A giant, fantastic change of mood

"There's a kind of hush --- all over the world tonight
All over the world, you can hear the sounds of lovers in love
You know what I mean."
        "There's a kind of Hush" The New Vaudeville Band 1967. A Herman's Hermits hit in 1968.

The way Herman's Hermits sang it, they emphasized the word "hush" and then paused for a beat before moving on. 

The half-second of silence made the song special. We heard the hush. It made the point that something big was happening -- something too big for words. 

If there is a word in English for this moment in politics for Democrats, I don't know it. I am imagining some multi-syllable foreign word, something equivalent to "schadenfreude," but not schadenfreude. The word would express the overwhelming feeling of relief, and the joy and hope that comes after a prolonged feeling of dread. Biden dropped out of the race. Whew. Double-whew. 

A majority of Democrats were telling pollsters that they thought Biden should not be running for re-election. It was a forbidden thought. A taboo to say it aloud publicly, because that was what Fox News was saying. Democrats whispered it. We were part of a team whose leader was in decline and maybe unfit, or nearly so. We were on a train going in the wrong direction, or a ship sailing toward an iceberg. 

The situation was grim and worrisome, but I did not yet feel full-on doom. There was hope. Biden might be good-enough. Not good, but certainly better than Trump, who was a dangerous criminal who plotted to overthrow an election to stay in power. Biden didn't need to be great. He just needed to be better.

Then the debate. 

There was no hiding or sugar-coating the situation. There is a word for what we felt: dread. We were doomed. We were on death row. The dread lingered on for three weeks. But then Biden's announcement. The governor called the warden and said it was all a mistake. 

The word "relief" doesn't quite do it, because relief doesn't include the feeling of escape combined with joy and combined with renewed hope for the future. 

The word I am looking for was done musically by Peter Tchaikovsky, in the ending moments of the 1812 Overture. Napoleon was at the gates of Russia. It was doomed, and yet against all odds and expectations, it survived!  Relief! Joy! We hear cannons boom. Huge carillon bells fill the air. 

 Da-da-da-da-dit-da-daah. BOOM! Da-da-da-da-dit-da-daah.

There is sound in that magical hush. Something special is happening in the hearts of America's Democrats. In that hush we hear carillon bells ringing and filling the air. Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty we are free at last.

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Can Kamala Harris win election running as a California progessive?

I hope Kamala Harris positions herself as a  centrist Democrat.

I hope she orients herself to winning votes in purple Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Doing what is popular requires that she disappoint some people.

I received an excellent comment posted to the substack version of this blog. (Substack is the place where people who get this blog primarily by e-mail comment.) Herb Rothschild is a retired professor and lifelong activist for peace, the environment, and racial justice. He wrote:

[Y]ou say, "The Clinton-Obama-Sanders-Elizabeth Warren style of Democrats represent the economic and cultural leadership of socially liberal college graduates." I can't understand that grouping, It was Sanders and Warren and others who pushed hard to return the Democrats to the New Deal commitment to economic equity, proper taxation, and corporate and financial regulation, which the Clintons and Obama had rejected.

Biden did not present himself during the 2020 campaign as nearly committed to the New Deal legacy as his main challengers, Sanders and Warren. He presented himself as the "centrist" candidate. And you were keen for him exactly for that reason, since you have a knee-jerk antipathy to the progressive wing of the party. . . . 

You have to be more careful in your description of alignments within the Democratic Party over time.

Herb Rothschild is right about my wariness about the progressive agenda as presented by Sanders and the leadership of national advocacy groups in the Democratic coalition. I want good policies to be enacted. That means that they need to be popular.

Bernie Sanders insisted on branding his policies "Democratic Socialism." He gets points for courage in his effort to de-stigmatize the word "Socialism," but he sabotages his agenda. He failed to sell it to America. He is from Vermont, where "Socialism" sounded OK. He had blue-state blindness. 

Biden is not a persuasive communicator, narrating to Americans the value of his policies. That void was filled by younger, more aggressive, more articulate spokespeople representing policy institutions in the Democratic coalition. We see them on MSNBC and read them in the mainstream news and in serious political magazines. They defined the Democratic brand. They have their legitimate causes and they believe they are representing progress and virtue. But advocacy group positions are not constrained by the need for getting elected. Their job is to push the boundaries of reasonable policy, not build a majority. The result is that voters still suspect that Democrats want to defund the police, when, in fact, Biden has the opposite view. It is why voters think that Democrats have stopped most drilling for oil in the U.S., when in fact under Biden we are producing more oil than ever. It is why voters suspect that Biden is perfectly happy to sacrifice objective merit in appointments to meet DEI objectives, when, in fact there is no shortage of highly qualified candidates available for him to appoint to meet Biden's reasonable objective of a government that "looks like America." Voter see a caricature of Democrats.

The 2024 election will not be determined by issues of jobs and taxes and income equality. Republicans will see to that. It will be decided on wedge issues that Trump has made the centerpiece of his brand. Trans athletes. Woke renaming of California schools. De-criminalizing illegal immigration. Late-term abortions. Electric vehicle requirements. Ending private health insurance in favor of universal coverage. High gasoline taxes. 

Kamala Harris has a history, one that made sense in a universe of California politics and a run for president in 2019 as a progressive hoping to be Bernie-lite. She was a blue state senator trying to appeal to Democratic activists and donors. Republicans are painting her as a woke, San Francisco, extremist zealot.

Harris needs to do something dramatic to change the story. She needs to disappoint the most forward and aggressive people in the progressive advocacy groups. (Very possibly Herb Rothschild, too.) Their complaints will be a feature, not a bug. The complaints would give her credibility that she is in fact a centrist looking to reduce partisan drama. She could win as a calm-the-waters centrist.

The alternative is to please the economic and cultural progressives and stake her claim to being a change-agent because it represents a better, more just, environmentally sensitive America. She will be aided in that effort by the Trump campaign which will say that that is exactly what she is trying to do. She will lose the battleground states plus some others. Trump will win. The progressive progress of the past four years will be reversed. 

A Democrat who expects to be elected president needs to voice policies that are popular with the American people. High gasoline prices may well be good for the climate, but voters don't like them. Trans athletes breaking records in women's events is not popular. Late term abortions are not popular. Mass illegal immigration is not popular. 

In a democracy, it isn't just OK to do what is popular. It is necessary.

[Note: Here is the full text of Herb Rothschild's comment.]

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Defining Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris must define herself soon. 

Meanwhile, Republicans are busy trying to define her.

Is she is a New Deal Democrat, in the mold of FDR and the Biden who ran for president in 2020? 

Or, is she a "New Democrat" in the Clinton-Obama mold, which is how Biden governed once in office?

Kamala Harris is female and of mixed race. For better or worse, her identity is part of her brand. Republicans are already at work making those a negative, defining Harris as a mediocre, unqualified, whore. They say she is not merely unqualified to be president; she is ineligible to be president. JD Vance reprised the "birther" attack, saying that even though she was born in an Oakland hospital, she isn't really a natural born citizen because her mother and father were both immigrants studying for the Ph.D. degrees at Berkeley, and not U.S. citizens.  Republican officeholders and media call her a "DEI hire" -- code for unqualified and unfairly promoted -- chosen because of her sex and race. The "whore" attack references her long and well-known former relationship with California politician Willie Brown. Trump merchandise calls Harris a "HO." 

Solid performances by Harris can blunt those attacks. Vance understands that they sound misogynist and racist and have the potential to backfire among voters Republicans want to attract. Former Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy called that line of attack "totally stupid and dumb." Vance is attempting to parry the racism charge by saying that Democrats think everything is racist, even harmless comments, so he will drink some Mountain Dew to prove the charge of racism doesn't bother him.

In 2020 Biden projected a "retro" Democrat in the New Deal style of Democrat. He was the alternative to the dozen-plus Democratic candidates who were either Bernie Sanders or candidates crowding each other leftward to be nearly-Sanders or Sanders-lite. Biden won the 2020 Democratic primary because there was a split between Democratic voters and Democratic thought leaders and policy leaders. Voters prefer the New Deal Democratic style. Democratic policy and branding is shaped by the activist members of the "New Democrats," primarily people in the advocacy groups in the Democratic coalition of environmentalists, reproductive rights advocates, racial justice advocates, gay and trans rights advocates, and similar groups. The Clinton-Obama-Sanders-Elizabeth Warren style of Democrats represent the economic and cultural leadership of socially liberal college graduates. They usually live in coastal cities or in college towns. Their work integrates them into the national and global economy by moving around data and ideas. They work in offices. They are succeeding in this economy.

Biden's 2020 campaign spoke repeatedly to a different group of people, often sharing his memory of his father, a working man who lost his job. A job gives a working man respect, Biden says. It lets a man provide for his family. It isn't about self-actualization. It is about making a living to pay bills. Many of those jobs take place outdoors. People get hot, dusty, wet, and dirty. The best of those jobs are "union jobs," Many of these jobs are highly skilled, but the knowledge is gained on the job, not in college. These are the jobs of old-style New Deal Democrats.

The Democratic brand is shaped by the liberal advocacy groups, but a majority of Democratic voters rejected them in 2020. Some of the policy goals of the advocacy groups are irrelevant to the lives of working people. Some are too "out there," too forward to be popular, at least now, and they are off-putting. These include banning natural gas heating and cookstoves in new construction; cities not allowing new gasoline stations; unenforced borders with hundreds of thousands of amnesty claimants gaming the system; trans athletes demolishing records in women and girls' athletics; late stage abortions; tampons in elementary school boys' bathrooms; DEI as a central mission of universities, and hard and soft quotas on diversity hiring. They become wedge issues that peel working class Americans out of the Democratic Party. 

Harris has a tightrope to walk. The presence of Jill Stein, Cornell West and RFK mean that she cannot openly oppose virtuous-but-still-unpopular liberal causes, but she endorses them at her peril. Biden walked the tightrope by emphasizing jobs -- American jobs for working people in heartland areas. Urban liberals don't insist that those chip factories be built in their already-crowded cities.  

The other great unifier for Kamala Harris is Trump. Trump has openly and proudly made enemies. Somewhere between 55% and 60% of Americans loath Trump. Kamala Harris wasn't well-known. A unknown, unspecified generic Democrat decisively beats Trump in polls. Harris cannot remain generic. She is a real person who will draw opposition based on some element of her looks, her manner, her laugh, or her policies. 

But if she appears both reasonable and competent she will match up very well against Trump. There is widespread public sentiment favoring a reasonable and competent alternative to Trump. It seems like a small thing to ask.

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Bringing manufacturing jobs back to the USA

National security -- both econmic and military --  requires that the U.S. have a world-class domestic computer chip industry.

Trump talked about it, but nothing got done. Biden got it started, with the "CHIPS" Act. Chip factories are being built right now all over the U.S., especially in red states and rural areas.

JD Vance gave it a name at the Republican convention: "workerism." 

College classmate Jim Stodder shares an economist's perspective on industrial policy. He teaches international economics and securities regulation at Boston University, with recent research on how carbon taxes and rebates can be both income equalizing and green. During and after college he knocked around as a roughneck in the oil fields. Then he returned to formal studies and received a Ph.D. from Yale in economics. His website: www.jimstodder.com

Jim Stodder: recent

Stodder at age 18

Guest Post by Jim Stodder

JD VANCE’S “WORKERISM”

A few days ago, I had lunch with old (liberal) classmates. We discussed Republicans inviting the Teamster Prez to their convention, and JD Vance's sympathy for the “working man, union and non-union alike". The consensus among my classmates was that this is mood music -- to accompany the picking of workers' pockets.

I’m liberal too, but also an economist. So let me explain why this new Republican “workerism” is more than that, but still has me worried.

The theory of Comparative Advantage was born in England 200 years ago in a fierce debate: the landed gentry (and their peasants), who hated cheap grain from America vs. the factory owners (and their workers), who loved cheaper bread and porridge.

The industrial interests won, and Comparative Advantage became gospel for a new subject called “economics”. It argued that every nation benefits by specializing in what it’s relatively good at, not just what it’s the absolute best at – which is usually nothing. That’s how division of labor usually works with people. Good thing, since otherwise most of us wouldn’t have a job in the first place.

Comparative Advantage was mostly correct up to the late 20th century, and highly beneficial for the poorer countries – with fastest growth going to those most open to trade, like China, Korea, India, Turkey, and Chile. But it also led to falling real wages within rich countries, and the rise of an “anti-globalist” right in the working and middle classes of the West.

Increasing inequality within the rich countries does not disprove Comparative Advantage. Its claim was that trade benefits the country – but not everyone in that country. The pro-trade consensus among liberals, therefore, was for free trade plus redistribution, so benefits can be shared.

But the late 20th century brought something to invalidate this theory. Comparative Advantage assumes – realistically, until recently – "constant (or diminishing) returns to scale”. This means that doubling your productive inputs gets you a doubling (or less) of your output.

But some newer technologies lead to increasing returns to scale, so doubling your inputs more than doubles your output. That means the biggest fish get bigger and swallow the smaller ones. So those smaller fish, the less productive countries, can do better by cutting trade or imposing tariffs on stronger ones, so they can get bigger.

Increasing returns can still lead to mutually improving trade if it's just product by product. Germany sells us BMWs, we sell them Teslas, and everybody’s happy.

But the more important form of increasing return is industry-wide, where competing firms within a network build each other up with overlapping webs of talent, suppliers, and customers, each one increasing the value of the network to all the others – positive network effects or PNEs. PNEs are why Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and NYC each dominate its key industry of software, movies, and finance. They are also why both Trump and Biden wanted Tariffs on Chinese EVs, no dual-use chips to China, and restrictions on AI.

PNEs kick in with the growth of new industries, so increasing returns last a while. But new tech like AI, robotics, bioengineering, precision medicine, MOOCS, and telecommunications make network effects not just more important, but longer lasting, likely to persist over many decades.

Like Verizon says, it’s all about the network. Imagine you’re choosing cell phones. One is crystal clear, but only connects you to two people. The other has static and cuts-out, but it’s connected to everyone else in the world. It’s obvious which one you buy.

Paul Krugman is an economist who writes about PNEs in international trade. He sees that they kill most of the old liberal arguments against tariffs. He's forced back onto non-economic arguments that tariffs aren’t nice – they cause retaliation!

Tariffs on China and not selling it dual-use chips can help build our networked industries, but they also have a military dimension. For JD Vance (with Republican Senators Hawley, Cotton, and Rubio) and their "working man" military-industrialism, that’s just fine. They hope to win over workers in protected industries, stress America First (forget Ukraine), increase military spending, and promote traditional masculinity. Never mind that women and gays also work in those industries.

A lot's baked into the technology but policy responses are not. There was talk with Joe Biden (and John McCain!) about an “Alliance of Democracies” – NATO writ large. We should stress the economics of PNEs as well as the military-diplomatic benefits. We can invite less-than-democratic countries and even our adversaries on a conditional basis, subject to monitoring. That way we can increase the power of a network and spread its benefits more widely.

A PNE can be beneficial for everyone since output is more valuable inside than out. It’s a “positive sum” game where cooperation can be rewarded. That same added value, however, can also be sucked off by a network center like Amazon, Walmart. or Uber, leaving their sub-partners with just a tad more than they could earn outside.

That’s what "America First" Republicans want. Keep those networks for U.S. companies. Where foreign partners are necessary, squeeze those network gains out of them, so they go mostly to U.S. companies. Plus, a bit more for their workers.

JD Vance and his new “Pro-Labor” Republicans are right that some trade protectionism makes sense for the US in networked industries. But they are wrong to think those networks can be kept for the US alone, or that foreign partners, if needed, should pay a tariff penalty.

These new Republicans are young enough to see the world has changed. What they don’t see is that America is strong because we have natural allies and citizens from every country in the world. To make those networks work, we have to know when to compete and when to cooperate. Republicans like JD Vance can see the first part are blind to that second part.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your emai go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.] are blind to that second part.

 

A simple choice

Biden departs. Harris enters. Trump remains.

The cast has changed. Who plays what role in the new drama depends on what the new drama is about.

Until yesterday, Republicans had a view of the election. Trump was the bold man who was trying to save a country in decline, and who was unfairly set-upon by the deep state and radical woke cultural elites. The alternative was a frail, senile, corrupt puppet of those dark forces. Trump was the hero of the story. Biden was the fool, a tool of Knaves.

Democrats had a contrary view, expressed by Ana Navarro on ABC's The View. "The choice . . . is between a good, frail, old man, surrounded by a steady, experienced team, or a crazy, loco, old man surrounded by a bunch of criminals and hooligans.” Biden was the wise hero; Trump was the narcissistic sociopath.

Yesterday the matchup changed. Trump decided to stay in character. For three or four days after the assassination attempt Trump's campaign hinted that the near-death experience turned him into a kinder, gentler unifier. Midway into the convention speech he went back to type. He wrote yesterday:

There are more Truth Social posts like these this morning. Trump didn't change.

Republicans are trying to define Kamala Harris. Trump complains that she has a weird laugh and that she is "crazy."  Another tack is to sexualize her. Flags and bumper strips call her a "Ho," i.e. whore. (A Trump-supporting local Republican wrote a comment for publication saying he had "wet dreams" about Harris and that "I wish that she'd give me a BJ.") A third approach is to attack her legitimacy by challenging her merit, saying she was chosen to meet a DEI diversity quota.  

Who is Kamala Harris? She is 59; Trump is 78. Harris could emphasize relative youth, or at least a retreat from gerontocracy. The age-and-infirmity issue could be turned 180 degrees against Trump. Harris legitimately pushes "reset" on the election. Pete Buttigieg as VP would enhance the new- generation narrative. It would also reverse the script from the inarticulate-Democrats to the team that, finally, can explain things and sell the Democratic policy agenda. Democrats could win with this.

Trump will try to make Harris look like a mix between Tlaib Omar, AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Stalin. It will be unpersuasive if Harris positions herself correctly. She was a former DA and Attorney General. She needs to clean up some careless talk about paying legal fees for violent BLM protesters, but she could re-emphasize law and order. That sets up the contrast between herself, a law enforcer, and Trump, a flagrant law breaker. Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania and its former Attorney General, would help make that case. Shapiro is a centrist Democrat. That would set up a "normal centrist Democrat" versus the crazy, wicked Trump. That, too, is a winning matchup.

Harris has one immediate task. She needs to look and sound like a president, not a second-banana useful to campaign to female voters. She needs to give a serious talk, one without big smiles and hand waving, about the state of the nation. A president narrates to the American people the state of the nation and the world. She needs to pass the competency test. She needs to look and sound like a commander in chief. She needs to describe the American economy and her plans for it. She can do this from some Vice Presidential office, doing the job of president-in-waiting. Her strongest matchup is for the American people to see a normal, healthy Democrat to contrast with Trump and his high-drama, divisive schtick. 

If she doesn't define herself, then Republicans will define her. We can imagine Trump as president because we have seen him being president. Now we need to see her as she defines herself. 

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Easy Sunday: Surprise! High voter turnout hurts Democrats

Low-propensity voters are more likely to be Trump supporters than Biden supporters.

Democrats have become the party of college-educated professional people. Republicans have become the party of the working class.

Polls that look only at "likely voters," measured by people who voted in previous midterm and special elections, show Biden still competitive with Trump. Trump pulls ahead among people who vote sometimes, but not always. 

The New York Times produced this graphic showing the split among people who voted in the 2022 primary election: Biden wins by 5%.

But among less-likely voters, Trump wins by 14%.

For decades Democrats have attempted to increase the ease of voting, advocating policies of early voting, vote by mail, multiple drop boxes, and easy ID requirements. Republicans have wanted to suppress the vote, disallowing student IDs, implementing multi-step absentee voting procedures, and election-day-only voting. Trump may well have lost the 2020 election because of his condemnation of early voting and vote by mail. He suppressed his own vote. 

I don't expect Democrats to stop trying to register and turn out low-propensity voters. They will feel policy inertia. The main change will be in Republican policy. Republicans have awakened. Now Trump urges people to vote however is easiest for them, including the early voting he condemned as outrageous election theft in 2020. 

If 2024 is a high turnout election, as is widely expected, and if Trump wins, as polls now show is likely, then we can expect Republican election-denialism to end. Republicans will trust elections again. They will stop promoting laws in the states that restrict voting eligibility and hours and manner of voting. Trump successfully sold election denialism to Republicans. It damaged our democracy. It was transactional for Trump, to meet the moment's need. Trump lost, so the votes had to be fake. He never really meant it. It was a negotiating tactic, built on the premise that high turnouts helped Democrats. It probably wasn't true in 2020, and it certainly is not true in 2024. Republican voters and policy-makers who bought the idea that this was a matter of principle were conned. It was never principle about voting. The principle was Trump winning. 

Now the way for Republicans to win is to get less-engaged, less-educated, low-propensity voters to vote, so that is the new policy. 

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Waiting for Hamlet

"And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."

       Hamlet's soliloquy on being and action

Joe Biden is Hamlet.

Remember: Hamlet is a tragedy. He dies in the end and he brings others down with him. 

Weak people dither. They avoid facing reality and shuffle forward into doom. Strong people take action. Sometimes they face doom, too, but they are active, not passive.

We are in a waiting period. President Biden is stuck. I expect a resolution shortly.

Today's Guest Post posits a path. Biden should not get pushed out of the 2024 election by doubting-Democrats and bad polls. He should take action.

Rick Millward is a songwriter, musician, and music producer, formerly from Nashville, now living in southern Oregon. His most recent production is Loveland, a collection of songs on themes of romantic love. He performs frequently at local wine venues. 

Millward

Guest Post by Rick Millward

Speculation is rampant, and at this point it appears to be “When, not if”.

Joe Biden is 81. A somewhat diminished 81. He looks it, he sounds like it. If we look back to the last year or so it’s obvious that he’s been struggling. This is hard to admit, but true nevertheless. It has led us to this moment, when an ill-advised debate performance revealed our worst fears and suspicions were not unwarranted.

Older people have “good days and bad days”. We celebrate the good days and endure the bad ones, until inevitably all the days aren’t so great anymore. It is heartbreaking to watch President Biden go through this while in the most high profile position in our society.

One milestone that’s often used is “taking the keys”, when a elder is judged to be a danger behind the wheel. It’s often a fight when they can’t accept they must give up significant autonomy. We are at that moment with the Office of the Presidency. 

President Biden must resign.

When Kamala Harris was selected to be the Vice President Biden deemed her to be qualified and able to take over the office should he become incapacitated. We voted for both of them, and celebrated the selection of a formidable woman, and a political asset. She has served admirably and inherent in this choice was the idea of succession. Many of us believed that Biden would serve just one term and then endorse his Vice President in 2024. We waited. It didn’t happen. There may have been a rationale for this at the time, but it has proven to be disastrous and the issue of his age is overshadowing everything. Now, if he merely suspends his campaign it won’t be enough to end the controversy and it will be an ongoing distraction.

President Biden needs to resign and Vice President Harris needs to be sworn in, something that could happen at the Democratic National Convention. It would be mesmerizing political theater. As President she will command the respect of the office and run as an incumbent in November. Her strengths as a candidate will no doubt energize a demoralized Democratic base and beyond. I think it’s a sure win, perhaps a landslide.

Will Democrats do this? There is some talk in the commentariat, but to do anything otherwise, an open convention, seems to me would only weaken further a precarious position. Democrats are in disarray over Biden’s situation, and the most orderly way to resolve this is to promote the Vice President, leaving the party to work out who will be VP, also something that could be done at the convention.

In a comment I posted here in two years ago I thought I was predicting this, thinking it would happen after the 2022 midterms. When it didn’t happen, I accepted that smart people were making the right calculation, and I supported that, though begrudgingly.

Now? Better late than never, I guess.

  

[Note: In that guest post published July, 2022, "Kind Words for Joe Biden", Millward praised Biden for his accomplishments, and urged Democrats to stop criticizing him. It was beating a lame-duck horse, he said. "President Biden will not be running for a second term. Anyone who believes otherwise is living on another planet."]

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