Short Note on the Epstein Suicide

Really Donald Trump has done our side a great favor in tweeting the nutty conspiracy theory about the Clintons.  Before that, our own side was showing signs of sinking into a paranoia of its own.

But Trump just had to retweet someone's comment blaming Bill and Hillary to snap our side out and rally us against conspiracy theories.  So good work, Donald!

One More Comment on the Brexit

Polls show that Brexit supporters feel very strongly that their sovereignty is on the line.  For the sake of Brexit, they are willing to see North Ireland, Scotland, and even Wales withdraw from the United Kingdom, and willing to see the economy crash.

This is widely being portrayed as irrational and hysterical, but I am not so sure.  After all many countries have made great sacrifices for the sake of protecting their sovereignty.

So maybe the real question is not whether withdrawal from the EU would entail some hardships -- we all agree that it would.  The real question should be whether Britain is withdrawing from the frying pan only to take refuge in the fire.

Donald Trump is eager to see a no-deal Brexit.  The reason he wants the Brits to leave without a deal is that if Britain leaves the EU regulatory zone, he can hope to bring Britain into the US regulatory zone.  And make no mistake, if Britain joins the US regulatory zone, it will not be as an equal partner, but has subordinate dependency.

Likewise, Vladimir Putin is eager to see Britain crash out of the EU without a deal, and his motives are obvious. What he wants is for the British economy to tank and Russia to come forward as the rescuer.  This will, of course, mean reducing Britain to a subordinate dependency -- of Russia.

So maybe the real question to ask Brexit supporters is not whether they are prepared to accept the loss of non-English Britain and the tanking of the economy for the sake of restoring England's sovereignty.  The question should be whether ending up as a subordinate dependency of either the US or Russia rates as sovereignty and, if not, whether it is a preferable infringement on sovereignty to the EU.

A Note on the Debt Ceiling

I am of mixed minds about the quiet, no-drama raising of the debt ceiling.  On the one hand, the debt ceiling should not be a hostage and all such games of chicken should be discouraged.

On the other hand, for Republicans to hold the debt ceiling hostage and Democrats not to does feel rather like unilateral disarmament.

On the whole, I think the Democrats did the right thing to raise the debt ceiling with a minimum of fuss.  After a big, dramatic showdown with Obama, Republicans ultimately appear to have decided that such showdowns are more trouble than they are worth.  So maybe -- maybe -- we just might be seeing a broken norm being restored.

Of course, a much better option would have been to do away with the debt ceiling altogether and prevent any future such showdowns.

Do We Have a Warped Set of Priorities?

Consider recent stories regarding Donald Trump.

Asylum seekers, including children, are being held in overcrowded and inhumane conditions.  The Trump Administration claims to have a third country agreement requiring all asylum seekers to seek and be refused asylum in Guatemala before coming here.  The Administration is making other plans to cut the number of asylum seekers admitted to near zero.  Steve Miller is also seeking a plan to greatly reduce the number of green card holders.  Donald Trump put out a tweet to four non-white Congresswomen who oppose him to "go back home" and led crowds chanting "Send her back!" about the only one of the four who is not U.S. born.

Which one of these developments gets the most attention?  The last, of course.  The first, asylum seekers held in inhumane conditions, has gotten some attention, mostly because of the Squad's attempts to draw attention to it.  But the changes in immigration policy have flown mostly under the radar.

Part of this is the media's Washington focus.  It is easier to focus on the President's latest outrageous tweets than developments taking place along the border, let alone prospective changes affecting mostly people in other countries.  But let's face it, We, the People, are not blameless here either.  It really is easier to focus on a story about a famous guy that lots of ordinary folks we never heard of.  Especially if those ordinary folks aren't even fellow citizens. 

On the one hand, to report the tweets without the policy is to strip them of all context.  It allows Trump supporters to portray him as harmless, just a little rough around the edges, and to dismiss objections to him as mere trifles of aesthetics.  Bigoted tweets look a lot less like a harmless blowing off steam when you see the bigoted policies that lie behind them.

On the other hand, let's face it.  There are people who are not bigots who support Trump's basic immigration policy, although they would prefer a more humane way of carrying it out.  And even more people simply can't bring themselves to care about anyone who is not a fellow citizen.  We should not make immigration policy outside the bounds of reasonable discourse.

And Trump's tweets show what sort of regard he has for a lot of fellow citizens.  And increasingly, the tweets and the rallies show that even Trump tweets are not a mere roughness of style, or a trifle of aesthetics.  The tweets and the rallies are active attempts to rile up the mob and inflame people's basest passions.  And such actions are very dangerous indeed.

Brexit is Going About How I Expected

When Salon used the purported Venn Diagram on the left to show the options for Brexit, I was unduly annoyed at the abuse of Venn Diagrams, but I could see what the outcome would be.  The diagram showed three alternatives.  A deal between Britain and the EU would be acceptable to Leave voters and would not crash the British economy, but was not acceptable to the EU, which wanted Britain to suffer.  A new referendum (with Leave probably failing) was acceptable to the EU and would not crash the British economy, but was not acceptable to Leave voters.  And crashing out without a deal was acceptable to both Leave voters and the EU, but would crash the British economy.

I could see how that was going to end up.  Either a deal or a referendum would force someone to back down in a humiliating fashion, and that obviously wasn't going to happen.  So if everyone dug in their heals, the only possible outcome was for Britain to crash out without a deal and let the chips fall where they may.

Of course, I was wrong about some things.  The EU did, after all, agree to give Britain a deal.  But Leave voters and leaders found the terms humiliating and unacceptable, so they turned it down.  The Brits needed some time to dither and delay in order to accept the pain of a no-deal exit as preferable to the humiliation of any deal the EU would offer, but they appear to have gotten there.  The delay also served the useful purpose of allowing the Brits to stockpile supplies for the initial shock of exit, so Brexit will doubtless be less painful that it would have been if it had happened sooner.

I recommended that what the Brits needed was a top-notch demagogue to sufficiently stoke their anger at being made an example of that they could see Brexit as a sort of war -- a replay of the WWI with their leader as a latter day Winston Churchill, the German-led EU as the Nazis, and the hardships associated with a no-deal leave as sort of like bombing during the Blitz.  That is, in fact, just what is happening now.  Although the British are not usually distinguished for their demagogues, three appear to have risen to the occasion -- Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, and Nigel Farage.  I am inclined to see Johnson as the least bad choice among them -- someone we can hope will direct British anger only at the EU and not at immigrants (as with Farage) or Jews (as with Corbyn).

Of course, I made the same suggestion to the Greeks when facing the possibility of Grexit.  They should combine skilled economic planning for leaving the euro (but not the EU) with a top-notch demagogue to treat the EU/Germans as Nazis and the ensuing hardships as the equivalent of WWII.  Admittedly, good planning and good demagogues do not often go together.  And, in the end, the Greeks backed down, not ready yet -- emotionally or technocratically -- to deal with the upheaval that would follow.  Perhaps if they had dragged out the negotiations for longer they might have both made adequate preparations to soften the blow as much as possible (though it would still have been severe) and to stoke public anger far enough the accept the Grexit and ensuing hardships.

Well, the Brits have had more than long enough now to make plans, and long enough to build public anger to where it can take No Deal.  They have also managed a reasonable division of labor -- Theresa May as the sober leader who made necessary plans to soften the impact of a no-deal Brexit, and Boris Johnson as the demagogue who will fire up the public to accept the pain of impact, whatever that may be.

If Donald Trump Shot Someone in the Middle of Fifth Avenue

If Donald Trump shot someone in the Middle of Fifth Avenue, various new commentators would explain that it was a shrewd maneuver to gain the votes of ordinary Americans.  After all, ordinary Americans are all murderers and think that laws against murder are elitist and inauthentic.  Warnings would circulate to Democrats not to condemn the murder lest they play into Trump's hands.  Handwringers would warn that, although Trump was wrong to shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, Democrats were equally wrong to insist on making an issue of it. 

Is the Squad the Democrats' Freedom Caucus?

The Squad

So, with that out of the way on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are she and her cohorts making up the "Squad" -- Illhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley -- the Democratic equivalent of the House Freedom Caucus?

Certainly there is some resemblance.  Both groups are insurgents, dead set against compromise and against politics as the art of the possible.  Both are determined to let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough, and are more interested in issuing demands, attracting attention, and (they hope) moving the Overton Window, that in passing actual legislation.  Both are serious headaches for House leadership, refusing to take political or even practical reality into account, willing to court disaster for the sake of ideological purity.  And both have awakened in the other party a "strange new respect" for the ideologically committed, but politically pragmatic Speaker, who has the frustrating job of dealing with the insurgents.

But there are differences as well, drawn from the differences between the parties.

Former Speaker John Boehner, frustrated in his dealings with the House Freedom Caucus, said of them, "They can’t tell you what they’re for. They can tell you everything they’re against. They’re anarchists. They want total chaos. Tear it all down and start over. That’s where their mindset is."  Devin Nunes referred to the House Freedom Caucus as "lemmings with suicide vests."  Pelosi, by contrast, dismissed the Squad as media personalities, with no real legislative heft, but did not appear to dissent from their ultimate goals.

In other words, the Freedom Caucus were basically wreckers.  They wanted to put and end to vast swaths of the Federal Government.  Doubtless they would agree that an orderly dismantling was the ideal way to go about it.  But if an orderly dismantling was not in the cards, obstruction, incompetence, shutdowns, and even default on the national debt were all effective, after all.  The Squad, by contrast, wants to build programs, which calls for some actual knowledge and skill and willingness to work in a constructive manner.

Furthermore, the Freedom Caucus followed the Republican Party as a whole in its determination to deny President Obama any sort of success.  As such, they were opposed to any compromise, any bipartisan legislation, and constantly eager to undertake actions that would hurt the country, such as government shutdowns and debt ceiling breaches.  By contrast, both AOC and Rashida Tlaib have asked questions of the chairman of the Federal Reserve that makes clear they are willing to put their country's well-being above partisan advantage.  And AOC is apparently working on bipartisan legislation with Ted Cruz.

More importantly, the name "Squad" itself reveals something important -- the four members are not enough to rate as a caucus.  The Democrats have a House Progressive Caucus with some 98 members -- most of whom voted for compromise legislation that the Squad opposed.  Pelosi's whole point in dismissing the four was that they were not numerous enough to carry any legislative weight.  The House currently has 235 Democrats out of a total of 435.  That means that even if all members of the Squad refused to vote for a measure, it could still pass with purely Democratic votes.

This is in contrast to the Freedom Caucus, which was numerous enough to block legislation by defecting.  That meant that the Republican leadership in introducing legislation either had to make it far enough to the right to gain the votes of the Freedom Caucus (which often made legislation highly unpopular with the country as a whole) or else to form a coalition with Democrats, which moved legislation to the left of the Republican mainstream.  In particular, Republicans had to rely on Democratic votes for must-pass legislation such as raising the debt ceiling, which gave Democrats considerable bargaining power.  No wonder the leadership found the Freedom Caucus so frustrating!

But if the Democrats have the advantage of being able to bypass the Squad in passing legislation, they have a disadvantage as well.  The Squad, unlike the House Freedom Caucus, has to deal with the Right Wing Noise Machine.  Fox News, talk radio, and the whole, disciplined right wing mediasphere all train their focus on the Squad, playing up every controversy (real and imagined) about them and eventually forcing the mainstream to deal with the noise as well.

And I confess to being of two minds about this.  On the one hand, I do believe that the Squad, like the Freedom Caucus, needs to learn some lessons on the art of the possible, and to accept that most of the country does not agree with them.

On the other hand, it is a mistake to believe that anyone can ever placate the Great Right Wing Noise Machine.  Even if the Squad did shut up, the Noise Machine would just move on to another target.  Before the latest dust-up, that target was Nancy Pelosi.