Cromwell

So tomorrow’s the epic debate.

I guess I’ll be staying up late.

Will Trump act deranged?

Will his answers be strange?

If they are, then his chances aren’t great.

Trump, as usual, will be on the attack throughout the debate. His objectives will be: first, to show that Harris is weak, and can be dominated; second, to tie her to Biden’s record; and third, to portray her as a woke liberal. Harris, on the other hand, will be trying to show the world she is a cool, unflinching, rational decisionmaker. She will talk as much as possible about Trump’s tariffs and Project 2025 and attempt to bait him into self-destructive behavior. Her repeated entreaties to ABC to keep the microphones on is part of that strategy.

As of today, the election is a coin flip. Barring some sort of international crisis that completely flips the picture, the debate will be the last chance for the candidates to add more certainty to the process. As they often say on reality shows, the stakes have never been higher.

If Justice Merchan had advised us that he needed more time to work through the complexities of the immunity issue, or that a delay in the sentencing was part of the ordinary course of business, I would have accepted it. But he didn’t. Instead, he made a decision based on politics that denied Americans information they could have used in the voting booth. That was a mistake.

Merchan is also sending a message that the outcome of the sentencing process may well be different if Trump loses. Much as I would like the man to spend time in jail, that would be a mistake, too. To the maximum extent possible, the criminal law and the political process should be completely separated here.

Harris has run an effective campaign under difficult circumstances. If she loses narrowly, I don’t think the left will put the responsibility on her shoulders; it is more likely they will blame Biden (for being a bad salesman), the MSM (for overstating our economic problems) and the voters (for being gullible enough to support Trump). As a result, Harris will remain the head of the realo faction of the party, albeit with competition from several blue state governors.

Having said that, Trump’s extreme policies are likely to push the party as a whole to the left. Sanders and Warren will be too old to run in 2028, so we will almost certainly see a new generation of fundi candidates calling for fundamental changes to the system, starting with the judiciary and the filibuster. The obvious choice, since she will be old enough to run for president in 2028, will be AOC.

The GOP has become nothing more than a vehicle for the erratic and opportunistic policy prejudices of Donald Trump. It stands for, in the immortal words of Ben Sasse, “the weird worship of one dude.” But what if Trump loses again? Will the GOP remain a kind of cult of the orange man, or will it develop a coherent program that fits within the parameters of liberal democracy?

That decision will be made by the base, which means the Haley wing of the party won’t be running the show any time soon. Trump will have some say in that decision even in the unlikely event that he winds up in jail. The real issue, however, revolves around the future of MAGA once it is forced to mutate into a more consistent ideology in the absence of its preferred leader. What does Trumpism mean when it is no longer tied to the whims and personality of Trump?

MAGA could completely embrace the communitarian vision of the Godly Society, which does not have Trump’s complete support. If so, J.D. Vance will be the next party leader. If not, it could move more towards a mixture of selective libertarianism for reactionaries and genuine economic populism or turn more towards using the power of the state to eradicate wokeness. DeSantis is the obvious choice if the party goes with the latter option.

I’m just speculating here, but I think the base is more libertarian than communitarian in its attitudes. The Godly Society in its entirety–a fundamentally Catholic idea in a land of Protestants and agnostics– is going to be a hard sell for Vance, and fighting wokeness turned out to be a losing issue for DeSantis. I suspect the next Republican leader will be none of the above.

George H.W. Bush didn’t swagger. He didn’t have the “vision thing,” as he put it. He didn’t cut taxes. He presided over a recession. He seemed out of touch with the concerns of average Americans. He wasn’t a natural cultural warrior. No wonder he lost his bid for re-election in 1992.

But history has been kinder to him than the voters. He wasn’t responsible for the collapse of communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, but he easily could have screwed it up, and he didn’t. He also managed to create the coalition that threw Saddam out of Kuwait, and unlike his son, he knew when to stop. In foreign policy, at least, he was a big winner.

I think Biden will be treated by history in much the same way. Both he and Bush were decent, mostly successful, transitional presidents who were doomed in their individual ways by circumstances beyond their control and by their inability to inspire the American public.

While economists generally oppose trade restrictions, because they reduce efficiency and limit growth, they typically accept the following as legitimate reasons for them:

1. NATIONAL SECURITY: You can’t expect nations to sell weapons, raw materials, and technology with military uses to countries which present an economic and military threat to them. Becoming dependent on technology from those countries is a bad idea, too.
2. LEVERAGE: Tariffs have been used historically as a lever to open markets elsewhere, not as measures that are desirable in and of themselves.
3. PROTECTION OF INFANT INDUSTRIES WITH GREAT POTENTIAL AGAINST UNFAIR, SOMETIMES SUBSIDIZED COMPETITION: This one speaks for itself.
4. The Biden-Harris trade restrictions meet #1 and #3. The proposed Trump universal tariffs don’t meet any of them; they are intended either to revive dying industries from a bygone age or to create a slush fund of taxpayer money for Trump to use to turn his friends into wards of the state. That’s why they are so objectionable.

Some right-leaning commentators who are otherwise unsympathetic to Trump are starting to argue that he nonetheless does not present a real threat to American liberal democracy. Here are their rationales:

1. Sure, Trump can sound like a dictator at times, but he doesn’t have an interest in being one. The record of his first term proves it.
2. OK, maybe he does want to be a dictator, but he just doesn’t have the ability to pull it off. He will always be a man on golf cart, not horseback.
3. OK, maybe he does want to be a dictator, and now has the ability to make himself one. The guardrails will hold. The courts will restrain him, and the military won’t follow illegal orders.

My responses to these are as follows:

1. What the record really shows is that Trump repeatedly tried to behave as an authoritarian in his first term but was thwarted by what he calls the “deep state.” That kind of resistance is unlikely the second time around. Part of his agenda is to make sure it doesn’t.
2. Trump will never make a perfect authoritarian, given the limits of his personality, but not all dictators are hard workers or successful bureaucrats. Stalin was, but Hitler wasn’t. If Trump hires the right people to enable his worst impulses, and he probably will, his second term will be much worse than his first.
3. Trump and Vance have already made it clear that they don’t intend to obey court orders that, in their view, thwart the will of the American people. Trump will also be in a position to appoint loyalists to top military jobs. Can we count on them to obey the Constitution instead of Trump? Is that a risk you really want to run?

The bottom line here is that I don’t know that Trump will try to make himself a dictator, but I know he is capable of trying, and that neither impeachment nor the criminal law will deter him, given the events of the last few years. Leaving aside the many stupid ideas he has about policy, that is enough reason for supporters of liberal democracy to vote against him.

I’ve got those dirty, lowdown, low birth rate blues.

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

I’ve been a human gaffe machine; for that, there’s no excuse.

If I don’t clean up my act, I’m sure we’re going to lose.

____________________

I’m a man who speaks the truth–the voice of the New Right.

I try to save America; to bring us to the light.

It’s been a real struggle here, but I’m up for the fight.

If I don’t succeed this time, we may well say good night.

__________

I’ve got the blues.

The cat lady blues.

We’ve got to bring the birth rate up

But our women just refuse.

I know to all you atheists

This may sound a bit odd.

But I just want to save this land–

To bring us back to God.

Imagine that you are J.D. Vance, and it is 2027. You became president when Trump died choking on a cheeseburger. All of the power of the federal government is now at your fingertips. The Godly Society is within reach.

But there is a problem–the tariffs and the deportations aren’t working the economic magic you predicted. The tariffs didn’t lead to the creation of lots of new manufacturing businesses, and the deportations only resulted in inflation and the destruction of thousands of small businesses. The country is deeply dissatisfied. Worse, from your perspective, the birth rate is actually going down. What are you to do?

The logical choice is a national ban on both abortion and birth control. The birth control ban, unfortunately, will be unconstitutional under the prevailing case law, and will also be hideously unpopular with most Republican women, not to mention the rest of the country. How will you deal with that?

The good news on the legal front is that the Supreme Court is dominated by conservative Catholics, and the rationale of the Dobbs decision is applicable on its face to Griswold, as well. You have a pretty good chance of prevailing there. If you don’t, however, you can always fall back on your old opinion; just because Justice Roberts says something doesn’t mean he can enforce it.

As to the political problem, you can address it in Trumpian fashion by changing the subject and finding a left-leaning enemy who represents an existential threat to real America. The women will come around even on an issue as sensitive as birth control as long as they know the only available alternative is always worse.

Donald Trump has a vague notion that he wants to revive the economy and society of the 1950s–one dominated in all respects by burly men working for good wages in manufacturing and construction jobs–but no coherent vision for the future. Instead, his appeal is based on the following two points:

1. I’m STRONG. I stick my chest out and lift my chin like a gorilla. I always attack, and never retreat. I belittle my opponents constantly. In office, I threaten nuclear war and impose sanctions whenever someone displeases me. Republicans love this kind of manly behavior; it’s the antidote to an overly feminized society.
2. I really, really, really, REALLY hate the left. No one hates the left more than I do. I will never sell out or even concede anything to them. I will scourge them with my mouth on a daily basis. Believe me. Believe me.

From such limited and unpromising materials, the New Right has stitched together an economic theory based on tariffs and deportations that is supposed to lead to the Godly Society. For all of his personal weaknesses, therefore, Trump is viewed by reactionaries as the gateway to a much-improved America. Good luck with that.

It occurred to me this morning that the task for Harris is very similar to the one presented to Rishi Sunak; she has to run both as an incumbent and an agent of change. Sunak never had a chance, but Harris does. Why?

First of all, America’s economy is in much better shape than the UK’s. Second, America is more polarized than the UK, and has fewer swing voters, so there is a higher floor for an incumbent. Third, Harris, as a fairly powerless VP, is less tied in the eyes of the public to the current government than Sunak was. Finally, Sunak had to run against Keir Starmer, not Trump. That makes all the difference in the world.

Assume that Gore had succeeded in flipping about 500 votes in Florida and had won the election. How would America and the world have been different today?

The 9/11 attack certainly would have been attempted. While some commentators have been extremely critical of the Bush administration’s intelligence work, I think you have to assume the terrorists would have been successful. Gore would undoubtedly have attacked Afghanistan in the same manner that Bush did. There is no compelling reason to believe the course of that war would have changed. The big difference, however, is that Gore probably would have ignored the calls for war against Iraq from the right. As a result, Saddam would have remained in power.

Would Iraq with Saddam have been a better place than it is today? If you’re a Shiite living there or an official in the Iranian government, the answer is clearly no. For the rest of the world, the answer is yes. Saddam was a brute, and was difficult to manage, but he helped keep Iran and Sunni fundamentalists in check. There would be no Shiite militias attacking American bases in Iraq, and ISIS would never have raised its ugly head. Iran would have fewer resources to send to its proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen. There would be more oil on the world markets. Life, on the whole, would be better.

And what of American politics? Without the war in Iraq, there would have been no rationale for an Obama campaign in 2008. Either Hillary Clinton or McCain would have been Gore’s successor. Try imagining how that would have turned out.

I was a true independent until 2004; I voted for both Republicans and Democrats in presidential elections until that date. With only one exception, I don’t regret those votes, including the one for Dole in 1996. The exception is my vote for Bush in 2000. If I and a few hundred other Floridians had known what was coming, history might have been very different.

It has always perplexed me at a certain level that Gore lost in 2000. America was at peace; America’s standing in the world had never been stronger; and the economy was roaring. How could Gore turn that into a losing hand? The answer, I think, has two parts: Gore’s personality put people off; and the stakes in the election didn’t appear to be very high. There were no storm clouds on the horizon, until, of course, there were.

How does 2024 stack up against 2000? There are two important similarities: the election is likely to be extremely close, and, regardless of what the GOP candidates say, the country is enjoying both peace and prosperity. The big differences are plain for everyone to see: liberal democracy is under threat; and Trump, unlike Gore, will refuse to concede if he loses and unsuccessfully exhausts his legal remedies. Nobody will vote thinking that nothing is at stake this time.

In what ways would the world be different if Gore had prevailed? For that intriguing counterfactual, see my next post.

Alvin Bragg has punted the issue of the timing of the sentencing to Justice Merchan. Assuming, for purposes of argument, that Merchan decides that nothing in the immunity decision compels him to order a new trial, should he sentence Trump before the election?

Yes. Regardless of what the sentence is–and I don’t expect it to include jail time–the American people are entitled to know it before the election. It will be, and should be, a factor in the national decision-making process.

Trump will denounce it as “election interference.” I would call it a welcome blast of truth and openness in the system.