Cromwell

Probably the bravest man in the world, and the most predictable death since Prigozhin. Will the House GOP take note? Don’t bet on it.

Mitch McConnell did America a service by rounding up enough GOP votes to pass aid to Ukraine. The bill now goes to the House, where extremists and dysfunction rule. What happens now?

Mike Johnson is in a familiar spot; a large majority of House members supports aid to Ukraine, but a majority of Republicans does not. His choices are the same as they are on funding the government; he can build credibility with the far right (and Trump) by refusing to bring any Ukraine aid bill to the floor, but thereby risk going down in history as the man who delivered Ukraine to Putin, or he can support some sort of face-saving compromise that will be supported primarily by Democrats. Which will it be?

The implications of losing Ukraine are different than the repercussions of shutting down the government, so I’m not making any predictions on this one.

Here are my musings on today’s events:

1. The prosecution is going to present this as a sort of prequel to January 6: Trump steals the 2016 election by paying hush money to a porn star.
2. The early trial date is getting the headlines, but the real story here is that the judge rejected Trump’s fairly plausible legal defense. That’s two shots of bad news in one day.
3. Trump is, of course, complaining that the trial date interferes with his campaigning. The truth is that his campaign strategy revolves around his daily crucifixions by the judicial system. The trial, in that sense, will help him more than it hurts him with the GOP electorate. Whether the same is true with independent voters is another matter.
4. The trial is going to come down to a credibility test between Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels on one hand and Trump on the other. I don’t see how Trump can avoid testifying if he wants to win.
5. Imagine being the prosecutor who gets to puncture the credibility of the man who told 30,000 lies in office. It should be like shooting fish in a barrel.
6. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be on TV.
7. Trump’s base will not accept the outcome if he is convicted, no matter what the evidence shows. They will chalk it up to a biased judge and a blue state jury. To them, it will just be more proof of how much the system hates their hero.
8. I can’t imagine Nikki Haley withdrawing from the race until the outcome of the trial is known, and its political impacts can be felt.

To be honest, China in the Mao years–a country with a growing population and a pathetically weak economy, based on agriculture–was kind of a Malthusian dystopia, so the one-child policy made some sense at the time. The CCP’s error was to refuse to change course as soon as conditions changed. Today, China has a declining worker base, an aging population, an inadequate welfare state, and an imbalance between males and females. It is a recipe for big trouble in the future.

Xi, of course, wants lots of babies, but not even the CCP can successfully make those kinds of demands on its citizens. Halfhearted attempts to expand the welfare state to accommodate working women have failed to produce the desired results. What should Xi do, and what will he actually do?

The logical way to solve the problem, in addition to building an economy based on consumption rather than investments in infrastructure, is to persuade Chinese men to play a much greater role in the rearing of children. Chinese women are not going to agree to take on that task when they are expected to work 72 hours a week outside the house. Unfortunately, prevailing social norms in China, as elsewhere, will be difficult to overcome. My prediction is that Xi, who is more accustomed to giving commands than using persuasion, will actually respond by making birth control much more difficult to get.

The Democrats retook the Santos seat last night. There were a raft of special circumstances in this special election, including snow, the degree of public attention, a Democratic quasi-incumbent, and the Santos factor, that warn us against drawing too many conclusions from it. That said, turnout was high in spite of the snow, which suggests that the Democrats have a good chance to retain the seat in November. What other lessons can we learn from yesterday?

I think House GOP dysfunction is starting to bite, which, along with a number of revised electoral boundaries all over the country, will help the Democrats win the House in November. I don’t think the results of one special election tell us anything meaningful about a Trump-Biden race, however. The principal issues in that campaign will be GOP extremism, Biden’s acuity, and the perceived state of the economy. The last of the three will make the ultimate difference, one way or the other.

You can’t reasonably argue that China is more woke than Russia. It hasn’t invaded any of its neighbors. Given the recent changes in the Russian regime, it probably isn’t much more repressive, either. And yet, the extreme right admires Putin, and identifies China as the ultimate enemy. Why?

Two reasons–one legitimate, and one not. The legitimate reason is that China represents far more of an economic threat than the Russians do, even though Chinese prosperity brings opportunities for American businesses and workers as well as challenges. The illegitimate one is racist–the right views Putin, a white Christian, as one of us, but sees the Chinese as a totally alien culture which must be crushed, because it cannot be understood or accommodated.

One of the great mysteries of life in America in 2024 is why the public thinks the economy sucks, when it obviously doesn’t. Part of it, of course, is the unpleasant novelty of inflation. Is there more to it than that?

Consider the following examples:

Exhibit A is a relatively affluent retiree. He has done well in the Biden years. His house is worth almost twice what he paid for it. His investment portfolio has done well, too. His net worth is far higher than it was in 2020. His Social Security payments were protected from inflation by a COLA. His life is good.

But he is a Trump voter for culture war reasons. He gives Biden no credit for the increase in his net worth, which is actually a reasonable conclusion, since the federal government had little or nothing to do with the soaring value of his house. In addition, he experiences higher gas and grocery prices every day, while the increased value of his investments is just background music to him. As a result, even though he has done well in the Biden economy, he thinks it sucks.

Exhibit B is a young minimum wage worker. In the early Biden days, she did well, as a result of the stimulus and the expanded welfare state. Then inflation took off, and her real income went down, even though she found a better job with significantly higher wages. Today, her real wages are going up, but she is still struggling with the effects of past inflation–most notably, higher housing costs. She thinks the economy sucks, too.

Unlike our affluent retiree, our young worker experiences higher housing prices on a daily basis. She blames Biden for this, even though he had nothing to do with it. Housing prices are a function of increased demand for space arising from the pandemic and supply restrictions caused by local and state government regulation and shortages of labor and materials.

What is the message here? Biden is losing the public relations battle on the economy for reasons he cannot control. His only hope is that people get used to the new status quo on prices, see that Trump will only make matters worse, and vote accordingly.

I have about as much chance of interviewing Xi Jinping as I do of being the next quarterback of the Chiefs. But if I did, it would run something like this:

C: Thank you for seeing me today. Unlike most Americans, I’m not going to ask you about human rights or Taiwan or Ukraine. I’m going to focus on the meaning of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

X: OK. That sounds interesting.

C: Marx was a European. You don’t much care for European thought. Does that feel like a contradiction to you?

X: No. Marx was a product of his time and place. Some of what he said pertains to China; some does not. That’s what we mean by “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

C: But Marx was putting forth dialectical materialism as a universal law. You and the CCP don’t appear to believe in universal laws, either.

X: Marx didn’t grow up in China. He didn’t know anything about China. He just thought we were a bunch of ignorant peasants living in the past. A lot of what he said didn’t apply to China, either then or now.

C: I think everyone would agree that Mao was a revolutionary. He broke a lot of things. He even went outside the party to break things when they got too stagnant. Are you a revolutionary like Mao?

X: Mao was a product of his time, too. He broke things that needed to be broken. Today, things are different. We’re building a China that is great again. We don’t need a revolution; we need to improve on what we have.

C: Based on what I’ve seen in your museums, the CCP’s claim to legitimacy is based on its success in overthrowing the hated foreigners, not the emperor, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie. Where’s the Marxism in that?

X: The powers that be in China at the time were lackeys of foreign imperialists. There is no contradiction between class struggle and anti-imperialism. We follow Lenin on that point.

C: But the Qings were in power in China long before the foreign devils had any influence over them.

X: They were foreign devils, too. The struggle against them was on behalf of the Chinese people.

C: Your office is located close to the Forbidden City. When you see it, are you impressed by the glory of Chinese culture, or do you see a monument to the oppression of workers and peasants?

X: Some of both. The French do the same thing with Versailles.

C: True, but France doesn’t claim to be a socialist state.

X: Neither does the CCP. We’re just on the way to true socialism.

C: The CCP has bourgeois members. There’s lots of inequality in China. Do you and the CCP really constitute the dictatorship of the proletariat?

X: We have to build a prosperous, industrial China before we can talk about true socialism. That’s one of the characteristics of socialism with Chinese characteristics. We work with the bourgeoisie in the short run, but we make it clear that we’re in charge, so to that extent, we are the dictatorship of the proletariat. Just ask all of the rich tycoons we’ve humbled over the last few years.

C: To the detriment of economic growth. Capital is fearful and distrustful of you now.

X: There are higher priorities than economic growth, important as it is. Maintaining the primacy of the party and the Chinese people as a whole over irresponsible capital is one of them.

C: So you would agree that China is not yet a classless society?

X: Yes. We’re working on it. Once we reach the requisite level of prosperity and have complete sovereignty over our area of the world, we can strive for full communism.

C: When do you think that will happen?

X: Probably not in my lifetime. It depends largely on what the capitalist countries do.

C: Will the Chinese state ever wither away, as Marx predicted?

X: Not while I’m in charge, that’s for sure. (Snickers)

C: Here’s my last question. China has always had a large, powerful, autocratic state. One could argue that the continuing existence of that state is one of the attributes of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Is that the case, or will the state at some point wither away?

X: We’ll have to see. We’re a long way from that point. It won’t happen in my lifetime.

C: Thank you for your time.

Guanxi–the cultivation, maintenance, and use of connections for economic gain–is a feature of all societies. The Chinese, however, take it to a completely different level. It is an integral part of their culture, which, of course, elevated the collective over the individual and celebrated bureaucracy long, long before 1949.

When you combine the widespread use of guanxi with a one-party system, a complete lack of government transparency, and politicized law enforcement and judicial systems, you have a recipe for corruption. It essentially means that wars on corruption, in the Chinese context, are nothing more than bureaucratic winners trampling on webs of hapless losers.

Keep that in mind the next time you read that Xi has uncovered evidence of corruption at the highest levels of Chinese government.

The left-leaning pundits are divided: some think Biden should withdraw from the race; while others believe he needs to make himself more available to the public and the press to reassure the voters on the age issue. Who is right here?

Actually, neither. He isn’t going to withdraw, and his public appearances rarely make me feel better about his acuity. His campaign strategy is to let his record speak for itself–the economy is roaring, after all– and to let Trump alienate swing voters in front of the cameras, as he always does. Becoming more of a public figure isn’t consistent with that approach.

Hard work and determination had made his country great. The welfare state, in addition to being a drag on growth, only created incentives for laziness and mediocrity. It was, therefore, essential to keep the people from falling into the hammock of dependency. The welfare state would not be expanded, even if doing so would encourage consumption, reduce inequality, and revive growth.

Is this neo-Victorian Xi or Paul Ryan? Spoiler alert–it’s both.

A large percentage of Taylor Swift’s most devoted followers consists of teenage girls who can’t vote. Much of what remains after that cohort would never vote for Trump under any circumstances. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that a Biden endorsement from Swift would make little practical difference in the election.

But Trump was a celebrity long before he was a politician. He still thinks like one. One of his favorite insults revolves around the television ratings of his opponents. As a result, it makes perfect sense for him to feel threatened by someone who is an even bigger celebrity than he is.

The leader wanted to transform his country’s economy in two ways. First, he wanted to reduce inequality, partly by reducing the power of the nation’s tech giants. Second, he thought it was essential to national security to maintain an advantage in some tech fields, including AI and the manufacturing of chips. To that end, he used large amounts of public money to fund these industries, to mixed reviews.

Is it Biden or Xi? Spoiler alert–it’s both.

The opinion of the special counsel will not matter in the long run. The American people will make a decision on that issue based on their observations of the president over his entire term of office. What that decision will be, I do not know.

One thing is for sure–the opinion on that subject of a man who told us to eat bleach is of no value whatsoever.

Imagine, if you will, that the January 6 trial goes forward prior to the Republican Convention, and that Trump is found guilty of numerous felonies. How does the party respond?

A fairly large segment of the electorate will care, and Haley may raise some concerns, but the delegates and the base will remain unimpressed. They have already made it clear that they won’t even accept a decision from a jury that is selected in part by Trump’s attorneys. The man is innocent, and a victim of the deep state, and that is that, no matter what anyone says.

And so, Trump will run as the nominee even with a felony conviction on his record.