What Is The Constituency For This?

Trump wants to make pollution easier than oil companies want it to be. Jon Chait explores this further.

This immigration policy is just bizarre. Who is served by crapping on overseas service members? That's just bizarre.

Gillibrand

I was surprised that she never gained traction. The prevailing wisdom is that certain segments of the Democratic coalition never forgave her for her (greatly exaggerated) role in forcing Al Franken to retire.  If so, that suggests that the energy surrounding #MeToo has either dissipated or was never that powerful a political (as opposed to cultural) force in the first place.

The Other Joe Walsh

The non-Eagle Joe Walsh will challenge Trump for the GOP nomination.  Walsh was a former Trumpist, echoing the same racist, sexist trolling that the current president does.  He's an odious shitsack of a human being.

He's doing this, most likely, as a grift to make money off Very Concerned Conservatives who don't like Trump's obvious ignorance.  He could be trying to set himself up as the 2024 nominee, if Trump gets walloped in 2020. 

Joe Walsh is not your friend.

However...

With the exception of Herbert Hoover, every incumbent president since 1900 who lost has a strong intra-party challenger.  Taft had Teddy Roosevelt. LBJ dropped out. Ford had Reagan. Carter had Teddy Kennedy.  Bush had Buchanan.  The only time I can recall a president being re-elected despite a strong primary challenge was Truman in '48.

There is nothing admirable about Joe Walsh.  Maybe....MAYBE...he had a Road to Damascus moment and realizes the errors of his past ways.  I'm skeptical.

I welcome, however, his entry into the GOP primary.  When he loses by only getting 10-15% of the vote (if that), he will prove once and for all that Trump is not a sui generis phenomenon streaking across the sky like a comet.  He IS the modern GOP.  And if he weakens him for the general election, so much the better.

Doubling Down

Trump...ah, fuck.  I mean what the hell?  His trade war is a great example of Trump's political instincts dooming us all.  He's obsessed with never apologizing and never admitting he was wrong. As Emerson said, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of foolish minds."  It's what Hofstadter meant by the One-Hundred Percent mind. Dubya was the same way, but with Bush it was a war that killed at least a 100,000 people.  (The fascinating thing about Trump is that in many ways his presidency - so far - has not been as big a disaster as Bush's.)

No, Trump's crimes are largely rhetorical: his endorsement of white nationalist grievance, his violation of presidential norms and his consistent betrayal of our allies.  The G-7 is a great example, with Abe having to correct him on the new Japanese trade deal and Trump insisting that North Korea hasn't broken international agreements with its missile tests (it has) and Putin will be his guest at the G-7 next year. 

There was an article in the Atlantic arguing that Democrats shouldn't root for a recession. The article makes four points.  The first three are basically "recessions are bad, especially for groups Democrats purport to care about."  This is undoubtedly true. If, as I believe, any coming recession will be because Republican policies from the trade wars to tax cuts that exacerbate inequality and deregulation that creates bubbles, then the recession will be the creation of policy, not "the business cycle."  If, as I believe, the coming recession is a creation of policy, then policy changes could end it.  The Federal Reserve forced a crushing recession on the country from 1980-1982 in order to kill inflation.  Once inflation was dead and the Fed lowered rates, the economy perked back up. 

More broadly, a Trump Recession creates the third recession started on a Republican president's watch.  The Recession of 1991-93 was largely the end of the boom and a decline in defense spending.  The Recession of 2007-09 was created by monetary and regulatory policy. But they all came under Republican presidents.  Twelve years of Reagan Bush? Recession.  Eight years of Bush? Recession. Four years of Trump? Recession.  The argument of "Elect a Republican, get a recession" is exactly the sort of simple to understand message that can penetrate low engagement voters and depress identification and membership in the GOP.

If Republican policies are the problem - and from climate change to inequality to gun violence to voting and minority rights - they are, then discrediting the GOP completely is a necessary.  Yes, recessions are damaging to the poor, but so is continued GOP governance.

Ed Burmila, a few months ago, said, "It will get worse."  As Trump hears the rattle of a coming recession and and potential wipeout in 2020, he will become more unhinged.  God only knows where that will lead us.

Offered Without Comment

From Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life from 1964:

Religion, for many individuals and groups, may be an expression of serene belief, personal peace, and charity of mind. But for more militant spirits it may also be a source or an outlet for animosities. There is a militant type of mind to which the hostilities involved in any human situation seem to be its most interesting or valuable aspect; some individuals live by hatred as a kind of creed....There are both serene and militant fundamentalists; and it is hard to say which group is more numerous. My concern here is with the militants, who have thrown themselves headlong into the revolt against modernism in religion and against modernity in our culture in general.

And then

One can trace in (Billy) Sunday the emergence of what I would call the one-hundred percent mentality - a mind totally committed to the full range of the dominant popular fatuities and determined that no one shall have a right to challenge them....The one-hundred percenter. who will tolerate no ambiguities, no equivocations, no reservations, and no criticism, considers this kind of committedness an evidence of toughness and masculinity.

In case you were wondering why Evangelicals stick with Trump.

The Coming Crisis

It is somehow fitting that David koch died while the Amazon burned and Trump's ludicrous idea of buying a melting Greenland.  It wouldn't surprise me if some Koch funded study suggested that there's gold or oil or whatever under Greenland's ice, and once we are done melting it, we can have at it.

Climate change is real.  Interestingly, the places that have gotten warmer over the past 30 years in the US are almost all Blue States (the exception being the Great Basin). The South hasn't gotten extremely warmer.  More tornadoes and hurricanes, but weather is tough to link directly to climate.  Meanwhile, fatal heat waves bake Europe.

There is little doubt in my mind that climate is the biggest challenge we face as a species, which is why the absolute refusal of the GOP to do anything about it is maddening.

Warren

This is a link to a nice profile of Elizabeth Warren. There is no doubt that she has run - by far - the most issue-laden campaign that I can recall.  There is no doubt - as the article catalogs - that she is a tireless and indefatigable campaigner.  Yet, time and time again -  especially when talking to people of my parent's generation, I keep hearing that word.  You know the one.  You heard it in 2016.

Shrill.

I have no idea, exactly, what that means.  Is it the fact that her voice is a pitch higher than the men who run for president? It can't be because she's angry, because she's not.  She's the Happy Warrior of this election cycle. Perhaps it's simply unconscious bias at work; our vision of leadership is male.

I remember in 2008, quite a few African Americans and others were worried that America would never elect a black president.  But the Dubya administration was such an unmitigated disaster, that it didn't matter.  Maybe my fears are like those of 2008.  Maybe Trump's singular odiousness will compensate for whatever "shrill" means.

Interesting gamble to take.

Rooting For Self-Inflicted Injuries

Some tool on Twitter was castigating liberals for wanting a recession to occur, just so it would hurt Trump.  Of course, Republican needlessly inflicted pain on America from 2009-2017, so - as always - every allegation is a confession.

If a recession is brought on by a dramatic restriction of international trade caused by Trump's bullshit tariff wars and Brexit, then perhaps simply loosening trade restrictions would help the economy.  A true Austrian economist would likely approve of a forced recession in order to re-set the economic cycle.

If America and the world were to enter a recession because of Trumponomic and Brexit, it would cause real pain for real people.  But hopefully, it would finally discredit rightist (and leftist) talking points about trade and the broader bullshit about tax cuts for the rich creating a good economy for everyone.  "Elect a Republican, get a recession" is a pretty persuasive bumpersticker.

But it would all be contingent on being reversible by sane trade practices and proper Keynesian spending.

UPDATE: More here.  Oddly, I didn't catch any political science talk about depressed voter turnout among Republicans should the economy crater.

The Real Racists, Part A Million

Jon Chait comes back from vacation to explain how conservatives create a blinkered view of racism that magically exonerates Trump and the GOP from being racist.

Racism is a theory of power.  Which party is denying minorities the opportunity to vote whenever possible?

Who Is Joe Rogan?

This is a very interesting profile of a very influential guy in the landscape of 2019 masculinity.  Here's a great sample:

The bedrock issue, though, is Rogan’s courting of a middle-bro audience that the cultural elite hold in particular contempt—guys who get barbed-wire tattoos and fill their fridge with Monster energy drinks and preordered their tickets to see Hobbs & Shaw. Joe loves these guys, and his affection has none of the condescension and ironic distance many people fall back on in order to get comfortable with them. He shares their passions and enthusiasms at a moment when the public dialogue has branded them childish or problematic or a slippery slope to Trumpism. Like many of these men, Joe grumbles a lot about “political correctness.” He knows that he is privileged by virtue of his gender and his skin color, but in his heart he is sick of being reminded about it. Like lots of other white men in America, he is grappling with a growing sense that the term white man has become an epithet. And like lots of other men in America, not just the white ones, he’s reckoning out loud with a fear that the word masculinity has become, by definition, toxic.

As a white man, I am both exasperated and sympathetic to some of this. If you know you are privileged and you act and think through that lens, then you shouldn't be threatened by those assailing privilege.  You aspire to be the best man you can be, and that's that.  Still, a casual dip into my Twitter feed would be enough to agitate someone less secure than I am.  My security is based not on any special virtue, but simply a product of my physical experience and most importantly, my age.  At 52, I'm simply not invested as much in how others see me. 

Here's another graph that speaks to what is a problem:

In the more progressive corners of culture, it’s become a familiar rallying cry to wonder out loud, “What are men even for now?” That’s an excellent question, but you can maybe understand why it rings a bit more ambivalently in the ears of men trying to find their footing in this new world. A brighter and more virtuous future? Wonderful! If you need anything from us, we’ll just be over here peering into the void. Meanwhile, the irony is that so many of the men who demonstrate a level of intelligence and empathy worth aspiring to—they’ve pretty much all been on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

If you want to engage men, demonizing them, belittling them is a very poor tactic to take.  Young men, in particular, are almost by definition oppositional.  Arguing a point with them will usually make them cling to that belief even more.  As the author notes, Rogan's main flaw is a flaw that men in particular have in spades: a lack of empathy.

Empathy is a dying virtue (if it ever was one).  That's not Rogan's schtick, even if some of it is pretty good.  There is some laudatory appeal in making a masculine space for men to explore what that means in a world that is changing faster than they can adapt, but if it comes without genuine empathy, then we are selling men short.

Mock Them

I remain unimpressed with most of what Antifa's Black Bloc does, with the exception of protecting people from raging white supremacists.  They are cosplay anarchists. I don't think the proper response to the Proud Boys is to meet them with aggression.  As Josh Marshall points out, that feeds their own narrative.  There's an understandable desire to see yourself as successfully fighting the next Hitler.  That's bad ass.  But there are very few actual Hitlers out there and the Proud Boys?  That ain't one of them.

As Marshall points out, these "feral dweebs" can be dangerous at the extremes, and recent events suggest that law enforcement is being more proactive in monitoring rightist hate sites and heading off would-be killers.  But mockery really is the best response to this collection of losers and wannabes.  Violence feeds right into what they want.

It Would Be Funny

If it weren't so sad...and terrifying.

An Underlying Story

Jeffrey Epstein's death remains a mystery.  At the very least, it exposes as aspect of American "justice" that activists have been decrying for years.  We have created an economic system that rewards prisons.  This bleeds over into state run facilities.  Prison guard is a job that you can get without a college degree, but because so many applicants exist, wages are low and hours are long. The guards at Epstein's jail were overworked and asleep at the switch.  Maybe something truly nefarious happened, but I'm inclined to believe Epstein killed himself.  Prison isn't nice to pedophiles.

Dig a little deeper and we see a story about a system that requires bodies to keep facilities full and guards employed.  As prison populations shrink (although they remain too large), we will see economic ramifications that I don't think we've examined fully.

The New World Order

This is a great piece by Josh Marshall.  He makes the point that Trumpism - as we know it in the US - is a global phenomenon.  It's linked to global economic oligarchy, of which Putin is clearly also part.  Here's a key paragraph:

I’m talking about the global contest between autocracy and authoritarianism on the one hand and democracy and civic, rule-of-law based societies on the other. China, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, India, the Philippines are part of a post-Cold War alternative autocratic model. A similar contest is playing out within the EU. Some of these countries are structurally autocratic and others like Brazil or India or Turkey may simply be passing through authoritarian phases. Regardless they all have common characteristics: authoritarian rule, personality cults, state and party management of domestic economies aimed at supporting the governing party’s hold on power, often the standard authoritarian focus on domestic enemies. Trump is part and parcel of this because the global slide to autocracy is joined at the hip to the rise of oligarchism, secret financial partnerships and extortion.

This is the point that he pivots on to discuss how America has lost its standing in the world; we are no longer able to offer a clear alternative to the Russian and Chinese model.  That's Trump, but it's also the GOP.  Russia reached out to the GOP through the NRA, because it was easy to do so.  The GOP has leaned towards authoritarianism for a good long while now, but the shift is complete.

It looks like we might be headed for a recession.  That's par for the course: elect a Republican, get a recession.  If so, it essentially dooms Trump's re-election hopes.

The question then is what damage he has done to the American world order put in place after World War II.  I fear it's damaged beyond repair.

Do This

These rich old white dudes who are "running" for the Democratic nomination really would serve the country better by investing a few millions in voter registration and voter access. If more people vote, Democrats will win.

Just A Reminder

The single most important issue, long term, is climate change.  The United States is the only substantive democracy where one major party doesn't believe in it.  The US is also among the top-two carbon emitting countries in the world, along with China.

We have seen apocalyptic predictions about environmental collapse.  Back in the '70s there was an apocalyptic Malthusian movement predicting food collapse.  (Think Soylent Green.) The Green Revolution prevented that from happening, but climate change could re-create food shortages by altering ecosystems.  Since the predictions of the '70s didn't come to pass, that engenders a cynicism among people prone to it anyway.  Populist disregard for "experts" rears its ugly head again.

Frankly, every major parking lot in this country should be a solar farm already.

Shouty Old Man

I remember when my parents used to listen to Lou Dobbs.  To be fair, he has a nice baritone voice, so that counts for as much as being consistently wrong and racist.

Dobbs is, naturally, wrong.  Trump's appeals to his base drag him further and further from where the votes are that he will need to win re-election.  Gun control is increasingly popular in the suburbs.  So it treating opiods.  The wall isn't.

So, please proceed, dipshits.

Playing Offense

Nancy Pelosi is in an unusual place.  She survived a challenge to her leadership from the center when Democrats won the House in 2018.  She has since been very aware - as she always is - about the fate of her caucus members from swing districts.  Wisely, the DCCC is going to expand their map in 2020.  In particular, they are investing heavily in suburban Texas.  Texas has always been the great white whale of Democratic strategy since the turn of the century.  The demographic changes in Texas suggest that at some point it will surpass Florida as America's most important purple state.

By investing in House races in those suburbs, the DCCC can begin to create networks that could pay off for whoever the 2020 Democratic nominee turns out to be. Clinton managed to win 43.2% of the vote and Trump barely eked out a majority in the once scarlett red Texas.  In 2018, candidates for the House split the overall popular vote 50.41% for Republicans and 46.97% for Democrats.  That trendline has Democrats salivating. (It is worth noting that Beto O'Rourke narrowly lost and gerrymanders - natural and partisan - meant that the relatively even split of the popular vote was still a 23-13 Republican delegation.

Republican House members are retiring in droves.  That was a portent of the 2018 Blue Wave.  There could be a second wave in 2020.

Make America 1952 Again

I'm reading James Patterson's Grand Expectations, the Oxford History of the United States from 1945-1974.  It is striking how awful the United States was for certain groups in the late '40s and '50s.  Consider a few of the following examples:

- The Murder of Emmet Till, beaten to a pulp for flirting with a white woman and his body thrown into a river.  His murderers were not found guilty by a white jury.  That is only the most egregious example of lynch law in the South.
- Joe McCarthy was every bit as erratic and dangerous as Donald Trump, and in some ways more dangerous.  Mainstream Republicans like Robert Taft empowered McCarthy in order to damage Democrats, and he did lasting and profound damage to the civil liberties in this country.  There's an excellent argument that McCarthy created the climate that made Vietnam a "necessity" for Kennedy and Johnson.
- There were effectively no rights for women, blacks, Hispanics, Asians or homosexuals.  Jim Crow is the best known of these structures, but homosexuality was literally illegal in most places.  Women had no workplace rights and were under extraordinary pressure to conform to a domestic role.
- Poverty was arguably as high then as it is now.  Large swaths of the country did not participate in the robust economic growth of the post-war boom.
- Holding an unpopular political position or even knowing a radical leftist was enough to get you fired from your job. Thousands lost their jobs via "loyalty programs."
- The world was perhaps even more dangerous, especially during Kennedy's reckless and feckless Cuban policies from the Bay of Pigs through the Missile Crisis.
- The Cold War ushered in a paranoia that warped every aspect of American society from movies and entertainment to the quest for civil rights.  Red baiting was a part of both party's politics.

Trump ran on "making America great again" and it is clear this is the America he remembered fondly from his youth.  As a rich white guy, the '50s were swell and the '60s were a time when that unchallenged prestige began to slip away.  Boomers - despite the Woodstock nostalgia - are probably America's most conservative generation.  For most of them - Nixon's Silent Majority - the '60s was a time when it all went to shit (while there's some truth to that, it's not for the reasons they think).

Trump's old, white, rural voters are the last battle cohort fighting the old fights from the '60s.  Once they're gone, I'm hopeful that politics will no longer be in thrall to the vestigial nastiness created by the gradual erosion of white, male supremacy.  It will still be there, of course, as long as there are young white men with access to penis replacement weaponry.

But a guy can hope.

The Dead Don't Die

Epstein probably killed himself, because that's a common thing for pedophiles to do in prison.

But this story isn't over.

This Time Won't Be Different

What are we to make of this?  Trump is a combination of congenital liar and uninformed buffoon, so there is literally no meaningful way to assess the accuracy of whether Congress if finally going to pass meaningful background checks.

But if history is any guide, we will have some noise about background checks, maybe banning a few ridiculous accessories like bump stocks or 100 round drum magazines.  Then, after the funerals are over and a few weeks have passed, it will die in some Senate subcommittee under the rheumy eyes of Mitch McConnell.

Head Of State

The President of the United States holds two jobs: head of government and head of state.

As head of government, the President is responsible for making sure the laws of the country are executed, the national defense provided for and generally overseeing the executive branch.  There are solid arguments that Trump isn't doing this job, effectively farming it out to Mick Mulvaney, who has executed a silent coup within the West Wing.  We won't REALLY know just how inept a head of government Trump is until we get access to his historical 'papers' and the tell-all books are written.

But we can assess Trump's conduct as head of state right now.  A head of state is the elected manifestation of the nation, which is to say the people.  The presidency is unique in that it combines head of state and head of government (most systems divide the office).  The role of head of state is to unify the nation as much as possible, especially at moments of tragedy.  Reagan when the Challenger exploded, Clinton after Oklahoma City, Bush after 9/11 and Obama after Newtown.  Those were moments when presidents stood up and bore the burden of a national tragedy and helped unite the country.

Trump is manifestly incapable of doing that.  The photos from his visit to Dayton are simply appalling.  Selfies with a rictus grin.  Odd thumbs up gestures.  It was the president as celebrity: complete with full on narcissism.  Trump was in Dayton so that people could look at Trump in Dayton.  He was not there to heal or bring together the country.

Maybe it will be the deciding factor, but more likely it will simply be another stone piled upon his political grave.

Bankrupt

Skimming Twitter after the twin massacres, it's interesting how bankrupt the gun humpers arguments are.  The most humorous of these is the "30-50 feral hogs" meme going around Twitter (basically, how can I protect my children from 30-50 feral hogs).  The rest are the same tired, easily disprovable scapegoats: video games, mental illness, divorce, godlessness and so on.  Of course, the United States is hardly alone in having video games and mental illness.  Nuclear families and church attendance are more rarer in Europe than here.  If these were the causes, we would see mass shooting around the world as common as they are here. Instead, America leads the world in mass shootings because we not only have more guns, but more lethal guns.

There are the usual stirrings that "this time things will change."  No.  Not unless Democrats win the White House, the House and 60 seats in the Senate.  No, it will not.

But the gun humpers are losing the argument.  It's just that winning the argument doesn't matter in our democracy.

Where I'm At

I agree with Martin Longman that the suburbs are THE battleground of 2020, and Democrats can blow it, by listening too much to Woke Twitter and not enough to those mushy centrists. 

Creating an urban/suburban coalition can probably include the following:

- Warren's wealth tax.  Losing the "over $50M crowd" is fine.
- Immigration reform. Guest workers, path to citizenship, certainly the DREAM act.  People in the 'burbs like taco trucks.
- Criminal justice reform. Non-violent drug offenders, marijuana decriminalization, less police killings.
- Robust public option. Allow people and companies to opt-in to Medicaid/Medicare.  Don't force it.
- Gun violence. Background checks/licensing, various no-brainer safety measures and restrictions.

Going "Full Sanders" and making a mandatory universal health care system, open borders and reparations is the way to lose the election in 2020, or make it so close that it can be stolen.

I don't like Biden, because I think he's too old and too set in the ways he learned as part of minority party of the '80s and '90s.  But if there as a "young Biden" - Cory Booker springs to mind, maybe Kamala Harris - then I've found my candidate.

While We're At It

Let's add incitement to the list of impeachment articles.

And Another

I was thinking the other day that it had been some time since the last horrific mass shooting in America.  And now it looks like another.  Police have a 21 year old white male in custody, because of course they do.  It's impossible to tease out cause and effect on what is effectively an epidemic, but it seems to me that America has two problems: easy access to weapons of mass murder and a masculinity problem.

Back in the '90s, there was a rush to blame movies and video games, despite the fact that these movies and video games are global, and we are the only country to slaughter each other on a Saturday afternoon in a WalMart.  It's not just the guns and it's not just the fragile man-boys.  The guns are easier to address via policy - mandatory safety licensing, owner and seller liability, universal background checks - but we have to do something about these homicidal young men wandering our streets.

Bleach In My EyesRe

As in, reading this makes me want to put bleach in my eyes.

No one hates Liberal more than Leftists.