Cromwell

The process is in a new phase.

The Rubio camp’s in a daze.

Can Marco or John

Make a deal to stop Don?

If they can, they’ll earn plenty of praise.

Consider this:  unemployment is below five percent; inflation is essentially non-existent; the price of gas is down; the deficit has been cut in half from its recessionary high; and we are not engaged in a large scale ground war anywhere in the world.  In spite of that, both the right and the left are bitterly dissatisfied with the status quo, as evidenced by the successes of the Trump, Cruz, and Sanders campaigns.  Why?

I would suggest three reasons:

1.  Part of American exceptionalism is the naive belief that everyone’s life in our country is always destined to get better simply by virtue of the superiority of our system.   This view is held by both the right and the left.  As a result, any suggestion that things could actually get worse for some substantial number of our citizens will be resisted forcefully.

2.  The white working class is, in fact, being left behind.   Neither the right nor the left has had a workable answer for this, so both are looking for scapegoats. In the case of the right, it is illegal immigrants and inept and corrupt Washington politicians; for the left, it is greedy Wall Street bankers.

3.  Both sides put more value on their losses than their gains.  The right has succeeded in reducing discretionary federal spending, as a proportion of the budget and GDP, to levels not seen in 50 years, but it sees itself primarily as the loser of the culture wars.  The left, for its part, disregards its culture war victories and focuses primarily on increasing economic inequality.

When Hillary is asked about the Sanders plan for free public college during debates, her stock response is to say that she doesn’t want to pay for Donald Trump’s kids to go to college.  Given the time constraints during debates, that is about as clear and vivid an answer as you could expect, but the issue requires a more comprehensive analysis, so here it is:

1.  The plan is practically impossible without dramatically increasing federal authority over state-run and controlled institutions.  The states fund public colleges and set the required level of tuition.  If the federal government decided to make them “free,” the states could respond by either cutting their support through taxation or by jacking up tuition.  The only possible response to that would be what would amount to a partial federal takeover of these institutions, almost certainly over the objections of the states.  Good luck with that.

2.   College is not an essential part of the welfare state.  While it is certainly true that a college education is more important today that it was in the past, it is perfectly possible to make a reasonable living without one, and millions of people do.  Would my lawn guy do a better job, and make more money, if he had a college education?  Should he have to pay to educate Trump’s kids?  I don’t think so.

3.  College, on the whole, is still a good investment.  As a result, most people will still be willing and able to pay for it on their own.  There is no reason to subsidize a decision that already makes economic sense.

4.  It would be a mistake to further subsidize an enterprise with a broken economic model until the model is fixed.  The costs of college, like health care costs, have skyrocketed over the last 20 years.  The market is starting to respond to that, and the federal government is beginning to demand more transparency and accountability, but it is too soon to throw vast additional sums of money into a broken system.

The bottom line for me is that I would have no problem paying more in taxes for universal health care, which I view as an essential part of the welfare state, but for universal public college?  No thanks.

         Sunshine State

Sunshine State decides it all.

Marco’s heading for a fall.

Cruz has put the state in play.

Kasich fights on miles away.

 

Trump could have the votes in hand.

His foes grope for another plan.

Can he be stopped at the convention?

Disbelief requires suspension.

1. Horatio Alger is back!  He can be pretty eloquent at times, too, even though many of his positions are just awful.
2. Cruz does a wonderful job of completely ignoring questions and sticking to his talking points.  He landed the only blows on Trump, but they were just jabs.
3. Trump’s ignorance of policy matters really shows up in debates like this.  He is much more comfortable when he gets to sling insults at his rivals.
4. Does anyone really believe that the protesters at Trump rallies, who are outnumbered by 1,000 to 1, are initiating violence?
5. It was nice to hear some real questions about trade, climate change, and education, even if the responses ranged between unsophisticated and downright stupid.  Tariffs are not the reason American companies have trouble selling in China and Japan.  Common Core was not imposed on the states.  There is no factual basis to say that any legislation addressing climate change will be completely ineffective, while destroying jobs.
6. Perhaps the most interesting exchange occurred when Trump had to admit that “strong” is not a synonym for “good.”  If he is the nominee, you can expect further discussions on that point during the general election.
7. Nothing happened last night to bend the arc.  The only remaining question is whether we are heading for a brokered convention, or not.

To an American, opposing Brexit would appear to be a no-brainer.  The consequences of Brexit could include a renewed push for Scottish independence, new problems with the status of Northern Ireland, reduced foreign investment, and reduced growth, based on new difficulties in exporting to the EU.  In exchange for that, the UK (or what would be left of it) would be able to stop the inflow of a relatively small number of immigrants, who are probably adding to growth, not decreasing it.  That isn’t much of a bargain unless you are Donald Trump.

Boris Johnson’s London is arguably the most cosmopolitan city in the world.  He always seemed to take pride in that.  As a result, I can only attribute his support of Brexit to political ambition and opportunism; there is no other plausible explanation, and it does him no credit.

I’m suffering from a severe case of debate fatigue.  My only other observation is that it can get very tiresome hearing all of the wonderful new things both candidates (but mostly Sanders, of course) promise without any discussion of the corresponding costs, and how they are to be allocated.  Everything has a price; not everything is worth the price.

I noted in one of my first blog postings that the most important attribute for a Republican Presidential candidate is swagger.  This has proved more prophetic than I could have anticipated.  It appears that at least 40 percent of the GOP electorate is willing to ignore even dramatic rhetorical deviations from orthodox party positions as long as the candidate repeatedly shows his willingness to kick the butts of anyone they perceive to be their enemies (both foreign and domestic).  In other words, the sizzle has proven to be the steak (Trump Steaks, to be precise) in this case.

The GOP establishment can never forgive Trump for displaying for all to see that a plurality of the Republican electorate doesn’t want limited government–it wants swaggering government.  They will no longer be able to convince themselves, or anyone else, that all of those faithful white GOP voters in the Deep South are small government advocates crying out for more tax cuts and deregulation.  That will be one of the principal legacies of the Trump campaign.

There once was a Texan named Ted

Who loved dirty tricks, it was said.

His campaign tried lying

That Marco was dying

He’d best put that rumor to bed.

Yeah, I bet Obama is really disappointed that he won’t get to spend any quality time with everyone’s favorite world leader.

“I believe in the kingdom come

Then all the colors will bleed into one.”

U2, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

 

Ezra Klein thinks Donald Trump is a liar.  In yesterday’s Vox.com, he pointed out the fundamental inconsistency between Trump’s seemingly humane statements during debates about health care and his actual “plan” to replace Obamacare, which he accurately characterizes as a warmed-over and less generous version of a generic Republican proposal.

As I watched Trump’s harangue (I wouldn’t dignify it by calling it a speech) amidst his water, steaks, and magazines last night, it became clear to me that Trump would respond to this allegation by reminding us of his personal awesomeness.  Consistency is the standard by which little men are judged, but gods resolve contradictions in ways that the rest of us cannot hope to understand.  And so we have the Trinity, and Trump’s Obamacare plan.

The truly scary thing about this routine is the possibility that Trump actually believes it himself.  What if he gets elected, threatens to impose the 35 percent tariff, and Xi and Abe don’t bow down to him, as he promises?  What’s Plan B?  I don’t see one.

Are we actually going to turn over custody of the nuclear codes to a man who might well threaten to use them as a negotiating tool?  As Mark Jackson would say, come on GOP–you’re better than that.

         Romney Calling

Romney calling to the undecided folks.

It’s really me, guys.

It isn’t a hoax.

 

Romney calling to the land of the sun.

The anti-Trump war

Has barely begun.

 

Romney calling to John Kasich land.

Come out and vote

Give your Governor a hand.

 

Romney calling to the rest of you all.

Do what you can

To stop us building the wall.

 

The Trump age is coming.

The voters in a trance.

The Dems sure will trounce us.

There’ll be no second chance.

We can’t let that happen.

It would be a crying shame.

One thing’s for sure.

You won’t have me to blame.

 

Romney calling. . .

 

Parody of “London Calling” by The Clash.

 

There are two (barely) conceivable paths to the nomination for Cruz.  The first would require him to effectively enter into a non-aggression pact with Kasich and Rubio, and campaign only in states he has a reasonable chance to win; the second assumes that the Kasich and Rubio campaigns will collapse in Ohio and Florida, that he will be the last anti-Trump standing, and that he can win a huge percentage of the votes after March 15.

To me, the former scenario is more plausible, but Ted apparently plans to campaign vigorously in Florida, which suggests that he is committed to the latter. Maybe he doubts, based on his unpopularity with the leadership, that he would be the choice of a brokered convention even if he had the second most delegates. Given the amount of firm support that Trump has, even in the face of a hail of negative ads paid for by rich establishment figures, I think he has made the wrong choice.

The MSM have tended to lump the Trump and Sanders campaigns together, but the real analogy is between Sanders and Cruz:  both are sitting senators with no following in their respective parties; both are running campaigns that are heavy on ideology, as opposed to personal awesomeness; both are relying on their ability to mobilize disaffected voters; and both have strong (but opposite) views about the role of the federal government in our everyday lives.

After the Flint debate, we know they have something else in common; they both despise “crony capitalism.”  How did that happen, and what does it mean?

For Cruz, a Conservative Libertarian, opposition to governmental support for business is an integral part of his political philosophy.  The outlying parts of his platform are his anti-immigrant stance and his objections to the TPP; you can probably attribute them to opportunism (or pragmatism, if you put it in a more favorable light).  In Bernie’s case, however, there can be no philosophical objection to entangling the state in business, so I can only attribute his views to a loathing of businessmen and a failure of nerve.  The most logical position for him to take relative to large businesses is nationalization, but he knows that is a non-starter, so he takes out his frustration on business leaders by trying to cut them down to size.

I don’t think either party gained or lost much from this debate.  The most interesting exchange came when Clinton accurately accused Sanders of sounding like Ted Cruz when he talks about governmental support for Boeing.  I’m working through the intellectual implications of that, and plan to blog about it later this week.