Republican Jesus

Reclaim the flag.

Reclaim Christianity.

Republicans have done a good job of claiming ownership of the symbols of traditional American identity. Democratic thought leaders fuss over whether the U.S. has been racist in its treatment of Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Catholics, and Jews. They question whether the U.S. has been imperialist in its foreign policy. The result is that Democrats come across as somehow disloyal and unpatriotic. Republicans have been the flag wavers. America is good and strong and Number One! This has been complicated lately by the GOP attack our institutions of justice. Yet somehow Republicans both wave the flag and demand we abolish the FBI. They claimed the symbol if not the institutions they represent.

Something similar has happened with Christianity. The big energy in American Protestantism is in Evangelical churches. They aren't selling piety or humility or anything like the Christianity I learned in my youth. They are selling certitude, strength, and salvation: Christ with a sword. Christ is Number One!

Yetter

I leave to Christians the job of re-claiming Christianity, but I have worked to reclaim the American flag from association with the political right. During the era of Vietnam War protests I displayed the American flag in my dorm room. We were the patriots. I welcomed seeing American Muslims displaying the American flag after 9-11. They are Americans. Of course they display the flag.

A reader of this blog attended an event I held at my house in support of Joe Yetter, a candidate for Congress challenging Cliff Bentz, the Republican incumbent. Bentz voted to discard election results in Pennsylvania so Biden electors could be replaced with Trump's "alternatives." I consider voting to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power to be disqualifying for holding a position of public trust. Bonnie Bergstrom attended that gathering. She taught remedial reading to children and then led workshops where she taught fellow teachers. She retired and moved to Medford, Oregon.

Guest Post by Bonnie Bergstrom.

Bergstrom

About a month ago I attended a fundraiser for Joe Yetter. Joe is running for Congress in Oregon's District 2. I was very impressed with his priorities and what he would try to do for our District if elected. But the thing that stayed with me was his urging us to reclaim the American flag from the right. That the liberals in this country are actually the patriots and therefore the ones who need to be displaying the flag as a symbol of that patriotism. 

I would like to propose, in the same vein, those liberals who happen also to be Christian, work to reclaim Christianity from the right. It seems that they are trying to take us closer and closer to being a theocratic state. We can look at Iran and Afghanistan, among others, to see how well that would work out. I recommend a book called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet, or watch the Netflix series based on the book. You will learn about the fundamentalist basis of their ties to Putin and the Russian Orthodox church among other things. The merging of religious fundamentalism and fascism is a dangerous trend around the world, and in the U.S.

I resent that the folks like Viktor Orbán and those who admire him, have co-opted Christianity as an excuse for their unChristian views. If these people actually read and pondered the actual words of Christ, they would hopefully notice that He says nothing about a Christian "culture" and in fact instructs His followers to go out and preach the gospel (the good news) to every creature. As far as the anti-immigration connection to Christianity, you will actually find hundreds of statements in both the Old and New Testaments that very directly compel us to care for the stranger. The one about the traditional family? That is most blatantly ignorant about what is in the Bible. Good luck trying to find something you could call a traditional family there! I am a non-evangelical lifelong Christian who is very familiar with the contents of the Bible. I often find it helpful to respond to those who think they are supporting their illiberal views with their religion to show me exactly where Jesus said the words or ideas they are parroting. They can't.

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More and better

Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist asks for more: 

Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. . . .

"Please, sir, I want some more."

"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.

'Please, sir,' replied Oliver, "I want some more."

Democrats should change from a redistribution and safety net message to a message of abundance. 

Most Americans want more.

I heard from Oregon's Democratic candidate for governor, Tina Kotek. She urged I watch her TV ad. Her voice narrates: "Early on, I worked at Oregon Food Bank, and I still volunteer at my church's food pantry. I've seen people struggle for all kinds of reasons." She goes on about the misery of homelessness and programs to address it.

Click Here

Dickens' 19th century readers sympathized with poor Oliver, especially since his request was made to the workhouse master, a "fat, healthy man." Oliver needed wealth redistribution. Today's Oregonians recognize that homeless people are miserable. The ad display's Kotek's compassion and her support for programs of redistribution.

I question whether it was a useful ad. It reaffirmed the current message of Democrats: Support for a better safety-net. Better food banks. More and longer unemployment insurance benefits. More addiction services. More tiny houses for temporary shelters. More latitude and support for immigrants. Student loan forgiveness.

What's my concern?

The problem is that most voters consider Band-Aids for poverty both hopeless and a financial sacrifice. It may be necessary and compassionate, but it means less for them. Voters--particularly the working class voters who are now voting Republican--would prefer a message of more. A bigger, stronger economy means a bigger pot, and if the pot is bigger it means aid to the very poor is less of a burden. Better yet, there is still more for themselves. Kotek's ad is not an aspirational message. It is a repair-strategy message. 

Democratic message strategist Ruy Teixeira advised Democrats to quit talking about the Green New Deal and instead refocus on creating abundance and talking about that. In his The Liberal Patriot post he said that talk of climate

reflects the priorities of Democratic elites who are primarily interested in redistribution and action on climate change. But voters, especially working class voters, are interested in abundance: more stuff, more growth, more opportunity, cheaper prices, nicer, more comfortable lives.

Growth, particularly productivity growth, is what drives rising living standards over time and Democrats presumably stand for the fastest possible rise in living standards. Faster growth also makes easier the achievement of Democrats’ other goals.

I get disagreement from some politically active friends when I suggest that Democrats should openly and proudly advocate for abundance. "Less is more," they tell me. "We need to walk softly on the land," they say. They tell me we should walk to the grocery store. Bicycle more. Drive smaller cars. Have smaller houses. Eat food from one's own garden. Recycle, or better yet, don't use things that create recyclable waste. A friend plans to turn off the natural gas at his home and wear sweaters in the winter. 

I consider these luxury tastes and opinions, advocated mostly by the very comfortable. In the real world that includes the great mass of American voters, people want jobs that pay better. They want better food, better housing, better education, and better health care. They want more, including more stuff. That is why there is a supply-chain problem; people want more stuff. One gets more when the economy is bigger and there is more to have and to share.

There is a reason merchants advertise sale prices. People want more for less. That is so simple and obvious Democrats can overlook this reality, even people who watch for items to go on sale. Democrats would do better to work with human nature. Democrats are more likely to get the votes they need to implement a green climate agenda if they stop talking about Band-Aids on poverty, and start talking about good jobs in world-class industries done in America by Americans.

We will deal with climate better if voters understand that Democrats think it is morning in America and there is a bright and prosperous future to protect.

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A Multicultural Fair and the rise of Christian Nationalism

"Multicultural." "Diversity." "Equality."

Those are controversial words.

The 29th annual Medford Multicultural Fair took place again this past weekend. 

The Multicultural event is at the front lines of the current political and culture war. The Mayor greets people. School bands and choirs perform. Booths of local nonprofits pass out literature. Volunteers paint children's faces. There are hula dancers and folk dancers on stage from Mexico, Thailand, and Japan.  

What is remotely political about this? It is an expression of liberal democracy. 

The Fair reflects an appreciation of diversity. It reflects the live-and-let-live individualism that was shared by both the political left and the old GOP of Eisenhower, Reagan, Dole, Romney, and the Bushes. Modern conservatism has gone in a new direction. The political right in America is part of a worldwide trend visible in Russia, Hungary, France, and Poland, and most recently in Italy: It is illiberal democracy. 

The world's democracies are experiencing a counter-revolution against globalism, modernism, free trade, and the free movement of capital and labor. Immigration and borders are the flash point. Trump did not happen in a vacuum. The new GOP under Trump took place in the aftermath of the U.K. Brexit and the rise of nationalist parties in Europe. Trump understands his base and he expresses illiberal democracy on its behalf in his actions and rally speeches. He lives it. Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán explains it:

Christian democracy is, by definition, not liberal: it is, if you like, illiberal. And we can specifically say this in connection with a few important issues — say, three great issues. Liberal democracy is in favor of multiculturalism, while Christian democracy gives priority to Christian culture; this is an illiberal concept. Liberal democracy is pro-immigration, while Christian democracy is anti-immigration; this is again a genuinely illiberal concept. And liberal democracy sides with adaptable family models, while Christian democracy rests on the foundations of the Christian family model; once more, this is an illiberal concept.

Orbán weaves together the themes of backlash against civil rights for Blacks, women, and non-traditional genders. American became more secular. Illiberal democracy reinstates Christianity as the default American belief system. Illiberal democracy reaffirms that Whites of European extraction are the default, the real Americans. Illiberal democracy reaffirms the "natural" and default presumption of binary genders and traditional roles within families, including patriarchy. 

There weren't Republican protesters at the Medford Multicultural Fair, but there wasn't a Republican booth, either. (There was a Democratic booth.) Illiberal democracy doesn't necessarily express itself by shouting down the people at the Bahai booth who were passing out stickers saying there was no room for prejudice. It expresses itself as resentment that Mexican youth can celebrate their their heritage, while the celebration of White majority culture might be condemned as an expression of White superiority. Illiberal democracy did not necessarily express itself with booths by Evangelical Christians with brochures urging women to submit to their husbands. Evangelicals resent the fact that they might be shamed for saying this sentiment aloud. There were no booths attacking trans people as unnatural and weird, but illiberal democracy expresses itself with quiet resentment of the fact that they might be called "homophobic" for saying it.

All the changes. A Black guy as president. Women wearing pants-suits and being the boss. Gay marriage. Trans people. Atheists. Unmarried people living together. Abortions. Pronouns.

Polls have routinely under-estimated Trump's support. Social conservatives sense they are being overpowered and sneered at by elites. They fear they are being displaced by foreigners. Their country is being stolen from them. They resent that they are shamed for feeling how they feel and thinking what they think.

After the Charlottesville rally Trump said there were "good people on both sides." Trump says forbidden things and doesn't act ashamed.

[A longer and more comprehensive discussion of illiberal democracy is available here at the New York Times.] 

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The privilege of presumed innocence.

I am pretty sure that when police see me they profile me as a harmless, old White guy and not the "criminal type."

I get the presumption of innocence.

If by any chance I got arrested for something, I would arrange for high quality representation, with money for investigators and experts. I don't think I would get equal justice. I would get very good justice, with access to bail and with all my rights and privileges protected. Everyone is supposed to get the presumption of innocence and access to justice.  Lots of people do not.

It isn't fair. It isn't equal justice. But it is how the system works.

Hilliard

College classmate Constance Hilliard brought to mind the reality of this inequality. Constance got her Ph.D. in African and Middle Eastern history from Harvard. She teaches at the University of North Texas. She wrote me after observing the privilege Donald Trump enjoys, especially in comparison with what she sees among people who are poor or who are profiled as suspicious. They get the short end of the inequality. 

Hilliard wrote:

Whether Donald Trump ever pays for any of his many crimes, the damage has been done. As a Black mother I cannot unsee the fact that our “democratic” society metes out the same quality of justice as what one might expect from a Somali warlord. Lack of power and money are what determine guilt. We just hide it beneath infinitely more layers of protocol than do the Somalis. 

Given all the brilliant minds that engage with matters of justice, why can’t our legal system rise above the habit of merely preying on and stuffing our prisons full of the poor and powerless? Those former prisoners from time to time includes some of my Black male students. Do our top law schools and brilliant legal minds devote any time at all to correcting the imbalance? After all, wouldn’t most human beings define justice as meting out the most punishment to those individuals whose wrongdoing crushes the lives of the most people?

Trump may not get prosecuted even if there is clear documented evidence that his tax returns contained perjury. He may not be prosecuted even though he acknowledges he took documents from the White House. He may not be prosecuted for leading a multi-pronged plan to overturn an election. 

There are perils to prosecuting him. If a president's successor prosecutes the defeated president of the opposite party, it sets a dangerous tit-for-tat precedent, even if the former president is dead-to-rights guilty. What constitutes truth in a courtroom may not translate out in the public square, where Trump and others will be adamant in calling the prosecution illegitimate. Trump has uncritical and loyal support. Trump warns that 'terrible things are going to happen" if he is prosecuted. Prosecutors must consider the risk of losing even an airtight case. They may encounter one or two jurors who simply will not betray their hero, no matter what.  

The Hill

However this plays out, the Trump's prosecution--or non-prosecution--is likely to reduce the justice system's reputation for fair and equal justice. Trump and his supporters are already saying the system is rigged against Trump.  If Trump escapes prosecution, Americans will see the most privileged of Americans get away with crimes. Trump--like Citibank and AIG and Fannie Mae in the financial crisis 14 years ago--is "too big to fail." Poor Americans will have yet more evidence that our legal system is rigged in favor of the rich. Comfortable, White Americans have the privilege of good justice. The very wealthiest and most powerful Americans have the privilege of no justice at all. 

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Abortion: Who decides?

Local Control on Abortion

Supreme Court liberals, in dissent: 

"Withdrawing a woman’s right to choose whether to continue a pregnancy does not mean that no choice is being made. It means that a majority of today’s Court has wrenched this choice from women and given it to the States."

The states? Why stop there?

Anti-abortion politicians argued the abortion issue should be a political issue decided by the states. They said the Roe v. Wade decision short-circuited the political process, with its push and pull of persuasion and popular choice. Let the people decide, they said. They say it's a matter of "states rights."

Politico

There is a problem with that. I know first-hand that states have significant internal divisions. Rural counties in Oregon say they want to secede from Oregon to become part of Greater Idaho. They say rural counties are steamrolled by the mass of liberal voters in the Portland metropolitan area. The division shows up in election results. The winner in the 2018 election for governor was Democrat Kate Brown. She got 74% of the vote in Portland's Multnomah County. She received 17% of the vote in rural Harney County. States mash opposites together. The divide is greater within states than between them. Trump won Wyoming with 70% of the vote and lost Vermont with only 31% of the vote. That is a huge difference, but nothing like the differences between the counties in the same state.

County-by-county control on abortion would be a vast improvement in representative government. We are accustomed to neighboring counties having different zoning laws, different health department priorities, different policing protocols, different facilities, and different politics. Local control maximizes representation. 

A close look at counties, however, reveals sharp internal divisions, visible at the neighborhood level. In my home country, densely-settled college-town Ashland had precincts giving 82% and 85% of the vote to the Democrat, Kate Brown. Yet in a rural precinct less than five miles outside Ashland she received less than 19% of the vote. 

To make the abortion decision "close to the people," we need neighborhoods to govern, not counties or states. This is not uncommon or unworkable. Voters are already divided into voting area precincts. We have local school districts, fire districts, and irrigation districts providing government tailored to that community's needs and wishes. A great many socially conservative anti-abortion advocates favor "neighborhood schools." They argue that parents at the local level should decide if their schools teach sex education or disturbing information about slavery, racism, or gender. Why should people in D.C., or the state capital, or even people in another part of the same county make those decisions for that school?  And then, in the local school, if the sex education lessons seem objectionable, individual parents can and do pull their children out of class for that lesson. After all, sex is a personal matter. Each parent decides what is best.

The principle of bringing the decision closer to the people has no clear limiting factor. That principle can be applied thoroughly and all the way down to the individual parent. We call it liberty. Abortion clinics can be sited in neighborhoods that want them. We would see them scattered about--but only where they are accepted. On the personal level, if someone opposes abortion, she shouldn't have one. 

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Easy Sunday: The birth of an elephant

Today we witness the birth of a real-life elephant. 

Elephant mothers are "single moms." The mother and baby get the immediate support and protection of the herd. 

Watch. Sixty seconds.  https://t.co/kkmiJwEbii

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Goodbye, print newspaper

My local newspaper shrank. Shrank some more. Began printing 4 days a week. 

Now it will be on-line only.

I got the news on Wednesday, the same time my newspaper carrier told me he got it. The Medford Mail Tribune is a shadow of its former self, but I still loved holding it and reading it. Maybe the resources spent on print and delivery will end up allowing them to hire reporters. The publisher says that is his intent.

Medford is the regional market center, medical center, media center, and transportation hub for about 500,000 people. We have five local TV stations--but beginning in October no print newspaper.

I will write my own thoughts on this newspaper soon, but for today I share a Guest Post by Tam Moore. He was a County Commissioner for four years, but his real career has been journalism. He worked in the early days of local TV news and later he wrote for the Capital Press, a West Coast newspaper focusing on agricultural news. 

Guest Post by Tam Moore

One year ago this blog noted the “shrinking” of the Medford Mail Tribune from a newspaper published every day to four-day-a-week publication with daily digital editions. The Trib made that change July 31, 2021, and we worried about a successful business model for collecting local news and sharing it with a regional audience.

Well, that 2021 business model didn’t work.

Tam Moore

 Publisher Steven Saslow this past week announced that the last printed Mail Tribune will be September 30.  

For now, electronic editions of the paper will continue. He hopes to use the on-line format for expanded news coverage. Let’s hope so, because when I Googled the Trib’s “E-Edition” link the only story present was an August 19 report that the U.S. Forest service would be closing an Applegate River campsite frequented by bears with a penchant for raiding trash containers.  Clicking on a sidebar box did get me today’s summary from the local copshops and yesterday’s criminal docket in circuit court.

This is going to take some getting used to, that’s for sure. And I’m going to miss the Albertson/Safeway grocery insert every Wednesday where I troll for their “digital bargains” only available if downloaded to my smartphone. There are some printed newspapers delivered in Medford, but for a county with 88,241 households to have no daily printed newspaper is a shame.  

There was a time in the 19^th and 20^th Century when Jackson County, Oregon was awash in newspapers. The first, called the Table Rock Sentinel, was published in Jacksonville in 1855 – back when Oregon was a territory of the United States. When Medford was born in 1885 with arrival of the O&C Railroad, the newly-christened Medford Monitor was sold on the streets, the very next year, Southern Oregon Transcript, another weekly, began publication. By 1888, the Medford Mail was in business. 

Those were the days when newspapers were partisan. You’d find Republican papers, Democratic papers and in that era populist papers. By the first decade of the 20th Century Medford had a morning Mail, an afternoon Tribune and a flock of weekly papers. George Putnam consolidated the Mail Tribune in 1909. Putnam was a legend in local political history. He witnessed a 1907 dispute between the Mayor of Medford and the owner of a short-line railroad connecting with Jacksonville – then the county seat. There was a lawsuit over the resulting assault trial. Putnam got sued for libel over his printed commentary on the trial in progress. He lost at circuit court only to have the Oregon Supreme Court set aside the libel judgement. Putnam was awarded $45 in court costs. He left Medford in 1919 to edit the Capital Journal in Salem. 

Robert Ruhl, who came to Medford in 1911 as part owner of the weekly Medford Sun newspaper and the Mail Tribune, became the Trib’s editor and publisher when Putnam left for Salem. Ruhl promptly declared the Trib “an independent newspaper.” 

Newspapers figured in Medford’s scandal of the early 1930’s – and the Mail Tribune emerged with the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for public service over coverage of “unscrupulous politicians in Jackson County.” Key players in that affair were Llewellyn Banks, a local orchardist who published the Jackson County News and Earl Fehl, publisher of the Pacific Record-Herald. Fehl was convicted for stealing ballots from the new county courthouse in Medford. Banks got a life sentence for killing the town constable who was trying to arrest Banks for involvement in the same ballot theft.  To learn more about those times, here’s a link: Good Government Congress (Jackson County Rebellion) (oregonencyclopedia.org)

There are some things you get from the local newspaper which are very serious such as what Robert Ruhl would later call “the strife of 1933.”  And then there are the entertaining gems which crop up. It takes a reading of the MMT in April 1957 to know that when the Medford City Council switched from meetings on Tuesday evenings to meetings Thursday evenings, one of the reported benefits to the switch was being able to watch the Phil Silvers Sgt. Bilko show on Tuesday nights. 

Newspapers have been part of my life since reading the wirephoto page captions during World War II. As a sixth grader I began delivering the Corvallis Gazette-Times and by college I was in the G-T pressroom as night editor of the campus daily newspaper. Adjusting to no daily paper will be hard, but what I really worry about is the news void which comes to a community without a printed paper. Broadcast news, where I spent almost half of my professional life, and Internet news aren’t quite the same as printed news.

With a newspaper, you can take your time reading. You can set the thing aside. Or clip out a story. Perhaps someone will figure out the business model which works so we can have a printed newspaper.  

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The Al Capone Thing.

Of course Trump cheated on his taxes. 

Of course Trump low-balled values for tax purposes.

Well, duh.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page cited Trump's reputation for cheating as a defense. He couldn't be guilty of fraudulent deception.

No one who has ever listened to Mr. Trump will be surprised if he hyped the value of his holdings in dealing with bankers. But then no one in New York finance would ever trust only what Mr. Trump claims before signing a document or lending him money.

No one could be so naive as to believe him and act on what he says.

Humorist Andy Borowitz made a joke of it with this parody news article:

Trump is throwing up defenses regarding Mar-a-Lago's documents. I suspect one of them will give a juror an excuse to vote not guilty. Trump could say he thought they were his to keep. Or, he thought he had given them all back and he was misinformed by staff. Or someone else packed them. Or the FBI put them there. One of Trump's excuses will create reasonable doubt. When found not guilty, he will claim total and complete vindication. That is Merrick Garland's fear. I don't count on a prosecution.

It will be hard to find a jury of 12 that will convict him on tax fraud either. There is always some justification or excuse that would give justification for denying what is right in front of one's eyes. Taxes are complicated, Trump's especially. Some juror will balk, or some prosecutor will fear some juror will balk. Doing an Al Capone-style incarceration on tax charges is unlikely.

The key thing for Democrats to understand is that Trump's flagrant misbehaviors are features, not bugs. Trump does not "fight fair." He is not "a good sport." He wins by hook or crook, and proudly so. Trump can be understood best by watching this 17-second scene from an Indiana Jones movie.

Click

Even stepping into the scene mid-movie, readers probably  identified with Indiana Jones.  Jones is an American. He was in danger amid foreigners. He won the fight by changing the implied rules of the confrontation. Indiana Jones didn't respect rules. Jones was cooly nonchalant. He shot and killed the guy. So what?

Most American movie-goers did not watch that scene and think Jones had some moral or legal obligation to give a warning shot. The scene is done for laughs. Ha! Fooled him!

There is a lot of Trump in that scene. Trump projects that Americans are beset by dangerous "others," both foreign and domestic. He doesn't respect them. He doesn't play by rules. He is smart. He wins. And he didn't sneak or apologize. He switched the rules and killed somebody, just like Trump said he could do on Fifth Avenue. 

In the legal arena, Trump might possibly be in trouble, though I suspect not. In the political arena, Trump understands that his audience likes the swagger. He could win re-election from prison. American audiences identify with Jones. He is defending himself and his American project. In real life, Trump tells a story of constant peril. He finds enemies, foreign and domestic, because he likes the fight and is good at it.  Of course he cheats. Of course he is ruthless. If he is "guilty" he is guilty of fighting too well to protect us.

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Pain ahead.

Jerome Powell, Fed Chair: 

     "We have got to get inflation behind us. I wish there were a painless way to do that. There isn't."

Candidates complain about inflation. That's easy. They don't advocate solutions. They are hard.

Inflation is real. The Federal Reserve has a tool to reduce it. They pull money out of the economy and raise interest rates. This reduces overall demand for goods and services, so prices fall. "Reduce overall demand" sounds clean and simple. It is impersonal. "Demand" describes an economy. The real world is made up of people. 

The Fed just raised interest rates another 0.75%. The era of zero interest rates is gone. Zero interest rates distorted financial markets. People made investments that only made sense if money were free to borrow, but in reality wealth--capital--has value, so the economy adjusted to a false reality. Zero interest rates caused people who wanted safe income to look in risky places to find it. Zero interest caused asset bubbles. The Fed is doing what needed to be done years ago. 

Higher interest rates means businesses pay more to finance supplies and inventory. Most construction is financed, so the cost of building or improving factories goes up. The cost of building or purchasing houses goes up. People typically borrow money to buy cars, so the cost of cars goes up. We get slow-downs and layoffs. These trickle through the entire economy.

Rising unemployment is the consequence and the measure of the Fed's success. Powell called it, "softening of labor market conditions." Let's get real. It means people lose their jobs. That makes poor people poorer. Their distress sends a signal felt throughout the economy. People see others getting laid off and they recalculate their own marketability.

Higher interest rates send a signal to businesses and the people who own them. In a slowing economy the business is less likely to raise prices to compensate for the higher interest rate costs. Profits go down, so the less-profitable business is worth less. Moreover, businesses are valued based on the presumed stream of future profit and income. That income is discounted back to the present. Future money is worth less in a 10% interest rate environment than in a 1% environment. Stocks tend to go down when interest rates go up.

The stock market going down is another consequence and measure of Fed success. Investors not only are less rich measured by their account statement, they feel less rich. They might own 3,000 shares of Facebook in their 401Ks. A year ago the shares were worth over a million dollars. Today they are valued at less than $500,000. Even if the money in a 401k is not going to be spent anytime soon, the lower value changes psychology and behavior. They feel poorer and spend less.

It is the same with home prices. Rising interest rates have reversed the housing boom. People feel more free to spend money if their home is priced at an all-time high and can be sold immediately. With houses sitting unsold on the market, homeowners are more cautious.

There will be a lot of squabbling over definitions. Is the economy good or bad? If unemployment rises, is that failure or back to normal? Are we in a recession, or just a slowdown? Are we in free-fall or is the economy already on its way back up? Republicans will define things as bad, complicated when the governor of a state is a Republican, who will then say the economy of their state is great and the envy of the country. 

What isn't definitional squabbling is that the Fed will try to make Americans poorer, so they will spend less freely and work harder to keep the job or customers they have. That is the simple on-the-ground reality. The Fed's goal is to make workers more nervous, entrepreneurs more cautious, and owners of stocks feel lousy when they look at their account statements. Candidates will talk about the problem, but not the real-world solution. The solution is pain. 

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The elephant in the room.

A GOP candidate can finesse Trump's supporters. 

But not Trump. 

Yesterday's post looked at Randy Sparacino, a GOP candidate for Oregon State Senate. There are thousands of candidates across the country with the same problem he has: Trump and his supporters.

A Medford journalist wrote me yesterday:

     "I'll bet Sparacino won't say a word at this point in the campaign. After all, we have short memories for something like the summer central committee action."

That's a good bet.

Sparacino is ignoring the proclamation by activists in his party that declared the 2020 election fraudulent and Biden illegitimate. Election denial is the supposed official position of Jackson County, Oregon Republicans. 

The problem for GOP candidates in purple areas is that a majority of Republican voters support Trump and his claims. They want to shout it from the rooftops. Some get onto Fox News and Newsmax. Some do it locally, like the Republican Central Committee with its proclamation. Trump's strongest supporters enjoy a feeling of solidarity. Where we go one, we go all. Us versus you. I see signs like this near my farm in a rural part of Sparacino's district. Messages like this don't make friends or win crossover votes, but they reflect an attitude.

Sparacino isn't telling his voters there is no evidence Trump won the election. As I wrote yesterday, Republican voters don't want to hear it, not in Southern Oregon or elsewhere. Trump says it; voters believe it. Republican officeholders and candidates play along. They say they heard rumors, that people have doubts, and who really knows anything for sure. 

The best candidate strategy is to say as little as possible. It is cowardly but at least they are not standing in front of a stampede of the gullible. Look at Liz Cheney. What did standing up for principle get her? Republican voters can be finessed. Let them believe what they want to believe. Pivot to safe ground of inflation, regulations, and guns. Mumbling preserves some access to discontented Democrats and independent voters. At least the Republican candidate isn't a total conspiracy nut-job. 

Republican candidates need not worry about local media calling them out. Here and nationwide, local small-city newspapers are a Potemkin Village with minimal staff. TV news needs stories with visual content. A candidate not taking a position isn't TV news. The political risk comes from social media. Facebook posts that call out Big Lie enablers could be devastating, if they catch on and spread. But so could viral stories that circulate among Republicans sharing that a candidate admits that Trump lost the election--the dirty, rotten RINO! The risks balance out.

Trump rally. Index finger up. Q symbol with thumb and middle finger.

Now that the primary is over, the real problem is Trump himself. He isn't shutting up. This election was supposed to be a referendum on inflation, homeless tents, and long lines at the DMV. But Trump keeps making news. Possibly an unbranded Randy Sparacino could defeat his Democratic incumbent, Jeff Golden, in this purple district. It might be close. Sparacino has more campaign money than he can spend. But Sparacino isn't the face and brand of his own campaign. Trump lingers like a watermark over Sparacino's face. Or nonstop music from next door, played by bagpipe enthusiasts. Trump insists on being the elephant in the room. A voter cannot support Sparacino without endorsing and enabling Trump and his entourage. "Trump Won!" "Fuck Joe Biden. And fuck you for voting for him!" There is a Trump scent on the clothes of GOP candidates, and a majority of Americans are holding their noses. Mumbling doesn't wash it off. No amount of money washes it off.

If you like Donald Trump you will love Randy Sparacino.

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Heads up to Southern Oregon readers

Jackson County GOP: Conspiracy theories, extremism, and election denial.

We needed leadership. 

Randy Sparacino, candidate for Oregon State Senate, is Missing in Action.

The Jackson County Republican Party laid down its marker this summer. It passed a resolution echoing Trump and "in solidarity with the Texas GOP convention" stating vigorous denial of the 2020 election.

   "We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected."

This resolution created an opportunity and a problem for local Republican candidates. The opportunity was for candidates to distinguish themselves from the conspiracy theorists, election denialists, and extremists who justify overthrowing American elections. It would be an opportunity for candidates to acknowledge that voting by mail works. It is the procedure that has been in place for two decades in Oregon, and under which every Oregon Republican officeholder holds office. It would create the opportunity to look reasonable to the broad electorate of non-affiliated persuadable voters. It would be an opportunity to defend the democratic process and the American tradition of peaceful transfer of power. It would be an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and courage, by doing the core job of political leaders of telling the truth to their constituents about their government. There is a lot of upside.

The downside is that some portion of Republican voters just don't want to hear it. They want their Republican candidates to echo Donald Trump, even if what he argues is self-serving, undemocratic, dangerous, and contradicted by audits, recounts, and investigations by people in his own administration.

Disappointment

Randy Sparacino is a special disappointment and danger. There are other Republican officeholders in Southern Oregon who also are hiding out and refusing to push back against their party leaders. Sparacino is in a high-profile race getting Republican support from around the state and nation. Sparacino is receiving an avalanche of contributions from the Republican establishment figures, from Republican heavyweight donors, and from local and national PACs. If Republican money translates into Republican votes, he has an excellent chance of winning election. Sparacino could be a high profile leader demonstrating that Republicans--real Republicans--aren't conspiracy nuts, and that they support the democratic process.

Sparacino's behavior is a red flag. Trump argued that state legislatures are free to--and should--override the popular presidential vote in their states and award the electoral votes to the Republican on their own authority. Because Oregon votes by mail, Oregon legislators have a ready-made justification within GOP circles for saying they doubt, and therefore are free to overturn, the election result. There is a growing national GOP movement to place election deniers into positions where they can overrule an election--county clerks, secretaries of state, governors, and state legislators. Elected Republicans will get enormous pressure to stay loyal to their party and throw electoral votes to the Republican, whatever the actual vote. Legislators in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania experienced it. Governors and secretaries of state in Arizona and Georgia did as well. If he becomes a state senator, Sparacino will face that pressure.

Why would I suspect he would bow to that pressure? Because he is bowing to it right now. Surely Sparacino knows full well that his local party leaders went wacko. But he stays silent. If he doesn't show courage and integrity now, why should we expect it later if he is in the state senate? Today he is reluctant to disappoint some local Central Committee people who got carried away. In the Oregon senate he might get a call from Donald Trump telling him he needs to come through for the team.

Sparacino is the most prominent Republican candidate in Southern Oregon. His silence and fence-straddling lets his party's resolution be the announced position of local Republicans. There could be an alternative message, but that would require Sparacino to show the courage and character we expect in a leader. 

He is lying low.

 

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