Cromwell

He was obviously insane, because, based on his behavior, he clearly thought he was living in America.

The reliably wrong progressive Tressie Macmillan Cottom acknowledges that unemployment is very low, inflation has reached reasonable levels, real wages are rising, and inequality is falling. Nevertheless, she insists that the economy sucks. Why? Because prices are higher than they were two years ago, and the welfare state–particularly with regard to child care–hasn’t been expanded to compensate.

Two observations are pertinent here:

1. The welfare state was, in fact, expanded during the pandemic years. The expansion was temporary, due to resistance, not from Biden and the Democrats, but from a united GOP and Joe Manchin. Wouldn’t it make more sense to attack the GOP on this issue than to whine about the failures of the Democrats?
2. To the very limited extent that Biden has any responsibility for inflation, it revolves around the economic impacts of the pandemic welfare state expansion that Ms. Cottom thinks was so essential.

What alternative is the left proposing here? I don’t see one that makes sense.

The Trump/Rubio approach to Maduro and Venezuela didn’t result in regime change; it only caused lots of misery. Millions of Venezuelans, seeing no future in their country, decided to try to immigrate to the US. They put a huge strain on our system. Trump and the GOP are benefiting from the problem that they effectively created.

It’s sickening.

I don’t expect the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to throw Trump off the primary ballot to survive US Supreme Court scrutiny. The real question is whether the Court will use a broad or a more limited rationale to justify its decision. An order finding that the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t apply to primaries, based on the political system that existed in the 1860s, would not have much of an impact on public opinion, or the ongoing criminal trials; a decision, based on the record made in Colorado, that January 6 was not an “insurrection” would be much more meaningful. In a bad way.

The Court would be wise to avoid making broad pronouncements on January 6 at this stage of the process. Will it take my advice? We’ll see.

(It’s 5:00 on December 24. Bob Cratchit is working in his cubicle at Scrooge, LLC when the boss, in “managing by walking around” mode, comes by.)

C: Mr. Scrooge, sir.

S: What is it . . . (he ostentatiously looks at the nameplate on the cubicle) . . . Cratchit?

C: Can I have tomorrow off, sir?

S: Why in the world would I do that?

C: Why . . . because it’s Christmas, sir.

S: Not in China, it isn’t. How am I supposed to compete with those people and their low labor costs if I give people like you unnecessary days off?

C: Actually, the Chinese get a whole week off for Chinese New Year. We should never have come back to the office, anyway. The pandemic might officially be over, but the virus is still out there, and I might get sick and give it to my child. He has special needs, you know.

S: (Sees a picture of Tiny Tim in the cubicle) Is that him?

C: Yes, sir.

(Scrooge walks around the office with an exaggerated limp)

C: There’s nothing funny about it, sir! He’s in really bad shape! If he gets the virus, it could kill him!

S: I don’t have time for that political correctness crap.

C: You sound just like Donald Trump, sir.

S: No, I don’t. Don’t get me started on him.

C: You’re not supporting him?

S: Of course not! I don’t want to burn everything down. I have too much to lose. Insurrections are bad for business. So are Trump’s stupid tariffs. Besides, he wants to run my business, and force me to suck up to him. I don’t need that.

C: What about DeSantis?

S: Way too much wokeness, and too little on tax cuts and business support. He has no idea what my business is like, and he doesn’t care. The Disney thing was a real turnoff, too.

C: Haley?

S: The best of a really bad lot.

C: Isn’t there anyone out there you really support?

S: My hopes died when Rick Scott didn’t run. Now I’m going to be forced to choose between a guy who wants to raise my taxes and a guy who will use government to attack me if I say anything bad about him. It’s the worst of all possible worlds.

C: That sounds really sad.

S: Kind of like your kid.

C: So what about Christmas?

S: As long as Biden’s still running the country, I don’t have much choice. Otherwise, he’ll be trying to get you people to unionize. He might even show up on the picket line.

C: So I get the day off?

S: Sort of. There will be a Zoom meeting at noon. I’ll text you the password.

C: Thank you, sir.

S: Don’t even think about ghosting me!

(Cratchit leaves)

There is a huge generational divide within the Democratic Party. Older leftists tend to be liberals, not progressives; they have an expansive view of freedom of speech, traditional views on gender, and support Israel, and are willing to live within the constitutional limits created by the McConnell Project. Young progressives are less patient with the limits in the current system and are, in a word, predominantly woke. They have tolerated Biden and the liberals up to this point for three reasons: they fear Trump, as they should; they know they’re not a majority of the party as it exists today; and the party has delivered at least some of the goods over the last 16 years. Unlike the far right, they’re not nihilists, so they’re willing to vote for half a sandwich over nothing at all.

This will change after the 2024 election. If Biden wins, it is unlikely he will be able to accomplish much during his second term, which will make the progressives even more restless than they are today. They will view–correctly–the filibuster, the Supreme Court, and GOP gerrymandering as being the root of the problem and will demand action. If Trump wins, he will be declaring war on the progressives, who will be his most prominent opponents. They will be expecting gratitude and solidarity for their pains in 2028.

So who will be the nominee? The blue base wants someone young and charismatic, with a vision of massive change for the country on both social and economic issues. Whoever it is will fit that bill.

If you are an optimist, and you therefore assume that Trump won’t win and declare himself dictator for life, the GOP will need a new candidate in 2028. The reactionary base, which currently belongs solely to Trump, will be in play for the first time in twelve years. Who will inherit Trump’s followers the next time around?

It won’t be DeSantis–he’s already burned too many bridges. It won’t be Ramaswamy, even though he is ideologically compatible, because he’s too annoying and too Indian. It won’t be Trump’s female VP; the base thinks women in America have way too much power over men already. It won’t be anyone from the Class of 2016; they’re too old and too untrustworthy. Who is left?

I see three potential winners here: Tom Cotton, who gives Trumpism an authoritarian twist that will go over well with a certain element of the base; Josh Hawley, who actually supports a populist economic program that should appeal to white workers; and Don Jr. If the base wants a monarchy, and it might, Don Jr. could be a serious contender.

Every once in a great while, Donald Trump will make a small effort to appease moderate opinion–most notably, on abortion. After all, you can win an election deliberately offending 45 percent of the population, but not 80 percent. That limited exception aside, however, Trump’s modus operandi is to throw red meat to his base and ignore everyone else. It goes against the grain, but he thinks driving up extremist turnout is how to win elections.

Joe Biden’s approach is completely different. He thinks general elections are won by appealing to centrist swing voters. That is what makes groups such as No Labels so ridiculous–he is already doing everything they want him to do. The danger here is that the blue base will be so disgruntled that it will refuse to show up in November.

Who is right? We’ll find out next year.

What Putin says about the rationale for the war seems to depend on his level of optimism about its outcome. In the earliest stages, he was talking about Grand Duke Vladimir and how Ukraine didn’t have a right to exist as a separate nation. He then moved to “denazification” and “demilitarization,” which can only mean regime change in the entirety of Ukraine. But when the war started to get away from Putin, he began to insist that it was the Ukrainians, not him, who refused to talk peace on the basis of existing conditions on the ground.

At his press conference a day or two ago, Putin was back talking about “denazification” and “demilitarization” again. That means he’s more confident about winning a total victory. For that, he can thank Trump and the GOP.

Ron DeSantis and his fellow Florida reactionaries argue that excluding books on race and gender that offend reactionary voters from public libraries does not constitute a “book ban” because the books can still be purchased within the state. Are they right?

No, because plenty of Floridians can’t afford to buy books. Their only access to books comes from public libraries. It is perfectly fair to call this a “book ban.”

The large social media companies–all of them privately owned–have consistently asserted a right to take down posts they consider to be self-evidently false and dangerous to the public interest. They view this as a form of “editing” that is clearly protected by the First Amendment. Some states dominated by the GOP, however, disagree. Their governments argue that the “editing” is actually “censorship” and that the private companies provide public spaces in which all opinions must be welcomed. It will be up to the Supreme Court to determine which side is right.

On issues involving right-wing book bans in public facilities, however, Florida has taken a completely different view. Attorneys representing state and local governments have argued that government has a right to discriminate against views it dislikes, because that form of editing in public facilities is “government speech.” In other words, the government has the First Amendment right to edit on the basis of content, but private companies do not.

To the extent you can call this “logic,” it turns the First Amendment, which only applies to government action, on its head. That isn’t just incredibly hypocritical–it’s extremely dangerous. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that free speech in America is on the line in these cases. Our system will survive if the Supreme Court rules incorrectly that “editing” by private companies is “censorship,” but a decision stating that the government has the right to limit speech in actual public spaces on the basis of content would have a huge negative impact on the fate of liberal democracy in America.

The GOP case against Biden consists primarily of inflation, crime, and the border. How should he respond?

Here are some suggestions:

1. INFLATION: Inflation was a worldwide phenomenon (even in Japan!) that resulted from the dislocations caused by the pandemic. With time, it has fallen back close to normal levels. Wage increases have outstripped inflation for about a year now. Most of the kinds of inflation that people particularly complain about, such as housing, had nothing to do with federal government policy and cannot be fixed by Biden or any other president.
2. CRIME: Crime levels are still historically low. They started rising during the Trump presidency but have since started to fall. In any event, the president–notwithstanding Trump and his Batman routine–has very little power over a local problem.
3. THE BORDER: Biden has only the resources and the law provided to him by Congress. He makes no apologies for trying to treat asylum seekers in a reasonably humane manner. Even at that, he has been attacked by the left for being too tough on migrants, and some federal judges have agreed with them.

It is a compelling case. Will the public listen, when the alternative becomes clear? We’ll see next year.

If you accept the right-wing analogy tying abortion to slavery, we have reached the stage of “popular sovereignty”–state regulation. That has resulted in a kind of equilibrium: red states without a referendum process have banned abortion; red states with referenda have permitted it; and blue states have strengthened abortion rights. Is upholding the status quo a viable and sustainable position for GOP candidates?

No, for two reasons. First of all, the GOP is driven by its extreme right wing, even though some reactionaries, for reasons I have explained in previous posts, are prepared to be pragmatic on this issue. Second, “popular sovereignty” is likely to run aground over the issue of extraterritoriality. It hasn’t come to the fore yet, but it will fairly soon. Then what happens?

We won’t have “bleeding Kansas,” but it sure won’t be pretty.

Both the growth and the inflation figures are extremely positive, even though both the right and the left still insist the economy sucks (more on the latter in a future post). Unimaginative commentators are giving the credit to the Fed. Should they?

The Fed didn’t fix the supply chain problems, or nudge consumers back to more normal spending patterns after the end of the pandemic. It didn’t even cause the price of housing to decline, as interest rate increases resulted in a reduction of homes on the market. The most you can say for the Fed is that it has managed the expectations game properly, and it did the obvious thing in raising rates when real rates were negative due to the dislocations caused by the virus. On balance, there is little reason to give the Fed much credit here.

The best answer to the credit question is “nobody and everybody,” but Biden and the Democrats are actually entitled to some recognition here. Yes, the pandemic relief bill was somewhat inflationary, but the excess savings provided a cushion from the negative impacts of the interest rate increase. In other words, we might well have had the recession that was predicted over and over again (but not by me) but for those savings, which, along with high asset prices, are still fueling the economy today.

Ken Paxton probably thinks America is just like Texas. It’s not. Kate Cox was an ideal plaintiff, from the blue team’s perspective; Paxton’s decision to take her on, and the decision of the Texas Supreme Court to deny her an abortion, are going to resonate with women all over the country, and not in a good way for the GOP.

Trump, having supported Paxton to the hilt during the latter’s impeachment episode, is in no position to disavow his views. Biden is going to make him wear this around his neck during the 2024 campaign.