Friday, May 31, 2019

In praise of Mitch McConnell

"Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue."

Click here: CNN clip

Mitch McConnell didn't even bother.  In fact, he smirked.

"Oh, we'd fill it."

He revealed an ugly truth about American politics. He is a hypocrite and damned proud of it.

We experienced a milestone this week. Amid all the news of the Mueller press conference, the Japan trip, the Low-IQ Biden tweet, and the Raptors beating the Warriors, something important happened in Paducah, Kentucky.  Mitch McConnell told the simple truth.

No hypocrisy. 

Equally important, he enjoyed the moment, stretched it out, made sure the body language captured it all.

He was asked at a Chamber of Commerce event in Kentucky what he would do if there happened to be a Supreme Court vacancy in 2020. He took took a sip of ice tea, said "Oh, we'd fill it."

His smirk was a way of showing he just didn't care, not about the supposed principles that underlay earlier representations that denying Obama the ability to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the death of Scalia was anything other than eye-wash. "The American people should have a voice of their next Supreme Court justice," he said. It was tradition, he said, going back to 1880.

"Of course, of course, the American people should have a say in the Court's direction."

There was principle involved.

The smirk show that America has entered an era when it was really all about partisan advantage, and not only did one not need to show that there was higher process principle involved, that there was in fact a new principle involved. Winning.

Only losers are good sports. Only losers pretend there are rules of the game and traditions and higher principles. 

My view is that Republicans have adopted this more fully than Democrats, and to their advantage, but both parties are learning the new rules. Republican who leave office (Corker, Flake) say what Republicans used to say before Trump took over the GOP. Democrats on the left are saying that bi-partisanship is selling out. Compromise is weakness. Bipartisan moderate Democrats are getting "primaried" from the left. The scrum of Democratic candidates for president want to be sure they don't lose too many votes on the left. Those are the ones at risk.

McConnell taught us that principles matter. It is just that the principles changed, and Trump understood it earlier and voiced it better than did others. It is about winning. That is the principle.

Thursday, May 30, 2019

"Peter, get balls"


It's the economy, stupid.



Ralph writes me: 

     "How about crony capitalism? How about military democracy? How about corporate nihilism? How about oligarchical lobbyists? How about stock owners without a boardroom vote? Think up some names to call them, or your blog isn’t worth a shit. So there."

Trump has his narrative: the economy is historically great, unemployment is down, the 2017 tax cut worked.

Maybe not. It isn't trickling down to Ralph, who sent the above comment.

Some numbers look good, especially if a voter has a home and a secure pension or 401k account. Prices are up.The rich got richer. It is great to be in the 1%. It is even great to be in the top 5%. The rich got richer.

Home prices are high--too high for young people to buy in, but great if one already owns a home. Stock prices are high. It is great for people who had money to buy low ten years ago, when Obama got elected. 

The news is dominated by the announcement and commentary on the Mueller Report and his Rorschach Test style announcement yesterday (Fox and Trump say "See! Total exoneration!" Democrats say "See! He is not exonerated!".)  

Click: Congressional Research report
Amid this, the Congressional Research Service released a report that is simultaneously important but dry. It isn't breaking news. But Ralph is feeling something personally so he tells it the way he tells it. The Congressional Research Service tells it their way.

The CRS is a nonpartisan division of the Library of Congress. It has a simple conclusion: the tax cut of 2017 did not do much good. The rich got richer, the deficit got bigger, but it didn't help the economy.

"In previous years, output grew by 2.9% in 2015 and 2.5% in 2014, thus the increase in growth is in line with the trend in growth over the period."  

The tax cut are not "paying for themselves." To do that the growth rate would have needed to be 6.7%, but the effect of the 2017 tax act was an increase of about 0.5%. There is a happy fantasy among budgeters that there is free money, that tax cuts mean more revenue. It doesn't. There was little growth in GDP to show for the new deficit.

The tax cuts affected corporations, dropping the average rate from 23.4% to 12.1%--good for them and stock prices-- but in fact individual tax rates fell little.

There was a surge in repatriated money in the the first half of 2018, but it mostly went to corporate stock repurchases, not wages and bonuses, then it returned to trend.

Back to trend line
There was a nominal growth in wages--3.2%--but after accounting for inflation the increase is about 1.2%. Better than nothing, but not much.

The Tax Act of 2017 got publicity for provisions that stopped companies from moving their headquarters abroad, but in fact "these inversions had apparently already been significantly slowed by regulators adopted in 2014, 2015, and 2016." It is just more of the trend.

Readers don't need to believe me. Read the report. Page one is an executive summary. For a government report, it is quite readable.

This blog has made the point in the past: the American economy has been in a slow recovery since the Financial Crisis of 2008-2009. There are structural problems with income distribution that cause populist feelings of the kind expressed by Ralph. Those kept President Obama and Democrats generally from "talking up" the economy during his presidency, even though it was improving. 

Trump played it smart. He called it "carnage." He said the unemployment numbers were fake

Ten year trend on Unemployment
And then, two months after inauguration he said the market was tremendous and all his doing. In fact, America is experiencing a steady economic recovery, in a steady trend line, neither accelerated nor de-accelerated by Trump. -

The structural problems still exist--as Ralph knows well--but solutions are available.  If health care were treated as a right of citizenship, paid generally by taxes and not the individual, this would constitute a significant shift in income distribution, ameliorating the winner-take-all elements of the current American system.

It would be a start.





Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Socialist Bernie and his socialistic socialism.

 Bernie Sanders:

    “When I use the world socialist–and I know some people aren’t comfortable about it—I’m saying that it is imperative [that we] create a government that works for all and not just the few.”

               

Bernie Sanders can explain what he means by "socialist." The fact that he needs to explain is the problem.

"Socialism" is a dangerous label.  Who says so?  Voters for one. Also Trump.


Facebook commentary has taken this blog to task for this observation. 

Milynn: "Wow, what an awful hit piece."

Mike: Socialism is a brand Americans fear "because 'well meaning' corporatists like Peter Sage propagate such fears."

Frank: "Wow! You write like a right wing propagandist."

Mike: "Your writing, intentionally or not, is a most subtle, if not insidious, form of McCarthyism."

And lots more. 

Many young left activists embrace the label "socialist." It is a sign of progressive policy and political steadfastness. Candidates and voters who won't call themselves "socialists" are corporatist sellouts, or worse.

Bernie Sanders identifies himself as a "Democratic Socialist."  He explains he is not a Marxist and does not think government should own the means of production. "I do believe the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal."

Sanders can make the plausible argument that he is a "socialist" only in the way that FDR was called a socialist. Sanders is trying to re-define "socialism" in the public mind into something mainstream and positive: Social Security, Medicare, the 40 hour workweek, fair pay and an end to trickle-down.

FDR's New Deal "socialism" was before World War Two and it preceded our alliance with the USSR. Then we had four decades of Cold War with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, with wars in Korea and Vietnam, an "Iron Curtain" in Europe, and a world divided into two alignment camps.

Voters over the age of fifty recall the USSR as the great rival. Socialism was a dirty word. Democrats got accused of it. A recent Gallup poll showed 47% of Americans would not vote for a "well qualified person in their party" if the person was a "socialist." 

Facebook supporters of Bernie tell me fears of Socialism "are founded on misinformation and corporate media manipulation of the stories that are broadcast." Another blog reader added that it wasn't "Socialism," it was "'Democratic Socialism!' Do you really not know the difference??"

I do. The general voting public over age fifty does not. 

Bernie's "socialist" label invites memories of totalitarian central planning and confiscation as it was practiced by countries that openly adopted the name "socialism," not Western European countries that adopted social welfare policies. The poll is one form of evidence of this. 



In his State of the Union address, Trump uses "Socialism" as the opposite of "freedom," not as the opposite of "corporate greed and low pay for workers." 

Bernie Sanders and his allies may be attempting to re-define "Socialism," but Trump understands that, fair or unfair, a meaning and association is already in place.

Trump uses the word as a weapon. 

I consider the email below a primary source, evidence of the political valence of the term "socialist," and a preview of the upcoming campaign. The email uses some form of the word "socialist" seven different times. Here, unedited and in full, is the email I received from the Trump campaign yesterday. (I have intentionally signed up for emails from all the campaigns, Democratic and Republican, so I can monitor what they send.) 

The email subject was "Reject Socialism."







Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Trump is messing with Democrats


It is working. Democratic voters are falling for it.

Joe Biden


Trump is trolling Biden because Biden is the Democrat he can most easily beat. 


It isn't that complicated. 

Trump teases and criticizes Biden and several things happen.
   1. Biden is the one getting media oxygen.
   2. Biden positioned as the guy in the one-to-one matchup against Trump, the Democratic alternative to Trump. 
   3. It confirms Biden as the frontrunner so the other candidates are diminished in comparison, creating the image of "Biden and the 23 dwarfs."

Trump is picking the Democratic candidate for them by elevating Biden.

Biden has structural flaws as a candidate. He divides the Democrats between the progressive and liberal factions  the persistent Bernie/Hillary division. Biden reflects the establishment, special interests Democratic Party, the one that missed the restless populist energy. 

Biden goes to more fundraisers than he does rallies. And he has a leisurely schedule. That meme is circulating: he is the corporate guy, the guy with bundlers. Money, not people.

Biden is the one on defense. He is pressed to explain past decisions on crime and incarceration, on Anita Hill, on hand-on campaigning, on Iraq, on immigration, on plagiarism.  Biden is the one minimizing, explaining, looking backward.

Plus, Biden looks fit, but old. He walks like he doesn't want to fall. 

It is the perfect matchup for Trump: new Trump versus old Biden, vigorous versus "sleepy," attacker versus attacked, Trump future versus Biden past. 

Trump doesn't plan, but he has good instincts for political street fighting, and Biden is the opponent that makes Trump look good. Trump likes the fight. His base likes to see him fighting. Biden is the one he wants to fight.

Observe what happened when Trump criticized Buttigieg. Buttigieg got great publicity for his artful slap back. Buttigieg said "I don't care" and it made Trump look petty. Buttigieg turned the Alfred E. Neuman jibe into a joke at Trump's expense, getting big laughs for calling it Trump's version of a "literary reference."  It elevated Buttigieg. 

Trump has re-focused back to easier prey, to Biden, with tweets so unexpected and outrageous that the very fact of the tweets make news:

"North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me. I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that's sending me a signal?"

The media took the bait: Look at Trump! Now Trump has North Korea doing it, flattering Trump!  Swampman! Low IQ! 

It is cynical and smart for Trump: more media oxygen for Biden, doing the one thing that unifies Democrats, sparring with Trump. 

Newsworthy tweet.
The best thing that could happen to Kamala Harris or Michael Bennet or the other candidates would be to be the subject of nasty tweets by Trump.  There are a lot of electable Democrats in the race. 

Michael Bennet? Who is he? Trump isn't saying. He is tweeting about Biden.

Democrats are being played.

Monday, May 27, 2019

Typecasting Bernie Sanders


Bernie Sanders carries a burden. Americans have a mental category for him, and he looks the part, sounds the part, and his biography confirms the part.

Engaging, but ultimately abandoned.

Social critic.


We need social critics.  

Shakespeare's fools are truth tellers to kings. But they aren't kings. Cassandra was right, but not believed. Jeremiah heard directly from God, and his reward was to be thrown into a cistern to starve. 

Hollywood knows the character, the network news anchor who was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore! (Network, 1976)

Comedy has a version of the role: the gruff, grumbly old men characters of the Muppets. 

We saw his appeal to voters, and it persists. Bernie Sanders and his message reached its apogee in 2016, as the social and political critic warning that Hillary was a mistake. He was right. He--like Trump--understood the unrest among voters in both parties against a self-satisfied status quo establishment. He warned us. We should have listened.

Grumpy old men
The trouble with Jeremiah, Cassandra, Shakespeare fools, and Bernie Sanders goes beyond the fact that they aren't listened to. It is that they read as social critics, not leaders. 

Sanders will get a significant block of votes, perhaps enough to win a Democratic primary. That is the risk for Democrats. He might get cast in the wrong role: Party leader.  Bernie succeeds as policy critic and visionary, but would be vulnerable as a leader.  He is the wrong person for the part.

He would be the easiest candidate for Trump to call extreme. 

1. He is leading under a banner and label that frightens people.  Voters will support a Jew (93%), voters will support a candidate over 70 (63%), and voters are generally open most other identity categories of people including now a gay person (76%) and atheist (60%), but voters are very uncomfortable with a "socialist." Click: Gallup

 Bernie Sanders calls himself, proudly, a "Democratic Socialist." 

He gets credit for this within the political left. See his courage! See his steadfastness over time! This is why he will get votes, maybe even a plurality. But it is a crushing burden in the general election. Only 47% of voters in 2019 say they would support a "well qualified candidate in their party who called himself a 'socialist'". More ominous is that this number has not changed since 2015. Sanders had four years to re-teach Americans the meaning of "socialist" and assure people it just means FDR and Social Security, and it hasn't worked.

2. He is leading on health care in a direction that frightens people. Americans overwhelmingly want changes in the health care system, but a great many people are personally satisfied with their own situation and don't want to lose it. People who have Medicare are set. Also, people who work for large organizations with employer-supplied health care have something good they don't want to lose. 

These older, secure  people turn out to vote. These are the people with "family wage" situations, those educated people in the new sweet spot for Democrats. They are comfortable, educated people OK with diversity, rainbows, and the Democratic message on immigration.

But they don't want their health care screwed up.

Click: The Hill poll
Sanders' position is the least popular position, when voters are given options of how they would like America's health care to be arranged. Only 13% of voters want universal single payer Medicare for All.  

Some 26% of voters prefer the government offering a government plan but with people being able to keep private insurance if they want to. And 32% favor a government program with individuals being allowed to buy supplemental private insurance on their own.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the most active people within the party are the young people who are in a different mental universe from older people who associate "socialist" with the USSR and the DMV, and people getting and enjoying their current health care. Many are intolerant of anything but Bernie "socialism" and "Medicare for All."

Why do I say that Bernie Sanders is a social critic and not a leader? Hasn't he led Democrats to the left?

Yes, he has, on policy. But not personally.

In the US Senate he has not been a team leader, and indeed he has kept himself off the team. He isn't a Democrat; he just caucuses with the Democrats, and he makes that point with pride. 

He plays the role of point of the spear, not the team captain. 
Rembrandt's Jeremiah: He warned them.

Trump and the GOP are already locking that bit of type-casting into place: "Crazy Bernie," the wild-eyed visionary, with his lamentations and dangerous policies, the guy out there on the extreme. The guy who cannot even get Democrats to join him.

The socialist who wants to take away your health care.

Bernie's supporters who are sharp critics of the non-Bernie Democrats are part of the problem for Sanders. 

His supporters won't let him lead a coalition. It is Bernie or nothing, and he is one of a kind. So he stands alone.



Sunday, May 26, 2019

Trump gets his opponents to self-destruct

  

   "There's no question: the White House is just crying out for impeachment. That's why he flipped yesterday, because he was just hoping."

                         Nancy Pelosi, to Capitol reporters


Trump goads Democrats into self-destruction. 


Nancy Pelosi
Trump got elected and holds power despite multiple handicaps. His personal life is filled with issues that would destroy other politicians: sex scandals, financial self-dealing, nepotism, erratic tweets.

Yet he survives, and indeed, thrives. He must be doing something politically useful.

Unless the economy seriously falters, he is very likely to win re-election, and if it does falter he will blame it squarely on Democrats and will vigorously sell the notion of "Democrat Recession," their fault, not his. He might well win either way. 

His secret: He is popular with his base, and he pushes opponents into weak positions. 

His behavior and language is so divisive his supporters know clearly that he is governing for them and only them.  He is a brute, but he is their brute. He doesn't compromise. He insults.

There is no middle ground with Trump. They cannot simply be different from Trump. They need a sharper distinction. If Trump says it--crudely, nastily--it has to be dead wrong. 

Trump is goading Democrats into impeaching him, and as Nancy Pelosi shared with her caucus, impeachment will create a meta-message that will help Trump. Democrats will appear to be more interested in stopping Trump than helping Americans, and when Trump is found not guilty by the Republican senate, Trump will call it a vindication. Not guilty!! 

Trump is pushing Democrats to take an unpopular position on immigration and borders. Trump is happy to present himself as hostile and cruel to immigrants. Rapists. Drugs. Terrorists. Democrats cannot defend being cruel or racist or xenophobic, so they are nudged into an unmistakable not-Trump position. 

Click: What is said in 2008 cannot now be said.
Democrats cannot say what was commonplace a decade ago. Biden's videotaped comments from the recent past defending borders are now considered toxic "oppo" material. 

Wow! Biden said "illegal!" 

Trump's rhetoric on immigrants, on "shit hole countries," on "caravans" and "hoards," and "infestations" keep Democrats in sharp opposition. Democrats do not have a coherent immigration policy, which makes it easy for Trump to accuse them of wanting an open border free for all. 

They look weak and confused and conflicted.

The rise of right wing parties in Europe are a signal Democrats should notice. Plus Brexit. Plus the recent defeat of the progressive Prime Minister candidate in Australia.

Educated urban people in diverse cities thrived under globalism. They tell a story of the value of diversity. Not everyone likes or believes the story, on left and right. Working people who compete with immigrants and workers in low wage countries are open to the traditional political target, the dangerous "outsider," the immigrant and foreigner.

Click: The Nation magazine
Trump jumped on the wave and amplified it. 

Trump made it either-or. Cruelty and racism or not. Democrats don't support open borders but don't dare embrace strong enforcement, lest it sound like Trump.

This sticks Democrats with an unpopular position. The progressive magazine The Nation observed:

 "a majority of Americans--in numbers well beyond Trump's base--also want immigration laws to be strictly enforced and the border sealed against illegal crossings. A 2018 Harvard/Harris poll reported that 70 percent of voters support more restrictive laws, with 64%--including 53% of Latinos--in favor of sending back people who cross the border without papers."

This explains something. Fully a third of Latinos who voted in 2016 supported Trump.

Democrats have an alternative to simply being opposite Trump, if they dare to take it, the Canadian approach. Canada is immigration positive, but carried out under tight controls and enforcement. It is actually what Americans want. 

Trump may have made that approach politically impossible. No one wants to sound even a little bit like Trump. 





Saturday, May 25, 2019

The persuasiveness of self confidence

What's up with this Pete Buttigieg boom?


It is utterly improbable. He is too young and looks young. He hasn't won significant office. He is gay and married to a guy.

Buttigieg

  

Get real, right? Buttigieg??


He is real, and it means he looks like he knows what to do in a fight with Trump.


That is the most important thing.

By now most readers have seen snippets of Buttigieg talking. He did a Town Hall on Fox. He did a one hour Town Hall with the Washington Post. 

I posted snippets of my own in an earlier blog post, when I saw him live and up close: http://peterwsage.blogspot.com/2019/04/pete-buttigieg-really.html

There is something about him Democratic voters like.

Some of it is that he is gay. There is a constituency of gay-friendly people, a politically active cohort. It isn't as big as the always-Bernie cohort, nor the black or Latino or vote-female cohort, but it is big enough to put him in the first tier.

Some of it is the Rhodes Scholar seven language savant meme.  There are lots of Rhodes Scholars (Cory Booker, former mayor of Newark, a US Senator, and fellow candidate is one.) But add the learnNorwegian so-he-could-read-a-book story, and you have a fact people can latch onto. It sets him apart.

But mostly it is his composure.  Buttigieg positions well against Trump in the political environment dominated by Trump.  

Tonight Show, with Jimmy Fallon
Quick watch: Click. Three minutes of clips from Fox Town Hall

A longer clip: Buttigieg on the Tonight Show:

 Click. Nine minutes. Funny. Watch how he deals with the Alfred E. Neuman tweet one minute in.

Trump has just dragged Nancy Pelosi into the mud, with her saying he needs an intervention and him (with the help from Fox) hitting back with altered videos of slurred-speech demented Pelosi. Trump has littered the landscape with people he has damaged with name-calling and insults.

Responding in kind doesn't work. 

Trump exemplifies the famous advice "never wrestle with a pig in the mud, because you both get dirty and the pig likes it." The wrestling match empowers the Trump brand and it tarnishes the brand of anyone else.


No win.
Except Buttigieg. It isn't so much what he says as how he says it. He has teflon. Insults fall off him. They don't stick because he doesn't seem to mind the insults. 

"I don't care," he said about Trump's tweets mocking him.

His manner of speaking reinforces the message that he is self-assured, and personally invincible. He wants change for the country but he, himself, is complete and OK. 

The contrast with Beto O'Rourke is the most dramatic. Beto is "selling." It reads as passionate to audiences, but it also reads as someone who wants others to believe what he believes, which desire reveals neediness. He wants something.

Elizabeth Warren, too, reveals passion, an awareness and message that the world is rigged, that our democratic system is corrupted by money, that things can be better and she is battling for that. It is a good posture and message, but imbedded in it is, again, desire and therefore neediness. Trump pounces on vulnerability.

Buttigieg doesn't sell, he describes. He doesn't project neediness. 

It could well be that the Democratic electorate on the whole will prefer a candidate with needy discontent over a flawed status quo. That was central to the Bernie Sanders message. Bernie, like Buttigieg, seems OK with himself, unapologetic. He dominates the left lane. 

Democratic voters may reward a message of need and shared vulnerabiithy--indeed, will demand it. Elizabeth Warren may crowd the left lane with Bernie and take it over. Or not. It is early, still.

There is a more moderate lane, held by Biden. Buttigieg is criticized for being too general, for not yet having specific proposals, for making the focus on character and personality, not policy. It is fair criticism. Buttigieg may crowd and take over this lane.

In the back of mind of Democratic voters is the question of who can defeat Trump in the inevitable head-to head matchup. A Buttigieg-Trump matchup is completely asymmetric on personal grounds. Trump is the powerful but needy one, the blowhard narcissist, the one who demands adoration. Buttigieg is at equilibrium, content with himself, able to focus on America's problems.

That makes Buttigieg look strong in comparison.

There are almost certainly Democratic candidates with a better resume for victory than Buttigieg, and those candidates would do well to study Buttigieg's demeanor, but this is the kind of temperament and composure that is either there or it isn't. You cannot fake this.

Buttigieg has it.










Friday, May 24, 2019

Holding women responsible for their pregnancies.

     "If a woman chooses to have sexual intercourse with a man, is she responsible for the consequences? If a woman chooses to go into an unsafe location, is she responsible for the consequences?"

      Letter to the editor, Medford Oregon newspaper 



The abortion debate in America is only partially about abortion.  It is also about gender roles.

There is a principled view that the product of conception is a person, fully worthy of the respect and protections we give a person.  

We don't torture a person, nor take away a person's liberties without due process. We count them for census purposes, consider them citizens if they are born in the geographical boundaries of the country, and we don't allow them to be enslaved. Persons have rights.

Alabama said so, and did it with consistency and clarity. The person conceived by a rape or incest didn't do a crime, so should not suffer the death penalty via abortion. 

The abortion debate has a subtext, expressed brilliantly in the attached letter to the editor: women are the gatekeepers of sexual behavior.  

The letter doesn't absolve men, but it doesn't address them either. There is an assumption embedded here of a traditional view of gender roles, with men and women being fundamentally different and having different cultural roles. Men will be men. Men will get sex if they can because it is their nature. 

Therefore, women have a complementary nature and role. Women are the ones who say "no." 

They say it overtly by declining sex and they say it indirectly by avoiding situations where unwanted-in-hindsight sex might happen: unsafe locations, intoxication with alcohol, debilitating drugs. If a woman flirts with dangerous situations she is making her choice right then, and bears the responsibility.

Modern, educated women, like my college classmate Katha Pollitt, celebrate something hugely important to women of my generation, the achievement of full female personhood through the ability to control reproduction. Our generation saw the one-two tools of reliable contraception and abortion as a safety net in the event of the rare, but possible, mishap. She writes about the revolution in technology and law of the 1960s and 1970s, which empowered her and my contemporaries.


It changed the world for women, and therefore men. It changed the American economy, with women in the professions and workforce; it changed American demographics, with women delaying pregnancies; it reduced teen pregnancies; it reduced shotgun marriages. 

It made them persons, fully human.

The letter by McDermott reveals that the abortion debate is simultaneously--maybe primarily--about gender roles. It is a continuation of the observations this blog made yesterday, that Donald Trump located and energized cultural backlash against feminism and a woke ethic of gender equality. 

In the traditional view of men, Trump (and Bill Clinton before him) are just doing what men do, and what powerful men can get away with. If Monica Lewinsky were a "good girl" she wouldn't have flashed her panties and settled into giving him blow jobs, and same with Paula Jones before her. If Stormy Daniels had said no, she wouldn't have had reluctant sex with Trump, so he wouldn't have been in the position of paying for her silence.

Men are men. Women who put out are tramps.

Columnist Pollitt and letter-writing McDermott both envision empowered womanhood. Pollitt sees empowerment in the ability to achieve personal and professional personhood. Pollitt and her peers operate at the highest levels of American civic and economic life. McDermott sees women as empowered in their roles as the moral gatekeeper, with the power to be good, to be careful, to navigate a world in which men will be men, but women have the power to say no.

In the mores and laws written in the urban, secular, HR-compliant world of coastal elites, the cultural battle is well won. Of course Pollitt is right, of course men have a duty to act with respect, of course sexual harassment is wrong, of course the sexes should be treated equally, because they are in fact equal.

In the traditional, faith-centered, world, away from HR departments and The New Yorker readers, there is a different assumption. Social tradition and the Bible tell the story: strong men lead and desire sex, and good girls say no until safely and respectfully married.

Democrats in their bubble under-estimate how many people there are who understand the world the way McDermott does, but those women vote as well as write letters to the editor. A majority of white women voted for Trump and not Hillary, and a greater majority of married white women did, and an even higher majority of married white evangelical Christian women did. 

This was all immediately after revealing the Access Hollywood recording. Trump: "I did try and fuck her. She was married. She's now got the big phony tits and everything."

Trump voters were shocked by the crudeness, but not by the reality of his behavior. They heard this then voted for him. Men are men.