal democratic norms; both preside over struggling economies; and, possibly as a result, both are being increasingly aggressive in their respective backyards. They are currently engaged in proxy wars in Syria, Libya, and the Caucasus. These conflicts typically end in agreements between the two without regard to the concerns of NATO or the other powers in the region. But will they always, particularly in light of Putin’s clear advantage in military strength, if NATO is left out of the equation?

This is happening largely because Trump had no interest in using American power to maintain some semblance of order in the region or to save liberal democracy in Turkey. When Biden takes office, he will have to decide whether to try and force Erdogan to dampen his foreign ambitions, restore democracy, and play nice with the rest of NATO. While it is clear that Biden is far more skeptical of the Sultan than Trump was, I’m not sure his actual policy will be that much different. Keeping Erdogan on side requires a lot of energy that needs to be devoted to more pressing concerns–most notably, China.

2020 had it all.

Pandemic spring; election fall.

We live in interesting times

The Chinese say–and they aren’t lyin’.

____________

Trump went down, and we rejoiced.

The quiet middle found a voice.

You couldn’t call it a blue wave

But, for now, our nation’s saved.

_____________

We’re at home and doing fine.

Our Europe trip died on the vine.

We’re spending more time on our deck.

The view is great, so what the heck.

_______________

We’ve retired; our work is done.

We chucked our jobs to have more fun.

I have more time to walk the dog

And do more posting on my blog.

______________

2020–what a year!

Deliverance is finally here.

It’s just eight weeks until he goes

And you won’t have to hold your nose.

In the end, it was the pandemic that cost Trump the election, but probably not for the reasons that you (and he) think. It isn’t because his response was inept, and cost (at a minimum) tens of thousands of lives; America would probably have forgiven him for that if he had truly behaved as a “wartime president.” It was because he told us every day that he didn’t care; his priority was the economy and the stock market, not the lives of the elderly and front line workers.

George W. Bush screwed up the response to Katrina, but what really killed him was the apparent indifference in the photo of him in the airplane flying over the disaster. As I’ve noted before, the public doesn’t necessarily expect you to solve their problems, but they have to know your heart is in the right place. Trump failed that test and justly paid the price for it.

Once a year, Maureen Dowd lets her brother hijack her column to make a pitch for the GOP. This year, he made the claim that Trump, like other reactionaries, “unapologetically loves America.” Is that true?

Of course not! We’re talking about Cadet Bone Spurs here–the man who thinks that sacrificing your life for your country makes you a sucker. The man who is doing his best to trash liberal democracy in America. The man who would be the Founding Fathers’ worst nightmare if he had the skill and the energy to create the authoritarian regime that he openly prefers.

Donald Trump and his biggest fans don’t love America. They hate the people who don’t unconditionally support “America,” a fictional entity run solely by and for white Christian men. That isn’t patriotism; it’s anger, delusion, and naked self-interest.