Cromwell

It’s October, 2021. The financial crisis is in full swing. It’s 2008 all over again. Everyone is looking to Washington for answers. What will President Sanders do?

Bernie really, really hates bank bailouts. He thinks Obama blew it by not exacting tons of flesh–pounds wouldn’t be nearly enough–in exchange for saving Wall Street. He fears that the big banks will wind up bigger and more powerful than ever if Congress passes another TARP. And so, he does nothing, and lets the vampire squid take the medicine they so richly deserve.

The problem is, the rest of us go down, too. The Great Recession of 2008 is replaced by something more akin to 1929. Unemployment reaches levels not seen in 90 years.

Isn’t that, in and of itself, enough reason not to vote for Sanders?

Brexit under Theresa May was a stopped-up mess. The government kept holding votes on the same plan, to no effect. She couldn’t go forward, and she couldn’t go back. Parliament’s attempts to take control of the process were equally ineffectual. The system was at an impasse.

To use a medical metaphor, the body politic was constipated.

Enter Boris Johnson, who is determined to deliver Brexit, come what may. It may be unconstitutional, and it’s certainly going to be ugly, but it’s going to happen.

To extend the metaphor, guess what’s about to hit the fan!

It’s July, 2020. The stock market is crashing as the result of Trump’s latest gambit in the trade war. Normally, investors would be looking to the president for reassurance, but in this case, Trump is responsible for the instability, and no one believes a word he says, anyway.

Enter Jerome Powell, who promises to do anything necessary to avoid a financial meltdown. The markets regain confidence, and a crisis is averted.

And so, a man who is the target of endless baseless complaints from President Trump manages to save his presidency. It could happen. If it does, don’t expect any gratitude.

On the Democrat front runner Joe.

He and Kamala went to-and-fro.

And Cory jumped in.

So who got the win?

The pundits say no one, you know.

Donald Trump constantly complains that CNN is “fake news.” Today, he must think they’re his best friends.

Debates always tend to turn into purity tests. This favors outsider candidates with skimpy records over establishment figures with much lengthier resumes. The CNN moderators made this worse by deliberately asking questions that were intended to maximize conflict. I suppose it made for more interesting TV, but I don’t think it really helped anyone identify the person who is best positioned to beat Trump and run the country, which is the ultimate point of the exercise from the Democrats’ point of view.

The format and the questioning also leave the casual viewer with the impression that the candidates disagree with each other to a greater extent than they actually do. Immigration is a perfect example. Whether illegal entry is a civil or a criminal offense is, as far as I can tell, a very minor matter in a much larger picture, but the fringe candidates and the moderators emphasized it because it gave them an opportunity to preen and feel important.

As to the performances, Booker probably won just by looking competent and taking the least amount of fire from the others. Harris is clearly more comfortable dealing with identity issues than policy specifics. Biden was better, but some of his attacks on Harris and Booker were pretty inept, and he still looked older and less forceful than some of the others. Tulsi Gabbard probably scored more points than anyone. The question is, in the long run (or even next week), who cares? You don’t govern with zingers.

The one is a conviction politician who doesn’t seem to realize that the UK has changed quite a bit since 1945. The other is a rogue with impressive political gifts and almost no convictions. Yes, Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson are polar opposites. Who will get the better of the other?

Corbyn would do serious damage to his party regardless of the quality of the opposition. Boris will give him the final shove, and then Labour will spend years picking up the pieces.

Night #1 of Debate #2 featured a pretty intense battle between two also-ran realos and the two fundis–Sanders and Warren. The realos held their own this time. That was encouraging.

I expected a pillow fight between Sanders and Warren, but got even less than that. For the purposes of last night, the two were substantive and rhetorical twins. Warren was even shouting angrily and scapegoating big (fill in the blank) just the way Bernie does. There was absolutely no distance between the two, except that Warren did a little better job of generating positive sound bites.

Warren likes to portray herself as a reformer trying to save capitalists from themselves, but last night, she looked more like someone who actually despises businessmen. Her misguided and heavy-handed proposal to use trade deals and access to our markets to club our allies into adopting left-wing policies sounds like something Jeremy Corbyn could love. It would be fair to call that approach to trade left-wing Trumpism. If you’re a Warren fan, you should be concerned; demonizing the goose that lays the golden egg is not a good way to campaign or govern.

On the one hand, there is no dispute that creating a hard border around Northern Ireland will disrupt supply chains, damage the political settlement, and generally cause unnecessary hardship. On the other hand, if there is no real border, Northern Ireland will effectively remain part of the EU, with massive implications for the entire island and the rest of the UK. If Brexit actually occurs on schedule, what will happen next?

In all likelihood, Boris will rely on legal fictions, which is a polite way of saying he’s going to lie about border enforcement. My guess is that he will simply say that the border is now being policed without providing anything like the amount of resources that are necessary to actually do it. And so, life will go on as before, except that everyone will be pretending that something meaningful has actually happened.

Hey, do you have a better solution, other than stopping Brexit?

The two factions of the Conservative Party that support Brexit have diametrically different views on what should happen next. The CLs see the new GB as being a low tax, low regulation, cosmopolitan, free trading paradise; this phenomenon is usually called Singapore-on-Thames. The Reactionaries, on the other hand, just want to pull up the drawbridge, get rid of the immigrants, and return to the happy, prosperous land of their forefathers.

How is Boris supposed to reconcile these two mutually exclusive ideas? With his mouth, mostly:

1. For the CLs, make a big display of negotiating new free trade agreements with the US and other non-EU countries, even though that process is likely to be very slow;
2. For the Reactionaries, growl at the EU at every possible opportunity, and make sure immigration doesn’t increase (not likely to be a problem, given GB’s economic woes); and
3. Splash more cash everywhere in the hope of avoiding a Brexit-caused recession.

The problem, of course, is that reality inevitably intrudes, and it will bite. The budget deficit will soar, the pound will sag, and the British consumer will suffer. Boris will call on the spirit of Winston Churchill to carry on in the face of this ongoing disaster. But Boris isn’t Churchill, in spite of his fondest hopes, the EU isn’t Nazi Germany, and the outcome will be very different.

Is Kamala Harris a fundi or a realo? Sunday’s article in the NYT strongly leaned towards the latter. So does her record as a sometimes, but not always, progressive prosecutor. And yet, the question persists, based largely on her apparent desire to keep a foot in both camps.

Her latest attempt to explain her position on Medicare-for-all is a perfect example of trying to thread the needle. Frankly, if I could give her one piece of advice, it would be to stop trying to poach votes from Sanders and Warren and to set her sights firmly on Biden’s supporters. Let’s face it; she’s never going to be able to out-fundi Bernie and Liz, but she can make a plausible argument on its face that Biden is too misty-eyed about bipartisanship, and that she has a program which, with a few exceptions, can get through the system by way of reconciliation and executive action. In that way, she could out-realo Biden, dominate the right side of the graph, and win the nomination.

The newly-minted PM is promising to use Trumpian tactics in his negotiations with the EU. He’s already intensifying efforts to prepare for no-deal. Lots of growling, threats, and table pounding are in the offing. Will it work?

No, because:

1. Given the size and workings of the EU, getting it to change positions is very difficult, regardless of the issue;
2. The EU has every incentive to make leaving difficult and painful;
3. The EU is better prepared for no-deal than the UK, and has far less to lose; and
4. The EU leadership believes Boris is a liar and a clown.

In other words, the EU thinks Boris is full of Bullwinkle.

Imagine that you are Bashar al-Assad. Primarily due to the assistance of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, you have prevailed in the civil war–at least in the western part of the country. But what do you do now? Syria is a smoking ruin. Millions of refugees have taken their talents to Turkey and Europe, and they aren’t coming back in the foreseeable future. There are American troops in the eastern part of the country, and the Kurds are effectively in charge; your writ doesn’t run there. The Russians and Iranians have neither the resources nor the inclination to finance a reconstruction effort or a reconquest of the east, and you’re hardly in a position to ask America, Europe, or the Gulf states for help. How do you win the peace?

Realistically, you probably can’t, but there are two things you can try. First, you can acknowledge reality and make a deal with the Kurds which gives you nominal sovereignty, and them practical control of the region, at least for now. That should get the Americans out, and you can deal with the Kurds when conditions are more favorable at a later date. Second, you can pretend to support legitimate efforts at national reconciliation, and offer to take those troublesome refugees back, in exchange for aid. That is unlikely to work, because no one with any sense trusts you, but what else do you have to offer?

I’ve got those dirty, lowdown, first debate blues.

You have to be aware of it; it’s all over the news.

I thought I had it all wrapped up, but now I’ve got to choose.

My former passive strategy is just a way to lose.

________________

I thought I hit all the right notes, but then it all went wrong.

Like singing in the proper key, but not the correct song.

I didn’t come across as young, and certainly not strong.

In a cast of younger left-wing folks, I don’t really belong.

_______________

I’ve got the blues.

The forced busing blues.

I shouldn’t have to go through this;

You know I’ve paid my dues.

I’m really geared to fight next time.

It’s a matter of survival.

I’ll show the world I’m still the man

And take it to my rivals.

While Sanders and Warren have similar programs, their voters are quite different: Bernie’s tend to be young, male, and poorly educated; while Warren’s are predominantly older, female, and better educated. Why?

Two words–socialism and identity. Bernie’s socialist past is a big liability with older voters. As to the rest, it makes perfect sense that women and the better-educated would support the brainy female Harvard professor, and that men and the poorly-educated would identify with the gruff community activist.

Can either of the two cross over? It won’t be easy, and that represents a problem for the left. As long as the fundis remain divided, the likelihood of a realo candidate, probably but not certainly Biden, prevailing is pretty high.

And for that, we all should be grateful.

David Brooks wonders why liberal white Americans have become much more woke. That’s easy. I’ll be happy to enlighten him.

Barack Obama did everything he reasonably could to be a unifying figure. There was nothing about him that was remotely threatening to white people. The reactionary right basically responded by calling him a Black Panther who hated whites. Brooks and the rest of the respectable right pretended that it wasn’t happening, and that the GOP was still a principled party espousing limited government. The left noticed all of this, and reacted accordingly.

America then elected a man who had first made his mark in the political world by being a birther. He doesn’t even try to hide his racism anymore. Exacerbating racial divisions on a daily basis is part of his plan. The more woke people he creates, the more support he gets from his base. That part of his plan is working. Whether that will be enough to get him re-elected is the big question for 2020.