Cromwell

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.

Regrets? Paul Ryan apparently has a few, according to excerpts of a new biography that were discussed in a Politico article. Ryan knows that he’s going to go down in history as a Trump enabler, he sees Trump’s impact on our civic values, and he’s not happy about either. He’s not throwing the big tax cut back, though.

It’s important to remember that everything could have been different, at least on paper. Trump could have put himself up for sale to either party and proposed genuinely populist policies, and the GOP could have treated him as a third party candidate with whom they would only make temporary alliances of convenience. That didn’t happen. Both completely embraced the other, and both are now stuck with each other, for worse.

Why did that happen? Part of it was just a lack of imagination, I suspect. But the biggest part simply was that the GOP cannot win elections without the assistance of his reactionary followers. There was no practical way for most GOP officeholders to treat Trump in a way that would offend about 40 percent of their voters, so they didn’t try. The rest is history.

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”

It wasn’t a disaster, unless you were foolish enough to think that Mueller would be some sort of white knight riding to the rescue of the nation. It probably didn’t do any lasting harm. It was just stupid.

The foundation of the current GOP is a deal between Reactionaries and PBPs wherein the latter get deregulation and regressive tax cuts and the former get support on social and cultural issues. For a variety of reasons, including the influence of Fox News, the establishment’s failure in Iraq, stagnant wages, the election of an African-American president, and some ringing defeats in the culture wars, the Reactionaries have become more militant, and are talking about renegotiating the deal. The discussion regarding industrial policy at the National Conservative conclave is the logical result of that process; some Reactionaries want to scrap the deal with business interests and impose economic ideas that are anathema to CLs and PBPs on the rest of the party.

Does the concept of a GOP completely dominated by the ideas of Reactionaries have a future? In the short run, probably not; inertia will most likely drive the party back to its Reaganite small government rhetoric once Trump is out of power, particularly if the next Democratic president is a left-wing populist. In addition, the GOP cannot win elections without votes and campaign contributions from business interests; notwithstanding what Trump thinks, Reactionaries are only a plurality within his own party, and a minority within the electorate as a whole. In the long run, however, it depends on how far left the Democrats move. Businessmen would object to the loss of influence within the GOP, but if they are presented with a stark choice between fascism and socialism, they will sit down, shut up, and provide votes for the former every time.

One thing is for certain: if the Democrats want to respond to “national conservatism” by creating a new label for their evolving populist ideology, it had better not be “national socialism.”

There really aren’t many prominent CLs in public life. Rand Paul is as close to a pure CL politician as you can find in Washington, but even he has to make plenty of concessions to the Reactionary faction of the GOP to get re-elected. The Koch brothers are CLs, but their positions are motivated at least in part by self-interest. And then there is George Will.

Will has a new book out. I have not read it, but I have seen reviews and read an interview with him about it on Vox. The centerpiece of it seems to be a distinction between European and American conservatism. In a nutshell, Will contends that European conservatism is rooted in loathing of revolution and the desire to protect existing institutions, whereas American conservatism is based on a very different historical experience, and is focused on preventing tyranny at the federal level, not avoiding societal change.

There is something to his theory; colonists, by definition, were embracing change, not defending existing institutions, and the American Revolution was portrayed by many as a battle against an overreaching central authority. There are a number of weaknesses in the argument, however, including the following:

1. Will, like many other members of the right, incorrectly views the Constitution as a device created to limit federal power. The Founding Fathers were hardly united on this point, but the purpose in ditching the Articles of Confederation was to strengthen the central authority, not to weaken it.
2. Large corporations obviously didn’t exist at the time the Constitution was written. The Founding Fathers, with the possible exception of Hamilton, could not have foreseen the degree to which national and even multi-national corporations would dominate economic life in this country. A strong central government is the only institution that can keep them in check. Would Jefferson have abandoned his notions of limited federal power under the present circumstances? We can never know for sure, but I would say the answer is probably yes.
3. There are plenty of European-style conservatives, who simply dislike all forms of change, in this country.

I don’t agree with the CLs about very much, but they have a certain intellectual integrity that one has to admire. Will can come off as a doddering old fool at times, but at least he hates Donald Trump, because he correctly views Trump as a threat to principled, limited government. At least give him credit for that.

Much is being made of a meeting of so-called “national conservatives” last week. In my terminology, “national conservatives” are just the Reactionary faction of the GOP; the point of the convention was to give better definition to their ideology.

Most of the headlines revolved around racism and immigration policy, but the more interesting bit pertained to the economy. Historically, Reactionaries have deferred to the PBP agenda of regressive tax cuts and deregulation in exchange for votes and financial support on racial, social, and cultural issues. The speakers at last week’s convention, however, urged the group to get behind a much larger role for the federal government: increased social spending, particularly for declining rural areas; subsidies and protection for sensitive industries; and support, in general, for white workers over business interests.

It wouldn’t be too much to call this industrial policy, and it sounds a lot like Warren’s agenda. Some speakers at the convention even acknowledged that, while going on to make it clear that she appalls them for lots of other reasons.

Is this a potential opening for her in a general election campaign? Only to a limited extent, because Reactionaries are primarily concerned with identity issues, and a white female Harvard professor is about the worst possible candidate to win them over on those grounds. Still, it suggests some potential points of agreement between the parties in the future, and that may prove to be significant.

Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have plenty in common. Both view politics more as a form of entertainment than public service or a battle of ideas; neither has much of a fixed ideology; both believe in the same kind of smashmouth negotiating style; neither has much regard for the truth; and both have a tremendous sense of self-worth. It is no wonder that Trump sees BoJo as a kindred spirit.

And yet, there are significant differences, too. BoJo is an experienced politician, not a businessman. He doesn’t treat the press as a public enemy, which makes sense, since his background is in journalism. He’s much more intelligent and well-informed than Trump–not that the bar is very high. Finally, and most importantly, BoJo will be operating under different constraints than Trump is, because the votes of a handful of Conservative activists do not represent any sort of mandate within the country.

My prediction? There will be a general election very shortly. The principal issue in the election will, of course, be Brexit. The Conservatives will run as a militantly pro-Brexit party; the anti-Brexit vote will be split between Labour and the Lib Dems as a result of Corbyn’s failure to embrace the second referendum; the Conservatives will consequently win big even though the anti-Brexit vote will be larger; and a no-deal Brexit will be the outcome, with disastrous results for the UK.

The luck of the draw did Biden no favors; it put him in a group with two hungry identity politicians–Harris and Booker. He’s clearly more vulnerable from the identity side of the graph than he is from the fundis.

How can he improve his performance? Here are some ideas:

1. GET AN EARLIER WAKEUP CALL: Too many of his answers at the first debate were tentative and rambling. Harris hurt him, not because anyone really thinks he’s a bigot, but because she made him look like a loser. The whole rationale for his candidacy is his ability to win in 2020; if he loses that, he’s done. More, and better, preparation is the key.
2. BEWARE OF BOOKER: Booker needs to peel realo votes from him to remain viable in the race. Expect him to attack early and often on identity issues.
3. CHANGE THE SUBJECT: Talk about Trump and make the realo case as often and forcefully as possible. Warren and Sanders may provide some opportunities with their statements on the previous night.
4. HARRIS IS A FLIP-FLOPPER: Harris is vulnerable on her record as a prosecutor, but Biden isn’t positioned to make that case. Instead, focus on her inability to decide whether she is a realo or a fundi, particularly on health care. Presidents have to make hard decisions, after all.
5. DON’T OVERREACT: There will be a temptation to come out being too aggressive to compensate for last month’s fiasco. Don’t do it. Remain as calm and affable as possible.

In a word, zero. I think these hearings will go nowhere. They’re a mistake. It’s time to move on.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are in a struggle to win over the progressive base. They will share the stage on the first night of the debate next week. Should we expect fireworks?

No. Their voters are actually demographically different; Sanders supporters tend to be male and poorly educated, while Warren appeals to women and the highly-educated. Second, they appear to get along pretty well. Third, while their intellectual approaches to problems are different (and that matters), their positions on the kinds of issues that will be debated are pretty much the same. As a result, their battles will be muted; Warren will probably gently remind America that she isn’t a socialist, and Bernie will make it clear that he supported Medicare-for-all before it was cool. That’s about it.

How will the left be won? Primarily through friendly pundits and surrogates, over a period of several months. In the meantime, both of them will probably go after Biden to some extent, and the real drama will come if Mayor Pete, or one of the also-rans, makes the realo case against both of them. I think that will happen; whether it will work or not remains to be seen.

The Iranians apparently believe they can flip the Europeans against the Americans by applying pressure. Will it work?

No. First of all, unlike any of his predecessors, Trump doesn’t care what they think. Second, several of their leaders (presumably including Boris Johnson) are friends of his. Third, they are far more dependent on American goodwill than Iran’s. Fourth, they have no reason to trust a country with a history of lying on nuclear issues and committing terrorist acts on their soil. Finally, they are largely ineffectual, anyway.

In the end, they will wring their hands about Trump’s decision to scrap the nuclear agreement, and they will do their best to talk both sides out of war, but they won’t do anything meaningful to restrain Trump if and when he decides that war is necessary.

You would think that the Iranians would turn to Putin, their supposed ally, for support here, but they know he would sell them out in a heartbeat for something he really wants. They would be wiser to put their money on Xi. He needs their oil, and he’s much less dangerous as a friend.