A Democratic Plan B

New! Improved!

Democrats don't need to despair that there is no clear successor to Biden.

The early primaries take care of that.

President Biden says he plans to run again in 2024. He doesn't want the Democratic agenda to look rudderless going into the 2022 midterms. Maybe he is so vain he really believes that no Democrat but him can beat Trump, but I suspect this is just posturing. If he insists on running, there will be an awkward and ugly mess, but Democrats will get through even that. 

1968: "I shall not seek the nomination"

Some Democrat will run against him in New Hampshire and do very well--maybe outright win. It will be an embarrassing vote of "no confidence" for Biden, and a huge boost for whoever had the guts to run. Biden's loss will topple a giant and create a new one. Biden will announce he is dropping out to devote the rest of his term to solving some big problem. We have seen this movie before, in 1968. Eugene McCarthy ran against President Lyndon Johnson in New Hampshire. McCarthy got 42% of the vote. Johnson got the message and announced he would not run for re-election. Then others got into the opened-up race, including Robert F. Kennedy, who appeared to be building a national coalition until he was assassinated.

The 1968 campaign for Democrats was a mess but the problem wasn't that Johnson's announcement opened up the race. That was the remedy. 

Democrats worry there is no one on deck with a huge, national presence, no one like Hillary Clinton in 2015. Being nationally known, with a well established brand, is both head start and anchor. Friends come and go; political enemies accumulate. Long resumes include embarrassing old votes and comments made in a different political era.  

Trump's celebrity and brand was an early advantage for him. I was in New Hampshire and saw his crowds, beginning at his first rally. People wanted to see in person the decisive billionaire tycoon they had seen on TV. 

2015: Crowd of 3,000 in Rochester, New Hampshire

It was a big head start, but what really mattered is that Trump is a gifted performer, with a schtick of ad-libbed humor, resentment, prosecutorial accusations, bluster, and policy talk that appealed to many Republican voters. Trump was interesting and other politicians were boring in comparison, Hillary especially. Trump earned the tailwind of nonstop TV coverage. News departments realized that audiences wanted to watch Trump. He might say anything. Trump's campaign turned him from a joke into a formidable candidate. 

2015: Trump crowd in Reno stood for 4 hours.

No Democratic candidate would go into New Hampshire to do Town Halls with the visibility Trump had, but a free-for-all campaign would elevate one or more of them. Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Stacey Abrams, Bob Bennet, Gavin Newsom, Jared Polis, Sherrod Brown, Mitch Landrieu, and maybe a couple of Democratic billionaires may all decide they are the new voice of the American left. Some readers will look over this list and think "Seven Dwarves." Nobody has stature. 

Stature is earned. You get it by exciting crowds, raising money, and winning elections. Then you have it. The pundit world has concluded that Kamala Harris underwhelms. That can change--or not. If she draws crowds, and if she says things people want to hear, and if she then beats other candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina, the story of Kamala Harris will be brand new. She will have presence. Or it could go another way, and Buttigieg or Landrieu or Amy Klobuchar seizes leadership out from under her. Surprise! Then that person has stature.

Power is not given away. It is seized. A candidate proves up by winning with a message. Wins brings more attention and more wins. The story changes from maybe to momentum. That culminates in a feeling of relief among Democrats. They will have chosen a new leader. 

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Mike Pence is choosing failure.

     "You don't understand. I could'a had class. I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let's face it."

       Marlon Brando, playing Terry Malloy, On The Waterfront

Mike Pence is at a decision point. He could be a contender. 

Mike Pence was in the room. He was an eyewitness. He can testify to what Trump said and heard, what he knew, when he knew it, and what he said his intention was. Mike Pence could pick up the phone, call Benni Thompson, the January 6 Committee Chairman, and say he wants to testify on camera now. I would expect his in-person testimony to be devastating to Trump. We already know a great deal about what Trump saw, said, and did. He did much of it on camera and Trump has already bragged about much of it. 

Trump may survive these hearings because Trump's behavior was done so openly and shamelessly that many--maybe most-- Republican voters think it is OK. That may change if they hear Pence describe Trump. We know what Pence thinks; he has said it. But we haven't heard it as testimony under oath: Trump wanted me to help him overthrow the election, and I wouldn't because it was illegal, morally wrong, and unconstitutional.

Pence's testimony would stand apart from tell-all authors. He would not be pleading the Fifth Amendment or refusing to cooperate. He would be doing his duty as a citizen who observed a crime. Of course, he would catch hell for it among Republicans. He would be called a back-stabber. He would be accused of lying for political gain, to pave the way for his own presidential ambition. That criticism would be his visible war wounds, the price paid for his courage. The GOP is still Trump's party. A potential outcome would be some version of what is happening now to Liz Cheney. That's a risk. Pence would be beloved, but by all the wrong people. Accolades from Democrats and pundits are worse than worthless if one is trying to ingratiate oneself to the GOP primary electorate.

Public testimony is Pence's best path to the presidency. His testimony might sink Trump. Trump is feared, not loved. Pence's revelations could start a cascade of people abandoning Trump. We saw it happen in the immediate aftermath of the Access Hollywood tape. That time the GOP was stuck with Trump, three weeks before the election. People aren't stuck this time. 

Pence is taking a dive. Apparently he won't be testifying publicly. Trump will likely survive and thrive. Republican voters will be able to avert their eyes from Trump's effort to overturn the election. Pence praises Trump for everything but that one little disagreement, and says he would have gone along, if only he could have. This does not condemn seditious intent, only Trump's means.

Pence perhaps imagines himself in Iowa or New Hampshire, in a primary election in 2024 against DeSantis, Cruz, Hawley, Don Junior, and a half dozen others. Pence perhaps imagines himself Trump's logical successor. He isn't. Trump was his own successor and Pence blocked it. He is Trump's enemy. Pence is pulling his punches for no good purpose. He will get booed in New Hampshire and Iowa. Pence is taking a dive for the opportunity to come in fifth in the Iowa caucuses.

His chance to make a clear case against Trump is now. He won't be persuasive doing it later as part of a campaign, explaining that he was a reluctant kill-joy. 

From: The Wire

In the words of the Omar Little character from The Wire, "You come at the king, you best not miss." He didn't come at Pence in January, 2021. He did his duty. But as Trump sees it, Pence went after him. That was once.

Pence gets a second chance to be a contender, if he will take it.

 

Shaming the GOP Enablers

Former judge Michael Luttig was a ponderous bore. He sucked the energy out of the Thursday hearing.

He had value. He sent a message by being there. He condemned Trump and his allies.

The danger for America should not have been Trump himself. The American Constitution anticipated a Trump-like charismatic demagogue. The danger for America is that leading GOP officeholders and thought leaders are complicit with Trump. The founders expected them to speak up in objection. The Constitution presumed they would jealously protect their own prerogatives of office. Except for Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, they aren't doing so.

Former Judge Luttig was brought in to put a stake in the ground. Trump is wrong and dangerous, he said. 

Ted Cruz and John Eastman have something in common. They both clerked for Judge Luttig. Michael Luttig has credibility as a thoroughly conservative judge. He is a luminary in the Federalist Society. His opinion matters, both as a policy mentor and career reference and sponsor. He is a grand old man.

His presentation was unequivocal:  

  A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, and our democracy today is on a knife's edge.

The war on democracy instigated by the former president and his political party allies on January 6 was the natural and foreseeable culmination of the war for America. It was the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost, so that he could cling to power that the American People had decided to confer upon his successor , the next president of the United States instead. Knowing full well that he had lost the 2020 presidential election, the former president and his allies and supporters falsely claimed and proclaimed to the nation that he had won the election, and then he and they set about to overturn the election that he and they knew the former president had lost.

Judge Luttig spoke at half speed. People alert enough to be watching the hearing on TV left the room in frustration. But Judge Luttig himself has authority, and his presence was the message. He sent a signal to the conservative legal establishment that the "Trump issue" could not be finessed. Trump is not half-right or maybe-right, or wrong-but-excusable. He is wrong, period. He is lying. He is a mortal danger to America. And so are his allies. That means you, my former clerks.

Luttig's message gives moral authority to a position that has a toehold within conservative opinion-writers. They are beginning to break with Trump. Open, clear opposition to Trump is not yet a mainstream idea among senior officeholders. Editorials in Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and New York Post declare Trump to be dishonest about the Big Lie--but they don't stand for public office. With the exception of voters in the Georgia primary, Republican officeholders who openly disagree with Trump, or who voted to impeach him after January 6, lose head-to-head primaries. Officeholders notice.

Trump, for his part, is not finessing his position:

January 6 was not merely a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again. It was about an Election that was Rigged and Stolen, and a Country that was about to go to HELL.

Trump hasn't "moved on." He is defining true Republicans and RINOs. Mike Pence was a coward who betrayed him, Trump said. So was Bill Barr. So is Mitch McConnell. So is everyone who questioned him. Trump says he won the election. He says it like he means it. Trump remains on center stage among adoring crowds. He is adamant and indefatigable.

Luttig is telling his kindred spirits they need to choose: Trump or democracy.

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Bear Market.

The Fed slams on the brakes.

For a decade America experienced low consumer goods inflation, but high and rising asset inflation. The Federal Reserve had a policy of very low interest rates. It had the desired effect of keeping economies humming and the "animal spirits" of entrepreneurs energized. 

When businesses and investors are being exuberant, they tend to be indiscriminate about it. With interest rates at zero every investment looked good--or at least better than nothing, the yield on cash. Stock prices were high, house prices were high, startup businesses had high valuations. Speculators had even bid up the prices of assets that are essentially imaginary: Crypto-currencies and Non-Fungible Tokens.

Policymakers didn't worry much about asset inflation. People like getting richer. It was miserable for young people trying to buy a first home, but bonds are an asset, too, and like other assets, their prices were high. (High bond prices is another way of saying low interest rates.) Young people could buy expensive houses with a manageable mortgage cost, when amortized over 30 years at 3% to 4%.

The Fed, encouraged by the whole political and social environment, created too much money and left interest rates too low for too long. How could that happen? I blame everybody for being in on it. Biden. The Fed. Politics. Democrats. Republicans.

After the Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 policymakers realized they had been too cautious. Demand had been destroyed. Banks were shamed by the careless loans they had made, so--now chastened--they were reluctant to loan money to anyone. The GOP blocked spending on infrastructure that might give then-president Obama a "win." It meant there was a recovery, but a painfully slow one. 

Trump was elected. Republicans, then controlling all three chambers of government, said, "Now, let's spend." A theory emerged to justify it: MMT, Modern Monetary Theory. It asserted that deficits don't matter. The supposed party of fiscal restraint, Republicans, saw an opportunity to make Trump more popular. It worked. Democrats didn't push back on spending. Democrats are always ready to spend. After all, there are problems to solve.  

Then Biden got elected. Republicans rediscovered fiscal discipline, but Democrats were in a narrow majority and had learned the lesson from the Obama and Trump experiences. Stimulate! The problem is that in the supercharged and stimulated COVID world there is no lack of demand. COVID created a lack of supply. In America and around the world, producers and shippers of physical things remain disrupted. War in Ukraine exacerbates matters. Americans have more money and fewer things to buy. The result is inflation.

Inflation of consumer goods is not an American problem. It is a world problem. United States' inflation is squarely in the middle of peer countries. 

There is a world price for most tradable products. Biden is paying a political price. He campaigned saying he would stop new oil leases on federal lands, and that creates a compelling target for blame. American oil companies have massive opportunities for new drilling. They aren't doing it because $120 oil, and minimal new drilling costs, is wildly profitable for them. They are doing what companies do in a capitalist economy: Maximize rewards for shareholders.

The supply-demand imbalance means inflation. Americans don't like it when it happens here to consumer goods. The Fed is trying to fix it by raising interest rates. This changes investment opportunities and investment and consumer psychology. Investors who want a safe place to park capital can once again get a return from cash, and not feel forced to place it in risk assets. It means that the future potential income from businesses will be discounted back to the present by a factor bigger than zero. That lowers their present values, which shows up as lower stock prices. Businesspeople are looking ahead and thinking things will be slower, harder, and more expensive. That psychology means people defer investments and projects. Enthusiasm turns into caution. 

The cause and effect are complicated and uncertain, but the world tends to work in this order:

       The Fed raises interest rates.

       The stock market cools.

       Consumers and businesses get more cautious.

       The economy gets sluggish or falls into recession.

       Inflation moderates.

This is a grim outlook for Democrats. There are political consequences. In 2022 Democrats will be blamed for inflation. In 2024, Democrats will be blamed for the recession. 

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"Real classy, Boston."

Sport is life.

Or, to quote from the Apple TV series Ted Lasso, "Football is life." 

"Football is life" are the words used by the Dani Rojas character. He bursts onto the scene with the bounding exuberance and joy of a puppy let off its leash. The character is eager to embrace life, his new team, and the game of  football--i.e. soccer as we would call it. The show is on Apple TV and worth the subscription price. Binge, then cancel, if you like. Amid everything going on in the world, the Ted Lasso show is a welcome view of a game, a team, life, and the effect of a relentless positive attitude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDFBG7_0H5I

Football is life goes both ways. Life is football. Life, including the behaviors of political life, shows up in sports. Something new and coarse is happening in crowd behavior, most recently and visibly among crowds at NBA games. 

Jack Mullen was a multi-sport athlete in his youth in Medford. He is a lifelong sports fan. He also a close reader of political news. In our youths we thinned and picked pears together in Medford-area orchards. Later we both worked on the staff of SW Oregon Congressman Jim Weaver. Mullen asked to share this reflection.

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

Once my father took his nose out of the newspaper and showed me a photo of Stan Musial and Adlai Stevenson talking to each other. I was hooked.  My lifelong love affair with sports and politics began that day and has never ceased. 

I still have a hop in my step every morning, rain or shine, as I unfold my newspaper before entering my abode. I glance at the front page before moving to the sports page.  On rare occasions, such as back in the days of Watergate, I stay on the front page. Usually I jump immediately to the sports page. 

This week, the competition for my attention between the front page and sports page is intense.  Zoe Lofgren and Liz Cheney are lifting my spirits just as the basketball fans in the Boston Garden are taking sports fandom to a new low.  My concern that our fragile democracy is on its last legs haunts me daily. The efforts of those on the January 6 Committee give me hope that we still have a fighting chance to save our democracy, just as members of the Senate Watergate Committee saved our democracy in the 20th century, as Lincoln in the 19th century. 

Meanwhile, in Boston, the hometown Boston Celtic fans showered opposing Golden State basketball players  Draymond Green and Steph Curry with chants of “F*** You, Drey-mond” and “F*** You Steph-on”.  Warrior coach Steve Kerr and player Klay Thompson, in the same vein as that Senator in 1954 said to Joe McCarthy “Have you no decency, Sir?”, at the post game press conference, said, “real classy, Boston”.  

I am left to wonder, just what are we now in the last days of spring 2022? Will decency find its way back in America?  It is a real struggle.

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Good bye, San Francisco

Enough already.

"Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone"

          Joni Mitchell

A counter-trend is in place. Residents of San Francisco want their city back. 

San Francisco had a well-deserved reputation for being on the leading edge of progressive, unconventional, avant-garde behavior. That was part of San Francisco's charm. That special San Francisco Bay character made it a magnet for innovation in technology and the vanguard in progressive politics. That attitude increasingly included a philosophy of law enforcement as regards small crimes: Don't sweat the small stuff. The city got rougher, dirtier, and less livable.

The counter-trend of frustration with what San Francisco had lost got national attention. Last year voters recalled School Board members who appeared to be putting time and attention to renaming schools. Earlier this month voters recalled a District Attorney who wasn't prosecuting small crimes. Voters realized they could not have a liberal paradise without law and order.

My Guest Post author lived in San Francisco and witnessed the slow erosion of her city. She describes why she left. Jennifer is a retired attorney.

Guest Post by Jennifer A.

I left San Francisco after calling it home for sixteen years because my mother's health required me to move to the east coast. I had lived on the line between the Mission and the Castro from the start, and I knew there were plenty of things I'd miss: easy access to public transportation and restaurants; a walkable neighborhood with lots of history; a casual environment where no one cared what I wore or how I earned a living; good (though boring) weather, and almost unlimited opportunities to walk in nature, hear music and watch live sports. I wish I could say the living was easy. But over the years, the dark side of San Francisco had begun to gnaw at me. By the time I left, I was convinced that people (like me) trying to live day to day in relative peace and security were invisible and expendable to the city government. Meaning no one was expected to take so-called quality of life rules seriously. We had our newspaper delivered and it was stolen about half the time. We couldn't leave so much as a paper clip in our parked car for fear of having the window smashed. Forget about leaving a bag of groceries in the back while carting the first batch upstairs. People woke us at 3 a.m. calling our intercom, hoping we would buzz them into our building. The Little Free Library a few blocks away was vandalized so often that its owner took it down. Walking from my front door to the grocery store was an invitation to verbal abuse from mentally ill or drug-addled people. I might open my garage door to discover someone sleeping in front of it. Any public park or seating area was taken over by homeless people.

None of these were major crimes, and many were just annoyances, but I was sure they wouldn't be tolerated in most communities around the country - and certainly not where homes cost what they do in San Francisco. But San Francisco just wasn't good at setting limits. Reporting any vandalism or theft felt pointless. Perpetrators ignored court summonses for minor offenses with impunity. Those convicted usually didn't serve time. Even something like the theft of an expensive bicycle would be of no interest to the authorities. In fact, thieves brazenly displayed dozens of stolen bikes for sale on sidewalks. For property crimes, the standard advice was"call your insurance company." And openly complaining about it made you vulnerable to criticism. Compassion for drug addicts and the mentally ill - which we did have - was supposed to erase any feeling that our own rights were important.

The San Francisco annual budget is $13.1 billion this year, more than some states. The city pours money into homeless shelters, drug treatment, mental health care, street cleaning, social workers, nonprofits and community policing. Yet in the years since I left, things have deteriorated more, to the point where the city has become a symbol of failed "liberal" policies. New people are always arriving in San Francisco needing help, and many are successfully moved into housing, jobs and a drug free life. But big picture, daily life for the average citizen continues to be frustrating and sometimes infuriating.

Walking away from San Francisco's problems was a relief, and I know other former residents feel the same. I love living where I can leave tools and porch furniture outside all night with no fear they'll be stolen. And if they were stolen, my neighbors would be sympathetic. In San Francisco, all would agree it was my own fault, because anything not nailed down is fair game. It's not like my new neighbors are all about law and order. They just have the expectation of a peaceful, secure life. And most importantly, that extends to the people who enforce the laws. Sure, there are car break-ins and thefts. But they're taken seriously, investigated and prosecuted.

 

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Political insult: Banana Republicans.

"Banana Republicans"

I heard Larry Summers, say it on CNN this morning. 

Clever insults have power. Pocahontas was Trump's snide name for Elizabeth Warren. It positioned Elizabeth Warren as a finagler and fraud, pretending to be a Native American. Pocahontas embodied an idea that motivated voters, that affirmative action hiring gives unfair advantage to people. Pocahontas associated her with that. Cruel, but smart, of Trump.

Castro giving a long speech

Larry Summers voiced an insult worthy of Trump. Summers is an economist, a former president of Harvard, and a former Treasury Secretary. He has been an outspoken critic of the Fed, saying that they misread the economy and were too slow to raise interest rates. That error unleashed the inflation, he says, and it is why the Fed now has to hit the brakes (raise interest rates) very hard. This will cause a regrettable, but necessary, recession, he says. He linked the phrase "Banana Republicans" to inflation. He says irresponsible attacks on election integrity accelerated the public's distrust of all institutions. If we don't trust our elections, we cannot trust our government, so we cannot trust our currency. 

The phrase Banana Republicans encapsulates multiple ideas and prejudices. There is no answer to it. There is no counter-argument, because it isn't an argument. It is a sneer. American self-image is one of a country with a secure, orderly government. Americans assume Latin American police are corrupt, the governments operate by nepotism, and that they easily slip into dictatorship or fascism or communism. Americans think Latin American strong-man dictatorship governments are evil, foolish, or both at once. We don't fear corrupt Latin American governments--because they are far away, south of the border, and not us. 

The idea of Banana Republic imagines a sweaty man making long, impassioned speeches to adoring--or intimidated--crowds: Castro. We imagine a fascist terror government: Pinochet. We imagine a narco state: Columbia. We imagine a terrorist military government with dissidents disappearing in the night: Brazil. We imagine a corrupt, populist socialist Venezuela. None of it is good.

Banana Republics are TV and movie caricatures. We envision military men with a chest full of medals.

Latin American dictatorships can be played for laughs. Woody Allen wrote and directed Bananas.

As Trump well understood, people in the USA have a snooty prejudice against Latin Americans and their governments. There is no groundswell of fear that immigrants from Norway, as Trump suggested as a preferred alternative, would change the American way of life for the worse. Norway isn't a "shit-hole country." Banana republics are. Trump successfully weaponized our prejudices. Banana Republicans turns the table.

The Banana Republicans insult widens the focus from Trump to all Republicans. The insult is not an argument or even a description. It is a name. It assumes the guilt. 

Like a majority of GOP House Members, my own U.S. Representative, Cliff Bentz voted not to accept Pennsylvania's electoral votes in the night following the attack on the Capitol. At the time it may have seemed to him like a middle-of-the-road, cautious vote. Now, with the revelations of the former president's post-election plans, his vote looks like part of his corrupt effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Trump is on record telling the Justice Department falsely to announce they found fraud in the election. That's all we need, he said; the White House and GOP House Members will do the rest. Now those GOP House Members look like toadies and co-conspirators. A description can be argued, but a name is an identity and it is one associated with shame. 

They are Banana Republicans. We will be hearing this phrase often.

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