Biden: Chairman of the Board. Or head coach.

Biden needs to learn from Vivek Ramaswamy.

Be his opposite. 

Ramaswamy is a caricature of Donald Trump. 

Trump presents himself as the indispensable hero. He told the GOP convention "I am your voice" and "Only I can fix it."  Vivek Ramaswamy is the young, over-eager, highly-caffeinated exaggerated version of Trump. He is even more full of himself than is Trump. On the debate stage he is the overly-confident know-it-all. He is articulate and whip-smart, but the more we see him the less we like him.

Biden isn't Ramaswamy. That's good. Biden should accept that reality. A great many Americans worry he is not fully credible as a CEO and party spokesman, especially one who starts a new four-year term beginning in 16 months. But he has a role where he is fully credible: Chairman of the Board. We have a template for that: Rupert Murdoch at Fox. No one doubted that he was in charge, even at age 92. People did not expect him to be at the office directly managing his media properties. When voters vote for president we are voting for the boss. A few highly-visible actions directed by the boss, e.g. firing Bill O'Reilly and Tucker Carlson or settling the Dominion lawsuit, made clear who the boss was.

Voters have another mental template for understanding Biden's presidency: The veteran head coach. No one thinks the head coach should be on the field blocking and tackling, and a head coach is not diminished by having an excellent quarterback or wide receiver. The coach is respected for managing a successful team of players with great skills and strong personalities. If they get out of control, Biden can fire them. Murdoch did. Coaches do.

My sense is that Biden is keeping the next generation of Democratic leaders at arms length out of fear that their prominence would reflect badly on him. That is a mistake, borne out of his trying to be a CEO and spokesman president. That role worked for Clinton, Obama, and Trump, and well-enough for the two less-articulate Bush presidents. It works poorly for Biden. So change the paradigm. 

Gavin Newsom is currently in the news looking self confident and presidential. Biden should draw him closer and enable his visibility, making clear he is part of Biden team. Claim him. Elevate him. Same with Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Cory Booker and a dozen others who are waiting on deck. Biden has people in his administration, including Janet Yellen at Treasury and Antony Blinken at State whom we don't see enough of.

The standard staging of presidential bill signings is the president at a desk, with onlookers. Those serve the purpose of displaying a president as either CEO or as Chairman. Keep those. 

Biden needs to change the structure of another form of presidential presentation, where we see the president standing up front, with the Vice President standing one step behind and one to the president's right.

Stop doing so much of those. Instead Biden might announce something and promptly call on subordinates to take the lectern. Give them substantial visibility to explain whatever is happening. Of course, they will mention Biden's oversight and direction. Other times the subordinates may take the stage first, do the presenting, and then Biden comes from off stage, does some scripted wrap up, praises the team, and then leaves. People already suspect that subordinates are propping up Biden. This is baked into our understanding -- and fear that Biden is hiding just how much staff does. Biden can get in front of this by acknowledging that of course he relies on staff. Great staff. A great team. It isn't something to hide. It is something to celebrate. Make it a positive, not a conspiracy.

Biden should take Ramaswamy's example as what to avoid. Don't be a know it all. Don't be a stage hog. The role does not play to Biden's strengths. Don't play to Trump's strength by going head to head with him over who is the most dominant star on stage. 

Instead manage stars. Be Bill Belichick. Or Greg Popovich. Or Phil Jackson. 

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Meanwhile, Venezuelan children are starving to death

President Biden just granted Temporary Protected Status to 472,000 Venezuelan amnesty-seekers.

Some Americans are uneasy about it -- so many people.  Is this really our problem?

Some people are furious about it. GOP candidates call it an invasion. Go back where you belong! 

Venezuelan asylum-seekers must cross the "Darian Gap," a roadless jungle area.

The long trip through the Gap:

New York Times

They walk and hitch their way to the U.S. border. 

From U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales

Finally, at a U.S. border, migrants make a final push, here through razor-wire to cross the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass, Texas.

NY Times

They claim amnesty under the treaties the U.S. has signed regarding the rights of entry of people facing violent danger at home. Processing facilities are overwhelmed:

Photo by U.S. Rep. Gonzales

People leave border towns and spread out across the U.S. New York Mayor Eric Adams says it has become a problem as migrants fill city sidewalks:

The U.S. has had sanctions in place against Venezuelan government and individuals for 17 years. The earliest sanctions imposed related to Venezuela’s lack of cooperation on anti-drug and counterterrorism efforts. The Obama Administration imposed targeted sanctions for human rights abuses, corruption, and antidemocratic actions. The Trump Administration expanded economic sanctions in response to the increasing authoritarianism of President Nicolás Maduro, in power since 2013. 

Venezuela has the world's greatest reserves of oil, more than Saudi Arabia's, at a total production cost of about $28/bbl. In an effort to make up the world's oil-supply gap amid sanctions against Russian oil, Biden made the controversial decision to allow Chevron to purchase Venezuelan oil. New oil sales barely scratch the surface of Venezuela's political and economic chaos. The New York Times documented widespread deaths of children from malnutrition. 

Children picking through garbage:

U.S. sanctions were intended to bring regime change in Venezuela but the authoritarian government of Nicolás Maduro retained power. The situation on the ground is civil chaos, characterized by hyperinflation, extreme poverty, armed gangs, police corruption, drug trafficking, homicides, and contract killings. Amnesty International reports that 98% of human rights violations and 92% of common crimes go unpunished. A police officer is killed every day. People are fleeing starvation and violence.

Venezuela is far away. We have first world problems. The story on TV this morning is that Taylor Swift will be attending the Jets-Chiefs football game. Big news! Her attendance is all over the web. She is causing ticket prices to soar.

Taylor Swift's whereabouts are a more pleasant story than starvation in a country far away. 

But Venezuela is in walking distance for desperate people attempting to keep their families alive. The U.S. is not an innocent bystander. We have been making, manipulating, and crushing governments in Latin America for over a century. Our sanctions targeted a government, but its primary victims are the Venezuelan people. They are escaping and going to many countries. We are one of them.

You make a mess, you clean up the mess. We have some responsibilities here.

Here is something to read about the situation they are fleeing:

https://www.icip.cat/perlapau/en/article/violence-corruption-and-organized-crime-in-venezuela/

https://www.icip.cat/perlapau/en/article/violence-corruption-and-organized-crime-in-venezuela/

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/venezuela-crisis

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Request of sane, old-school Republicans

Please speak up.


None of the candidates at the GOP debate last night dared to say the simplest, most obvious thing, that Trump and MAGA are a giant departure from the party of Reagan, either Bush, Dole, McCain, and Romney — the people my Republican friends happily voted for.

Your party left you.

I did a short video asking those old-school Republican readers if Donald Trump really represents them. If not, I urge them to speak up now, before Trump gets nominated. Surely the GOP can do better than Trump.

YouTube

GOP debate last night.

Nothing happened.

That was the big thing that happened. 

It was an opportunity lost, either to make a case against Trump or to distinguish oneself, but no.

I expect to see references to Shakespeare's Macbeth later today when I read the punditry about the debate. The "debate" had candidates strutting on a stage, soon to be heard no more, idiots full of sound and fury signifying nothing. The reference is so apt, except the candidates aren't idiots. They are capable people, earnest, but failing, in their ambitions to replace Trump. They have the impossible job of changing minds of people whose minds are made up. Too many people in the audiences they address have decided that Trump is a great man of courage, a hero, a successful leader, whose detractors are dishonest and illegitimate. A cook needs to break eggs to make an omelet, and they are happy Trump is an egg-breaker.

Only Chris Christie looked directly at the camera and addressed Trump. He did not criticize him for crimes against the Constitution and democracy, a point central to his fitness for office. Christie criticized Trump's campaign strategy and weaved in a schoolboy taunt.

You’re not here tonight, not because of polls, and not because of your indictments. You’re not here tonight, because you’re afraid of being on the stage and defending your record, You keep doing that. No one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore. We’re going to call you 'Donald Duck.'

The venue audience may have laughed, but if so the TV microphones did not pick it up. 

So what happened for those two hours? The situation felt familiar. It was like being at a bar near a boisterous group of people drinking heavily and well into an evening. Their table got loud and angry. People interrupted one another, talked over one another, each refusing to give up the floor. Much of it was unintelligible with three or four people shouting at once, trying to make their points. They bickered. Candidates came prepared with a highly misleading characterization of another's action or policy. Look what you did, a candidate would charge. No I didn't, the other would say, trying to explain amid multiple voices simultaneously accusing, defending, counter accusing.

There was no bar manager to tell them to quiet down. Fox hosts presumably could turn off microphones from interrupters, but did not.

Once again, Vivek Ramaswamy claimed his time and some of everyone else's, playing role of Mr. Let Me Explain Things To You Idiots. This time the other candidates realized that GOP audiences rewarded this behavior. They had learned this wasn't a policy debate. It was a shoving match, and the winner was whoever pushed himself to the front. 

Policy matters very little in this nomination race, but a split in opinion and policy has emerged. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy join Trump in wanting a quick end to the war in Ukraine by abandoning Ukraine and telling it to give up territory. Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Doug Burgum support Ukraine and oppose Russia, warning it is Ukraine being attacked today, Poland next.

Pundits are putting up stories this morning, drawing the same conclusion: Nothing last night changed the structure of the GOP nomination. Both Christie and Pence have been making the argument that the GOP should abandon Trump and return the GOP to a Reagan-style path of smaller government, commitment to democratic principles, respect for the law, and a strong national defense to protect democracies. They did not assert this at the debate, and they were at the ideal venue for it, the Reagan Library. 

They didn't do it because the GOP electorate has moved on. Readers of this blog who voted for Reagan, Dole, both Bush presidents, McCain, and Romney are now registered in a party that calls those people RINOS, and Trump calls them "enemies of the people." The party left you. Trump convinced a majority of the GOP electorate that it wants populist authoritarianism. Trump is the genuine article who will offer it. That is the GOP now.

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Joe Biden picked a side.

     "You’ve heard me say many times: Wall Street didn’t build this country. The middle class built this country. And unions built the middle class. That’s a fact. Let’s keep going. You deserve what you’ve earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you get paid now."

President Joe Biden joins a labor strike picket line

It is unprecedented. It is controversial.

It is Joe Biden at his most articulate, using body language.

The politics of this strike are complicated. Interests, values and cultural affinities move in multiple directions at cross purposes. Joe Biden cut the Gordian Knot. It is clean, simple direct: He stands with organized labor. 

There are issues and controversies:

*** the pros and cons of labor unions

*** the injury to the economy of this strike or any strike

*** the wage demands and whether they are fair and reasonable

*** the competitiveness of U.S. workers vs. foreign workers

*** electric vehicles vs. hybrids vs. internal combustion engines

*** union-friendly vs. right-to-work states

*** tax credits for EVs

*** concessions made by labor following the 2008 bailout of the auto industry

*** the non-union auto factory in Joe Manchin's West Virginia

*** whether EVs are really better for the environment

*** whether Green New Deal policies favor urban environmentalists over blue collar workers

Amid all these cross currents, Joe Biden stood with the UAW.

Many American voters consider unions unreasonable, anti-competitive, and generally bad. This has a partisan skew. The traditional GOP position, with its pro-business, pro-employer, free-market, freedom-to-contract orientation, opposes unions. Even that is complicated. Richard Nixon courted pro-Vietnam war hardhat-wearing union construction workers who were culturally offended by anti-Vietnam war protesters and counterculture hippies. Like Nixon and Reagan, Trump aligns himself with blue collar workers using patriotic symbols, even when opposing labor union strikes. Trump will visit a non-union shop and talk about electric vehicles being made in China.

Biden and Democrats are pushing conversion to electric vehicles as part of their climate agenda. The UAW considers that a threat, if not an outright betrayal. U.S. automakers are not retooling existing plants, but instead are opening non-union factories in right-to-work states and offshore. Senator Manchin, a Democrat who Biden cooperated with, demanded that the Inflation Reduction Act eliminate the $4,000 tax credit for purchasers of EVs made with union labor in the U.S. Biden's trademark success as a get-things-done dealmaking President required he give in to Manchin. 

Electric vehicles exacerbate the cultural divide. The prime EV customer is educated, coastal, and upscale. The children of the blue collar Americans of 1970s who shared Archie Bunker's scorn for the work habits of hippies now resent Silicon Valley techies in their Teslas for thriving so well in a workplace while they are struggling.

Still, Biden and Democrats are more pro-union than Republicans. Tim Scott said strikers should be fired. Nikki Haley complained:

 When you have a president that’s constantly saying, ‘Go union! Go union,’ this is what you get. The unions get emboldened, and then they start asking for things.

Those comments are pure gold for Biden. The criticism clarifies who stands where.

The Hill, which is becoming increasingly Republican, evidenced by this photo choice.

Labor unions retain a brand. They represent an idea of struggle to maintain middle class incomes against a tide of globalization and wage squeeze for American workers. Ford, GM, and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) are archetypes of big, self-interested corporations. They cry poor to workers but Ford pays its CEO $29 million last year. They cry for help from taxpayers when they are in trouble but then they move factories to Alabama and Mexico to lower what they pay those worker-taxpayers.

Biden is not pleasing everyone, but for a politician who wants to declare solidarity with working Americans, Biden was where he needed to be.

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Trump might win election in 2024.

If half of Americans choose Trump, then how dangerous can he be?

Dangerous.

Democracy has a suicide option. Democracy gives the public the power to elect charismatic fools and tyrants.

Republicans and Democrats each won about half the elections during my lifetime. I have had Republican presidents, senators, congressmen, state representatives. Often Republicans have slowed down or reversed what I thought were good policies, but the general trend has been good. 

The world is more just now than it was in the 1950s, the imagined MAGA golden age for America. Income inequality is greater than it was then, but everyone is better off, which is a consolation. Racial justice is much improved, full stop. The air and water are cleaner than they were when we celebrated the first Earth Day in 1970. When I was a Jackson County Commissioner in 1981-85, Republicans in the state legislature impeded efforts to stop lumber mills from cleaning up the air, and they won, and the air stayed dirtier longer than I wanted, but eventually a restless public demanded change. Republicans got outvoted and scrubbers got installed and the air is far better. I see the same pattern with national and state issues regarding auto exhaust pollution, waterway pollution, lead in gasoline, lead in paint, protecting salmon, and now dealing with CO2. Republicans oppose things, slow progress down, and the status quo stays in place, and then the public demands some change, legislators get replaced, and progress takes place. 

We saw this with expanding access to health care, too. Republicans fought Medicare. Then the public realized they loved it. Now Republican politicians like it. GOP legislators called the ACA "Obamacare" so they could campaign against it and its expanded access to Medicaid for the working poor. Then enough people realized it protected access to health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions -- including a lot of self-employed Republicans. Republican legislators kept on complaining about that awful "Obamacare," but they now support it without admitting it. It is unsteady progress, but progress. 

Losing elections is the price of domestic tranquility in a democracy. What I consider good policy many others consider error or waste. I analogize democracy to a wagon train on the Oregon Trail, with democratic institutions holding together both fast wagons and stragglers. Besides: If over half of my fellow countrymen prefer it, how bad could it be?  It isn't like people are going to choose to be led by a fool or a fascist authoritarian.

Over the weekend Trump posted late-night tweets, calling for all-cap DEATH for his former top military commander. He called on House Republicans to shut down the government to impede the government's prosecution of him. 

My high school teachers, WWII veterans, taught us about the nature of authoritarian fascism, and Trump's words sounded an alarm for me.

Yikes!

The safeguards to Democracy worked last time. The courts did their work. Most election administrators in the states played it straight, against the urging of partisan legislatures. The Justice Department and the other federal agencies are largely staffed by "career people." Trump has wised up. He said he knows that what stopped him last time were all those people loyal to their tasks and the laws, not to him. That will change first thing, he said.

Trump is charismatic and Joe Biden is old and inarticulate. Biden has qualities of stability but not qualities of showmanship. And there are inflation and gasoline prices, the government will be shut down for a while, the budget is in deficit, and the southern border situation is getting worse, not better. There are always problems and Biden is not good at projecting confident competence to solve them. Trump is good at creating the chaos he condemns.

Things fall apart. The center may not hold. Mere anarchy may be loosed.

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"The most flawed person."

We have warning. If this country elects Trump in 2024, we will have chosen it.

The warning comes from Trump's top appointees.

Milley

Gen. Mark Milley leaves the job as Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff telling Americans that Trump attempted to use the U.S. military to overturn the Constitution to retain office. 

Former White House Chief of Staff, retired Marine general John Kelly, spoke frankly about Trump:

The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.

Another former White House Chief of Staff, retired Marine general James Mattis said Trump was "more dangerous than anyone can imagine." 

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. . . We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. 

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was quoted calling Trump "a fucking moron." In Foreign Policy magazine he said:

It's really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn't even understand the concept for why we're talking about this. . . . Just sitting and trying to have a conversation as you and I are having just doesn't work.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said in a PBS interview last month: 

[Trump's] conduct here involved, trying to subvert and prevent the progress, the execution of probably the most important process and proceeding we have in our country, which is the peaceful transfer of power after an election.

And what's being alleged here is that he knew that he lost the election, he knew that the claims of a stolen election were false, and yet he decided he was going to try to stay in office by subverting that process, by putting out misinformation, but, more important, by putting out these false panels of electors and presenting them to Congress and trying to push the vice president to make these decisions to suppress the legitimate votes.

I mean, that was outrageous. 

The GOP electorate is undergoing a stampede in the direction of making Trump their nominee. Democrats cannot turn the herd. Only Republicans with national reputations can credibly warn their fellows. So far, Trump can pick them off and isolate them one at a time as they speak out. He calls them RINOs and enemies of the people: the Bush family, Liz Cheney, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and each of those former appointees. 

Mitt Romney called the silence of his fellow GOP senators cowardice and careerism. The incentive for ambitious Republicans is to be either a teammate of the winner, sharing the glory and power (Lindsay Graham and many fellow Republican senators and governors), or to be a successor to Trump (most of the presidential aspirants.) The incentive for conservative media is to be a cheerleader retaining the loyal market segment of the GOP base.

I believe there are still wise people within the GOP who understand Trump's danger. Some don't want to get involved. Some are scared off by what happened to Liz Cheney. Some are rivals of one another. They hedge their criticism of Trump, apparently hoping something stops him, perhaps the judicial system or inevitable mortality. Meanwhile they publicly condemn that judicial system and praise Trump's vitality. The stampede continues. 

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Easy Sunday: Don't normalize corruption.

Call it "hospitality." (Justice Clarence Thomas.)

Call it "hiring a wife." (Senator Bob Menendez.)

Provide hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of exotic travel for Thomas. Provide cash to Menendez.

Buy a home for Thomas' mother. Buy gold bars for Menendez's wife.

Don't talk about or report the travel and home purchase gifts. Hide the gold and cash gifts in a closet.

Offer congenial friendship, conversation, and eye-to-eye decision-making with that benefactor who has cases in front of the Court. Offer friendship, conversation, and eye-to-eye decision-making with that generous benefactor who has matters in front of the Senate.

It looks bad because it is bad. 

Republicans are defending and excusing Thomas. They have Thomas' back and he isn't resigning. That disappoints me.

This is a test for Democrats. Democrats shouldn't defend and excuse Menendez. I hope they don't pivot to attack the prosecution and call it "weaponized" for investigating and prosecuting crime by one of their own. Be better. Please be better.

Former Republican U.S. Rep Joe Walsh tweeted:  

     So a Democratic Senator is indicted on serious charges, and no Democrats attacking the Justice Department, no Democrats attacking the prosecutors, no Democrats calling for an investigation of the prosecution, and no Democrats calling to defund the Justice Department.

     Weird, huh?

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The Electric Car Vibe

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
              Attributed to Sigmund Freud

Words, objects, actions have cultural meanings and associations that are both literal and symbolic. Learning those is what makes us linguistically and culturally competent.

An electric vehicle is just a vehicle, but like cigars, they have "baggage." Ten years ago a Tesla in the garage signified a prosperous, highly-educated, modern, early-adopter owner.  The car represented virtue. There were no tailpipe emissions, they didn't use petroleum fuel, they were more crash-worthy, and they came loaded with accident-avoidance technology. Plus they were sleek and cool. The cultural meaning of the Tesla brand has since muddled. Elon Musk's controversial purchase and re-direction of Twitter, now X, moved his personal brand from "innovator wunderkind genius" into an "overly-entitled and willful bad-boy weirdo genius," and he has dragged Tesla along.

But Teslas, and EVs generally, still represent modern luxury.

Tesla pickup truck

Democrats back electric vehicles as part of their green energy climate-saving agenda. The idea-baggage of electric cars is that they are climate-virtuous, but the reality is more complex. They can be powered by electricity generated by renewable energy sources. The Pacific Northwest has a great deal of hydropower, which has its own problems for rivers and salmon, but they are carbon free. Good. In some parts of the country electricity is mostly generated by fossil fuels including coal -- not so good --  but that is changing. Good, except in the minds of people from coal-producing states. 

Political opponents of electric cars -- a group that overlaps Republicans, people representing fossil-fuel producing states, and people culturally opposed to the high-tech elitist liberal baggage vibe of electric cars -- point out the non-virtuous sourcing of materials in the battery. For them, electric cars are another iteration of liberal hypocrisy, with liberals pretending they are the good guys while people toil in dangerous misery mining rare earth metals in Africa and arch-rival China. 

Electric cars have become center stage in politics due to the United Auto Workers strike. The primary issue is wages, but a subtext of the strike is that that legacy American auto manufacturers with union workforces have been slow to adopt electric car technology and that electric cars have fewer parts and will employ fewer people to assemble them. President Biden is famously pro-union, but Trump saw an opening that combined the specifics of the UAW labor action with the partisan sorting and cultural baggage of EVs. This pits climate-protecting Democrats against down-home blue collar working people who don't think there is anything wrong with the climate or with their gasoline and diesel vehicles -- except that liberals have raised the price of gasoline too high by their anti-drilling policies. 

Teslas are assembled in a non-union factory in Fremont, California and workers there are paid substantially less than the current UAW employees. Teslas and electric cars represent a threat to the UAW. Trump announced a trip to support the UAW workers. Biden scrambled and scheduled a visit to come the day before Trump's. Biden will likely enjoy the public support of the union leadership. Trump may get the support of the members.

Trump just put up a radio ad that positions him as pro-worker and anti EV:

"They're American auto workers. They helped build our country and keep us on the move. We've always been able to count on them in times of war, peace, prosperity, and tough times. Yet all they've every wanted is to compete fairly worldwide, and get their fair share of the American dream. Donald Trump calls them great Americans, and has always had their backs, from tax cuts for their families to playing hardball with China. Biden? He's turned his back on the auto workers by cutting a deal that uses American tax dollars to fund China's electric car business. That's a stake in the heart for American auto workers, and they can count on President Trump to change that."

The cultural meaning of electric vehicles continues the conversation between myself and Herb Rothschild in the past two days of posts. I have argued that Democrats can be "right on climate" but wrong on the politics getting votes from working-class Americans. Democratic policies to reduce CO2 risk being read as elitist and hostile to working people. Trump is overtly pushing that message. Democrats need policies and messages that demonstrate that green energy is made in America by American workers. 

I have seen ads of American workers installing solar panels and wind turbines. I have seen ads of well dressed professionals in shiny cars enjoying the luxury and quiet of an EV. I have not yet seen ads for electric vehicles that show blue collar men in rough clothes driving home from a productive day of work in an EV, but I hope to, and soon. 

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Steadfast for principle

Yesterday's post advised Democrats to do what I thought was prudent on the issue of climate. 

A reader disagreed.

Today's post is best read in conjunction with my post yesterday. 

Yesterday's post

I wrote that Democratic policy on abortion, emphasizing a woman's freedom and choice, is politically successful. I analogized to the climate issue, and suggested that successful policies to address CO2 levels would need to increase choices. Democrats' climate policies and messages, I wrote, should emphasize improved technologies in green energy, not prohibitions and mandates, which would backfire. I see progress in a democracy as a series of oscillations between advances and backlash in the public mood. Political winners seize opportunities but over-reach, empowering their opposition. My work in politics in my young adulthood led me to be wary of initiatives that gain popular support, but lose it. I was warning Democrats not to do what many red-state legislatures are doing now, banning abortion and creating backlash that is costing them elections they were predicted to win.

Amazon

Herb Rothschild is a decade older than I am. In his young adulthood he was active in the struggle for Black civil rights in Louisiana. Throughout his lifetime he has been active in social movements on race, peace, economic justice and the environment. He has long been among those pushing the edges of possibility.

Fair criticism by Herb Rothschild

Your reasoning throughout today's blog is terribly flawed, Peter.

Let's start with the one about trans people. "Male-to-female trans athletes and trans people in traditional gendered spaces are another instance of forced interaction. It isn't your own thing. It is now our thing. This compulsory interaction creates political pushback and Republicans are exploiting it." I'll ignore the matter of athletic competition, which is a vexed question, and focus on other interactions. I remember a student from Tennessee saying in one of my college classes (1959, it was), "It's my choice not to sit by Negro students." I find the parallel apt. What are trans people supposed to do when cis people don't want to be next to them in, say, an airport bathroom? We're talking about public spaces here, Peter, and who gets to say who can be in them. Public policy, not private choice, must govern this matter.

As far as pronouns, you simply lost your thread of thought. No one is forced to call a non-binary person "they" any more than white Southerners were forced to call Black people Mr. and Ms. It is considerate, but no one made it compulsory. Gradually, change for the better occurred.

As for vaccinations, you at least acknowledged that this is not a mere personal choice. Actually, no state government made COVID vaccinations mandatory. The armed services did so, but that was neither Democratic nor Republican. But states do make vaccinations mandatory for public school children, with every state allowing exemptions for medical and religious reasons and some states (like Oregon) allowing exemptions for philosophic reasons, which in my view is a mistake. Vaccinations are a matter of public health and thus, to some extent, must be a matter of public policy, not private choice. Surely you can understand that, Peter.

When you write about climate change, a subject on which your good sense fails you time and again, you are wrong in several ways. First, I see no policies being enacted or proposed that compel people to change their ways. There is a marked distinction between declaring that by such-and-such a year all cars sold in California must be electric (a proper policy choice) and telling people with gas-fueled cars that they must get rid of them and buy an electric car (who is doing that, Peter?). The same difference holds for mandating that all homes built in Ashland starting in such-and-such a year must have heat pumps and telling current homeowners that they must install heat pumps. We've repeatedly enacted such policies. For example, we required car manufacturers to install catalytic converters in all cars beginning in a certain year, but we didn't require owners of cars without them to retrofit their cars.

As for "shaming" people about their personal choices on matters such as food choices, I'm not sure whom you're faulting here. I don't know of any Democratic politicians filing bills to ban meat. I think you're just expressing your usual irritability toward "progressive Democrats." But leaving aside the loaded term "shaming," why shouldn't people advocate for what they think are good choices? That's how change happens. It happened regarding wearing furs. No law banned that choice, but it has become increasingly socially unacceptable. Good!.

Returning to your remarks on climate policy, I reiterate criticisms I've expressed before on this topic. First, you are wrong that promoting green policies is politically unpopular. Two, even if it were, the threat of global warming is so dire that if Democrats abandoned their position on addressing the threat through public policy, it really wouldn't matter much if they lost the White House.

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Choice. It's a winning idea.

Democrats are the "choice" party.

They should be consistent. Choice on climate.

Democrats are for choice on issues of sex, gender, and reproduction. Let people do their own thing. It's nobody's business but one's own.

More problematic is the trans and gender issue. Standard Democratic policy supports gender choice, but third parties get  involved. "My pronouns are. . ." is not about what a person calls oneself. The words are instructions to others what words they are supposed to use, even when it seems to them unintuitive and inaccurate. Male-to-female trans athletes and trans people in traditional gendered spaces are another instance of forced interaction. It isn't your own thing. It is now our thing. This compulsory interaction creates political pushback and Republicans are exploiting it.

There was a lesson there for Democrats. The values and norms of educated, urban and suburban, diversity-accepting people -- the new heart of the Democratic Party -- can enjoy acceptance so long as they don't rub too hard against people who make other personal choices. 

Democrats did not analogize from abortion choice to Covid-vaccination choice. There were good arguments that the issues were fundamentally different. After all, at first at least, vaccinations appeared to reduce transmission to others, not just the severity of the disease to oneself. Democratic governors were feeling their way amid emerging information. But when that presumption appeared not to be true, and vaccinated people do sometimes transmit the disease, and vaccinations were about personal safety, Democrats were slow to adjust. Democrats looked to have switched roles with the abortion-banning right and became the choice-denying busybody. That hurt them politically.

The Democratic climate agenda risks continuing the pattern of failing to read the room on choice and compulsion. Commercial feedlot beef and hog farming may well be an environmental and climate disaster -- I think it is -- but people who eat meat object to being shamed for their food choices. People who have investments in natural gas cookstoves or home heating systems don't welcome criticism of their choices or having progressive cities' governments ban them. A mere decade ago serious cooks removed electric stoves to switch to gas, the supposedly superior cooking technology among the cognoscenti. The reverse in polarity requires a fast adjustment in attitude. The overwhelming majority of Americans have internal combustion engines in their vehicles. They fully expect to drive them for several hundred thousand miles -- or to sell them to a succession of future buyers who will continue to drive them that long. Electric vehicles are expensive, and refueling is still a problem that makes them impractical for many, including people who need to haul things or pull trailers. Green New Deal policies and messages against fossil fuels strike many of my neighbors as ideology trumping practicality. Few people object to electric cars, per se, either for themselves or others. They fear progressive ideologues will take away their choice to buy what makes sense for themselves.

Democratic climate activists may well be exactly right on the science on natural gas, on fossil fuels, and electric vehicles. I suspect they are. But they will succeed in electing Trump and a Congress sworn to unwind everything Biden did and that climate activists want if their policies are about prohibitions and limitations of choice. Their policies and messaging need to be about creating real-life affordable alternatives. Americans will embrace greener energy when it is approximately as reliable, inexpensive, and convenient as are fossil fuels. And then it won't take government mandates. The solution to a greener America is largely technological. Democrats are the progressive party. They need to express their confidence in progress. 

If Democrats try to take away choices, or force people to make ones that are inconvenient and more expensive, they will have the same result as GOP legislatures who try to end abortion choice. They will elect their opposition.

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