Cromwell

Members of the left frequently accuse Obama of being a “neoliberal.” Is that correct?

It is all a matter of definitions, of course. To me, a neoliberal is someone who believes in capitalism, free trade, regressive tax policies to support investment, and limited regulation of business. Obama only meets the first two tests.

The left appears to view Obama’s successful efforts to save the system during the financial crisis as an opportunity wasted. Those actions were taken during extraordinary conditions, and do not reflect his opinions during the rest of his administration. If he had not taken them, workers as well as business owners would be far poorer today.

The bottom line is that Obama supported the broadening and strengthening of the welfare state, and a mild degree of redistribution, to mitigate the impacts of the system on the less affluent. He was right to view capitalism as the goose that lays the golden egg, not the enemy. What are the alternatives? Socialism? Protectionism? There is plenty of history behind both; both quickly lead to economic slowdowns which damage everyone’s interests, not a fairer, wealthier society.

Every individual VP’s role is defined differently. Some have spent most of their time at funerals. Al Gore was given the task of redefining government. Dick Cheney actually ran the government, if some observers are to be believed. Biden was a liaison to Congress and a general adviser to Obama. Mike Pence sucks up to his boss and does his best to clean up messes. What would Kamala Harris do?

(Note to my readers: I refuse to call her an apprentice president, for obvious reasons.)

She would almost certainly be given portfolios relating to race relations and criminal justice. Other than that, she doesn’t have any experience that fills in a gap for Biden. I suspect he will view this as an opportunity for on the job training; the more she learns, and the better advice she gives, the more authority she will receive. At the end, she would be perfectly qualified to step into his shoes.

Contrary to our expectations, Trump has shown us that uncodified constitutional norms are not universally accepted, and are largely unenforceable. How should Biden deal with that, if he wins?

Here are a few items:

1. It is of the utmost importance that he appoint someone without strong political affiliations as his AG.
2. The independence of the DOJ from the rest of the executive branch should be given a statutory basis in order to prevent politicized law enforcement and put an end to the unitary executive theory.
3. Ethics statutes which exclude the president should be revised. In particular, the president should be required to disclose his tax returns.
4. The right of Congress to conduct investigations and to demand material from the executive branch should also be given a clear statutory basis.

Given that the GOP will want to be able to hold President Biden accountable, it should be possible to get a bipartisan consensus for these kinds of actions. Without them, the next GOP president will be tempted to go even further than Trump; illiberal democracy is just around the corner.

Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon shortly after the latter’s resignation in an effort to heal the nation’s wounds and move forward. It was an unpopular decision that may well have cost him the 1976 election. I think it is fair to say, however, that the verdict of history is on his side. The pardon was, in fact, in the national interest, if not Ford’s.

Biden will face a somewhat similar situation if he wins the election, given the long list of Trump’s misdeeds both in and out of office. In my opinion, it would be a mistake to authorize DOJ to take legal action against Trump. It would make the vital task of dealing with the national divisions far more difficult, invite retaliation, and make America look like a banana republic.

There are caveats to that advice, of course. Important examples of poor and corrupt administration should be reviewed and made public, and the Vance investigation should not be hindered in any way. If Vance determines beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump committed crimes in New York before he was elected, then he should be free to treat Trump just like any other lawbreaker.

Biden’s most important task will be to protect the nation’s foundations from further institutional rot. My next post will address that issue.

The DOJ’s decision to attack Yale’s admission policies isn’t just an attempt to retry the Harvard case; when combined with Trump’s statements about fair housing rules and the suburbs, it should be seen as a blatant election year attempt to pander to the view of white reactionaries that they, not black people, are the true victims of institutional racism. Call it the 2020 Project.

The 1619 Project at least has most of the facts on its side. It is accurate, but incomplete; the 2020 Project is pure rubbish.

Affirmative action was designed to be a temporary solution to the effects of slavery and racism. It would be nice if we could have a reasoned, good faith discussion about how long it should last, but that is not in the cards. The bottom line is the data clearly show that we are nowhere close to being there today, and anyone who suggests otherwise is being deliberately blind.

Like Donald Trump, Netanyahu will say and do anything to stay in power. Unlike Trump, he’s actually good at it. Beset with political and legal problems, and stuck with an unpopular campaign promise that he probably didn’t want to keep, he managed to leverage the annexation issue into diplomatic recognition by the UAE. It was a stunning, but ultimately meaningless (except to him) accomplishment.

Why meaningless? It doesn’t bring a peace with the Palestinians any closer. It doesn’t really change the relationship with the UAE, or even make a secret public. It doesn’t change the balance of power with Iran. It doesn’t even take annexation off the table for good; if Netanyahu is once again forced by events to talk about it, he’ll do it.

What this will do is provide further confirmation to Trump that life is all about creating and using leverage. If the Constitution denies you that leverage, well, the Constitution is just a scrap of paper.

President Cotton was frustrated. Having been elected by a tiny Electoral College margin (and without a popular majority) in 2024, he was determined to deliver the goods to his faithful Reactionary and PBP supporters, but the Democratic House rejected his agenda out of hand. Building on the precedents established in the Trump years, he signed executive orders directing the IRS not to collect capital gains tax and prohibiting DOJ from enforcing any civil rights laws, which he described as “immoral” and an “offense against God.”

The Democrats took legal action, but the Supreme Court viewed it as a political question and refused to intervene. Impeachment was out of the question, given Cotton’s support in both houses. There was no effective legal remedy for the obvious usurpation of power.

Protests broke out in most major American cities. It was the provocation that Cotton had been waiting for since 2020. He had already replaced the leaders of the military with men he knew he could trust to protect his interests over those of the country. He consequently sent the military to squelch the protests with orders to use overwhelming force. There were hundreds of casualties, but the protests ended. Fox News rejoiced.

Attorney General Barr, brought out of retirement just for this kind of event, announced that the government would use emergency powers to censor the MSM and the internet in order to prevent any new protests. Prominent Democrats, including members of Congress, who had supported the protests were arrested and held indefinitely without charge. New reactionary social legislation was adopted by presidential decree. Opponents of the regime learned to keep quiet. America had turned into Hungary, or even Hong Kong.

I was just a child then, but I remember 1968. Burning cities, violent demonstrations, MLK, RFK, Chicago–it seemed like the country was coming apart at the seams. It was a crisis. Ultimately, it passed.

Maybe it is just because I’m not sick or unemployed, but 2020 has a different feel to it. It doesn’t feel like a fever; it is more as if the foundations of our political system are rotting away before our eyes. Today, we have a president who doesn’t respect the authority of Congress to control the purse or hold him accountable. Tomorrow, it will probably be something even worse.

The people dodging tear gas in the streets are not ultimately a threat to the system, because they believe it can be made to work for them. The real danger today comes from get off my lawn white reactionaries who think they have a divine right to rule, and will sell out our institutions in a heartbeat to maintain it. They are a minority, but they are too numerous to crush. They have to be appeased until they are converted or die out.

If the ideas that represent the foundation of your party are unpopular, what do you do to stay in power? Here are some options:

1. KEEP SCREAMING ABOUT SOCIALISM AND HOPE THE DEMOCRATS RUN THE COUNTRY INTO A DITCH: Trump is already doing some of that in his campaign.
2. THE MCCONNELL OPTION: Who needs to win elections to hang on to power? The federal system, the filibuster, and friendly judges will block the Democrats’ agenda. It’s a half loaf, but that’s a lot better than nothing.
3. NATIONAL CONSERVATISM: Drop the regressive tax cuts and deregulation and go with a more populist and nationalist economic policy. Persuade the PBPs to go along by warning them about socialism.
4. SOFTEN THE SOCIAL CONSERVATISM: Those old white Christians aren’t being replaced, you know.
5. THE ORBAN OPTION: McConnell plus vote suppression, extreme gerrymandering, and a variety of First Amendment violations. There is a market for it. Some GOP intellectual leaders are already on board.

So which will it be? Most of them are not mutually exclusive. I would bet on the first two, and not the next two. The Orban Option? It’s a real and frightening possibility.

Ever since Reagan, the GOP orthodoxy has been to support tax cuts and deregulation for business under every imaginable circumstance. There are two problems with this. First, it hasn’t worked, except to massively enrich the donor class; inequality has risen sharply as a result. Second, it is unpopular, even with GOP rank-and-file voters. For a politician, that is an even greater sin.

Historically, the party has compensated for the unpopularity of its fiscal policies by cranking up the culture wars. As recently as 2004, it succeeded. Times have changed, however; even social conservatives admit that they have lost the culture war, and view themselves as an endangered minority. What is more, the situation will only get worse over time, as the party’s elderly white Christian base dies off.

So where does the GOP go from here? If both parts of the bargain that represents the foundation of the party are electoral losers, how can the GOP ever hope to win a majority in the foreseeable future? More on that in my next post.

I’ve noted innumerable times before that the foundation of the current GOP is a deal in which the PBPs get tax cuts and deregulation, and the Reactionaries get conservative judges and lots of soothing words on social issues. While Trump has a heterodox style, to say the least, he is a traditionalist on this subject; he has unquestionably delivered the goods to both factions. But what happens if he is trounced in November? Will the deal remain in effect?

It will come under attack from both sides, because the PBPs and the Reactionaries are going to blame each other for the debacle. The Reactionaries will attribute Trump’s defeat to his failure to adopt a populist economic strategy; the PBPs will say it was all due to those damned outrageous tweets that pleased the base, but turned off swing voters. Some Reactionaries are toying with a populist economic plan that deviates dramatically from the Reagan era theory of freedom and tax cuts; you will hear more about it in the future. Some PBPs will support Biden in order to bring an end to the division and chaos.

My best guess is that the agreement will ultimately stand, as neither party to it has much chance of getting what it most wants without using the other faction as an ally. The agreement has some seriously negative consequences for the future of the GOP, however. I will address these, and some potential ways out, in future posts.

It was the obvious choice, and the correct one. I predicted it months ago. So did lots of other people.

The best thing about Biden as a campaigner is that he doesn’t overthink things. For example, he’s staying in his basement and letting Trump hang himself on TV every day. It works, so why stop?

The tricky thing about the VP choice is to avoid saying anything negative about any of the other contenders. My guess is that he will refuse to answer questions on that topic. Whether his staff can be relied upon to do the same remains to be seen.

(Joe Biden is in his basement, still mulling over his VP choice, when God calls his name. Unlike Trump, he knows who it is immediately.)

B: Yes, Lord. What can I do to best serve you?

G: Well, you could stop hating me, and being against me, for one.

B: I hope you’re not buying into those lies that Trump tells. I’ve always been here for you, just as you were here for me.

G: I’m just pulling your chain. Trump has you confused with that guy from the XFL. I don’t believe a word he says.

B: So, am I going to win the election?

G: I know, but cannot say. Kind of like your VP choice.

B: Who knew God was a comedian?

G: George Burns, for one. Here’s one for you: two angels and a demon walk into a bar together . . .

B: Enough divine comedy! Let’s be serious. You’re not going to help Trump, are you?

G: I stay out of elections. As I told him, if America is stupid enough to vote for him, they deserve him. I’ll be happy if you win, though. I’m tired of the lies and the stupid drama.

B: Is there anything I can do for you?

G: Yes. You can try to heal all of the divisions in your country. I hate that. Something needs to be done.

B: Job 1, boss.

(God leaves. Biden still hasn’t picked his running mate.)

My fellow real Americans:

I’m here today because I’m told there was a big battle here. Really big. Huge, even, but not as big as me. Lots of people died. It was bad, I tell you.

I’m also told that Lincoln gave some kind of speech here, although I’ve never heard of it. Did you know I won more electoral votes than Lincoln? Way more! I even carried the South, and he didn’t. He didn’t beat Hillary Clinton, either. I should have a much bigger monument than he does.

Anyway, the fake news says that the South lost the big battle here. As usual, they lied. That would make the South losers, and they love me, so that can’t be right. The South won the battle. They won the war, too. Didn’t they pretty much get to keep their slaves after it was over? That’s winning in my book. Just like how I repealed Obamacare.

I’m here today to tell you that Lincoln was wrong. A house divided is better than a house united, at least as long as I’m president. Black people claiming to want their rights are Communists and terrorists. I’m running again to turn the clock back and put those people in their place. Without me, America is just another sh___hole country overrun with drugs and crime. Joe Biden won’t do anything to stop them, but I alone will. Vote for me on November 3.

Once again, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

My initial reaction, of course, was to be offended. The more I thought about it, however, the more appropriate it seemed. Given Trump’s continuing efforts to divide the country, his affinity for Confederate symbols, and his position in the polls, his speech could be the 21st century equivalent of Pickett’s Charge.