Cromwell

I don’t think Trump’s pressure will bring the Iranians to the table, given the government’s political constraints, but assume that I’m wrong, and negotiations ensue. What could Trump reasonably expect to get in a second deal that wasn’t attainable in the first one?

Here are the possibilities, and my reactions:

1. AN EXTENDED TIMEFRAME ON THE AGREEMENT: The other parties to the agreement would have no philosophical objection to this, as it would not change the framework of the deal. The Iranians might agree to it if they received some face-saving concessions. THE VERDICT: Quite possible.

2. LIMITATIONS ON IRANIAN BALLISTIC MISSILES: This one would be harder to enforce than limitations of nuclear activity. THE VERDICT: Questionable, but not beyond the realm of possibility.

3. TOUGHER INSPECTION PROTOCOLS: The current ones are pretty strict. Don’t hold your breath. THE VERDICT: Very doubtful.

4. LIMITS ON IRANIAN SUPPORT FOR FOREIGN PROXIES: Completely unenforceable and an unrealistic violation of Iranian sovereignty. THE VERDICT: Forget it.

The author of a book on cults made that case to an interviewer on Vox.com a few days ago. The Vox interviewer, who noted that Trump uses the same mechanisms of communication as every other politician, seemed dubious, and with some reason.

Neither party to the interview really said this, but the principal reason the issue comes up is that the GOP as a whole has been willing to abandon some of its core beliefs just to satisfy his whim. Russia used to be an enemy; today, Putin is our ideological soul mate. The FBI and the CIA used to protect us; now, they’re the deep state. Kim Jong Un used to be a murderous dictator; now, he’s sort of a good guy. Free trade used to be a positive thing; today, we embrace tariffs. And so on.

I think the true test of the theory will come if Trump ever abandons his support of regressive tax cuts and embraces the economic ideas of “national conservatism.” Would the GOP establishment be willing to go that far? At this point, anything seems possible, but it’s doubtful we’ll ever find out, as Trump’s populism on domestic issues has always been restricted to his style, not his substance.

During Thursday’s debate, Sanders once again portrayed the health care issue as a battle between a much abused public and the greedy drug and insurance companies. That is a grotesque oversimplification, and the voters know it, even if Bernie doesn’t. Refusing to confront the real problems, and the corresponding fears, involved in completely revamping roughly 17 percent of our economy does not help to sell the program to a public that is largely skeptical of expanded government.

In light of the Fifth Circuit’s decision in the latest of a never-ending string of Obamacare cases, I’m surprised that Sanders doesn’t make more of an effort to argue that M4A would actually be more legally defensible than Obamacare. If the current system is always going to be hanging by a slender legal thread, why not go for the whole enchilada?

The answer, I suppose, is that the legal argument, regardless of its merits, interferes with his favorite poor us and evil them narrative. That is a fundamental problem with his candidacy; he lets his ideology define the facts, like so many members of the GOP.

I’m on a roll this morning.

I’M DREAMING OF TRUMP’S IMPEACHMENT

I’m dreaming of Trump’s impeachment.

It’s surely time for him to go.

Now the House has spoken.

The system’s broken.

The trial will only be for show.

_________________

I’m dreaming of Trump’s impeachment.

We’ve reached the time to make things right.

May our days be merry and bright.

And may the voters finally see the light.

On the Democrat candidate Bern.

You can bet he won’t make a right turn.

He’s tight with the base

But in this kind of race

It’s the center that rules, as he’ll learn.

On the Democrat candidate Joe.

The polls say he’s leading, you know.

The left wants him gone.

He keeps hanging on

But we’ve still got a long way to go.

On the Democrat candidate Liz.

Her campaign’s not lacking for fizz.

She hates billionaires.

Take her on, if you dare

‘Cause that’s just the way that it is.

Comments on last night’s debate:

1. I don’t know if it was because he likes the LA sunshine, or his preparation was better, or he had a nap before the debate, but this was, by far, Biden’s best performance. That’s good news! He doesn’t have to win the debates; he just has to avoid losing them.
2. We had our first extended confrontation between the two intellectual giants over donors, with no clear winner.
3. It occurred to me that you can break the field down into overly hot, intense performers (Warren, Steyer, and Sanders), the icy and urbane Mayor Pete, and everyone else. My guess is that the viewers prefer someone who looks relaxed, but not to the point of being an android. That helps Biden, Klobuchar, and Yang, the last of whom is actually the best of the lot.
4. Don’t expect any significant shifts in the polls as a result of this debate, which is fine with the leaders.

Not as a result of impeachment, and possibly not after the 2020 election, but at some point, Donald Trump will leave office. The question is, then what will he do with himself, assuming reasonable health?

The answer is clear–THE SAME STUFF HE’S DOING NOW! He’s going to continue to tweet provocatively and hold id-heavy rallies, because that’s how he rolls. Just enjoying the perks of being an everyday billionaire is nothing compared to being the celebrity he is today. He’s not going to fade away into Trump Tower. He couldn’t stand the loss of attention, and his reactionary fans won’t want to let him go.

That’s a bit of a nightmare for us, of course, but imagine what it means to the GOP candidates who try to pick up the torch after he leaves. They’re never going to be free of him. He’ll be a big black cloud hanging over the entire party. Too bad.

This morning, Donald Trump stands accused of being a sort of modern day Catiline: a threat to the political system that can only be addressed by his removal from office. It is a form of ostracism. It is a stain on his reputation that will never disappear.

Even Trump, whose moral obtuseness knows no bounds, understands this, and it drives him crazy. The question for the day is, how did this come to pass, particularly after the Mueller investigation?

I think the answer is relatively simple– Trump can’t see any difference between running the Trump Organization and the country. As a developer, I’m sure he would have had no qualms about digging up dirt to use against, say, a member of a zoning board. No one would expend much energy condemning him for doing that, and he couldn’t be prosecuted for it. Why should things be different just because he is now the CEO of a much larger and important organization, America, LLC?

Because, of course, there is no America, LLC, and the presidency is a public trust, not a prize. Trump has no understanding of that distinction. He never will.

Emmanuel Macron is the antithesis of a populist. A member of the French elite from the day he started attending ENA, he is a rigorous and sometimes imperious intellectual and problem solver. Never for him the Trumpian approach of making decisions solely based on the musings of his gut.

Macron and his party have essentially occupied all of the space in both the right and the left center. Therein lies the potential problem; his principal opponent in the next election is bound to be a populist, because the establishment has no plausible candidate to challenge him. What if he loses? What happens to the EU, and the euro? Would the current political system even survive the election of an irresponsible populist?

Let’s hope we never find out.

David Brooks divides the American electorate into three groups: a reactionary “proletariat” comprised of Trump-supporting working people concerned about threats to their values and position in society; a “precariat” of socialist millennials stuck in the gig economy with limited wealth, prospects, and security; and a middle group exhausted by Trump and his excesses, but worried that the alternatives could be worse. Is he right?

As is typical with Brooks, there is some truth in this concept, but not enough. My reactions are as follows:

1. Trump’s core supporters are retired people and small business owners, who, in Marxian terms, are petit bourgeois. Calling these people a “proletariat” is misleading at best.
2. A large majority of millennials have regular jobs and are not dependent on the gig economy.
3. The exhausted middle actually contains a wide range of ideological positions, as described below.
4. The “proletariat” is larger and far more influential politically than the “precariat.” Only one of them is a danger to our liberal democratic system, and it isn’t the “precariat.”

It would be more accurate to divide the American electorate into four groups: a small group of social democrats, which includes, but is larger than, the Brooks “precariat;” liberals, who believe in evolutionary changes to the system, not a revolution; conservatives, who prefer to keep things the way they are, if at all possible; and reactionaries, who want to make the white patriarchy great again through any means necessary. In this scheme, conservatives and liberals match up with the Brooks exhausted middle, and may well have more in common with each other than with the extremes, but they do not agree on the pace of change, and it is unclear whether they will unite to get rid of the current administration. The conservatives are the swing voters. We’ll see.

Donald Trump’s style is pure populism. He uses Twitter to communicate directly with his supporters, eschewing the gatekeepers in the media. He attacks independent institutions constantly and seeks to bend them to his will. He goes on and on about “the swamp,” although what he apparently means by that is anyone who disagrees with him or attempts to follow the law and established practice. He despises experts and makes decisions based purely on intuition. He lies and defies established norms on a minute-by-minute basis. His followers love him for it.

But, at least on domestic issues, Trump is mostly a standard fare GOP politician on substance. Tax cuts for the rich, benefit cuts for the poor, conservative judges, and deregulation all the way, baby! The GOP legislative leadership tolerates him, in spite of his ethical flaws, because of it.

Task one for the Democratic nominee will be to point out this yawning contradiction between style and substance. Will it work? We’ll see next year.

Elizabeth Warren had a hardscrabble background. Her shtick is to complain about the “rigged” system and to bash billionaires. She is proposing lots of new programs to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. That makes her a perfect populist, right?

No, because she is a Harvard Law professor who is justifiably proud of her own intellect, and she loves wonks. Every one of her innumerable plans has a team of prominent wonks behind it. Wonks and populism go together like oil and water.

Every time Warren opens her mouth, in spite of her valiant attempts to sound empathetic, she undercuts her populist economic message. She would make a far better president than Bernie Sanders, but Bernie, with his gruff, straightforward way and his disdain for wonks, is a far more authentic populist.

Today, William Jennings Bryan is usually thought of as the hapless defender of religious fundamentalism against Clarence Darrow during the Scopes trial. In his day, however, Bryan was a fiery populist colossus fighting for cheap money and the increased regulation of business–most notably, railroads. That’s a left-wing agenda. How could the two mix?

Populism is an attitude, not a specific program. Populism doesn’t recognize any consistent difference between right-wing and left-wing measures. A populist wants to take on the establishment and use the powers of the government to help the benighted little guy. More often than not, that requires economic measures which we would associate with the left. The bottom line, therefore, is that the inconsistency that we would perceive here is in our own minds, not Bryan’s.