Category: Uncategorized
Trump likes incompetence and chaos
Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, the projected Secretary of State and National Security Advisor respectively, are fig leaves. Trump proposed them first to hide the ugly reality that followed.
Lowering the bar
His aim is to name people who will make him seem normal. This is difficult. He is a rapist and convicted felon who improperly stored classified material and imperiled US security. As President, Trump cozied up to Putin and incited a riot against the 2020 election result. He ran his businesses in ways that infringed on legal requirements and drove them into bankruptcy.
In this context, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Matt Gaetz fit well.
Gabbard, the nominee for Director of National Intelligence, is also a Putin sycophant and flak for Syrian President Assad.
Hegseth, the Fox News nominee for Defense Secretary, is a Christian nationalist and womanizer. He has no visible qualifications for the job except service in the Army as a major. The US Army has more than 16,000 of those.
Kennedy, nominated to lead Health and Human Services, is a flake. His “Make America Healthy Again” website doesn’t bother with discussion of the issues he is interested in. It goes straight to selling swag. In his bio, it highlights his environmental activism, entirely out of tune with Trump. But he is an anti-vaccine activist as well, claiming that all he wants is good scientific data. But he ignores the excellent scientific data already available on vaccines.
Matt Gaetz has sex with underage women, some of whom he pays for the privilege. His nomination for Attorney General was worthy of Trump. Sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein claimed Trump made a sport of sleeping with his friends’ wives. Gaetz has now withdrawn his name. Maybe Trump will give him a position that doesn’t need confirmation.
Normally when a nomination doesn’t succeed a president will pick someone less prone to controversy. I suppose the choice of Pam Bondi, former Florida Attorney General, might be seen that way. But she is ethically challenged and may not stand up well under intense scrutiny.
Exaggerating what he can do
While lowering the bar for personnel, Trump is also boasting about the incredible things he will achieve. He aims to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. His billionaire friends will cut trillions in government expenditure. He will end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
Much of this is not going to happen. Here too Trump is setting a bar. While on personnel he sets it low, on policy he sets it high. The moves he favors on immigrants and government expenditure will generate thousands of lawsuits. The stimulus to the legal profession will be unprecedented.
The result will be chaos, something Trump enjoys. He will use it to claim extraordinary powers for the presidency. He disdains democracy and seeks unfettered power. The current Supreme Court majority, which has already given him immunity from prosecution for official acts, will back him wholeheartedly.
Encouraging international chaos
On the foreign policy front, it is harder to predict the outcome. But let’s try.
If Trump ends military aid, Kyiv will have to negotiate an unsatisfactory outcome with Moscow. The result will be partition. Russia will keep most of the territory it occupies now. The Europeans will have to patrol a demilitarized zone. And rump Ukraine will face a prolonged period of instability as the Russians wage hybrid warfare against Kyiv.
Irredentist ambitions will explode worldwide. Serbia will aim to gain territory in the Balkans. China will continue its expansion in the East and South China Seas, and set its sights on Taiwan. Russia will try for Moldova and Georgia. India and Pakistan may go at it over Kashmir. Israel will annex whatever it wants of the West Bank and Gaza.
There are about 150 outstanding border disputes worldwide. Even if only a handful get worse, the international community will have a hard time managing them.
The President can impose tariffs without Congressional approval. They will re-ignite inflation in the US and have a devastating effect on the US and world economies. That will cause the Fed to slow the decline of interest rates, or maybe raise them again. Other countries will retaliate against US goods, slowing the US economy further. Even without the tariffs, the US expansion that started with Obama
A difficult four years
Trump will relish this chaos as well. But it is not good for the United States, which can barely manage one serious crisis at a time.
The current US expansion started during Obama’s presidency, in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Except for the COVID-19 recession Trump aggravated with an inept response to the epidemic, it has continued unabated since. Even without Trump’s chaos, the expansion would be unlikely to last much longer.
We are in for a difficult four years. Tighten you seat belt.
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Requiem for the world order
The post-World War II liberal order was already shaky. The past four American presidents have all contributed to undermining it. Clinton bombed Serbia without UN Security Council authorization. W mistakenly invaded Iraq in 2003. Obama neglected to nurture the 2011 Arab Spring, especially in Syria but also in Egypt. Biden gave unconditional support to an Israeli government that has violated the laws of war. Putin has pitched in with his 2003 invasion of Georgia as well as his 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine. Xi is conducting rehearsals for war with Taiwan.
Trump will bulldoze the foundations
But none of that has quite destroyed the world order. Trump will enjoy that privilege. He has already said he will cut a deal with Russia on Ukraine. The only way to do that is to stop assistance and surrender Ukrainian territory to Moscow. That will undermine NATO, even if he doesn’t withdraw from the Alliance.
Trump has no inclination to defend Taiwan. He has suggested South Korea and Japan should get their own nuclear weapons so the US can withdraw its troops. Trump will give carte blanche to Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. He will aim to reduce American troops in the Middle East, no matter what the consequences. A Trump Administration will do nothing to support democracy in the Middle East or elsewhere.
There is a big question mark on Iran. It is already a nuclear threshold state. It would need no more than weeks to obtain enough enriched uranium to make at least one nuclear weapon. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is spoiling for war with Iran. Biden has tried to restrain that impulse. He made it clear the US would not support more than the tit-for-tat exchanges of the past few months.
Would Trump continue to restrain Netanyahu? Or would he extend his unconditional support to war with Iran? If he does, any remaining foundations of the world order will be in smithereens.
The man of peace
Trump keeps on repeating he wants the fighting to stop in Ukraine. He claims to be a man of peace. But peace is not something you get when you concede to aggression or when you support it. Peace in Ukraine will require more support to Kyiv. Peace in Gaza and Lebanon will require constraints on Netanyahu. Trump appears poised to do precisely the opposite.
The implications of what Trump does will be wide and deep. Conceding to Putin in Ukraine will lead to future wars. Partition of Moldova, Bosnia, and Kosovo will follow. Invasions of the Baltics and Poland could be next. Supporting Netanyahu in Gaza and Lebanon will lead to future Palestinian or Lebanese efforts like October 7.
There is precious little any of us can do about this. American presidents have enormous leeway in foreign policy. Once he dismantles the Foreign Service and the Defense Department civil service, there will be no “deep state” resistance.
The precedent
The last time the US withdrew its commitment to world order was in the 1920s and 1930s. Republican Party isolationism then prevailed over Woodrow Wilson’s commitment to the League of Nations. America Firsters waved Nazi flags at Madison Square Garden. The US clamped down on immigration and hiked tariffs. The Nazis copied American racism. World War II was one of the results.
The world order will not be the only victim of the next Trump Administration. A lot of Americans will eventually die to stem the authoritarian resurgence his election will encourage. We acted reluctantly and too late against Germany and Japan. We are likely to delay too long this time around as well. The price for “peace in our time” can be astronomical.
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All good, until it’s not, in Atlanta
I am now past my second week of outside poll watching in Atlanta (Fulton County). Minus three days off for a jaunt to Boston to give a talk at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. By my count, I’ve now spot-checked 21 of the 34 early voting centers in the county. I’ve been to a couple more than once.
No wait no mess
I’m delighted to report that I have continued to find nothing to complain about. The early voting centers are adequately staffed and equipped. I haven’t found more than a 15-minute line anywhere. All the polling center managers say they haven’t had a longer line since early voting started.
That’s despite the record numbers of people voting. More than half of the number of people who voted in Georgia in 2020 have already voted. Most people exiting report that voting took no more than 5 minutes. None have registered complaints with me.
The Georgia Democratic Party has been concerned that polling centers post notices citing the disqualification of two candidates. All the polling centers I’ve visited display the notices prominently, along with the ballot, both inside and outside.
Four of the polling centers have had individual police officers stationed discreetly outside. I saw no indication voters felt intimidated or inhibited from voting. None of the police officers reported any incidents.
It would be hard not to conclude that Fulton County knows what it is doing and has done it well.
A long way to go
Of course there is a long way ahead. Early voting continues through November 1. Vote review panels are starting this week. Those are the panels that decide on a voter’s intention if it is not clear on the ballot. They also supervise duplication of ballots that can’t be machine read. I’ll have my first opportunity to contribute to those processes Friday, in Hall County north of Atlanta.
I am expecting an assignment to poll watch inside a polling center, also in Hall County, for election day. I am also expecting for this week assignments to ballot count monitoring. That is likely to continue for a few days after November 5.
The controversies to come
The process so far looks good to me. But that of course doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems. And even if there aren’t problems, some people will want to invent some. No one should imagine that Donald Trump is going to take a loss in Georgia without protest. He no doubt has both his mouth and his lawyers ready to complain about fraud if he loses. If he wins, he’ll extol the process.
The people voting so far in Georgia are disproportionately women. This spells trouble for the Republicans, joy for the Democrats. But of course the percentage could be reversed this week or on election day. And you really can’t tell how people vote when you ask them how the process went. Nor are there enough lawn signs or other indicators to tell you anything meaningful.
The Georgia state election board is still resolving quite a few issues, some in court. That is due to a MAGA takeover, which has put election deniers in charge. They are still trying to change the process. That is outrageous while the voting is taking place and so close to Election Day. When the courts refuse their proposals, they will no doubt complain that the election wasn’t fair.
It’s all good, until it’s not.
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Decent v indecent: you know what I mean
The choice in the American presidential election is a simple one. One candidate is decent. The other is indecent. This is true in many areas.
The economy
Trump mismanaged the COVID-19 epidemic and tanked the economy. Biden revived it. It is now growing more strongly than the pre-COVID rate.
The US economy is outpacing other countries:
Trump gave tax cuts to the rich that were expensive and did not deliver on his promises.
Biden has been really good for manufacturing:
If those aren’t enough reasons to vote for Harris, here’s another one for those in red states. Your economies depend far more on government programs than those of blue states:
Trump aims to cut those programs, give more tax breaks to the wealthy, and pay for them with tariffs the poor will shoulder more than the rich:
Immigration
Comparison of Trump’s and Biden’s immigration policies is complicated. But the numbers of illegal crossings surged during the Biden Administration as the COVID-19 pandemic receded:
The percentage of the US population that is immigrant is close to the earlier peak in 1890:
But deportations under Biden have been higher than under Trump:
More important: the US needs workers and entrepreneurs. Those immigrants Trump wants to deport open about a quarter of the new businesses in the US each year. The US has had more job openings than unemployed workers since 2018, except for the period of the pandemic:
Massive deportation would make the shortage of workers worse, reigniting inflation (along with the Trump tariffs). Immigrants have had lower crime rates than the US-born for at least 150 years. There is simply no moral, economic, or law enforcement reason for mass deportations, which would be violent and expensive.
Social issues
I can understand people who don’t like the idea of abortion. I don’t like it either. But that is not the issue. The issue is who should decide whether to end a pregnancy. I can’t imagine anyone more appropriate to do that that the pregnant woman herself, particularly if it is done before the fetus can survive. That was what Roe v Wade allowed. It should be allowed again, in all states. Anything less than that is bound to lead to confusion and strife. Governments should have a strictly limited role.
I don’t worry too much about the movement to ban books in libraries, even though the number of challenges is rising sharply:
I’m sure banning will guarantee books are read more rather than less.
But I do worry about the efforts to limit what schools teach, particularly about slavery and racism. Slavery was an abominable institution that tortured millions of people and killed many of them. No one should graduate from an American high school without that understanding. Students should also understand that enslavement of Africans was vital to America’s–and the world’s–economy for several hundred years before it was abolished. The wealth it produced is still in the hands of descendants of those who did not produce it. I’m not sure what we can do about that, but we should all appreciate the facts.
Foreign policy
The main foreign policy differences are all too apparent. Trump will back Israel to the hilt and surrender Ukraine (or part of it) to Russia. Harris will back Ukraine so long as the Ukrainians want to fight and try to restrain Israel. It is unclear what Trump would do about Taiwan. If he follows his own lead from Ukraine, he would hand it to China. Harris would likely follow Biden’s backing for the status quo against Chinese encroachments. On China, belligerence is bipartisan. Not much daylight between them.
More generally, Harris will back US NATO and Asian allies. Trump will try to wriggle free of alliance commitments.
In the past he has threatened NATO allies with letting them be attacked if they don’t ante up to 2% of GDP spent on defense by 2024. Today that means mainly Italy (where significant numbers of US troops are based), Spain, Portugal, Belgium (where NATO headquarters are located), Slovenia, and Croatia. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed the laggards over the 2% mark.
Trump has also suggested that Asian allies (South Korea and Japan) get their own nuclear weapons so that US forces can withdraw. That is a really bad idea.
Identity
Important as the issues above are, I suspect this election will come down to identity. The aging but wealthy heir Trump and the untested, fake hillbilly Vance are unabashed liars and fraudsters. They have tapped into a deep vein of white, especially male, supremacist feeling in the American population. It was always there, but they have allowed it to surface. Harris and Walz represent the opposite. The Vice President is an accomplished, well-educated Black woman running with an experienced white male as her second.
Many Americans won’t worry about the policy issues. They will vote on identity. Democrat v Republican, young v old, urban v suburban v rural, liberal v conservative, minority v majority, rich v poor. I hope they will also consider another dimension: decent v indecent. You know what I mean.
Please register and vote!
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Register now and vote when you choose!
I’ve been doing my thing with the Georgia Justice Project and VoteRidersGA for the past 10 days or so. Writing notes to people encouraging them to register and vote. Georgia, it turns out, has lots of people convicted of felonies who have either completed probation or can get off it. They can vote without paying fines or jumping through other hoops.
Of course I’ll never know what impact this will have, if any. But given the extensive efforts to limit voting, I’m willing to pitch in to encourage it. This is a non-partisan effort, even if I am a registered Democrat (who sometimes has voted Republican).
The question of course is what motivates people to limit voting. If you ask, they will tell you they want to limit voting fraud, not voting. But there is no evidence in any of the 50 states of significant voter fraud. And the “anti-fraud” efforts are concentrated in Black and other minorities areas as well as college campuses. That tells you all you need to know about the real purpose. Their efforts are counterproductive when it comes to fraud. Those challenging voter registrations are tying up election officials in mountains of paperwork, making it difficult to maintain the quality of elections in battleground states.
Nevertheless, there has been some progress in opening up the election process to encourage broader participation, partly due to the COVID-19 epidemic. The National Council of State Legislatures lists a number of states that permit “vote by mail”:
- Eight states—California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington and the District of Columbia—allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail.
- Two states—Nebraska and North Dakota—permit counties to opt into conducting elections by mail.
- Nine states—Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming—allow specific small elections to be conducted by mail.
- Four states—Idaho, Minnesota, New Jersey and New Mexico—permit mostly-mail elections for certain small jurisdictions.
Forty-seven states offer some sort of “early” voting before Election Day.
Polls can make inaccurate projections for many reasons. But one of the more difficult factors to take into account is turnout. At this point in the campaign, that is the main objective of both the Democrats and the Republicans. Convincing the few remaining undecided voters is far more difficult and labor intensive than getting your own cadres to the polls. So register, or check your registration, and vote when you can!
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Advantage Harris, but the set isn’t over
Those who imagined Kamala Harris lacked charisma and enough time to build the momentum required to run for President have already proven wrong, less than 48 hours after she became the candidate. The campaign has already taken in more than $100 million in smaller donations and even more in large ones. Tiktoks of the dancing Vice President are all over the web. The Democratic Party has united in backing her. She can win.
Republicans are having trouble finding more than her boisterous laugh to criticize. To be sure, Donald Trump is calling her a socialist and extremist. That isn’t finding much traction when applied to a career prosecutor. The contrast with his 34 felony convictions, giant civil judgments against him, and his criminal indictments is dramatic:
What Americans want
What a large slice of American wants is the Biden Administration without Biden. They want the health care provided by Obamacare. They want the access to abortion that Trump’s Supreme Court nominees took away. The pace of inflation is way down and continuing to decline while employment is holding up reasonable well. They like that, even if they complain about price levels. They don’t complain about Biden’s tax policies, which have increased taxes on the rich and reduced them on the middle class. America’s recovery from COVID has outpaced other major countries:
On foreign policy, Americans want support for Ukraine and Israel, while hoping for an early end to their wars. Support for NATO is strong. So too is support for Taiwan and other allies in the Pacific.
They would get none of that from Trump
Trump would disappoint Americans on all those fronts. He has doubted the value of US alliances in both Asia and Europe. He has even suggested that South Korea and Japan should get their own nuclear weapons, rather than sit under the US umbrella. Taiwan would have to defend itself from China.
Trump has repeatedly vowed to end Obamacare, vaunted his Supreme Court nominees, and presided over a confused and ineffective response to COVID-19. His minions have prepared plans to fire tens of thousands of competent civil servants. He intends to reduce taxes on the super rich and increase them on the middle class, via his 10% tariff.
Ad Harris
So Harris is having a good week. Trump is having such a bad one he is reportedly wondering whether he can dump JD Vance as vice presidential candidate. If you don’t get that right, are you qualified to be president?
Harris’ first big decision is likewise choosing a vice president. There is ample talent available. The question is who will help her with the most Electoral Votes. I don’t pretend to know, but I won’t be surprised if it is someone from North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin.
I’ve got friends who suggest it should be a Republican, even Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney. That would be unlikely to please the Democratic base. It’s an idea that will need to await the formation of a cabinet next year.
The long road to November
Sustaining momentum is difficult. Harris will need some future projects to talk about during he campaign. She may focus on the bipartisan immigration legislation that Trump blocked from passing in the House. She will surely push for a clearer path to citizenship for undocumented people, especially those brought to the US as children. Student loan forgiveness is another possibility, as is legislation on national rules for abortion and limits on presidential immunity.
The Democrats are fortunate that their convention is August 19-22, which gives Harris time not only to pick her vice president but also to try to ensure that the convention goes smoothly. I was in Chicago for the 1968 convention that went south. Demonstrations are to be expected. The police need to handle them well. Getting a prominent Republican or two to speak at the convention would be a good idea. Cheney or Kinzinger or fit there well, not because of policy positions. They know who Trump is and are willing to say it plainly.
There is no telling what may happen by fall. Biden and Harris will need to be in sync. She has already demonstrated that she is quick. Now she needs to demonstrate that she can manage a unifying convention, a big campaign, and Trump’s unrestrained attacks.
PS: Here is they guy who wasn’t sharp enough to be president:
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