Through The Looking Glass

 Mitch McConnell is one of two Congressional Republicans who set us on the path to Donald Trump - the other being Newt Gingrich. There are sundry media figures who anticipated and abetted his rise, but McConnell and Gingrich were uniquely malevolent forces in breaking Congress. 

I'm reading Geoffrey Kabaservice's Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party. As the subtitle suggests, it does not anticipate the rise of a populist demagogue like Trump (I'm about halfway through), but it talks about how moderate and even progressive forces in the GOP worked to sideline the worst aspects of far right politics, in this case the John Birch Society nutters. The election of Nixon in 1968 was a triumph for the moderates, which is a testament to how far right the Birchers were. 

Gingrich and McConnell brought the Bircher point of view into the leadership of Congress. The advent of the GOP as a post-legislative party incapable of doing the necessary work of writing laws, especially ones that require bipartisan approval is directly tied to these two evil men. McConnell more than anyone else is responsible for the deeply broken nature of the Senate.

McConnell's retirement announcement comes because he - for all the destruction that he caused that actively led to the rise of Trump - is not a creature of Vladimir Putin. His party has become at least partly in thrall to a Russian dictator. It has gone self-evidently insane, in the sense of being divorced from objective reality.

Because McConnell doesn't "like" Trump and actively opposes Putin's efforts to end American democracy, he will be given plaudits that he does not fucking deserve. He made the bed that we all have to lie in. Don't believe the encomiums that will be tossed his way. He broke America.

Meanwhile In Gilead

 I remain convinced that the two most important issues going into November are Dobbs and January 6th. For all the intramural handwringing over Biden's age or Gaza, the reality is that he's going to be running against Trump, who might very well be in jail by then. 

Meanwhile, you have the Alabama IVF case, which has created a massive problem for so-called normie Republicans. The problem is pretty straightforward: If you believe that life begins at conception, then embryos are people, therefore the disposal of embryos is murder (or at least wrongful death). The Alabama Supreme Court decision was fucking bonkers - dripping in dominionist theology. Yet that's effectively what most Republicans are going to have to adopt as their position.

Waging war on IVF is going to be a disaster for Republicans, yet they have no choice.

Inconclusive

 The protest vote in Michigan came in right about where it needed to be to herald...something. What was interesting is that Dearborn is in Wayne County, and that was where the protest vote was most significant at 17%. However, the lowest number was in Montmorency County with 8% and most counties were above 10%. That 10% could be a baseline for discontent or worries about Biden's age or approval numbers. In which case, the protest vote from Dearborn (which is where many Muslim Americans live) is about 7% off the baseline. Still a 13% uncommitted vote is only somewhat more than the 11% in 2012, the last time we had a Democratic incumbent.

Biden probably should change course on blanket support for Netanyahu's pogrom in Gaza. In Afghanistan, he did the absolutely necessary thing and paid a price for it; a price that is largely ridiculous given how important it was to divorce ourselves from the failure of that policy. Supporting a Likud government that refuses to embrace a two state solution is unlikely to cost him support from many Jews as most American Jews support a two state solution. It's unclear whether that will win him back any of the performative leftists who think he's personally committing genocide. But it is the right thing to do, and that seems to matter to Biden.

Oh, and Trump did manage to get over 60% in Michigan, so that sucks. I know Haley's strategy is to be there waiting when he goes to prison or has a massive stroke, but I'd like to see her make a stronger case.

The Expectations Game

 The anti-Biden framing of most news has been covered in a lot of quarters, but the idea that Biden "only" won South Carolina with 96.2% and Trump - as the de facto incumbent - won 59.8% represents Biden's weakness...I dunno man.

Anyway, Michigan is having its primary and there is a movement afoot to have people upset with Biden's handling of the Israeli-Hamas war vote "uncommitted" in the Democratic primary. In 2020, about 1% voted "uncommitted" in Michigan, despite the race not being over at that point. In 2016, it was closer to 2%.

So if I were measuring the impact of the "uncommitted" movement, I think I'm looking at 10%. If it exceeds that, then that's a meaningful measurement. I think you also have to look at where those uncommitted votes come from. If it's concentrated in Dearborn, that tells you one thing. If large swaths of Detroit vote uncommitted, then Biden has to take serious stock of his Israel policy.

Josh Marshall lays out a nice menu of things that Biden really should be doing. I would guess that the White House is having some very contentious discussions with Netanyahu. They should go public with those. Another thing Marshall suggests is removing the UN shield that the US has thrown around Israel since 1948. Let some form of censure happen - you don't even have to vote for it. The big suggestion is to basically create a Rafah Airlift to bring aid to the communities there. 

However, there remains the possibility that pro-Palestinian politics is not as prevalent as being terminally online would suggest it is. The Michigan primary will give us a read on whether that it true.

They Are Absolutely Coming For Griswold and Obergfell

 For years, we heard that Roe v Wade was settled law, and that justices were just calling "balls and strikes". That's always been bullshit. I think we need to understand that post-Dobbs, that everything is on the table.

The things the American Taliban are talking about are actually no longer just talking points. You have the Alabama IVF case. In Missouri, a pregnant woman can't get divorced, even if her spouse is beating her. We already know that Talibangelicals are taking aim at no-fault divorce, and this is pretty good evidence that they are serious. Tennessee is going to start chipping away at same sex marriage.

But, Joe Biden is old and is "allowing" Netanyahu to be a huge murderous asshole.

Trump Is Almost Certainly Doing More Crimes

 There's a vanishingly small chance that he is not breaking campaign finance laws as we speak.

Trump Is Weak

 He's struggling to get past 60% as the de facto incumbent in the GOP primary. As Marshall notes, 60% is a great showing in a general election; it is quite weak as an incumbent in a primary. In fact, LBJ dropped out over something much less profound. 

Of course, I don't know if that 40% who refuse to vote for Trump will vote for Biden or simply not vote in November. We can hope that there's some significant erosion, especially as his legal woes mount.

The Road Home

 After about a month of traveling through Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, we are headed back to the states tonight. It was a fascinating trip in so many ways. We spent the bulk of our time in Chile, and that's a country that is simultaneously rich and poor.

The US typically ranks in the top-10 for GDP per capita measured at purchasing power parity. (PPP tries to factor in the cost of living.) Most of the states ranked ahead of the US are city states like Singapore or Monaco or close to it like Liechtenstein and Qatar. Only Norway and Switzerland have higher GDP/capita and have larger populations - and even then, they are relatively small. All of this is to say that America is a really rich country.

Chile ranks at 59, beneath Russia, Bulgaria and Trinidad and Tobago. Uruguay a few spots lower at 62, Argentina lower at 65. All of this makes these countries fairly rich by South American standards. What's interesting is that Chile has roughly the same wealth inequality as the US, but with much lower overall income. Using the World Bank's GINI coefficient, the US ranks 108th with a GINI number of 39.8 (1 is perfect equality, 100 perfect inequality). Argentina's GINI number is 42. So they are both poorer and less equal than the US. Chile, which had years of neoliberal economics, has a GINI number of 44.9. That's starting to be "bad". Uruguay is closer to the US at 40.8. 

So we saw some real poverty on our trip, though largely from the window of our car. We saw the same homelessness issue that we see in America. What was most striking was that we saw a very industrious population in all three countries, and yet one thing that stood out was the size of homes.

This is a major feature of American wealth that we only sometimes talk about. Our homes are pretty damned big. In southern Chile, we saw large tracts of cookie cutter single family homes. If I had to guess, I'd say they were probably smaller than 1500 square feet. Given the uniformity of them, they were probably built during one of Chile's intermittent socialist governments. We also saw structures barely better than shanties that seemed to be the main form of housing. 

Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Santiago are huge, wealthy cities. I'm writing this from the wealthy section of Santiago ("Sanhattan") and even here, you can tell that a lot of apartments are pretty small. Really Manhattan itself would seem to be a comparison. 

These three countries are fairly wealthy in the global scheme of things (outside of the US/Japan/Europe axis), yet there is still something that would strike most American visitors. Of course, it's a great place to visit because you can have a luxurious dinner for two with drinks that costs almost half of what it costs in the states. (That's what PPP measures.)

The final metric is the Human Development Index. It looks beyond wealth at life expectancy, education and social equality. This is where the US trails Europe (and Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan). We rank 21st (opioids have not been kind to us). Chile is tied with Qatar at 42; Argentina is at 47, Uruguay - surprisingly to me - is at 58. There are 191 countries on the list. So...pretty good.

I'm not sure where I'm going with all this.

I suppose that it's the nature of travel. On the one hand, we've learned so much about how there are different ways to organize a society and "do things". By American standards, the traffic laws are pretty lax, but drivers are exceptionally careful and skilled - by necessity. We drained that from our roads by giving people massive SUVs to drive. Dogs roam the streets and are largely taken care of by the neighborhood. Crime happens, yet it's rarely violent. Family seems SO important here, and children are both adorable and well-behaved - a sure sign they are deeply loved and attended to. 

Yet, for all the wonderful things we have seen and done, I'm looking forward to home. Even if it means I'm getting 3 hours of sleep tonight.

Vive Mexico

 Mexico is suing American gunmakers and it might work to change the way they do business. The immunity gunmakers have from law suits is absolutely sickening and perverse. Hopefully this stands and they are finally held liable.

Narcissistic Collapse

 Trump has had quite the few weeks, hasn't he? The second E. Jean Carroll verdict and now the hammer dropped in the New York fraud case. This hurts Trump where his narcissism lives: his perception of his wealth. There has long been the argument that Trump isn't worth near what he claims to be worth. In fact, that's partly at the heart of his fraud case. There is no way he can pay off these fines easily. Even on appeal he has to pony up major assets.

We've known Trump is a malignant narcissist for decades. If we didn't know, it became apparent in 2015 and onwards. Now, let's take a look at "narcissistic collapse":

A narcissistic collapse happens when a narcissist believes that someone (or something) is threatening their ability to maintain their superficial inflated ego. People with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) often look down on others to maintain the positive images they hold about themselves. If their behavior is called out or challenged, their fragile self-esteem is damaged, resulting in intense reactions and abuse toward others.

Narcissistic collapse isn’t an official psychiatric term and hasn’t been extensively studied. However, some researchers and psychologists argue that collapse essentially disarms the false self associated with narcissism. Because narcissists are so insecure, they often feel empty and hollow–they need admiration from others to feel validated.

For example, if a spouse leaves them or a boss fires them, it disrupts the narcissist’s entire status quo. Instead of reflecting on what happened or trying to address the conflict appropriately, they can become hysterical, volatile, or rageful toward themselves or those around them.

Trump has always been dangerous. In fact, he exhibits many of the signs of narcissistic collapse since 2020 at least, if not longer. However, being crushed financially is going to be an order of magnitude more traumatic for him and he will likely act even more wildly vengeful and conspiratorial in his rhetoric and his cultists will eat it up.

Or maybe he gets so worked up, his coronary arteries do our country a favor.

Anyway, Joe Biden is old and stuff.

Murderous Thug Murders Again

 Putin directly or indirectly caused the death of Aleksei Navalny today, though that death was written in the stars once Navalny returned to Russia to fight for freedom in his country.

Meanwhile, Trump has degraded the GOP to the point where it is functioning as an asset of that ghoul. Aid to Ukraine could pass tomorrow if Mike Johnson just allowed the vote.

What a rank betrayal of American principles.

Do This

 Jon Alter lays out a good strategy for Biden: become available. Talk...A LOT. Biden is a poor communicator from the Bill Clinton-Barack Obama standard - though I would argue he's Cicero compared to Trump. But he's always been a poor communicator. He's not senile. The only way to prove that it to make a LOT of appearances. 

You can't keep a candidate under wraps. Let Biden be Biden.

Biden's Doppleganger

It occurred to me that the closest president I can think of it Joe Biden is Franklin Roosevelt.

Bear with me.

Biden is - if you haven't heard - old. He is physically impaired by his age. FDR couldn't walk. Especially in FDR's third term, age and his disability left him more physically frail.

What's more, FDR was not a super genius. He was a pol's pol. He could glad hand and back slap with the best of them. Biden may lack FDR's sparkling charm, but he's not charmless and he's REALLY good at retail political moments. They both have an instinct for legislation built on compromise and they understand that America has a critical role to play the world fighting fascism. Both were tested by crises. 

The biggest difference is that FDR was a magnetic public speaker and Biden simply is not. His lifelong speech impediment is clearly worse. I agree with Josh Marshall, though, that we need to see more Angry Biden. That's his best venue for this moment.

The Immigration Fiasco

 I'm a big fan of my Senator, Chris Murphy. I think he's quite thoughtful, hard-working and principled. His work with James Lankford on the immigration bill was an example of shouldering a thankless burden (on both men's part) and doing the hard work of actually legislating.

The decision by the GOP to spit the bit on a bill that they demanded is - if nothing else - a spectacular reminder that the Republican party cannot legislate. 

Jon Chait notes that there are two reasons for the GOP killing what was in many ways their own bill, both of them political. The first has been widely discussed, which is that Trump wants to campaign on chaos at the border. This bill would have greatly reduced that chaos, so they killed it. The second, subtler, reason is that the Biden Administration has been an interesting mixture of left wing ideas and rhetoric and middle of the road legislating. Biden has passed a surprising amount of legislation before the lunatics took over the House.

Passing a bipartisan immigration bill would reinforce that Biden is Biden - a slightly center-left Irish pol who likes to solve problems and make people happy. It reinforces Biden's essential moderation. 

As a result, the GOP has been forced to come with post-hoc reasons for killing the bill that met most of their demands. These reasons are pretty shitty and most of them deal with lies. For instance, they claim that the bill allows for 5,000 people a day to enter the country illegally before anything is done. That - unsurprisingly - is bullshit. The 5,000 number refers to people who cross the border illegally and asylum seekers. 

The whole problem today is with asylum seekers, because the asylum system is broken. You flee from, say, Haiti through Mexico and get to the border. You cross, seek out a Border Patrol Agent and ask for asylum. The system is so backlogged, that you are released into the US to await a hearing that is several years away. Trump's efforts to simply send asylum seekers back home was stopped by Circuit Court injunction, because it violate the asylum laws. This is why the new law is necessary.

Joe Walsh - former hard-right asshole, now repentant centrist - has said that the optics won't matter. People "trust" Trump and the GOP more on being mean to immigrants. My hope is that we will shortly have a presidential address on the immigration bill whereby Biden touts the bipartisan nature, the centrality of fixing the asylum system and his eagerness to work with reasonable Republicans on a compromise. Since there are no reasonable Republicans, this should help Biden keep that centrist mantle he desperately needs leading into the election.

Since Last We Spoke...

 The House GOP faceplanted their planned impeachment of the Secretary of Homeland Security; the Bipartisan Immigration Bill in the Senate was killed by Trump, because the GOP would rather have an issue to campaign on than a solution; the Supreme Court seems extraordinarily unlikely to boot Trump from Colorado's ballot; Trump is NOT immune (duh)...am I missing anything?

My guess is that the main story that the press will focus on is a Republican special counsel called Biden old and forgetful.

I Hate Agreeing With David Brooks

 Brooks wrote one of his things in The Atlantic about doomcasting. When reading Brooks in the past, I would always be about half way through it, thinking "Actually, he makes some goods points" and then BOOM he would draw some conclusion or parallel that was just idiotic. He doesn't really do that here. He does tend to focus more on leftwing doomcasting as opposed to the apocalyptic American Carnage of Trumpistan.

In particular, he does return to his hobby horse about "community" and communal norms. 

The reason I was in agreement with Brooks is that he specifically addresses the deep pessimism and cultural depression among the young. He mentions that being negative is a great way to draw clout and attention, without mentioning the algorithms that feed negativity into our brains via our screens.

At the root of a lot of this is the idea that systems are corrupt and holding people down. This may be one reason why young people have such negative views of the economy. To believe that things are terrible is very "savvy".  It's also, I really believe, wrong. We live in an age of miracles and wonders. I'm sitting in the rainforest of Argentina, typing on a personal computer that has access to the world's warehouse of information. I can find restaurant reviews for every restaurant in town, automatically translated into English. 

Is everything perfect? Of course not. Every generation is called upon to struggle with great issues. Americans must struggle to preserve representative government. Everyone must struggle with the climate issue.

I read an interesting piece about Denmark the other day. Denmark is routinely held up as the beau ideal of countries. However, Denmark's remarkable society involves very real tradeoffs. Universal health care is awesome, but that means primary care is largely assembly line medicine. Universal education is awesome but tracking exams basically rule you out of professions before you turn 20. All societies involve tradeoffs, good and bad intertwined. 

Relentless negativity serves no one but the forces that want you to turn on your neighbor or devolve into despair and inertia.

The Elephantine Constant

 Jon Chait notes that the two pieces of legislation meandering their way through the halls of Congress represent a clarifying mindset into the GOP. There are two priorities for Republicans: winning power and cutting taxes (confirming judges and deregulation are right there with them, but more in the "winning power" column). When it comes to Congress, it's all about cutting taxes. (I remember a clarifying conversation with my father right before his death, where he saw the election of Trump and realized that, yes, they will do and say anything to cut taxes). 

The result is that there will be a tax cut bill paired with an expansion of the child tax credit, which did wonders for reducing the number of children living in poverty until it was allowed to lapse. This is classic horse trading between the parties: Democrats get to help poor children, Republicans get to help rich old white dudes.

Immigration, as Chait notes, is not an issue that Republicans actually want to solve. It's not just waiting for Trump to become president again, because you may recall the "migrant caravans" occurred under Trump during the midterms. Scaring people on booga booga immigration is pretty much all they are left with politically, especially if opinions of the economy improve. Given that the GOP has pretty much stopped talking about the economy, I'd wager that they are seeing some polling on the economy that has them spooked. Cue the scary brown people.

In the end, what seems to matter most of all for the GOP is cutting taxes. It took a death bed realization for my dad, I hope democracy does not look up from its death bed and note that it was killed because rich Americans scared enough poorer Americans to abandon democracy.