My Next Project

I plan for my next project to be read over the Inspector General's report on the Trump investigation (which I have started) and the Senate Intelligence Committee's report.

One might ask, what does it matter now, since Trump will be out of the White House in a matter of weeks.  It matters insofar as Republicans use the investigations of Trump and Russia, and some genuine paranoia on our side, as excuses for their attempts to delegimize Joe Biden as President.  Democrats attempted to delegitimze Trump, the argument goes, so turnabout is fair play.  Democrats often descended into paranoia over Trump's Russia ties, so why shouldn't Republicans descend into paranoia over rigged elections.

There are any number of counter arguments to offer.  One is to argue that any paranoia and attempts to undermine the Trump Presidency were mere retaliation for Republican birtherism.

More plausibly, one can point out that the things simply are not comparable.  Hillary Clinton did not concede defeat on Election Night, but she conceded the next day.  President Obama duly cooperated with Team Trump on the transition.  Hillary did not sue to overturn the results, nor did she pressure state election officials not to certify results, or state legislatures to choose their own electors.  Jill Stein did call for a recount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, but that is not inappropriate in a very close election.  Trump opponents did march in protest and did encourage faithless electors, an attempt that went nowhere.  And appointing a special counsel is by no means an unprecedented act.

But another response is to defend the Russia investigation on the merits.  Although what it revealed was by no means as bad as what Trump's worst enemies suspected, it did reveal enough to fully justify holding an investigation. Unlike the "rigged" election, which exists only in some people's overheated imagination, Russian interference in 2016 was absolutely real.  And the behavior of some Trump officials was disturbing.  

More to follow.

What is he Thinking?

Make America Great Again

With a neck-and-neck election looming in Georgia that will determine control of government for the next two years, Donald Trump is doing his party no favors.  He has already vetoed the defense bill, threatened to veto COVID relief, and raised the danger of a government shutdown.  (Why Congress can't come back to Washington to override his vetoes has not been made clear).  What is he thinking?  I have heard three main options:

1. He is trying to blackmail Republicans into overturning the election or he will inflict maximum harm on the country.
2. He is deliberately trying to throw the election in Georgia because his wounded ego can't bear the thought that other Republicans can win where he lost.
3. He has no rational goals at all; he his just throwing a mindless tantrum.

I would dearly like to believe that taking such wildly unpopular actions will hurt his prospects for 2024, but, alas, voter memories are short, and this will all probably be forgotten by then.

A Final and Disturbing Comment from Stevens

 

Stuart Stevens wrote his book in the autumn of 2019, which already seems like ages ago -- and like a golden age compared to today.  At the time he wrote, there had been no COVID pandemic, no lockdowns, no Black Lives Matter riots, no armed vigilantes, and (of course) not attempts to overturn an election.

He had four quotes that I found most striking.  One was the opening comment on what he believed the Republican Party stood for.  One was his comment on political parties serving as "circuit breakers" because it so closely matched Ziblatt's comment on "gate keepers."  And one was his comment on Republicans seeing themselves as the champions of "real America" against something that is fundamentally un-American, and terrifying.

The last, which seems especially prescient when surveying the horrors of 2020 is a warning to Republicans to heed the memoirs of Franz von Papen, the conservative German politician who arranged the deal that made Hitler Chancellor.  Papen survived the war and was acquitted at Nuremburg.  He went on to write his memoirs, attempting to defend his pro-Nazi actions as the least-bad option under the circumstances.  Particularly revealing are his comments about lifting the ban on Nazi storm troopers:

Right wing meetings were continually broke up and interrupted by left wing radicals. The police, most of whom can under Socialist [Social Democratic] Ministers of the Interior in the States, did not or would not do anything about it.  The parties of the left pretended then, and continue to do so now, that the lifting of the ban on the Brownshirts was the first step in my hoisting the Nazis into the saddle. . . . All that happened was that equal rights for all parties, including both the Nazis and the Communists, had been restored.

I alone can fix it

Reading this, I felt an icy cold chill, thinking of Black Lives Matter riots, right-wing outrage at weak-kneed Democratic governors who declined to call out the National Guard to suppress the riots, and applause for vigilantes, such as Karl Ritterhouse and the Proud Boys.  Riots calmed with the end of summer, but by now riots seem to be the routine response to a police killing.  What will happen this coming summer is anyone's guess.  But the idea has distinctly taken hold on the right that left-wing violence, by Antifa and Black Lives Matter, is running out of control, abetted by weak Democratic governors.  And that vigilante violence is an appropriate response in self-defense.

We have slid a long way down the slippery slope since Stevens wrote his book.

The Need for Party Structure: Ziblatt and Stevens Together

 

As I previously mentioned, Daniel Ziblatt and Stuart Stevens' books complement each other well.  Ziblatt emphasizes the importance of political parties, including their campaign structures, in a working democracy, but his descriptions are mostly theoretical.  Stevens gives us a ground view look at political consultants and their role in democracy. 

In fact, sometimes the parallels are stunning.  Ziblatt speaks of parties as the "gatekeepers" of democracy, barring demagogues who threaten the rules of the game.*  Stevens says that parties should act as "circuit breakers" to deny the exploitation of the darkest side of our politics.**  Different figure of speech, same concept.  Stevens actually cites Ziblatt's How Democracies Die, both on the "gatekeeper" role of political parties and the danger Trump poses in rejecting the rules of the game, denying the legitimacy of opponents, tolerating violence, and threatening the civil liberties of opponents.  

Stevens' work also shows some stunning parallels to Ziblatt's earlier book, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy.  In his earlier work, Ziblatt argues that the success of democracy depends on a strong conservative party.  By a "strong" party, Ziblatt means not just electorally strong, but institutionally strong, with a well-developed party structure, led by a party elite with a vested interest in perpetuating democratic politics.  In other words, people like Stevens who figure out how to appeal to voters, run political campaigns, endeavor to win, but recognize that losing means living to fight another day.  And note that this means not just that politicians who lose can run for office again, or run for a different office, but that political consultants can move from one politician to another and use the same basic institutions. Perhaps this is a cynical view of democracy, that its survival depends on the campaign consultants who have a vested interest in competitive elections.  But, as always, the question is compared to what.

In Conservative Parties Ziblatt looks at the alternatives to a strong party structure and finds them most unattractive.  Pre-WWI the German Conservative Party reached out to the Agrarian League, a better-organized group dedicated to enhancing agricultural interests, only to find out that the party had been taken over by an interest group, and one with most unpleasant anti-Semitic, anti-urban and militaristic tendencies. Post WWI, Ziblatt compares the weak DNVP (successor to the Conservatives) to the strong Social Democrats.  The Social Democratic Party was funded by membership dues and had a party newspaper.  The DNVP had neither an independent financial base nor a party newspaper.  Instead, it came to rely on Alfred Hugenberg, a right-wing media magnate who used his media empire to stir up right-wing radicalism and his fortune to finance the party (Ziblatt estimates that he provided at least 30% of party funding). Compare this, then, with Stevens' description of the Republican Party today*** -- at the mercy of an increasingly extremist right wing media driving its voters' opinions, dependent on mega-donors and their political action committees (PAC's), and beholden to special interests such as the NRA and Grover Norquist's anti-tax zealots.  Ziblatt emphasizes the point as well in How Democracies Die.

My most serious criticism of Ziblatt is over the key issue he never addresses.  Ziblatt emphasizes the need for a strong democratic conservative party to reign in the "right wing grassroots" with their authoritarian tendencies.  He warns of the danger of letting the right wing grassroots take over.  But he never explains who these right wing grassroots are or how numerous they are  He does drop at least some hints that they may not be so numerous.  Irish Protestant militias in Britain or anti-Semites in Germany exercises influence far out of proportion to their numbers and were more ideologically extreme than electorally-minded party leaders.  This suggests that the "right wing grassroots" are more accurately characterized as the activists. And their appeal is often to bigotry -- anti-Irish in Britain, anti-Semitic in Germany, or anti-black or -Hispanic in the U.S.   A strong party can meet some of the activists' more reasonable demands (denying Catholic Ireland control over Protestant Ulster, for instance) while refusing to surrender to outright bigotry.  And the party can contain the activists, in large part, by drawing in the allegiance of a broad electoral base while limiting the activists' popular appeal.  When right-wing media, mega-donors and interests groups capture a party, they are able to stir up popular sentiment in favor of extremism and endanger democracy.

Stevens makes the same point when talking about the more rabidly anti-tax and anti-spending elements in the Republican Party.  He served as campaign advisor to the incumbent Mississippi U.S. Senator, who had brought home the bacon for his state. The challenger was an obscure state senator who had never run for state-wide office, had no local base or fund-raising network, and was running on an anti-spending platform. Doubtless the challenger could pitch himself as the voice of the grassroots running against the establishment.  But, in fact, he was himself funded by large, wealthy out-of-state activist groups, freed by Citizens United to pour unlimited money into the election.  Stevens wrote ads for the incumbent the old-fashioned way -- by boasting that he had brought home the bacon for Mississippi and would continue to do so.  The challenger, in the meantime, found that cutting spending on Mississippi was not a winning issue and made barely-coded appeals to racism.  The incumbent won by a narrow margin.

Such elections are not unique to Mississippi.  In the Delaware election to replace Joe Biden, popular Republican moderate Mike Castle lost the Republican primary to Christine O'Donnell, who had no base of support in Delaware, but did have the support of national Tea Party groups and prominent right wing media figures.  O'Donnell lost to the Democrat.  The approach is not always a failure.  Ted Cruz ran as a scrappy outsider underdog against the Texas Republican establishment, despite having served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, in the Bush Administration Department of Justice, and as Texas Solicitor General, and despite having the support of national Tea Party groups, politicians, media figures, and former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese.  Needless to say, Cruz won. But the point here is one that Democrats learned the hard way in 1972.  The distinction between the party establishment and the grass roots is a false one.  In many cases the party establishment is the grassroots.  The party establishment consists of the people who call meetings, knock on doors, and win the votes of their fellow citizens.  Candidates outside the party establishment usually need the backing of a well-funded out-of-state organization to compete.  The true dichotomy is the party establishment versus the activists, each claiming to be the true voice of We, the People.

And then there is the matter of bigotry.  Both men emphasize its importance.  Ziblatt points out that the issue of slavery tore our country apart, and that the parties were only able to turn down the temperature of politics by agreeing to exclude black people.  And he expresses the widely held suspicion that Republicans' actions are ultimately driven by a desperate white resistance against demographics.  Stevens says the same.  One wonders what they would say about Trump's recent inroads on the minority vote.  Nonetheless, Stevens made another comment that I found revealing and disturbing.  Republicans have for some time been reacting with hysteria to any Democratic gains, warning that the Democrats stand for radical Islam or Sharia or (currently) socialism.  And, he comments:

[M]ost Republicans know it's nonsense, just as they know Donald Trump is an unqualified idiot.  But what many Republican politicians actually do believe is that they represent the "real" America, and they are somewhere from uncomfortable to frightened by America's changing landscape.

__________________________________________________________________

*Ziblatt gives Charles Lindberg and Henry Ford as examples.

**His example is Todd Akin, who the Republican Party refused to support when he denied that rape could cause pregnancy.

***See especially chapters 5 and 6.

Stuart Stevens: It Was All a Lie

 

And now for the book I was really looking forward to, It Was All a Lie by former Republican consultant Stuart Stevens.  

An important qualifier applies here.  Stevens wrote his book in fall, 2019.  It seems a golden age compared to 2020.  He was thus unaware of a number of events that lay ahead.  Those events will nonetheless inform my writing.

Stevens begins his book by setting forth what he took to be Republican values, and how he turned out to be wrong:

I was drawn to a party that espoused a core set of values: character counts, personal responsibility, strong on Russia, the national debt actually mattered, immigration made America great, a big-tent party that invited all.  Legislation could come and go, compromises would be necessary, but these principles were assumed to be shared and defined what it meant to be a Republican for fifty years.

 So, speaking as a Democrat, do I agree that these were Republican values?  Let's go through them one by one:

Character counts:  What exactly that means is a bit unclear.  Presumably it means having high standards in leaders an not mindlessly supporting them just because they are on our team.  I think I speak for many on our side in saying I thought the emphasis on character was just a tool to bash Bill Clinton.  Republicans seems to define character mostly in terms of private vices, particularly in matters of sex.  I thought they were fools to suggest that Clinton was our first chronic womanizer to be elected President, although he may have been the first whose record was widely known.  I also thought it absurd to think that he was a uniquely bad character who disgraced the office held by such august figures as Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.  Besides a chronic womanizer, Clinton was also a draft dodger, but that vice was rampant in his generation of politicians.  Eight years of frantic digging by Republicans failed to disclose any significant public corruption.  But I suppose that if on takes "character counts" to mean that Republicans are more particular about sexual indiscretions than Democrats and less likely to dismiss them as private matters, then pre-Trump I would have agreed.  To the extent that a politicians vices affect public duties that is a different matter altogether.

Personal responsibility:  When I talk to conservatives and read their writing, I would say I did see this as a major difference in values between conservatives and liberals.  Liberals tend to define justice as not imposing any unfair burdens and disadvantages, while conservatives defined justice as not taking anything you didn't earn and not giving anyone an unfair advantage.  Both liberals and conservatives admire people who overcome hardship, but liberals were more likely to see that as a reason for removing hardships, while conservatives were more likely to see hardships as challenges to be overcome.  What particularly struck me (I am thinking especially of Rod Dreher here) is that, while someone like Rod Dreher might acknowledge that unjust social structures might exist, and that fate might be unfairly stacked against some people, he basically saw any collective effort to change unjust structures and make the system less stacked against some people was an immoral abdication of personal responsibility, and that people should stick to overcoming such obstacles by individual effort.  I also saw plenty of evidence of hypocrisy there.  Personal responsibility often seemed more like something to lecture other people (most of whom were not white) than something Republicans necessarily practices themselves.  But there is plenty of hypocrisy on our side as well, so maybe I shouldn't just too harshly.

Strong on Russia:  Agreed.  Pre-Trump Republicans were Russia hawks.  

The national debt actually mattered:  ROTFLMAO! It has been obvious on our side of the divide for a long time that Republicans' alleged concern for the national debt comes into play only when a Democrat is President.  It is an ongoing scam.  Republicans make huge tax cuts without comparable spending cuts, ignore the resulting deficits, and then suddenly freak out and demand massive spending cuts as soon as a Democrat is elected.  The Democrat manages to shrink the deficit somewhat while Republicans spend the whole administration denouncing deficits and profligacy, until the next time a Republican is elected President.  Then the cycle repeats.  I will say, though, that various ex-Republicans I read assure me that Republicans are genuinely unaware of the obvious.  Tom Nichols, for instance, got rather offended when someone pointed out this scam and said that no one ever mentioned it when he was a Republican.  Bruce Bartlett says that Republicans 100% believe that tax cuts increase revenues.

Immigration made America great:  I don't think Republicans used to be such a hard-core nativist party as they are now.  Ronald Reagan, for instance, supported an immigration amnesty.  And I could not honestly say when Republicans started being hardcore nativists.  But certainly it should have been obvious by the second GWB term.

Big tent party:  I am not clear what Stevens means by this.  Does he refer to all races and ethnicities?  If so, he must have noticed that, much as the Republican Party may want to attract minorities, it remains stubbornly white.  If he means ideologically, clearly when a country as large as the United States has only two parties, both parties have to allow a certain ideological flexibility.  But that flexibility has been diminishing for some time.

Stevens then goes on, chapter by chapter, to discuss the Republican Party as it really is. He begins with race. When Democrats embraced the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's, Republicans responded by appealing to the backlash against civil rights.  Republicans wonder why they can't appeal to black voters, but the answer is staring them in the face. (He does not, interestingly, fault any Republicans after Reagan on this count).  I believe this to a considerable extent, but the recent election has raised questions about it.  Donald Trump, despite being the most blatant and bigoted nativist, probably since the 1920's, made major inroads into the Hispanic vote.  And despite barely veiled appeals to racism (Cory Booker will bring low-income people into the suburbs), he made (more modest) inroads into the black vote as well.  This should stand as a warning to Democrats.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the white working class a solid Democratic constituency for a generation. Look where it is now.  we are farther now from the Civil Rights movement than Ronald Reagan was from the Great Depression.  We can't count on the minority vote forever. It has to be earned.

He also rips Republicans for their concerns about "character" and "family values," both referring mostly to matters of sex, commenting not just that Republicans have often failed to practice what they preach, but that some of the most bigoted, homophobic consultants have been gay.  He points out the Republicans' obvious, glaring inconsistency on deficits and debt and another, almost as obvious political truth -- railing against spending in the abstract is a winning political strategy, but calling for specific cuts is a surefire loser.  He warns that Republicans' longstanding history of anti-intellectualism has degenerated into a distrust of knowledge, which has degenerated into a distain for facts and evidence, and, ultimately, an inability to make any sort of coherent policy beyond just rooting for Team Us over Team Them.  He explores the alternate reality created by the right-wing media, dating back as far as 1944 and the magazine Human Events. He discusses the inordinate power of special interest groups, such as the NRA, or Grover Norquist's anti-tax movement and the inordinate power of big money donors.

Next: How Stevens and Ziblatt interact.

Make America Great Again

 

So far Donald Trump has attempted to overturn the election by:

• Suing to overturn the outcome
• Pressuring election officials to throw out votes
• Pressuring state legislatures to choose their own slate of electors
• Asking for a special counsel to investigate voter fraud
• Asking the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines
• Considering martial law.

All of these attempts have failed.  The next one up will take place on January 6 and will be an attempt to get Congress to reject the results of the Electoral College. As I understand it, that can work only if both houses of Congress vote to reject the outcome.  We know the House will not vote to reject the outcome because the House has a Democratic majority.  It seems extremely likely that enough Senate Republicans will vote to accept the outcome that the attempt will fail in the Senate as well. So the latest ploy will also fail

But Congress certifies the election results on January 6, 2021.  Inauguration Day is January 20, 2021.  Two weeks lie between those events.  And that is when Trump will become truly desperate.  I don't know what he will attempt, but truly all I can think of is an actual insurrection by his supporters.  

So buckle up your seatbelts.  There could be turbulence ahead.

The Clear Flaw in Trump's Strategy

 

But her e-mails!

Donald Trump appears to be pursuing a two-track approach to losing the election.  One track is to attempt to overturn the election.  The other is to burn it all down on the way out.

Burning it all down includes vetoing the defense authorization bill, threatening to veto COVID relief and/or the general budget and let the government shut down in the middle of a pandemic an economic crisis, failing to respond to an unprecedented security breach, making wildly corrupt pardons, etc. etc.  

The pardons will probably play well with the base and not draw much attention from low information voters. But the rest of it looks to be wildly unpopular, even with supporters.  I get that these actions are an attempt to inflict as much damage as possible so as to hobble his successor.

But they also look like an  implied admission that the attempt to overturn the election will fail.  After all, if it succeeds in overturning the election, Trump will be stuck having to clean up the mess he himself created.