Jobs Report: Good is bad.

The jobs report was surprisingly good, with 336,000 new jobs added to the economy.

That worries people.

It is counterintuitive, but good news in the economy frightens people, especially those who want the economy to be good. People are watching "the Fed," the Federal Reserve Bank decision makers who control the money supply and therefore the cost of borrowing money. 

In recent memory 10-year treasury yields were nearly zero. People have anchored that zero rate as a before point, an original position, before Biden. Now they are almost 4.79 and they have been on a steady climb.

People notice the level and the trend. Boomers who have accumulated money and are now living off interest may appreciate the change. Safe, liquid money fund investments now pay about 5%. Costs are inflating, but so is income -- a wash. But gasoline prices are in our face. A fill-up of 20 gallons at $5/gallon in Medford, Oregon yesterday afternoon is an even $100.  A hundred dollars feels like the purchase of a durable good -- a good toaster, a new kitchen faucet -- not a transitory consumable.

Most Americans are not retired and living off of investments. They are paying interest, not earning it. Some of them are hoping to buy homes. Home prices have stayed high. New homes are hard to site and expensive to build, so new supply is not coming on line in places where the jobs are. The housing crisis of 2008-2012 shrank the construction trades. Contractors went broke. Workers left the industry. Meanwhile, inflation hit the cost of materials. Industry professionals tell me that building residential housing in Southern Oregon would cost me a minimum of $250/square foot, and that is on top of the purchase of a development-ready lot. New housing is nowhere near "affordable" based on local incomes. 

For several years -- 2018-2020 -- mortgage rates were in the 3% range. People mentally anchored on that -- the good old days. Now rates are over twice that, hitting 8%. Home buyers face the double whammy: prices stayed high while financing prices grew.

Democrats' fueled the post-Covid recovery with easy money. It worked. The economy surged back. Inflation here is lower than in Europe, but Americans see what they see, higher prices. Democrats get the blame for inflation. Statistics show the overall rate of inflation is down.

A strong labor market means the Fed will likely keep raising rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is flat for this year. The SP500 is up 12% but that is entirely due to a half-dozen very large technology stocks. Unless one owned a disproportionate share of those giant companies, one fell behind. If one did, one feels lucky, a bullet dodged. There is not a broad-based stock market "wealth affect" making investors feeling comfortable about their retirement funds. This is another place of distress.

There is a bright spot. Workers, especially entry level and lesser-skilled people, are in demand and can readily find work if they seek it. That mood trickles up, so we see growing demand for pay raises and unionization. Farm owners have to scramble and pay up to get workers who will show up. $25/hour is the new wage paid to get work done in Southern Oregon vineyards.

The strong jobs report is a net good sign for the economy. Fed Chair Jerome Power promised generalized economic "pain" -- his word -- as necessary to end inflation. Instead, we are getting a soft landing. It turns out that some localized points of pain have emerged, and unluckily for the incumbent president, they come in the places people most notice prices and values: gasoline prices, interest rates, the value of their retirement savings, and from the point of view of employers, the price they have to pay to get work done.

Politically, Biden "owns" the economy, and he has labeled it Bidenomics. It reflects on Biden's core point of comparative value: governing competence. If the 2024 election is a referendum on the economy, it will be hard for Biden or any Democrat. But it won't be. Trump insists on being the center of attention, so it will be a referendum on Trump. That is the sweet spot for Democrats.

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Congressional dysfunction.

Congress chooses chaos. 

Gallup: 17% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.   

Congress' disfunction is glaringly apparent.  Depending on the issues at stake, somewhere between six and 20 House Republicans prefer to shut down the government rather than accept a spending bill that does not include major spending cuts to popular programs, changes to policy on the southern border, ending aid to Ukraine, and defunding of Department of Justice prosecutions of Trump -- actions which have no hope of passing the Senate. Their deeper goal is burn-it-down re-ordering of the federal government. This group made the Speaker's job impossible for John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and now Kevin McCarthy. 

Boehner

Ryan

McCarthy

McCarthy won the Speakership by making concessions to the most adamant half-dozen of his caucus. They demanded too much. Policies popular in deep red Districts like that of Matt Gaetz in the Florida panhandle are toxic in swing Districts held by Republicans. One of these would be in Oregon, the newly drawn 5th District, in which the winner, Lori Chevez-DeRemer, won by 2% in a district won by Biden. 

Chevez-DeRemer

Her District has a 5% Democratic edge. Nothing would be better for a Democratic challenger than for the GOP incumbent to be stuck defending both Trump and participation in a GOP majority that shut down the government, fought to cut Social Security, and tried to defund the Department of Justice. She is trying to avoid looking like one of the nihilists. She voted to retain McCarthy and she said she was "disappointed some members just voted to paralyze the House.”

Democrats could have bailed out McCarthy if a dozen or so of their members had voted to join the 200-plus Republicans who voted for McCarthy. Democrats did not. McCarthy isn't a compromise Speaker. He may be more "reasonable" than Jim Jordan or some other successor to McCarthy, but at key points McCarthy planted his flag alongside Trump, total war with Democrats, and chaos being better than governance. He spoke out against Trump in the aftermath of January 6, but then decided to build the House GOP around Trump. That validated and enabled Trump, who now eggs on the very people making McCarthy's job impossible.

Democrats would have validated McCarthy had they thrown him a lifeline. If Republicans are going to become even more extreme and dysfunctional, led by members representing the brightest of bright red Districts, let them, Democrats figure. They will lose their majority. 

Could House Democrats form a majority with a centrist coalition government? I could imagine this. It would be good politics for Democrats to tighten the southern border, something Republicans want and a growing number of Democrats, too. Democrats could never allow cuts to Social Security or Medicare, but a growing number of Democrats favor a tilt back toward budget discipline. Democrats cannot abandon their messaging on climate, but there is more drilling, fracking, and petroleum produced today, under Biden, than there was in the hey-day of the pre-Covid Trump administration. I could imagine that in exchange for some policy changes and sharing of committee chairmanships that a coalition government might make policy sense.

It would not, however, make political sense. Republicans who compromised with Democrats would face a primary fight. Democrats who conceded on core Democratic policies would face a primary fight, too. That 5th Congressional District became vulnerable to a Republican because the prior Democratic incumbent, a "Blue Dog" centrist who opposed Medicare negotiating lower prices, lost a contested primary to Jamie McCloud-Skinner, who represented a purer form of progressive Democratic thinking. She then lost the general election

I hear some Democrats credit Joe Manchin for his votes on judges, impeachment, health care, and infrastructure. He represents a mostly-rural, mostly-White, coal-producing state, that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. What more could Democrats ask for? They ask for more. He will get primaried if he runs for re-election.

We are unlikely to see a coalition House. Primary voters want what they want. I expect the House will find an unstable GOP-led majority, which will flirt with government shutdowns, aborted efforts to impeach Biden, uncertainty over whether we will support Ukraine, and very public infighting. The radical members of any GOP majority are incentivized to go on TV to share their dissatisfaction. Conservative media is incentivized to show GOP drama. People will see dysfunction. They might blame Biden, but I expect more of the blame to fall on the GOP in Congress

Then, as Democrats hope, people in the 50 or so competitive Congressional Districts will vote to give Democrats a big enough majority that they can govern again. 

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Trump as Superhero

     "Trump’s supporters . . . do not really hold him to the standards that human persons are held to. And that is because many of his supporters, like Trump himself, do not consider him to be a person — he is more like a primal force or superhero, more than a person, but less than a person, too."

Daniel P. McAdams, Professor of Psychology, Northwestern University

Trump's supporters imagine him as a comic book hero. Or an agent of God.

They aren't being ironic.

Barack Obama had a rock star vibe in the beginning. Reagan's supporters imagined him as a cowboy with a white hat. George Bush tried out looking like a fighter pilot and drew guffaws. Bill Clinton was a man -- just a man -- glib, charming, and a notorious and all-too carnal horn dog.

Trump is something more. Trump has his own iconography. 

There are many rational judgements and preferences that would explain why people might support Trump. People might like his judicial nominees, his views on borders, his views on Russia and Ukraine, his price supports for soybeans, his blood and soil nationalism, or the fact that he fights the people the voter dislikes. But that doesn't explain the blindness to his dishonesty and criminality. The simplest explanation is that Trump's strongest supporters are in a cult. They appear to have created a idol. A golden calf. They invested it -- him -- with magical power. Some have made him a comic book superhero. Others have made him sacred, a Christ-figure. But this Christ substitute is not meek nor does he consent to a fate of dying for others at the hands of Caesar or the Department of Justice.

Trump encourages and sponsors this idolatry. His official merchandise offers the images for sale. The images are noteworthy for the seriousness that Trump shows them and that his supporters display them.  His Truth Social website has images of Trump as as Rambo; Trump fearless atop a tank; Batman Trump; Trump Bat-signals; Trump as sword-wielding knight; Trump as sheriff; Trump as lion; Trump as Savior and partner with Jesus. 

These are recent images from Trump's Truth Social:

Trump is not the non-corporeal God of Abraham. He is the Greek gods of Homer or the magical people in the Marvel universe. He is larger than life. He makes his own rules. He is armed, sometimes armored. He represents strength and violence. He is also our protector, suffering for us. He promises a second coming.

As I wrote yesterday, I think the Trump era is unraveling under the weight of criminality and crazy. As events move toward criminal trials and primary elections Trump's statements on social media are getting more extreme, more erratic. They are aimed at judges, prosecutors, witnesses, and are likely to trigger judicial sanctions. Trump seems to welcome that. He does not want to consent to laws. They are irrelevant to him. Like the gods of Homer, he is above the law and constraints of the temporal world of mere mortals. They can fix fights, and so can he. 

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"God help us."

"God help us." That is good news.

Trump's longest-serving Chief of Staff, John Kelly, speaks up. 

It is late in the game in the "Era of Trump."

 

America is watching a groundswell of revisionism.

Many of Trump's closest associates are speaking out in condemnation of him. They are being praised as they slip back into the good graces of respectable people in America's enduring establishment. This establishment would include the leaders of America's great institutions in business, law, government, and learning, the book writers and book readers, lobbyists, the mainstream media -- in short, the people who run the country. Trump's enablers want to be on the side of "the normies," not the "crazies." 

MAGA people represent populist energy, but the country isn't run by those "forgotten men" of the working class. The country is run by people with education, status, and wealth. Populist crowds are frightening when they storm a Bastille or a Capitol, but crowds are led and manipulated and used by demagogues in concert with people with the enduring power. MAGA chanters, disrupters, and voters are pawns in the chess game. Trump, Fox, and conservative billionaire PACs used them masterfully, and they have worked together for eight years, but the Trump/Fox/billionaire team is unraveling. The billionaire funders are looking for an alternative to Trump. Trump is too crazy and unreliable for them. Trump is bad for business. Trump drew Fox into legal danger, and they are cleaning themselves up. Trump demands more loyalty from Fox than it is safe for them to give. Trump's enablers are returning to home base. I consider it an "early indicator." It is a sign that the Trump Era is disintegrating under its own weight of civil lawsuits, criminality and crazy. 

The quiet enablers on Trump's staff must notice what is happening, so they are becoming truth-tellers, not loyalists. The people who stayed too close for too long -- Mark Meadows, Rudolph Giuliani, Kenneth Chesbro, Jeffrey Clark -- may share the prison fate of Nixon's top aides Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Chuck Colson.  Trump's enablers are looking over the horizon, and over their shoulders.

Former Chief of Staff John Kelly upped his criticism of Trump. He was deeply offended by Trump's attitude toward the military and patriotic service. He saw Trump's blatant hypocrisy on issues. He saw Trump's "open contempt" for values Kelly considers sacred. He kept quiet in the moment. But this week he told CNN:

A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.

The time to have said that was four years ago. That would have displayed a soldier's courage. Saying it now is a soldier changing uniform after the tide of battle has turned. Kelly's silence gave Trump credibility, and that credibility persists. The MAGA crowd will pay no attention to Kelly. He deserves no medal.

The real importance of Kelly's comments come from being a signal about where we are in this Era of Trump. Kelly spoke up. The rats are leaving the ship. 

It may not feel like it, but it is late in the game for Trump. 

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Hitler succeeded Hindenburg, age 89, as head of state upon his death

A spectre is haunting Democrats -- the spectre of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Democratic strategist James Carville is saying Democrats desperately need a candidate other than Joe Biden.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg stood as an example of people who held on to a position too long and thereby let a political opponent to take their place. Carville is saying it on podcasts, in news shows, and most recently on Bill Maher's "Overtime." 

Carville said Biden is a weak candidate because he looks and acts feeble and everyone can see it. Democrats are holding our breaths, he said, waiting for the fatal gaffe or error that sinks his candidacy. Carville says the polls are unmistakable that Democrats want an alternative.

      "If we have somebody under 60 and ran against Trump, we’d get 55 percent.”

Maher 6-minute monologue

The swing voters who decide close elections are generally unengaged with politics and poorly informed. I analogize to my own lack of attention to NFL football. I watch the Super Bowl but know almost nothing about the teams until the day of the game, then I pick one to cheer for. I don't condemn unengaged voters. They are my fellow Americans and different people are interested in different things. 

Lightly-engaged voters act on the branding of the two major parties. Even supposedly-independent, un-affiliated voters have made a weak choice of which party is the better fit. Democrats vote for Democrats; Republicans vote for Republicans. Then, on the margin voters pick one of the two major-party candidates. Policy details are subsumed into the amorphous brand of each of them. In 2020 it was a choice between normal versus crazy. Biden represented a return to normal politics. Trump represented more high-drama. A majority of Americans were tired of the Trump show. That pretty much explains it. 

Republicans appear ready to nominate Trump in 2024. Since 2020 Trump got more crazy, more extreme, more wild in his tweets and accusations. He orchestrated a plot to overturn an election, was found by a jury to have sexually assaulted a woman, he committed business fraud, and he faces felony charges for crimes against the nation. Plus his closest aides say publicly that he is dangerous, dishonest, and utterly unfit for office. Trump is a flawed choice.

So any Democrat could beat Trump, right? Not quite. In a choice between a normal middle-of-the road competent Democrat versus the deeply flawed Trump, yes indeed. The Democrat wins and has down-ballot coattails because Republicans are stuck defending the indefensible. But Biden is different. Democrats who praise Biden for competent handling of the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, and for being right on Ukraine, and for reducing inflation are correct, but this is irrelevant. The lightly informed swing voter doesn't know that these bills passed with bi-partisan support and credit Biden, or that some Republicans are now taking credit for programs that they voted against. They don't follow the news any more than I follow who plays quarterback on the Super Bowl teams. Swing voters make a simple choice based on a simple narrative, and they see what they see: Dangerously feeble versus dangerously crazy. It's a bad choice that could go either way. 

The fact that so many Republicans appear to think that Trump isn't really crazy, just an outspoken hell-raiser and a victim of Democratic prosecutors, can make the poorly-informed think maybe Trump isn't thoroughly bad. But Biden is who he is. People can see him, reflect on grandparents or friends of the family as they age, and each of us have different experiences. Everyone has seen people age out and fail at some point. Anyone watching Biden will entertain some doubts. He is already marginal. We wonder and worry about what is ahead.

James Carville is right. Democrats are on the verge of nominating the one person who could lose to Trump. 

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Restoration of the Russian Empire

Manifest Destiny.

Russia is re-imagining itself. Think Big.

Vladimir Putin announced a new Russian holiday, the "Day of Reunification." It marks the re-integration of eastern Ukrainian districts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia into Russia.

Pravda

Russia has a tradition of being led by tyrants. These leaders were not celebrated for their compassion and humanity, but for their strength and ruthlessness. Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. Catherine the Great. Joseph Stalin. Now Vladimir Putin. 

Even in this era of Trump, Americans have a different expectation of leaders than do Russians. Power is divided here. We still give lip service to rule of law, and a majority of Americans believe Trump is pushing boundaries. Trump getting away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue is still understood as a troubling, ominous joke. Russians have a different sense of history and practice. Putin is part of a long history of willful, ruthless leadership on behalf of retaining power and achieving national greatness. In Russia troublemakers fall out of windows. Or get poisoned. Or their airplane gets shot down. 

Tony Farrell, a college classmate who spent his career as a brand manager and marketer of products on TV, made a point that is useful for Americans trying to understand Putin and Russian aspirations in Europe. When making a TV pitch, the marketing rule is to "Make no small promises." The product isn't merely good; it is stupendous. It is miraculous in how it stops leaks, cleans bathroom tile, restores memory, or offers the best, most delicious steaks ever sold. 

Americans hoping for a compromise settlement in a peace plan with Ukraine may get their wish, temporarily. There may be a cease fire. But there are ominous signs that this will settle nothing. Putin is not thinking small, simply trying to bring concentrations of native speakers of Russian into Russia. Putin referred to the breakup of the USSR as a great tragedy for Russia and mankind. Propagandists on Russian TV are now putting out new messages about Russia's intentions. The "no small promise" of Russia is restored greatness of Imperial Russia of 300 years ago. It goes beyond the territory of the USSR. That Imperial Russia includes the modern day countries of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Poland and Georgia. Four of those countries are now part of NATO.

Russia is dealing with some of the same dysfunctions that Americans see in rising suicide rates, low birthrates, alcoholism, drug use, declining life expectancy, and "deaths of despair." Russian state TV propagandist Sergey Mardan said, "Pointless existence is the worst existential horror. There are some nations whose existence is pointless. They have no purpose, they've lost it." But there is a new and growing national purpose for Russia, he said. Russia can be great again. "You finally realize what this [new holiday] is all about is the restoration of a Russian nation, the restoration of the Russian Empire!" 

This is not just some loudmouth crackpot. State TV is the voice of Russian leadership, putting a new idea out there. Not just great. Even greater.

In the 80 years since WWII, Americans have seen war as bad-but-necessary, and that sense of necessity has kept us at near-constant war somewhere. A different attitude toward conquest has been part of the human condition since the beginning of time. We search for glory. Humans respond to calls for it. Great leaders retain and grow power by stoking it. Hearts swell with pride at having a sense of purpose. Americans chanting "USA! USA!" at international sporting events are probably a harmless sublimation of that spirit. Americans carrying "Make America Great Again" flags inside the Capitol on January 6 is not harmless. Russia leaders are frustrated. The Russian economy is struggling. People are emigrating. An supposedly-easy war turned hard and grinding. Compromise may be more dangerous for Putin than would be an attempt at conquest. People want to believe they are part of a something great.

Make no small promise.

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Easy Sunday: Greater Medford Multicultural Fair

Question: "So what's wrong with normal regular America that we have to celebrate diverse people and cultures?"

Answer: Diverse people and cultures are America. 

E pluribus unum. 

The USA was founded as an idea, not a blood-and-soil ethnic people. The writers of the Constitution had no choice but to accept diversity as they understood it. The Protestants of New England with close ties to England had to join with the Quakers and German speakers of Pennsylvania and the Roman Catholics of Maryland. Their diversity was imperfect. They did not include indigenous people. They kicked the can down the road on the enslavement of Black Americans. They did not mention women. But the idea was there: We are a republic that joined diverse people in a single polity. 

We are experiencing a counter-revolution against globalism, modernism, the free movement of labor, and therefore diversity itself. This shows up as efforts to insist on the centrality of Americans of White European ethnicity in the story of the USA. In that understanding, non-conforming people are minor players in the real story of real Americans. That definition of the "real" America has required marginalization of Women, Blacks, Native Americans, Mormons, Jews, and people from outside White Northern Europe, including Greeks, Italians, Japanese, Chinese, and many others. It required marginalizing the Hispanics who predate annexation of the American Southwest and the ones who immigrated since. 

A metaphor facilitates that marginalization, the "melting pot." It defines those groups as proto-Americans who disappear as they become real ones when they melt. 

The Multicultural Fair makes an opposite point. They don't melt and disappear. They change that pot. America includes them. Their histories aren't a sideshow. They are American history. Black soul music, whether sung by a Black man or a White woman, is American. Middle Eastern Belly Dancing is American. Philippine, Japanese, Mexican, and Ukrainian music and dancing is American. Philippine, Hawaiian, Japanese, Mexican, and Peruvian food trucks are serving American food, right along with the ones selling hot dogs and cotton candy.

The event was not political, and yet it made an unsaid political statement by its very existence. We were seeing America. It was a good Saturday. Children ran around. Parents sampled food trucks. The rain stopped just in time.

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