Cromwell

All About The Base

(Chorus)

Because you know I’m all about the base

‘Bout the base, no liberal.

I’m all about the base, ’bout the base, no liberal.

I’m all about the base, ’bout the base, no liberal.

I’m all about the base, ’bout the base.

 

Yeah, it’s pretty clear, I only love the right.

The left can just go stick it where it never sees the light.

‘Cause I won the election, and their lady lost.

Bitter though they may still be, I’ve become the boss.

The mainstream media all despise me

But you know that crap ain’t real.

 

I’ll win in 2020, just you see.

If you want to take me on, I’ll be here.

And my base will stand there with me.

They’ll be loyal, have no fear.

 

Yeah, my daddy always told me to kick the world’s butt.

He told me just ignore it when they tell you you’re a nut.

You know I’m not a puppet, establishment guy.

So if that’s what you’re into

Then go eat ___ and die.

 

(Chorus)

Parody of “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor.

All of the factions except the CDs (who detest Trump, and are effectively part of the opposition) are represented in the current administration, which is one of the reasons it lacks a consistent sense of direction.  Here is the breakdown:

1.  The most prominent Reactionaries are Bannon and Sessions.  DeVos, Carson, and Perry would probably fall into this category, too.

2.  All of the billionaires surrounding Trump are, as you would expect, PBPs.  That includes Kushner, Tillerson, and all of the members of his economic team.

3.  Mulvaney is the most important CL.

Does Trump have the political skills to keep this group operating as a unified whole?  Of course not.

 

Like Trump, PBPs are naturally transactional;  their opinion of him will depend, not on red meat or his Twitter account, but on whether he delivers the goods.  In their case, “the goods” means deregulation and tax cuts for businesses.

While Trump and the GOP Congress have sent the right message on deregulation, the chaos surrounding the administration is a clear source of concern, and the failure of Obamacare repeal doesn’t bode well for tax reform.   To make a long story short, the PBPs will swallow a large dose of corruption and incompetence as long as Trump makes them money, but if he doesn’t, unlike his Reactionary base, they’ll jump ship.

You probably thought that one minor silver lining inherent in the GOP victory in 2016 was an end to debt ceiling crises.  But noooooooo!

I’m not sure how this is going to turn out, but here are the key questions:

1.  Can Paul Ryan maintain control of the Freedom Caucus?  Probably not. Boehner couldn’t, and the FC is even hungrier for a victory after the Obamacare repeal debacle.

2.  Can Nancy Pelosi deliver enough votes for a clean increase?  Yes.  She has always come through when it mattered most, and a debt ceiling debacle would damage the Democrats’ brand as the responsible party.

3.  Can Mulvaney be trusted?  He’s saying the right things at the moment, but his heart isn’t in a clean increase.  Given the degree of dysfunction in the administration, one can easily imagine him playing both sides of the street.

4.  What will Trump do?  This is, of course, the most important question.  It is clear to me that there are two keys to persuading him to do what you want:  be the last person to speak to him; and have a plausible argument that your position constitutes “winning.”  Let’s hope the few adults in the administration can convince him that damaging the country’s credit and hurting the economy is not a “win.”  Am I sure that will happen?  No.

You probably remember the scene in “The Godfather” in which Vito Corleone and the rest of the mob leaders meet to work out an acceptable truce in the ongoing war.  Trump would probably view this as a template for his brand of politics:  strong men (i.e., “winners”) ruthlessly pursuing their own interests by cutting favorable deals, with very little concern about the impacts to the public at large.

Unfortunately for him, the American political system doesn’t work that way.  The Russian system, on the other hand, does.  Hence at least part of his enthusiasm for Putin.

Paul Krugman used to say that the Democrats were ambivalent about immigration, but the Republicans are schizophrenic.  What he meant by that is that Democrats had some difficulty balancing their normal compassion for the needy with their desire to protect the wages of workers;  on the other hand, immigration is a major football within the GOP between PBPs (who want the workers) and Reactionaries (who hate foreigners).

For what it’s worth, here’s my two cents on the matter:

1.  We have a right as a nation to protect our borders.  That’s a matter of common sense and sovereignty, not racism.
2.  There is no current problem with the levels of illegal immigration.  There haven’t been any hordes at our borders for years.
3.  Refugees and economic immigrants represent separate problems.
4.  We have a history of welcoming refugees.  It is part of our national DNA that should be respected and maintained.  Refugees do not disproportionately commit violent crimes, regardless of what Trump tries to argue.
5.  Economic immigrants should be admitted on the basis of cold-eyed policy.  The factors that go into this include:  (a) impacts to wage levels for the low-skilled; (b) relations with our neighbors; (c) impacts to public services; (d) the likelihood that the immigrants will create economic benefits; and (e) demographic concerns.
6.  There is little evidence that immigrants depress wages.  Immigration is really just a conspicuous form of globalization.  Offshoring and technological changes have a far greater impact.  Even countries with minimal immigration have experienced problems with stagnant wages for the low-skilled.  Depriving our farmers of a needed labor source just makes everyone poorer.
7.  Pissing off Mexico is not really a good way to conduct foreign policy.
8.  Immigrants typically create more benefits than they consume.
9.  Immigrants can help us pay for the welfare state.
10.  And so, I would argue for a liberal position on legal immigration.  As to the illegals who are already here, most of whom are otherwise law-abiding, I don’t see any public benefit to making their lives more miserable than they already are.

Politico has a good, lengthy article today about the impact of Trump’s protectionism on American farmers, the majority of whom voted for him.

There go all those exports to Japan!  Oh, well:  at least they have Gorsuch.

You don’t actually have to watch a horror movie to know what’s happening;  the music alone will tell you roughly what’s going on.  The same is true of historical documentaries.  With the advantage of hindsight, it’s easy to show how and why disaster was imminent in 1914, and 1929, and 1939.

The real world isn’t like that;  life doesn’t come with a soundtrack.  If it did, Franz Ferdinand would have known better than to go to Sarajevo.

I can’t hear cellos groaning in the background, but I’m worried about what I see, and I’m not the only one.   The cover of this week’s Economist features a mushroom cloud with the faces of Kim and Trump and the caption “It Could Happen.”  New York Magazine has an article about how Trump could turn things around with a war. These are topics that I write about all the time.

Very few things in life are inevitable.  I hope I’m wrong.  I just don’t think I am.

 

Donald Trump is a one-trick pony;  the only thing he knows how to do is to throw red meat to his base.  He’s continuing to roam the country, holding rallies in red states and talking about locking up Hillary Clinton, because that’s how he got elected.  If he wants to move his agenda, he needs to figure out a way to get beyond that and reach the more moderate members of his own party, but building coalitions is just not part of his DNA, and it certainly isn’t as much fun.

It is likely that some of his style will rub off on the Democrats, but will we ever see a successful left-wing imitation of Trump?  Will we ever get to “Lock him up!” I don’t think so, because:

1. The Democratic victims coalition is much more heterogeneous than the Republican Reactionary base.  If you’re throwing red meat to African-Americans, for example, where does that leave women and Hispanics?
2.  Every poll I have ever seen suggests that the Democratic voting base prefers compromise and results to ideological purity.
3.  One would hope that the reaction to bombast would be quiet competence.

The 45th President Trump.

He’s calling the White House a dump.

He says that’s a lie.

I’m not really sure why.

For the capital makes him a grump.

Published reports suggest that the Trump Administration is prepared to take some fairly drastic action to counter China’s failure to protect the intellectual property of American firms, as well as the protectionist elements of the “Made in China” program.  Is this a good idea?

I feel pretty strongly about free trade, but on this issue, Trump has a case.  China is not a true market economy;  the “Chinese dream” is about the Chinese state, not entrepreneurs;  like Trump, but with better reason, the Chinese government clearly sees the world in mercantilist terms; and many Chinese firms are, in fact, effectively arms of the state, not private entities.  This is a real problem, and if it isn’t addressed, it’s likely to get worse.

I have two big concerns about whatever Trump is cooking up, however.  First of all, starting a unilateral trade war with the Chinese is probably going to be a losing proposition for everyone involved.  If we’re going to try and coerce the Chinese, we would be in a much stronger position if we had the support of our traditional allies.  Trump, however, is more interested in offending them than in working with them, and they may believe at this point that the Chinese are better free traders than we are.  Second, the credibility of this effort is going to be compromised by Trump’s explicit willingness to trade economic chips for help with North Korea.  It is more likely than not that no one will take him seriously, because really, why should they?

I speculated that the Trump effect would be so toxic that the Democratic platform in 2020 would include a fairly strong rejection of protectionism in a post about a week ago.  That’s a few years and a few tariffs away, however;  the current Democratic position statement appears to be an effort to outbid Trump on trade issues.

Ugh!  Democratic protectionism isn’t any prettier than its Republican counterpart.  I don’t think it’s good politics, either;  the blue base is going to associate protectionism with bigotry, and really, who can out-Trump Trump?

The Catholic Church believes that a fertilized egg is a human being, and that the protection of life is an overriding public obligation.  As a result, the Church opposes the death penalty as well as abortion, and supports social programs which help the poor and the powerless.  You may well disagree with some or all of this, but you can’t reasonably say that it is logically inconsistent or hypocritical.

Individual CDs follow the Catholic line on being “pro-life” whether they are themselves Catholic or not.  Reactionaries, on the other hand, think their overriding objective is the deterrence of immoral extramarital sex.  The burdens of giving birth and supporting an unwanted child are, to them, an appropriate sanction for a sin.  In other words, being “pro-life” to them has nothing to do with life itself;  it is a just punishment for wayward women. Reactionaries consequently have no qualms about supporting the death penalty or cutting medical benefits for the poor.

The current conflict in the Catholic Church is between a leadership which clearly thinks that it is a mistake to place too much emphasis on preventing abortion, as opposed to protecting the interests of the born, and conservatives who view abortion as a sort of modern day holocaust, and who are willing to ally themselves politically with the Reactionaries even if it means accepting the rest of the odious Reactionary social agenda as a quid pro quo.

 

Regardless of what you think of the Bush family, there is no doubt they believe in noblesse oblige and the value of public service.  It is much to their credit.

Trump, on the other hand, has no concept of public service.  He doesn’t see himself as anyone’s servant.  To him, winning an election is an exercise in ego gratification, and the presidency is a prize, not a job.  As a result, he has no reason to care about the American people;  it’s all about him, not us.

If you wanted to put everything that is obnoxious about the Trump Administration in one nutshell, you could do worse than that.

It’s easy to understand why Trump has surrounded himself with military figures; like billionaire businessmen and successful athletes, they are “winners.”  They kick butt, like him.  Their swagger is the essence of the current version of the Republican Party.

Is this harmful to the country?  Is civilian control of the military under threat?

The military figures in Trump’s cabinet are, as a whole, probably more competent than the civilians.  I haven’t seen any evidence that they reject civilian control or the rule of law.  And yet, I have to admit that I feel more than a little uneasy about the growing connection between the military and the Republican Party.  There has always been a potential element of tension, given that our servicemen and women come disproportionately from red states, but Trump is making it worse.  What happens if we go a few steps beyond where we are now, and the military start to believe that blue states and liberal democratic values aren’t really a legitimate part of the country?  That’s a possibility that needs to be stopped before it gets started.