“The End of the Innocence.” “Welcome to the Boomtown.” “Dust Bowl.” For some reason, I find myself gravitating to grim 80’s songs in the middle of our pandemic/recession/constitutional crisis.
Iran/Contra, cocaine, and struggling single mothers seem kind of quaint today, don’t you think?
Welcome to the Zoomtown! Such places actually exist, per the NYT.
It has been suggested that the Democrats should refuse to participate in the confirmation hearings in order to make a statement about the illegitimacy of the nomination. Is that a good idea?
No. It will help the Republicans move the nomination through the Senate at warp speed, and it will make it impossible to ask the kinds of questions that need to be asked during the hearings.
There is only one positive element to a boycott; it would prevent the use of the politics of personal destruction against the nominee. The seriousness of the occasion transcends that kind of approach.
The MSM have struggled to come up with a generally accepted formula for calling out Trump’s lies without using the divisive l-word. It appears that they have hit upon “without evidence” as their catch phrase. They use it every time he just makes up something, such as his latest allegation that the Democrats fabricated RBG’s testament. Just recognize it as a polite, judgment-free way of labeling the man a liar.
On a somewhat related note, the right apparently has taken to accusing the left of fomenting a “color revolution.” If you take the analogy as far as you need to go, that makes Trump America’s Putin. That this analogy doesn’t bother them should tell you how far the GOP has fallen.
It’s 1911, and you’re in the UK. The Liberals have a large majority in the Commons, but things are not going well, and an election looms. They decide to change the subject by sending the Lords a budget they know will be rejected. When it is, they get to run against the Lords instead of defending their record. It works, albeit imperfectly; they win the election with a reduced majority.
Biden is clearly attempting to avoid this kind of scenario. He wants to talk about empathy, the virus, the economy, climate change, and health care. If the election is fought on those grounds, he will win. If it becomes a battle over the Constitution, who knows? Hence his lack of interest in committing himself to abolishing the filibuster and packing the court.
We have to assume that McConnell will ultimately get 51 votes to proceed with the confirmation process. How should the Democrats respond? Righteous outrage is understandable, but unproductive; what they need is a tactically shrewd reaction.
Here are some options, and my reactions:
A statesman is someone who puts the long term health of his country before any personal or partisan interest. That’s exactly what Mitch McConnell isn’t. In 2009-2010, he made it clear that regaining power was more important than digging the country out of the Great Recession. In 2016, he pulled his Merrick Garland stunt. Today, he appears to be determined to violate his own “rule” for Garland and force a vote on Trump’s nominee before the next president takes office.
McConnell and Trump are very different people, but they appear to agree on two points: power is the only thing that matters; and rules are to be made up and broken purely in your short term best interests.
What can the Democrats do? What should they do? That will be the subject of my next post.
Mitch McConnell has a plan to use the filibuster, the Electoral College, and the judiciary to frustrate the emerging Democratic majority and effectively lock in minority rule for the foreseeable future. RBG’s death, for him, is a gift from heaven. He’s already announced that Trump’s nominee will get a vote in the Senate even though we are less than two months from the election.
But this grab for the marshmallow comes with terrible risks, both for the GOP and the country. First of all, it isn’t set in stone that McConnell can get a majority in the Senate for an expedited vote. Second, Trump is bound to pick an extreme right-wing jurist in an effort to please his base. That won’t help him win votes from moderate swing voters, particularly women, that he desperately needs in November. Third, it puts the seats of endangered GOP senators (here’s looking at you, Susan Collins) in even more peril. Fourth, and most importantly, such a naked, unprincipled power grab will be viewed as a justification for ending the filibuster and packing the court, not just by the far left, but by the entire Democratic Party, if they win the presidency and a Senate majority in November. Is a socially conservative Supreme Court worth a huge constitutional crisis, and even a potential revolution of sorts?
One thing is for sure: the country didn’t need this right now. Life is about to get even uglier than it already was.
The unloved product of an unsuccessful war, the Weimar Republic ultimately died because it was too timid to provide genuine solutions to the Great Depression. The center collapsed, and the voters were ultimately left with the choice of a Nazi dictatorship, a Communist dictatorship, or a “republic” consisting of the military and lots of awkward work-arounds. Their decision was a disaster for themselves and the world, but the alternatives weren’t too great, either.
Today’s America differs from Weimar in that it still has a viable center-left alternative. The problem is that 30 percent of the country considers it illegitimate. Given that we no longer have a principled center-right party–only a Trump cheering section that openly cares more for its own interests and values than liberal democracy–this is very worrisome. If Biden loses, or wins and then fails to put the country back together, we are looking at some very dark times in the foreseeable future.
Biden is outspending Trump on TV in most or all of the swing states. The Trump campaign, in all likelihood, is not worried. After all, Trump was outspent in 2016, and he can count on all sorts of free media coverage that isn’t available to Biden. He can dominate the airwaves without spending a dime.
That’s a two-edged sword, however. Trump isn’t capable of making a case for himself with swing voters when he’s unscripted. Every time he appears on the evening news, he helps Biden, not himself.
While I am undoubtedly on the center-left of the American political spectrum, I agree for the most part with Milton Friedman’s position that corporations should be in the business of making money–period. My rationale is that running a successful business is a difficult proposition, and requires a different skill set than making and implementing public policy. Politics is about balancing interests; imposing that approach on business typically results in confusion and failure. That’s why nationalization rarely works.
That said, Friedman wrote at a time when business interests held little sway in Washington. You don’t have to be Sanders or Warren to see that conditions are very different today. Regulatory capture is a serious problem whenever the GOP is in power, and Republicans have pursued the same anti-tax and anti-regulatory agenda for the last 40 years in spite of drastic changes in circumstances.
So how does one reconcile Friedman’s concept with current conditions? By voting out Republicans and thereby limiting the influence of business on the making of policy, of course.
William Barr has already made it clear that he views intervening in favor of Trump’s friends as part of his job. He makes no apologies for doing so. To the victors go the spoils, even in the criminal justice system, according to him.
The final barrier to a complete politicization of the system, and thus a descent into the realm of a banana republic, is frivolous prosecutions of Trump’s enemies. Will he try that before the election? Based on today’s headlines, he’s clearly thinking about it.
A party so committed to the death penalty, military adventures, and cuts to essential social programs never had much of a claim to be “pro-life.” The pandemic and climate change, however, have taken this hypocrisy to a much higher plane.
The GOP’s unstated but real position on climate change is that deaths due to wildfires and hurricanes are an acceptable level of collateral damage in exchange for preserving the economic benefits associated with the use of fossil fuels. The party’s stance on the pandemic is that the poor, elderly, and sick should sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the economy and Trump’s electoral success. “Pro-life,” indeed.
Are the party members aware of this contradiction? Most likely, they just don’t care. Potential life is more attractive to them than actual life. It certainly causes less trouble.
Trump’s plan was to ride a roaring economy to re-election. Given that masks help keep the virus under control and thus boost consumer confidence, you might well wonder why the man on golf cart refused to wear one. The answer is simple: being an angry, tough-talking, swaggering man is the core of his political identity, and unless you’re a comic book superhero, you can’t swagger in a mask.
The wearing of masks, as a result, is now associated with the Democrats. The GOP is the party of testosterone and death. Is it any wonder the polls show that the gender gap has turned into a chasm?
It isn’t the regressive tax cut, deregulation, and climate change denial. His ideology is shared by other Republicans for the most part. We’re used to that.
It isn’t even his personal shortcomings. We’re appalled and depressed by his narcissism, lack of empathy, corruption, gracelessness, invincible ignorance, and authoritarian leanings. We still wonder how in the world such a man could be elected president. But these are reasons to pity him, not to hate him.
No, the reason we hate him is that, unlike any previous American president, he gets up in the morning every day and reminds us that he hates us. We have no place in his America. He is president of his base, not a country that includes us. If we all died tomorrow, that would be just fine with him, because we didn’t vote for him. We’re in his way. We’re the swamp. We don’t recognize his infinite genius. We need to go.
Yesterday, Trump told us that the California fires could be avoided by leaf raking. He also said that cooler weather was coming–just trust him.
What will he tell the victims of Hurricane Sally? To avoid flooding by draining their pools?