Echo Trump’s Tough Talk, or Lift Tariffs? Democrats Clash Over Trade
Neither Obama nor any other Democrat is or has lately been a real free trader in the history Republican style.
He is a fair-trader, which means a free-trader with add-ons to protect the environment and workers and otherwise advance social and other liberal goals having nothing much to do with trade per se, and nothing at all to do with protecting American jobs.
The whole tariff thing, however, is true-blue protectionism, and so both stupid and harmful to those slated to go unprotected.
It was the subject of trade, which has become the centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s agenda, that most animated the candidates.
They argued over whether to revisit Obama-era multilateralism or double down on Mr. Trump’s brand of economic isolationism, which has upended how both Republicans and Democrats think about international commerce.
The most striking example of the fissures came during a heated exchange between Senator Elizabeth Warren, a progressive from Massachusetts, and John Delaney, a moderate former congressman from Maryland, during an argument over what should be done about Mr. Trump’s steel tariffs.
“I’m the only one running for president who actually supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Mr. Delaney said, referring to the 12-nation trade pact that Mr. Trump abandoned upon taking office.
“President Obama was right about that. We should be getting back in that.”
Deriding Ms. Warren as an isolationist on trade, he added: “We have to engage.”
Ms. Warren unveiled a trade plan this week that included a raft of strict preconditions on human rights and environmental standards that would be required for kicking off any negotiations with other countries.
On Tuesday night, she vowed to sideline big corporations and make sure that unions, small farmers and environmentalists took priority in future trade talks.
. . . .
For good measure, Ms. Warren went on to assail Mr. Trump’s rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which she called Nafta 2.0, as a giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that would lead to higher drug prices.
Not to be outdone, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said that he would stop giving military contracts to companies that did not employ American workers to manufacture their products.
“If anybody here thinks that corporate America gives one damn about the average American worker, you’re mistaken,” said Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.
“If they can save 5 cents to Mexico or China or Vietnam, that’s what they’ll do.”
As can be easily seen, he really doesn't approve the way capitalism works. The way it essentially works.
<snip>
The more moderate Democrats were more cautious in their attacks on Mr. Trump’s stewardship of the economy, largely taking issue with sluggish income growth and what they called the unfairness of the tax code while criticizing his methods on trade.
For instance, when asked whether they would repeal Mr. Trump’s tariffs on steel imports, most of the 10 candidates hedged.
. . . .
Despite the strength of the economy, some economists argue that it has thrived in spite of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
The trade tensions caused by his tariffs are widely acknowledged to have been a drag on economic growth.
The federal budget deficit has increased an average of 15 percent for each fiscal year he has been in office.
Moreover, Mr. Trump’s handling of trade negotiations has called into question his deal-making prowess.
The overhaul of Nafta is languishing in Congress, where it must be ratified.
A new trade war with Europe is brewing over digital taxes.
Negotiations with China, which resumed this week in Shanghai, appear to be making little progress.
Showing posts with label free trade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free trade. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Friday, November 10, 2017
A propos of The Duce in China
His supporters still don't get it.
China fills the big box stores at which they and the entire working class of America buy nearly everything a person can carry, and much that you can't.
Tariffs and protectionism would significantly hurt all those people and benefit in net only the few, if any, who got better jobs out of it.
But we are already at full employment.
So, good times for robots?
"The going was good" for the unionized aristocracy of American workers for a few decades after the Second World War, when the economies of the rest of the world had been destroyed and American unions controlled the fates of several major industries that, facing no foreign competition, were on a global export romp.
Nobody's bringing back those good old days.
Friday, October 20, 2017
Lemmings cruising toward a crash?
Velshi and Ruhle, in politically spun news, have once in a while over several weeks been questioning the health of the stock market, reporting that some economists and knowledgeable players see the current phase of our nine year old bull market as a bubble, a rerun of the scene just before the great crash of 2008.
(But where are the bad mortgages?)
Today they pointed out that we are in the region economists think of as full employment, meaning that apart from people changing jobs or voluntarily not working pretty much everybody who wants a job and can be relied upon to do it is working.
And when you are at full employment and a boom continues employers compete for workers by raising wages and benefits.
But that isn't happening to the extent expected or wanted.
Wages and benefits are rising, but more slowly and less than they would have in the past, and that has been the story pretty much throughout this bull market.
Their explanation in part is that automation has been enabling productivity rises without much rise in the market for labor, and little or none for the least skilled.
That part makes sense.
Too, they concede the Sanders/Trump claim that globalization means that importation of cheap goods from overseas has prevented demand from driving up US domestic production of those same or similar goods and thus pushing up US wages.
While that is true, as well, it doesn't mean protectionist policies would not drive up prices more than wages, or that it would not drive up prices paid by Peter while driving up wages paid only to Paul
The last part is that interest rates are too low and are causing a mere bubble in stock values.
That part is doubtful, since too low interest rates would cause notable inflation, and we aren't having that.
(But where are the bad mortgages?)
Today they pointed out that we are in the region economists think of as full employment, meaning that apart from people changing jobs or voluntarily not working pretty much everybody who wants a job and can be relied upon to do it is working.
And when you are at full employment and a boom continues employers compete for workers by raising wages and benefits.
But that isn't happening to the extent expected or wanted.
Wages and benefits are rising, but more slowly and less than they would have in the past, and that has been the story pretty much throughout this bull market.
Their explanation in part is that automation has been enabling productivity rises without much rise in the market for labor, and little or none for the least skilled.
That part makes sense.
Too, they concede the Sanders/Trump claim that globalization means that importation of cheap goods from overseas has prevented demand from driving up US domestic production of those same or similar goods and thus pushing up US wages.
While that is true, as well, it doesn't mean protectionist policies would not drive up prices more than wages, or that it would not drive up prices paid by Peter while driving up wages paid only to Paul
The last part is that interest rates are too low and are causing a mere bubble in stock values.
That part is doubtful, since too low interest rates would cause notable inflation, and we aren't having that.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
So The Duce was not kidding about trade?
The Financial Times, advocate of ever more free trade, doesn't like it at all.
How's this for a headline?
It looks like Trump is serious about starting a trade war with China
A Harvard educated economic nationalist will lead a National Trade Council with a big job.
Not a hint how he can get his own party, dominated by free traders, on board.
But Bernie Sanders might go for it.
If not, it will just highlight what cosmopolitan phonies the fair traders are.
The AP story is not so alarmist.
How's this for a headline?
It looks like Trump is serious about starting a trade war with China
A Harvard educated economic nationalist will lead a National Trade Council with a big job.
Not a hint how he can get his own party, dominated by free traders, on board.
But Bernie Sanders might go for it.
If not, it will just highlight what cosmopolitan phonies the fair traders are.
The AP story is not so alarmist.
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Protectionism and robots
American workers want to be more expensive than robots, and robots are more expensive than the wildly exploited and exploitable labor of the Third World who have gotten so many American jobs under free trade.
But from the look of it protectionism would protect robots more than workers, or workers only if they agreed to work for little or nothing more than the current going wage - or the price of a good robot.
So the goods the robots or workers got to produce in America, thanks to protectionism, would cost more for American consumers or businesses, but American workers would gain little or nothing by way of better wages.
And doesn't that mean they would actually be worse off?
Just wondering.
But from the look of it protectionism would protect robots more than workers, or workers only if they agreed to work for little or nothing more than the current going wage - or the price of a good robot.
So the goods the robots or workers got to produce in America, thanks to protectionism, would cost more for American consumers or businesses, but American workers would gain little or nothing by way of better wages.
And doesn't that mean they would actually be worse off?
Just wondering.
Thursday, August 25, 2016
"Our Revolution" in trouble
Almost everything they are for I oppose.
Almost everything they oppose I am for.
Strangely absent from their concerns, as listed in this story, is the issue of international trade.
Ah, well.
Fair trade is just free trade made even more profitable for the foreign producers who get our jobs, anyway.
Bernie and the left have always been faux opponents of free trade.
True, they seem to aim at better for retirees, but I doubt that can be trusted.
Far too many of the sorts of young and radical leftists who support Bernie make no effort to hide their anger at and scorn for old white folks.
And the agenda as a whole is too ambitious, largely wrong-headed, and puts at risk what we already have.
Sunday, August 21, 2016
Is abandoning neoliberalism the same thing as adopting protectionism?
I think not.
The death of neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics
Globalist, cosmopolitan critics of neoliberalism may note and celebrate, but do not share the aims of, the essentially protectionist and nationalist populist movements opposing free trade and/or free immigration on economic grounds.
These populisms favor the interests of the working classes and poor native to the nations that lose by free trade or open low-wage immigration over those of the workers of foreign nations that gain.
That is, they favor the interests of better off workers and poor over those of worse off.
Fair trading politicians and cosmopolitan global leftists merely pretend to support those native interests, while protectionist politicians actually do.
The populist right has taken over these issues in Europe and America because they are about competition of nations for advantage, and the left in general has, compared to the right, abandoned the notion that the people of a nation have any legitimate moral or political claim to special solicitude from each other or from their own leaders and government, when their economic or power interests clash with those of foreigners.
More particularly, the left in Europe is also more committed to the EU and everywhere is more committed to the UN and other transnational sources of power and legitimacy than to the nations, even their own nations.
Again more particularly, the left in America disapproves US national power per se in any case, as well as using it exclusively or even primarily to further American interests, even if through peaceful avenues of trade and the like.
And the American left expects the votes of immigrants, and wants besides to use immigration to alter the balance of power among the races in America.
The right, on the other hand, pretty much everywhere is using these same issues as bait, to lure working class votes to help undermine progressive economic and social policies and programs of advantage to those working folk, themselves.
They aren't really going to go in for trade and immigration protection of domestic labor all that much, anyway.
This is true both in Europe and in America, of the anti-EU and anti-immigration, populist right of the Old World and the Trumpism of the New.
Trump might personally be sincere in his protectionism, but the party he leads is dead set against it.
The death of neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics
Globalist, cosmopolitan critics of neoliberalism may note and celebrate, but do not share the aims of, the essentially protectionist and nationalist populist movements opposing free trade and/or free immigration on economic grounds.
These populisms favor the interests of the working classes and poor native to the nations that lose by free trade or open low-wage immigration over those of the workers of foreign nations that gain.
That is, they favor the interests of better off workers and poor over those of worse off.
Fair trading politicians and cosmopolitan global leftists merely pretend to support those native interests, while protectionist politicians actually do.
The populist right has taken over these issues in Europe and America because they are about competition of nations for advantage, and the left in general has, compared to the right, abandoned the notion that the people of a nation have any legitimate moral or political claim to special solicitude from each other or from their own leaders and government, when their economic or power interests clash with those of foreigners.
More particularly, the left in Europe is also more committed to the EU and everywhere is more committed to the UN and other transnational sources of power and legitimacy than to the nations, even their own nations.
Again more particularly, the left in America disapproves US national power per se in any case, as well as using it exclusively or even primarily to further American interests, even if through peaceful avenues of trade and the like.
And the American left expects the votes of immigrants, and wants besides to use immigration to alter the balance of power among the races in America.
The right, on the other hand, pretty much everywhere is using these same issues as bait, to lure working class votes to help undermine progressive economic and social policies and programs of advantage to those working folk, themselves.
They aren't really going to go in for trade and immigration protection of domestic labor all that much, anyway.
This is true both in Europe and in America, of the anti-EU and anti-immigration, populist right of the Old World and the Trumpism of the New.
Trump might personally be sincere in his protectionism, but the party he leads is dead set against it.
Monday, August 8, 2016
Trump offers tax breaks and less regulation to Wall Street. But not free trade.
Trump vows 'to make America grow again' in speech on economy
The GOP nominee proposed reducing the number of income tax brackets from seven to three and to "dramatically streamline the process." He also pitched allowing parents to deduct child-care expenses from their taxable income.
“We will make America grow again," Trump said.
The real estate mogul also pledged to reduce the business tax rate and impose a "temporary moratorium" on new regulations, all while lambasting Clinton and President Obama.
The “one common feature” of Clinton’s economic plan, Trump said, is that it “punishes you for working and doing business in the United States”
In a rebuttal issued in advance of the speech, the Clinton campaign hit the Trump plan as focused on tax cuts for the wealthy and dangerous for the economy.
Trump also addressed an issue that's been at the center of his campaign: trade. While saying "isolation is not an option," Trump blasted the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he called "a disaster."
The GOP nominee proposed reducing the number of income tax brackets from seven to three and to "dramatically streamline the process." He also pitched allowing parents to deduct child-care expenses from their taxable income.
“We will make America grow again," Trump said.
The real estate mogul also pledged to reduce the business tax rate and impose a "temporary moratorium" on new regulations, all while lambasting Clinton and President Obama.
The “one common feature” of Clinton’s economic plan, Trump said, is that it “punishes you for working and doing business in the United States”
In a rebuttal issued in advance of the speech, the Clinton campaign hit the Trump plan as focused on tax cuts for the wealthy and dangerous for the economy.
Trump also addressed an issue that's been at the center of his campaign: trade. While saying "isolation is not an option," Trump blasted the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he called "a disaster."
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
How far does the platform really reflect any Trump change? Not far, it seems.
Republican Party platform draft explicitly calls for Trump’s Mexican ‘border wall’
Not much of a change, there, really, though.
Would a wall made of brick, stone, concrete, or whatever actually be different in effect, in cost, in anything but symbolism?
There was a Berlin Wall, and Hadrian built a wall, and it's the Great Wall of China, not the Great Fence.
The Republican Party platform usually calls for stronger control of borders and illegal immigration.
But in past platforms, the GOP simply asked for a fence — an idea Congress approved in 2006, but never funded.
“The double-layered fencing on the border that was enacted by Congress in 2006, but never completed, must finally be built,” the 2012 platform said.
. . . .
The platform draft generally shows the GOP going farther right at it prepares to nominate its hater-in-chief.
Other amendments call for banning military women from combat, teaching Bible in public schools, overturning the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage and combating porn as a “public health crisis.”
As reported in The New York Times, the sociocons and the Christian right had it pretty much all their own way.
Emerging Republican Platform Goes Far to the Right
Trump scores rare GOP platform win on trade
On the whole, the Examiner story just retails lies to the effect that Trump is really a free trader and the GOP platform did not and did not need to make a shift from its traditional free trade stance to frank and outright protectionism.
Wall Street didn't budge, and Trump lost on this one, despite the deceptive headline.
Chamber of Commerce 1, Trump 0.
Not seeing anything in the news about the platform expressly calling for deportation of all illegals, either.
Not much of a change, there, really, though.
Would a wall made of brick, stone, concrete, or whatever actually be different in effect, in cost, in anything but symbolism?
There was a Berlin Wall, and Hadrian built a wall, and it's the Great Wall of China, not the Great Fence.
The Republican Party platform usually calls for stronger control of borders and illegal immigration.
But in past platforms, the GOP simply asked for a fence — an idea Congress approved in 2006, but never funded.
“The double-layered fencing on the border that was enacted by Congress in 2006, but never completed, must finally be built,” the 2012 platform said.
. . . .
The platform draft generally shows the GOP going farther right at it prepares to nominate its hater-in-chief.
Other amendments call for banning military women from combat, teaching Bible in public schools, overturning the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage and combating porn as a “public health crisis.”
As reported in The New York Times, the sociocons and the Christian right had it pretty much all their own way.
Emerging Republican Platform Goes Far to the Right
Republicans moved on Tuesday toward adopting a staunchly conservative platform that takes a strict, traditionalist view of the family and child rearing, bars military women from combat, describes coal as a “clean” energy source and declares pornography a “public health crisis.”
It is a platform that at times seems to channel the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump — calling to “destroy ISIS,” belittling President Obama as weak and accusing his administration of inviting attacks from adversaries.
But the document positions itself far to the right of Mr. Trump’s beliefs in other places — and amounts to a rightward lurch even from the party’s hard-line platform in 2012 — especially as it addresses gay men, lesbians and transgender people.
. . . .
An amendment to specifically recognize that gay people are targets of the Islamic State caused a stir among more conservative delegates who said they felt there was no need to single out any one group.
As the delegate who offered the amendment, Giovanni Cicione of Rhode Island, argued his case — by saying he believed it was an “innocuous and important” way to tell gay people the Republican Party does not exclude them — another delegate moved to shut off the debate.
. . . .
The amendment was defeated, as were others in a similar vein.
But nearly every provision that expressed disapproval of homosexuality, same-sex marriage or transgender rights passed.
The platform calls for overturning the Supreme Court marriage decision with a constitutional amendment and makes references to appointing judges “who respect traditional family values.”
. . . .
Mr. Trump’s influence was also evident in the absence of any mention of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that was promoted in the last Republican platform.
Another tweak to the platform’s language on immigration will also please Mr. Trump:
Though the initial draft called for building a “physical barrier” along the United States border with Mexico, that passage was amended yesterday to call specifically for a wall.
Yet it was the lack of much interference by Mr. Trump or his aides that seemed to set the tone for the platform’s direction.
That allowed conservative activists like Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, to exert greater influence.
Mr. Perkins’s hand could be seen in dozens of amendments on issues like gun control, religious expression and bathroom use.
“He is going to be the nominee for the party. He has his own ideas,” Mr. Perkins told reporters on Monday.
“But this is a statement of not Donald Trump’s campaign, but of the Republican Party.”
A first draft of the document that will become the GOP platform at this year's Republican convention sticks to Donald Trump's tough talk on trade, but leaves the long-time party position opposing abortion rights relatively unchanged.
And in a major shift, the platform would drop the pursuit of a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman, opting instead to oppose the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage and calling on the matter to be decided by the states.
. . . .
The most substantial changes to the 2012 platform came on trade -- a key issue for Trump where he has sparred with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other reliable conservative business backers.
The new language sounds remarkably like Trump, though it stays away from some of his more inflammatory positions including renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Which means that, compared to what Trump has been touting, there has been a rhetorical change and some tweaks about "better deals," and that's all.
No calls for tariffs, quotas, or outright protection, it seems, though those are what Trump and his campaign have openly demanded.
Trump scores rare GOP platform win on trade
On the whole, the Examiner story just retails lies to the effect that Trump is really a free trader and the GOP platform did not and did not need to make a shift from its traditional free trade stance to frank and outright protectionism.
Wall Street didn't budge, and Trump lost on this one, despite the deceptive headline.
Chamber of Commerce 1, Trump 0.
Not seeing anything in the news about the platform expressly calling for deportation of all illegals, either.
Monday, July 11, 2016
The undemocratic remedies for Trump whose names Jon Chait dares not speak
The thing to remember is that if The Donald wins he and the Congressional Republicans get to split their differences and the Democrats get crushed.
In return for his leading agenda items concerning ending immigration and abolishing free trade he has already given the conservatives control of his nominations for the Supreme Court and would likely have to make concessions on things like Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare.
Probably, goodbye EPA and, maybe, goodbye Department of Education.
Expect other concessions to the Republican urge to abolish Big Government.
He is already on board for a massive shift in the tax burden from the top to the bottom.
He is already on board for the decades old Republican strategy of running up massive debt rather than rejecting tax cuts unmatched with spending cuts.
He opposes non-proliferation, NATO, and the global alliance system on which is predicated US security.
But all that stuff isn't the whole story.
There is also Trump's insistence on mass deportation of some eleven million people already here illegally, a suggestion of amazing cruelty.
There is his relentless praise of torture and his insistence on targeting the families of Jihaders and terrorists.
And there are those alarming if uncertain reports about his reading habits (the Hitler speeches), his express admiration for thug rulers and lawless methods of rule, and his Mussolini style.
For all of these, the media never stop branding him with the Swastika and their favored photos of him fit that narrative quite well, like this one at the top of a New York magazine article by Jonathan Chait.
Indeed, the entire article, How Hitler’s Rise to Power Explains Why Republicans Accept Donald Trump, relies shamelessly on smear, a fact to which Chait nearly confesses with this admission that the analogy is false.
To be perfectly clear, Trump is not Hitler or a Nazi.
Trump’s racism is not of the genocidal variety, and he is committed neither to a program of Darwinian racial conquest nor the principled imposition of one-party rule.
The allegation of racism, though more than plausible, is actually based on little more than the opposite of what used to be called "charitable interpretation" in dealing with his public speech, or surmise to explain his willingness to mercilessly purge those 11 million people, it should be said.
But this is the main reason any analogy between Trump and Hitler is a grotesque smear.
As Chait admits, there are in Trump's agenda no genocide, no program of racial conquest, and no more commitment to "principled imposition of one-party rule" than is to be found in the program of anybody else who competed for the nomination of either major party this year.
And those facts alone totally delegitimate labeling Trump a Nazi.
Chait completes his all too fleeting concessions to truth and reality with this grudging and even shamefully twisted admission, entirely in keeping with such a hatchet-job.
If President Trump does start a world war, it would probably be as a result of blundering rather than a long-term master plan.
If President Trump starts a world war? Really?
I agree one might argue he is more likely to do such a thing than Hillary, but Chait has not even raised the question before this sentence and will not again after it.
And probably not owing to a long-term master plan? Really?
Anyway, so, given Chait's brief and grudging admissions, is Trump really a fascist, then? No.
Is he a Nazi? No, not by a hell of a long ways.
And that Swastika people like Chait keep trying to stick on his forehead?
Undeserved.
Nevertheless, the remainder and indeed the bulk of Chait's piece is an incoherent history lesson comparing the rise of Trump with the rise of Hitler.
A history lesson in which German conservatives are said to have disbelieved the worst about Hitler and seen him "as Trump," though this claim is "supported" with quotes from Germans of the right who saw and favored Hitler precisely as a destroyer of the Weimar Republic and contradicted by Chait's claim that conservatives thought they could prevent him doing his worst.
And finally a history lesson that crucially forgets that Hitler was given the job as Chancellor because the Nazis had just won an election in 1932 and, though not a majority, had become the largest party in the Reichstag.
Democratic legitimacy argued the leader of the leading party had to be offered the job, similar in nature to that of a Prime Minister in any parliamentary government, though neither the law nor the constitution outright required it.
And in comparison, as for the Republicans giving Trump their nomination, again, neither the law nor the constitution requires it.
But the democratic requirement to do it is all the more imperative as Trump's victory, in a competition that did not have to be democratic at all but is so because party rules make it so, was so utterly overwhelming.
And has it not been the near unanimous view of the commentariat of both the left and the right that though the laws, the constitution, and even the party rules allow it, neither the Democratic nor the Republican conventions may defy their primary voters and hand the nomination to anyone but their respective democratic front runners?
Has it not equally been the dominant view of the commentariat of both left and right that their respective processes of selecting a party nominee need to be made more democratic and not less so by the leaders of both major parties?
Yet this does not prevent Chait all but explicitly portraying both Hindenburg's selection of Hitler for Reichskanzler and the impending Republican nomination of Trump as equivalent, frightful mistakes.
On the whole, the article is so muddled that the reader comes away wondering exactly what is the threat in Trump's case.
Chait reports correctly that conservatives did not believe at the time that, once given the Chancellorship, Hitler would, or would be able to, promptly impose a dictatorship of his party, his movement, his ideology, and himself personally.
That was the threat Hitler posed and they were wrong about it.
But Chait has already conceded neither Trump nor his supporters share any remotely similar aspirations.
So what, exactly, is the threat the Republicans might be today wrongly underestimating?
This is all the help we get with that question.
Through Election Day, a Trump presidency will be a mere hypothetical. Afterward, if it happens, the reality will descend all at once.
That reality is stark.
Trump’s admiration for ironfisted dictators, not only in Ba'athist Iraq but Russia, China, and North Korea, is the ideological lodestar of his long history of political musings.
Over the years, Trump has weaved left and right on health care, abortion, taxes, and even the issues currently central to his campaign, like immigration and trade, but has never wavered from his foundational belief that strong leaders are those who crush their enemies without restraint.
Whatever norms or bounds that we think limit the damage a president could inflict are likely to be exceeded if that president is Trump.
Those Republicans who publicly endorse Trump because he probably won’t win may be making an error on a historic scale.
Shouldn't a member of the journo fraternity, of the paid political commentariat, like Chait be able to do a better job putting some meat on this barely skeletal threat than I have done here and in others of my many posts on the man and the menace of his contempt for normal republican governance?
But assuredly he has not.
And what exactly does Chait want from the Republicans, anyway?
According to him, the mistake of the German conservatives was in not defying the informal but nevertheless real requirements of democratic legitimacy by refusing Hitler the Chancellorship.
So what is the mistake today's Republicans are committing or about to commit regarding Trump that he wants them not to make?
He says their mistake is endorsing his candidacy for the presidency.
But his fraught analogy between the Republicans on the one side and Hindenburg and the German conservatives on the other surely means their comparable error would be nominating him in Cleveland rather than egregiously, even shockingly, defying democratic legitimacy in order to give the nomination to some normal Republican.
But Chait does not dare to say so.
Much less does he dare to recall that, as the choice of Chancellor was constitutionally not the voters' but President Hindenburg's, the choice of our president is not the Republican Party's nor even the American voters', but belongs exclusively and without let or hindrance to the Electors of our Electoral College.
He is pretty clear Hindenburg should have refused the job to Hitler.
Should the Electors, if the case arises, refuse the presidency to Donald Trump?
Perish the thought.
Chait dares not defy the dogma of democratic legitimacy even enough to advise Cleveland to nominate someone else.
No one in America dares suggest the Electors save us from the voters' choice.
In return for his leading agenda items concerning ending immigration and abolishing free trade he has already given the conservatives control of his nominations for the Supreme Court and would likely have to make concessions on things like Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare.
Probably, goodbye EPA and, maybe, goodbye Department of Education.
Expect other concessions to the Republican urge to abolish Big Government.
He is already on board for a massive shift in the tax burden from the top to the bottom.
He is already on board for the decades old Republican strategy of running up massive debt rather than rejecting tax cuts unmatched with spending cuts.
He opposes non-proliferation, NATO, and the global alliance system on which is predicated US security.
But all that stuff isn't the whole story.
There is also Trump's insistence on mass deportation of some eleven million people already here illegally, a suggestion of amazing cruelty.
There is his relentless praise of torture and his insistence on targeting the families of Jihaders and terrorists.
And there are those alarming if uncertain reports about his reading habits (the Hitler speeches), his express admiration for thug rulers and lawless methods of rule, and his Mussolini style.
For all of these, the media never stop branding him with the Swastika and their favored photos of him fit that narrative quite well, like this one at the top of a New York magazine article by Jonathan Chait.
Indeed, the entire article, How Hitler’s Rise to Power Explains Why Republicans Accept Donald Trump, relies shamelessly on smear, a fact to which Chait nearly confesses with this admission that the analogy is false.
To be perfectly clear, Trump is not Hitler or a Nazi.
Trump’s racism is not of the genocidal variety, and he is committed neither to a program of Darwinian racial conquest nor the principled imposition of one-party rule.
The allegation of racism, though more than plausible, is actually based on little more than the opposite of what used to be called "charitable interpretation" in dealing with his public speech, or surmise to explain his willingness to mercilessly purge those 11 million people, it should be said.
But this is the main reason any analogy between Trump and Hitler is a grotesque smear.
As Chait admits, there are in Trump's agenda no genocide, no program of racial conquest, and no more commitment to "principled imposition of one-party rule" than is to be found in the program of anybody else who competed for the nomination of either major party this year.
And those facts alone totally delegitimate labeling Trump a Nazi.
Chait completes his all too fleeting concessions to truth and reality with this grudging and even shamefully twisted admission, entirely in keeping with such a hatchet-job.
If President Trump does start a world war, it would probably be as a result of blundering rather than a long-term master plan.
If President Trump starts a world war? Really?
I agree one might argue he is more likely to do such a thing than Hillary, but Chait has not even raised the question before this sentence and will not again after it.
And probably not owing to a long-term master plan? Really?
Anyway, so, given Chait's brief and grudging admissions, is Trump really a fascist, then? No.
Is he a Nazi? No, not by a hell of a long ways.
And that Swastika people like Chait keep trying to stick on his forehead?
Undeserved.
Nevertheless, the remainder and indeed the bulk of Chait's piece is an incoherent history lesson comparing the rise of Trump with the rise of Hitler.
A history lesson in which German conservatives are said to have disbelieved the worst about Hitler and seen him "as Trump," though this claim is "supported" with quotes from Germans of the right who saw and favored Hitler precisely as a destroyer of the Weimar Republic and contradicted by Chait's claim that conservatives thought they could prevent him doing his worst.
And finally a history lesson that crucially forgets that Hitler was given the job as Chancellor because the Nazis had just won an election in 1932 and, though not a majority, had become the largest party in the Reichstag.
Democratic legitimacy argued the leader of the leading party had to be offered the job, similar in nature to that of a Prime Minister in any parliamentary government, though neither the law nor the constitution outright required it.
And in comparison, as for the Republicans giving Trump their nomination, again, neither the law nor the constitution requires it.
But the democratic requirement to do it is all the more imperative as Trump's victory, in a competition that did not have to be democratic at all but is so because party rules make it so, was so utterly overwhelming.
And has it not been the near unanimous view of the commentariat of both the left and the right that though the laws, the constitution, and even the party rules allow it, neither the Democratic nor the Republican conventions may defy their primary voters and hand the nomination to anyone but their respective democratic front runners?
Has it not equally been the dominant view of the commentariat of both left and right that their respective processes of selecting a party nominee need to be made more democratic and not less so by the leaders of both major parties?
Yet this does not prevent Chait all but explicitly portraying both Hindenburg's selection of Hitler for Reichskanzler and the impending Republican nomination of Trump as equivalent, frightful mistakes.
On the whole, the article is so muddled that the reader comes away wondering exactly what is the threat in Trump's case.
Chait reports correctly that conservatives did not believe at the time that, once given the Chancellorship, Hitler would, or would be able to, promptly impose a dictatorship of his party, his movement, his ideology, and himself personally.
That was the threat Hitler posed and they were wrong about it.
But Chait has already conceded neither Trump nor his supporters share any remotely similar aspirations.
So what, exactly, is the threat the Republicans might be today wrongly underestimating?
This is all the help we get with that question.
Through Election Day, a Trump presidency will be a mere hypothetical. Afterward, if it happens, the reality will descend all at once.
That reality is stark.
Trump’s admiration for ironfisted dictators, not only in Ba'athist Iraq but Russia, China, and North Korea, is the ideological lodestar of his long history of political musings.
Over the years, Trump has weaved left and right on health care, abortion, taxes, and even the issues currently central to his campaign, like immigration and trade, but has never wavered from his foundational belief that strong leaders are those who crush their enemies without restraint.
Whatever norms or bounds that we think limit the damage a president could inflict are likely to be exceeded if that president is Trump.
Those Republicans who publicly endorse Trump because he probably won’t win may be making an error on a historic scale.
Shouldn't a member of the journo fraternity, of the paid political commentariat, like Chait be able to do a better job putting some meat on this barely skeletal threat than I have done here and in others of my many posts on the man and the menace of his contempt for normal republican governance?
But assuredly he has not.
And what exactly does Chait want from the Republicans, anyway?
According to him, the mistake of the German conservatives was in not defying the informal but nevertheless real requirements of democratic legitimacy by refusing Hitler the Chancellorship.
So what is the mistake today's Republicans are committing or about to commit regarding Trump that he wants them not to make?
He says their mistake is endorsing his candidacy for the presidency.
But his fraught analogy between the Republicans on the one side and Hindenburg and the German conservatives on the other surely means their comparable error would be nominating him in Cleveland rather than egregiously, even shockingly, defying democratic legitimacy in order to give the nomination to some normal Republican.
But Chait does not dare to say so.
Much less does he dare to recall that, as the choice of Chancellor was constitutionally not the voters' but President Hindenburg's, the choice of our president is not the Republican Party's nor even the American voters', but belongs exclusively and without let or hindrance to the Electors of our Electoral College.
He is pretty clear Hindenburg should have refused the job to Hitler.
Should the Electors, if the case arises, refuse the presidency to Donald Trump?
Perish the thought.
Chait dares not defy the dogma of democratic legitimacy even enough to advise Cleveland to nominate someone else.
No one in America dares suggest the Electors save us from the voters' choice.
Monday, July 4, 2016
O against protectionism
Obama: We Will Shape An International Order That Works For Our People
Not even trying to sound like Bernie, much less Trump.
President Obama touted the benefits of globalism in a joint press conference Wednesday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Obama said "protectionism or anti-trade arguments" are prescriptions that will not work and promised the "international order" will help those who have been neglected by free trade.
The president holds the TPP deal will increase American exports and bolster fair trade controls on our trading partners.
Already a devotee of the fair trade restrictions Bernie calls for, he has not like Hillary adopted the merely rhetorical economic nationalism of Bernie Sanders, much less the real thing comprising high tariffs, import quotas, and bans urged by Donald Trump.
Not even trying to sound like Bernie, much less Trump.
President Obama touted the benefits of globalism in a joint press conference Wednesday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Obama said "protectionism or anti-trade arguments" are prescriptions that will not work and promised the "international order" will help those who have been neglected by free trade.
The president holds the TPP deal will increase American exports and bolster fair trade controls on our trading partners.
Already a devotee of the fair trade restrictions Bernie calls for, he has not like Hillary adopted the merely rhetorical economic nationalism of Bernie Sanders, much less the real thing comprising high tariffs, import quotas, and bans urged by Donald Trump.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
The Guardian fact checks Trump
Fact-check: Donald Trump on trade, globalization and the Clintons
The topic is Il Duce's comments in Monessen the other day.
They admit he was mostly right, in particular concerning the adverse effect freer trade has had on the American working class.
Democrats including Hillary really don't plan to do much about it.
And the fair trade rules Bernie calls for would protect foreign workers who make what we import, not the jobs of American workers.
They mean the foreigners who get jobs in the factories that replace American factories are protected against the worst forms of exploitation.
They do nothing to seriously slow the exportation of jobs free trade has entailed, let alone stop it, and the notion fair trade rules can reverse job exportation is an utter fantasy.
Nobody but Trump is proposing use of the only tools that could stop or reverse the flow of manufacturing jobs out of the US, tariffs and even selective import quotas and prohibitions.
Nobody.
This is one of those issues both major parties have simply refused to address for decades, watching with folded arms as the American working class got hammered.
And that is one of the reasons Trump has been able to so successfully challenge everyone else.
Just as the refusal of the European classe politique to give an inch on concerns about Islam and immigration has empowered the opposition to the very existence of the EU, so the refusal of the American classe politique to lift a finger to protect American labor from globalization has empowered Trump's rebellion.
And the irony is it is far from clear he would really even try to use such tools.
It is highly unlikely the congress would go along with him, anyway.
Opponents of his plan to raise tariffs point to the dangers of trade war and the harm done by raising tariffs in 1930.
Defenders point out we have for decades been running huge trade deficits anyway with the very countries from which our markets need protection, so our economy would suffer less harm from lost exports to them than it would gain by protection from imports from them.
Economists more and more seem to be admitting the protectionists have the better case.
So it seems, anyway.
The topic is Il Duce's comments in Monessen the other day.
They admit he was mostly right, in particular concerning the adverse effect freer trade has had on the American working class.
Democrats including Hillary really don't plan to do much about it.
And the fair trade rules Bernie calls for would protect foreign workers who make what we import, not the jobs of American workers.
They mean the foreigners who get jobs in the factories that replace American factories are protected against the worst forms of exploitation.
They do nothing to seriously slow the exportation of jobs free trade has entailed, let alone stop it, and the notion fair trade rules can reverse job exportation is an utter fantasy.
Nobody but Trump is proposing use of the only tools that could stop or reverse the flow of manufacturing jobs out of the US, tariffs and even selective import quotas and prohibitions.
Nobody.
This is one of those issues both major parties have simply refused to address for decades, watching with folded arms as the American working class got hammered.
And that is one of the reasons Trump has been able to so successfully challenge everyone else.
Just as the refusal of the European classe politique to give an inch on concerns about Islam and immigration has empowered the opposition to the very existence of the EU, so the refusal of the American classe politique to lift a finger to protect American labor from globalization has empowered Trump's rebellion.
And the irony is it is far from clear he would really even try to use such tools.
It is highly unlikely the congress would go along with him, anyway.
Opponents of his plan to raise tariffs point to the dangers of trade war and the harm done by raising tariffs in 1930.
Defenders point out we have for decades been running huge trade deficits anyway with the very countries from which our markets need protection, so our economy would suffer less harm from lost exports to them than it would gain by protection from imports from them.
Economists more and more seem to be admitting the protectionists have the better case.
So it seems, anyway.
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Bernie shifts to global economic revolution
Bernie Sanders: Democrats Need to Wake Up
This is not Bernie using his hard won high profile to shift from seeking the Democratic nomination to supporting Hillary and the Democratic Party against Trump and the Republican Party.
This is Bernie the Seattle rioter, the global anti-capitalist revolutionary jumping up and down and angrily shouting in rage.
Rage at a human race born in naked poverty, a humanity that spent most of history as poor as the most desperate Chinese peasant of the 19th Century, a human world in which wealth remains exceptional and the erratic race between progress and poverty sees now one and now the other dash ahead.
Rage at the global poverty against which progress still races, and at the inequality that is in any case intrinsic to capitalism.
Rage at the global capitalism, itself, that Obama and Hillary support, endorse, and seek to ameliorate.
We so are not all socialists, now.
And then he pivots to briefly damning those who supported Brexit and those who support Trump while espousing the left wing fake version of economic nationalism, before with his usual hypocrisy pretending to take their side and share their rage, as he has done throughout his campaign.
We need to fundamentally reject our “free trade” policies and move to fair trade.
"Fair trade" is what cosmopolitans urge to steal votes from economic nationalists who urge tariffs or even bans on importing specified products.
It does not and cannot keep jobs in America and is not intended to, but only ensures that the foreigners who get our jobs are not too awfully exploited.
It is what Denis Kucinich and David Sirota used to talk about while pretending they wanted to stop factories moving to Mexico or China when what they really wanted to do was make those lost American jobs even more beneficial to the Mexican and Chinese workers who took them.
Americans should not have to compete against workers in low-wage countries who earn pennies an hour.
Absolutely not.
We need to insure those workers in low wage countries at least earn dimes and quarters.
That is what "fair trade" is all about.
We must defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
And then he ends pretending, as he has all along, that he wants to prioritize Americans while demanding policies that would harm Americans for the purpose of benefiting others around the world, as well as future owners of beach-front and shore level property.
We must help poor countries develop sustainable economic models.
. . . .
We need to create tens of millions of jobs worldwide by combating global climate change and by transforming the world’s energy system away from fossil fuels.
We need international efforts to cut military spending around the globe and address the causes of war: poverty, hatred, hopelessness and ignorance.
Those are the causes of war, huh?
My God, what awful left-wing twaddle.
The notion that Donald Trump could benefit from the same forces that gave the Leave proponents a majority in Britain should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party in the United States.
Millions of American voters, like the Leave supporters, are understandably angry and frustrated by the economic forces that are destroying the middle class.
In this pivotal moment, the Democratic Party and a new Democratic president need to make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind.
We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires.
So writes the global radical who has all along worn the sheep's clothing of faux economic nationalism, his crude redistributionism amiably attired as Scandinavian social democracy.
There is a lot more Chavez/Madero/Pope Francis in this fellow than he has clearly let on.
Had he been chosen as the Democrats' nominee Trump and the Republicans would have eaten him alive.
PS.
Yes, all this means that the establishment left and the establishment right actually agree that Americans are overpaid.
Raising the minimum wage in a context of free trade will not actually help American workers that much as it will mostly just drive factories out of America even faster, possibly at the cost of a rise in inflation putting a nasty ding in people's - and especially retirees - nesteggs.
But that will help make the globalizing plutes even richer (conservatives: Yay!) while pleasing cosmopolitan liberals and libertarians who think giving poor foreigners our jobs benefits the globally worst off, does the greatest good for the greatest number, and helps equalize the global playing field.
Ditto open borders and high-volume low-wage immigration.
In contrast to all of which Donald Trump, alone, stands for positions on trade and immigration that put America First.
This is not Bernie using his hard won high profile to shift from seeking the Democratic nomination to supporting Hillary and the Democratic Party against Trump and the Republican Party.
This is Bernie the Seattle rioter, the global anti-capitalist revolutionary jumping up and down and angrily shouting in rage.
Rage at a human race born in naked poverty, a humanity that spent most of history as poor as the most desperate Chinese peasant of the 19th Century, a human world in which wealth remains exceptional and the erratic race between progress and poverty sees now one and now the other dash ahead.
Rage at the global poverty against which progress still races, and at the inequality that is in any case intrinsic to capitalism.
Rage at the global capitalism, itself, that Obama and Hillary support, endorse, and seek to ameliorate.
We so are not all socialists, now.
And then he pivots to briefly damning those who supported Brexit and those who support Trump while espousing the left wing fake version of economic nationalism, before with his usual hypocrisy pretending to take their side and share their rage, as he has done throughout his campaign.
We need to fundamentally reject our “free trade” policies and move to fair trade.
"Fair trade" is what cosmopolitans urge to steal votes from economic nationalists who urge tariffs or even bans on importing specified products.
It does not and cannot keep jobs in America and is not intended to, but only ensures that the foreigners who get our jobs are not too awfully exploited.
It is what Denis Kucinich and David Sirota used to talk about while pretending they wanted to stop factories moving to Mexico or China when what they really wanted to do was make those lost American jobs even more beneficial to the Mexican and Chinese workers who took them.
Americans should not have to compete against workers in low-wage countries who earn pennies an hour.
Absolutely not.
We need to insure those workers in low wage countries at least earn dimes and quarters.
That is what "fair trade" is all about.
We must defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
And then he ends pretending, as he has all along, that he wants to prioritize Americans while demanding policies that would harm Americans for the purpose of benefiting others around the world, as well as future owners of beach-front and shore level property.
We must help poor countries develop sustainable economic models.
. . . .
We need to create tens of millions of jobs worldwide by combating global climate change and by transforming the world’s energy system away from fossil fuels.
We need international efforts to cut military spending around the globe and address the causes of war: poverty, hatred, hopelessness and ignorance.
Those are the causes of war, huh?
My God, what awful left-wing twaddle.
The notion that Donald Trump could benefit from the same forces that gave the Leave proponents a majority in Britain should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party in the United States.
Millions of American voters, like the Leave supporters, are understandably angry and frustrated by the economic forces that are destroying the middle class.
In this pivotal moment, the Democratic Party and a new Democratic president need to make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind.
We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires.
So writes the global radical who has all along worn the sheep's clothing of faux economic nationalism, his crude redistributionism amiably attired as Scandinavian social democracy.
There is a lot more Chavez/Madero/Pope Francis in this fellow than he has clearly let on.
Had he been chosen as the Democrats' nominee Trump and the Republicans would have eaten him alive.
PS.
Yes, all this means that the establishment left and the establishment right actually agree that Americans are overpaid.
Raising the minimum wage in a context of free trade will not actually help American workers that much as it will mostly just drive factories out of America even faster, possibly at the cost of a rise in inflation putting a nasty ding in people's - and especially retirees - nesteggs.
But that will help make the globalizing plutes even richer (conservatives: Yay!) while pleasing cosmopolitan liberals and libertarians who think giving poor foreigners our jobs benefits the globally worst off, does the greatest good for the greatest number, and helps equalize the global playing field.
Ditto open borders and high-volume low-wage immigration.
In contrast to all of which Donald Trump, alone, stands for positions on trade and immigration that put America First.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Trump vs free trade in Pittsburgh
Preaching to the choir in this town.
If he takes Pennsylvania and Ohio the Democrats could be in a lot of trouble.
It looks right now like Republican control of the Congress - the House and the Senate - is safe, no matter who takes the White House.
And so?
So Hillary's agenda is DOA and her preferred nominees for the Supremes may not even get a hearing, assuming she wins.
Republicans now waiting for 2017 may well prefer to wait for 2021, reminding everyone the constitution does not require there be any particular number of Supremes.
And if Trump wins?
He and the Congressional Republicans will add a few Supremes, putting not just Obamacare but a whole lot of the legacy of The Great Society and The New Deal in danger - and so putting me and my wife personally in danger.
God knows what else the Republican Congress might do with this "master of the art of the deal."
But it is highly questionable the same folks who have given us generations of free trade treaties would implement his protectionist agenda.
So that would also be DOA, most likely, if this is not one of the things he changes his mind about and just drops, anyway.
Some of what Trump purports to stand for and his supporters want deserves a much better champion than Il Duce.
Nor would he get his Wall, and neither would he get much help from the Congress in trying to deport 11 million people, no matter how much he yelps about it.
He might get changes to legislation significantly cutting low-wage legal immigration, though.
What if Bernie won, the Bernie of that NYT manifesto, and faced that Republican Congress?
Just the thing to exacerbate polarization.
Medicare for All?
Free tuition at all public colleges and universities?
What, are you high?
An invitation to paralysis and exacerbated polarization.
Sharpening the contradictions, one might say.
Just another way to seriously damage the republic.
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Clinton takes the lead
Clinton Opens 12-Point Lead on Trump as Two-Thirds See Him as Biased
Hillary Clinton surged to a broad advantage against Donald Trump in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, capitalizing on Trump’s recent campaign missteps.
Two-thirds of Americans see him as biased against groups such as women, minorities or Muslims, and a new high, 64 percent, call Trump unqualified to serve as president.
These and other doubts about Trump have produced a sharp 14-point swing in preferences among registered voters, from +2 points for Trump in mid-May, after he clinched the GOP nomination, to +12 points for Clinton now, 51-39 percent.
That snaps the race essentially back to where it was in March.
What, no Brexit bump?
And look at this.
The national poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds another apparent impact of Trump’s problems:
Perhaps benefitting from comparison, Barack Obama’s job approval rating has gained 5 points, to 56 percent, matching its high since the early days of his presidency.
That includes 55 percent approval specifically on handling the economy.
In his face-off with the president, Il Duce is getting hammered.
Pray that Hillary is not indicted.
Some details.
There are notable shifts among groups in the latest vote preference results.
Largest is a 16-point loss for Trump, and 17-point advance for Clinton, among white Catholics, a potentially key group that accounts for one in seven registered voters.
Clinton, further, is now leading among young adults, a group in which Trump was surprisingly competitive last month.
Trump is -11, and Clinton +11, among registered voters who don’t have a college degree, as well as among liberals and conservatives alike.
And Trump is -10, Clinton +11, among white men.
Clinton continues to prevail mightily among nonwhites – by 77-15 percent now, vs. 69-21 percent last month; that includes 90-8 percent among blacks and 69-20 percent among Hispanics.
(For an adequate sample size, this combines results among blacks, and separately among Hispanics, from May and June.)
Trump leads Clinton by 50-40 percent among whites, down from 57-33 percent last month.
Maybe I shouldn't be, but I am surprised his lead among whites is that big, though I am glad to see it has dropped and I hope that trend continues.
Do that many whites really think free trade and immigration have harmed them in net, and that he can change both without political and economic turmoil?
Are that many whites that concerned about Muslim visitors or immigrants, and willing to see 11 million people actually uprooted from their lives and deported?
Hillary Clinton surged to a broad advantage against Donald Trump in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, capitalizing on Trump’s recent campaign missteps.
Two-thirds of Americans see him as biased against groups such as women, minorities or Muslims, and a new high, 64 percent, call Trump unqualified to serve as president.
These and other doubts about Trump have produced a sharp 14-point swing in preferences among registered voters, from +2 points for Trump in mid-May, after he clinched the GOP nomination, to +12 points for Clinton now, 51-39 percent.
That snaps the race essentially back to where it was in March.
What, no Brexit bump?
And look at this.
The national poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds another apparent impact of Trump’s problems:
Perhaps benefitting from comparison, Barack Obama’s job approval rating has gained 5 points, to 56 percent, matching its high since the early days of his presidency.
That includes 55 percent approval specifically on handling the economy.
In his face-off with the president, Il Duce is getting hammered.
Pray that Hillary is not indicted.
Some details.
There are notable shifts among groups in the latest vote preference results.
Largest is a 16-point loss for Trump, and 17-point advance for Clinton, among white Catholics, a potentially key group that accounts for one in seven registered voters.
Clinton, further, is now leading among young adults, a group in which Trump was surprisingly competitive last month.
Trump is -11, and Clinton +11, among registered voters who don’t have a college degree, as well as among liberals and conservatives alike.
And Trump is -10, Clinton +11, among white men.
Clinton continues to prevail mightily among nonwhites – by 77-15 percent now, vs. 69-21 percent last month; that includes 90-8 percent among blacks and 69-20 percent among Hispanics.
(For an adequate sample size, this combines results among blacks, and separately among Hispanics, from May and June.)
Trump leads Clinton by 50-40 percent among whites, down from 57-33 percent last month.
Maybe I shouldn't be, but I am surprised his lead among whites is that big, though I am glad to see it has dropped and I hope that trend continues.
Do that many whites really think free trade and immigration have harmed them in net, and that he can change both without political and economic turmoil?
Are that many whites that concerned about Muslim visitors or immigrants, and willing to see 11 million people actually uprooted from their lives and deported?
Saturday, June 25, 2016
So why aren't they still Democrats?
Uprising in the rust belt
Subtitle: They used to be Democrats. Now they really could hand Donald Trump the White House.
The story focuses on working class, industrial Pennsylvania, devastated by decades of free trade in steel and again by the Democrats' wars on coal and shale oil, both of which promise to get much worse.
Of course they worry about Social Security and Medicare, but they have to privilege jobs for today over retirement security for tomorrow.
And they think Trump is better for jobs.
Their jobs, anyway.
Subtitle: They used to be Democrats. Now they really could hand Donald Trump the White House.
The story focuses on working class, industrial Pennsylvania, devastated by decades of free trade in steel and again by the Democrats' wars on coal and shale oil, both of which promise to get much worse.
Of course they worry about Social Security and Medicare, but they have to privilege jobs for today over retirement security for tomorrow.
And they think Trump is better for jobs.
Their jobs, anyway.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Trump hammers Hillary
Transcript
CNN report
Appealing at the outset for Bernie Sanders' supporters to dump Hillary and support him, Trump's speech was every attack Bernie ever made on the Clintons, Hillary's and Obama's foreign policy disasters, the corrupt Democratic Party, free trade, open low-wage immigration, contributions to the Clinton Fund from Wall Street and individual big time plutes for whom good things were done in return, all delivered in the style of Benito Mussolini.
Add in truths, half-truths, and lies about Benghazi and post-Orlando charges that Hillary is taking huge amounts of Fund money from the most fanatical, anti-gay, anti-woman Muslim regimes and wants to admit hundreds of thousands of effectively unvetted Muslims from the most dangerous parts of the world, thus making LGBTs in particular and Americans in general less safe from terrorism.
Add in standard Republican bromides about Iran and nukes, withdrawal from Iraq enabling the birth and spread of ISIS, and Hillary's refusal to speak of the threat as radical Islam, a charge he inoculated against Islamophobia immediately by coupling it with assurances of sympathy for the hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who are the victims of terrorism and Jihad, and who just want to live in peace.
And then he pivoted to his positive program, mostly economic, and mostly promises of unicorns.
He drew blood.
CNN report
Appealing at the outset for Bernie Sanders' supporters to dump Hillary and support him, Trump's speech was every attack Bernie ever made on the Clintons, Hillary's and Obama's foreign policy disasters, the corrupt Democratic Party, free trade, open low-wage immigration, contributions to the Clinton Fund from Wall Street and individual big time plutes for whom good things were done in return, all delivered in the style of Benito Mussolini.
Add in truths, half-truths, and lies about Benghazi and post-Orlando charges that Hillary is taking huge amounts of Fund money from the most fanatical, anti-gay, anti-woman Muslim regimes and wants to admit hundreds of thousands of effectively unvetted Muslims from the most dangerous parts of the world, thus making LGBTs in particular and Americans in general less safe from terrorism.
Add in standard Republican bromides about Iran and nukes, withdrawal from Iraq enabling the birth and spread of ISIS, and Hillary's refusal to speak of the threat as radical Islam, a charge he inoculated against Islamophobia immediately by coupling it with assurances of sympathy for the hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who are the victims of terrorism and Jihad, and who just want to live in peace.
And then he pivoted to his positive program, mostly economic, and mostly promises of unicorns.
He drew blood.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Dreher doesn't even like Trump. He loathes him.
Identity politics, the self-interested politics of our numerous tribes, in contemporary America is encouraged for anybody who isn't white or isn't male, says Dreher's reader.
For la pensée unique, for the reigning liberal PC that actually does dominate the mind of the mass media, it's not only impermissible but hateful and shameful bigotry, misogyny, and racism when whites or males do it.
The reason is that the whole point of the regnant identity politics of the left is to rip power and wealth, prestige and honor out of the hands of powerless whites and males thrown to the grievance-wolves by mostly white and mostly male, and so also bitterly hated, elites too frightened and possibly also too stupid to defend them.
And that is exactly what those charges aimed at Trump and his supporters are about.
White people, and especially white males?
You can just gimme your wallet and shut the fuck up.
A somewhat different take on the matter.
Identity politics has long since displaced class politics as the vote getter and mass mover among the Democrats and on the left, in general.
You can see it, for example, in that party's abandonment of the unions and its adoption of free trade, gay marriage, and abortion - and of American history as taught by Howard Zinn and Rev. Wright, the famous author of the 2008 Democratic campaign motto, "God damn America!"
And now we see the same thing happening on the Republican side, to the horror of Wall Street and colorblind conservatives.
Trump has made the causes of powerless whites and males, the big losers in the tribal wars for advantage, his own by refusing deference to their tribal enemies or their demands to control his speech and his thought.
And the better to cement these whites into his GOP he has - unreliably, the man is such a feckless poseur - rejected some conspicuous elements of the conservative agenda most inimical to those same whites, espousing protectionism, unionism, Medicare and Social Security, and plenty of other Big Government stuff.
All that to the horror of both Christianist sociocons like Dreher and French, of libertarians, and of every variety of Small Government conservative.
And to the joy of the bare handful of soi-disant Reaganite conservatives who prioritize white nationalism like Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Phooey
The political news and comment is all crap this morning.
The primary season isn't even over and I'm already sick of it, all of it, up to and through the generals in November.
Even money Il Duce will be the victor over a Clinton weakened by the Sanders campaign's alienation from her of millions who should be her supporters in November.
20% chance she'll be indicted, most likely after she is nominated.
30% chance or less Bernie will be nominated.
Most people - especially conservative pundits whose cause stands to lose by it - think if Trump wins in November that will cause a lasting change in the defining agenda of the Republican Party, against free trade, against immigration, against NATO expansion, for American nationalism, against the racial, feminist, and LGBT agendas of the left, and against abortion but maybe also for, or anyway much less against, working people, the New Deal, and Big Government.
On the other hand, the people who think they would gain by it, the folks who support the Sanders campaign, are the ones who write about a Sanders presidency changing the agenda of the Democratic Party.
Both groups are probably wrong, since neither of the two outsiders has much if any influence on the selection or ideology of down-ticket candidates or of the personnel who make up the respective party officialdoms, either nationally or at the state and local levels, and none at all on donors or publicists who typically support the two parties.
Even if one or another of the two actually ends up in the White House, he will get at best reluctant support from his own party and "supporters" in the country at large who don't actually support him at all, but only deplore the other fellow even more than the winner.
The primary season isn't even over and I'm already sick of it, all of it, up to and through the generals in November.
Even money Il Duce will be the victor over a Clinton weakened by the Sanders campaign's alienation from her of millions who should be her supporters in November.
20% chance she'll be indicted, most likely after she is nominated.
30% chance or less Bernie will be nominated.
Most people - especially conservative pundits whose cause stands to lose by it - think if Trump wins in November that will cause a lasting change in the defining agenda of the Republican Party, against free trade, against immigration, against NATO expansion, for American nationalism, against the racial, feminist, and LGBT agendas of the left, and against abortion but maybe also for, or anyway much less against, working people, the New Deal, and Big Government.
On the other hand, the people who think they would gain by it, the folks who support the Sanders campaign, are the ones who write about a Sanders presidency changing the agenda of the Democratic Party.
Both groups are probably wrong, since neither of the two outsiders has much if any influence on the selection or ideology of down-ticket candidates or of the personnel who make up the respective party officialdoms, either nationally or at the state and local levels, and none at all on donors or publicists who typically support the two parties.
Even if one or another of the two actually ends up in the White House, he will get at best reluctant support from his own party and "supporters" in the country at large who don't actually support him at all, but only deplore the other fellow even more than the winner.
Thursday, May 5, 2016
Of course, they aren't conservatives
What now, conservatives?
Their central agenda item is to undo a century of progressive institution-building and governance in the name of a free-market, open borders, free-trade America that has never been seen before now in the entire history of the human race.
That is not conservatism, that is the opposite of conservatism, that is the radical agenda of our revolutionary plutocracy aimed at building and strengthening our newer, shinier Gilded Age.
Fuck them, and let Trump destroy their Republican Party and their entire movement, drowning it in a stew of Buchananism.
Their central agenda item is to undo a century of progressive institution-building and governance in the name of a free-market, open borders, free-trade America that has never been seen before now in the entire history of the human race.
That is not conservatism, that is the opposite of conservatism, that is the radical agenda of our revolutionary plutocracy aimed at building and strengthening our newer, shinier Gilded Age.
Fuck them, and let Trump destroy their Republican Party and their entire movement, drowning it in a stew of Buchananism.
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