Cromwell

The rising cost of housing, higher education, and child care was a thorn in the side of Americans long before Biden, and is worse now. Why do we have these problems, and what is the GOP proposing to do about them?

Housing costs went up dramatically during the pandemic as a result of an increased demand for additional living space. In addition, supply chain problems were an issue, the lack of construction workers slowed down building projects, and local and state land use regulations drove up costs by reducing densities and limiting the amount of land available for development. The issue with higher education is the business model of private universities, which have created large bureaucracies and built resort-like facilities in an attempt to attract wealthy students, while redistributing some of the excess to deserving poor students. With regard to child care, I honestly don’t know why the problem exists; it certainly isn’t high unit labor costs.

Simply throwing money at these problems won’t work. In some cases, deregulation could be a big part of the answer; that falls cleanly into the wheelhouse of the right. The GOP isn’t proposing any solutions to the problems, however; its “solution” is to have faith in Donald Trump, the well-known magician, who will actually make things worse by engaging in culture wars with our universities, deporting construction workers, supporting exclusionary zoning in suburbs, and cutting federal payments to parents.

Let’s hope the GOP’s lack of interest in policy is noted during the campaign, because it matters.

By most objective standards, life in America is pretty good right now. The unemployment rate is low, the markets are doing well, and inflation is under control. We are funding wars in Gaza and Ukraine, but not fighting them ourselves. Sure, we have issues, but nothing beyond the realm of normal political discussion. The system can address them in the normal course of business, and things will be even better.

Not according to Trump and the GOP, however. They believe we are one step away from the apocalypse. World War III is just around the corner. We are already in a recession, and the inflation rate is comparable to that of Germany in 1923. Trans and woke people are destroying our schools and corrupting our kids. Illegal immigrants are running wild across the country, committing violent crimes and sucking up what little housing is available. Only a strongman can save us from the chaos.

What Trump is really saying is that you should trust him rather than the plain evidence in front of your face. That, my friends, is “weird.”

It is safe to assume they are the following, in order:

1. Stay in power as long as possible;
2. Manipulate America into a wider war with Iran that is purely in Israel’s interests; and
3. Help Trump get elected.

Agreeing to a cease-fire accomplishes none of these objectives; in fact, it is inconsistent with all of them. As a result, even though the Israeli military and a large segment of the public wants a cease-fire, it won’t happen unless it is the prelude to a wider war.

And what of the wider war? It would be horribly risky; Israel’s very existence would be at stake. It would, however, accomplish the first two objectives, and possibly the third. It cannot be dismissed at this point.

Prominent members of the New Right are in a panic about birth rates. They are demanding more children. And yet, they are the first in line to insist that women and children seeking asylum in our country must be deported ASAP.

On its face, it makes no sense. Can you explain it to me?

Here’s the list:

1. IDENTITY ISSUES: Harris is just brushing off Trump’s identity-based attacks, which is wise, since they only alienate swing voters. In any event, the facts on identity speak for themselves, and the electorate of 2024 is younger and less amenable to racist attacks than the electorate of 2016.
2. THE FUTURE, NOT THE PAST: Trump is a reactionary. His vision of America is an idealized (from the white Christian nationalist point of view) version of the 1950s. Basing the discussion in today’s reality, embracing change, and refusing to go backwards is the best antidote for that approach.
3. FREEDOM, NOT DEMOCRACY: Saving “democracy” is too abstract for the average voter. Talking about how the GOP is coming for specific freedoms will make more of an impression. That is what Harris is doing.

It appeared that we were stumbling into oblivion with Biden as the nominee. Harris has brought us hope. I appreciate that.

But don’t be fooled; we are looking at two grim alternatives after the election. Harris is still the underdog. If she loses, we will be at the mercy of a man who has consistently demanded revenge on his enemies–meaning everyone who didn’t give him unqualified support–for the next four years. If she wins, that same man will be calling for war on the streets in order to keep himself out of jail. There is little reason to doubt that the hard core of the red base will respond, particularly since the president-elect will now be a black female, not another old white guy. Then what?

It won’t be pretty, that’s for sure.

After the war and the Spanish Flu came the Roaring Twenties. In the popular imagination, it was a time of of prosperity and hedonism–of Al Capone, Jay Gatsby, and flappers dancing the Charleston. It was the party that would never end, until the Great Depression came crashing down, and it did.

But that is only part of the picture. The Roaring Twenties were a time of furious cultural warfare, as the rural white Protestant majority attempted to regain control of the country. Prohibition was imposed; a new racist immigration law was adopted; the Scopes trial took place; Al Smith was crushed in 1928; and the Klan was revived, even in some northern states.

We’re reliving the second part of the picture. We skipped the first part, for better or worse.

Walz provides identity balance for the ticket. He may win a few votes in the Midwest. He’s pretty good on TV. He comes from possibly the only state in which progressive politics mix with rural residents. He can plausibly accuse J.D. Vance of being a member of the coastal elite. That would be fun.

But the more compelling case for Walz is what he won’t do. He won’t alienate the left or the center. He won’t cost the Democrats any votes in Michigan. Most of all, unlike some of the other candidates for the job, he isn’t indispensable where he is now. Minnesota is not a swing state, and his replacement will be a Democrat. If Harris wins, the blue team won’t pay any price for it.

I agree with the choice.

Under the most optimistic scenario, the Democrats will win the House and keep 50 seats in the Senate. That’s it. A more realistic scenario has the GOP winning a tiny majority in the Senate. As a result, the opportunities for Harris and the Democrats to do much meaningful legislating will be few and far between.

There is one exception to this rule–the Trump individual tax cuts are expiring next year, which would give Harris considerable leverage with the Republicans in the Senate, who will desperately want to keep them. Would Harris look at the deficit and let them expire, or would she make a deal in which the tax cuts for the wealthy are traded for additional spending on social programs such as the child tax credit?

Harris, like most Democrats (and, for that matter, Republicans) doesn’t seem to care much about the deficit. In addition, Congress has been allergic to difficult tradeoffs for many years. My money is on the second option.

Inflation was a worldwide phenomenon created primarily by pandemic-related supply chain issues. Harris had approximately zero percent responsibility for it. Nevertheless, Trump will keep hammering her on the issue, and some of it will undoubtedly stick.

So how should she respond? In three ways. First, by noting the improvement over the last 18 months. Second, by emphasizing the efforts made by Biden-Harris to reduce prices, most notably of prescription drugs. Third, and most importantly, by talking about Trump’s tariffs at every opportunity. The public is not aware of them yet. It needs to be.

The Harris campaign failed in 2020 because, like most of the candidates, she didn’t know how to posture herself as a unique and compelling figure between the extremes of Sanders on the left and Biden on the right. That won’t be a problem in this election; the Democratic Party is united in its opposition to Trump, and Harris doesn’t deviate from it on policy in any meaningful way. As a result, fears that this campaign will be a rerun of the last are misplaced. The task is much more straightforward this time, and Trump is an unpopular opponent with little experience trying to woo centrist voters.

To date, there have been no major missteps by the campaign even under remarkably unusual circumstances. Harris replaced Biden without knifing him in the back. She united the party behind her in a matter of a few days. Her commercials are sharper than Biden’s. The race is now a dead heat even before the convention. Can the good news last?

Yes, it can. Will it? I don’t know.

Trump and the Republicans are basically staking everything on the border issue. To me, it’s a bad bet. Yes, the American public is concerned about chaos and cost; it wants an orderly system, and it doesn’t want to pay for it. But it doesn’t support deliberate acts of cruelty, which are exactly what the Trump campaign has to offer, and it can see for itself that the allegations about immigrants committing massive numbers of crimes and causing inflation are rubbish.

Harris needs to get out front on this issue. It isn’t enough to argue that the situation has improved over the last few months, and that Trump torpedoed a legislative compromise that would have helped sooner. Harris should spend a lot of time talking about the Trump plan, including the unlawful raids by the military, the massive deportation camps, the cruelty of family separation, and the impacts to the economy of deporting so many essential workers. The public has no idea this is on the menu. It needs to know ASAP.

The blue team is feeling much better with Harris as the nominee; she brings hope and energy where none existed before. That’s good, but partisan enthusiasm alone won’t win in November. After all, the red team feels the same way about their guy.

This election will be decided by a handful of undecided voters in a few swing states. To some extent, they will be swayed by the state of the economy in November; Harris has little control over that. The other critical factor will be whether Harris can prove she is the only candidate in the race who is fit to be president. That is an issue over which she does, in fact, have considerable say.

Job 1 for Harris is to make the election a referendum on Trump’s fitness, not on the Biden economy. She can do that by choosing a good running mate, by sounding firm and competent on the stump, by taking reasonable positions on matters of policy, and by pointing out the implications of the Trump agenda for average people. The rest is up to Trump. If history is any guide–including the events of the last week or so–he’s more than ready to destroy himself in the eyes of moderates.

The perceptive reader will see that there are two notable absences from Job 1. It is not necessary for Harris to put forth a detailed and compelling vision for the future, and focusing on Trump’s criminal past is a waste of time and energy. The first is too divisive to attract swing voters, and the second simply emphasizes the obvious.

For some reason, J.D. Vance has decided his name should be spelled without periods. I won’t acknowledge his preference. Why?

For two reasons. First, only successful rappers have the right to use initials without periods. Second, Trump deliberately mispronounces “Kamala” all the time on the campaign trail as a gesture of contempt. In light of that, why shouldn’t I misspell Vance’s name?

Some members of the New Right would attribute the increased economic power of women–and to them, the decline of the traditional family–to the failures of neoliberal economics. Their response is a combination of universal tariffs and deportations. The former is designed to revive dead or dying manufacturing and mineral extraction industries that mostly employ men; the latter is intended to create labor shortages. Put together, the idea is to create additional demand, and higher wages, for men, which will make them more desirable marriage candidates, which will lead to traditional families with one male wage earner, which will bring back the 1950s. Goodbye, childless cat ladies!

I have previously listed the reasons why the tariffs and deportations are likely to fail in their objective, so the return to the 1950s is unlikely to occur; instead, we will have higher inflation, failing businesses, and higher interest rates. In addition, many of the well-educated cat ladies like their lives just the way they are. Is it plausible that they will seek men with manufacturing jobs as mates to avoid working for a living when they actually find their work fulfilling and enjoy their independence? I think not.