Fragile Democracy

No checks. No balance. 

Democracy is at risk.

In the aftermath of last Thursday's debate, Democrats have been contemplating the threat to American democracy in the event of a Trump landslide victory.

It would mean Republican leaders and voters might stop denying the validity of presidential elections. There is that consolation. 

The Supreme Court just removed a guardrail against strong-man lawlessness. A 6-3 majority ruled that presidents are immune and nearly un-prosecutable for crimes they do in their official capacity, including taking bribes in exchange for pardons, and perhaps even that extreme hypothetical of telling Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival. The justice system is no check on a president.

A charismatic demagogue needs the support of a legislature, at least at first, in order to concentrate power. Big presidential wins traditionally have big coattails. A Trump landslide would almost certainly mean that Republicans re-take a majority in the Senate and increase their majority in the House. Republicans have purged the party of visible RINOs, so the complexion of both chambers would move decisively MAGA-ward. It would be up to a legislative chamber to say "no" to a president. There is no reason to think Republican majorities would do so.  

Jack Mullen reflected on the history of watershed elections. Mullen spent his youth in Medford, Oregon, worked with me for a Democratic congressman, lived in the Bay Area, and now lives in Washington, D.C. where he follows sports and politics. He remains an Oakland A's fan.

 

Mullen, with famous A's fan "Road-trip Mike."

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

Democracy has been a fragile thing, often hanging by a thread, from the times the Greeks established it for themselves, and up through the 21st  Century.

America’s showcase as a long-running, stable democracy is again being tested. In some ways this 2024 election resembles our pre-Civil War election of 1860. Maybe, even more, the 1932 German election.

The 1860 presidential election decided the long-term future of a United States in its then-established form. Voters in 1860 understood the magnitude of their votes. Fortune smiled upon Abraham Lincoln as his newly formed united Republican Party defeated Stephen A. Douglas (Northern Democrat), John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat) and John Bell (Constitutional Unionist).

Democracy’s saving grace had Douglas, Breckinridge and Bell splitting the anti-Lincoln vote. Democracy, and the inclusion of Black Americans, was better protected by the strong national government that emerged from the war than it was in the states, both southern and northern, after the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. 

There was no such luck for post-WWI Germany. President Paul von Hindenburg was re-elected as president in 1932, but it was the down-ballot election of Nazi party members that history now knows thrust the Nazi party into control of the Reichstag. Von Hindenburg, against his better judgement, in an attempt to accommodate the new power swing inside the Reichstag, appointed the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor. Two years later, von Hindenburg died in office. The Reichstag building was burned under mysterious circumstances, and the Nazis blamed the arson on communists. Out of the chaos, Hitler’s power as chancellor allowed him to set up his dictatorship.

The similarities between Germany in the early 1930’s and the U.S. today in the U.S. lie down-ballot. Resentful and angry German voters, suffering from the long-term effects of the punitive Treaty of Versailles and the spiraling effects of inflation and unemployment, took their frustrations to the ballot box. The Nazi power swing placing them in control of the Reichstag proved too strong for Germany to overcome. Democracy died.

Down-ballot voting in this November 's U.S. election will be just as pivotal as it was in Germany. The alarm bells are sounding, are enough people are listening?

No,, what scares me is not that the likes of Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Steve Bannon return to power under a President Trump. A vibrant House and Senate could help us survive even that assault on democracy. They would be a check and balance.

No, what scares me is the down-ballot vote that puts MAGA Republicans in full control of the government. I cringe at the thought of a Republican election victory that returns Mike Johnson as speaker of the House and the Senate to GOP control under the leadership of someone MAGA-compliant. If the House and Senate become legislative tools of Trump, willing to approve his plans, then he will be in the same position as was Hitler to take take openly un-democratic actions. We already know the Supreme Court majority will affirm its legality, saying they want a "bold" president unafraid of prosecution for committing crimes. Republican legislators would be high-profile validators, assuring the public that it is the will of the people and consistent with American norms, and traditions. 

We Americans will have done it to ourselves. We will have handed democratic power to a person who has demonstrated that he doesn’t respect it. Think about that on this day that we celebrate having independence from a king.

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America needs immigrants

Our working-age population would fall catastrophically if we closed our borders.

The public debate over immigration and "the southern border" has defined immigration as a problem to be solved. We hear that immigration is "out of control." There is justification for that.  We lack the public consensus on immigration that would allow legislation to set up and fund a border security apparatus equal to the task.

Lost in the public view that immigration is primarily a problem is another perspective, that immigration is good and necessary. America needs immigrants. Herb Rothschild makes that case in this guest post.  

Rothschild taught English Literature at Louisiana State University. He is the author of The Bad Old Days, a memoir of his years as a Civil Rights activist in Louisiana. He lives in Talent, Oregon. This column appeared last Friday in Rothschild's regular weekly column in Ashland.news.

Rothschild

Guest Post by Herbert Rothschild

One way to calculate with reasonable accuracy how many immigrants the U.S. needs is to decide a desirable ratio between workers and retirees. The current ratio of 2.8 to 1 is too low.

I had to write this column before the debate between Biden and Trump, so I couldn’t know what they would say about immigration. I’m sure it figured largely in the debate. I’m almost as sure that neither candidate spoke thoughtfully about it. 

For Trump, treating immigration as an existential threat has paid big electoral dividends, so I can expect nothing truthful, much less useful, from him. I don’t expect too much more from Biden. Over the last three years he’s tacked this way and that, trying without success to seem both tough and humane.

Some specific policies related to immigration are obviously proper, and Biden has supported many of them—citizenship for DACA kids, an easier path to legal status for undocumented spouses and children of citizens, and more resources to expedite asylum requests. Another reasonable policy would be a second iteration of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (Simpson-Mazzoli), which, among other provisions, legalized most undocumented immigrants who had arrived before January 1, 1984. Simpson-Mazzoli was the last comprehensive immigration bill Congress passed. 

In February, 2022, when a flood of refugees from Haiti reached Del Rio, Texas, I wrote a column about how our imperial interference in the affairs of Latin American and Caribbean countries continually exacerbates the poverty and tyranny that people flee. So, if we want to reduce the flow of immigrants to our southern border, we must change our own behavior.

It's not clear, though, that the flow of immigrants should be reduced, or by how much. What we haven’t heard in the public forum is informed discussion about whether immigration is desirable. We need that discussion to counter the vilification of immigrants on the one hand and mere altruism on the other. Neither of these attitudes generates wise political policies.

The U.S. sorely needs immigrants. Just how many we need and how many we can accommodate without undue stress are questions needing answers. While precision will elude us, we have useful data on which to draw.

First, there is the demographic forecast. The fertility rate for a generation to replace itself is 2.1 births per woman. For the 20 years before the 2007–2009 recession, the U.S. fertility rate was slightly under that. Since then, the rate has fallen. In 2020, the rate equaled 1.64 births per woman, then rose to 1.67 in 2022. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that by 2034 our fertility rate will settle at 1.70.

Only because more of us will live longer, the CBO projects that U.S. births will exceed deaths until 2040, after which our population will decline absent immigration. And even now, because the retired population is growing relative to the working population, absent immigration the burden of sustaining the older cohort would be heavier than it is, with fewer people to shoulder it either as taxpayers or caregivers.

The U.S. Social Security system was designed for a much higher ratio of workers to retirees than exists today. In 1960, there were more than 5 workers for every beneficiary. Now it’s 2.8 to 1. The Social Security Administration (SSA) predicts that the ratio will dwindle to 2.3 to 1 by 2035. And that’s with immigration. Absent immigration, our pension and health care systems would soon collapse even if technology makes some workers more productive.

So, one way to calculate with reasonable accuracy how many immigrants per year the U.S. needs is to decide a desirable minimum ratio between workers and retirees (taking into account that many immigrants arrive with children). The current ratio of 2.8 to 1 is too low, and the shortfall is exacerbated by keeping undocumented workers in the economic shadows where their pay is low and untaxed. We should raise ratio to at least 3 to 1 and maintain it there.

People responsible for tracking economic performance keep telling us how dependent we already are on immigrant workers. Last week, Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve System, said, "We've seen labor force supply come up quite a bit through immigration and through recovering participation. That's ongoing, mostly now through the immigration channel." Financial analysts like Elsie Peng and David Mericle of Goldman Sachs and Mark Zandi from Moody’s credit the post-pandemic surge in immigrants with stabilizing wages and cooling inflation. And immigrants aren’t taking jobs from citizens. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, in May the number of job openings was 8.1 million while the number of unemployed looking for work was 6.1 million. Actually, immigrants create more jobs than they take. That’s the finding of an academic study entitled “Immigration and Entrepreneurship in the United States.” Immigrants are 80% more likely than long-time residents to become entrepreneurs. First- and second-generation immigrants are launching businesses across the spectrum, from small sandwich shops with one or two employees to major tech firms with thousands of workers. Elon Musk is an immigrant.

Regarding the future impact immigrants will have on the economy, on June 18 the CBO released An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034. It predicts that increased immigration to the U.S. is expected to drive highereconomic growth, grow federal revenues and shrink deficits. Regrettably, most of this increase will be immigrants without work permits. Nonetheless, they will add almost $9 trillion to our Gross Domestic Product over the next decade.

Immigration has its costs, although very little to the criminal justice system. Even undocumented immigrants can access health care and their children can attend school. Most significant is their added strain on an already-inadequate housing stock. The question of how many immigrants we can accommodate without undue stress hinges upon other policy decisions we make, especially the funding of state governments, controlling health care costs, and addressing our woeful housing shortage. In social systems as in natural ones, the parts are interrelated.

OK. How much of what you just read did you hear in the debate?

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Downsizing: Saying goodbye to the LPs

"The roller-coaster ride we took is nearly at an end. . . 
And I think it's gonna be all right . . .
The mornin' sun is shinin' like a red rubber ball."
         Bruce Woodley and Paul Simon, sung by The Cyrkle, 1966

My generation came of age with a sountrack of the greatest music of all time, the music of the 1950s,'60s, and 70s

In today's Guest Post, Ben Beach describes a chapter in his "downsizing" project as he and his wife moved from the home where they had raised a family to something smaller and easier to manage. 

He gave up his collection of LPs. 

Ben Beach is a college classmate. He is a mostly-retired writer and editor, now living in Alexandria, Virginia. He set a record for the most consecutive finishes in the Boston Marathon: 54. That record was broken in April.

Guest Post by Ben Beach

Like many 75-year-old Americans, I have fond memories of flipping through racks of record albums at the store: the Byrds, the Beatles, Lesley Gore, Chad & Jeremy, Simon & Garfunkel, the Shangri-Las, and untold others. By my 25th birthday, I must have had about 60 or 70 LPs.

Today, I have none. My wife and I recently moved from a four-bedroom home to a one-floor condo, and that meant all kinds of prized possessions had to go.

As I pulled the albums off the shelves and said goodbye, a flood of memories washed over me. The Beach Boys’ “Little Deuce Coupe” had the song “409.” My older brother drove a 409, generally considered the fastest car in “My Little Town.” He used to take part in midnight drag races down on the parkway against Sonny LeJeutis (Corvette) and Craig Mottola (Ford Galaxie 406). I wondered if my parents ever found out.

By the way, when the Beach Boys first reached me on the radio, I thought they might be long-lost cousins. Then it became clear that they were really the Wilson boys and were just calling themselves the Beach Boys.

I looked longingly at a couple of Everly Brothers albums. I recalled the night at an amusement park named Playland. A music-loving 16-year-old taking guitar lessons, I wondered if I might possibly be the next Phil or Don Everly. I stepped into a booth and recorded “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” Once I got home and listened, it was clear that I was not going to be either Phil or Don. To put it generously, my voice was sub-par.

I was a Box Tops fan and had their album with “The Letter.” You remember: “I don’t care how much money I gotta spend. Gotta get back to my baby again.” I was a college freshman 200 miles from my first serious girlfriend.

How about tunes that bring back driving memories? The first time I drove at night, I heard the Supremes singing “Reflections,” and that song still takes me back to Route 22 in Armonk, N.Y. Other tunes that transport me to specific places include “I Think We’re Alone Now;” “Donna,” “California Girls;” “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter;” and “I Fought the Law.”

Coming across my Buddy Holly album was doubly sad, due to his early death in that Iowa cornfield. Every February 3, I check in with college classmate John Goldrosen, author of Buddy Holly: His Life and Music. Maybe you saw “The Buddy Holly Story,” the movie based on John’s biography.

My wife made me a lifetime Fleetwood Mac fan, starting in the late 1970s. And the good old Four Tops were with us on March 11, 1978, when we had our first slow dance. It was what the Drifters would call a “Magic Moment.”

Thanks to Carol, letting go of my albums was somewhat less traumatic than it could have been. In 1989, she had organized a surprise 40th birthday party and gave me a jukebox. Way over the top crazy! What was she thinking?

It turned out to be a stroke of genius. I had a large collection of 45s but rarely went to the trouble of playing them. The jukebox enabled me to put any 80 of them in the slots and just push buttons. I rotate them from time to time. Twenty-five years after the jukebox entered my life, our first grandchild arrived. There are now six, and all have loved punching the buttons and dancing to the music of my youth.

Back to the albums. A neighbor’s son carted them away and sold them to people who will actually play them. It made no sense for me to have them sitting on those shelves when they had the power to make others happy.

And we found room in the condo for our Rock-Ola 448, still going strong. It’s five feet away, and I think I’ll walk over there and have the Crystals sing “He’s A Rebel.”

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Kamala Harris is Plan B

The Biden of 2020 is not the Biden of 2024.

The years and the job have had a noticeable effect.

If Biden is the Democratic nominee, then I will vote for him. Donald Trump is a dangerous demagogue who used lies, forgery, intimidation, and violence in an attempt to stay in office despite losing the election. That is an attack on our democracy as direct as was the attack on Pearl Harbor. So, of course I oppose Trump.

Joe Biden is frail and declining, but he leads a team of competent people. His critics say that he is propped up by them. That is a good thing. All presidents are surrounded with advisors, and Biden seems to be well served. Trump surrounded himself with people who committed crimes, and who then requested and received pardons. 

Democrats should not be in denial about Biden's state of physical and mental health. The public will better accept Democrats defending an honest presentation of Biden than they will watching Democrats fall into line behind a "big lie" of their own. The Biden of 2020 is gone. These video clips show the change that has taken place. 

CLICK HERE

Here is another one, with a view of Biden back in 2012 in a debate with Paul Ryan. 

CLICK HERE

I had forgotten that only a short time ago Biden was a feisty, sharp-witted politician, fully able to articulate a policy message. Biden is in decline. The trajectory is evident. The GOP campaign will see to that. 

I think the GOP claim that "a vote for Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris" has traction. What will be Biden's condition in a year, in four years? The debate makes me wonder if he is fit to serve now.

If  Biden is who Democrats are presenting to the public as their best candidate, and that seems to be the plan, then they had better get started selling Kamala Harris as a strong partner now and as a desirable replacement soon-enough. Harris is not an afterthought in voters' minds not since the debate. She is present in my mind as the likely successor before Biden's four-year term of office would end. I expect some others to see it that way as well, especially since the GOP will be making that point. Democrats need to try to make that an appealing prospect. So far they haven't tried. Democrats need to get started.

Tomorrow: Boomers acknowledge their age by downsizing their homes. What to do about the collection of LPs?

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