Cromwell

We all know that Trump uses his powers of outrage to make his orthodox, plutocrat-friendly positions on taxes and regulation palatable to the Reactionary wing of the GOP. The irony here is that Biden, if elected, is likely to do precisely the opposite. He will use his reputation for good sense and moderation to help sell very progressive positions on taxes, child care, health care, and climate change to the general public.

Sometimes it’s the salesman, not the product. Trump would be happy to tell you that; it has worked for him all of his life.

I have to admit it–I snapped. I could only bring myself to watch small parts of it, and I turned off Trump a little before 11:00. Not that I missed anything valuable.

Here are a few observations:

1. The whole context was kind of in-between. It wasn’t exactly a MAGA rally, given the White House setting and the kind and number of people in the audience, but it wasn’t an intimate speech, either. The analogy to a State of the Union seems appropriate. I’m not sure that will either fire up the base or convince wavering voters.
2. Another day, another Hatch Act violation. These people don’t care if they violate the law. The law is for suckers. It’s all about power for them, and gaslighting for the rest of us.
3. When Trump talks about American exceptionalism, he’s just mouthing words that someone else wrote for him. He doesn’t believe any of it.
4. I bet a large percentage of Americans turned him off about the time I did. It’s stupid to speak that late at night. The same observation goes for the Democrats.
5. Ivanka Trump simply doesn’t have enough gravitas to pull off the tasks that she is given in this administration, including her speech last night.
6. It’s never a good sign when you have to parade so many people up on stage to say you’re not a sexist and a racist. Do you believe them, or your lyin’ eyes?
7. His plan for the virus is for everyone to live what used to be a normal life, and take one for the team, if necessary. The lives of thousands of Americans don’t matter. It’s all about GDP and the stock market.
8. Alternative facts. So many alternative facts. In the end, that may well be the concept for which this administration is remembered.

Michael Cohen has taped a new ad in which he warns Americans not to trust Donald Trump. Is he right?

Of course he is–and he should know. Trump has been ripping off people all his life; it is his business model. In his view, the world is divided into the shrewd and ruthless on one hand, and suckers on the other. It is the natural order of things for the suckers to be exploited by the shrewd and ruthless. He makes no apologies for it.

Winning in November would be the ultimate con. This time, Trump can’t just hit and run; he has to persuade an American public that has seen him operate for almost four years that there is no pandemic or recession and that the real danger to America is from a bland old gentleman and his supporters. He has to sell us on a vision of America that directly conflicts with what is staring us all in the face. Having told over 20,000 lies during his time in office, he has to convince us that this time, he is telling the truth.

God help us if there are enough suckers out there to prove him right.

A successful strongman is a tough act to follow. Just ask Maduro.

Which, of course, leads us to Mike Pence. Pence reminds me of Malvolio; he’s obsequious to his boss and self-righteous with everyone else. You can find his picture next to “smarmy” in the dictionary. His speeches and ideas don’t work at any level higher than a Rotary Club. In his defense, however, you can say that he isn’t completely insane or corrupt, and that he would be unlikely to destroy the republic. It’s a pathetically low bar, but that’s where we are today.

Could Pence win the nomination in 2024? I doubt it, because Trump has made owning the libs the most important task of a GOP president, and Pence doesn’t really have that in his skill set. He’s broadly acceptable to the various elements of the party, but he doesn’t excite any of them. That approach has worked with Biden and the Democrats, but the GOP base is a different animal entirely, and I think they will prefer someone like Cotton.

Conservative Libertarians are the intellectual heirs of the Anti-Federalists. In a nutshell, they see the federal government as an enemy, and the president as a potential latter day George III. The principal task of the citizenry is to push back against any encroachment on their freedoms by the tyrants in Washington who are forever trying to extend their powers beyond the four corners of the Constitution.

While the CLs are more than adequately represented in the world of pundits, there aren’t many prominent pure CL officeholders. Rand Paul comes the closest to the ideal type. Given his ideology, you would think that Paul would be horrified by the Mussolini wannabe in the White House. But nooooooo! He even provided a gushing testimonial for Trump on national TV last night.

If you’re looking for concrete evidence as to the level of decay within the GOP, you could do far worse than that.

The following statements about Trump are beyond dispute:

1. He desperately wants to have high TV ratings; and
2. He thinks climate change is an insignificant problem at best, and a hoax at worst.

Hence, the irony of the prospect of having Trump’s speech on Thursday being upstaged by the landfall of what is likely to be a very powerful hurricane in Texas or Louisiana.

Having been through this on multiple occasions, I feel for the affected population, but for Trump, it’s meteorological justice.

On the head diplomat they call Mike.

There just isn’t much there to like.

He spoke overseas.

While his boss will be pleased

We should tell him to go take a hike.

I didn’t stay up to watch Melania’s speech, because . . . I don’t care. There is nothing about her and her life that connects her with me, or 330 million Americans. She can’t speak for anyone but herself. She doesn’t matter, for good or ill.

The presentation last night was factually false, occasionally surreal, corrupt at times, and disjointed. “Factually false” applies to virtually everyone. The naturalization scene would make a great skit on SNL. Larry Kudlow talking about the roaring recovery, as if we didn’t have double digit unemployment and a pandemic out of control, was both ludicrous and par for the course. Tiffany Trump going on and on about the vast elite left-wing conspiracy didn’t win dear old dad any friends. Mike Pompeo’s wooden speech from Israel was a gross violation of the principle that partisan politics end at the water’s edge. As with the previous night, the combination of angry denunciations of the extreme left with more soothing presentations was jarring. Some of the individual speakers were, in isolation, pretty effective, but I don’t think the totality of it is working.

Looking forward to some stirring oratory from Mike Pence tonight? Me, neither.

Walker was emphatic yesterday that Trump is not a racist. Is he right?

No, but it has to be admitted that Trump’s racism is somewhat unusual. The man on golf cart divides the world into winners (like him, of course) and losers. People of color are presumptively losers, because they are poor, powerless, and feckless. However, successful black athletes like Muhammad Ali, Walker, and Tiger Woods rebut the presumption; they are wealthy and physically powerful, so they are “winners” entitled to respect.

And so, Trump’s racism only extends to 99.9 percent of the black population. Do you find that reassuring? Didn’t think so.

To any reasonably sane American, Hillary Clinton ran as a relatively bloodless, left-center technocrat in 2016. Nothing much to fear there, right? Not according to the Reactionary wing of the GOP, which viewed the election as the last chance to save the country from annihilation–the electoral equivalent of Flight 93. They didn’t have a majority, and they needed lots of help from unusual sources, but they won.

This year, both parties see the election as a Flight 93. The new GOP horsemen are socialists, rioters, and cancel culture warriors. The Democrats, on the other hand, see the nation changed beyond recognition if Trump pulls it out by the inept response to the pandemic, the recession, and the looming threat of the caudillo unleashed.

The winner will be the candidate who persuades swing voters that his chosen apocalypse is more frightening. My prediction? Only Fox viewers are worried about rampaging leftists in the suburbs and cancel culture, while everyone is affected by the recession and the pandemic. I don’t think the GOP nightmare is real enough to undecided voters to carry the day.

There for a moment, I knew how Alexei Navalny felt.

It was the scene in the White House, right after the film celebrating Trump’s victory over the virus. Trump awkwardly offered thanks to the little people without whom his great triumph would have been impossible, including Post Office employees. The little people, for their part, shook their heads at the unfounded attacks on the great man by the radical left, and applauded him fulsomely for his genius.

Is this a parallel universe, or what?

Trump has to thread the needle here by soothing the fears of whatever moderate swing voters are still out there, while still firing up his base. I don’t think he is succeeding, because the anger is overwhelming the bridge over troubled waters. Don Jr. in particular was so amped up, I thought he was going to jump through my TV screen and punch me in the face. That isn’t going to get it done.

Nikki Haley was the best of the bridges, but she’s wrong if she thinks she can win in 2024 by quietly rejecting the worst excesses of Trumpism. The right isn’t going to vote for a woman who helped get rid of the Confederate flag. It just isn’t going to happen.

What could a President Biden do to stop the virus? Due to previous events and our federal system, less than we would like.

The proper role of the federal government in this crisis is to provide consistent, science-based planning guidance and to facilitate and coordinate the production and distribution of PPE. The latter doesn’t appear to be a big problem at this stage of the crisis. The former, of course, is a totally different matter. Trump failed miserably, and worse, made mask wearing a culture war issue; he’s consequently responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. As a practical matter, that damage cannot be undone.

Biden has suggested a nationwide mask mandate. Would that help? Probably not, for two reasons. First, his legal authority to impose one is questionable at the very least. Second, because Trump has succeeded in associating masks with liberals, you can guess how members of the right would react to a national mandate. Thirty percent of the population would probably immediately refuse to wear masks as a political protest, which would make the mandate practically unenforceable.

The best course at this point is consistent, gentle persuasion. It won’t work perfectly, but all of the alternatives are worse.

One of the functions of a convention is to help the faithful identify the next leaders of the party. The list of speakers for this year’s extravaganza, however, is very heavily weighted towards Trump family members and loyalists, and low on potential candidates for 2020. Pence is on the list, of course, but that could hardly be avoided. Tom Cotton and Nikki Haley are also on the list. Rubio and Cruz are not included; nor are any members of the Bush family. Josh Hawley is also excluded.

What does this mean? There will be no distance between the party and pure Trumpism in the eyes of the voters in 2020. There will be no meaningful policy debates, and no logical successor will emerge. Everything will be put on hold until after the election. If Trump loses, all hell will break loose.

Tens of millions of Americans will be tuned into the GOP convention in the hope of hearing a plausible plan for dealing with the virus. For the most part, you can expect the speakers to ignore the pandemic and talk about rioting and looting, but with eight hours of time to fill, it can’t be disregarded completely. What can you expect?

Something like this:

1. The virus is an act of God, and the Chinese. No one could have done much about it.
2. We’re working really hard for a vaccine. It’s coming . . . soon. Keep the faith.
3. In the meantime, go back to bars and restaurants and take one for the team, if necessary.

It will be interesting to see to what extent the speakers–particularly Trump himself–identify with the anti-mask crowd. It’s in his best interest to avoid that, but he may not be able to help himself. He rarely can.

Biden and the Democrats won a decisive victory in 2020. But not quite decisive enough; the GOP managed to squeak out enough wins to maintain control of the Senate.

Faced with a splintering party, McConnell predictably dug in, looking for more of that old 2010 magic. He made it clear to Biden that there would be no more stimulus–in fact, the entire blue agenda was going nowhere. He would agree to keep the lights on and hold a few hearings on judges, but that was it.

Understandably frustrated, the left demanded that Biden follow Trump and use executive actions to accomplish what could not be done through legislation. For the most part, Biden refused, saying that he had no interest in subverting the Constitution. Moderates and constitutional purists applauded his restraint, but the public did not.

Violent protests broke out in several large cities. The right–with Trump and Tom Cotton in the lead–called for the use of overwhelming force in the name of law and order. Biden left the problem to state and local officials, with mixed results. Who gained from the deadlock? The GOP, of course. The public blamed Biden and the protesters, not McConnell and the obstructionist GOP Senate. The honeymoon was already over.

(The moral of the story is obvious–winning the Senate is really, really important, even if a bare majority probably won’t be enough to get large parts of the agenda through).