tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16617707879412426862024-03-13T22:23:30.667-07:00Publius ReduxContemporary PoliticsPublius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-19135214176987488672022-12-02T09:19:00.000-08:002022-12-02T09:19:53.317-08:00<p><b><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>WHY GEORGIA STILL MATTERS</b></p><p><i>First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. </i></p><p><i>Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. </i></p><p><i>Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. </i></p><p><i>Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me. </i></p><p>Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Minister, after his release from Dachau</p><p><i> </i></p><p><i> </i>On December 6 there will be a run-off election in Georgia for the Senate seat between the Democratic incumbent, Raphael Warnock, and Republican Herschel Walker. Warnock led in the general election 49.4% to 48.5%, short of the 50% needed to be certified as the winner. On the basis of the results of other mid-term elections for the Senate, Democrats will hold 50 seats in the Senate in the next Congress, and Republicans will hold 49 seats. Thus, regardless of the outcome of the run-off election, the Democrats already have majority control with the Vice President, a Democrat, holding the tie-breaking vote.</p><p>As is often the case in competitive elections, and especially in run-off elections, the determining factor will most likely be voter turnout, particularly here where both Parties have disincentives to vote. For the Democrats, why bother since they already have majority control; for the Republicans, why bother since they have already lost control of the Senate. So, does it really matter for Democrats? It certainly does. Much is still at stake. Democrats need to go all out to get their people to the polls. Turnout is determined as much, if not more, by organization and money. The policies and the personalities/character of the candidates are secondary. Its all about getting the Party's base and leaners to cast their ballots. Expense and effort should not be spared. </p><p>But why does it matter? The reasons are several. First, and perhaps foremost, the Republican Party must be opposed at every opportunity - as a matter of principle. If this seems like blind partisanship, so be it. It certainly has become the Republican method of operation. Not one inch should or can be surrendered to a Party whose radical right wing and its supporters have become committed to the destruction of the American experiment as it has developed over the years since the founding of the Republic and are willing to espouse violence to achieve their goals. Does that sound paranoid or over the top? I don't think so, but let me elaborate below.</p><p>Second, there are procedural benefits that come with another seat. Democrats would no longer have to enter into a power sharing arrangement with the Republicans in the Senate which would be dictated by a 50/50 split. With 51 Senators, Democrats would claim one-seat majorities on committees. It would help them move legislation forward and confirm judges and presidential nominees.</p><p>Third, there are practical benefits. It will give Democrats a little breathing room if someone threatens to break ranks. A 51st vote would make the Democrats less dependent on the votes of Senators Manchin and Sinema (DINOs) (and Sanders). It would also provide a bit of a buffer for 2024 when the Democrats will have more Senate seats to defend. It may be a platitude to say every vote counts, but keep in mind Democrats will no longer have the House to fall back upon.</p><p>Fourth, it would further penalize the Republican Party for nominating such blatantly unqualified, incompetent and dishonest charlatans as Herschel Walker for public office, e.g., Oz, Mastriano, Masters and Lake to name just a few, and perhaps move it back toward the mainstream.</p><p>Fifth (overlapping the First), it would be a further statement in opposition to the philosophy promoted by the Republican Party, a philosophy which would condemn America to the past, freeze American mores to those which a majority of Americans have long rejected, and block all attempts to prepare for and facilitate adaption to the future needs of society. Here, it may be instructive to look at the decisions of the current Supreme Court, which with Donald Trump's appointments has more decidedly become the legal arm of the Republican Party and manifests the Party's objectives. Since the Republicans, in denying the wishes of a majority of the public, find it difficult to appeal to a broad spectrum of the electorate, they have successfully engaged (most recently largely through the machinations of Mitch McConnell but going back to the time of Ed Meese, Attorney General in the Reagan administration) in taking over the Supreme Court, where there is no voting electorate with which to contend and Justices serve for life. </p><p>The Court is now dominated by fundamentalists flying the flag of "originalism" (at least when it suits their purposes or can be twisted to do so). Originalism insists that the answers to Constitutional issues are in what people thought hundreds of years ago. Fundamentalism is the religion of the Republican Party, both figuratively and literally. If war is politics by other means, then so is Constitutional law as determined by today's Supreme Court (Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch,<i> et al</i>). </p><p>So what does that mean in terms of politics. We have already seen the overruling of Roe v Wade, the Heller and Bruen Second Amendment decisions, Citizens United, Hobby Lobby, Masterpiece Cakeshop and the Little Sisters of the Poor case re contraception, just to cite few. The Court is open to the argument that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment not only doesn't support affirmative action (or even Brown v Board), but that it precludes affirmative action. This is not just the Supreme Court speaking, it is the Republican Party; it is MAGA writ large. Besides opposing gun control legislation, abortion rights, separation of church and state, campaign finance legislation and affirmative action, they oppose environmental regulations and wish to impose sharp limits on voting rights and the regulatory authority of Congress and administrative agencies. And this doesn't even touch on January 6 and election denial.</p><p>Herschel Walker! In the Senate! Are you serious? It's an insult. The Georgia run-off election is another opportunity for Democrats and voters in general to echo Howard Beale in Network and shout, "I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore."</p><p>In a figurative sense, Democrats should emulate Sherman's march through Georgia <i>vis-a-vis</i> the Republican Party - scorched earth. It's long past time to speak up.</p>Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-90299483312012828782022-11-01T17:50:00.000-07:002022-11-01T17:50:54.712-07:00<p> <b>THE DEPLORABLES REVISITED OR BARBARIANS AT THE GATES</b></p><p><br /></p><p><i>There is nothing the rabble fears more than intelligence. If they understood what is truly terrifying, they would fear ignorance. </i>Goethe</p><p><i>I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. </i>Will Rogers</p><p><i>American voters have not confronted so grave a choice since 1860. </i>Mark Danner</p><p><i>The most important thing about this election, by far, is that it could decide who will control the Senate. Our main concern right now is about which party wins control. If you want a Senate that's going to reject anything that comes out of a Biden White House, feel free to consider the Republican candidates. Otherwise, come on ... [D]on't...turn the Senate over to Mitch McConnell.<span> </span></i>Gail Collins</p><p><br /></p><p>A week to go in another of a seeming endless series of existential must-win elections. It never seems to get any less critical. The counter-enlightenment just won't go away. But the Democrats and the Independents (few as they are) are not taking it seriously enough - just another mid-term which comes every four years and almost always goes against the party controlling the White House. This election is far more than that, and the Democrats better get their act together, if it is not already too late (in many states early voting has begun and absentee ballots are out). The candidates which the Republicans have put forward are breathtakingly appalling. They have outdone themselves, which is saying something for a Party which in the past has foisted upon us such notables as Dan Quayle, George W. Bush, John Ashcroft, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Kris Kobach and has presently succeeded in dumping on us Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks, Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, Tommy Tuberville, Elise Stefanik and the like. The new lineup includes such worthies as Doug Mastriano, Blake Masters, Herschel Walker, Don Bolduc, J.D. Vance, Mehmet Oz, Lee Zeldin, Mark Finchem and Kari Lake. If I've left others of this ilk out, please forgive me. Maybe it's no coincidence that election day comes so soon after Halloween.</p><p><b>Democratic Strategy</b></p><p>The Democratic attack should be four pronged: 1) elaborate on what President Biden and the Democrats in Congress have accomplished (with virtually zero support from Republicans) for the benefit of all Americans (stay away from identity based appeals); 2) emphasize that Republicans have offered no solutions to today's problems, such as inflation and crime, but only complain about them and recite the time worn and failed mantras of lowering taxes (mainly for the rich) and reducing regulations (see the British example and the demise of former Prime Minister Truss); 3) point out what a Republican majority in the House and Senate would mean for abortion rights, voting rights, environmental issues, Medicare, Social Security, health care including costs of pharmaceuticals, Supreme Court nominations, church-state relations, costs of education and rational gun regulations, and publicize Senator Rick Scott's agenda as well as the refusal of Republican Congressional leadership to present a platform; 4) play the January 6 card and the attempt by the Republican Party to overturn the election (and the Government), reject the rule of law and ignore the will of a majority of the electorate.</p><p><b>Control Of Congress</b></p><p>Democrats need to emphasize foremost that this election is not only about electing individual Senators and members of the House, but also about determining majority control of the House and Senate, and that such control will have greater impact upon the nation's and the individual voter's well being and future than the acts of an individual member of Congress. If Republicans hold the majority, even a moderate Republican member will be bound to vote with the Republican caucus, and is thus a danger to the country. The same goes for state and local elections. More and more we see that gerrymandered federal and state election districts determined by malapportioned state legislatures impact on the outcome of elections.</p><p><b>Getting Out The Vote</b></p><p>The effectiveness of the foregoing, notwithstanding its merits as a campaign strategy, is nevertheless totally dependent for its success on getting out the vote, particularly the young vote. Ultimately, the Party most successful in getting its base and those likely to be receptive to its program to the polls is going to win, particularly in a mid-term election.</p><p><b>The Republican Party And The Politics Of Extremism</b></p><p>Finally, it would be remiss not to remind voters of the parallels between the goals and ideology of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and those of Putin's and Orban's governments and other European far right parties, with their preoccupation with the denial of individual rights, the denial of gay rights including same sex marriage, ethnocentric policies and the primacy of the State; and even those of the National Socialists as they came to power in Germany in the early 1930s.</p><p>The Republican Party leadership today is not made up of conservatives but of radicals/revolutionaries who are not interested in maintaining and improving the current and long standing system of government, but only in destroying it so they can take it over and run it themselves autocratically, based on their supposed superior thinking.</p><p>The Party can be looked at as consisting of two groupings:</p><p><span> a. white, non-college graduate, rural males who want to push down and keep down those who they perceive as beneath them (these are the racists and ethno-centrists and misogynists) and who blame the "elite" in power for the elevation of such perceived inferiors to equal status and which elite they wish to overthrow;</span><br /></p><p><span> b. the intellectual elite, who feel that their intellectual and philosophical and management superiority is not recognized or accepted by the currently empowered establishment, and who want to take over themselves as autocrats who cannot be questioned. They (people such as Peter Thiel and those at the Claremont Institute) represent the contemporary version of the counter-enlightenment - the autocracy of a self-proclaimed intellectual elite (as distinct from the 18th century autocracy based on birth and wealth) promoting the efficiency of the tyrant driven by narcissism and ego and desire for power for the sake of power. Shades of Ayn Rand.</span></p><p><span>What we have is group (b) manipulating group (a) to overthrow constitutional republican government and relying on obscenely wealthy oligarchs to fund their efforts. That is today's Republican Party. They are aiming at a permanent takeover, a one-party state, not unlike Putin's and Xi's.</span></p><p><span>This may be too heavy a load for a campaign presentation, but it puts the critical importance of this election (and the next one) in historical perspective.</span></p><p><span><b>What The Democrats Have Accomplished</b></span></p><p><span>In two years President Biden and the Congressional Democrats have pushed through a $1.9 trillion pandemic stimulus package, </span>a trillion dollar infrastructure bill, a generous tax credit for parents that brought child poverty to historical lows, legislation that allows Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices and to cover more drug costs, the biggest investment in clean energy in history, a technology bill encouraging computer chip manufacturing and including tax credits encouraging the building of factories that manufacture batteries and solar panels, a veteran's health bill, a gun safety bill and expanded health care subsidies, as well as new taxes on corporations that buy their own stock and a new 15% minimum tax rate for corporations earning more than $1 billion a year. </p><p>State unemployment is at all-time lows in 11 states and below 3% in 17 states. The U.S. economy added more jobs, including 700,000 manufacturing jobs, during Biden's first 20 months in office than it did during the first 37 months of the Trump administration, that is, before Covid put the economy into a coma. Wage growth is robust (overall labor income per working-age adult, adjusted for inflation, rose 3.5% from January 2021 to July 2022). The latest report shows that GDP for the third quarter increased at the annual rate of 2.6%. The U.S. budget deficit has been sliced in half for fiscal 2022. </p><p>Notwithstanding the Republican's constant clamoring about deficits and their willingness to shut down the Government if the debt limit is increased, the federal deficit went up in every single year in the Trump administration. It went up before the pandemic; it went up during the pandemic; it went up every single year on his watch.</p><p>If the Democrats can maintain and expand their majorities in the House and the Senate they can push for a more expansive child tax credit, subsidies for child day care, paid leave, funding for free community college and universal pre-K, codification of abortion rights, the right to purchase contraception and to marry whom one chooses, expanding and safeguarding voting rights, installation of more like-minded judges, addressing racial discrimination in policing (not defunding the police), gun safety legislation that closes background check loopholes and sets a minimum age of 21 for purchasing guns, and legislation that confronts climate change, all of which are opposed by the Republican Party (just for good measure they voted against capping the price for insulin). A more robust majority in the Senate would enhance the chances for an increase of the corporate tax rate to 28% (certainly justified by the bonanza profits accruing to oil companies and other wealthy corporations that are jacking up prices to reap more profits which they use to buy back stock and pay dividends to their wealthy shareholders), a global minimum tax rate and an increase in taxes on the richest Americans which Republicans have opposed. </p><p><b>Republicans Have Offered No Solutions To Inflation, Crime Or Immigration Problems</b></p><p>On inflation, the primary target on which they have focused, Republicans have said little about what they would do, and what they have said - like forcing cuts to entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, extending and making permanent Trump's 2017 tax cuts, otherwise due to expire in a couple of years (which overwhelmingly benefitted the wealthy), and repealing the 15% corporate minimum tax - would make the problem worse. They want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at a time when millions of seniors are struggling to pay their bills, and repeal the authorization for Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. They would repeal the $2,000 cap on prescription drug costs for seniors, the $35 a month cap on insulin and the savings on healthcare premiums of $800 a year for millions of Americans under the Affordable Care Act. And, of course, they are still determined to repeal the Affordable Care Act itself. The Republican plan (if it can be called that; it is really just the old familiar dogma that tax cuts-in the teeth of all the evidence-trickle down and pay for themselves and that government spending is what causes problems) will only make inflation worse, not better. The markets agree. Look at what happened in Great Britain when Liz Truss announced an economic plan that looks remarkably like what the Republicans are proposing. On September 23, before Liz Truss's demise as Prime Minister, Larry Kudlow, former Director of the National Economic Council from 2018 to 2021 in the Trump administration , said: "The new British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has laid out a terrific supply-side economic growth plan which looks a lot like the basic thrust of Kevin McCarthy's Commitment to America plan". We know how that worked out in Great Britain. The same disaster is waiting in the wings here if we elect a Republican Congress.</p><p>Although deficit spending may have had some inflationary effect early in the Biden administration, one cannot ignore the social benefits of such spending during the pandemic emergency. Today's inflation has been triggered more more by snarled supply chains, pent-up consumer demand, shipping industries that were slow to return to peak production and bottlenecks in refining. Tight energy supplies and ensuing gas price increases are far more attributable to the war in Ukraine than any domestic energy legislation. Inflation is a global problem that is worse in Europe and Great Britain than in the United States.</p><p>On immigration, another principal target of attack, the most they can come up with seems to be their "build the wall" slogan and their demonstrably false argument that the Democrats want open borders. They ignore the fact that what is needed is bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform, which is indeed sorely required, but in which they have steadfastly refused to participate.</p><p>The Republicans other main focus is on violent crime, which is of great concern to all, and rightly so. But what is the Republican plan? From what I can see, it is mainly an attack on bail reform programs, promotion of Willie Horton-like memes and reiteration <i>ad nauseum</i> of the "law and order" mantra. There is room for reasonable differences on bail reform programs, but that is not the solution to the crime problem. A more useful tool, at least for homicide cases, would be more effective gun ownership regulations, which is anathema to Republicans. Constant winks at, and outright encouragement of, acts of violence and disrespect for the law by the Republican leadership set the wrong example - see January 6 and the Republican response to it, Donald Trump's other violations of statutes and established rules which encourage criminal behavior, and the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband. Ultimately crime is more directly related to poverty and inequality. </p><p>Republicans talk big about crime, but here is the reality. Republicans are worse at controlling crime than Democrats. Examples: in 2020 Oklahoma's murder rate, the most reliably measured form of violent crime, was almost 50% higher than California's and almost double New York's. According to Paul Krugman, murder rates rose at roughly the same rate in Trump-voting red states and Biden-voting blue states. Homicides rose sharply in both urban and rural areas. Levels of both homicides and violent crime as a whole are generally higher in red states. So, while concerns over the recent crime surge are valid, the right-wingers who talk tough on crime don't seem to be any good at actually keeping crime low. Even after the 2020-21 surge, serious crime in New York, in fact, was still lower than it was when Rudy Giuliani was mayor.</p><p>Since we are addressing Republican myths, here is the reality about the Republican claim that rural America (the bedrock of Republican support) is not receiving its fair share of resources. The truth is that rural America is heavily subsidized by urban America. Less urbanized states receive far more from the federal government than they pay in. In a normal year the most urbanized states are usually net contributors to the federal budget.</p><p>And, getting back to crime, except in New England, homicide rates in 2020 were generally higher in more rural states.</p><p><b>Republicans Will Be A Destructive Force If They Win Control Of Congress</b></p><p>To begin with, Republicans are threatening to oppose increasing the debt ceiling, which would force the United States to default on its sovereign debt obligations, unless President Biden reduces government spending by cutting such programs as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, recklessly jeopardizing payments for military salaries and safety-net benefits for low-income individuals, as well as roiling bond markets, and resulting in widespread government layoffs.</p><p>Republicans will push for a federal anti-abortion law, limit voting rights, cut back on environmental regulations, promote polluting industries and limit and make more costly health care coverage. They have vowed to dismantle the economic and social welfare architecture the Biden administration has constructed. Take a look at Senator Rick Scott's Rescue America Plan. Scott runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Under his plan Republicans will dictate what can be taught in public schools to conform to the dictates of their white supremacy base, do away with diversity programs, build the wall and minimize legal immigration, reduce the government workforce by 25%, sell government buildings and assets, move government agencies out of Washington or shutter them entirely, protect the nuclear family which means eliminating same sex marriage, eliminate abortion rights and deprive LGBT persons of their rights, eliminate separation of church and state, carry out an isolationist foreign policy, cut taxes and never propose any tax increases, make all Americans pay taxes even if they have minimal income, make all government programs, including Medicare and social security, lapse after 5 years unless re-enacted, and require an annual balanced budget. The fact that this borders on insanity doesn't make it any less appealing to the Far Right which is running the Republican Party. This is what we will face if Republicans control Congress. This should concern everyone, not just Democrats, which is why it must be brought home, not only to Democrats who are thinking of sitting out the mid-terms, but also to non-partisans who are not committed to either Party. Once elected, Republicans in Congress vote as a monolith. Whatever the merits of the individual, he or she will be compelled to vote the Party line. When one votes for a Republican, one is not voting for the individual but for the Republican program in its entirety. In that Party there is no room for deviation from the dictates of the extreme right Freedom Caucus.</p><p>It is telling that the Republican Party did not adopt a platform at its 2020 National Convention. Their policy agenda is so unpopular that they are reluctant to have voters, other than their base, know what they really stand for, except for the off the wall extremists like Scott. Thus Kevin McCarthy spoke in broad generalities when he announced the Part's agenda for the 2022 mid-terms, because he knows that the positions of his base, to which he is bound, would be unacceptable to that uncommitted part of the electorate whose votes the Republicans need if he is to become Speaker of the House. </p><p>More specifically, this is the wish list we would get with a Republican controlled Congress:</p><p>repealing all new taxes on large multinationals like Amazon and a tax on stock buybacks as well as repealing increased spending on the IRS which was enacted to raise revenues by cracking down on companies and high earners that cheat on their taxes;</p><p>passing further tax cuts, including extending some of the reductions for businesses and individuals passed in 2017 under Trump that are set to expire over the next few years;</p><p>reduction of expenditures on safety-net programs like Medicaid and supplemental nutritional assistance and reduction of future spending on Medicare and Social Security for some beneficiaries;</p><p>unwinding some of the spending from the newly signed climate law, challenging future regulations and reducing federal regulation of new drilling projects;</p><p>thwarting judicial nominations;</p><p>pushing for a national ban on abortions;</p><p>watering down the Biden's order providing student debt relief;</p><p>stalling President Biden's equity agenda focused on minorities, poor women, disadvantaged and marginalized communities through congressional investigations;</p><p>restructuring or scaling back entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, most prominently by allowing Medicare and Social Security to "sunset" if Congress did not pass new legislation to extend them;</p><p>diminishing the power of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to regulate the finance industry.</p><p><b>Rejection Of The Rule Of Law</b></p><p>The substantive policy differences noted above are reason enough to vote for Democrats in the mid-term elections. An even more overpowering reason to vote Democratic is that of fending off the Republican attack on the fundamental principles of the American republic - a blatant attempt to destroy 250 years of democratic government and impose in its place an authoritarian one party state governed indirectly by wealthy oligarchs through autocratic leaders.</p><p>Republicans have always been inclined to substitute the authority of a wealthy elite for written law. They consider that a code of laws applicable equally to all persons as contrary to the rule of select individuals. They prefer to be judged by the decree of a "superior" elite rather than by definite laws, drawn up by the dictates of reason. They see themselves as purveyors of temporal and divine authority, although the founders of our nation were never in favor of an official religion and in fact had a hatred of arbitrary tyranny and a contempt for organized religion.</p><p>As pointed out by Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books, "American voters have not confronted so grave a choice since 1860." The parallels of the Republican Party with the governing elites in Russia, China, Turkey, North Korea and Hungary are striking. They all represent a backlash against the enlightenment principles that are the backbone of the American experiment. If the Republicans prevail it will be the end of the experiment with the America of the future becoming an ever more authoritarian place where government maintains the right to intervene in personal decisions, even the most intimate - except when it comes to firearms, in which case anyone, young or old, sane or unbalanced, can go about as heavily armed as a combat soldier.</p><p>If any election cried out to be nationalized - to be fought not only on the kitchen table issues of inflation and the price of gas but on the defining principles of what the country is and what it should be - it is this November's.</p><p>Under this threat, Democrats must unite and make crystal clear to voters what is at stake. Americans must be given a persuasive reason to vote. This election is about safeguarding the country they know and the freedoms and rights they cherish. This is how the issues need to be presented:</p><p><u>If you don't want a government that can force you to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term - vote;</u></p><p><u>If you don't want a government that can deny you contraceptives - vote;</u></p><p><u>If you don't want a government that can tell you with whom you can make love and whom you can marry - vote;</u></p><p><u>If you don't want a government that will do nothing to protect your child from a troubled teenager with an assault rifle - vote;</u></p><p><u>If you don't want a government that can ignore the people's voice at the polling place - vote;</u></p><p><u>If you don't want a government that will do nothing about rising temperatures and the danger they pose to all of us - vote</u></p><p>Finally, how can one vote for any member of a Party in which a majority of its House members (as well as a significant number of its Senate members) voted to overturn the certified 2020 election results; a Party of which many members treated the January 6 attempt by a violent mob to overthrow the government of the United States and hang the Vice President as a normal tourist crowd; a Party whose candidates in large numbers refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election and refuse to commit to abide by election results in their races in 2022 unless they win. We are about to go down a slippery slope. We need to stop before it is too late, and this is the primary message that Democrats need to get across to their own base and to those not tied to any Party.</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><span> </span><br /></p>Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-15295965446471706252022-06-20T20:01:00.001-07:002022-06-21T13:07:45.391-07:00<p><b>MOVE OVER JUSTICE TANEY; OR, ALITO'S CRI DE COEUR FOR A RETURN TO THE LIKES OF DRED SCOTT, PLESSY V. FERGUSONAND KORAMATSU</b></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>They will do anything for the unborn, but once you're born, you're on your own. </i>George Carlin</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>The Republicans are doing everything they can to stop women from having control over their own bodies and doing nothing to stop the carnage against kids. </i>Maureen Dowd</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent </i>John G. Roberts, Jr. at his confirmation hearing</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>[Stare decisis is]important because it reflect[s] the view that courts should respect the judgments and the wisdom that are embodied in prior judicial decisions. </i>Samuel A. Alito at his confirmation hearing</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Adherence to precedent is necessary to 'avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts . . . .' </i>Chief Justice Roberts (quoting The Federalist No. 78 (Alexander Hamilton))</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">We can still hope that Justice Alito's draft opinion in the Mississippi abortion case (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization), which would overrule Roe v. Wade (and Planned Parenthood v. Casey) in disregard of precedent and the rule of <i>stare decisis,</i> which ordains the following of prior decisions, doesn't hold up, but given the Court's composition (the agenda of the Court's five most conservative Justices is so far outside the legal mainstream that even Charles Fried, Reagan's conservative solicitor general, called it "reactionary") that seems unlikely. If Alito prevails, this decision will undoubtedly be seen as one of the worst, if not the worst, in the Court's history, ranking alongside Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's Dred Scott decision in 1857 (the Constitution was not meant to include American citizenship for people of African descent, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and so the rights and privileges that the Constitution confers upon American citizens could not apply to them), Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 (racial segregation laws that provide for separate but equal facilities do not violate the Constitution) and United State v. Korematsu in 1944 (exclusion of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast Military Area during WW II does not violate the Constitution) (one could throw in Bush v. Gore as well). In both its conclusion and its reasoning it would be a dark blot on the reputation of the Court for making judgments on the basis of the application of neutral principles of law rather than on the personal bias, political sensibilities and ideologies of the Justices. It would give credence to any suggestion that the six conservative justices are no more than surrogates for the Republican Party and the Religious Right.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <b>Alito's Arguments from the Draft Opinion</b><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> i) The Constitution makes no reference to abortion</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span> ii) Roe v. Wade imposed a highly restrictive regime on the entire nation</span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span> iii) Roe was "egregiously wrong" from the start</span><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span> iv) Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (which upheld Roe) inflamed debate and <span> </span>deepened division</span><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span> v) There has been an unbroken tradition in this country of prohibiting abortion dating <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>back to the earliest days of the common law</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> vi) In Casey the Court came up with a phony reliance interest to justify upholding Roe as <span> </span><span> </span>women's reliance on abortion is of a lower order than the reliance interests that arise in <span> </span><span> </span>cases involving property and contract rights</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> vii) Elected representatives can decide how abortion should be regulated</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> viii) Women are not without electoral or political power</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> ix)<span> The Court has overturned precedent in the past.</span></span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>To anyone who has any familiarity with US Constitutional law such arguments would be comical if they weren't so pathetic. It's almost as if Alito (who is a smart man) wants to demonstrate that he can, and will, impose his personal religious and political views regardless of whether they are intellectually cogent or consistent with Supreme Court precedent or policy.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> <b>Response to the Arguments</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">i)</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">There are many rights which the Court has determined or affirmed which are not mentioned as such in the Constitution . After all, if they were we would hardly need the Supreme Court to determine what they are. I am not fluent enough in Constitutional case law to name them all, but certain ones come to mind, such as the Miranda rule, one man, one vote, the right to have assigned counsel by the state in criminal cases when the defendant is too poor to afford one, and the right not to be subject to education in segregated public schools enunciated in Brown v. Board. The terms "due process" and "equal protection" by their nature do not lend themselves to specificity.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The right to abortion is what is known as an "unenumerated" right, meaning that it has constitutional stature even though there is no specific text in the Constitution referring to it. Such concept is well established in our constitutional system. The Ninth Amendment explicitly acknowledges the existence of such rights, stating that the "enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." So, as Kenji Yoshino, a professor of constitutional law at NYU Law School, points out, the question is not whether unwritten rights will be recognized, but which ones.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Just out of curiosity, I wonder whether the right to posses an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon pursuant to the 2nd Amendment would qualify as an unenumerated right for Justice Alito?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>ii) Alito shows his true colors here when he refers to the Roe precedent as highly <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>restrictive. It is only "restrictive" in the point of view of those who oppose abortion and wish to impose their religious views on others. It is the overruling of Roe which <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>would be restrictive on the liberty of women to end their pregnancy by their choice. <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Keep in mind that no one is being forced to have an abortion. <span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> iii) "Egregiously wrong" is pretty strong language, one might say rude, arrogant and <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>injudicious, for reference to a Supreme Court opinion which has been followed as <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>precedent since1973</span> and which was upheld in Casey in 1992. Alito would seem to <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>want to ignore that Roe was a 7-2 decision and that five members of the majority <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>were Republican appointees (a Republican appointee wrote the majority opinion) with <span> </span><span> </span>only one dissent by a Republican appointee. Maybe only 9-0 decisions deserve to be <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span>considered for </span><i>stare decisis</i> treatment for Alito.<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span>If Alito wants to overrule egregiously wrong decisions he might start with some he <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>participated in, such as the Heller, Citizens United, Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor cases.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> iv) Roe and Casey inflamed debate and deepened division. This is really absurd. What <span> </span><span> </span>does Alito think overruling Roe will do - bring peace and quiet? Did Brown v. Board <span> </span><span> </span>in 1954? No - so should it be overruled? What about Swann v. Charlotte-<span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Mecklenberg Board of Education in 1971 (busing for the purpose of <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span></span>desegregation is constitutional)? It is people like Alito and his fellow religionists and <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Republicans who have inflamed debate and deepened division and continue to do so.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> v) Under common law as adopted in American colonies abortion was allowed until "quickening" which occurred when the pregnant mother first felt the fetus kicking. This would normally be toward the end of the second trimester. This continued in many states at the time of the 14th Amendment in 1868 which applied the due process and equal protection requirements on the states, and which Roe relies upon. Roe is consistent with this standard. In some states which subsequently imposed more restrictive rules, the changes were driven by those who were concerned that Protestant women, as distinguished from Catholic women and immigrant women, were having more <span> </span>abortions the consequences of which would change the national demographics, and by those who wanted to keep women in the home. Alito is giving us at best poor history, if not outright distortion. This is substantiated in the <i>amicus </i>brief filed by the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians in support of Jackson Women's Health Organization.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span>Perhaps even more to the point, the Court in the past has indeed said that unwritten rights would be recognized only if they were deeply rooted in the nation's history and <span> </span><span> </span>tradition and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The draft opinion claims to be applying this test, but this approach would effectively freeze an 18th or 19th century understanding of rights in place. As Yoshino states, this approach is bizarre. In the Obergefell case in 2015, making same sex marriage a fundamental right, the Court transformed the role of tradition in discerning unwritten rights. It instead embraced an approach that "respects our history and learns from it without allowing the past alone to rule the present." The Alito opinion seeks to reinstate the shackles of history on the unenumerated rights inquiry. The opinion is not only an assault on abortion rights, but on same sex marriage, homosexual relationships and contraception as well.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span>As David Cole, National Legal Director of the ACLU, writes, virtually all the <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>constitutional rights we enjoy today reach beyond those recognized by "history and <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>tradition". If we were to limit rights to those enjoyed in 1791, when the Bill of Rights <span> </span><span> </span>was adopted, or even to the late 1800s, when the Civil War Amendments (including the 14th Amendment) were added, many of the rights we take for granted would be in jeopardy. The Equal Protection Clause did not prohibit sex discrimination or racial segregation when it was ratified in 1868. Nor did the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause include the right to<span> </span>use contraceptives or to choose one's sexual partner or spouse regardless of gender or race. </span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span>Alito says abortion is different because it destroys potential life. However, that <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>distinction has no logical connection to his reasoning. His argument is not that only <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>rights that obstruct potential life are limited to those rooted in history and tradition. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span>As to the assertion that abortion destroys potential life, the key word is "potential", in <span> </span><span> </span>this case, a "weasel" word to avoid having to grapple with the all-important issue of <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>when life, or more properly, personhood, begins and what, in fact, it is that is being "destroyed". That issue will be addressed <span>below</span>.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span>Even if one were to accept Alito's version of history, the denial of these rights in the <span> </span>past was totally in derogation of the concept of ordered liberty. Such denial imposed <span> </span>a patriarchal system that expected women to remain at home, confined to the private <span> </span>sphere and governed by their families, their husbands and in-laws, and the concept of <span> </span><span> </span>coverture, that is, that a married woman did not have a separate legal existence from <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>her husband. As Amanda Taub has pointed out in the NY Times, Alito's opinion relies <span> </span><span> </span>heavily on the reasoning of a 17th century English jurist that women's rights ought to be constrained so that they wouldn't encroach on men's rights too much. It is <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>shocking that such reasoning can persist today. A central tenet of such a legal philosophy is that giving women legally enforceable rights over their own bodies is a threat to men's freedom. Sounds like the ridiculous claim that is being propagated today that whites are being discriminated against, as well as the incel ideology and the "great <span>r</span>eplacement" conspiracy theory.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> Turning again to history, Taub points out that traditional gender roles became a central <span> </span>element of southern states' justification for white supremacy, including the Jim Crow <span> </span>laws, based on the supposed threat from which white women had to be protected. Preserving traditional gender roles thus became linked to protecting the racial hierarchy. Today, <span>the </span>framing by the Republican Party of Roe as a part of feminism and the Party's opposition thereto fits in with the Party's dedication to protecting and preserving existing <span> </span>hierarchies, both racial and otherwise.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span>vi) Again Alito shows his personal biases by denigrating women. To judge a woman's <span> </span><span> </span>reliance on the right to abortion provided by Roe as of a lower order than reliance on <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>property and contract rights would take us back to the 17th century. It is an <span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span>argument hardly deserving of a response, but a quote from the opinion in Casey is worthy of note, "... people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail".</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> vii) This is a sort of a <i>non-sequitur</i>. Yes, of course elected representatives can decide how <span> </span>abortion should be regulated. So? Elected representatives can regulate away all sorts <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>of rights - that's why we have the Reconstruction Amendments<span> </span>- so majorities in state <span> </span><span> </span><span> legislatures </span>can't take away fundamental individual rights.<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span>But Alito is not so deferential to state legislatures when it comes to regulating guns <span> </span>or imposing health mandates. States can't regulate to protect living children from guns, <span> </span><span> </span>but they can regulate to protect unborn children. Whatever happened to judicial integrity? Or<span> </span>just plain common sense? How can you claim that mandates for masks and vaccinations to protect the lives of others (as well as one's own life) restrict individual freedom, but that limitations on the right to choose whether to have a child do not? </span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> viii) This seems to be merely a variation of item vii), and echoes the popular sovereignty argument of Stephen Douglas in his debates with Lincoln for the legality of slavery to be decided by popular vote of the residents of a State. One would have thought that such an approach would have been ended by the Civil War. In another such attempted return to the discredited past, some of the restrictions being contemplated by "red" states on travel to "blue" states to seek abortions reek of that era's Fugitive Slave Law. </span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> ix) Alito cites some thirty decisions in which the Court overturned precedent, but it has been noted that the vast majority of those decisions <u>expanded</u> rights, a handful watered down rights protections, but none <u>eliminated</u> a right altogether. This only underscores how unprecedented the Dobbs case will be if it destroys a long recognized right.<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Overruling Roe would also contravene long-standing Supreme Court policy that deference to precedent requires "special justification" for overruling an earlier decision, even if a majority of the Justices of the current Court disagree with it. In US v IBM in 1996, one of a line of cases enunciating this policy, the Court stated as follows:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>"<i>Stare decisis</i> is a 'principal of policy' [citation omitted] and not 'an inexorable command' [citation omitted]. Applying that policy, we frequently have declined to overrule cases in appropriate circumstances because <i>stare decisis </i>promotes the even handed, predictable, and consistent development of legal principles, fosters reliance on judicial decisions, and contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process [citations omitted]. '[E]ven in constitutional cases, the doctrine carries such persuasive force that we always have required a departure from precedent to be supported by some '<u>special justification' </u>[citation omitted]" (emphasis added).</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Ironically, this opinion was written by Justice Thomas, an outspoken advocate of overruling Roe.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Alito himself, apparently when it suits his cause at the time, makes the case for following precedent. In Ramos v. Louisiana, dissenting from the overruling of a precedent by the majority, he writes, "there has been massive and entirely reasonable reliance" upon such precedent, and further states that "<i>stare decisis</i> exists to promote . . . evenhandedness, predictability, and the protection of legitimate reliance."</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Alito has cited no "special justification" for overruling Roe, the requirement mandated by Supreme Court policy, although, as indicated below, he makes a desperate and dishonest attempt to compensate for this omission.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Although the pro-choice lobby would like to take this opportunity to debate the pros and cons of the Constitutional right to abortion <i>de novo</i>, that is not what is legitimately at issue here. That question has already been addressed and answered in Roe almost 50 year ago when the Court determined that the Constitution provides women with a right to privacy which recognizes their freedom to choose not to carry a pregnancy to term, subject to certain limits in the later stages of pregnancy. The issue in Dobbs, as in any case involving the prospective overruling of precedent, is, or should be, whether anything has taken place in the intervening period following the original decision which would justify changing the ruling of law in such case. The burden of proof in making such a showing is on the party or parties seeking such change. In Dobbs they (and Alito in his draft) have failed to do so. The considerations which are relevant to making such a determination are the following:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>(a) has the rule established in the case whose precedent is being challenged proven to be intolerable in defying practical workability?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>(b) is there so little reliance on the rule that no hardship would result as a consequence of it being overruled?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>(c) have related principles of law subsequently developed which have left the rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine, an anachronism, or has there been a significant change in, or subsequent development of, constitutional law? </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">(d) have facts so changed or come to be seen so differently as to have robbed the rule of significant application or justification?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The answer in all instances is clearly "no". That should be the end of the matter. It is not enough that the people who opposed the rule in the first place want to relitigate it. The Court has spoken. You don't get a "do-over" just because the composition of the Court has changed. But that is just what Alito is attempting to do (which raises questions as to his judicial integrity and impartiality).</span></p><p><b style="font-size: large;"> When Does Life Begin</b></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">As noted immediately above, Dobbs is not, or should not be, an abstract debate about the relative merits of the arguments of the pro-choice and pro-life movements as to (i) whether the 14th Amendment to the Constitution allows a government to violate a woman's right to privacy and invade her bodily integrity by taking away her procreative control and forcing her to carry a pregnancy to term against her will, and (ii) whether personhood protected by the 14th Amendment commences at conception. We are past that point. Those questions were resolved in Roe, as modified in Casey, in the negative. And there is no "special justification" for overturning them. Rather Dobbs turns on, or should turn on, the nature of the judicial process, the establishment of legal norms in a democratic society and the finality of judicial decisions. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">However, since Alito, motivated by his political and religious biases, is clearly not going in this latter direction, it may be worthwhile to analyze on the merits the fundamental substantive argument of the pro-life position in such debate, the claim that abortion destroys life. (Even such conservative constitutional giants as Justice Scalia and Robert Bork criticize Roe only on the ground that it recognizes a 14th Amendment right to abortion through the right to privacy, not that it rejects the existence of constitutionally protected personhood from conception. In fact, they would deny personhood while the fetus is still in the womb.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">This is the so-called moral issue that anti-abortion advocates argue justifies their opposition to the right of a woman under the 14th Amendment to determine herself as to whether to bring a pregnancy to term. The pro-lifers claim that they are saving the life of an "unborn child" (while ignoring the impact on the life of the prospective mother of the bodily burdens of pregnancy, the destruction of her right to procreative control and her interest in sex equality; Linda Greenhouse has even suggested that forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term could be treated as "involuntary servitude" in violation of the 13th Amendment). The issue as to whether abortion results in the taking of a life should be resolved on the basis of medical science, and should stand or fall on that basis alone, not on the "morality" of abortion as such. This is not to say that the taking of a life is not a moral issue, but that the "moral" issue is a disguise for a political/religious issue, and that the question can only be resolved by a medical determination as to when "life" begins. That is, is abortion the taking of a life? If so, we would be faced with an issue falling under the rubric characterized by Isaiah Berlin as value pluralism, where two universal rights are in conflict with one another. We are spared this dilemma fortunately by the fact that, as demonstrated below, constitutionally protected life does not begin at conception, and therefore there is no basis for denying a woman her constitutional right to abortion by overruling Roe. (It is ironic, if not hypocritical, that the opponents of abortion usually have no qualms about the taking of life via the death penalty or about the loss of lives through their failure to regulate gun purchases, which issues for them apparently have no moral components.) </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">But this characterization of the pro-life issue is misleading, at best. The underlying premise of the pro-life movement is, for the most part (there is a strong flavor of misogyny as well), a religious one, evincing the crusade of the Christian Right, whether evangelical or Catholic, to impose its religious views and rules as to the family and the role of women in society as a whole. These seem to derive from their reading of the Bible (for what it is worth, and questionable at that) and their ideas about, and seeming obsession with, sex and sexual morality, i.e., no pre-marital intercourse, no sexual relations outside of marriage or for any purpose other than to propagate, no same sex marriage, no marriage of blacks and whites, the "sin" of being gay. Prohibiting abortion furthers such causes as dictated by these beliefs. In reality this is about the attempt to create a theocratic state. Alito's draft opinion is as much about that as it is about abortion. It implicitly bolsters his view that "religious liberty is in danger of becoming a second-class right" (see his speech at the Federalist Society in November 2020).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">In fact, even on religious grounds the Christian Right contention that life begins at conception is an outlier. In Islam the prevailing view seems to be that life begins only upon ensoulment, which occurs 120 days after conception. Thereafter abortion is the taking of a life and is prohibited other than to protect the life of the mother, but prior thereto abortion is permitted. It has been stated that in Jewish thought it is widely accepted that as long as a fetus is in the womb, it has potential, but not full personhood. Another commentator has said that Jewish law was consistent with life beginning at birth. Given Alito's stated concern with the loss of religious liberty, why does he not treat the denial by States of the right of Jewish and Islamic women to choose to have an abortion granted by their religions as a deprivation of religious liberty? How does this differ in principle from the affirmation by the Supreme Court of the right of employers to deny providing health insurance for birth control to their employees based on the religious beliefs of such employers? Is the denial of abortion rights not an infringement on the free exercise of religious belief? Is this not a violation of the separation of church and state? Is this not the imposition of one set of religious beliefs over another?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Even if one disregards the disingenuousness of the pro-life claim that they are attempting to save lives (not of the mothers, of course, but of "unborn lives", an oxymoron if there ever was one), the proposition fails on its own terms if one views it from a medical standpoint and actual practice. The relevant question is not whether or not one is pro-life, but "when does protected 'life' begin"?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Let's start with some basic numbers. In the United States in 2019 (the latest year for which I could find such data), 92.7 % of abortions were performed in the first trimester, that is, 13 weeks; 6.2 % were performed within 14-20 weeks, and less than 1% within 21 weeks or more. 42.3% were early abortions, that is, within 9 weeks. Even then it has been suggested that one reason for abortions after the first trimester is only because of the barriers to abortion in the U.S. It takes time to save money for the procedure, or to arrange transportation, child care and time off from work to travel to a clinic if one is not nearby.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">One standard for the beginning of life is viability of the fetus, which is the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb. This is generally presumed to be at 24 weeks, but apparently it can be anywhere within 20-26 weeks. Thus there is a cogent argument that less than 1% of abortions take a "life" by this standard. Even in those cases there may be instances in which the mother's life or health was at stake or the fetus had to be aborted for other medical reasons.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Another, and more convincing approach (although reaching a similar result), is that a human life begins only at the time the fetus develops the infrastructure necessary for consciousness rather than mere viability. It is only then that it can arguably be considered a person, or at most a proto-person, not yet an individual. This requires a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components and nerve cells. Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation (thank you, Scientific American). More specifically, the thalamus, which is necessary for pain and conscious perception, does not appear until the end of the second trimester.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">In the first few weeks of development human embryos are indistinguishable from fish or bird embryos. For many weeks after that they are recognizable as mammalian embryos, with a heart and a basic brain, but anatomically no different from mouse or pig embryos at similar gestational stages. It is only after week 8 that the first rudimentary brain activity, the kind that is observed in organisms as simple as insects, can be observed. The very beginnings of our higher brain structures only start to appear between weeks 12 and 16, and the coordinated brain activity required for consciousness not until 24-25 weeks. The cerebral cortex which is necessary for consciousness becomes operational after 25-32 weeks of gestation. Thus, consciousness, albeit not yet personhood, cannot rationally be deemed to exist before approximately the end of the second trimester at the earliest. It is only then that the fetus can be argued in any rational sense to have acquired the moral status of a life entitled to protection.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Putting this in a different perspective, there were about 625,000 abortions in 2019, about 195 abortions per 1000 live births. If less than 1% of these abortions took place after the second trimester that would be at most 6,250 "lives" ended, including those required to preserve the life or health of the mother or for other medical reasons. A life is a life but how does this compare with 45,000 gun deaths in 2020, including 24,000 by suicide.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">A third, and most convincing, standard is that life begins at birth. There is much to be said for this standard which, among other things, is much more precise than the other standards set forth above. It has the legal and practical virtues of being clear, practicably usable, and universally salient and recognizable. It is not without reason that we date the age of humans from the date of birth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The mass of mental content to which the neonate is exposed on birth are in fact essential components for developing conscious experience, memory and emotion, which form the basic material for subjective self-conscious thought and experience - in other words the objects of conscious life to which the new human must be exposed before it can develop sensory reaction and a sense of itself as opposed to the rest of the world; when it becomes aware of itself as an individual entity, a separate being different from nature and other people. Even this stage is not yet fully reached at birth, but it cannot take place before birth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The neonate no longer draws its basic life support from its pregnant woman and depends on her for survival. Its presence in the world is no longer mediated through the body of the pregnant woman. This separate embodiment enables the neonate to be drawn into the social world of others in ways previously not possible; in short, to be treated as a member of the social community in ways that are precluded by its social estrangement when enclosed in the womb, and which entitles it to the protections mandated by society through its moral and legal rules.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Birth corresponds to a development of momentous significance socially, biologically and psychologically, in that it places the new human being in the necessary context for the development of conscious life, a sense of self, agency. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Let's look at the ruling in Roe. In that case, the Court ruled that the States could place no restrictions on a woman's right to choose to abort during the first trimester. From the second trimester on the States could enact medical regulations on abortion procedures so long as they were narrowly tailored to protecting the mother's health. From the third trimester on a State could legally prohibit all abortions except when necessary to protect the mother's life or health (thus rejecting birth, except in the case of risk to the health of the mother, as the beginning of life entitled to protection). For the most part this conforms to the medical analysis as to viability of the fetus or the underpinnings of consciousness in its determination of personhood. Casey modified Roe to some extent by dropping the trimester structure, but left the woman's right of choice intact through viability, while providing less restrictive limits on the State's ability to regulate. As noted above, neither viability nor preliminary consciousness generally take place before the end of the second trimester and in practice 99% of abortions take place within 20 weeks so the rules of Roe and Casey effectively conform to medical science as to the minimal standards for determining the beginning of "life" deserving of protection under the Constitution.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Roe and Casey do not accept the pro-choice argument that life begins at birth (which is the most realistic, convincing and ideal solution), but also reject the pro-life notion that life begins at conception while accepting the argument that a right to life occurs at some point short of birth, and thus limit their rulings to application of the minimal standards for ascertaining the beginning of "life" as determined by medical science. One would think that this would would be an acceptable resolution of any purported constitutional conflict between the mother's right to freedom of choice and the nascent human being's right to life, leaving aside the ongoing battle of the degree of regulation the States can impose before viability.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">But not if Alito gets his way. From a medical standpoint (and intellectually) the opposition to abortion as the preservation of "life" starting from conception as argued by the pro-life lobby is without merit, but Alito and his conservative allies on the Court are prepared to ignore science and precedent to impose their religious and political views on others. Nor, if they are successful, will the pro-life movement stop at that. They will move on to the next stage, banning birth control and contraception, with Griswold v. Connecticut (the 1965 case establishing the right to privacy and declaring that married couples had a constitutional right to use contraception) in their sights (see the NY Times, June 14, 2022). Individual State bans of abortion will not be sufficient for these religious zealots, once referred to by a fellow Republican as "the people who brought you the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch trial." As Mary Zeigler, a law professor at the University of California Davis School of Law, has stated, "anything short of a nationwide abortion ban will not satisfy them."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <b>Alito's Race Card</b><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The weakness of Alito's rationale for overruling Roe as a matter of law, history, medical science and Supreme Court policy is such that he apparently feels the need to try to smear the pro-choice movement with an ahistorical argument (buried in a footnote), by citing an <i>amicus </i>brief (filed by a small group of evangelical leaders and conservative organizations) and a concurring opinion by Justice Thomas in an earlier case linking the right to abortion to the historic eugenics movement and racist campaigns to limit Black reproduction (relying on the fact that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger supported both abortion and eugenics), thus reframing the opposition to abortion as racial justice. Historians of the eugenics movement consider the Thomas argument "deeply flawed" and that it "distorts history in the service of ideology". That doesn't seem to have deterred Justice Alito. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Because the logic of Alito's argument for overruling Roe and Casey is so weak and without merit, he is grasping wildly for the "special justification" that has repeatedly been mandated by the Court to justify overruling a precedent (as described in ix) above), and which is otherwise lacking in his opinion. In doing so he has shamefully abandoned any semblance of integrity or objectivity to seek the cover of the false claim of abortion as "racial injustice" as a rationale for overruling Roe. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Conveniently for his argument, he neglects to note that, as Melissa Murray points out in a 2021 article in the Harvard Law Review, Black women were historically especially vociferous in their desire for broader access to contraception and abortion, and that Black civil rights groups today overwhelmingly support abortion rights. Omitted also is any reference to the statistics in a brief filed in the case by 18 civil and women's rights groups, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the League of Women Voters, that abortion legalization in the 1970s led to a 9.6% increase in Black women's college graduation rate and that abortion access resulted in a 6.9% rise in Black women's labor market participation rate - three times higher than for women generally. According to a Pew survey in 2021, 67% of Black adults supported a right to abortion in all or most cases.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <b>Laws of Other Countries</b><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The laws of other countries, of course, do not bind the U.S. Supreme Court, but they may be of interest in considering the "moral" claim of the pro-life movement, irrelevant as such claim may be to determining whether to overrule Roe.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Since 1994 just three other countries have rolled back abortion rights, all Catholic countries. In that period 59 countries have expanded abortion rights. If Roe is overturned, any States that ban or severely limit abortion at all stages of pregnancy, as roughly half are expected to, would join a minority of countries that prohibit it. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The vast differences in treatment of abortion worldwide suggest that there is no universal consensus that abortion in the first trimester or prior to viability is the taking of a "life". It would appear that countries with 60% of the world's population and 75% of women of reproductive age permit abortion, although with some cutoff, usually at the end of the first trimester with further exceptions in many cases. Thus, it is clear that the great majority of nations recognize that life does not begin at conception, with varying views as to when it does begin, but certainly not before the first trimester. As such, even a claim as to be preserving of a life falls short of any universal agreement.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> *<span> *<span> *</span></span></span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span>In short, Roe and Casey hold up well, and overruling cannot be justified on any grounds, legal, medical or moral.</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p>Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-42983579084736386282022-03-24T14:28:00.000-07:002022-03-24T14:28:13.484-07:00<p> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span></span><b>TODAY UKRAINE; TOMORROW ?</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p>Quo vadis? This is not really the beginning of where we are going. The beginning was a long time ago. As Faulkner said, "The past is not dead, it is not even past." Russia's acts of expansion and aggression are part of its history and culture. As the current crisis in Ukraine signifies, there is nothing to suggest that it will stop here or now. It is part of the national DNA , long pre-dating Putin. There was never a chance for "reset", and any such concept, if it still survives, should be discarded. George Kennan's containment strategy still applies today and probably tomorrow as well. It turns out it may not have gone far enough in its prophecy - he was right about the Soviet Union collapsing of its own weight, but it didn't take into account that it was Russia itself which was the antagonist under the guise of communism which eventually lost whatever appeal and strategic value it may once have had. It was always Russian nationalism. Russia will be a permanent adversary. It is a renegade nation. It has never believed in the Western tradition. It does not have the political system or the institutions which would allow it to do so. To develop constructive relationships nations need not always agree, but they need to be operating under the same set of rules. Russia has never the subscribed to the generally accepted rules of conduct of the Western nations, such as a pluralistic political system that encourages competition and debate, democratic elections, freedom of speech and press, religious tolerance and independent judiciaries. In fact, it rejects them. It rejects the idea of a rules based international order. There is no room for accommodation unless Russia changes its historic pattern.</p><p>First, a disclaimer. I have no no expertise or experience when it comes to Russia, I have never been there, and I think the only Russians I have met have been New York City taxi drivers. I rely a great deal on the writings of Angela Stent, a non-resident fellow at Brookings, Stephen Kotkin, a professor at Princeton, Serhii Plokhy, a professor at Harvard, and Timothy Snyder, a professor at Yale.</p><p>Russia is not only a geopolitical threat. Russia's world view, particularly as articulated by Putin, represents the historical reactionary forces that have recently gained support from autocratic leaders or would-be leaders in the West and in countries that since WW II have otherwise evinced a desire to emulate the West; even in the US. And this, I believe, has encouraged Putin to take the action he has in Ukraine. This philosophical conflict with the West has even greater long term significance than the current geopolitical issue. It may not be the Cold War, or even a large scale "hot war" (at least not yet), but it may define the course of this century. The Cold War was never really a conflict with communism but a conflict with Russian nationalism and the Russian value system. In fact, for some in Russia the Cold War never ended. Perhaps for them it never can. Putin argues that Russia's national security is at risk, but it is really his political security which is at stake as the comparative economic benefits and personal liberties available in the Western ethos move closer geographically to Russia.</p><p>In 2021, before the most current Russian invasion of Ukraine, Plokhy wrote, "The ongoing military conflict in Ukraine is not only a contest of political values. Russia's effort to stem its imperial decline by seizing the Crimea and occupying part of the Donbas presents a major threat to international order, with its bedrock principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of nation-states, on a level not seen since the end of World War II."</p><p> <b>What Kind of a Country is Russia?</b><br /></p><p>Russian culture/society requires a czar, an autocrat, an authoritarian leader. The serfs may have been freed, but this is still a nation of serfs who prefer to be dominated by an autocrat. Notwithstanding the accomplishments of Russians in literature, art, music and science (although I am not sure how many of them were ethnic Russians and how many were from other ethnic groups within Russia or the former Russian Empire or how many were liquidated by Stalin), listening to Putin raises the question as to how far the Russians have come from the barbarian hordes which once populated the steppes. Think of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and its secret protocols which allied Russia with Hitler and allowed them to divide between them territories in Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, the Stalin imposed genocidal famine on Ukraine in the 1930s which starved 3.9 million to death, the show trials and Stalin's Great Purge/Great Terror of 1936-38 in which over 700,000 were killed and one million sent to Gulags, Stalin's murder of Trotsky in 1940, the Katyn Forest massacre in 1940, the sell-out of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, the defenestration of Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk in 1948, the bloody suppression by Russian troops of the Hungarian and Czech protests in 1956 and 1968, government targeted assassinations and murders throughout the world, the poisoning of the Kremlin's arch critic, Aleksei Navalny, and his subsequent imprisonment, the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK in 2018, the death in prison of Sergei Magnitsky, the long history of the Gulag and the war crimes currently being committed against the civilian population in Ukraine. These are not nature's noblemen.</p><p>Due to its size and diverse multi-ethnic society with accompanying fear of disintegration, Russians are obsessed with order and stability at the cost of individual liberty. For this it always requires an external enemy. They have endured a thousand years of repressive autocracy, secretive government, a lack of individual and property rights and expansionist foreign policy, with brief periods of reform followed by Putin authoritarianism. The Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment have passed Russia by, and in fact Russia is the contemporary embodiment of the counter-enlightenment.</p><p>Western concepts of individualism, competition and free expression are alien to the more holistic, organic communal Russian values. Or as Putin describes it - managed or sovereign democracy. According to Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, "Putin is trying to turn Russia back into a totalitarian dictatorship of the pre-Gorbachev days".</p><p> <b>Historic Relations with its Neighbors and the West</b><br /></p><p>Russia is permanently expansionist for cultural, political and historic reasons and its national paranoia engenders a fortress Russia mentality. (Catherine the Great: "I have to expand my borders in order to keep my country secure.") This so-called defensive expansion is in part due to Russia's lack of natural borders, but Russia also has retained an imperial mindset based on a 19th century Concert of Europe or balance of power frame of mind. In the 1830s or so the foundations of the Russian imperial identity were formulated as autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality; nationality being ethnic Russian, the preservation of Russian cultural dominance.</p><p>Russia is and historically has been obsessed with the West. It is schizophrenic, both resentful and envious. Putin plays to the dual legacies of superiority and inferiority complexes that for centuries have shaped Russia's view of its role in the world. Moreover, many Russians believe their right to self determination is constantly challenged by the West. George Kennan described the psychology of Stalin's regime as paranoid, viewing the outside world to be "evil, hostile and menacing". Nothing has changed.</p><p>According to a former LA Times bureau chief, by the time she had left Russia she had come to accept that "hatred of the West and of the West's collaborators was not a sideshow or an occasional propaganda point but the very foundation of Mr. Putin's rule. It wasn't only a deep hunger for Russian empire; there was a desire for vengeance, too." She described it as institutional hatred. Russia is "still fixated on the same handful of grudges, stung and distrustful over the humiliation of the Soviet collapse and the perceived treachery of NATO expansion". In the view of Russia's leadership, Georgia and especially Ukraine must be brought to heel; the Russian empire would rise again.</p><p>For the Soviets, NATO was the foe because it embodied the Western resolve to resist them. The fixation with NATO did not end with the Soviet collapse. In the early 2000s there was talk of Russia becoming a member of NATO. One problem was that Russia would have to accept NATO's rules if it joined. These were rules written in Washington and Brussels. Putin, seeking to regain Russia's position as a great power, bristled at accepting the Western agenda. Russia wanted to interact with the US as an equal, with the power to co-determine how NATO was run. It wanted an equal partnership of unequals.</p><p> <b>Russia's View of its Role in the World</b><br /></p><p>Russia dreams of a role in the world beyond its capabilities. Although it has the largest land area of any country it is only 9th largest in population and 11th largest in GDP (its GDP is less than New York State). The US produces 50% of global GDP; Russia produces 3% of the world's economic output. It exports little beyond oil, gas, coal, some minerals and arms. It is not an industrial power. It is a petrostate. John McCain called Russia a gas station masquerading as a state. Or as one commentator has said, the only two real things in Russia are oil sales and theft; the rest of it is all a kind of theater. It is a kleptocracy. It looks less and less like an advanced nation. Economic backwardness persists. The disparity between Russia's self-concept as a great power and the reality of its capabilities, both natural and man-made, has limited its ability to play the world role it believes it is destined and entitled to play. Economically and politically they have a hard time matching the West so they resort to coercion.</p><p>Russia wants to have its opinion taken into account; it is upset that the West doesn't recognize its special status as a great power. Russia feels that it has a special place in the world, a special mission. According to Richard Holbrook, what Russia wants is to restore a sense, however symbolic, that they still matter in the world.</p><p>If it were not for its nuclear weapons it would be a third rate power which could be ignored. It is this perceived lack of recognition, of the respect which it feels it is entitled to, and which Putin appeals to, these delusions of grandeur, which contribute to its aggressive behavior. This, its national character, is unlikely to ever change. </p><p> <b>Putin</b><br /></p><p>Putin is not rational, but has the mentality of a gangster who is trying to punch above his weight. He is obsessed with his legacy and his place in Russian history. He resents being ignored. He believes that he, as the leader of Russia, should have a significant say in all international decision making. Out of desperation he draws attention to himself and Russia by the forays into Georgia and Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. He resembles Hitler in his Lebensraum movement into the Sudetenland and German speaking lands to the east.</p><p>The core element of the "Putin Doctrine" is getting the West to treat Russia as if it were the Soviet Union, a power to be respected and feared, with special rights in its neighborhood and a voice in a every serious international matter. The doctrine holds that only a few states should have this kind of authority, along with complete sovereignty, and that others must bow to their wishes. It entails defending incumbent authoritarian regimes and undermining democracies. The doctrine is tied together by Putin's overarching aim: reversing the consequences of the Soviet collapse, splitting the transatlantic alliance, and renegotiating the geographic settlement that ended the Cold War.</p><p>Putin believes that Russia has an absolute right to a sphere of privileged interests in the post-Soviet space. This means its former Soviet neighbors should not join any alliances that are deemed hostile to Moscow, particularly NATO or the European Union. Putin has made this demand clear in the two treaties proposed by the Kremlin on December 17, 2021, which require that Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries-as well as Sweden and Finland-commit to permanent neutrality and eschew seeking NATO membership. NATO would also have to retreat to its 1997 military posture, before its first enlargement, by removing all troops and equipment in central and eastern Europe, which would reduce NATO's military presence to what it was when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Russia would also have veto power over the foreign policy choices of its non-NATO neighbors. This would ensure that pro-Russian governments are in power in countries bordering Russia - including, foremost, Ukraine. As Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany recently said, Russia has just moved "to wipe an entire country off the world map".</p><p>Angels Merkel saw through Putin back in 2014 at the time of the Russian launch of a war in Southeastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea: "Russia is violating the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of Ukraine. It regards one of its neighbors, Ukraine, as part of a sphere of influence. After the horrors of two world wars and the end of the Cold War, this calls the entire European peaceful order into question."</p><p>Putin's Russia has defined its role in the world as the leader of conservative nations that espouse "traditional" values and as a protector of leaders who face challenges from the "color revolutions" - popular uprisings against authoritarian governments - which Putin believes are orchestrated by the West. The image of Russia as the defender of the status quo - against what is depicted as a revisionist, decadent West trying to promote regime change against established leaders - is an integral part of the Russian idea. Putin has been taken by the ideas of Russian ultranationalists who view Russia's destiny as a conservative empire in perpetual conflict with the liberal Western world. Putin has said that Western Christianity is decadent because it supports LGBTQ rights and multiculturalism. Russia is depicted as the bastion of forces that oppose chaos and liberal ideas. He is committed to the idea that Russian civilization differs from Western civilization. Putin has taken the position that the rule of law is not a universal aspiration, but part of an alien Western civilization. Putin represents traditional, collectivist, authoritarian Russian political culture and appeals to a sense of Russian exceptionalism, which defines itself in opposition to the West. He is driven by a concept of ethno-nationalism, an idea of nationhood and identity based on language, culture, blood and soil- a collectivist ideology with deep roots in Russian history and thought. According to Timothy Snyder, the idea of Russia as a separate civilization from the West with which it competes goes back centuries, to the roots of Orthodox Christianity and the notion of Moscow as a "third Rome", following Rome itself and Constantinople - a new Byzantium. </p><p>He claims that since the Soviet collapse there is a mismatch between Russia's formal borders and its national and ethnic borders, and this is a threat to Russia's security. Russia thus has a right to come to the defense of the 22 million Russians under threat outside Russia in post-Soviet space (shades of Hitler's Nazi Germany). What certainly resonates today is the idea that there is one big Russian or Slavic nation, with maybe different tribes, but basically they are the same nation. That is the model, from the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, which Putin now subscribes to when he says Ukraine has no legitimacy as a nation. What we see now is a return to a pre-revolutionary understanding of what Russians are. It is a very imperial idea of the Russian nation, consisting of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. The latter two groups don't have a right to exist as separate nations. We are almost back to the mid-nineteenth century with imperial officers trying to hinder the development of Ukrainian culture and ideas. Putin's nationalism represents a civilizational identity that suggests a common culture and political boundaries and justifies conquest and irredentism.</p><p>I was originally skeptical of the expansion of NATO. Some have blamed that for the current crisis. But now we know why we needed it. NATO enlargement has been only one of the reasons for the deterioration of Russia's relations with the West. The most important reasons are Putin's obsessive nostalgia for the historic Russian empire, his resentment over the USSR's loss of its empire following its cold war defeat and Russia's unwillingness, over the last quarter century, to accept the rules of the international order, including acknowledging the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the post-Soviet states and supporting a liberal world order that respects the right to self-determination. If NATO had not been enlarged would Putin have allowed the nations of Central and Eastern Europe to live in peace? If Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had not joined NATO would they still be independent states? Doubtful.</p><p>Russia is still the nationalistic, expansionist, empire building police state it has historically been. It is part of a pattern. Putin appears to be attempting to turn back the clock, not merely to the heyday of Soviet Communism but to the time of an Imperial Russia. Whether it be granting political asylum to Edward Snowden, or actively engaging in supporting anti - government groups through a media, social network and cyber security campaign, or interfering in foreign elections, Russia under Putin is constantly on the attack. And now, as we see, militarily. To quote President Biden, "This was never about genuine security concerns on their part. It was always about naked aggression, about Putin's desire for empire by any means necessary, by bullying Russia's neighbors through coercion and corruption."</p><p>As Ivan Krastev, Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, argues, "Even if Ukraine were autocratic, it would not be tolerated by Putin. He's reconsolidating imperial nationalism."</p><p>Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser, has stated, "It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire". As Ukraine moves closer to the West, Putin may think this is his last chance to do so.</p><p> <b>Reflections in the Mirror</b><br /></p><p>It is no wonder that the Republican right has shown an affinity for Putin. They are cut from the same cloth. The new right is more Bolshevik than Burkean. They want to overthrow, bypass or undermine existing institutions, to destroy what exists. They are scornful of compromise, unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. The only difference may be that the Republicans don't control atomic weapons, at least not now. Ukraine on the world stage is a reflection of what the ultra-right is pursuing in the US. With the internet and the web, global geopolitics can no longer be separated from domestic politics, and the latter no longer stops at the water's edge. Putin and Russia are the cutting edge of the modern counter-enlightenment which seems to be engulfing the world, including our own country. What is so shocking is that the Republican right, until it sensed that the wind was blowing in a different direction, didn't even try to disguise its admiration for Putin. Toxic partisanship seems to have eased up for the moment, but only slightly.</p><p>As recently as March 8, Mike Pence was praising Trump's "management" of Putin: "I do believe that the reason why our our Administration is the only American administration in the twenty-first century where Putin did not try and grab land and redraw international borders by force is because he saw American strength." Some management; Trump's threat to leave NATO encouraged Putin's current invasion of Ukraine. Pence's political organization is claiming that Putin's invasion was precipitated by a "horrific decision": Biden's revoking of the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Ron DeSantis said of the Russians: "When Trump was President, they didn't take anything. And now Biden's President, and they're rolling into Ukraine." Kevin McCarthy argued that Democrats are unfairly blaming the Russian invasion for the current high gas prices when the real problem is their lack of love for fossil fuels - their failure to authorize more pipelines, new leases on public lands, and more drilling: "These aren't Putin prices. They're President Biden's prices." All of this is disingenuous at best. None of this would have any short term effect on gas prices. </p><p>The Texas Republican, an organ of the Republican Party, asserted, "This war didn't have to happen." Mr. Biden's White House "caused this". Senator Jim Risch of Idaho claimed that the carnage depicted in President Zelensky's address to Congress was a direct result of a response by the Biden administration that had been "slow, too little, too late". </p><p>Senator John Kennedy traced the invasion to the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, the failure to attack Syria after it used chemical weapons, and the Russian seizure of Crimea, noting that this all happened while Joe Biden was either President or Vice President. Of course, he neglected to mention that he was among eight Republican Senators who visited the Kremlin in 2018 after release of a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report which determined that Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf. </p><p>He also ignored the four years under Trump during which he repeatedly undermined NATO, sided with Mr. Putin over his own intelligence community on Russia's interference in the 2016 election and tried to bring Russia back into the community of developed nations.</p><p>Or the ever quotable Marjorie Taylor Greene (the gift that keeps on giving) declaring that an independent Ukraine only exists because the Obama administration helped overthrow the previous regime, an apparent reference to the popular uprising that took down a pro-Russian president of Ukraine - actually two Ukrainian governments ago. By the way, she opposes any intervention although she also blames the Biden administration.</p><p>Representative Madison Cawthon of North Carolina called Mr. Zelensky a "thug", echoing Russian propagandists.</p><p>Senator Ted Cruz also blames President Biden for the invasion, arguing that the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Biden's decision to waive sanctions against the Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline caused the attack. Actually the latter was only an expansion of an existing pipeline and had already been completed, just awaiting administrative approval. Indeed eighty percent of the expansion was built under the Trump administration.</p><p> Aside from the sheer stupidity of these remarks and their divorce from reality, it is appalling, although perhaps not surprising, that these Republican Party leaders are trying to turn a human tragedy to partisan advantage. </p><p>Bipartisan resistance to Putin is critical; American power is dependent on its democratic basis, the erosion of which has no doubt encouraged Putin's move into Ukraine. </p><p> <b>Going Forward</b><br /></p><p>Notwithstanding the sanctions, Putin is determined not to stop in Ukraine until he takes the entire country, however long it may take and regardless of the casualties on both sides (or the desires of the Ukrainians who voted for independence from the USSR by 92 % in a 1991 referendum; the majority of every region was for independence. Prior to the referendum polls showed that even 58% of ethnic Russians in Ukraine were in favor of independence.). If he continues in his quest, we have to recognize that there is a strong likelihood that he will ultimately succeed militarily, even if at a high cost, at least for the time being. In misjudging the West he has left himself no way out. Ukraine will become occupied territory, much as was the case when the Nazis occupied most of Western Europe during WW II and the Soviet Union acted likewise in Eastern Europe after WW II. Putin will eliminate the democratically elected leadership and impose a puppet government of Quislings to administer a satellite state with the support of Russian troops. But even if the sanctions can't stop Putin for now in Ukraine, if the foray into Ukraine is not made extremely economically painful, Putin will not stop there and will move into Georgia, the three Baltic states and the rest of Eastern and Central Europe next, all of whom were eager to ally with the West after suffering the oppression of the Soviet empire. Even Finland may be at risk. Russia under Putin sees no limits on its aggression in its desire to recreate the Russian empire. </p><p>The full range of economic sanctions should be applied, particularly with regard to technology transfer; arms supplies to Ukraine should continue as well. The US embargo on imports of oil and gas from Russia is important, even if it is mostly symbolic. Long term the European dependency on Russian oil and gas must be terminated, and the Europeans should eventually join the embargo, even if that is not practical immediately. We and our allies should start building the foundation for ending such dependency immediately through increased exports from other oil exporting countries and increased LNG trade, although this may take time. Nevertheless we should push as far as possible now consistent with keeping our allies together even it requires some sacrifices on our part (including high gasoline prices, perhaps softened by subsidies for those who are hit hardest). This will be necessary to foreclose any further aggression by Putin into Eastern and Central Europe. The sanctions must be maintained until Ukraine is able to resume its full sovereignty and independence. This may take months and even years. The confrontation with Russia will be long term. In the meantime the US and its European allies should support any Ukraine government-in-exile and, as has been suggested, aid any long term insurgency from covert bases in Romania and Poland. It should also expand its military readiness in Eastern Europe with boots on the ground. More sophisticated antiaircraft missile systems should be transferred to the Ukrainians, perhaps including the Russian system purchased by Turkey if Turkey would agree (which would additionally put them back in the good graces of NATO and the US). Sadly, Putin understands only one thing - military strength and the ability and will to use it. It has also been suggested that for the present, even if a formal no-fly zone is too dangerous, humanitarian air corridors should be created, perhaps UN rather than NATO backed. There is risk for us involved, but it is important for Putin to know we are willing to take risks. It shifts the burden back on him to recognize and assess his own risks. The best way to avoid WW III is to remain firm, not to shy away from calculated confrontation.</p><p>Is there a way out? It's hard to see one that is acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine. What might be reasonable is for Ukraine to renounce any attempt to join NATO (but not its right to join the EU) while retaining the right to defensive military security, and granting some level of local autonomy to the eastern provinces. Perhaps throw in some mutual security pacts between NATO and Russia to downgrade offensive military capability in border areas. Biden has already offered transparency in military exercises in the region and offsite inspections of the US missile-defense launchers in Poland and Romania to verify that they could not fire offensive cruise missiles contrary to Putin's assertions. I am dubious that this would satisfy Russia. Putin is too far over-committed. This would be considered a loss by him. Russia will have to suffer much more before he will come to the table.</p><p>This is not only about Ukraine. The Putin doctrine may have more appeal and lasting power than communism. It has its antecedents long before Marx. This is a worldwide struggle against the coming of the new authoritarian one party state and the attack on the rule of law and liberal democracy. We are all involved, and the US must take the lead.</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><br /></p>Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-32090860630700227612021-04-25T14:09:00.000-07:002021-04-25T14:09:17.665-07:00<p> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></p><p><b><span> FILIBUSTER REFORM REVISITED, OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING ABOUT THE SUPER MINORITY AND LOVE THE NUCLEAR OPTION</span></b></p><p><span><i style="font-weight: bold;">"</i><b>[</b><i style="font-weight: bold;">T</i><b>]</b><i style="font-weight: bold;">he most fundamental characteristic of democracy - the idea that majority rule is the fairest way to decide the outcome of elections and determine which bills become law - is baked into our founding ideas and texts." </i>Adam Jentleson, Former Deputy Chief of Staff to Senator Harry Reid</span></p><p><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p><b>I. Background</b></p><p>My December 26, 2012, blog was captioned "It's Time for Filibuster Reform". In my blog of October 30, 2020, I wrote, in contemplation of the November election, that if the Democrats won the White House and the Senate they "should aggressively propose meaningful legislation in several of the areas . . . which are most popular with the public. If the Republicans persist in their opposition to all things progressive, as they did with Obama, then the Democrats should threaten to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate. If that gets no results, then the filibuster should go". </p><p> In my December 13, 2020, blog, after the Presidential election but before the Senate run-off elections in Georgia, I wrote, "If . . . the Democrats win both Senate seats in Georgia, [passing legislation which provides something tangible to everyone, regardless of color or identity] should be easier to accomplish, but it may require filibuster reform. Total elimination of the filibuster is probably not possible (even some Democrats would not support it), and may not even be desirable. Democratic Senators Merkley and Udall put together a reasonable and fair proposal to mitigate the abuse of the filibuster a few years ago (discussed in my blog of December 26, 2012) which the Democrats should revisit".</p><p>Much has happened with the filibuster since the first of the above mentioned blogs. In November 2013, Senate Democrats used the "nuclear option" to eliminate the three-fifths vote rule on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments in order to overcome Republican obstructionism. Supreme Court appointments were exempted and still subject to the filibuster. In April 2017, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell extended the nuclear option to Supreme Court nominations as well in order to end debate on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch (to fill the seat for which President Obama had nominated Merrick Garland for whom McConnell refused to hold hearings much less debate and a vote), although McConnell apparently sees no contradiction in his current opposition to elimination of the filibuster.</p><p>Given the immediate total 100% resistance by Senate Republicans (and House Republicans as well) to the initial significant legislation proposed by Democrats to cope with the effects of the Covind virus, although favored by a majority of the public, including Republicans, and to H.R.1, the voting rights bill, also favored by a majority of the public and again including Republicans, the time has come to recognize that only through elimination or reform of the filibuster will there be any likelihood that Republican obstructionism can be overcome. It is also likely that the labor rights bill, "Protecting the Right to Organize Act", which the House passed with only 5 Republican votes, and the gun control bills increasing background checks (with 8 Republican votes), which has overwhelming public support, and increasing time for background checks (with 2 Republican votes) will run into a brick wall of opposition in the Senate where Republicans are unanimously opposed (It is already clear that Atlanta, Boulder and Indianapolis, et al, will not change their minds as has been the case in their past failures to act after similar incidents. In April 2013, four months after the Newtown massacre, a bill enacting background checks on gun purchases introduced by Democrat Senator Manchin and Republican Senator Toomey was defeated by filibuster 55-45; The 45 Senators represented 38% of the people; the bill was supported by nine in ten Americans. Since Newtown on December 14, 2012, through July 2020, more than 2,600 have been killed in mass shootings, including Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, 49, Las Vegas, 58, and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida, 17. When is enough, enough?). </p><p>An infrastructure bill which the Biden administration is preparing, and which is vital to long term economic growth is facing similar lock-step Republican legislative opposition in the form of a pathetically inadequate "counter proposal", notwithstanding broad support among both Republican and Democratic voters for substantial infrastructure legislation. The same fate likely faces the two bills passed by the House that would establish paths to citizenship or legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants, including those brought to the country unlawfully as children and workers in the agriculture sector. Likewise the bill to restore a key enforcement provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that made it harder for states to target voters of color which was struck down in 2013 by the Supreme Court. And don't forget the bill to make the District of Columbia, with its 700,000 disenfranchised taxpayers, a state (DC has a larger population than either Vermont or Wyoming and almost as many as North Dakota and Alaska. Do you think that Republican opposition to this bill might just have something to do with the fact that DC is 53% Black and Hispanic?).</p><p><b>II. History of the Filibuster</b></p><p>Before we get to discussion of the source of the current intransigence and dysfunction of the Republican Party let me restate the substance of my 2012 exegesis of the history of the filibuster since it no longer seems to be accessible on my blog website. It is perhaps best summed up in my letter (unpublished) to the New York Times of earlier this year:</p><p><span> </span>"This is just putting off the inevitable [the need for the elimination of the filibuster] given the obstructionist approach of the Senate Republicans. However, there is reluctance on the part of a few Democrats to pull the plug entirely on the filibuster. To reflect for a moment, the idea behind the filibuster is to ensure that there is ample opportunity to debate when a bill is introduced in the Senate. No one can disagree with the premise that the majority should not be able to ram legislation down the throat of the minority with no chance to discuss the merits. However, in recent years the filibuster has been used by the minority, principally Republicans, for purposes never intended, in effect as a veto power. It is now the primary tool of the Republican Party to block any legislation with which it does not agree. From a defensive weapon meant to ensure debate it has become [in its present form] an offensive weapon to foreclose debate. We have reached the point where the mere threat of a filibuster is often sufficient to stop a measure."</p><p>We now have an untenable situation where the minority can dictate to the majority. Today it is standard procedure that if you want to pass any legislation in the Senate a simple majority is not sufficient; as a matter of practice, a <i>de facto</i> 60 vote supermajority requirement applies to all legislation (with the exception of the complex and extremely limited reconciliation process). That hardly seems what the Founders had in mind. This is not democracy. It has been calculated that forty-one Senators from states with as little as 11% of the national population can effectively veto legislation. The 21 states represented by two Republican Senators contain less than 25% of the population. Even on the basis of the present 50-50 split Democratic Senators represent over 41 million more people than Republican Senators, that is, Republican Senators represent approximately 38% of the population. Since 2000, Senate Republican share of the population has never exceeded 50%. Their high water mark was in 2005-06, when they had 55 seats, at 49%. In 2009, their share was 35%, yet they were still able to to block much of President Obama's agenda when Democrats represented 65% of the population. (Without trying to push the analogy to its extreme, it should be noted that in the German parliamentary election shortly after Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933 his party only received 43.9% of the vote, and we know how that played out.)</p><p>Certainly minority rights need to be protected. However, we have the Bill of Rights and the Reconstruction Amendments and the Supreme Court (although lately the Court has not been of much comfort to minority groups) to do that (and we have not yet reached the point where losers of elections fall into the category of protected minorities, Donald Trump and his acolytes to the contrary notwithstanding). We are a nation of minority rights, not minority rule. The Founders also recognized the need to protect minority rights through the checks and balances which they incorporated into our constitutional structure. To pass legislation you need to get a majority in each of the House and Senate and the signature of the President, all elected by the people. That makes it hard enough to pass any legislation even without the filibuster.</p><p>The right to filibuster is not provided for in the Constitution. Where in democratic theory or in our revolutionary history does it say, "the minority rules"? In fact, one of the principal driving forces behind the convocation of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was to replace the Articles of Confederation with its supermajority requirement of approval of 9 of the 13 States for military, tax or spending legislation, which effectively paralyzed the government.</p><p>If a minority was allowed to block a majority, then, to quote Madison in Federalist 58, "in all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority." Jefferson, who was in Paris at the time of the Convention, wrote to Madison, who served as the informal secretary of the Convention, "It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail". In 1834, in a letter written shortly before he died, Madison concluded "The vital principle of Republican Government is the <i>lex majoris partis, </i>the will of the majority".</p><p>In fact the filibuster is not part of the original design of the Senate but is a historical anomaly. The first House and the first Senate had nearly identical rule books, both of which included a motion to move the previous question. In legislative procedure, such a motion is used to end debate and bring a matter to a vote. In the beginning days of the House and Senate it apparently was not used much at all. In any event, the House has retained it, and it is now used to end debate and to bring the matter in question to a vote. The motion can be approved by a simple majority. In the Senate, in 1805, Aaron Burr, presiding in his capacity as Vice President, recommended a pruning of the Senate's rules, and singled out the previous question motion as unnecessary. In 1806, when the Senate met to re-codify the rules, they deleted the previous question motion from the Senate rulebook. They did so not because they sought to create the opportunity to filibuster; they abandoned the motion as a matter of procedural housekeeping. Deletion of the motion took away one of the possible avenues for cutting off debate by majority vote but did not constitute a deliberate choice to allow obstruction. The first documented filibuster did not occur until the 1830s, and in the following years filibusters were rare. Thus it stood until 1917, when, prodded by President Wilson who was unable to overcome a filibuster by a "little group of willful men" in the Senate to a vote on his bill to arm merchant ships against German U-boat attacks, the Senate adopted Rule XXII, the supermajority rule which at that time required a two-thirds vote to end debate (it was dropped to 60 votes in 1975), a process known as cloture. It represented a compromise between those who wanted no cloture rule at all and those who wanted a simple majority cloture rule. Thus it does not reflect a Senate uniformly committed to the filibuster but only the fact that a minority blocked more radical reform. The purpose of the 1917 cloture rule was not to protect the right of a minority in the Senate to block legislation by engaging in unlimited debate, but to fill the gap in the Senate rules by giving the Senate some power to limit debate for the first time since 1806. </p><p>Until relatively recently the filibuster was rarely used and mainly only by white supremacist Southern Senators obstructing civil rights legislation in order to maintain Jim Crow rules and racial segregation in the South. From the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until 1964 the only bills that were ever stopped by filibusters were civil rights bills. Now it has become the rule rather than the exception. Between 1917 and 1971 no session of Congress had more than 10 cloture motions, a rough measure of filibuster threats. In the 92nd Senate, which met in 1971 and 1972, the number of cloture motions filed jumped to 24, from an average of fewer than 2 per Congressional term between 1917 and 1970. In the 97th Congress (1981-82), 31 cloture motions were filed; in the 102nd Congress (1991-92), 60; in the 107th Congress (2001-02), 71; in the 112th Congress (2011-12), 115; in the 116th Congress (2019-20), 328. Not only does this reflect the level of partisanship between the Parties, it also suggests that it is far too easy to call for and carry out a filibuster.</p><p>The modern filibuster has an impressive list of victims in addition to civil rights bills - electoral college reform in 1970 which had broad bipartisan backing and the support of 81% of the American people, a paycheck fairness bill to reduce wage disparity between men and women, the DREAM Act to protect undocumented immigrants who came to America as children, the DISCLOSE Act to expose the anonymous donors pumping millions of dollars into the political system, a bill to allow public safety officers to collectively bargain and form unions, a bill to close tax loopholes that reward corporations for sending American jobs offshore and an expansion of social security benefits, all Democratic bills. In addition, some bills or provisions in them never get voted upon due merely to the threat of a filibuster and the requirement of 60 votes; for example, the public option for health care included in the ACA until the very end, even though it enjoyed majority support.</p><p>Republican Senators are much more united by what they want to stop than what they want to pass; their incentive to act is weaker since they can accomplish much of their agenda by doing nothing. Democrats, on the other hand, are traditionally the force for social change, and their agenda tends to rely on passing major legislation.</p><p> Aside from obstructing almost all progressive legislation, the filibuster has turned the Senate into a totally dysfunctional body which passes little legislation of any kind. Is it any wonder that as recently as December 2020 82% of the public disapproved of the way Congress is handling its job? Over the last 12 months approval has never been higher than 35%. Under its present rules it is incapable of governance. Of course, this works heavily in favor of the Republicans as they are congenitally indisposed to government and governance in the first place. They are the Party of the <i>status quo</i> or even of the <i>status quo ante</i>. Or as Henry Adams described the reigning conservatives of his time, they zealously believed that "what had ever been must ever be".</p><p><b>III. Current Filibuster Practice</b></p><p>To review how the filibuster works today:</p><p><span> 1. An individual Senator can prevent the Senate from holding a vote on a particular issue until 60 of his colleagues finally tell him or her "no". Since, as described below, a filibuster would paralyze the Senate for days and perhaps weeks and make it impossible to carry out other business, today a Senator merely has to advise that he is going initiate a filibuster and the legislation in question is dropped or put to a vote requiring 60 votes for passage without requiring the opposing Senator or Senators to even debate the legislation, thus destroying the supposed purpose of the filibuster.</span><br /></p><p><span><span> 2. Not only can Senators use the filibuster to force endless imaginary debate, but they can also use it to prevent debate from starting in the first place, since the motion to proceed which is required to start debate is subject to filibuster.</span><br /></span></p><p><span><span><span> 3. In order to resolve differences between similar but not identical bills passed by the House and the Senate through the conference committee process, the Senate must pass three motions, a motion formally disagreeing with the House bill, a motion expressing the Senate's desire to conference and a motion enabling a small group of Senators to be designated as negotiators, each of which motions can be filibustered.</span><br /></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span> 4. Even after 60 Senators break a filibuster, the dissenters can still force up to 30 hours of post-cloture debate per broken filibuster, with the result that to pass a single bill the Senate may need to spend 30 hours on additional debate after breaking the filibuster on the motion to proceed, another 30 hours after breaking the filibuster on the cloture motion to end debate and possibly another 90 hours after breaking three filibusters if the bill has to go to a conference committee.</span><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span> 5. As unanimous consent is required to avoid a filibuster and post-cloture debate, a single Senator can place a "hold" on any Senate business by indicating a willingness to withhold such consent by doing so through his or her party leader and without revealing his or her name to other Senators.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span> 6. In most cases Senators can offer any amendment to any bill under consideration, regardless of whether the amendment is germane to the underlying legislation, thus overwhelming the amendment process or effectively destroying the bill's chances of passage by filing "poison pill" amendments.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> 7. Perhaps most significantly, a filibustering Senator (or group of Senators) does not need to speak continuously on the floor of the Senate to sustain his or her objection.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> 8. In effect, following the initial objection, the majority must assemble 61 votes to end the filibuster rather than the minority having to assemble 41 votes to continue debate.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><b>IV. Suggested Filibuster Reform</b></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>It's time for a change. The last 12 years have seen the culmination of the scorched-earth partisanship initiated by Newt Gingrich (and again threatened by Mitch McConnell) which has led to unresponsiveness by Congress to the needs of the people of this country, Democrats and Republicans alike, and the widespread distrust of government. Filibuster reform is a necessity if this course of legislative paralysis is to be reversed. It can be done by changing the rules of the Senate which can be done by a simple majority vote which the Democrats now have if all 50 Democratic Senators support it with Vice President Harris' vote.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>The following suggestions for filibuster reform are derived from the proposal of Senator Merkley of Oregon and former Senator Udall from New Mexico referred to in my 2012 blog:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> 1. Eliminate the filibuster on motions to proceed.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> 2. Eliminate filibusters on amendments since Senators would still have the right to filibuster the final vote. All amendments would have to be germane to the underlying legislation.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> 3. Eliminate filibusters on the conference committee process.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> 4. Require a substantial number of Senators, say, 10, to file a filibuster petition to block a simple majority vote on a bill.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> 5. Require a specific number of Senators, say, 5, for the first 24 hours, 10, for the second 24 hours, 20, for the third 24 hours, and 41, thereafter, to be on the floor to sustain the filibuster. If the count falls below the required level, the regular order prevails, and a majority vote is held.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> 6. Require debate to be continuous. If, when a Senator concludes speaking, there is no Senator who wishes to speak, the regular order is immediately restored, debate is concluded and a simple majority vote is held. Debate must be germane to the bill in question.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> 7. Limit post-cloture debate to, say, 8, hours.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> 8. A motion for cloture could be initiated at any time and would still require 60 votes.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Such a procedure would seem to provide a reasonable amount of time for the minority party to debate the merits of any bill without totally upsetting the schedule of the Senate and yet keep the debate on course and ensure legitimate debate instead of merely being a tactical device to kill the bill.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>It should satisfy those Democrats who are committed to the Senate as a debating forum (as delusional as that may be today) and are reluctant for that reason to eliminate the filibuster entirely. Although not the ideal solution (which would be total elimination), it should make it possible to move deserving legislation through the Senate, albeit somewhat inefficiently, and a vast improvement over the current situation. As a practical matter, it may be the only alternative which has any chance of success. Other reform possibilities include establishing carve-outs for certain types of critical legislation, as has already been done with executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments including those for the Supreme Court (a carve-out for the new voting rights bill, which goes to the heart of our democracy, being a first priority candidate), lowering the threshold for cloture from 60 votes to, say, 57, then 54, and finally, 51, after specified periods as the debate on the bill goes on, or requiring the minority to provide 41 votes to continue the debate as opposed to having the majority provide 60 votes to end debate.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><b>V. Recent Examples of Failure of Bi-Partisanship</b></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>For those moderate or conservative Democrats who may still view this as an extreme remedy, there really is no other recourse if Democrats hope to enact any part of President Biden's program. Bi-partisanship with today's Republican Party is off the board no matter how desirable and preferable it would be. Bi-partisanship requires compromise and open-mindedness to which Republicans are opposed, not just tactically but ideologically. This is not part of the Republicans' DNA. The Republican battle cry is, "If it comes from the Democrats, just say 'no'". Let's look at some recent examples in addition to the pending legislation:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> a. Original Obamacare in 2009 - 1 Republican vote in the House (only after 218 aye votes were already recorded) and none in the Senate.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> b. From 2009 to 2013, before then Majority Leader of the Senate Harry Reid exercised the "nuclear option", President Obama faced 86 filibusters against his executive branch nominees. All other Presidents before then combined had endured only 82 filibusters against their nominees.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> c. 2010 - Mitch McConnell: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> d. First Trump impeachment - no Republican votes for impeachment in the House and 1 for conviction in the Senate on one of two counts.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> e. Second Trump impeachment - 10 Republican votes for impeachment in the House (197 voted against impeachment) and 7 for conviction (43 voted to acquit) in the Senate on what should have been a "no-brainer" (although Constitutionally mandated a clear example of the danger of super majority voting; the vote for conviction was 57-43).</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> f. Objection to State electoral college certification for 2020 Presidential election in Arizona - 121 Republican votes in the House and 6 in the Senate.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> g. Objection to State electoral college certification for 2020 Presidential election in Pennsylvania - 138 Republican votes in the House and 7 in the Senate.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> h. 2021 $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan - no Republican votes in the Senate or House.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> i. 2021 Biden cabinet appointments - of 21 appointments voted on as of this writing, Hawley has opposed 19, Cruz and Scott have opposed 18, Cotton has opposed 17, Tuberville has opposed 15; 23 of the 50 Republican Senators have opposed one-half or more of the appointees; Collins has voted for all, Murkowski, Portman and Romney have each voted for 19.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Does this look like bi-partisanship? Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema argue that by requiring a supermajority the filibuster forces bi-partisan compromise. Really? Good luck with that. The truth is that the two Parties no longer hold a shared version of reality or a shared vision of ideals. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>The Republicans draw primordial energy from the dark side of human nature and represent white supremacy, fundamentalist evangelical faith and volkish nationalism versus the Democratic ideas of reason, skepticism, humanitarianism, democracy, faith in progress, scientific secularism and modern concepts of individual liberty. It is a sectarian divide not unlike a religious sectarian split. Partisanship has become a "mega-identity", in the words of the political scientist Liliana Mason, representing both a division over policy and a broader clash between white, Christian conservatives and a liberal, multiracial, secular elite.</p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Simply put, there is no chance whatsoever for President Biden's program to be enacted in any recognizable form given the present state of the filibuster rule. And if these programs are not enacted, aside from the harm to the country, the Democrats run a significant risk of losing both the House and the Senate in 2022 and the Presidency in 2024.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><b>VI. The Republican Party And Democratic Values</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Why is the Republican Party incapable of the bi-partisanship which is implicit in democratic systems? It is because the Republican Party, with or without Trump, is the party of supporters of white (by 2020 81% of Republican voters were white) male supremacy, anti-feminism, patriarchy, homophobia, ethnocentrism and evangelical fundamentalism/Christian nationalism who are motivated by their fear of losing what they deem as their deserved traditional privileges. In more polite terms these supporters are generically referred to as the Trump base, but this fails to identify its composition which the Republican Party has embodied and enabled and obscures what drives the Party's political program. Forget about the self proclaimed ideologies of traditional conservatism - small government, fiscal discipline and family values - those are smoke screens and are no longer emphasized by Republican politicians as they don't resonate with voters in today's economic and cultural environment, not that they were ever viable policies or more than propaganda to enhance the position of the Republican Party's wealthy benefactors. Today, for the Republicans, it's all cultural or social issues which they have come to see as their sole route to power. Governance is beside the point. To quote the NY Times in discussing the actions of Marjorie Taylor Greene as illustrating the attitude of the new ranks of Republicans in Congress, "A growing number of lawmakers have demonstrated less interest in the routine passing of laws and more in using their powerful perches to build their own political brands and stoke outrage among their opponents".</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Each of these components of the Party's supporters incorporates anti-democratic values, as does the filibuster itself. These Republicans were for democratic values, i.e., the majority decides, as long as they represented the majority, or at least considered themselves as such. They believe in faux democracy only. Now that such a privileged position is contested, they are unwilling to rely on the Bill of Rights (which they claim to revere) and the courts (although they have stooped to the most abject charlatanism to establish the Supreme Court as an anti-democratic bastion) to protect their imagined rights, that is, their ability to continue to govern as a majority even when they don't have the votes, but instead attack democracy itself in an effort to enable the Republican Party to wield power, even if it does not speak for majority views, through gerrymandering and voter suppression or overthrowing the votes of the feared new majority, even, as we saw on January 6, by resort to violence. When they saw themselves as speaking for the majority they had no inhibitions about touting popular sovereignty (as advocated, for instance, by Stephen Douglas a Democrat when that was the racist party, in arguing that the white majority should be allowed to decide whether to permit slavery in the territories in the lead-up to the Civil War), but with the fear of becoming a voting minority they are now whining that they need the filibuster to protect their minority rights (as they similarly did when defending Jim Crow legislation, again as racist Democrats). They are now relying upon it to defeat H.R.1 which would foreclose their attempts to reimpose Jim Crow through red state voter suppression and gerrymandering. The majority which they wish to preserve today is the majority of the 19th century, the establishment that then dominated public life. With the present composition of the Republican Party congenitally indisposed to tolerance and compromise and consensus, t</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>here is an increasing disdain for democratic institutions and norms. The very natures of racism, anti-feminism, patriarchy, homophobia and religious fundamentalism represent inherent rejections of the democratic values which rely upon and compel bi-partisanship. </p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>To quote Jennifer Horn, the former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party who left the Party, the GOP, in its current incarnation, is "the most open embrace of an anti-democracy movement that we have seen in our country in a very long time.... We tried to disenfranchise American voters. We targeted minority voters in Georgia and Michigan and Pennsylvania, trying to overturn democracy in America". But she is a rare Republican exception; see the recent statement by the Arizona state representative who chairs the state's Government and Elections Committee explaining that Republicans were happy to create measures that kept people from voting because "everybody shouldn't be voting.... Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well". </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Echoes of Paul Weyrich, conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think (oxymoron?) tank, and, with Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority, in remarks to the Religious Roundtable in August 1980: referring to what he calls the "goo-goo syndrome: good government", "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><b>VII. The Republican Base Versus Bi-Partisanship</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p>It has been noted by Jelani Cobb that the modern Republican Party has been built upon the "Southern beachhead" established by Goldwater in 1960. He further notes that in 2018 some 70% of "safe" or "likely Republican" districts were in Southern states. Prior to the 2020 elections Southerners composed 48% of House Republicans and 71% of the Party's ranking committee members. The South, he contends, remains the nation's most racially polarized region and also the most religious - two dynamics that factor largely in the Party's political culture.</p><p>It is instructive to reflect on the historic use of the filibuster by Southern Senators to maintain their Jim Crow anti-democratic political, economic and social structure, an obvious link to what has become the Republican Party's anti-democratic use of the filibuster today, and, in the case of its opposition to H.R.1, its present racist bias which was imported lock, stock and barrel with the migration of the Dixiecrats to the Party as part of its Southern Strategy after the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s. These people wouldn't compromise then, and they won't compromise now that they dominate the Republican Party with its willing accomplices.</p><p>The filibuster is intimately tied to white supremacy and the anti-majoritarian, anti-democratic policy of the slave holding South. The current Republican reliance on the filibuster can be traced back to South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, albeit a Democrat, in whose footsteps the Republican Party with its present southern heritage is following. Calhoun, in the years prior to the Civil War, was the most articulate spokesman for slavery and its extension into the Territories and the leading proponent of nullification or "concurrent majorities" whereby any State legislature could exercise veto power over the application of any federal law in such State. Calhoun was determined to pull the United States back toward a form like the one which existed under the Articles of Confederation - one in which a minority could impose its will on the majority. The issue then was slavery and ostensibly state's rights, and although the term "filibuster" and the filibuster itself was not yet in common use, the principle is the same - the right of the minority to veto the decisions of the majority.</p><p>Underlying the origins of the filibuster in the 19th century and to this day is the issue of the balance of power in Congress; then between the slave South and the free North and now between rural (white evangelical) and urban (diverse secular) America. The fear then was that the addition of Senators from new (free) states would overwhelm the South in the Senate - something of the same type of fear motivating the rural white evangelical South and Plains states today; thus the fear of majority rule.</p><p>Let's explore the religious right element for a moment. In doing so it is important to distinguish between mainstream Protestantism and the evangelical Christian nationalism of the religious right. Nor is this a matter of questioning the theological beliefs of the right or any other religious grouping; it is about the application by the religious right of these beliefs to the political arena when the law no longer reflects conservative fundamentalist beliefs about proper social policy, their attempts to impose such beliefs on others and the implications thereof for reaching bi-partisan accommodation or consensus with their political agency and protector, the Republican Party, on issues of governance; that is, Christian nationalism as a political theology the religious right embraces in order to baptize their political ends with the support of the transcendent.</p><p>First, some statistics: The share of white Protestants identifying as evangelical was 56% in 2020. White evangelical backing for Republican presidential candidates has hovered around 75-80% for decades. About 80% of white evangelicals supported Trump in 2016 and at least 75% did so in 2020; in a poll conducted after January 6, 66% of white evangelicals agreed that Trump was a true patriot. Roughly half of evangelicals embrace Christian nationalism to some degree (this kind of nationalism believes that non-Christian Americans are unable ever to be truly American). 28% of white evangelicals believe in QAnon. </p><p>By 1996 the Southern Baptist Convention had adopted what has been called the "civic gospel": the view that America had been founded as a Christian nation, but had fallen away, and that Christians had to take aggressive political action to protect their own rights, to buttress public and private morality, and to restore the American Constitution; conservative activists argued that there was only one Christian view on political issues and that political liberals could not be true Christians.</p><p>Frances Fitzgerald has written, "According to fundamentalist tenets, obedience to constituted authority was the cardinal principle of Christian society: children were to obey their parents, wives their husbands, and citizens the state, just as all humans were to obey God". There is no room for egalitarian gender roles, which is considered incompatible with the inerrancy of the Scriptures.</p><p>Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Professors of Sociology, describe Christian nationalism as:</p><p><span> " [A]n ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture. It includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious. Understood in this light, Christian nationalism contends that America has been and should always be distinctively 'Christian' from top to bottom - in its self-identity, interpretations of its own history, sacred symbols, cherished values and public policies - and it aims to keep it this way."</span></p><p>Katherine Stewart, who writes frequently about religious nationalism, describes Christian nationalism in "The Power Worshippers", as follows:</p><p><span><span> "It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power. It does not seek to add another voice to America's pluralistic democracy, but to replace our foundational democratic principles and institutions with a state grounded on a particular version of Christianity, answering to what some adherents call a 'biblical worldview' that also happens to serve the interests of its plutocratic funders and allied political leaders.</span><br /></span></p><p><span><span>"Christian Nationalism is not a religious creed but, in my mind, a political ideology. It promotes the myth that the American republic was founded as a Christian nation. It asserts that legitimate government rests not on the consent of the governed but on adherence to the doctrines of a specific religious, ethnic and cultural heritage. It demands that our laws be based not on the reasoned deliberations of our democratic institutions but on particular, idiosyncratic interpretations of the Bible. Its defining fear is that the nation has strayed from the truths that once made it great."</span></span></p><p>Religious fundamentalists believe in the inerrancy of the Bible including the historical accuracy of all of the events which are recorded in it such as the Adamic account of creation; that the Bible is the word of God and revealed truth through divine revelation. Truth depends on revelation and faith, not reason. The Christian right rejects the modernism of their fellow mainstream religionists and secularism in general. There is only one right way and followers of other religions are indulging in heresy. From the perspective of a fundamentalist religious believer divine commands take precedence over all other needs and obligations. Believers who comply with laws which flout such commands risk eternal damnation. </p><p>For the evangelical church, membership is no longer based in religion. The litmus test for religious belonging comes via one's political beliefs.</p><p>How is it possible to work together with such true believers who leave no room for compromise? Fundamental religionists accept an authoritarian and hierarchical source of governance which cannot be questioned. It is strictly top-down; there is no room for democratic rules. God's law overrules man's law; and who is to decide what God's law is? Certainly not the people. If such fundamentalists form the backbone of the Republican Party, as is the case, there is no room for bi-partisanship. Consensus is beyond reach. As Katherine Stewart comments, "Today it makes more sense to regard the Republican Party as a host vehicle for a radical movement that denies that the other party has any legitimate claim to political power. . . .[F]ew Republican politicians can achieve influence without effectively acting as agents for Christian nationalism, and almost no Democratic leaders can realistically cede enough ground to earn the movement's support."</p><p>The idea of trying to negotiate with white supremacists is too absurd to even discuss. They deny democracy on its face. They are fighting back against challenges to their historically dominant position in American culture, society and government. They are driven by a fear of the "Great Replacement", the theory that holds that minorities are progressively replacing white populations due to mass immigration policies and low birthrates. Projections of a "majority minority" by around 2045, with white population then making up only 49.7 % of the population (24.6% Hispanic, 13.1% Black, 7.9% Asian), only compound this fear and further motivate white supremacists. These are not people who are open to bi-partisanship, and the Republican Party has chosen to become their party.</p><p>The anti-feminists are much the same (remember Phyllis Schlafly successfully campaigning against the ERA). It should be noted also that religious fundamentalism in America has historically been deeply tied to white supremacy as well as to the anti-feminist patriarchal mentality which lies at the heart of the anti-abortion movement. There has been a marriage of evangelical morality to the Republican Party - all in the service of maintaining white conservative male leadership.</p><p><span>A recent poll conducted by a Republican pollster showed that, when asked if they believed politics was about enacting good public policy or about ensuring the country's survival as we know it, only 25% of Republicans said it was about the former and almost 50% said it was about the latter. According to the pollster, there is a real sense among many in the Republican coalition today that they are under siege. Whether it's a sense of losing cultural power or losing economic power, many people who have gravitated to the right don't see what's happening in Washington these days as really about such things as top marginal tax rates or what government spending should look like but rather as about the way of life they have known is changing rapidly. And that makes them anxious and drives a lot of their views accordingly. She goes on to suggest that for a lot of Republicans to relieve this sense of siege would mean some combination of feeling like they're able to practice their religion freely. According to her, some recent research has shown that one of the most unifying beliefs of the Trump coalition was the idea that there is religious persecution of Christians in the U.S. these days (see recent speeches by Justice Alito and Attorney General Barr). </span></p><p><span>For them, Trump seemed as though he was somebody who was going to defend their right to practice their religion as they saw fit and not be told by the government that they couldn't, or be told - not just by the government, but by other institutions - by schools that their children go to, or by the media, or by their employers - that they're not allowed to hold certain beliefs. They're reacting not necessarily to things that the government is doing, but what they feel is an encroachment on their values coming from government, Hollywood, big tech, the media, universities, whatever. It is not so much a matter of economic libertarianism as get the government out of my life libertarianism. They're more willing to accept an extreme candidate because "he fights". </span></p><p><span>According to the NY Times, "Recent party polling indicates that, more than any issue, Republican voters crave candidates who 'won't back down in a fight with the Democrats'". Further, " . . . it's the willingness to engage in brass-knuckle political combat that's most important in the party right now". According to Ralph Reed, now a Republican strategist, that " . . . has become the overarching virtue Republicans look for in their leaders. . . . Now we just dig in."</span></p><p><span><span>So, if you're a Republican politician, how do you wield power to deal with the problems your base sees? As one commentator has pointed out, there aren't a lot of policy solutions to the problems the base is concerned about. There is </span>not a lot of policy they can offer. There is more a posture of fighting, and that's what appeals to the base, not bi-partisanship. </span></p><p><b>VIII. The Future of Liberal Democracy Requires Filibuster Reform</b> </p><p>So there you have it. The Republican Party in its present form has demonstrated that it is incapable of participating in a bi-partisan dialogue on a legislative program as it would be suicidal. It has entrapped itself for short term political gain - a Faustian bargain. Such being the case, if the Democrats wish to achieve their legislative goals there must be filibuster reform. There is no other way.</p><p>It actually goes deeper than that. There is much more at stake than a legislative program, important as that may be. Due to the desperate situation the Republicans have created for themselves, their only recourse is to destroy democracy through gerrymandering and voter suppression. At the state level they are capable in many states of doing just that (see Georgia and Texas and many others) and they are working on it (not even the opposition of usually Republican corporate America can discourage them). For them, it is to be decision not by election but by assertion, made not by a simply numerical majority but by "we", the patriots, the real Americans. They have fused the idea of an entitlement to privilege - which is being stolen from white Americans by traitors, Blacks, immigrants, and socialists - with the absolute distinction between real and and unreal Americans. The concern is not that there are bogus votes, but that there are bogus voters, that much of the US is inhabited by people who are, politically speaking, counterfeit citizens. Unlike "us", they do not belong; they cannot be among the "we" who get to choose. Which is why as a matter of self preservation as well as good government policy, to say nothing of the democratic ideals in which our country professes belief, H.R.1 must be enacted into law, and that is not going to happen without filibuster reform, as Republicans have made clear that they are dead set against it. </p><p>Passage of H.R.1 should be seen as an existential issue, not only for the Democratic Party but for the future of this country, as it goes to the heart of liberal democratic government. For that reason alone there must be filibuster reform, if not filibuster elimination, now. It may well be a matter of "now or never". If state voting laws are changed as contemplated in "red" states, there may be no second chance. There will be minority government, and it will not be a benevolent minority. It is time to take a page from the Republican handbook and play "hard ball". We have finally come to the fork in the road, or, if you prefer, the Rubicon. There is no <i>via media</i>. We faced this once before at Fort Sumter, and now again on this past January 6.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-3607325802424195772020-12-13T13:42:00.000-08:002020-12-13T13:44:09.320-08:00<p> <b>YOU'RE FIRED!</b></p><p><i style="font-weight: bold;">"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." </i>Martin Luther King</p><p><i>"<b>Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.</b>" </i>Immanuel Kant</p><p><i style="font-weight: bold;">"The mills of God grind slowly; yet they grind exceedingly small."</i> Ancient Hellenistic philosopher, but more commonly associated with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</p><p><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> *<span> *<span> *</span></span></span><br /></p><p>Although we're not quite at the finish line, we can't delay the post mortem on the election any longer as we are already edging into the 2022 election cycle.</p><p>So which is it ? Or is it all of the above? This election leaves the questions unanswered.</p><p>Although the main objective has been accomplished, the down ballot results are disappointing. There is still a chance in Georgia to save the Senate, but the odds of winning the necessary two seats are not great. In the House, it looks like no more then a five seat majority.</p><p>What is the main takeaway? Essentially it is that the adherents of the Enlightenment voice of reason cannot comfortably rely on the "good sense" of the American electorate. We still don't know in which direction the country is going. And based on past history the options are several, some of which are most disturbing.</p><p>In terms of a normal presidential election, Biden's victory would seem substantial. However, when considered in the context of who his opponent was, it was a close-run thing. How could a viper like Trump get some 74 million votes; almost 47% of the total votes cast? In 2016, Trump could have been seen by some as an unknown quantity (not by any New Yorker who has been living with his antics for some 40 years; in 2016 Manhattan went for Clinton by 86% and in 2020 for Biden by 87%). Let's give him a chance - see what he can do. He's a successful businessman (actually he was a failed businessman). Maybe he can improve government. After four years, it's very clear what he can do, and that's to be a destructive corrupt incompetent mean spirited force. To quote Henry Adams, "I expected the worst, and it was worse than I expected." Trump was given his chance, and he totally blew it and imposed a lot of damage. And in doing so he had as a willing and enthusiastic accomplice the Republican Party. And yet Trump has been more than competitive in the 2020 election, and the Republicans have held off the Democrats in the Senate and strengthened their position in the House. So, what's wrong with this picture? </p><p>A significant portion of the American people are to blame. We are not what we think we are or claim to be. As recently stated by a NY Times book reviewer, "[T]oday's America is not at all what the founders hoped the nation would be, but represents instead what they feared it would become." The Republicans, starting with Reagan and now led by Trump, have achieved their objective of creating a cult, and have appealed to those only too happy to follow anyone who would cater to their most tribal passions. They need to satisfy a primitive sense of belonging to what they see as their kind of people, their clan. Their non-inclusive sense of community is limited to those they see around them, to those who look the same and respond to external stimuli in the same way as they do and have the same personal history.</p><p>Although exit polls can be unreliable, and it is difficult to separate out the specific determinants of an individual vote, if there is any single factor which will dictate a person's vote, it seems to be whiteness, the sense that this is a white Christian country. Purity is the password. And this outlook is only reinforced in rural surroundings with a sullen hatred of the national government and a strong evangelical fundamentalist base which has historically been motivated by anti-modernism and anti-secularism. Specific policy positions are not really important. Even issues like gun controls, abortion and homosexuality are relatively unimportant in and of themselves. It is the fact that "their people", who are represented by the Republican Party, oppose them that counts. It satisfies their sense of belonging. This is their community. The others, that is, the Democrats, are out to destroy their community. Thus, elective politics becomes an existential confrontation that calls for no holds barred opposition, including rejecting election results (in effect, blame it on the refs), buying into totally unsubstantiated absurd and bizarre conspiracy theories of fraud and even bordering on violence. </p><p>The latest attempt to overthrow the outcome of the election, that is, the petition by the State of Texas to the Supreme Court which was summarily declined, only emphasizes to a breathtaking extent the charlatanism (and for that matter the incompetence of the Republican legal elite) and the arrogance of the Republican Party. In short, the votes don't matter, only the power to dictate the results. (It's interesting to note that Biden won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by about three times as many votes as Trump won those states in 2016 which threw the election to him even though he lost the national popular vote by 2.8 million votes while Biden won nationally by 7 million votes. No one questioned the result in 2016.) For a Party that is constantly citing the Constitution it would appear that its members have never read it. Does the Republican Party leadership really believe that Trump won the election? Are they merely sore losers? It makes no difference. They have so cultivated and aroused their ignorant base with their deceitful claims that they cannot escape the embrace of the base for fear of being displaced by those with even more extreme views. They have sown the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind. Can there be a more blatant example of a total disregard for democratic principles, a republican form of government and more than 250 years of history? Should there be cries of treason? Maybe we should resurrect HUAC to investigate the Republican Party. If presented in a persuasive way I can think of a no more damaging attack on Perdue and Loeffler in Georgia.</p><p>By the way, I note that the chairman of the state Republican party of Texas is considering secession. By all means, let them go! Maybe we could work out a deal with Russia whereby we could deport to Russia all denizens of Texas who wish to go, and they could set up a semi-autonomous region in Russia with Trump as the local czar. They could call it "The Russian Banana Republic". Maybe we could throw in a Trump hotel in Moscow as further inducement.</p><p>Given such a situation, how do Democrats and other rational people move forward? (Here let me interject that, if you believe in such things, it is more likely that the final battle at Armageddon will not be between good and evil but between the rational and the irrational. That's what really separates us - the fault line that establishes the partisan schism in this country.)</p><p>Much has been written about reaching out to the white, rural, evangelical and non-college graduate sectors of the country which constitute the Republican base. There has been criticism of the so-called "elite", the urban, educated cosmopolitans who allegedly have only contempt for this base and don't respect them or try to meet their needs. They don't reach out to them and try to understand or talk to them. My question is, what do these people want ? What do they need? What are the programs or policies that they want - other than anti-abortion rules, unlimited guns and rejection of homosexuality and gay marriage? Does anyone think that if the Supreme Court was to overrule Roe v. Wade, overturn all gun control regulations, find bans on gay marriage constitutional and allow states to criminalize homosexual activity that these people would vote Democratic? They would only be happy if we could recreate life as it was in the first half of the 20th century, or even earlier, (the good old days when Blacks and women couldn't vote and fundamentalist religious leaders rejected evolution) or at least as they think it existed. The base does resent the "elite" who they denigrate as secular liberals and equate with the Democratic Party. Nothing will change that, because they see the elite as different from them, and they, the base, don't want to change. Their way is the right and only way. These "conservatives" (although not true conservatives in the Burkean sense) resent what they see as liberals' belief in a god of supervening justice with which only they are familiar and who through them guides the world in directions of which they approve. This competes with the god of the conservatives who created a fixed realm which is already laid out and doesn't need any human intervention to carry out. Such intervention merely interferes with their god's plans. These are people raised to believe that the truth is eternal and identity is fixed. Overall, a Manichean world view, laid on a base of supernatural eschatological mumbo jumbo.</p><p>If this is a correct analysis, there is no point in reaching out to such a Republican Party clan. They have their cult leader in Trump and will follow him anywhere, much like Jim Jones of the Jonestown massacre and David Koresh of the Branch Davidians, as long as he is willing to lead which, with his narcissism, he is likely to do even after leaving the Presidency.</p><p>The only way to deal with this conundrum is to win elections by (i) holding together the Democratic Party progressives and moderates, (ii) persuading independents and the unaffiliated to vote for Democratic candidates, and (iii) passing legislation which provides something tangible to everyone, regardless of color or identity, keeping in mind that politics and perfectionism do not easily mix. Democrats must stop seeking their own brand of purity and start with what is possible.</p><p>If by some stroke of good fortune the Democrats win both Senate seats in Georgia, this should be easier to accomplish, but it may require filibuster reform. Total elimination of the filibuster is probably not possible (even some Democrats would not support it), and may not even be desirable. Democratic Senators Merkley and Udall put together a reasonable and fair proposal to mitigate the abuse of the filibuster a few years ago (discussed in my blog of December 26, 2012) which the Democrats should revisit. But even if some filibuster reform can be implemented which allows Democrats to be more aggressive, moderation should be the guideline. Democrats should not force issues beyond what the general public, which includes swing voters, can tolerate at this time. Democrats should play the long game - looking to 2022 and 2024 and beyond. Even modest gains, and perhaps only modest gains, should be able to establish (re-establish?) the Democrats as the majority party in America and lead ultimately to a genuinely progressive polity.</p><p>If the Republicans retain control of the Senate, they can be expected to stonewall the Democrats at every step of the way, and the dysfunction, which will be to no one's benefit, will continue (this is also an argument which should be made in the Georgia run-offs). That should not stop the Democrats from pushing forward popular legislation even if defeat is a foregone conclusion. Force the Republicans to vote it down, and remind the voters of that in the next election.</p><p><br /></p>Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-13431972444412209182020-10-30T16:28:00.033-07:002020-10-30T16:59:19.775-07:00Monocracy or Democracy <span> </span>Here we are again. It has been hard enough surviving four years of Donald Trump.
Four more years would be disastrous. There can be only one priority - win.
Policy is only secondary. If the Democrats win, policy will take care of itself.
For this the Democrats need unity. They need to get out the vote. For those in
the Democratic Party who had higher hopes in terms of a more "progressive"
candidate, remember in team sports you cannot score if you don't have the ball.
You can argue about whether to use the long passing game or the steady ground
game after you get possession. <div><br /></div><div><span> </span> The secondary objective is to demolish the
Republican Party. Trump is an individual. Individuals come and go. The
Republican Party is an institution. Decaying and corrupt as it may be, it was
here before Trump and will be here after Trump, unless the Democrats send it on
its way like the Federalists and the Whigs. They have been a millstone around
the neck of this country since at least the time of Reagan with their twisted,
incoherent and inconsistent philosophy, an amalgam of borrowed themes to justify
or rationalize their underlying greed. They have been obstructing even the most
moderate progressive policies for forty years if not more. There is room for a
conservative party in this country in the classical sense of conservatism, but
the Republican Party today is a party of reaction, not conservatism, and Trump
is their flag bearer. They stand for plutocracy. Even worse under Trump they
stand for monocracy - the rule of one. They stand for the disenfranchisement of
those who vote or might vote Democratic. In this regard, they are attempting to
carry forward the voting restrictions of the Jim Crow South (as well as other
attitudes of that era). This is Trump's sick world view, and the sycophants of
the Republican Party are willing to follow him all the way to the deluge, or at
least the bank. Their ideal is the one party state. They are not Nazis, but that
is their political model. Take a look at what was going on in Germany in 1933
and thereafter. Noam Chomsky may be right when he calls the Republican Party
"the most dangerous organization in human history". As David Blight has put it,
"It knows what it hates: the two coasts, diverse cities, marriage equality,
certain kinds of feminism, political correctness (sometimes with reason),
university 'elites', and liberals generally. It is racial and undemocratic. It
twists American history to its own ends, substituting 'patriotism' for
scholarship and science. It has weaponized 'truth' and rendered it oddly
irrelevant." </div><div><br /></div><div><span> </span> Trump has only contempt for democracy, at least as it is practiced
in this country, as well as the rule of law which preserves liberal democracy.
His democracy is the "democracy" of Russia, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the
Philippines, China and North Korea. Certainly he believes in "one man, one
vote". The problem is that for him that one man is him and the one vote is his.
He has continuously and consistently tried to circumvent Congress (which does, in
fact, represent the people although they sometimes have a funny way of showing
it) and even his own administration. He constantly advocates policies which do
not reflect the preferences of the majority of the American people whether it is
the wall, DACA, health care or even modest regulation of guns, among other
things. In fact, it would seem that due to his mental illness his policy
decisions are based on being in opposition to the majority. His is the emotional
attitude of the two year old demanding attention. He is like a naughty little
boy determined to show that we cannot make him listen or care or behave, that no
parent or teacher or public health official can guilt him into anything because
now he is all grown up. His reward is our disapproval, and that will always be
enough. It feeds his perverse pride at being out of step. According to Trump
biographer Michael D'Antonio, "He just prefers being the bad boy, the
out-of-control deviant member of society who says the things that no one else
will. He's just performing. He needs adoration of the mob more than he needs the
acceptance of normal people." At some level he knows that he is so inadequate
that he would be totally ignored if he did not stand in opposition to the
majority's standards and norms. Yet he also psychologically needs to claim that
he is backed by the majority of people, i.e., the biggest crowd at the
inauguration, but for voter fraud he would have won the popular vote, etc. In
his twisted way he deals with this by redefining the people to consist of his
minority base of racists, homophobes, ethno-centrists, misogynists, white
supremacists, QAnon, authoritarians, religious extremists, etc. The "others" are
not part of the people.
As Susan Faludi has pointed out, Trump channels (or
tries to channel) old fashioned machismo - aggressive, physically tough,
physically strong, never back down, bullying and bombast. FDR's declaration from
1932 seems apt, "... the man of ruthless force had his place in developing a
pioneer country" but he now endangered the nation. "The lone wolf, the unethical
competitor, the reckless promoter whose hand is against every man's, declines to
join in achieving an end recognized as being for the public welfare, and
threatens to drag the industry [read country] back to a state of anarchy."
Faludi calls it, in Trump's case, "ornamental" masculinity, defined by display,
a pantomime of aggrieved aggression: the curled lip, the exaggerated snarl. The
irony, if anyone can get any joy from irony in our political world today, is
that Trump is in fact weak and a coward, a cry baby and a whiner. His
"masculinity" is not only ornamental, it is fake, a "cover up". Just as Trump
University was a sham, although it may have been a good way to learn how to get
ahead in real estate by lying, cheating and stealing, the art of Trump's deals.
How does anyone buy into this? </div><div><br /></div><div><span> </span> Let's face it. Roughly 40+% of the voters are going to support him no matter what.
Are they "deplorable"? Perhaps, or just
damaged goods. In any event, it's a given. They are people who fear complexity
and change. They are the living embodiment of the themes of the
Counter-Enlightenment, which seem to lurk under the surface to re-emerge in
history from time to time and never fully disappear, in the rejection of reason
and the eruption of irrational behavior. These are people who embrace the
doctrinaire, conformity, uniformity, hierarchy and obedience thereto, divine
revelation and authority, revealed truth as distinct from science, a natural
social order with separate strata, and liberty as freedom from constraint from
the will of the minority or of those who don't conform to one's tribal norms. As
one commentator has said, "Trump supporters ... have a strong concept which you
could summarize as white, rural, John Wayne, football and hunting. They feel
core America is under existential threat from people they view as outsiders:
immigrants, Chinese communists, cosmopolitan urbanites and people of color. They
see themselves as strong and vigilant protectors, defending the sacred homeland
from alien menace." Sort of a tribal solipsism. </div><div><br /></div><div><span> </span> Beyond that there is a more malign element here. Trump and the Republicans want to create (perhaps
"maintain" would be the more accurate verb) a permanent underclass of
non-whites, a racial hierarchy. Obviously they don't say that (they blame the
economic disparity on "bad choices"), but that is the desired effect of their
social, economic and political policies. This is to keep their undereducated,
rural white base in line. Going back to slavery and Jim Crow days, that is how
the planter aristocracy and its progeny in the South kept political control of
the poor whites - by ensuring that there was always a class below them that they
could lord it over. The Republican Party has become a new kind of Confederacy. </div><div><br /></div><div><span> </span> Then there's roughly 40+% of the voters that can reliably be expected to vote
for Enlightenment principles such as reason, a secular democratic egalitarian
community, inclusive of the entire population, pluralism, education, tolerance
and progress, i.e., Biden. This is why this election represents more than just a
debate over climate change, health care and abortion, although it is that too.
We are at Armageddon. Are we going to be a liberal (don't forget, democracy can
be authoritarian) democratic country or a country dominated by autocrats and
plutocrats in essentially a one party state in which the ruling party would not
represent a popular majority. </div><div><br /></div><div><span> </span> The critical mass in the election is the remaining
10% who are on the fence and may go either way. How do the Democrats appeal to
them? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. That alone won't
do it. Certainly there has to be a substantive policy program that appeals to
what most Americans want or need. But at this point what Americans want and need
most (aside from the end of the pandemic, and we will get to that) is a return
to civility, stability, reliability, dependability, a sense of decency,
predictability, togetherness, fairness, all of the old fashioned but never out of
style virtues. There is no better way to promote these values than by
emphasizing all the ways in which Trump denigrates these ideals - by quoting
Trump back to them, by listing his egregious statements, positions, lies,
contradictions, failures, hypocrisies and misstatements of fact. Leave out the
petty stuff. You don't need a list of a thousand lies, 20-30 (choose your own
number) will be enough if they are important and convincing enough. On top of
that, give examples of how Trump and his cronies have circumvented Congress in
order to spend government funds on projects which he can't get Congress to
approve and to put officials in places of responsibility without required
Congressional approval. His appointment of incompetent and corrupt officials who
are then fired to be replaced by more incompetents (usually "acting" so he can
keep them on a string and because he couldn't get them approved by the Senate).
Finally, list all of his international failures - China still stealing our
technology, North Korea still increasing its nuclear capability, Iran back on
track to develop theirs, Russia still interfering in our elections, Venezuela
still ruled by a dictator, Hungary's Orban invited to the White House, the
invitation to Duarte of the Philippines to do likewise, the worldwide loss of
respect and influence for our country, particularly by our allies in NATO and
elsewhere. If this is the work of a self-proclaimed brilliant negotiator, can
you imagine what a bad negotiator would do. Xi, Kim, Erdogan and Putin have all
eaten Trump's lunch. In fact the rest of the world thinks of Trump as a jerk, a
fool and just plain incompetent; the would-be emperor of a banana republic.
Emphasize his lack of emotional and mental stability with quotations to that
effect from those who serve or have served in his administration and from his
family members, draw comparisons between Trump and Joe McCarthy and George
Wallace (and Andrew Johnson who was our worst President prior to Trump), point
out that he is one of only three Presidents to be impeached (which include
Johnson) and the reasons for the impeachment, detail his conflicts of interest,
crony capitalism, nepotism, self-dealing and tax evasion, his constant business
failures, his obstruction of justice and politicization of the Justice
Department, his firing of five inspector generals in numerous agencies for
uncovering corruption and incompetence, his ignoring of congressional subpoenas
and stonewalling of more than 20 congressional investigations, his demeaning of
the intelligence agencies and most significantly the public health agencies, the
pardoning and support of his criminal cronies, his implicit support of white
nationalism, his attempts to chill the freedom of the press, his blatant and
explicit racism and misogynism, his attempts at voter suppression, his
usurpation of local policing activities, his anti-pollution control and
anti-environment activities, his failure to take action against foreign
interference in US elections and in fact his encouragement of such interference,
his imposition of tariffs for which Americans pay, his continued and still
pending attempt to overthrow Obamacare with no replacement, his failure to put
forward his promised infrastructure projects, his anti-union regulations and his
rejection of climate change and science generally. All by one man and in only
four years - in one sense it's an astonishing achievement. </div><div><br /></div><div><span> </span> What about Trump's handling of the economy, the one area where the polls show some approval?
Let's see what Steven Rattner says - (i) for the first three years of his presidency,
his economy amounted to nothing more than a continuation of the recovery
engineered by President Obama; (ii) job growth was faster during Obama's last
three years than during the first three years of Trump's administration; (iii)
the economy expanded at roughly the same rate during the two periods and never
came close to Trump's promised "4, 5 or maybe even 6 percent"; (iv) after the
virus came, Trump's slow start and clumsy management no doubt contributed to
unemployment rocketing to 14.7 percent and a second-quarter fall in gross
domestic product of 9 percent, by far the largest since the great depression;
(v) there is no V-shaped recovery-more like a backward check mark; last month
only 661,000 jobs were created, bringing the total returned to 11.4 million,
just over half of what was lost; (vi) new claims for unemployment insurance have
been trending sideways for two months, nearly quadruple pre-pandemic levels;
(vii) manufacturing, a centerpiece of MAGA, sits at its smallest share of GDP in
73 years of data; (viii) the trade war-Bloomberg Economics estimated that the
trade war would cost the US economy around $316 billion by the end of 2020; (ix)
the tax cut-has fallen wildly short of generating promised revenues or growth;
(x) going forward-Moody's Analytics estimated that the economy would expand
faster under Biden, by a full percentage point if the Democrats also retake the
Senate, and a Biden presidency would also mean 7.4 million more jobs created
than under Trump, who would end a second term without unemployment having fully
recovered. That would mean, in the latter case, that at the end of a second
Trump term America would have fewer jobs than it had when Trump took office.
As to the motley crew of enablers which Trump has recruited, such as Lewandowski,
Bannon and Manafort, Romney's senior strategist in 2012, a Never Trumper, has
described them as follows: "These are evil people. They don't have a sense of
right and wrong. The people Trump attracts - these are damaged people. These are
weird, damaged people. They are using Trump to work out their personal issues."
One compilation going back to the Nixon administration shows that the Trump
administration is the subject of 215 criminal indictments compared to 76 for the
Nixon administration, 26 for Reagan, 16 for George W. down to zero for the Obama
administration. </div><div><br /></div><div><span> </span> The Democrats can't just rely on the NY Times, The Washington
Post, CNN, The Atlantic, etc., to make their case. They have to put the Bill of
Particulars, the indictment as it were, (reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson's
indictment of George III in the Declaration of Independence) in their messages
to those most abused by Trump and those of the educated electorate who may not
be living in urban centers. Of course, there also needs to be emphasis on the
positive substantive programs which the Democrats plan to put in place, such as
universal health care through a public option to go along with employer provided
health care and Obamacare, dealing with climate change, tax increases aimed at
the wealthy and corporations, responsible public health policies to bring the
pandemic under control, stronger financial and antitrust regulation, empowerment
of unions, more funding of education, including universal pre-K, increasing
teacher's pay and training, easing the cost of higher education and vocational
training, fully refundable child tax credits, paid parental and sick leave,
environmental protection, increase in the minimum wage, affordable housing,
police reform standards (not defunding), assistance for displaced workers and
job training, comprehensive immigration reform, campaign finance reform, a
foreign policy which restores our influence and allows us through international
alliances to minimize the civil disturbances which lead to refugee and asylum
pressures on us and our allies, and most importantly a return to respect for the
rule of law both domestically and internationally. </div><div><br /></div><div><span> </span>Democrats must continue to
hammer home on the pandemic. No crisis has had a greater impact on our daily
lives since WW II. Trump's incompetence and criminal negligence in coping with
it, which have already cost us over 225,000 lives (and still counting), alone
justify his defeat at the polls (as well as his Senate enablers). His latest
absurd counter-factual statements as well as those he has made since the
beginning of the pandemic, his discouragement of anti-pandemic rules and
guidelines by state and local public officials, and his attacks on and
contradictions of federal public health officials, too numerous to mention here,
should be broadcast in capital letters throughout the social networks and the
mainstream media. And for those who may put higher priority on the economy, it
needs to be emphasized that the economy is not coming back until the pandemic is
under control. </div><div><br /></div><div><span> </span> Assuming victory in the White House and the Senate, the Democrats
should strike quickly. Biden's idea of a commission to study what to do about
the Supreme Court and the court system generally is a good one, both politically
and practically. The issues are complex, and as recently demonstrated in the NY
Times series of Op-Eds on the subject there are a number of ways to deal with
them. That also provides time to see just how extreme the Court as currently
constituted may be. At the same time the Democrats should aggressively propose
meaningful legislation in several of the areas enumerated above which are most
popular with the public. If the Republicans persist in their opposition to all
things progressive, as they did with Obama, then the Democrats should threaten
to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate. If that gets no results, then the
filibuster should go. Down the road that may bite back, but for now there must
be movement. Otherwise the reactionary right will think they can get away with
anything.</div>Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-4845670879425658682018-10-01T13:18:00.001-07:002018-10-01T13:18:49.354-07:00<div>
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<div>
</div>
<div>
WHY KAVANAUGH SHOULD NOT BE CONFIRMED</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Who do you believe, Kavanaugh or Ford? I certainly believe Ford; no one makes up a story like that with such details. It rings true. She has everything to lose by telling her story and nothing to gain. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I am also willing to accept that Kavanaugh does not remember the incident. After all, he was likely blind drunk when it took place. And there are enough remembrances of others who knew him during his high school and college days to confirm that drunken partying was routine for him and his friends during those years. Furthermore, why would he remember it - just another wild party with the usual girl chasing. If it was a common occurrence why would one particular incident stand out? Particularly a failure. Certainly for the aggressor there would be no lasting psychological impact. He probably thought nothing of it and forgot about it the next day, particularly since there were no immediate implications. I see no contradiction in her remembering and his forgetting. And under those circumstances how can he do anything but deny, and deny vehemently. To even acknowledge the possibility that the attack took place and if so it was due to drunkenness and youth ("I didn't know what I was doing, and I apologize for my behavior.") would have been devastating to his chances of being confirmed (even with Republican Senators for whom misogyny is a way of life).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So, accepting that the incident took place as she describes it, is it enough to justify denying him confirmation? Is this just a youthful indiscretion? Excessive drinking, for example, can perhaps be considered youthful indiscretion when it involves only harm to oneself, but when it involves violent physical and emotional damage to others it no longer gets him the benefit of the doubt for the innocence of youth. Even at the age of 17 or 18 he knows the difference between right and wrong. Nor is there any issue of consensuality here.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Okay, but it was a long time ago, and there is no suggestion that he has led other than an exemplary life since then, or at least since his college years. Shouldn't he get a pass for good behavior since then? Isn't this analogous to restoring the right to vote to convicted felons who have served their time? No, it isn't. This is a nominee for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. The context makes a difference. For such a position, there can be no statute of limitations. The standards have to be higher. Any concerns about defects in character should be resolved against the nominee. There should be no doubts.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The tone of Judge Kavanaugh's response to the allegations at the Senate hearings raises new concerns - those of judicial temperament and impartiality. His bombastic attack on the Senators questioning him, his sense of entitlement based on his scholastic record, athletic prowess, hard work and career resume, his conspiratorial accusations that the allegations were a calculated and orchestrated political hit by Democrats, charging them with exacting revenge on behalf of the Clintons and outside left wing opposition groups, his calling the allegations a grotesque and coordinated character assassination all raise questions as to his suitability to render reasoned, impartial and just decisions on the complex issues he would face as a Supreme Court Justice. Is his channeling of Trump a vision of how he would judge on presidential power? Does such a man belong on the Supreme Court, or, for that matter, on any court? Under the pressure of the moment the true character of the man was revealed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These outbursts also reflect the depth of his partisanship. It was always known that he was a conservative. That was to be expected, for better or for worse. But this goes beyond conservative views. This reflects an innate bias towards a tribal view of judicial decision making, of "us against them".</div>
<div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-21680623244397975102018-06-21T14:31:00.000-07:002018-06-21T14:31:57.614-07:00<br />
<br />
<b><u>HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN HERE?</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
<br />
<i>"[A] dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us, that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism, than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career, by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing Demagogues and ending Tyrants." "Publius", The Federalist I (Alexander Hamilton)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>"You cannot fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool enough of the people for long enough to do irreversible damage." Joseph Schumpeter</i><br />
<em><br /></em>
<br />
It has been a little over a year since Donald Trump (or Agent Orange as Spike Lee refers to him) was inaugurated, but we continue to be inundated with analyses in the media of how and why his election happened. It remains an obsessive topic of private conversation, at least among those who voted otherwise. Although there are many explanations, none are entirely satisfactory, perhaps because the most likely are so unattractive and run counter to the essence of the American Creed, which, albeit only sporadically adhered to in unblemished form, in the main, for all its shortcomings, has been a successful experiment in pluralistic republicanism . It's becoming clear that the election was less about who Trump is (we always knew the answer to that) than about who the American people are. Trump has been successful (and maybe this is his only true success story) in stirring up the latent shameful undercurrents of American society which have been with us from the beginning and erupt in times of stress. As Camus wrote, with regard to the plague bacillus, "it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests". Likewise the plague of ethnocentrism, racism and intolerance is always present in some segments of the population, ready to re-emerge given the right conditions. Madison himself felt that there was more to fear from the power of the majority than from the government, and this after the colonies' war against the government of England. That's certainly been brought home to us in the last election, albeit by an artificial majority.<br />
<br />
Perhaps a good place to start is with the problem of terminology. Political power resides with those who dictate the vocabulary. The Republican Party for some time and Donald Trump more recently have proven themselves most adept in this regard and the mainstream media have become passive accomplices, purveyors of false equivalence. Our political vocabulary today is rife with misnomers that aid and abet what has become a hostile takeover, a non-violent "democratic" coup, of our government. Regime change evidently begins at home.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b> Populism and Democracy</b><br />
<br />
For instance, we are told that Trump ( as well as other leaders or leadership hopefuls in France, Poland, Hungary, Turkey and elsewhere in Europe) is leading a "populist" revolution, that is, suggesting a revolution of the people against what in a different era might be called the aristocracy or plutocracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The use of the term "populism" by itself is misleading. It fails to distinguish what might be called populism of the left, i.e., positive populism, and populism of the right, i.e., negative populism. Trump's financial and political backers are anything but positive populists. Populism of the left supports the concerns of ordinary people and their right to have control over their government, rather than a small group of political insiders or a wealthy elite, to achieve a better life for themselves, and in principle to see a broader and more equitable distribution of the economic pie, e.g., Bernie Sanders populism. In the US, historically the populist movement was a politically oriented coalition of agrarian reformers in the Middle West and South that advocated a wide range of progressive economic and political legislation in the late 19th century which eventually broadened its base to include labor and other groups (positive populists).<br />
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At a more abstract level, populism of the left speaks for "we, the people", that is, <u>all</u> of the people. A more recent example of positive populism is FDR's New Deal. If there is anything which Trump's movement speaks for, it is not "we, the people". To the extent that there is any coherence to what might be called Trump policy, it favors the wealthy, and rule by oligarchy, banks, big business and financial entrepreneurs, precisely the groups that the historical populists of the left and any contemporary self respecting heirs to that tradition did and would oppose. Populism of the right, which is the populism of Trump, the Tea Party, the House Freedom Caucus and the rest of the Republican Party, represents a narrowing of the concept of "we, the people". It is nationalist populism where majority rule is not tempered by the legal assurance of the rights of minorities, and of individuals. Followers of this tradition attack both above and below. They aim at a so-called "elite", which includes the educated, the intelligent, the academic community, scientists, artists, writers, teachers, journalists, secularists, government officials, etc. (but not the wealthy), what might be characterized as a meritocracy (these populists of the right seem to have an undying hatred for anyone who is not mediocre), but also at those who are economically below them or are otherwise different - the poor, African Americans, immigrants, Moslems, LGBT, etc. They are about exclusiveness, not inclusiveness. Populists of the right do not accept the right of all others to participate fully in society regardless of their background. It is non-pluralistic populism. Those not included are not part of the "people".<br />
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By associating the Trump movement with populism without highlighting this distinction, the mainstream media provide an undeserved positive imprimatur. Trump and today's Republicans, to the extent they represent any form of populism, stand for right wing populism, for negative populism. Trump, with the unintentional help of such media, has skillfully sold himself as a man of the people, particularly what he posits as the neglected middle class. Admittedly one would have to be pretty gullible to accept this characterization, but maybe naivete is one aspect of the stereotypical American character which does hold true. America may be the land of the entrepreneurial, but maybe in part because it is also the land of the conman, the land of the "sucker born every minute".<br />
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In fact, even <i>bona fide</i> populism, that is, populism that is pluralistic, raises doubts. Madison's view of populism was perhaps more realistic. He believed that ordinary citizens lacked civic virtue; as noted above he feared the tyranny of the majority, so-called popular sovereignty, the same "popular sovereignty" advocated by Senator Stephen A. Douglas in support of a popular vote in the Territories to determine whether to be slave or free states. Madison was fearful of the character of the popular majorities that would rule the States and of the populist sentiment that would swirl through the body politic under the influence of the charismatic demagogue; the populism of the authoritarian leader who caters to the passion of the crowd while neglecting the bestowal of real benefits, such as health care, education, etc., which would truly improve the lot of the broader population; who embraces their negativism. Whether representatives in a representative democracy would act as enlightened deliberators or simply act as agents for parochial interests was a great conundrum that republican constitutionalists had to address at the Constitutional Convention.<br />
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People in a democracy, whether representative or direct, are often the slaves of perverse demagogues who know how to manipulate and flatter them. In a democracy the people often have no real conception of what liberty is and their rule can be harsher than that of the worst tyrants. As Bret Stephens has put it, "... a diabolical ideology gains strength not because devils propagate it, but because ordinary men embrace it." He quotes Bertolt Brecht: "as he put it after the war, 'The womb is fertile still, from which that crawled'".<br />
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Perhaps then it is democracy itself which is the curse, unless we distinguish between liberal democracies (ours still?) and illiberal democracies, such as those in Hungary, Poland and Turkey with their authoritarian overtones. This type of democracy is the majoritarian democracy, which places higher value on the interests of the majority than on the rights of others, which Madison and other of the founders feared.<br />
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In any event, branding the Trump movement as "populist" gives it a more appealing face to voters who are otherwise dissatisfied with what they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as their neglected status in society.<br />
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Trump's form of populism is a movement which incites and embraces the worst instincts of human nature - white nationalism, racism, religious intolerance, ethnocentrism, homophobia, misogyny, violence - which musters the darker forces of our nature to achieve electoral success. In short, everything which goes against the grain of what our textbooks tell us that America stands for. By clothing these passions in the nomenclature of populism, we provide cover for the dark side of human nature. Is this the true nature of America? Does populism of the right trump (no pun intended) populism of the left? We'll see. There is more in our history to support this view than we like to admit. (Examples: virtual eradication and forced relocation of Native Americans; the nativism of the Know Nothing Party before the Civil War; the original KKK; Jim Crow; the Chinese Exclusion Act; Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and the Red Scare after WW I; the second coming of the KKK in the 1920s; the internment of Japanese-Americans in WW II; McCarthyism; to name just a few)<br />
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There is, of course, another consideration which underlies and supports the above, that is, ignorance. The Trumpists and their alt-right acolytes stand for the dumbing down of America. Perhaps we can't blame the Republicans alone for this. For a long time we have been aware that Americans are breathtakingly uninformed, even when it comes to their own history and form of government, and seemingly unconcerned about it. From the beginning of the Republic, it was understood that democracy would only work if the polity was educated. On this premise, over the years the U.S. has been a leader in broad-based public education, but for the extreme right today it has low priority and has become a target because it is "liberal" and "secular". In reality, education is anathema to their program which relies on irrationality and ignorance for its success. 58% of Republicans think that universities have a negative effect on the country, presumably because these institutions value skepticism, not credulity, and are committed to the exercise of reason rather than the recitation of dogma.<br />
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The less people know, the more obdurate they are in upholding what they think they know. It is the ignorant person who, being credulous, has no doubt about anything and becomes violent and ferocious when challenged. This plays into the hands of right wing demagogues.<br />
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One is reminded of Learned Hand's Spirit of Liberty speech in which he said, "The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right ...."<br />
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A subset of this dumbing down is the rejection of professionalism, experience and expertise. This assumes that the people know as well as, if not better than, the experts (who are the "elite"), perhaps because they think they can look it up on the internet. It is all part of the anti-intellectualism in American life written about by Richard Hofstadter. This has been around for a long time but seems even more pervasive today.<br />
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What about Trump's support system, the establishment Republican Party? How does it fit into this paradigm? Has it transformed itself to support Trump solely as a matter of political expediency now that his presence in the White House enables its policy objectives? Doubtful. The Party has been on this same path of populism of the right, although somewhat less overtly, for a long time, at least since Nixon's Southern strategy and the decamping of racist Southern Democrats to the Republican Party. Quite simply, it is the path to electoral success, perhaps the only path, for a party that is programatically, intellectually and morally corrupt. Trump's victory has been exploited by a political party which refuses to distance itself from what is, in fact, a white, religiously intolerant, nationalist, racist government. If Trump hadn't come along, Republicans would have had to invent him, and they certainly have tried their best, e.g., Palin, Cruz, Santorum, Bachman, Huckabee, Bannon, Buchanan, etc. Let us recall that conservatives in Weimar Germany made the gargantuan mistake of seeing Hitler as a useful tool for rousing the populace.<br />
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<b> Liberalism vs Conservatism</b><br />
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Here we have another problem of terminology which obscures our political vision, that is, the definitions of "conservative" and "liberal". The Republican Party has done a clever job of demonizing the term "liberal" as threatening, and promoting "conservative" as America's political standard, which it claims for itself. In short, conservative is good, liberal is bad, and the Democratic Party is liberal. According to the journalist and academic Thomas Edsall, "Trump's success, such as it is, has been to accelerate the ongoing transformation of traditional political competition into an atavistic struggle in which each side claims moral superiority and defines the opposition as evil." Liberalism has been equated with radicalism, with revolution, with foreign "isms" that would destroy America's past and its traditions; on the other hand conservatism has been equated with patriotism, the Constitution and good old fashioned Norman Rockwell Americana. These terms have thus become the signposts which signify where one stands in society.<br />
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Furthermore, by denominating the differences between the Parties in such terms, a false impression is created that their differences are ideological, and thus just competing approaches to problem solving, which gives them a cover of legitimacy when in fact they represent fundamental differences in standards, values and concepts of civic virtue.<br />
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The sad fact is that most Americans have little idea of where these terms come from or what they mean. As descriptive terms they are meaningless in today's political environment. In truth, these terms are not mutually exclusive, and both Parties could be characterized as fundamentally both liberal and conservative in the original sense of these words. (As Adlai Stevenson said, "The strange alchemy of time has somehow converted the Democrats into the truly conservative party of this country - the party dedicated to conserving all that is best, and building solidly and safely on these foundations.") That is, both Parties could have been so characterized until about 40 years or so ago when the Republican Party became neither liberal nor conservative insofar as its actions were concerned. It became instead the Party that believes it can not only stop but reverse change and believes that modernity is a dirty word, the Party that harks back to an illusory utopia and ignores the trajectory of history. As per William Buckley, speaking for the Republican Party, the conservative mission is to stand "athwart history, yelling stop.'' It has rejected the traditional liberal values of tolerance and freedom and adopted the illiberal values of conformity and coercion.<br />
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How did this happen? First of all, it is useful to distinguish between two or perhaps three strands of conservatism as defined by the political psychologist Karen Stenner - "laissez faire conservatives", "status quo conservatives" and "authoritarians", although it is questionable whether this latter group should be classified as conservatives. They would seem to fit into what Richard Hofstadter, writing in 1954, a different era, classified as "pseudo-conservatives ... because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions."<br />
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Laissez faire conservative are not conservative in any real sense. They can better be identified as classical liberals or libertarians. They favor free markets and are pro-business, and oppose intervention in the economy and efforts to redistribute wealth. They have nothing in common with authoritarians who are not generally averse to government intrusion into economic life.<br />
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Status quo conservatives are those who are psychologically predisposed to favor stability and resist rapid change and uncertainty. They are in a sense the true conservatives, the heirs of Edmund Burke, epitomizing a recognition of the limits of human reform and a skepticism about far-reaching public initiatives. Status quo conservatism is only modestly associated with authoritarianism.<br />
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In contrast to status quo conservativism, authoritarianism is primarily driven not by aversion to change but by aversion to complexity; in a nutshell, authoritarians are simple-minded avoiders of complexity more than close-minded avoiders of change. This distinction matters because in the event of an authoritarian revolution, authoritarians may seek massive social change in pursuit of greater oneness and sameness, willingly overturning established institutions and practices that their psychologically conservative peers would be drawn to defend and preserve. In Hofstadter's characterization, the "pseudo-conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition."<br />
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Based on her studies, Stenner concludes that one-third of the population qualify as authoritarians. Another survey found that 64% of white working class Americans have an authoritarian orientation, including 37% who are classified as "high authoritarian". 82% of white working class evangelical Protestants have such an orientation.<br />
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The Republican Party of the past was conservative in that it represented laissez faire conservatives and status quo conservatives. They differed from liberals, as represented by the Democratic Party, more as a matter of degree than of kind. But the new Republican Party shifted to the authoritarian mode which comports with populism of the right in appealing to those with authoritarian tendencies who now comprise the Republican base, which has been further cultivated by Trump.<br />
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Trump himself is too shallow and non-reflective, or just plain ignorant, to think through or understand any of this, but his natural predilection toward a Hobbesian world view, where if a person blocks you, you knock him down, no matter who he is, and his perverted personality play perfectly into the hands of the new Republican Party. Thus, as noted above, their acquiescence in his bad behavior. Trump really has no positive agenda in the normal sense (he is capable of adopting any belief according to political expediency) or, indeed, any interest in governing. He understands nothing of our history or of the necessary preconditions of our democracy. He is motivated by a petulant envy of Obama. He is an unscrupulous provocateur, driven solely by the need to see his name in headlines every day ( a Trump logo on the White House?), whether for good or bad, regardless of the consequences for the country, and, like a spoiled child acting out with temper tantrums, the need to get his own way, a monomaniac whose singular obsession is himself. As was said of Huey Long when he was a young boy, he will do anything to attract even unfavorable attention (there are other more frightening similarities, but Long at least pursued progressive policies). Trump himself, according to the New York Times, told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals. Narcissism raised to the infinite power.<br />
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His apologists would have us believe that he is merely a fabulist, but as Adam Gopnik has written, there is a difference between the fabulist and the fraud - "The fabulist wants to convey the dramatic experience of events, while the fraud wants to convey a false evaluation of them. The fabulist wants to dramatize himself; the fraud to deceive others." Trump wants both. Selling snake oil is his business model.<br />
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The kindest thing that can be said about him is that although he's a phony, he is a real phony because he honestly believes all the phony junk which he believes, to echo Martin Balsam's character describing Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. This seems to be what passes for genuineness and authenticity in certain circles these days.<br />
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Trump has, in his mind, created an image of himself, based on his warped personality, which dictates his "policy" decisions which have the sole aim of reinforcing that image, i.e., toughness, strength, power, infallibility, etc.<br />
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British historian Alan Bullock depicted Hitler as a charlatan, a manipulator, an opportunist entirely without principle. Sound familiar?<br />
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Given that he has no positive vision, the only way for him to attract attention is to tear down everything that preceded him, to attack norms and standards of long standing, to destroy what exists and to diminish anyone who stands in his way with <i>ad hominem</i> insults and <i>inuendo</i> and outright lies. He is a con artist who gets his highs by nose thumbing on a grand scale; as a person of no virtues he can build himself up only by tearing down others and their accomplishments, including his predecessors. That catches people's attention, makes headlines, appeals to people who can only express themselves through violence and destruction in their personal lives. To have plans, to build for the future, to have imagination, has no immediate payback; it takes time to see the results which in fact may be problematic. To knock down what already exists has immediacy and visibility and symbolizes power. And, sad to say, one gets as much attention by hurting people and taking something away from them as by helping them, particularly if one can characterize them in a demeaning way and classify them as the "other".<br />
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Maintaining liberal democracy depends as much on following recognized and accepted customs and traditions and procedures and standards of conduct, both written and unwritten, and the exercise of restraint and toleration, as on observing the Constitution and statutes. In this sense, it <u>is</u> a government of men or women, not merely a government of laws. Trump makes a point of flouting such practices in his quest for personal authority and autocracy.<br />
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Again according to Edsall, Trump is determined to leave the destruction of democratic procedure as his legacy. He is a nihilist who seeks to trample, to trash, to blight, to break and to burn. He fully believes and acts on the adage - the strong always take from the weak. This could well be the watchword of the Republican Party.<br />
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Trump has become a cult leader of a movement that has taken over a political party - and has specifically campaigned and acted on a platform of one-man rule. He views the government as a personal fiefdom. His narcissism is perhaps well illustrated by Barbara Tuchman, as quoted by the historian Jon Meacham, referring to "wooden-headedness" in statecraft: "assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring any contrary signs". As she wrote, wooden-headedness was best captured in a remark about Philip II of Spain: "No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence." As Paul Krugman has said, "invincible ignorance", or, in another context, zombie economics.<br />
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Remember Senator Joe McCarthy? Jon Meacham on McCarthy: "A master of false charges, of conspiracy-tinged rhetoric, and of calculated disrespect for conventional figures (from Truman and Eisenhower to Marshall), McCarthy could distract the public, play the press, and change the subject - all while keeping himself at center stage. ... He thrived on a dangerous, but politically alluring, combination: hyperbole and imprecision. ... McCarthy was an opportunist, uncommitted to much beyond his own fame and influence."<br />
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And Edward R. Murrow on McCarthy: "The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this atmosphere of fear, he merely exploited it - and rather successfully. Cassius was right. 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.'"<br />
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As Mark Twain is often credited with saying, "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes." Trump is the second coming of McCarthy.<br />
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Thus the agenda of the Republican Party and Trump's compulsive, obsessive drive for publicity and attention mesh very well together, but in neither case does it have anything to do with conservatism; far from it. It is just a label. Trump wants revolution, that is, the overthrow of anything that anyone who came before him can claim as theirs. True conservatives build on what went before, making modifications where necessary, perhaps more slowly and less experimentally than progressives, but nevertheless open to reform. Burke was a reform whig. That is not Trump's way. Nor is it the way of today's Republican Party, which, in its marginalization of its laissez faire and status quo conservative wings and its appeal to its authoritarian base, would prefer to destroy the accomplishments of the social legislation of the 1960s and the New Deal and recreate the world of the robber barons. That is reaction and destruction and radicalism from the right, not conservatism.<br />
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Burkean conservatism, to the extent that it was based on a fear of revolution, more particularly the radicalism of the French Revolution, and on the hereditary element of the British Constitution, is no longer relevant. And although Burke accepted an aristocracy, it was an open aristocracy based on social mobility that reflected a pluralistic society, what today may be compared to an open meritocratic elite nourished by equality of opportunity. What he did fear was mob rule and its destructive force, which he foresaw as the outcome of the French Revolution. As Alan Ryan, the political theorist and historian, has pointed out, as a reform whig Burke looked to government to provide efficient and corruption free administration, promote security and prosperity for everyone, and include economic interests beyond those of the traditional aristocracy. He shared Adam Smith's view of the benefits of free trade. He was a believer in progress. It was utopian rationalism which he attacked, not reasoned argument. He feared both royal despotism as well as populist pressures which could likewise lead to despotism. The Republican Party of today is not the party of Burkean conservatism. One can reasonably assume that Burke would more likely equate Trump and the Republican Party, particularly its Tea Party and Freedom Caucus factions, with the destructive radicals of the French Revolution.<br />
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As for liberalism in its classical form, it advocates sovereignty of the people and liberty under the rule of law with an emphasis on economic freedom. In this form, subject to preservation of the rights of minorities, it has been embraced by both the Democratic Party and, in the past, the Republican Party. Today it incorporates what might be called welfare capitalism which has been endorsed more strongly by the Democratic Party, but also by the Republican Party, albeit to a far lesser extent (they, that is, the laissez faire branch, adhered in large part to <i>laissez faire</i> economics, i.e., leave businesses alone and success at the top raises all boats), up until the time of the Reagan administration (surprisingly, perhaps, there was much progressive legislation during Nixon's administration but probably due in large measure to the fact that Congress was controlled by the Democrats). If our political system was functioning as it should Democrats and Republicans would be working to find the balance on a case by case basis within this paradigm. However, in today's era of dysfunction the Republican Party seeks only to maximize the individual freedom of its wealthy backers and their corporate allies, focused on non-interference with their private projects without regard to any deleterious effects on the common good, by manipulating its authoritarian base. Thus, the Republicans have rejected their inherited ties to liberalism, and for that matter, in large part, laissez faire and status quo conservatism, in favor of plutocracy and oligarchy, or plutarchy. As the only way to achieve this goal, they have descended to the depths of hypocrisy and charlatanism by appealing to the authoritarian instincts of a substantial portion of the populace. Thus, a combination of plutarchy and negative populism.<br />
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In any event, the liberal/conservative distinction is a red herring or straw man created by the Republicans. This is not really what divides the Parties. The issues which divide the Parties today, and for that matter the populace, are only marginally related to liberalism and conservatism as usually understood.<b> </b>Those terms become just a misleading ideological excuse to justify Republican policy positions which are based not on liberalism or conservatism but on appeals to the pathological tribalism and identity politics of their base and on the interest politics of their financial backers. Conservatism has become the clan logo which is attached to status issues which appeal to the Party base, which is comprised largely of rural whites with limited education who feel most comfortable with a static, authoritarian, conformist and hierarchic society based on revealed truth as opposed to reason and science, and which have been packaged together, as an indivisible platform, with interest issues which satisfy the wealthy financial and corporate backers of the Party.<br />
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If the Party that fulminates against blacks, moslems and immigrants also votes against free trade, control of global warming, financial regulations and pollution controls, for example, uneducated whites, particularly rural whites, will go with them because they see themselves as fellow members of the same cultural group, even if those issues are race or ethnicity neutral, all under the false rubric of conservatism.<br />
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For instance, why is <u>gun regulation</u> considered a liberal cause. If one must characterize this as liberal or conservative, it would seem that this would be a conservative approach. The NRA types would seem to be the radicals. But by labeling gun control as liberal, the NRA and its Republican enablers attempt to remove the issue from an objective rational analysis of the balancing of individual rights and community safety and make it a partisan Party issue of "us against them".<br />
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<u>Abortion and contraception</u>: liberal or conservative? They don't fit well into either category. If anything, "pro-choice" could be considered libertarian (laissez faire conservatism) which ties in nicely with the Republican professed desire for individual freedom, liberty, etc., while "pro-life" represents government interference in private choice, anathema to a traditional laissez faire conservative Republican outlook. Republicans try to squirm out of this conundrum by claiming "personhood" for the unformed embryo. Contraception is more of the same. To the extent that the Republican view can be considered to be driven by ideology, it is that of religious orthodoxy (although I would be surprised to find any reference to abortion or contraception in the Bible; the reaction thereto is of fairly recent vintage), not any conservative policy criteria. It is an appeal to their authoritarian base and their desire to regulate moral behavior. Similarly, for the benefit of the Republican original meaning/intent constitutionalists, there would appear to have been no prohibitions in the US on abortion at the time of the ratification of the Constitution. The contradictions of the Republicans' so-called conservatism is exposed by their opposition to contraception which would reduce the occurrences of abortion, to say nothing of their lack of concern about the gun deaths of school children and others.<br />
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<u>Same sex marriage</u>: again not so clearly liberal or conservative. To the extent that this represents a significant change in established and historical traditions and practices, opposition can be considered as status quo conservativism. But such opposition is at the same time a rejection of the concept of individual liberty and laissez faire conservatism which Republicans are constantly flaunting. Nevertheless, a complicated issue. However, one suspects that for Republicans this is less a matter of defending custom and tradition than one of homophobia and religious orthodoxy, of authoritarian intolerance of the other and desire to regulate moral behavior and impose conformity.<br />
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<u>Voting rights</u>: it would seem obvious that this is not an issue as to which there is a liberal or conservative view. Everybody who meets the statutory criteria should be allowed to vote. What could be more American than voting - one person, one vote, etc. This was at the heart of the "republican" principles of the founding generation. Although admittedly the franchise was originally limited to white male property owners, the original concept has taken us way past that. How can the Republican attempts to restrict voting rights be characterized as conservative and Democratic attempts to preserve such rights as liberal? It doesn't fit. What does fit is the Republican's perceived need to disenfranchise groups which are not disposed to vote for them. That is chicanery, not conservatism.<br />
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<u>Immigration</u>: the issues surrounding legal immigration also do not easily fit into a liberal/conservative dichotomy. They raise questions as to the benefits and costs to the US economy and workers, both short term and long term, and, as to certain types of immigration, families, etc., humane considerations. If anything, reasonable immigration rules should appeal to a conservative mentality; this is an American tradition-we are and always have been a nation of immigrants. True conservatism of the Burke variety (status quo) defers to traditional customs and practices. Certainly there have been ups and downs in US immigration policy, but the overall trend has been towards openness.<br />
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As to how to deal with illegal immigrants currently residing in the US, again considerations of humanity which have little to do with being politically liberal or conservative, should dominate. Was not amnesty granted to the defeated Confederates soldiers who tried to destroy the Union? What about the pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio after having been convicted of criminal contempt? An analogous example is that of courts of law and courts of equity. They have been merged today in most States, but the separate principles still prevail. The touchstone of equity is fairness and its principles are used to help adjust situations where the law's unbending character leaves an unfair result, where a threatened future action is likely to cause irreparable harm. Adhering to such longstanding precedent would seem to be in the "conservative" mold.<br />
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As to refugees, humane considerations and American tradition should provide the guiding principles. But in fact Republican policy is based on appeals to authoritarianism and its intolerance of the other and concerns as to voting patterns of immigrants.<br />
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Nobody disputes stopping illegal immigration; the issue is what works best - pragmatism, an American tradition.<br />
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<u>Religion in politics</u>: the issues relating to government endorsement of religion and interference in the exercise of religious belief or non-belief were settled in the early days of the American republic. Initially all or most of the American colonies had established churches, but establishment was long ago dispensed with. Jefferson and Madison were in the forefront of disestablishment and the exercise of religious freedom. What better endorsement could there be. Why is this being resurrected today? How is this a conservative cause? One could more easily argue that keeping religion outside of politics is more conservative (both laissez faire and status quo) than liberal. But this is not a question of conservatism versus liberalism. The Republican position rejects one of the foundation stones of the American republic. The Republican/Trump position here is simply kowtowing to religious fundamentalists, primarily evangelicals, for their votes. And the religious orthodox are interested only in using the coercive powers of government to secure a privileged position in society for their version of Christianity and in imposing their religious beliefs and practices on the nation, thus enhancing their own power. They do not want to be relegated to the private sphere and are reluctant to surrender their position as arbiters of public questions. Again, is this conservatism? Hardly.<br />
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As an aside, for evangelicals and the religious right, religion is no longer, if it ever was, about ethics - what we actually believe or do - but purely about identity; who we think we are. After their endorsement of Trump, as immoral as one can get, their hypocrisy nullifies any voice they might have on such matters.<br />
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<u>Privatization in public education</u>: education is probably the most important issue being faced today, both for the social and economic issues which it addresses and for America's long term economic competitiveness. How to improve our educational institutions, both in terms of results that work for and accommodate the needs of all and in terms of accessibility, does not lend itself to easy solutions. But is a blind reliance on the private sector, which is arguably a laissez faire conservative cause, a path in the right direction? Is blaming teachers and teachers' unions a constructive argument? This is an issue which should be non-partisan. Nor should the move from public education, a long standing institution, appeal to status quo conservatives. Underlying the different approaches of Democrats and Republicans is the question of money - how and where to spend it and how much and for whom. It could be argued that this is indeed a liberal/conservative issue, and perhaps some aspects are, but on the whole this doesn't appear to be the case. It really comes down to the Republican elite not wanting to spend money (through increased taxes) on schools in poor neighborhoods and for disadvantaged children, to religious groups seeking subsidies for their religious schools, maintenance of <i>de facto</i> segregation in schools, and more control of educational content to reshape history to promote a partisan political position. Public schools from the earliest days of the republic have been the backbone of the American education system which has led the country to world leadership. Now all of a sudden it is "government" education, i.e., liberal, and bad by definition. Once again it is the use of false terminology to obscure ulterior motives. The irony is that Republicans who glorify the private sector and demean government programs are here asking for public money to finance private schools. They want it both ways to advance their true motive which is to advance the cause of the white upper class, to appeal to the religious orthodox who wish to promote the teaching and celebration of their religious preferences in the schools, and to put money in the pockets of some of their wealthy backers.<br />
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<u>Unions</u>: this is not a liberal/conservative issue; it is employers/investors versus employees on how to share the fruits of labor. It is an interest issue. One can argue as to what is a fair allocation in any given situation, but to oppose the right of workers to organize in seeking to make their claims would seem to be more a matter of greed than political ideology (and certainly not populism). Historically, it was argued that unions and labor legislation infringed on property rights and the right of contract, i.e., laissez faire and status quo conservatism, but only if conservatism is defined as giving priority to protecting the rich and powerful. That may be conservatism, but it is not Americanism, at least as we thought of it from the early 20th century until recently. For those elements of the Republican base which are motivated by their economic travails, anti-unionism is self-defeating, but they go along with it as Party team players because unions are supportive of the Democrats.<br />
<br />
<u>Environment and global warming</u>: if there is any issue as to which Republicans seem to be twisted out of shape it is this one. It would seem that the conservative position would be to preserve the environment, <i>a la</i> Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican President. Instead they oppose all efforts to do so, mainly it would seem to support pollution spreaders and developers providing financial backing to the Party. The conservatives here are literally and figuratively the Democrats. The Republicans in their opposition condemn science much as their forbears condemned Galileo as a heretic. Reaction, not conservatism.<br />
<b><br /></b>We need a new set of labels today to differentiate the political parties in any meaningful way. "Liberal" and "conservative" have outlived their usefulness. To the extent that generic terminology might provide any insight into the principles of today's political parties, how about progressive/pragmatic/liberal for the Democrats and authoritarian/reactionary/dogmatic/illiberal for the Republicans (with or without Trump).<br />
<br />
<b> The Republican Strategy</b><br />
<br />
As argued above, today's Republican partisanship has little, if anything, to do with legitimate populism or conservatism.<br />
<br />
To the extent that there is any dominant ideological theme to the Republican Party's positions (making the rich richer does not qualify as ideology; it is just interest politics), it is the antipathy towards the federal government, i.e., "small government", sometimes rationalized as deferring to state and local government (where appeals to narrow self interest are easier to convert into voting majorities and politicians are easier to control), which has a long history in the United States dating back to the American Revolution and the Anti-Federalists who opposed the Constitution. That Federalist/Anti-Federalist split might still well be the nearest thing to a defining ideological divide between the parties today.<br />
<br />
As Paul Krugman has written, "[T]here's a faction in our country that sees public action for the public good, no matter how justified, as part of a conspiracy to destroy our freedom," and quotes George Will as an example as follows: "' ... liberals like trains not because they make sense for urban transport, but because they serve the goal of diminishing Americans' individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism'".<br />
<br />
But this is still a cover for interest politics. Even here the Republicans rely on a distorted characterization of the federal government as showing favoritism toward minorities or "others" ahead of "hard working" whites, again appealing to its authoritarian/pseudo-conservative base, while ignoring the historical beneficial role the federal government has played in stimulating and developing the American economy.<br />
<br />
If the partisan policy differences with the Democrats are not truly reflective of the conservative pole of the liberal/conservative spectrum what are they due to?<br />
<br />
The Republican Party leaders want political power, as do all politicians, in order to be able to influence government policy in directions which benefit themselves and their financial and corporate backers (and to pave the way to big bucks on K Street). However, such policies are in virtually all cases unlikely to bestow any benefits on the base, that is, the middle class working person, which they need to win elections. Those policies which would help the middle class have long ago been preempted by the Democratic Party. Once FDR put together his coalition, the Republicans struggled. FDR's election made politically possible the use of government programs to remedy the inequities of free-market capitalism. How could they break the hold that the Democrats had on the nation with their progressive legislation based on a pro-active government? Finally the opening occurred with the passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-60s as well as the rebellion of the anti-war activists during the Vietnam War along with the drug culture with its "anything goes" attitude. Then the switch of the southern Democrats to the Republican Party allowed them to play the race card. It became clear that the path for the Republicans was an appeal to the instincts of the American voter as manifested through authoritarian personality characteristics, such as fears relating to social status and maintenance thereof and the concomitant fear of the implications of social mobility and being left behind, the need for a sense of belonging to a like-thinking peer group, and finally to outright hostility to certain elements of the "other" as characterized by their political leaders. In short, authoritarianism and demographic anxiety, as described in more detail below. And that has been their program ever since. It has nothing to do with liberalism or conservatism. It does have a lot to do with populism of the right, negative populism, more properly - racism, intolerance, ignorance and incitement of fear and hatred. Thus, the Republican Party has come to be associated with white, Christian, rural and male identity, and the Democratic Party is seen as the party of nonwhite, non-Christian, urban and female or feminist identity.<br />
<br />
<b>The Republican Base</b><br />
<br />
Who are these people? Hillary Clinton characterized them as the "deplorables", which was impolitic but accurate to the extent that she also distinguished them from those who were truly suffering and being left behind economically. These are people who are psychologically indisposed to change, who actually prefer a rigid authoritarian hierarchic society where everyone knows his place and can be secure in preserving his status whatever it may be as long as there is a lower status, who want a static society in which no one has to make adjustments, where one has to make no effort to keep up with progress and one doesn't have to contend with new ideas or new people, where everything is fixed in place. They cannot abide ambiguity and uncertainty and complexity. They are overwhelmed by a nostalgia for a past of mythic purity. They see themselves as defending our history and our culture.<br />
<br />
They are willing to follow a demagogue - 60% of white working class Americans say that because things have gotten so far off track, we need a strong leader who is willing to break the rules.<br />
<br />
They resent what they see as the cosmopolitan elite. They will follow anyone who promises to restore the rightful economic and cultural status of the common people in relation to the decadent urban intelligentsia.<br />
<br />
There is perhaps another element here - the failure of rural working class whites to adjust: the refusal to move, to get an education, to make an effort to change their prospects. 54% of the white working class view getting a college education as a risky gamble.<br />
<br />
There are certain personality traits and attitudes which psychologists have identified as being associated with those who deem themselves "conservative" which may account for their voting predilections: they are more likely to accept or even embrace authority, they are more moralistic and more conventional, they have a stronger need for order and control and stability and a greater dislike of change, they value equality less than "liberals" and have less empathy, their moral sense is less centered on fairness and kindness and more on loyalty, deference to authority and moral and sexual purity, they have a stronger need for certainty and cognitive consistency, they have a greater need for social order and greater acceptance of aggression as intrinsic to human nature. In this post-truth era facts are less influential than emotions. These are the authoritarian "conservatives" of which Kenner speaks.<br />
<br />
These traits are reflected in white resistance to the perceived takeover of the country by non-whites and the declining white share of the national population. As minorities are seen as getting more power, there is a perceived threat to the status quo, which makes hierarchical social and political arrangements more attractive, creates a nostalgia for the stable hierarchies of the past, triggers defense of the dominant in-group, results in greater emphasis on the importance of conformity to group norms and beliefs. Conformity is a way of guaranteeing and manifesting respectability among those who are not sure that they are respectable enough. The nonconformity of others appears to such persons as a frivolous challenge to the whole order of things they are trying so hard to become a part of. Naturally it is resented, and the demand for conformity in public becomes at once an expression of such resentment and a means of displaying one's own soundness.<br />
<br />
Opportunity is viewed, as per Trump, in zero sum terms. The Republican base sees their own opportunity as dependent on domination over others, which is why such people see the expansion of opportunity for all as a loss of opportunity for themselves in their scramble for status and their search for secure identity.<br />
<br />
Call it the long delayed coming into fruition of the prophecy of Sojourner Truth in 1851, "I think that 'twixt the negroes in the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the white man will be in a fix pretty soon".<br />
<br />
For the most part, the Republican base is not really interested in or aware of the issues on the merits. Winning is more important than policy because it is rooted in their sense of personal status. They have rejected interest politics for status politics. They are motivated primarily by threats to their social or cultural status, as they perceive it (which includes race, ethnicity, sexual preference, gender roles) , and since the Republican Party has successfully labeled the Democrats as the Party which is promoting programs which supposedly endanger this status, they will blindly support the Republican Party in opposing any Democratic initiatives.<br />
<br />
<b> The American Voter and Tribal Politics</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
As Steven Pinker has written: "The answer lies in raw tribalism: when someone is perceived as a champion of one's coalition, all is forgiven. The same is true for opinions; a particular issue can become a sacred value, shibboleth, or affirmation of allegiance to one's team, and its content no longer matters. This is part of a growing realization in political psychology that tribalism has been underestimated in our understanding of politics, and ideological coherence and political and scientific literacy overestimated."<br />
<br />
Group victory is seen as more important than the practical matter of governing a nation. For Republicans, party victory is tightly bound with racial and religious victory.<br />
<br />
Another commentator: "Our species is profoundly coalitional, and in most times and places moral prescriptions apply only to one's in-group, not to humanity in general. I don't see any evidence that we evolved innate, universal moral values about how to treat all humans. ... It's not that they feel killing a random stranger for no reason is morally ok; it's that loyalty to their coalition is primary."<br />
<strong><br /></strong>
If it's liberal, it's Democratic; if it's Democratic, it's them-the other side which must be defeated for no other reason than that it is the other side, the enemy, and if we don't defeat them then they will <u>win </u>and we will <u>lose</u>. It is a primordial tribal outlook of the clan stoked by fear. How does one qualify to become a member of the tribe? There is a litmus test, i.e., anti-woman's choice, anti-gun regulation, anti-immigrant, homophobic, anti-feminist, anti-science, anti-intellectual, etc., which must be adhered to, and which helps define the tribe. No outliers are tolerated. The need for a tribe, a place where one feels among his or her own kind is overwhelming. The substance of issues doesn't even come into play. The term "conservative" is just a code word attached to a position on any issue to alert the tribe members of where the tribe stands on that issue. "Liberal" conversely describes the other tribe.<br />
<br />
The Republican Party has successfully sold a fake bill of goods to a substantial portion of the American electorate - that to be a true American one must adhere to conservatism, a label which it claims for itself by fiat, that to be other than conservative is to align oneself with the anti-Christ and thus be a tool of evil, that liberalism is the enemy of conservatism and that the Democratic Party is the tool of liberalism. The wars of religion with different flags.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b> Justice as Fairness</b><br />
So, that's how it happened here. Hillary may not have run the ideal campaign, but even if she had emphasized the right issues in the right places it may not have been enough. Those who needed to were not interested in listening.<br />
<br />
How does one cope with this fakery? To what elements of human nature can one appeal? Is there a basic goodness and decency to be found in the American electorate? The 2016 election indicates that it is virtually a toss-up among those who voted. Too many voted their passions, not their interests. Given their personality inclinations there is little to suggest that Trump voters are reachable. Notwithstanding the disaster which Trump and the Republican leaders have turned out to be, the Republican base stands firm. These people do not want to change. As William Allen White wrote with regard to the KKK, "They have no capacity for receiving arguments, no mind for retaining or sifting facts and no mental processes that will hold logic." If they had any of these they would not have been Trump voters in the first place. The appeal must be to those who sat out the last election to get them to the polls and to third party voters. As the late David Foster Wallace said, there is no such thing as not voting.<br />
<br />
No clear answers readily come to mind as to how to do this. Our Founders emphasized virtue. That was a different age; today's age seems to be that of "elective despotism", which Richard Henry Lee feared in that earlier age - illiberal democracy. Reinventing the labels to clarify and emphasize the choices might help as a start. Ultimately the goals of society are, or should be, in addition to individual liberty and freedom of conscience, economic and social justice for all. John Rawls has defined justice as "fairness". Fairness is one of the first social concepts with which young people come in contact and should strike a chord with everyone. Like pornography, one cannot define it, but children get it. Think of the playgrounds of your youth or even your first confrontations with your parents. How often did you say, "That's not fair", or on the playground, "no fair", or just generally, "play fair". Think of a "level playing field" and "not moving the goal posts". It harks back to the New Deal of FDR and the Fair Deal of Harry Truman and plain speaking. That is really what the Democratic Party is about - fairness. Fairness in education, in the work place, in employment opportunity, in health care, in public facilities, in voting, in access to housing; not favors, but fairness; simple justice, not undue advantage. If the Democratic agenda could be put forth in terms of programs for achieving fairness for all, not just for specific groups, and not just in terms of rights or equality or altruism, perhaps the Party can regain its momentum.<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
<i>I recognize the full and complete necessity of 100% percent Americanism, but 100% Americanism may be made up of many various elements. ... If we are to have ... the union of spirit which is the foundation of real national genius and national progress, we must all realize that there are true Americans who did not happen to be born in our ... country, who do not attend our place of religious worship, who are not of our racial stock, or who are not proficient in our language. If we are to create on this continent a free Republic and an enlightened civilization that will be capable of reflecting the true greatness and glory of mankind, it will be necessary to regard these differences as accidental and unessential. We shall have to look beyond the outward manifestations of race and creed. Divine providence has not bestowed upon any race a monopoly of patriotism and character. President Calvin Coolidge, October 6, 1925</i><br />
<br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
<b><u><br /></u></b>
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<br />Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-58384172614863427412017-02-25T15:49:00.003-08:002017-02-25T15:49:55.232-08:00 <b><u>LETTER TO THE EDITORS AT THE N.Y. TIMES</u></b><div>
<b><u><br /></u></b></div>
<div>
<b><u><br /></u></b></div>
<div>
<div>
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: #e1e1e1 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 3pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>From:</b> Stein, Stephen <br /><b>Sent:</b> Thursday,
February 23, 2017 5:22 PM<br /><b>To:</b> 'letters@nytimes.com'
<letters@nytimes.com><br /><b>Subject:</b> Even if Trump is the Enemy, His
Voters Aren't - Feb. 23, 2017<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact, Trump’s voters are the enemy. Trump himself is
despicable, but we have known from the beginning what he is, a classic immature
ill-informed bully. People like him are a dime a dozen. We see them every
day. What is “deplorable” is that such a person could be elected President.
For that we can’t blame him. He has not pretended to be anyone other than who
he is. His voters are another story. Leaving aside the racists, white
supremacists, misogynists and other ethnocentric bigots, who are undeniably the
enemy, the other Trump voters had a choice, and they knowingly chose badly. If
they could do so with the information available to all, they cannot be trusted
or persuaded to do any better in the future. They have delivered us to the
worst of times and are the cause of what will be much suffering for people who
can least afford it, have put the country at risk and have rejected the historic
values of the nation. To say that some of his voters had fallen on hard times,
whatever sympathy such circumstances may evoke, doesn’t excuse voting for such a
truly and obviously dangerous man just because they may have been enduring
hardship themselves. On the other hand, if the excuse is ignorance, willful or
otherwise, that is hardly an acceptable explanation either. In a democracy,
ignorance is indeed the enemy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Stephen Stein </div>
</div>
Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-70515031986692998072017-02-20T14:09:00.001-08:002017-02-20T14:09:18.477-08:00<div>
<b><u>OPEN LETTER TO SENATOR SCHUMER</u></b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I am writing to express my strongly held view that the Democrats should
filibuster the nomination of Judge Gorsuch as a Supreme Court Justice.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Normally, as a moderate Democrat, I would not take such an extreme position
(except in such obvious cases as Bork-type nominations), but, although Gorsuch
is not a Bork, he can be just as dangerous with regard to issues which are
important to Democrats, liberals, progressives and to values which are embedded
in our national ethos. There are special circumstances present at this time.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
First, and perhaps foremost, with Donald Trump as President (with Bannon as
his eminence grise) and the Republicans in the majority in the House and the
Senate, and as a result with all of the extremist kooks (both radical and
reactionary) coming out of the woodwork, those values are going to be under
constant assault. The Supreme Court is the last line of defense, and as you
know that is a tenuous line as it is. In short, the situation calls for
desperate measures to which one would otherwise perhaps not want to resort.
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Second, Trump has no interest in any sort of bi-partisan approach on any
issue. He considers any attempt at cooperation by the Democrats as a sign of
weakness of which he can and will take advantage. Opposing him every step of
the way may not achieve many victories, but at least can limit the damage.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Third, Gorsuch is a wolf in sheep's clothing. His credentials are
unquestionable on paper, and he comes across as reasonable person, but he is
just another Alito. When Alito was nominated, progressives had high hopes that
he would be open minded, a moderate, mainstream conservative. In the event, he
has been a disaster. Let's not make that mistake again. As the saying goes,
"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me".</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Fourth, and this is a bit more intangible, Democrats must demonstrate that
they can be just as irresponsible as Republicans in playing political games. So
far, as in the cases of Judge Garland, raising the debt limit and closing down
the government, the Republicans have done just that. As a Party which stands
for stasis and reaction, the Republicans take advantage of the Democrats, who
see government as a positive force, by putting a freeze on action. Democrats
need to show that they can and will put a hold on action when it suits their
purposes. Gorsuch's nomination is such a case. Killing the nomination doesn't
do any damage to the country. Operating with eight Justices, if that is what it
ultimately comes to, is not the worst thing in the world for the country, and
for the progressive cause, at least in the current configuration, is a
positive. If Gorsuch is defeated, will the next nominee be any better? Maybe
not, but the Republicans will have to think twice about who they nominate.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
The nuclear option? Call McConnell's bluff. He's clearly uncomfortable
with using it. See if he can hold together his caucus on this issue. You only
need three defections/abstentions. If he goes for it and succeeds, you get the
same result as you would have if you didn't use the filibuster. Of course, you
lose the right to filibuster ( as do the Republicans, and the pendulum will
swing back, as they well know), but what good does it do you if you don't use
it. And until you use it, and certainly if you don't use it now, the
Republicans will have no fear of pushing the envelope as far as they can. What
are you saving it for? To oppose future bad legislation? If it won't work
here, it won't work anywhere. Anyhow, legislation can be overcome when the tide
turns. Supreme Court nominations, particularly this one, will be with us for
thirty years or so.</div>
<div>
</div>
<span id="role_document" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">
</span><br />
<div>
What does this do to Democratic Senators defending their seats in states
that went for Trump? My guess is it isn't going to make any difference. There
will be other issues which, for better or worse, will dominate those races.
Maybe the greatest downside of failing to use the filibuster is that the
Democrats will lose the momentum and support for Democratic values which have
been building up in the Party and throughout the country since Trump took
office. If this is lost, a bad situation is only going to get worse. Democrats
need an act of defiance, even if it turns out to be only symbolic, and this is
the opportunity. In the current political environment, nice guys finish last.</div>
Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-4810120879474943402017-02-20T14:04:00.001-08:002017-02-20T14:04:13.442-08:00<div>
</div>
<div>
<b><u>OPEN LETTER TO SENATOR SCHUMER AND CONGRESSWOMAN PELOSI</u></b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Attention: Senator Charles Schumer</div>
<div>
U.S. Senate</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Representative Nancy Pelosi</div>
<div>
U.S. House of Represntatives</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Dear Senator Schumer and Representative Pelosi:</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
I write to you in your positions of Senate Minority Leader and House
Minority Leader and, as such, the leaders of the Democratic Party.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
I hardly need to point out to you the disaster to this country that the
election of Donald Trump represents. It may be an old saw, but if ever there
was a desperate time calling for desperate measures it is now. The only way to
survive this calamity and maintain the values and ethos of this country is to
oppose him, his policies and his surrogates in Congress every step of the way.
There is no choice. You cannot work with someone like him and his advisers,
such as Bannon, Flynn, etc. If you reach out, they will take it as a sign of
weakness and try to steamroller you. Their substantive goals are secondary to
that of imposing their will as an end in itself. They truly evidence the
authoritarian personality of which Hannah Arendt wrote. You cannot negotiate
with such people. To combat this, the Democrats must with no delay and on a
regular basis get across to the public the harm which will be imposed upon them
by each of Trump's policies and of the Democrat alternatives and their
advantages in basic every day bread and butter terms. </div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
One suggestion: set up the equivalent of the British Parliamentary "shadow
cabinet" with one Democrat member of Congress designated for each Trump
appointee to react to each proposed policy, act of legislation, regulation and
executive order as it is announced or in anticipation, demonstrate its flaws and
promote an alternative or explain why the current policy, legislation, etc.,
need not be changed. Equally important is to immediately point out every
misstatement of fact promulgated by the Trump administration. Much of Trump's
policies are justified on the basis of non-existent facts, the public's faulty
assumptions or misreading or distortion of the public's desires. Since we have
no Prime Minister to coordinate such a process, someone will have to be
authorized to do so. Maybe someone like Joe Biden. </div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
In addition, why not publish a "White Paper" with specific policy proposals
representing the program of the Democratic Party. It needs to be simple and
straightforward, ideally on one page. It can be based on the Democratic
Platform but substantially condensed. Nobody is going to wade through the
platform. Something like, I hate to say it, the 1994 Republican Contract with
America.</div>
<div>
</div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">
</span><br />
<div>
Trump lost the popular vote. He does not represent the majority. He has
no mandate. Keep reminding him. It gets under his thin skin, and he strikes
out violently. When he does, he looks like a fool. It may take time, but
sooner or later people will catch on. Use his lack of self control against
him. Like judo, which originally evolved in response to bullying at school, use
his strength (as he sees it) against him.</div>
Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-90284662297168770182017-02-20T13:49:00.000-08:002017-02-20T13:49:03.026-08:00<br />
<br />
<br />
<b> THESE ARE AGAIN THE TIMES THAT TRY MEN'S SOULS</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
Where is Thomas Paine when you need him? We certainly need someone like him today. Our system and our values are under attack by domestic forces as never before since the Civil War. It would appear that this is not the view only of progressives, but of thinking conservatives as well, i.e., David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Robert Kagan, <i>et al</i>. But we have wallowed enough; the time has come to put the recent election itself behind us and prepare for the next one. <br />
<br />
There may be no Thomas Paine around today, but there are infinitely more means of reaching the people today then there were in his time. It will take a concentrated effort; in fact, given the news cycle today, a daily effort.<br />
<br />
First, Trump and his stooges (although he himself may be Bannon's stooge or puppet) must be confronted on every issue. The attack must be continuous and unrelenting. They must be put on the defensive on a regular basis. There is no room to work together with them. That is not their intention. They are destroyers, not governors. Their primary goal is to impose their will by taking down everything that represents evidence of anyone else's will. In a way not unlike the destruction of symbols of prior societies by ISIS in Palmyra, only worse. There it is only stones; here it is living social, economic and moral institutions and ideas fundamental to our history and present society. As evil as ISIS is, Trumpism is far more dangerous. His Administration's present policies, if you can call them that, are dangerous enough on their merits, but, perhaps more importantly, each success they achieve will only encourage them to reach further. That is an added reason to oppose them every step of the way, starting with a filibuster of Trump's nomination of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court..<br />
<br />
The people who voted for Trump have been duped. That should be the approach, although not in such explicit terms. It is not enough to attack Trump and his claque personally, although there is much justification for that, but it must be brought home to the populace that the Administration's programs will not be for their benefit or result in improving their situations; in fact, just the opposite. It needs to be demonstrated that these actions will actually be detrimental to America's "greatness" in the eyes of the rest of the world, and will weaken America's position, both tangibly, e.g., economically, politically and strategically, and intangibly, e.g., morally. What Trump and his minions totally fail to understand is that it is that moral image, which they seem intent on destroying, that gives us any claim to be <i>primus inter pares. </i> His policies for making "America First" likely will have just the opposite effect.<br />
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Second, What is needed is the equivalent of the British shadow cabinet. The Democrats should designate someone as a counterpart to each cabinet member and member of Trump's policy team to comment on each program or statement announced by each cabinet member and policy maker or his or her spokesperson, and in each case to respond and propose the Democrats' own program to deal with that particular issue or explain why the present policy is preferable to any proposed changes. Such designated persons should take the initiative in proposing their own programs. To make this effective, each designee must have the authority to speak for the Party and a staff to support him or her. To coordinate this effort, there will need to be someone who will be the equivalent of the opposition party leader in the parliamentary system. This will require a cohesiveness and consistency which we are not used to in American politics and particularly in the Democratic Party, but these are unusual times which call for creative and imaginative measures. Perhaps the minority leaders of each house of Congress could share this responsibility, or maybe designate someone like Joe Biden for this role who would consult with Schumer and Pelosi.<br />
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The critical themes should be (a) how Trump's policies will (i) not help the people who voted for him, and (ii) in fact hurt them, and (b) the Democrats' alternative. In addition, a few digs at Trump on a regular basis won't hurt, although this should not be the main thrust of the attack. Nevertheless, he is so thin-skinned and insecure (yes, that's where it all comes from) that he will strike out with his absurd tweets (as he is already doing) and eventually people will finally catch on that they have a fool and impostor as President. The more he says, the worse he looks, and even the gullible have their limits.<br />
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The public should be constantly reminded that Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes; that he has no mandate; and that on many if not all substantive issues a majority of the American public are opposed to his positions. This is the case on abortion, gun regulation, the environment and global warming, gay marriage, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and health insurance. When the issues are characterized broadly as small government, government mandates, over- regulation and individual freedom, the public in knee-jerk fashion may be supportive of Trump and the Republicans, but when issues are presented in specific terms that directly affect individuals the outcome is different. The Democrats need to keep emphasizing this opposition to Trumpism. Democrats need to frame the issues better than they have in the past. Some examples of popular support for Democratic policies in recent polls, as reported by Moyers & Company:<br />
Health care reform - while respondents are split roughly 50/50 on repealing Obamacare, 58% supported a third option, replacing it with a federally funded health care system providing insurance for all Americans;<br />
Unions - 58% of respondents said they approve of labor unions, and 72% said unions should have either more influence than they now have or at least the same amount;<br />
Campaign finance reform - 77% of the public supports limits on campaign spending;<br />
Climate change and renewable energy - 64% are at least a fair amount worried about climate change; 59% believe that the effects have already begun; 65% in one poll believe human activity causes climate change (in another poll, only 48%); 80% support solar panel and wind turbine farms; a majority opposed every other potential energy source: offshore drilling, nuclear power plants, fracking and coal; 61% said companies should be required to reduce carbon emissions and 78% support air pollution-regulations;<br />
Abortion - 56% believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases;<br />
Gay marriage and LGBT rights - 61%believe gay marriage should be legal, and by a narrow margin most Americans believe transgender people should be able to use the public bathroom of the gender they identify with;<br />
Undocumented immigrants - 84% support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Only 33% supported building a wall along the US-Mexico border (among Republicans, 62%, but 76% also supported a path to citizenship);<br />
Higher minimum wage and free child care - support of roughly 60%.<br />
This doesn't mean that Democrats should ignore the economic issues of jobs, economic inequality, consumer protection and financial regulation. Contrary to the perception that Trump prevailed on the basis of those types of issues, 2016 exit poll data show that Hillary Clinton won voters who said the economy was the most important issue by 11 points, 52-41. Democrats can't afford to lose those voters.<br />
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There also needs to be a full time team of fact checkers that is responsible for reminding the public constantly that Trump bases his positions on alternative facts, also known as outright lies and distortions. The actual facts that are relevant to the policy issues and of which the public is uninformed, either willfully or otherwise, have to be publicized repeatedly. For example, the number of persons who will lose health insurance coverage if Obamacare is cancelled, the fact that Mexicans represent less than half of undocumented immigrants and that the numbers are running the other way with more leaving than coming, that illegal immigrants commit less crimes than citizens, that undocumented immigrants in large part only take jobs that citizens won't take, that imposing hardship on the Mexican economy will likely increase illegal immigration from Mexico, that discouraging birth control will lead to an increase in abortions, the number of accidental deaths and suicides from guns compared to deaths from criminal use, the fact that a majority of police favor more gun regulation, that the recent immigration ban from our "so-called" President will increase the terrorist threat, not reduce it, that the number of deaths from Muslim terrorists since 9/11, according to one source, is 123 (none by anyone who emigrated from or whose parents emigrated from the seven countries targeted by our "so-called" President), compared to a total of more than 230,000 killings by gang members, drug dealers, angry spouses, white supremacists, psychopaths, drunks, domestic terrorists (Aurora, Charleston, Newtown, Colorado Springs, Oklahoma City, Columbine, the latter two before 9/11) and others, clear-cut data relating to global warming caused by human activities, the actual increase in domestic manufacturing production over the last several years, such inconvenient facts as the rust belt losing jobs to the South and not always overseas, the correlation of the demise of unions with loss of worker rights and stagnation of compensation, decreases in air and water pollution due to environmental regulations, how the income tax proposal will benefit mostly the very wealthy, how the border tax with Mexico will increase prices of products that are imported into the US, how rejecting TPP is a gift to China, that we already have extreme vetting of immigrants and refugees from the Middle East, the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, etc.<br />
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Trump and Bannon ultimately base their programs on fear, but many of the sources of that fear are virtually nonexistent or<i> de minimis. </i>This needs to be demonstrated to the public. Democracy without an informed electorate is no democracy at all.
There will always be the willfully uninformed, and they certainly made their
presence felt in the last election. But the Democrats did not do a good job of
getting their message across. Some voters are not interested - the
"deplorables", but others are reachable. With the Republicans in control of
both the House and the Senate and the White House, they will be able to set the
agenda. Thus it is all the more important for the Democrats to make sure that
voters in the next election know what they stand for. Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-64731476307434304372017-01-27T13:47:00.000-08:002017-01-27T13:47:14.856-08:00 <b>THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT</b><br />
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We have just elected as our next President a dysfunctional demagogue with authoritarian instincts who is totally unqualified for the position. He rode to victory as a successful businessman, which in large part he was not (Trump Airlines, New York Generals, bankrupt Atlantic City casinos, <i>et al</i>) and a TV reality show star, which is also questionable (contrary to his claim his show was not the number 1 show on television or even on Monday nights where in fact it finished only 67th) . He gives promise to be remembered in the history books as our worst President since Andrew Johnson (who wasn't actually elected) or James Buchanan in the mid-19th century. In addition to being a sociopath and a shameless pathological liar, he is a man woefully uninformed and seemingly proud of it, breathtakingly lacking in self control and judgement, irresponsible, without any sense of history or respect for the office of the Presidency or moral sense, and consumed by self absorption and delusions of grandeur. And that's just the beginning; he is a crude, vulgar egomaniac devoid of integrity and suffers from arrested development and a transgressive personality. But we're familiar with this type of person from our school days confronting arrogant boastful bullies on the playground. They exist. What is shocking is not that such persons exist, but that, notwithstanding this, such a person was nominated and elected. It's not as if the electorate didn't know this. It was all out in the open. One has to give Trump credit, he didn't hide it (unlike his tax returns); in fact he flaunted it, seemingly as a qualification for the office. Along the way he was helped by the lies and the empty promises. And the suckers came running. They bought it, hook, line and sinker. Just as in any third rate democracy.<br />
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Is this the price of democracy? If so, maybe we need a different system. Maybe history is on the wrong track. Maybe the rubric attributed to Lincoln (probably wrongly) should be something like, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and although you can't fool all of the people all of the time you can fool enough of them enough of the time to win elections." The results of the recent election certainly cast doubt on the ability of an electorate based on full adult citizen suffrage to make intelligent decisions.<br />
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But maybe the problem is not with the electorate, but with the process. Maybe we haven't tried true democracy, at least in Presidential elections. Let's not forget that the electorate, that is, those who voted, elected Hillary Clinton as President by almost 3 million votes, a substantial margin of 2.1 %. So Trump did not fool enough of them to have won in a truly democratic process. It's pretty frightening that he fooled as many as he did, but Hillary won the popular vote by a larger margin than elected Presidents who won the popular vote in 1844, 1880, 1884, 1960 (JFK),1968 (Richard Nixon) and 1976 (Jimmy Carter), and by more than any losing candidate who won the popular vote since 1876 including Al Gore in 2000. Something is wrong here. And this is the second time the popular vote winner has lost in the last five Presidential elections. (Some believe it may also have happened in 1960 depending on how the popular vote is calculated.) So the principal ogre here is not the American voter, at least not the majority of them, but the electoral college, which in 2016 permitted 55,000 voters who gave Trump his margin in Michigan and Pennsylvania to count for more than 2,800,000 voters who gave Hillary a winning margin in the country as a whole. Keep in mind that with the current partisan split in the country this unacceptable situation is more likely than not to be repeated.<br />
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[Just for laughs - maybe Trump's mandate is to implement Hillary's program.]<br />
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Let's give democracy a chance. What we need is election reform. Of course, it won't help with the damage likely to be created by the result of this election, but progressives need to be prepared for the next election. We may be able to hold the worst off for four years, but for eight years it will be tough (after all, how long can we expect RBG and Breyer to hold on). Election reform includes, among other things, doing away with or neutering the electoral college, reducing the impact of money on elections, and making it possible and easier for those eligible to vote to register and vote. And to make sure that democracy performs in fact as it should on paper we need to stress continuing voter education, an essential ingredient for a working democracy.<br />
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Let's start with the electoral college. As noted above, there are other measures which need to be pursued to make our election process in fact as well as in theory democratic, but I will leave them to be addressed at some other time.<br />
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In the first place, as one constitutional expert has stated, the electoral college is an odd political contraption. It's like some Rube Goldberg machine, a compromise resulting from the Founders' inability to agree on anything else and their exasperation and exhaustion as they tried to finish up their work on the Constitution.<br />
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The Constitution begins, "We, the people ...", as distinct from "we, the States ...", and there is good reason for that. The Constitutional Convention was convened to remedy the Articles of Confederation, which was a compact of states, and the choice of words was not without purpose. [In fact, an early draft of the preamble did contain the words, "We, the people of the states of ...", but it was replaced by Gouverneur Morris with the present language.] The electoral college certainly does not reflect "we, the people", at least not with the unit rule that all but two states use to allocate electoral votes. As we know, the Founders, in order to get agreement on the overall package, had to make a number of concessions to the States, particularly the slave states, such as equal representation in the Senate and the three-fifths rule for slaves which, in addition to its inherent injustice and moral abomination, made both the House of Representatives, the Senate and the electoral college undemocratic. We finally did away with slavery and the three-fifths rule, but the composition of the Senate and the electoral college remain the same. As a practical matter, the Senate will never be changed, and there are arguably legitimate reasons to keep it as it is (in fact, though, over time it has become even more undemocratic with the expanded use of the filibuster, but that was the subject of an earlier blog). The electoral college is something else. There is no good reason to keep it. It has on a number of occasions failed and retains the potential to do even more damage. As yet, in modern times, we have not had occasion to see an election in which no candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes. In such a case the House of Representatives would vote to decide the winner. Each State delegation would have <u>one</u> vote, with such vote to be determined by a majority vote of its members. If the electoral college in its first phase is not guaranteed to reflect the nationwide popular vote of "we, the people", in its second phase such a vote by the House makes a total mockery of popular representation (don't even think about the chicanery which would take place in trying to sway the votes of individual Representatives). I hardly need to spell it out; suffice it to say that Wyoming (population of 584,00) would have the same vote as California (38.8 million), Florida (19.89 million), Texas (26.96 million) or New York (19.75 million) (although I don't believe the election has gone to the House since 1824, it becomes ever more likely today when politics are so partisan and third parties keep popping up to distort the choices).<br />
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To me, any method of electing the President by other than the nationwide popular vote is <i>prima facie</i> absurd in a nation based on the democratic process. The President is the president of the people, not the president of the States. After all, we elect Governors in all fifty states by popular vote; we don't do it by counties; same thing with Senators. Why not for President? Deeply ingrained in our national ethos is the principle of one-person, one-vote, and the Supreme Court has ruled it a constitutional requirement (other than for President but only due to the express inclusion of the electoral college in the Constitution). The electoral college represents a rejection of such principle; it denies political equality and fundamental fairness.<br />
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Nevertheless, let's take a look at the arguments submitted by supporters of the electoral college.<br />
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One argument is that the Founders wanted to balance the interests of big (high population) states and small (low population) states. On the face of it this is not a persuasive argument. It's a carryover of the Confederation concept, the elimination of which was the purpose of the Constitutional Convention, but as the mindset was difficult to overcome a compromise was in order. The form the argument takes today is that without the electoral college the candidates would ignore small states in their campaigning, and people in those states wouldn't be in a position to judge their relative merits. The reality is that the candidates ignore the small states anyhow. For that matter they ignore many of the big states as well. They focus on the so-called swing states, of which there are only a relative handful. There is a certain irony in this argument when you consider that the decisive swing states in the 2016 election, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, are not exactly small states. In any event, with the advent since 1789 of radio, television, the national media and the internet every voter, regardless of location, has all of the access, and then some, needed to make a decision as to whom to vote for. In fact, then as now, the major political divisions have run, not between big states and small states, but between the south and the north, and between the cities and the rural areas (of which there are both in all states).<br />
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Another Founding-era argument, which certainly made sense then, was that voters spread over a large geographic territory would not have sufficient information to make an informed choice among leading presidential candidates. That was before there were national political parties. With the coming of the two party system with national candidates and platforms and modern means of communication and transportation this objection became obsolete.<br />
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The sad reality is that the electoral college mechanism, like many other political issues of the day, was primarily driven by the slavery question. The slave states were credited with more than their legitimate number of voters in tabulating their share of electoral votes in the first phase of the electoral college voting, and then in the second phase (it was assumed at the time that the electors would merely, in effect, nominate candidates and that the House would make the final decision) these less populated states would be treated equally with the more heavily populated non-slave states. We are left, some 225 years later, with a peculiar anachronism which grew out of the "peculiar institution". The weakness of the electoral college as a democratic institution is further compounded by the adoption by all of the states (other than Maine and Nebraska) of the winner-take-all unit rule which allocates all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate with the highest number of votes, regardless of whether that candidates wins the state popular vote with only 50.1% of the votes.<br />
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One more argument, which in my opinion borders on the frivolous (and with which we are familiar in another context), is that in the case of relying on a national popular vote in which the contest is very close and there are allegations of voter fraud there would have to be extended time consuming and expensive recounts. This is of a part with the by now tiresome knee-jerk claim of the Republican Party (and the obsessional Donald Trump) that there is voter fraud lurking everywhere. We know that voter fraud is almost non-existent, and there is no reason to think it would be any more present in an election determined by a nationwide popular vote. Votes would presumably still be counted at state and precinct levels, and allegations of fraud, such as there may be, would be handled in the same way as they are handled today. True, since every vote would count, there is the possibility that there could be more disputes, but the purpose of an election is not to see how we can reduce the number of disputes. It is to make sure that every vote counts and counts equally. If opponents of a national popular vote are really serious about the integrity of the election process, they would instead support efforts to modernize our voting mechanisms and apply consistent voting procedures throughout the country.<br />
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In effect we have system in which is ingrained the idea that the votes of some citizens are worth more than those of others because they are cast in less populous states. It is doubtful that it was ever a good idea, but the reasons for its adoption certainly have no relevance today.<br />
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Unfortunately, in the real world there would seem to be little likelihood that a constitutional amendment eliminating the electoral college and replacing it with Presidential elections based on a nationwide popular vote could be enacted. Although this should be non-partisan issue, in today's political atmosphere it becomes a partisan issue. There is no inherent political bias in relying on a national popular vote for President. No one can predict whether it would result in a different outcome in future elections. However, it would seem that the most outspoken defenders of the electoral college are Republicans. Apparently they see the electoral college as benefiting them. This certainly was the case in 2000 and 2016, but in the future it could as easily go the other way.<br />
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Sad to say, the Republicans seem to feel that they cannot prevail unless they can disenfranchise voters. We see this in places like North Carolina and other states where state governments are controlled by Republicans, and they have tried to impose requirements that limit voting aimed at groups who they feel they cannot convince to vote for them. It never seems to occur to them that it would be more constructive to develop programs and policies that appealed to a majority of voters. On the other hand, perhaps they recognize that as a Party they do not believe in the ideals that appeal to a majority of Americans. As such, they have become a party which is trying to maintain those undemocratic mechanisms which we have inherited from a very different and hardly appealing past and to re-impose certain undemocratic practices which we have been able to eliminate, e.g., poll taxes and the like. Be that as it may, the chances for a constitutional amendment are pretty slim.<br />
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There is some hope though through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all of their respective electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It will come into effect only when it has been adopted by states with an aggregate total of 270 electoral votes. So far it has been adopted by 10 states and the District of Columbia which together have 165 electoral votes. To become effective, additional states with 105 electoral votes will have to adopt it. Still an uphill battle, but it has more promise than a constitutional amendment. If progressives keep hammering on this, it may bear fruit. Polls show that a majority of the public favor eliminating the electoral college, 62% in a recent poll and a majority in every Gallup poll asking the question going back to 1967. It will probably be necessary to get big swing states like Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio to join the Compact and that may be difficult given Republican control of state legislatures and Governorships but perhaps passing ballot initiatives is possible.<br />
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One further thought - what about mandatory voting? I raised this in an earlier blog, but it's worthy of further discussion. In the recent election about 57% or 58% of the voting age population cast a ballot, fairly typical in the US but lower than in most OECD countries. Trump got 46.1 % of the vote and Clinton got 48.2%. Thus Trump was elected by 26% of the vote of the eligible population. He is a minority President in every sense of the word. This is ridiculous. Even George W. Bush and Barack Obama won with only around 30% of the vote of the voting age population. Of course, they won the majority of that vote (2004 only for Bush). Part of this is due to voter suppression and difficulties in registration, but it is also due, according to some commentators, to lack of enthusiasm, "The more significant costs of participation are the cognitive costs of becoming involved with and informed about the political world.... Political interest and engagement ... determine to a large extent who votes and who does not." According to this view, making voting easier, which has been the case over the last 20 years (notwithstanding the recent Republican voter suppression campaign), doesn't increase turnout. If this is correct, and the consistent pattern of low turnout in the US would seem to bear this out, the only remedy might be a mandatory requirement to vote. Turnout in the nine elections after Australia adopted compulsory voting averaged 94.6%, compared to a 64.2% average for the nine elections before the reform. An added benefit is that if everyone, or almost everyone votes, any socio-economic bias in the voting should be eliminated. However, along with this there needs to be a campaign of voter education for the politically disengaged. This, too, would be an uphill battle, particularly given the Republican reaction to the health care mandate, but here the mandate is only that one has to vote; one doesn't have to pay anything and the vote can be for a Republican or a write-in candidate.<br />
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These are challenging propositions, but, as Rahm Emanuel has said (although apparently not the originator), "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste", or words to that effect. And make no mistake, this is a serious crisis, as is brought home repeatedly each day. There is probably no better time to act.<br />
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Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-7056136585926536232016-11-21T14:53:00.000-08:002016-11-22T14:39:05.985-08:00 <u style="font-weight: bold;">ELECTION 2016: POGO'S REVENGE</u><br />
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"We have met the enemy and he is us". Pogo got it right. As the losing side plays the usual blame game with much wringing of hands, notwithstanding whether one attributes the Presidential election result to supposed failures of Hillary's campaign or her persona, racism, economic stagnation or any of the other possible explanations of the outcome, the bottom line is that the American electorate (including eligible non-voters) screwed up. Here are some takeaways and some thoughts on going forward.<br />
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1. Low Voter Turnout. This is nothing new, but this time we're really paying for it. Leaving aside questions as to whether it was better or worse than in previous elections, or whether Obama voters from 2012 turned out in the same numbers, total voter turnout was only about 58% of eligible voters, and only 66% of eligible voters bothered to register. Even taking into account Republican voter suppression efforts, that is disgraceful, particularly for a county that likes to pride itself on spreading democracy to the rest of the world. Whatever happened to civic responsibility? Isn't it time to institute compulsory voting and fines for people who don't register and vote, at least for elections for national office (even if the vote is write-in or for none of the above)? As of 2013, 22 countries had compulsory voting, including Australia and 9 other OECD countries. This is appealing not only on the merits, but also because it is comforting to think that if everyone eligible had voted there would have been a different result. Faith in the good sense of the American people, although naive and unsupported by the evidence, dies hard (think of the popular vote). However, there is also the growing suspicion that this is a sick country, that the ideals that we grew up with are, and always have been, illusions, that this election has revealed the underlying reality show.<br />
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2. The Deplorables. Hillary was right (if impolitic) when she claimed a substantial number of Trump voters were deplorables. They are. Whether it's half, or 40% or 60%, it's significant. These are the racists, nativists, homophobes, misogynists, anti-Semites, white supremacists, the religiously intolerant and xenophobes who came out of the woodwork in response to Trump's blatant appeals. Bigotry, predominantly in the form of racism, whether overt or implicit, and nativism, were the defining motifs of Trump's campaign. Even those of his supporters who don't fall into these categories ought to be condemned for voting for such an"indecent human being" as Tom Friedman characterized him. He's being generous at that; "despicable" and/or "disgusting" would seem to be more descriptive. His Bannon, Flynn, Sessions and Pompeo appointments show his true colors, if there ever was any doubt.<br />
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3. The Willfully Ignorant. This segment of Trump voters includes those who have legitimate grievances, and they comprise a substantial portion of his backers. For the sake of convenience, the predominant theme of these grievances can be summarized as income inequality and stagnation, although they are also manifested through resentment toward the "elite", which seems to include the college educated, feminists, academics, government employees (particularly federal government employees), white collar workers, elected officials (but what happens then to those they elect? do they immediately become part of the elite?), urban dwellers, people who live on the East and West Coasts, and presumably the rich and famous (other than Trump). Income inequality (which will be deemed to include joblessness and low-paying jobs, when available) and income stagnation are the biggest issues in this country for the working class and the poor. It didn't start with the recent recession, and has persisted through both Democratic and Republican administrations. Something needs to be done about this, and Trump supporters are right to cast their votes for someone who will try to do some thing about it. But they voted for the wrong candidate.<br />
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Trump's policies, such as they are, are only going to exacerbate the inequality. He promises to bring back manufacturing jobs. Those jobs aren't coming back. Most of them were lost to automation, not trade agreements. Opting out of trade agreements and initiating trade wars isn't going to bring them back, but the cost of goods we are importing will go up for everyone and export industries will suffer, which is certainly not going reduce income inequality or increase the availability of well paying jobs. Probably this will also cut back on economic growth. Globalization has been around for a long time and isn't going away. National economies, including ours, are too integrated and dependent on each other to just put up a stop sign and say no more. It won't happen. The immigrants that Trump speaks of deporting or blocking at the wall are not taking well paying manufacturing jobs from Trump voters. They are mostly taking jobs that Trump supporters don't want. Whatever Trump proposes to do with Obamacare is not going to make paychecks go further; in fact, just the opposite as fewer become insured and end up having to pay more for medical expenses. Trump can't do anything for coal miners; coal is a dying industry because natural gas is an abundant less expensive and cleaner fuel and mining jobs are disappearing because of new mining methods. An infrastructure program will provide construction jobs, but that was part of Clinton's agenda as well, and Republicans have been opposing similar programs throughout the Obama administration.<br />
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Taxes are going to be cut - for the wealthy, thus expanding the wealth divide. For blue collar workers, the contemplated tax cuts are going to provide peanuts. The super wealthy will no longer have to deal with estate taxes. A lot of good that is going to do for blue collar workers. Corporate taxes will go down, but where do those benefits go - to bloated company management salaries and capital, i.e., shareholders, through share buybacks and increased dividends. He is going to cut back regulations which will help the big banks which he railed against in his campaign while curtailing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which protects consumers against predatory financial organizations, further enhancing the very institutions with which his supporters are so infuriated.<br />
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So what were they thinking? Or were they thinking? Probably not. They got taken in by a clever charlatan. He made big promises of everything they wanted. He didn't say how; he just said unequivocally that he would do it, that he would change things. He made the better offer. So they took it. They bought the snake oil. They should have known better, but they were so desperate and frustrated and angry that they voted for what they wanted to hear. They were convinced they were voting for change for the better. As one Trump supporter said, they would have voted for Captain Kangaroo if he were running. And they were getting even with what they think of as the elite who they blame for all of their travails. They didn't associate Trump with the elite, because the so-called elite were against him (and that probably contributed to their voting for him). So he couldn't be one of them. And he was saying all those spiteful things that many of his supporters were feeling, but would have been ashamed to say themselves. He legitimated their basest feelings. That's probably why the polls were wrong - they kept it to themselves until they reached the sanctity of the voting booth.<br />
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One of the greater ironies here is that this anger was vented against the one political party which has been trying to come to their rescue. The Republican Party has tenaciously obstructed every legislative effort of President Obama and the Democratic Party to address the issues which so frustrate those Trump supporters who are motivated by their economic distress. The Republicans fought against and weakened Dodd-Frank which targets big bank and other financial institutions; they opposed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, they opposed and limited the stimulus program; they opposed Obama's proposed infrastructure bank; they opposed the public option in the Obamacare legislation which probably would have reduced healthcare costs; they opposed increasing the minimum wage. They oppose a commitment to pre-K education, expansion of Pell grants, equal pay for equal work for women, and paid family and sick leave. All of these measures would ease the economic burden of working class families. They propose to make Medicare and Medicaid less generous, and in most States in which they are in control they have rejected Medicaid expansion even though the Federal government would pay almost all of the additional costs. This is the Party which shut down the Government and some of whose members were willing to have the US default on its debt. This is the Party which has caused the federal government to be dysfunctional for the past eight years, which has created the "swamp" that Trump promises to clean up. Trump supporters are right to want change, to "throw the rascals out", but instead they voted to elect the presidential nominee of the Party that created the mess and to maintain its majority in the Senate and House. They voted for a Party that calls for small government when it is only government which can protect them and provide the stimuli and incentives to the economy which will improve their lot. Echoes of "Keep the Government's hands off my Medicare". This anger at government flows from both ignorance and the race-based misconception that all government programs benefit only blacks and other minorities, which demagogues such as Trump and many others in the Republican Party are only too happy to exploit. After all, what else do they have to offer.<br />
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4. The Forces of Reaction. There are perhaps some fundamental issues reflected here that go beyond the problems of the day. These are the forces of political reaction. As Mark Lilla has pointed out in "The Shipwrecked Mind", "Reactionaries are not conservatives. They are ... in the grip of historical imaginings. ... [A]pocalyptic fears of entering a new dark age haunt the reactionary." The Republican Party today is not the party of conservatives but the party of reactionaries. Lilla goes on to say that the reactionary in his historical myth making blames everything on modernity, whose nature is to perpetually modernize itself. The reactionary builds on the resulting anxiety with political nostalgia, proclaiming the perpetual continuity of all things. Make America Great Again!<br />
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So, going forward - What is to be done? Two thoughts.<br />
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1. No Making Nice. There is the temptation to say, give Trump the benefit of the doubt; maybe all his threats were just campaign talk (more locker room talk?); maybe he'll turn out to be a pragmatist; maybe we can work out deals with him, make reasonable compromises. Forget about it (how do the Bannon, Flynn, Sessions and Pompeo appointments work for you?) That was the mistake Obama made when he was first elected in 2008 - that he could work with the Republicans. We know how well that turned out. Trump and the rest of the Republican Party are obstructionists and destroyers, not creators, and are not interested in governing, only in tearing things down for their own benefit. You might think of them as right wing revolutionaries. The only way to deal with them is to play hardball - to oppose them every step of the way. This is not just another lost election. It may sound Manichean, but this can be looked at with little exaggeration as the closest thing to Armageddon this country has faced since the Civil War, at least with the Republican Party in its present iteration and with Trump as its leader. If given the opportunity they would take down all progressive legislation and Supreme Court decisions (yes, the Court is now a political institution) going back to the New Deal (maybe even before), clearly an apocalyptic possibility. McConnell, at the beginning of Obama's first term, stated that his overriding objective was to make Obama a one term President. He didn't succeed, but that set the tone for all of Obama's legislative initiatives and judicial appointments (think Merrick Garland). To a great extent that strategy was successful. The Republicans never paid a price for it - witness the recent election in which voters supported the Party which largely created the mess in Washington with which they are so fed up. Democrats are the Party of reason, but reason only works when both Parties are playing by the same agreed ground rules with a sense of moral purpose and common decency and recognition of the pluralism of this country. The Republicans and Trump have rejected the prevailing rules and the ideal of a pluralistic society and have no moral sense. Reason is out the window. The only recourse is a policy of total resistance, including using the filibuster, as detestable as that may be in principle, for extremist Supreme Court and Cabinet nominations and regressive legislation. This is not to say that if opportunities arise whereby progressive policy objectives, such as the infrastructure stimulus proposal, can be achieved by reasonable compromises they should be rejected. By all means, the Democratic Party should take what it can get if the price is right, but keep in mind that any wavering will be seen as a sign of weakness, particularly by a school yard bully like Trump. Only strength, even if arbitrarily exercised, and especially if so, is respected by him.<br />
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2. How to Make It Work. The case has to be made to the public, and most specifically to those described herein as the willfully ignorant. Every action by Trump and the Republicans, whether in the form of proposed new legislation or amendment to or repeal of existing legislation or regulations or judicial decisions, needs to be analyzed specifically in terms of how it affects blue collar non-college educated workers and brought to their attention on a constant basis. It has to be done in layman's language in real life terms with the bottom line being jobs and effect on income and other material benefits, and conversely the effect on high earners' income and wealth. This should not be in the form of think tank style policy papers. The analysis needs to be politically focused and voter oriented.<br />
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In addition, the Democrats in Congress should be pro-active and not just react to Republican initiatives. They should come up with their own progressive legislative program even before the Republicans come up with theirs, and publicize the benefits of the Democratic proposals to the average voter. It needs to be communicated to members of the working class at the grass roots level. It doesn't matter that it will never pass. Let the Republicans reject it. And then make them explain why.<br />
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It may be obvious, but no less important is the need to expand voter registration efforts and to resist voter suppression tactics in the courts and at all levels of government. Changing demographics can't help if people don't vote.<br />
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The Democratic Party has historically been the party of the working man and woman, and in fact still is, but this reality has been lost on the average voter. The message is not getting through. The story is not getting told. The past eight years has not been great for the working class, but there have been many progressive achievements that have not been sufficiently promoted. This does not mean ignoring or diminishing concern with traditional Democratic social issues such as abortion, gun control, poverty, health care, affordable and quality education, equality of opportunity, discrimination, police over-reaction, the environment and gay rights, but they should not be addressed in the form of identity politics but as of benefit to the entire population; economic issues which emphasize broad economic growth for all need to be brought front and center. In other words there needs to be an effective appeal to the best side of populism. Why not a super PAC established exclusively for this purpose? And start immediately. There are only two years until the next election. It's still the economy, stupid!<br />
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<b><u><br /></u></b>Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-69141682561094244422016-10-23T17:38:00.001-07:002016-10-23T17:38:21.567-07:00 <strong><u>DONALD TRUMP: AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT</u></strong><br />
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With less than three weeks left before election day the race seems shockingly closer in several states than it should be based on any rational evaluation of the candidates. One major party candidate, Hillary Clinton, is probably better qualified by experience than any candidate who has been nominated for the presidency since I first voted 56 years ago. Conversely, the other major party candidate, Donald Trump, is not merely the least qualified such candidate proposed during that span (and well beyond), but is totally unqualified by any measure for the office, or, for that matter, for any other public office. Mrs. Clinton has served as a Senator and as Secretary of State. She is totally conversant with the full gamut of both domestic and foreign policy issues facing the country today. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, has no experience whatsoever in these matters, nor does he have the intellectual capacity to deal with them. Trump, a self-described super successful real estate mogul, proclaims that running the ship of state is no different than making a real estate deal, which, by the way, it turns out he actually was not so good at, experiencing a half dozen bankruptcies in which his investors and creditors were left holding the bag while he came out ahead. His successes, such as they were, seem to have relied on, for the most part, his wealthy father's financial backing and political connections, misrepresentation, unethical practices, outright lies and other peoples money. It is this business "acumen" which he contends qualifies him to be President, but basically, he is a just a con man, someone who perfectly fits the stereotype of the real estate scammer who sells underwater lots in Florida when he's not trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge. In short, a fraud. But at this stage it is pointless to try to enumerate all of his inadequacies. One hardly knows where to begin and the list would be endless. And this is before one even begins to take into account his personality flaws, which include being a congenital serial liar and probably a sociopath. By now everyone is fully aware of them (he flaunts them every day).<br />
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But the purpose here is not so much to try to convince those that are willing to ignore these flaws and intend to vote for him to rethink their position as to persuade those who under no circumstances would vote for him that not voting for him is not enough. I am thinking of those who are disenchanted with the political process, or are unenthusiastic about Hillary Clinton, or who are disappointed that Bernie Sanders did not get the Democratic Party's nomination and feel that Hillary Clinton is no Bernie Sanders. Well, she's not, but she is the closest thing to Bernie Sanders you're going to get this time around. You don't have to like her - this is not a high school popularity contest. Not voting at all or voting for one of the third party candidates only increase the chance that Trump could pull this off. Don't be misled by all the polls and prognostications that predict that Clinton is going to win. Think of Brexit. Think of "Dewey Defeats Truman", the banner headline on the front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune on November 3, 1948.<br />
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If you're unhappy with things as they are now, you're going to be miserable if Trump wins. Think of it - Obamacare down the drain, privatization of Social Security, more income inequality, Dodd-Frank eviscerated, twelve million undocumented immigrants deported, further tax breaks for the 1% (and not much if anything for the rest of us) and a huge increase in the deficit, institution of stop and frisk, discrimination against Moslem citizens, limits on the availability of reproductive health services for the needy and continued attacks on Planned Parenthood, support for the NRA approach to gun controls, backing off from equal pay for women, family leave and increases in the minimum wage, voter disenfranchisement, trade wars with negative economic consequences, desertion of our European and Asian allies, gutting of all of Obama's environmental regulations, climate change denial, rejection of fracking regulation and other clean energy initiatives as well as the Paris Agreement on climate change, ignoring the failures of our education system and the burden of college education costs, expansion (and perhaps use) of nuclear arsenals; and if the Republicans maintain control of the House and the Senate the implementation of every retrogressive policy in the Republican Party platform. And don't think that establishment Republicans are going to block any of this. After all, they are the ones who don't have the moral courage to withdraw their backing for Trump in the first place.<br />
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And that's not even the worst part! If you don't think of anything else, think of the Supreme Court. There's already one vacancy; there is a real possibility that there will be two or three more in the next four years. Think of 3-4 Scalia clones on the Court. That will lock up a reactionary Supreme Court for at least another generation, not just four years. Forget about Roe v. Wade. Think expansion of Citizens United to open the money spigot in politics even further, and furtherance of the Heller ruling to totally eliminate regulation of gun ownership. Expect more attempts to impede voter registration, to eliminate affirmative action and to further weaken labor unions. The possibility of a Trump presidency as it would affect the Supreme Court is in itself the single most significant issue for this election. Thus, the existential threat. <br />
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That is why no one who believes in the progressive cause or who is just non-partisan can justify failing to vote or voting for a third party candidate. For young people who are disenchanted with the current system, I fully sympathize; our political system is dysfunctional. But it doesn't have to be that way. If you look at the root cause of this dysfunction, you will see the Republican Party as it has evolved over the last twenty or so years - since the time of Newt Gingrich. And who is one of Donald Trump's most avid supporters? None other than Newt Gingrich, who may be in Trump's cabinet. The ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party in Congress, to which the rest of the Party is subservient, stands squarely in the way of any progressive legislation, or, for that matter, any legislation at all. In short, its objective is the very dysfunction which you hope to end. And who are these people? They are our elected representatives. So, elections do make a difference; voters make a difference; votes make a difference. Don't waste it by not voting or by voting for a candidate who has no chance of winning.<br />
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Finally, just a word for those Trump supporters who are not racists, misogynists or nativists, but who are planning to vote for Trump because he has promised to bring back manufacturing and other jobs or who believe he will institute policies which will rectify the inequality of wealth in the US today. You have a just cause. But Donald Trump is not the answer. First of all, he doesn't care; second, he doesn't have a clue about economics, trade or jobs. He is a flim flam man; a snake oil salesman; a megalomaniac who is just selling his personal brand. Give it another thought. There was once a great advertising line for the Levy's bread company - "You don't have to be Jewish to like Levy's". By the same token, you don't have to be a centrist Democrat to vote for Hillary Clinton. The competing brand in this case is stale and mold infested.<br />
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<br />Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-39345992698508053032016-04-18T16:08:00.000-07:002016-04-18T16:08:18.914-07:00Has Bernie Burned Out?My previous blog argued that Hillary Clinton was the better candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, mainly because she has a better chance of winning in the general election and because Bernie Sanders' program was not achievable. Since then, Sanders, who once was a refreshing entrant in the quadrennial presidential circus, has become annoying with his pie-in-the-sky screed. He turns out to be an old fashioned populist demagogue, a William Jennings Bryan for the 21st century (and we know how well he did). In some ways Sanders is no different than the Republican demagogues of the right with his assaults on the usual whipping boys of populist causes over the years, banks and the wealthy. Of course he is substantially different in his ultimate objectives; his policy goals are for the most part admirable, but his attack format is not all that different. Trump, <i>et al, </i>argues, "elect me and everyone will will fall in line", i.e., Putin, corporate executives who want to move their companies overseas, Mexico, Japan, China, etc. Sanders argues similarly with regard to bank executives and presumably the one percent. In short, he too is an ideologue. If there is anything to the claim of American exceptionalism it has to be based on Americans' approach to problem solving, that is, pragmatism, not dogma. Simply put, Hillary is a pragmatist while Bernie is an ideologue. It is this commitment to ideology (and let the facts and circumstances be damned) that has been the ruination of the Republican Party. Bernie, like them, seeks a Utopian world, albeit his Utopia would be far preferable to theirs.<br />
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To Sanders, the enemy is big banks and the one percent who are the cause of inequality and the Great Recession. All we have to do is lean on them and everything will work out. However, he doesn't seem to have a clue as to how this is going to happen or really understand economics. Certainly bankers are not nature's noblemen and have been treated too easily for their past transgressions. I carry no brief for the banks and their officers. The chicanery they have indulged in is breathtaking. But breaking up the banks is not going to solve our ills. Bernie doesn't seem to understand the difference between revolution and reform. Revolutions seldom turn out well. Arguably Trump and Cruz are also seeking a revolution, of a different kind of course. A common by-product of revolution is civil war, or, in peaceful times, more extreme partisan politics. Reform is not as exciting, but is more likely to achieve results. It is the route to take and that Hillary subscribes to.<br />
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Surprisingly there are other echoes of the Republican dogma in Sanders' approach to the economy. The Republicans have forever argued that you can cut taxes substantially without reducing social programs (although they would prefer to do both) because the increase in economic growth will generate the revenue to offset the tax cuts (all mainstream studies refute this). Sanders believes that raising the minimum wage, spending a trillion dollars on infrastructure and offering free college will inspire such enthusiasm and determination that people will work harder and invest more, and the economy will generate the tax income to pay for it. Thus his plans won't cost money, they'll raise money. If you recall my last blog, to believe this you have to believe in the tooth fairy. The economic profession certainly doesn't believe it. <br />
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Bernie focuses on the excesses of others, and there is more than enough of that, but he is short on practical solutions and seems to miss the point on many of these issues. Let's be clear at the outset. I am in favor of raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the wealthy and spending substantial sums on improving our deteriorating infrastructure ... and so is Hillary. As far as breaking up the banks, that in itself is not going to improve the lot of the middle class or the poor. The size of the big banks is a subset of a more important issue - what we should be talking about here is monopoly power - the closing out of medium and small businesses in a range of industries. Whatever happened to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice? There are too many mergers and acquisitions which leave only a handful of competitors in a number of sectors which give them a virtual monopoly on buying and/or selling. We see it in the health care and insurance sectors as well as the banking sector. This should be a major priority of the next President, but it does not have the same allure as "breaking up the banks". Sanders seems to be unaware of this issue. His focus is very narrow. It is all about "Wall Street". There is much to criticize about Wall Street, but the nation's economic issues are much broader than that. Although the financial sector is in many ways unique, which may require additional considerations, if bigness as such is to be evaluated it should be done in the context of maintaining or increasing competition.<br />
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But let's just focus on the banks for the moment. There is more work to be done in the regulatory area, but Dodd-Frank has made a good if slow start. The big banks have shed many businesses. They have been forced to become simpler and safer, if not always smaller. Increased capital requirements have significantly penalized the banks for their size and complexity and required them to find ways to shrink on their own. Recently the plans of five of the eight largest banks to wind themselves down in case of a crisis have been rejected by bank regulators. The tools are in place in existing legislation. The Democrats need to concentrate on defending and fine tuning Dodd-Frank rather than breaking up the banks which is a non-starter politically, even if it were deemed to be desirable. By pushing for the latter, Bernie would, in the face of determined Republican opposition, lose any opportunity to further the reform process. Hillary, on the other hand, would have a much better chance to move that process along, in part because she is not perceived as an enemy of Wall Street.<br />
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Then there is the issue of Glass-Steagall. Bernie wants to bring it back, and I would agree with the principle of separating commercial banking from investment banking, particularly in light of the Great Recession. However, the economic experts have concluded that the existence of Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the Great Recession. On that basis, it would seem more practical to rely on the regulators under Dodd-Frank to develop the mechanisms to ensure that the risks that Glass-Steagall was meant to eliminate are addressed. This may mean strengthening Dodd-Frank, but again Hillary is better positioned to push that through than Bernie with his all or nothing approach.<br />
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When it comes to the bail-out of the banks and the auto industry, Sanders has a checkered record due to his ideological hang-ups. Although he was in favor in principle of the bail-out of the auto industry (which was essential), he was strongly opposed to the bail-out of the banks. This would have been a disaster for the financial sector and the US and world economies. But Bernie is not a pragmatist; he is a Utopian and is not guided by the likely results of his actions as long as he can maintain his ideological purity. Sound familiar - say, the Tea Party? Beyond this, when, due to the Republicans in Congress, funds for the auto bail -out would only be available from funding which would also be used for the bank bail-out, Sanders voted against appropriation of such funds. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.<br />
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What about free college education for all? That's a great idea, but it's not affordable, at least for now. Again, the problem should be approached incrementally. No qualified student should have to forego a college education due to lack of funds. There are mechanisms already in place to help, but they are not enough. They need to be enhanced. To do this the Republicans in Congress have to be brought on board. Bernie is not going to be able to do this with his proposal for free college education for all. It would be a non-starter. There is also the other side of the equation - how to lower the cost of college education. The next President needs to be able to develop ideas as to how this can be done and bring along the academic community to support such ideas. I don't see Bernie having the flexibility to do this.<br />
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The issue of international trade agreements is the subject of Bernie's most frantic rants. This is a very complex subject, and even Hillary is backing away from TPP under the pressure of electoral politics. However, I believe she will be amenable in principle to trade agreements with the appropriate protective mechanisms. Bernie never will. He refuses to accept the reality of the modern world. The United States has lost, and will continue to lose, manufacturing jobs with or without trade agreements. Our future, as it has been for many years now, is in the service and technology areas. What we need to do is educate our young people and promote development in these areas, and that requires allocating funds for these purposes. Our enemy here is not less developed countries which can manufacture at less cost, but the Republican Party which will nor appropriate the necessary funds. In addition, we have to provide relief for those workers who are displaced by loss of manufacturing jobs through job retraining, income support and job placement assistance. I never read about Bernie addressing these issues. He seems to think we can restore our manufacturing sector as it was. Maybe in Utopia - he and Donald Trump who is going to impose 35% tariffs on imports. We should concentrate on helping the people who need help and not try to roll back the tide.<br />
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Finally there is the issue of campaign finance. Nobody in the Democratic Party, including Hillary, disagrees with Bernie on this. So, what is he going to do about it? Only through the right Supreme Court appointment is there any possibility for help. Even under the best of circumstances that is not going to play out for several years. In the meantime one must be able to compete with the other side. That Bernie has been able thus far to do this in his own way is a tribute to him, but not to play the game when it comes to the general election would be suicidal.<br />
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Bismarck got it right - politics is the art of the possible.<br />
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<br />Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-7267439107324118882016-02-18T15:35:00.002-08:002016-02-18T15:37:53.062-08:00<b> <u>THE TOOTH FAIRY VS THE DENVER BRONCOS</u></b><br />
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The Democrats are at it again. Shades of George McGovern in 1972 and the rejection of Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Liberal Democrats indulged themselves and stroked their egos in 1968 when they turned on Humphrey (until the last minute when it was too late), the epitome of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, because he failed to denounce LBJ's Vietnam war (who ironically was the last President to enact any part of the progressive agenda favored by the liberal Democrats until Obama). So what did they get? Richard Nixon, their <i>bete noir</i>e. Having learned nothing, they went for McGovern in 1972 who was about as liberal as you could get and was destroyed in the election, again by Nixon.<br />
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So here we are in 2016, and the Democrats are toying with Bernie Sanders. Bernie is a wonderful guy, and in the best of all possible worlds we would have a single payer health system with free health care, free public colleges and expanded social security, as he advocates. That's fine if you believe in the tooth fairy. In the real world, there are no tooth fairies. There is only the American public (read electorate), whose intelligence, in words attributed to H.L. Mencken, can never be underestimated. More to the point, there is the Republican Party, which sees as its principal goal the destruction of the federal government or any government which they cannot control. (An interesting note: the Republican right (actually there is no Republican right, because there is no Republican left or center) is chasing its own tooth fairy in people like Trump, Cruz, Rubio and Carson, disregarding their own ideological disaster in 1964 with Goldwater.) Sanders cannot win a national election; as a self proclaimed socialist promising what will be characterized as a European welfare state, he will be road kill for the Republicans. The last socialist to run for President was Norman Thomas and you know how far he got. Sanders will be fair game for the Republican simplistic rubrics, "tax and spend Democrats", "big government", etc. It's true that Republican politicians have bumper stickers for brains, but take a look at the bumpers in front of you; it works in H.L. Mencken's world.<br />
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Which brings us to the main point. Politics is about winning elections, not providing salve for one's conscience or indulging one's self righteousness. For those who say they are sick of politics and want to do what's right and the hell with the politicians, let me put it on a more fundamental level - democracy is about winning elections. If you don't win, forget about your progressive programs. Bernie, for all his good intentions, is not a winner on a national level in this political climate, or, for that matter, perhaps in any likely political environment. Bernie deserves our thanks for highlighting the issues in his program, but the time is not yet ripe for them; perhaps in another generation or even two. Keep in mind that much of what Norman Thomas advocated eventually found its way into law in one form or another through the efforts of more pragmatic politicians and the gradual evolution of concepts of social justice. For the young idealists who are enamored by Bernie Sanders, the person, and his ideas, don't let the perfect destroy the good. In Hillary Clinton there is an attractive alternative. She is someone who in a long public career has demonstrated that she strongly supports the principles that lie behind Bernie Sanders' programs and has a far better chance of moving those principles forward. Democrats are aghast at the Republican's denigration of compromise; yet Sanders' approach is exactly the same. Of course, Sanders' positions are good and those of the Republicans are, quite simply, bad, but there are no points awarded for losing even if you are right, or think you are. We Democrats need someone who can get the best possible deal under all of the circumstances (no, not Donald Trump's deals).<br />
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So how do the Denver Broncos come into the picture? For those who follow professional football and watched the recent Super Bowl, you know outstanding defense can win games even when your team's offense is anemic. And that's where we Democrats are today. Our top priority has to be to protect the gains we've made during the Obama presidency. Unfortunately this is not a time when we can expect to make broad progress on social justice issues. The Republicans are rigidly opposed to such progress and seem to have no shame, much less guilt, to which Democrats can appeal. Sanders wants to institute a single payer health care system. The Republicans are not only opposed, but are determined to eliminate Obamacare which, even if it does not fulfill the ultimate goal, is a vast improvement on the previous system. The Republicans will try to roll back financial and environmental regulations, reduce taxes on the super rich, and not only stifle immigration reform but deport 12 million undocumented residents. With a Republican House assured for the foreseeable future and a Republican Senate again a strong possibility and in any event captive to Republican filibuster, the Democrats' last line of defense is the Presidency. Democrats will have their hands full just trying to maintain the <i>status quo</i>. The upcoming election is all about defending the White House, <i>a la</i> the Denver Broncos. With that in place, a Democratic President can look for opportunities to move the ball forward without Congress, much as Obama has done or tried to do, i.e., environment, immigration, or through compromises with Congress when circumstances permit. The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton is the best defense. You might say she is the Von Miller and the DeMarcus Ware of the Democratic Party all rolled into one.<br />
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As I have written in an earlier blog on the 2012 election, it is the nature of a two party system that in general elections it is more about who you vote against than who you vote for. In this election, it is crucial to vote against the Republican candidate for President, whoever it may be. The corollary is that in the nominating process you must vote for the candidate who is least likely to lose in the general election.<br />
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In the last few days the premium on choosing the right Democrat to run for President looms even larger. With the death of Justice Scalia, the next President will have the opportunity to put his or her stamp on the Supreme Court for the next generation or more, and, if it is a Democratic President, preserve the progress made under Obama and stop the hemorrhaging of progressive principles imposed by the conservative cabal on the Court. It seems highly unlikely that the present "know nothing" Senate will approve, vote on or even report out President Obama's nominee to replace Scalia. Thus, it will be left to the next President (and the next Senate; don't forget that in those States with a Senatorial election coming up). The views one holds on the comparative merits of Sander's and Clinton's positions on social and economic issues pale in comparison to the significance of nominating the next Supreme Justice (or for that matter, probably several more in the next 4-8 years). This is an unexpected opportunity to promote the progressive agenda. Its significance cannot be over emphasized. Losing the White House is not an option. Clinton is far and away the best bet. The Denver Broncos trump (pardon the expression) the tooth fairy.Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1661770787941242686.post-10607605011255718732015-08-31T14:54:00.000-07:002015-09-03T12:41:02.041-07:00Why Congress Should Approve the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) (P5+1-Iran Nuclear Agreement)It's like Obamacare all over again, except on an international scale this time, with the Prime Minister of Israel acting as a major lobbyist against the JCPOA, both directly and indirectly through his Ambassador, AIPAC, Israel's designated agent in the US, and the rest of the "Israel Lobby", and complicating the already partisan politics in the US. With the polemicists in full throat, the more one hears the more it echoes the partisan battle over health care. Damn the facts, full speed ahead or astern. Somewhat lost in the diatribes of the opponents of the JCPOA is the fact that we are dealing with nuclear non-proliferation at a pretty fundamental level. Yet much of the debate seems to be related more to political partisanship (deny Obama a "victory"), the culture wars (the ultra-right against everybody else), what is best for Israel (fueled by Netanyahu's belligerent fear mongering about existential threats to Israel), resolution of the various crises in the Middle East and regime change (although this latter issue is only intimated <em>sub-rosa</em>). In short, with the exception of the few serious people who are concerned about how effective the JCPOA will be in actually achieving its goal, we don't have our eye on the ball with regard to the one issue which makes all of the others pale in comparison.<br />
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Few seem to want to consider how we got to where we are. It's worth taking a look. It all started because of the concern that Iran was getting to the point where it was, or would soon be, within 2-3 months of accumulating enough weapons grade uranium to manufacture a nuclear explosive device. At that point there was a consensus that this would be unacceptable. The split was over whether to take military action to deter Iran from following this path or to try first to achieve this goal through diplomatic negotiations (a split that still exists although the militarists for the most part try to obscure their intentions). The President chose diplomacy as the initial course of action while stating that all options were on the table, except containment, that is, the US would not tolerate a nuclear armed Iran. Keep in mind - this exercise is all about minimizing the likelihood of having another country with nuclear arms (with the potential access to such weapons by terrorists), not about bringing peace to the Middle East, a perhaps utopian quest.<br />
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To the extent that those favoring the military option acquiesced in the diplomatic option, it was, on the whole, based on the premise that diplomacy had no chance of success, and that after diplomacy failed it would be "bombs away" with no regrets. To their chagrin, diplomacy has succeeded, and they are now fighting a rear guard action to "un-succeed", if you will, the diplomatic process so they can get back to the military option. Very few will say this openly, of course, because the great majority of the American people would not tolerate another Middle East military adventure (by now we know how well these turn out). Beyond their proclivity to resolve all international disputes by the use of force, these neo-cons and ex-Cold War warriors are more interested in "regime change". They believe they can solve all of the Middle East issues by installing a new friendly government in Tehran which they believe would be the outcome of the exercise of the military option. Revisit Iraq, anyone? Where <em>did</em> ISIS come from? Short of all-out war, which the US public would not abide, bombing alone, according to the experts, would have only limited effectiveness. Meir Dagan, a former Director of the Mossad, has said that an "an attack on Iran's nuclear reactors would be foolish". Not only would it not foreclose the likelihood that Iran would ultimately achieve a nuclear weapon or weapons, it would further entrench the Mullahs and the ultra-right in Iran.<br />
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But let's get to the JCPOA itself. After the imposition of internationally supported sanctions which brought Iran to the table, the initial step in the negotiations was to achieve an interim "stand-still" agreement freezing Iran's nuclear program and rolling back parts of it in return for a partial easing of sanctions, so that Iran could not drag out the more substantive negotiations while moving steadily ahead with development of a capability which could result in nuclear armed weapons. Such an agreement was achieved in 2013. The substantive negotiations then began between the P5+1 (US, England, France, Russia, China and Germany) and Iran and ultimately resulted in those parties (plus the European Union) signing the JCPOA which we have before us today. According to estimates at that time Iran needed as little as 2-3 months to enrich enough uranium for its first nuclear bomb, and that's where they will be today if the JCPOA is rejected. If the JCPOA goes into effect, it will take Iran at least a year to make enough weapons grade uranium for a bomb.<br />
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As to the mechanics of the JCPOA, people who actually look at it objectively have diverse views on parts of it, as one would expect for such a complex arrangement. Although there are elements to legitimately be concerned about, we can discount many of the critics, such as the Republican Senators and Congressmen and Presidential candidates, who made up their minds before they ever saw the final agreement. For them, this is still about Obama, nuclear weapons be damned. <br />
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We can also discount the views of Netanyahu and the present Israeli government. Netanyahu is obsessed with Iran and, having staked his legacy on solving the Iran nuclear problem, permanently, on his watch (see David Sanger, "Confront and Conceal", ch, 8) , came out against the JCPOA before even having seen its contents. In fact, he would be against any agreement. It should be noted that he also opposed the interim agreement, without which Iran would have reached breakout capability by now. This is a government which is so politically beholden to right wing extremists that it is no longer capable of rational judgment as to what is in its own best interest. Let me be clear that I am not advocating jettisoning Israel; one of the fundamentals of US foreign policy is and should continue to be the security of Israel. All of this only means that the views of the present government of Israel are unreliable in making an objective evaluation of the JCPOA. Whatever Netanyahu may say, the JCPOA is in the best interest of Israel as well as that of the US. If the truth be known, Netanyahu has always favored the military option and would rather go to war with Iran, or, more to the point, he would rather for the US to go to war with Iran and ride along on our coattails (along with members of the Israel Lobby, which includes neo-cons who were instrumental in promoting the second Iraq War, he was a supporter of that war, which he said would be good for Israel and the world, the real winner, as it turns out, being Iran; so much for his judgment) (For an interesting back story on the long and close relationship between Netanyahu and his Likud Party and the US neo-cons, those wonderful people who gave us the Iraq war and would like to give us one with Iran, see John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "The Israel Lobby", in the London Review of Books, Vol. 28, No. 6, March 23, 2006). The JCPOA stands in Netanyahu's way, and thus he opposes it (to the extent even of injecting himself into US domestic politics, which is unforgiveable). On the other hand, many former senior officials in Israel's defense and security establishment support the JCPOA as the best option available, including a former director of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, two former Mossad directors and a former chief of IDF Defense Intelligence. <br />
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Too many in the US exhibit a failure to consider what is really at stake here and approach the JCPOA only from the instinctive and narrowly protective perspective of Israel's interests, or, more to the point, Netanyahu's views of Israel's interests, which, as indicated above, are not necessarily the same. On the contrary, the JCPOA needs to be judged first on the merits, that is, how effective it is in limiting Iran's capability to develop nuclear weapons. If it is efficacious in this regard, it is in the US interest to go forward with it. Given that the security of Israel is a keystone of American foreign policy, it is legitimate to also ask whether doing so would be harmful to Israel. If the JCPOA can contribute to halting the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, it is hard to see how that can be harmful to Israel; to the extent the US can succeed in that effort it is reducing any existential threat to Israel. But Netanyahu seemingly will be satisfied with nothing less than an attack on Iran. Another military foray by the US in the Middle East weakens the US, and concomitantly is not good for Israel. Israel and its supporters in the US should understand that having the US provide blind support to Israel and act as it's surrogate in Netanyahu's and his government's vendetta with Iran is not only detrimental to the US but also to Israel. Israel's ultimate strength and security is a function of the leadership and credibility of the US, which would be seriously compromised if the JCPOA were to be rejected and even more so if this were followed by bombing and/or war in Iran, as it would have to be if Iran were to be denied nuclear weapons.<br />
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Most Jews in the US would support the JCPOA. AIPAC and the rest of the Israel Lobby, such as the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, which oppose the agreement, do not speak for American Jewry (the Conference rejected membership for J Street which supports Israel but also supports the peace process and supports the JCPOA), only for the current government of Israel, and whatever their sincerity they are misguided as to the true best interest of the State of Israel. Congress should keep this in mind - to be supportive of Israel you don't have to be anti-JCPOA.<br />
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A further consideration which seems to be ignored in the "is it good or bad for Israel" face-off is that the fate of the JCPOA is not in the first instance a bi-lateral Israel - Iran issue. Nuclear non-poliferation, the goal of the JCPOA, is a global issue in which the entire international community has an interest. This is not a matter which can be approached from the perspective of one nation; it is of concern to all nations. The international community, including even those Middle East countries who have their own antagonistic relationships with Iran, has made its voice clear - overwhelming support for the agreement. It is not for Israel to be conceded a veto on an issue of nuclear non-proliferation.<br />
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As it is clear that the Republicans in Congress, all of whom will toe the anti-Obama line, and/or prefer war and/or regime change, and will oppose the JCPOA, and the Israel Lobby, which through AIPAC is spending $20 million to defeat the JCPOA, are not interested in the merits of the JCPOA on its terms and are not listening, it is up to the Democrats in Congress to make the decision on one of the most important foreign policy issues of the post-WWII era. As, pursuant to the arcane provisions of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, it is effectively within their control to determine the fate of the JCPOA, they will be accountable for whether the Middle East is to remain free of nuclear weapons (ignoring of course the fact that Israel already has such weapons).<br />
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The technical aspects of the JCPOA are hard to fully evaluate without having a nuclear expert sitting alongside to explain the implications of the various obligations imposed on the Iranians, but it clearly imposes restrictions on Iran's nuclear program going well beyond what the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty requires. Some of the major elements of the JCPOA are as follows:<br />
a. it lengthens from a few months to at least one year the time frame in which Iran could produce enough bomb-grade material for a single nuclear weapon, the so-called break-out point;<br />
b. it requires Iran to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98% to under 300 kg for the next 15 years, about a third of the amount needed for a single bomb (it now has about 8,000 kg);<br />
c. it requires Iran to keep its level of uranium enrichment at not to exceed 3.67% (bomb grade requires 90% enrichment; Iran had been processing ore to 20% enrichment; for most power reactors in the West, uranium is enriched up to 5%);<br />
d. it requires Iran to disable the Arak facility from producing weapons grade plutonium; the reactor's spent fuel will be shipped out of the country; Iran will not be allowed to build any other heavy water reactor for 15 years;<br />
e. it requires Iran to reduce the number of its centifuges by two-thirds from about 20,000 to about 6,000 for the next 10 years (Iran would need tens of thousands of centrifuges to create enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb);<br />
f. it requires Iran to convert the Fordow facility into a research center;<br />
g. it allows for unprecedented intrusive inspections at Iran's nuclear sites for 15 years with a dispute resolution mechanism to resolve disputes as to whether Iran is in breach of the JCPOA and provisions for the sanctions to snap-back in place if the dispute is not resolved satisfactorily (the mechanism is structured in such a way that the US is in a position to unilaterally have the sanctions reimposed if Iran is in breach); there is a further procedure, again for 15 years, whereby if Iran is suspected of producing nuclear materials for a weapon at an undisclosed location and Iran cannot verify the absence of such undeclared nuclear materials at the suspected location and resolve the issue by consultation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Joint Commission can mandate the necessary means for resolving the matter (this could be done by consensus or a majority vote of 5 of the 8 members of the Joint Commission - the US, England, France, Germany and the EU, i.e., the votes of Russia, China and Iran would not be neeeded); if Iran does not implement the mandate, the snap-back provisions apply; and<br />
h. sanctions on Iran imposed in relation to its nuclear activities, excluding those related to other activities of the Iranian regime such as human rights violations and support of terror, will be lifted only after the IAEA has verified that Iran has implemented its obligations under the JCPOA.<br />
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The upshot is not only that the Iranian nuclear program is stopped in its tracks, but it is substantially reversed. True, it is not permanently eliminated, but with the JCPOA we (and Israel) are better off now than we were before negotiations started, and if the JCPOA is implemented in accordance with its terms we will be better off in 10-15 years than we are now, even if the Iranians then try to go ahead with a nuclear weapons program. Even if the Iranians breach the JCPOA at some point we are still no worse off than we are now and probably a lot better off. We still have the military option or the re-imposition of sanctions, probably more onerous than now given what would then be our even stronger moral position, and more time (because break-out would take longer) to exercise such options. Although the Iranians could still try to cheat, we will be in a better position to detect cheating with the JCPOA in place than we are now.<br />
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In short, it doesn't really cost us anything, and it buys time. Ending the Cold War took a long time too. Sure, the Iranians will continue to make trouble in the Middle East, but that's a given, and short of regime change, which could come only militarily (and we can see how well that worked in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan), there are limits to what we can do about that, although President Obama has made abundantly clear that the Administration intends to unilaterally maintain economic pressure and deploy military options if needed to deter Iranian aggression, both during and beyond the proposed nuclear accord. We need to take the long view, not something Americans easily adjust to. In 10-15 years the 1979 revolutionaries will be longer in the tooth, and demographics (more than 50% of Iranians are under 35; more than 40% under 25) may push Iran toward a more responsible role in the Middle East and in its relations with the West. <br />
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This is not to suggest that the JCPOA is perfect or risk free, but that we are better of with it than without it. Ideally the Iranians would give up their nuclear program entirely and permanently, not just for a finite period of 10-15 years, but that was never a possibility, unless, as Secretary of State Kerry suggested, you believe in unicorns. That's why we call them "negotiations". Iran is not Libya. One of the bothersome things about the most vociferous of the opponents of the JCPOA is that they will accept only total capitulation, unconditional surrender, by the Iranians as a satisfactory outcome (one hardly needs to point out how well the Versailles Treaty worked). Such people cannot be taken seriously. At worst they just want an excuse to bomb and/or achieve regime change, and we know where that has taken us in the past. Call it the return of the neo-con Cold war warriors with Iran substituting for the "Evil Empire". It's zombie foreign policy - you kill it again and again but it keeps coming back (with apologies to Paul Krugman and his characterization of the Republicans' zombie economics). At best they are naive about the nature of negotiations. The very essence of negotiations and diplomacy is compromise (this, of course, is anathema to the mindset of the Tea Party types in Congress and on the Republican presidential campaign trail whose model for the conduct of foreign policy is the playground bully). Of course, no one wants to "leave money on the table". There is always that risk, but here we get more than we give up. In essence all the Iranians achieve is the "<em>status quo ante</em>" by eliminating the sanctions, the return to the status of any sovereign nation (granted that they are a bad nation). On the other hand, we achieve a substantial derogation of their nuclear capability for non-civilian purposes, including the most intrusive inspection regime ever negotiated and snapback sanctions for at least 10 years, none of which we had before. Is it an iron-clad agreement? Of course not; there is no such thing. Remember the old adage, "don't let the perfect spoil the good".<br />
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When people criticize the P5+1 negotiators, they need to consider that on our side it was never an issue of giving up our sovereign rights, but that is exactly what we were requiring the Iranians to surrender in large part. This is not to suggest that there was any moral force on the Iranian side, but only to emphasize the difficulty of the negotiations in imposing our will on the Iranians. As such there undoubtedly were points on which the Iranians felt that their sovereignty was being challenged and were intransigent. This required the P5+1 negotiating team to work around such points without giving away the overall substantive outcomes which they were trying to achieve. Although we will never know, or at least not for many years, exactly what went on in these discussions, it would seem that those outcomes were in most part achieved. In countries such as Iran there is a high level of paranoia, distrust and fear of making a mistake in dealings with the West. Being unsure of themselves, the safest thing for them is to say "no". Such subjective irrationality cannot be argued away. Surely it made these negotiations difficult on a psychological level. The point is that this must be taken into account in evaluating what was accomplished and, equally important, what could be accomplished. This is particularly relevant for those who think we can go back to the table if Congress rejects the JCPOA. Such an approach reflects a failure to comprehend the dynamics of negotiations in general and particularly in this part of the world.<br />
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Some opponents argue that the US is compromising the original intent of the sanctions. This is an inaccurate characterization. The intent of sanctions was to force negotiations and ultimately an agreement limiting Iran's capability to develop nuclear weapons in order to avoid bombing/war or acceptance of Iran as a nuclear state. This has been achieved. Underlying much of the opposition to the JCPOA is that it serves as a vehicle for the opponents to express their grievances at a world which does not conform to their platitudes as to American exceptionalism, and which they don't, and make no effort to, understand. They resent that Iran is being treated as a contractually equal party rather than as a vassal state on which the US can impose its will unilaterally, but the days of the Chinese "unequal treaties" and Admiral Perry's Black Ships are long gone.<br />
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Many of the opponents are now arguing that when the sanctions will be lifted Iran will have more money to back Assad, Hamas and Hezbollah. Undoubtedly this is true, but from the first day this was inherent in the process. The goal of the sanctions was never anything but limiting Iran's nuclear weapon capability, not to remake the Middle East or convert Iran into a good neighbor. As noted above, the President has made clear that entering into the JCPOA does not foreclose countering Iran's aggressive actions on other fronts. Those are different battles. Nuclear weapons represent a different order of priority. First things first. Again, this argument ultimately relies on regime change as an objective. The argument seems to be that you can't negotiate with the devil. But we do it all the time - we did it with the Soviet Union when it was the evil empire.<br />
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Out of desperation, some opponents, who are reluctant to acknowledge that the military option, with all that it implies, is the only alternative, propose that the US and the P5+1 group maintain the sanctions or impose more onerous ones and go back to the negotiating table with Iran and insist on a better deal. The rest of the group will never accept this. If the US rejects the JCPOA the sanctions regime will collapse. As Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary under President George W. Bush, has said, "It's totally unrealistic to believe that if we backed out of the deal that the multilateral sanctions would stay in place." As to the possibility of unilaterally imposing ramped up sanctions to force Iran to dismantle its nuclear program, Jacob J. Lew, the current Secretary of the Treasury, has said this is a "dangerous fantasy". If Congress now rejects this deal, "the elements that were fundamental in establishing that international consensus [on sanctions] will be gone.... The simple fact is that, after two years of testing Iran in negotiations, the international community does not believe that ramping up sanctions will persuade Iran to eradicate all traces of it hard-won civil nuclear program or sever its ties to its armed proxies in the region." The British Ambassador to the US has said that rejection of the deal would collapse the international sanctions regime. Senator Patty Murray, Secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference, who has come out in support of the JCPOA, spoke with the Ambassadors to the US from the five countries which negotiated the JCPOA alongside the US who told her that starting over is not an option. Not only would the international consensus that makes sanctions possible crumble, but blocking the JCPOA would damage the United States' leadership (remember the League of Nations) and raise questions about the credibility of the role of the US, both in the Middle East and globally (something to note for those opponents who want to "make America great again"). If the US were to reject the JCPOA and pull the rug out from under our allies and the UN Security Council, it would be a foreign policy disaster. We would be considered untrustworthy and undependable - a dysfunctional giant. Keep in mind that the JCPOA has been unanimously endorsed by a positive vote of all 15 members of the UN Security Council, a rarity in UN politics for an issue of this geopolitical magnitude. (It is no small matter that the US was able to hold together the P5+1 group thoughout the negotiations; that in itself was a diplomatic achievement of the first order that ranks equally with the achievement of the successful outcome with the Iranians.)<br />
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Of note is the fact that Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisors under Republican and Democratic Presidents, respectively, both support the JCPOA. Scowcroft's opinion piece in the August 21 Washington Post, entitled "The Iran Deal: An Epochal Moment that Congress Shouldn't Squander", is worthy of reading in its entirety, but a short quote provides the essence:<br />
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"Let us be clear: There is no credible alternative were Congress to prevent U.S. participation in the nuclear deal. If we walk away, we walk away alone. The world's leading powers worked together effectively because of U.S. leadership. To turn back now on this accomplishment would be an abdication of the United States' unique role and responsibility, incurring justified dismay among our allies and friends. We would lose all leverage over Iran's nuclear activities. The international sanctions regime would dissolve. And no member of Congress should be under the illusion that another U.S. invasion of the Middle east would be helpful."<br />
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Some argue that we can force the hands of our allies by imposing secondary sanctions against those that refuse to follow our lead. According to Lew, "that would be a disaster.... They will not agree to indefinite economic sacrifices in the name of an illusory better deal." He cites as an example the situation in 1996 when, in the absence of international support for imposing sanctions on Iran, Congress tried to create secondary sanctions that penalized foreign companies for investing in Iran's energy sector to no avail.<br />
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There are those who, while otherwise reasonably satisfied with the JCPOA for the next 10-15 years, are concerned as to the situation thereafter. The duration of the JCPOA is the most legitimate concern, no one likes to live with contingency, but there really is no better alternative available. To quibble over whether it should be, say, 20 years, does not seem constructive. The reality of the negotiation process was that there had to be some cut-off point, and that whatever would be agreed upon would seem arbitrary (as indicated above, expectations of permanent and total surrender of nuclear capability was never realistic). Fifteen years is a long time. Think back at how things have changed (although not necessarily for the better) over the last 15 years, i.e., before 9/11. The JCPOA does provide that inspectors will be able to monitor the production of rotors and other centrifuge components for up to 20 years and can monitor Iran's stocks of uranium ore concentrate for 25 years. It will be obvious if Iran starts to make weapons grade fuel, and there is a permanent ban on the metallurgy needed to turn the fuel into a bomb. Maybe things with Iran will get better, maybe not, but as noted above, if after the expiration of the main provisions of the accord Iran starts to move toward a nuclear weapon, the US still has the option of economic sanctions as well as the military option. As some have suggested, it could be helpful if the US conveyed this warning to the Iranians, even if privately, but not as a call for renegotiation.<br />
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Some have called for a full disclosure by Iran of its past weaponization activities, but that probably was never a realistic possibility, and its absence in no way weakens the agreement. <br />
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A further concern as to the effectiveness of the JCPOA is the so-called 24 day rule for resolving disputes as to suspicious sites which it is argued would allow Iran to cover up evidence of nuclear work during such period. According to US experts that would not be feasible, although smaller scale illicit activities involving non-nuclear elements might be able to be covered up. This is a risk, but not of such a nature as to justify rejecting the entire agreement.<br />
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The bottom line is - if not this, what then? The JCPOA can stand on its own merits, but there really is no viable alternative. This is much better than bombing and war, and further sanctions will never fly with the rest of the world if the US trashes the JCPOA. In which case unilaterally imposed sanctions would not work. Nor would further sanctions work this time around even if the international community could ever be convinced to impose them. The Iranians would never return to the negotiating table under such circumstances no matter how much it hurts them to stay away. The Iranians would just be more hell-bent than ever to develop a bomb (remember, these are the people who put up with poison gas from Saddam in a 7-8 years war; this is, after all, the Middle East, the home of the suicide bomber where rational self-interest seems to have gone out of style). As for bombing, the experts say it would have only limited and relatively short term effectiveness. Iran would emerge from an attack more unified than ever, and more determined to build a bomb. And if the Middle East seems chaotic now, it would only be that much worse if we were to act militarily in Iran. That's all we need - another invasion of an Islamic country. Even more important, the sacrifice of American lives under such circumstances would border on the criminal. But that is the end game many of the opponents of the JCPOA are playing. To the extent that Republicans and other conservatives acquiesced to negotiations in the first place it was on the premise that they would fail to achieve anything. Now that the negotiations have succeeded they are desperate, and this is reflected in the inflammatory language they are using and the imposition of total Iranian capitulation, an insuperable barrier, as a condition of approval.<br />
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The heart of the matter is, as Senator Barbara Boxer has said, "Iran is a bad and dangerous actor, ... but would we rather have a bad and dangerous actor with a nuclear bomb or without one?" The answer should be obvious.Publius Reduxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665996420070790591noreply@blogger.com0