Cromwell

The election is twelve days away.

We fear it more than we can say.

We have feelings of dread

Occupying our heads

But Trump wins if we give in that way.

The leaves are spectacular in the mountains of North Carolina at this time of year. You cling to them desperately, and try to savor every moment, because you know they’re doomed. They’ll be gone in a week or so. Winter is coming.

It’s hard to avoid seeing this as a metaphor for the election and our political system. If Trump somehow leverages vote suppression and the support of “his” Supreme Court into an unlikely victory, he will (probably correctly) view it as a successful referendum on autocracy, and behave accordingly. The next four years will be about the Orban Option, and whether it can be stopped. If Biden–the most inoffensive Democrat available–wins, he will have to deal with the fact that 30-40 percent of the voters consider his presidency illegitimate, because the bulk of his supporters aren’t straight white Christians. That, not the innumerable shortcomings of Trump’s personality, is the central problem of American politics today.

The only hope for our system is a successful Biden presidency that moves America to the left on economic issues and accommodates the right on cultural issues. It will be an exercise in threading the needle. The odds are against it. But it’s all we’ve got.

Trump is clearly convinced that he’s losing, which is bad news for us and the integrity of our liberal democratic system. The more threatened he feels, the more the craziness quotient goes up. With less than two weeks to go and the polls looking really bad, the sky’s the limit.

What will he try at the debate? Trevor Noah is apparently making jokes about him screaming or trying to grab Biden’s microphone when his is muted; I don’t think that is implausible at all. Will he run over to Biden and try to make a citizen’s arrest? Will he and his entourage show up without masks and try to make everyone sick? Who knows?

It’s not physically possible to hold your breath for twelve days, but that’s really what’s required here.

Superman, of course, can fly. The Flash can move at something like the speed of light. The Incredible Hulk is amazingly strong. If Donald Trump is a superhero, what are his superpowers?

They’re in his thumbs. He owns the libs on Twitter.

As I understand it, the Pennsylvania official in charge of running the election issued an order, based on the pandemic and problems with the Post Office, permitting the counting of votes that are postmarked, but not received, by November 3. Local GOP luminaries sued in state court. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court applied state law and upheld the order. The US Supreme Court subsequently considered the issue and deadlocked 4-4 on staying the Pennsylvania court’s order, with Roberts joining the three liberals. The order consequently remains in place, at least for now.

This sounds positive, but it isn’t. The Supreme Court did not issue an opinion on the matter, so we don’t know what the reasoning of the majority and the minority was, but we do know that one of the appellants’ arguments was that vote counting has to stop on the day of the election as a matter of federal law. In other words, all of us have a constitutional right to vote, but not to have that vote counted, even if it was cast in complete accordance with the law. Barrett will be on the Court on November 4. If Biden doesn’t win a clear victory on November 3, therefore, it is now certain that we will have the toxic cocktail of Trump “orders” to stop the counts, litigation in state courts, multiple Brooks Brothers riots, and an ultimate decision by a Supreme Court beholden to the man on golf cart.

Both sides agree that Barrett is on the ballot with Trump on November 3. Only he, however, can be removed from office that day. What happens if the Democrats win a decisive victory? Will she view that as a vote of no confidence in her legal right-wing agenda, and tread cautiously, like Roberts? Or will she ignore the public will and plow straight ahead, in the manner of Thomas and Alito?

There is nothing in Barrett’s background or writings which suggests much flexibility. I’m guessing she’s the damn the torpedoes type. For the sake of the country, I hope I’m wrong.

4.5 million people live in Kentucky. 6,600 are coal miners. That’s a statistical blip. And yet, virtually all of the McConnell and McGrath commercials that I have seen have focused on coal mining.

There is a point at which nostalgia crosses the line and becomes delusion. I’m afraid that’s where Kentucky is right now.

Tim Alberta argues in today’s Politico that America has (metaphorically, of course) had a beer with Donald Trump every day for the last four years, and finds him repulsive. Is that really Trump’s core problem?

Not exactly. Even leaving aside the fact that Trump doesn’t drink, he never encouraged anyone to have a beer with him. He doesn’t have close friends; he doesn’t even like dogs. His sales pitch isn’t empathy, but that he is the indispensable superhero who alone can fight off the evils of the Other–cancel culture, socialism, Mexicans, the Chinese, etc. His most dedicated fans still believe that. The rest of us look at the results and note that the country is far less safe than it was four years ago. The virus, to continue the metaphor, was his kryptonite.

If he’s not a superhero, what’s the point? Why would we identify with a stupid, corrupt billionaire who wants to be a man on horseback, but can’t pull it off? We might as well vote for an ordinary, compassionate mortal with whom we really could have a beer. That’s Biden.

Trump has been playing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” at his rallies for years. Yesterday, we learned that he is also playing “Fortunate Son” over John Fogerty’s objections. During a news story on one of his rallies, I could hear Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend” in the background. Finally, it seems that the Trump supporters outside of Walter Reed were playing “Born in the USA.”

Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Two things: first, that 30 to 40 percent of Americans think that it is perfectly OK to have a right-wing president who does whatever he pleases, with some as yet unknown, but probably large, percentage of them supporting the full Orban Option; and second, that our liberal democratic institutions are much more fragile than we thought. There are no mechanisms in place that will guarantee protection from a future Franco. In the final analysis, to the extent that the system survived, it was due to Trump’s narcissism, unpopularity, and laziness, and to the wisdom and courage of some civil servants and members of the judiciary, not to any paper checks and balances, let alone the Democratic Party.

So, all Biden has to do, if he is elected, is overcome what is left of the leadership of the GOP, prove to left-leaning millennials that the system can actually work, and appease the elements of the right who want to make America white and Christian again without betraying his constituents.

What could go wrong?

I don’t want to be overconfident here, so let’s assume the worst case scenario: through a combination of vote suppression, inappropriate interventions by the Supreme Court, and the bugs in the Electoral College, Trump squeaks out a narrow win even though he loses the popular vote by a large margin, and the House remains under Democratic control. Blue America is seething with anger. What can we do?

All of the options are lousy. Here they are:

1. LITIGATION: We already lost in the Trump Supreme Court.
2. IMPEACHMENT: LOL.
3. THREATS OF SECESSION: Blue America isn’t a compact area from a geographic perspective, and it would just give Trump an excuse to send in troops and treat us as occupied territory.
4. A GENERAL STRIKE: It wouldn’t have enough support to work. There are too many Trump supporters out there who wouldn’t cooperate.
5. SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT: Trump doesn’t care, and the GOP views shutdowns as good things.
6. DEFAULT ON THE DEBT: An act of nihilism that shakes things up without actually accomplishing anything.
7. TAXPAYER STRIKE: This one makes some sense, if it is widespread enough, but businesses run by Trump supporters wouldn’t cooperate, and the GOP doesn’t care if the deficit explodes, anyway.
8. MASSIVE DEMONSTRATIONS: Trump shrugs them off and continues his victory lap.

The bottom line is that we have to win the election–period. There is no Plan B.

If, as I suspect, the Democrats win a decisive victory in November, a civil war will break out almost immediately between the PBP and Reactionary factions of the Republican Party. Mourning for their dead tax cuts, the PBPs will put the blame for the defeat on Trump’s affinity for red meat tweets and lack of interest in wooing centrist voters; the Reactionaries, for their part, will say that Trump sucked up too much to plutocrats, and will call for an economic agenda that is more friendly to white Christian workers. McConnell will attempt to bridge the gap by declaring war on the new administration. It will be 2009 all over again, but with fewer Democrats in the Senate.

But a second, less publicized civil war will also be fought between two different groups within the Reactionary faction. The more ambitious and pragmatic Reactionaries will be aware of Trump’s flaws and will want to put the man on golf cart in the rear view mirror as soon as possible. A large percentage of the extreme right, however, will view the Trump presidency as a sort of reactionary Brigadoon that was undeservedly destroyed by the MSM and the pandemic. A new Lost Cause, if you will. Trump, of course, will do everything he can to encourage this line of thinking as he tweets furiously from his exile at Mar-a-Lago, and the MSM will continue to treat him as an evil rock star, which won’t help.

Will Trump still be the leader of the GOP in 2024? The odds say no, given his age, failures, and legal problems, but it isn’t impossible. One thing is for sure: the poison of his influence will be felt for years to come.

In the last week or so, I have posted about originalism, “soft totalitarianism,” and constitutional arguments supporting minority rule by reactionaries. Is there a point of intersection among these three arguments?

Yes. All of them presuppose that, like their proponents, the Founding Fathers were militant Christians who would naturally support their position that they are entitled to frustrate the will of the majority in the culture wars. There is no historical evidence for this whatsoever. The most prominent FFs were Deists, not Christians, and one of the few things upon which they all agreed was opposition to any form of an established church.

With some ambivalence, Ross Douthat introduces us to the concept of “soft totalitarianism” in today’s NYT. The gist of this extreme right-wing theme is that an unholy alliance of tech giants, the cultural establishment (the MSM and Hollywood), and young left-wing academics is threatening the freedom of speech of conservative Americans. In their view, they are entitled to hold political power indefinitely in order to keep the cultural enemy in check. Is there any validity to this?

No, because:

1. By definition, there is no such thing as “soft totalitarianism.” A totalitarian wants complete control over every sphere of life within his country. Even the proponents of this theory don’t go that far. The argument focuses on Facebook and Twitter, not Joe Biden.
2. Totalitarianism requires a monopoly of political power and force, not just near unanimity on cultural issues. In other words, it operates through government, not business.
3. The theory assumes that Mark Zuckerberg cares more about left-wing ideology than maximizing his profits, which is clearly false.
4. The right still has vast areas of cultural and media safe space (Fox News; talk radio; religious media, etc.) that is not in any danger of intrusion by the left even if you incorrectly assume that Facebook and Twitter have turned against it.
5. What has political power–in particular, the Trump presidency–done to eliminate this problem, to the extent that you believe it exists? Nothing, to date.

There is a dangerous subtext to the concept of “soft totalitarianism.” Using that bogus label provides a justification for supporting a hard totalitarianism on the right. It is clear that the proponents of the theory really want to go far beyond Trump and terminate the First Amendment rights of the majority of Americans, because that is the only way they can turn the tide in the culture wars. Look for them to support a candidate who is openly in favor of illiberal democracy, or even fascism, in 2024.

Here’s how Biden should respond to questions about climate change and the Green New Deal:

“Here’s the deal, folks. Manmade climate change is real. There is a scientific consensus that it exists. You can see it every day, in more frequent and destructive fires and hurricanes. You can see it in sea level rise in some communities. It’s already imposing costs on us, and they’re only going to get worse.

We’re going to pay those costs one way or another–the only questions are how and when. We can ignore the problem and pay the costs by picking up the pieces after the hurricanes and the wildfires. That means tens–and maybe hundreds–of billions of dollars every year in property damage, and lots of deaths. It means we are treating deaths from natural disasters as acceptable collateral damage for maintaining our fossil fuel industries. It also means falling way behind China in the high tech industries of the future, and more pressure from illegal immigrants from countries that are going to get unbearably hot.

Alternatively, we can invest money up front in creating the infrastructure and the new industries that will help us compete with the Chinese. We can avoid at least some of the damage and the deaths and the turmoil arising from climate change. We can help create a more stable and peaceful world. That’s my vision for the future.

A vote for Trump is a vote for a slightly more comfortable present and a future full of catastrophes. A vote for me is a vote for a brighter future for you, your children, and your grandchildren. It’s up to you, America.”