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.

How Democracies Die: How Have We Fared

 Ziblatt purports to take a comparative international view of how democracies die, by comparing Trump to other potentially authoritarian leaders.  He argues that authoritarian leaders can subvert democracy by doing three things -- capturing the referees, sidelining key players, and tilting the playing field.

By capturing referees, Ziblatt refers to referees with the power of the state, such as judges, law enforcement, intelligence agencies, ethics agencies, and the like.  In other words, the "deep state."  by sidelining key players, Ziblatt means non-state actors who are nonetheless politically influential, such as news media, donors, and influential cultural figures.  By tilting the playing field, he means measures such as gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, and the like.  Needless, American politicians have been seeking to tilt the playing field for a long time, but authoritarian leaders take such measures to extremes.

Ziblatt, writing after Trump has been in power for about a year, warned that a potentially authoritarian leader's record at one year was not necessarily a good measure of what the future held.  He offered ten potential authoritarian leaders -- Argentina's Juan Domingo Peron, Eduador's Rafael Correa, Hungary's Viktor Orban, Italy's Silvia Berusconi, Peru's Alberto Fujimori and Ollanta Humalo, Poland's Jaraslaw Kaczynski, Russia's Vladimir Putin, Turkey's  Recep Erdogan, and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.  Fujimori and Erdogan, for instance, showed no obvious authoritarian tendencies at one year, yet both ultimately subverted democracy.  But the book makes no really systematic comparisons.  It gives an extended narrative for Chavez and Fujimori, for instance, but says almost nothing about some of the others. I would have preferred that he choose a smaller number of authoritarians and go over a clear account of how they subverted democracy -- or attempted and failed.  

One point he does make is the danger of attempting to defeat a potential authoritarian by resorting to extraordinary (and sometimes extralegal) means.  Such measures can scare off moderates by making the opposition look extreme.  They can furnish a pretext for crack down.  And, above all, violating norms leads to serial escalation of norm violation and makes a functioning democracy extremely hard to restore.  Zimblatt notes, for instance, that Hugo Chavez' opponents undermined their own image as democrats and helped him to consolidate power when they attempted a coup. Something similar happened in Turkey with Erdogan.  He contrasts that to Colombia, where the opposition stuck to normal channels in opposing an increasingly autocratic leader and were able to reign him in.  

For that reason, Ziblatt advises against impeachment.  Not answered -- what if Trump does something legitimately impeachable.  And if there is one thing that Trump has made clear, it is that getting rid of him the old-fashioned way, by election, is a lot more difficult and dangerous than most people anticipated.

It also sheds serious light on how successful Republicans in general and Trump in particular have been with the three strategies of an authoritarian -- capturing referees, sidelining key players, and tilting the playing field.

Capturing the referees.  Ziblatt mentions the firing of James Comey, urging the Justice Department to prosecute political opponents, and use of pardons and promises of pardons as attempts to capture the referees.  He judges that attempt a failure, and that has been borne out by the post-election.  Judges (except for three on the Wisconsin Supreme Court) have consistently and indignantly refused to overturn election results.  Secretaries of state and election boards (with a small number of exceptions in Michigan) have certified the results and state legislatures have refused to overturn them.  The Justice Department has found no significant voter fraud and (so far) has resisted appointing a special prosecutor to investigate.  The Department of Homeland Security refuses to seize voting machines.  The military refuses to declare martial law.  The "deep state" has held firm and, as David Frum comments, "deep state" is simply code for rule of law.

Sidelining key players.  Ziblatt gives references to "fake news" and some attempts to use anti-trust laws to threaten hostile media outlets as attempts at sidelining key players.  The attempts have notably failed.  Mainstream media outlets have responded with some quite impressive investigative journalist, and their subscriptions have increased.  Trump in general and Republicans in particular have had some success pressuring social media to to favor right wing sources in their search engines. But the response to Trump's attempt to overturn the election has been robust -- mainstream media have made clear in no uncertain terms that Trump's claims of fraud are unfounded, and his attempts to overturn an election are an unprecedented outrage.

Tilting the playing field.  This one is rather a different matter.  Republicans have a longstanding habit of making voting harder to do.  Both parties have a tradition of gerrymandering but Republicans, by all accounts, are successful more often.  And one thing that has become clear following this election is that a lot of Republicans see Democratic votes in a very real sense as fundamentally illegitimate.  Obviously attempts to tilt the playing field have not been entirely successful.  Trump lost, after all.  But all evidence is that Republicans will continue and escalate the attempt in an effort to lock in a monopoly on power.  The players most likely to endorse the attempt to overturn this election are ones like members of Congress or state attorney generals who do not have the actual power to do so. Republicans with the actual power -- judges, election officials, state legislatures, the Department of Justice -- have declined.  But all evidence points to continued and ever increasing efforts to tilt the playing field.

Ziblatt, both in this book and his previous one, emphasizes the importance of political parties and election consultants in upholding democracy.  I next intend to discuss Stuart Stevens' book for the same issue from the perspective of a political consultant. 

How Democracies Die, Continued

 

So back to Ziblatt.  My last post went over his view that political parties are key to to success of democracy.  In particular, political parties' role is either to block the nomination of potentially authoritarian candidates or, failing that, to form pro-democracy coalitions to keep authoritarians out.  I have also criticized Ziblatt for assuming that all political outsiders, and everyone who criticizes political insiders, is automatically an authoritarians.  To automatically bar outsiders is to allow democracy to become sclerotic and degenerate into a cozy little oligarchy.

Another way to see whether outsiders are a threat to democracy is to see whether they respect accepted norms.  Norms are unwritten rules of democratic fair play.  Breaking norms does break any laws, but it does mean fighting dirty and dirtier.  People who see our system as hopelessly corrupt tend to denounce norms and say that there should not be any.  And (Ziblatt acknowledges), never changing norms can lead to excess rigidity.  

Ziblatt cites the classic example of a norm that held -- Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court kept finding his actions unconstitutional, and he threatened to increase its from nine to fifteen members.  This led to cries of outrage that FDR was fighting dirty and ended with him backing down.  It also ended with the Supreme Court backing down and finding his actions constitutional. (The "switch in time saved nine.")  Ziblatt's classic constructive violation of a norm was by FDR's cousin, Teddy Roosevelt, who had dinner with Booker T. Washington.  This was regarded as a scandalous breach of racial etiquette at the time.  We look upon it as a major advance of the cause of racial equality.  

And sometimes democracy can survive the violation of a norm if it leads to a new norm.  The classic example is Andrew Jackson's veto of the National Bank.  Up until then, the assumption had been in favor of legislative supremacy and the President was expected to veto legislation only if he considered it unconstitutional.  Since the Supreme Court had found a national bank to be constitutional, the norms of his day did not allow Jackson to veto the bank, no matter how much he might dislike it as a matter of policy.  But he scandalized establishment opinion by vetoing the bank anyhow.  Democracy survived and developed a new norm that holds to this day -- the President may veto any legislation he wishes.

Ziblatt also uses the term "norms" rather promiscuously and seems unable to distinguish a true norm from a mere custom.  He gives as examples of harmless norm breaking Jimmy Carter getting out of the limousine and walking to his inauguration, or Donald Trump not having a White House pet.  But these are not norm violations, merely departures from custom.  What is the difference?  A norm violation breaks the perceived but unwritten rules of democratic fair play.  A norm violation provokes cries of dirty pool.  I don't think anyone thought that it was dirty pool for Jimmy Carter to walk to his inauguration, or for Donald Trump not to keep a pet.  And sometimes breaking old norms leads to new norms.  I mentioned above Andrew Jackson's veto of the National Bank, which changes the norm of Presidents vetoing only legislation they deemed unconstitutional to vetoing legislation for policy reasons.  Ziblatt mentions William Henry Harrison openly campaigning for President in the 1840's, when it had previously been the custom for candidates to pretend indifference to the outcome.

But Ziblatt considers two norms essential -- mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance.  Mutual tolerance is straightforward enough.  Rival politicians and parties must accept the other side as legitimate.  Losers must accept electoral outcomes and live to fight another day, while winners must not seek permanent victory, but must allow the losers to always to come back and contest the next election.  Needless to say, Donald Trump is violating this norm in a big way post-defeat.

Institutional forbearance is a lot harder to define.  Essentially, it means political actors must use less than their full power.  He gives as examples executive orders, presidential pardons, Senate concurrence in Presidential appointments, and impeachment.  He also gives the filibuster as an example, but the filibuster is an excellent illustration of why institutional forbearance can be so hard to define.  The filibuster was once considered an extreme measure, to be used only for major and extremely controversial measures.  Over time, it has become a routine measure, such that the 60-vote super majority is considered the normal procedure in the Senate and passing legislation by simple majority is somewhere between radical and scandalous.  So which is the  norm violation, the constant use of the filibuster, or the increasingly frequent exceptions being carved out?  And, again, what of changes in acceptable use of institutional power, such as the Presidential veto?

Ziblatt suggests that violations of institutional forbearance are most alarming when they undermine mutual tolerance.  In other words, when the party controlling one branch of government appears to be using its power to permanently lock the other party out, that is particularly cause for alarm.  Ziblatt offers may examples from early in Trump's term (the book is copyright 2018).  But none of those example are so alarming as the current attempt to overturn an election.

To be conitnued.

One More Comment

I don't know if I have said this before.  I fully expect most Congressional Republicans to continue to profess uncertainty as to who our next President will be up through January 5.  On January 6, they will have no choice but to make a decision.

My guess is that the majority of Republicans in both houses will refuse to accept the outcome of the Electoral College.  In the House, the Democrats will hold a majority and vote to certify Biden.  In the Senate, the Republicans will hold a majority, but a handful (probably Romney, Collins, Murkowski, Sasse and Toomey, all of whom have already declared for Biden) will join the Democrats to certify Biden.  Republicans will probably keep litigating the election until the inauguration -- and maybe even after.  And Republicans for the next four years will use the close vote to question Biden's legitimacy.

As for the Georgia Senate elections, I 100% endorse everything in this article.  Compromise will be impossible if Republicans control the Senate.  Yes, there are moderate Republican Senators who support compromise legislation.  But the Majority Leader controls what comes to the floor, and, unless the Democrats win both seats in Georgia, the Majority Leader is Mitch McConnell.  

I would add one thing to the article, though.  I think winning even one of the Georgia Senate seats will be worth doing.  Why?  Because maybe we could persuade one Republican Senator to bolt the party.  (It has happened before).  He or she wouldn't have to become a Democrat, just an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.  My bet would be on Pat Toomey.  He has decided not to run for reelection, so he has nothing to lose, and he is clearly fed up with his party's behavior.  If we can persuade Toomey to bolt, there will be a rich irony to it. Toomey was elected in 2010 after his predecessor, Arlen Specter, another moderate Republican, switched parties and thereby tanked his career.

Update:  No, apparently not Pat Toomey.  Fearing that he might be considered reasonable, Toomey set out to sink COVID relief by inserting a poison pill to keep the Fed from saving the economy.

Altmeyer and Dean: Authoritarian Nightmare

 I went ahead and bought Authoritarian Nightmare by John Dean and Robert Altmeyer, even though I suspected (correctly, it turned out), that the book would do little more than recap earlier writings I had already read.

For anyone who does not know, John Dean was an aide to Richard Nixon who was implicated in Watergate, and who was the first to testify against his bosses.  At the time, Dean saw the Republican Party close ranks in favor of the rule of law and against Nixon once the full extent of his criminality became clear.  Dean's political career was over and he stayed out of the spotlight until he increasingly began seeing the Republican Party running off the rails.  He did some research to make sense of it and ultimately found the explanation that made most sense was with social psychologist Robert Altemeyer's research on the authoritarian personality.

Altemeyer and other scholars of the authoritarian personality came to their field wanting to understand how democracies fail.  Their inspiration (as is so often the case) was the failures of democracy in Europe between WWI and WWII.  Central to research on the subject, and to Dean and Altmeyer's book, is that to understand how demagogues subvert democracy, understanding the demagogue is less important than understanding his followers.  Obviously, Trump is a pathological personality in numerous ways.  While we want to have as few individuals like him as possible, the fact remains that the United States is a big country, and out of so many people it will be impossible to avoid have some pathological individuals.  But a demagogue without followers is powerless.  So more important than understanding where demagogues come from is understanding why so many people flock to them. 

Much of the book is unoriginal.  Its speculation on how Trump got to be the pathological person that he is parallel what his niece, Mary wrote in her own book.  Its general discussion of right wing authoritarians (authoritarian followers), social dominance orientation (typical authoritarian leaders) and double highs (people with both traits).  Authoritarian followers are conventional people, submissive to leaders the consider legitimate, and aggressive on their behalf.  They are more interested in loyalty to a leader than in a neutral set of values, more swayed by authority and group loyalty than by facts and logic, and unconcerned about people outside their in-group.  And they are driven in their aggression by fear and self-righteousness.

People with a high social dominance orientation (SDO) are potential authoritarian leaders.  Less common that authoritarian followers, high SDO individuals are cynically amoral and seek to advance their own fortunes with no regard for others.  That sounds like Donald Trump, all right.  Then there are the double highs, who have the traits of both an authoritarian follower and and authoritarian leader.  They have the drive to both dominate and submit.  It seems a strange combination.  But a double high may seek to dominate and demand submission from others.  Or a double high may not be at the top of the hierarchy and be submissive to people above but domineering to people below.  Or a double high may seek domination of his (most double highs are male) group, but want submission within the group. 

Double highs are not common, but they are particularly dangerous.  The authors describe them as combining the worst traits of an authoritarian leader and an authoritarian follower.  Double highs combine the dogmatism, religious fundamentalism and self-righteousness of authoritarian followers with the power madness and amoral manipulation of authoritarian leaders.  Except that Trump does not fit that description very well at all.  Whatever else the man may be, he is neither dogmatic nor a religious fanatic. Nor does he strike me as self-righteous in the manner of (say) Ted Cruz or Newt Gingrich.  Trump comes across as unapologetically amoral, so maybe he is not a double high, but only an SDO.  

Ah, but there is one double high feature about him that the authors strangely missed. They implausibly claim that Trump probably has not had a submissive inclination since his father died, but that manifestly is not true.  His submissive behavior toward authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Recep Erdogan, Mohammed Bin Salman, or Kim Jong-un is notorious.  Yes, one can attempt to explain it away.  Maybe Trump is submissive to Putin because of blackmail. Maybe he was just sucking up to Xi to get a good trade deal.  Maybe fawns on Erdogan because of his Turkish investments and backs MBS to the hilt for fear he will raise oil prices.  But Kim Jong-un?  It seems a safe bet that Trump has no investments in North Korea, has never had any dealings with North Korea that could open him to blackmail, has nothing to gain by his friendliness with Kim and really not much reason to fear him.  (Yes, North Korea has nukes, but presumably it fears U.S. retaliation if it ever uses them).  I suppose Trump could be buttering Kim up in hopes of getting him to agree to a big nuclear disarmament deal.  But that wouldn't explain why he so relished hearing how Kim executed his own uncle.  

I would therefore be more inclined to agree with the authors when they say:

Other social dominators who have been beaten by the alpha can similarly endorse submission.  They have power leader's lieutenants and sergeants and enjoy exerting it.  It is in their interest that everybody else submit, so they score highly on the RWA scale as well.

Trump seems to recognize that authoritarian leaders like Putin, Xi, Erdogan, MBS and Kim exercise a kind of power he does not have the opportunity -- and perhaps not the raw brutality -- to exercise.  So he submits to them and vicariously relishes their cruelty that he cannot exercise himself.

There were a few other interesting revelations not found in Altemeyer's earlier online book.  A survey of state legislators taken in the mid-1990's showed a wide range of authoritarian scores for Democrats, but Republicans all tended to cluster high, except in Connecticut.  This would suggest that the Republican Party has been moving in an authoritarian direction for a long time. Another quite disturbing finding was that surveys on authoritarianism found that people are endorsing more authoritarian views (i.e. answering yes on more of the statements measuring authoritarianism) than the have seen before.  Where in the past many people might answer yes to a few questions, today more are more people are widely answering yes.  And double highs, once rare, are becoming increasingly common -- as many as 14% of respondents in one survey.  Another interesting finding -- when asked if Trump should declare the election void if he lost, two-thirds of Trump supporters said no.  Only 14% said yes and 19% were unsure.  Those numbers have since moved in a most alarming direction.*

But the entry in the book I found the most interesting of all was not part of the body at all, but a footnote.  Apparently Altmeyer made a career studying authoritarian psychology to understand how people could reject democracy.  His focus was mostly theoretical or historical -- how it happened in other societies, and the nitty-gritty of authoritarian psychology.  Dean, striving to understand what had happened to what was once his party, found his answers in Altemeyer's research and approached Altemeyer to express his fear that the Republicans were becoming an authoritarian party, and that what Altemeyer had made his study was happening right here and now.  Altemeyer, preoccupied with running experiments to test hypotheses, had not noticed it was happening!  When Dean pointed it out, Altemeyer was dismissive, saying that if there was a threat at all, it was a long way off.  He has since acknowledged the mistake.

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*Although many offer the "just asking questions" rationalization.

On the Other Hand

Make America Great Again

 On the other hand, Donald Trump seems determined to hand the Democratic candidates for Georgia Senate a huge favor.  No, I don't mean the rally denouncing the Republican candidates and calling for an end to the GOP.  That is the work of a fringe group, miniscule compared to the total number of Georgia Republicans.  All evidence is that Georgia Republicans plan to turn out in great numbers to vote for revenge.

I mean Trump's threat (to all appearances quite serious) to veto the entire defense budget unless it repeals Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 immunizes internet service providers from liability for content published on their sites (with a few exceptions such as copyright infringement or child pornography), so long as they do not create the content.  The reasoning underlying the law is that so much content is posted on the internet that providers cannot possibly police all of it and take down everything that is defamatory or otherwise actionable. Immunity from liability is what makes it possible for internet providers to make their service generally available.  Otherwise they would be so busy curating content to offer access to ordinary citizens.

However, it does not forbid internet providers from taking down content that they deem objectionable. Therein lies the rub.  Many internet service providers take down false, inflammatory, or defamatory content when it is brought to their attention.  Because right wingers tend to publish a lot more false inflammatory or defamatory content than other people, they get taken down more often and feel unfairly treated.  Thus many right wingers want to give internet service providers an ultimatum -- publish absolutely everything, no matter how false, inflammatory, or defamatory (except copyright infringement and child pornography) or be held liable for content. Except that many right wingers do not fully understand the implications of an outright repeal of Section 230.  They assume repeal would force the internet to publish their worst lies.  In fact, it would make internet service providers more likely to take down their content. Right wingers really want to modify, not repeal, Section 230.

Trump tiny desk

On the other hand, in demanding the right to publish anything they want, no matter how false, inflammatory, or defamatory, right wingers sometimes find themselves on the receiving end of their own medicine and don't like that much either.  (Thus, for instance Devin Nunes' suit against Twitter was barred under Section 230).  So, too, Donald Trump seems to have been inspired to want to repeal Section 230 because Twitter posted a picture mocking him for sitting at a tiny desk.

The point here is the Congressional Republicans can't just cave and add a repeal of Section 230 to the defense bill without doing untold damage to the workings of the internet.  So they are placed in an impossible dilemma -- defy Trump by overriding his veto, or allow our troops to go unpaid.  Congress began by passing the bill by a veto-proof margin, hoping that the threat to override would be enough to make him back down.  Trump (apparently) is not backing down, so Republicans are left with no good options.*

Again, I would urge the Georgia Democratic candidates to press the Republicans on the issue.  Force them to commit either to publicly defying Trump and incurring his anger, or else letting our troops go unpaid.  And, of course, the Democrats should promise that they will pay our troops.

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*Politico thinks their best option is to stay in session for ten days, excluding Sundays, after the bill passes the Senate.  In that case, Trump can fail to either sign or veto and the bill will pass without his signature.  If Congress adjourns and Trump fails to act, the bill s deemed vetoed.

Don't Put All Your Eggs in the Governmental Basket

 It is no secret that I am generally despondent about our political future.  Republicans have made a general, calculated decision to go insane and found it a winning political strategy.  Maximum insanity is essential to winning the primary and does not seem to be a serious handicap in the general election.  The presence of a few progressive activists in the Democratic Party allows Republicans to paint the entire party as dangerous radicals.  But so much of the Republican Party is completely nuts that any attempt to point this out is seen as elitist and disrespectful to a vast swath of Real Americans.  

During the Bush II Administration, Republicans tended to see any narrow Democratic victory as evidence of fraud and demand an investigation. But they were prepared to accept Democrats winning if the margin was wide enough.  Those were the good old days!  Today, many Republicans are dismissing all Democratic victories as fraud, no matter how high the margin.  A narrow Democratic victory proves that just a little funny business could have changed the outcome.  A wide Democratic victory proves just how outrageous the fraud is.

Other people talk about the attempts to restrict voting that we can expect Republicans to make -- no longer even pretending that the purpose is anything other than ensuring their victory.  But I fear Republicans going further -- using control of the vote counting to throw out enough Democratic ballots as fraudulent to ensure that Republicans always win.  Or maybe transferring choice of electors from the people directly to the state legislatures, all without losing any support.  This will make little difference in solidly Republican states where a Republican win was a certainty anyhow.  Nor will it make much difference in solidly Democratic states where Democrats control the vote counting.  But in closely divided states, expect Republicans to resort to any means, fair or foul, to lock in a monopoly of power.

So is there any hope at all?  I see a little.  For one thing, division and dysfunction will probably make the federal government so dysfunctional that it will be significantly weakened.  More and more government will take place at the state and local level.  (Trump has discovered this and found it frustrating).  Democrats need to stop putting all their eggs in the federal basket and focus more on state and local government.  In solidly Democratic states, Republicans will not be able to control the vote counting or to prevent Democrats from winning.

But more than that, it is time to acknowledge that conservatives are right, and that for too long we have put all our eggs in the governmental basket.  This came as a revelation to me attending Indivisibles meetings.  We have had discussions of attempts to reform the Albuquerque Police Department, which is notoriously abusive.  All have gone nowhere.  Changing the names at the top, and changing training for new recruits does nothing to to affect the culture of mid-level management.  A thick cloud of despair is coming over would-be reformers.  

The next week we heard from a speaker who specialized in non-violent conflict de-escalation.  She described how in potential tense situations -- street harassment, demonstrations, confrontations with police, even police brutality -- they could intervene to calm things down.  Someone asked about training police in that.  The speaker said that the training is never effective if compulsory; it has to be voluntary to work.  She also said that police start out hating conflict de-escalators and see them as interfering, but over time they come to appreciate the help and police start showing up for training individually.  She gave many individual instances of success.  Less clear -- whether the approach scales up and has actually worked to reduce incidence of police brutality or community conflict.  We also heard about private initiatives to fight homelessness and provide other services.

And the more I hear that, the more I think, that maybe conservatives are right that we have relied too much on government for too long.  Maybe actions take outside of government, and even outside of a political or ideological framework, are the best approach now.  

So What if Donald Trump Had Not Been President?

 

I alone can fix it.

To what extent does Donald Trump deserve blame for the COVID outbreak?  What would have happened if someone else had been in the White House at the time?  Could better leadership have stopped the pandemic, or is Trump simply a victim of bad timing?

James Fallows wrote a fascinating article for The Atlantic about the possibilities.  (In June). He focuses specifically on what might have been done to stop the disease before it reached U.S. shores.  I fully agree that this is the best approach.  There have, after all, been close calls before.  What was the difference this time?

The US has a program called "Global Argus" that tracts world-wide events for subtle signs of social disruption that may suggest an outbreak of contagious disease.*  When there are signs of an outbreak, the US can deploy medical and scientific teams to help suppress it.  We have been preparing for such an eventuality since the Bird Flu.  

By December, 2019, there were discernable signs that something was amiss in China.  The Chinese government (unsurprisingly) attempted to cover it up, the the signs were clearly there. Under the Obama Administration, the US had observers and CDC representatives in China.  Trump, opposed to international cooperation and determined to start a fight, removed them.  U.S.-China cooperation in public health matters was well established.  Trump put an end to it.  The lack of U.S. presence strengthened China's natural inclination to cover up the problem, because it made covering up a viable option.

Nonetheless the signs were there and not all could be concealed.  News of the outbreak began to appear in the President's Daily Briefing which Trump notoriously does not read.  By mid-January, U.S. officials were asking permission to return public health observers to China. Stung by the general hostility between countries, the Chinese refused.  Under a normal administration (Fallows heard the expression or some variation on it repeated many times) the President or National Security Advisor would have called his Chinese counterpart and let the Chinese know that we had detected a problem and were willing to discretely help in dealing with it.  The threat not to be discrete if the Chinese were not willing to cooperate would be implied but unspoken.  Trump did not act. With his exclusive focus on trade, he had shut down an extensive network of ties that might have been mobilized to communicate about the pandemic. And simultaneously, Trump's eagerness for a trade deal meant an aversion to anything that could anger Chinese leader Xi Jinping.  

When the severity of the outbreak became apparent, Trump's response was a ban on international travel -- but incomplete, and with no attempt at security after travelers arrived. Others recommended re-routing international air traffic to specific hubs, with screening on arrival. To this date, international travel takes place without screening and control. In fact, the U.S. had an extensive plan, developed under the Bush and Obama administrations, for dealing with a global pandemic. Trump was unwilling to follow any instructions left by his hated predecessors.  Faced with a crisis, he was simply unwilling or unable to act.  The bureaucracy to act was also weakened and hollowed out by his unwillingness to appoint competent managers.

In short, Fallows believes that the best opportunity for a competent administration to stop the virus was before it reached the United State.  I fully agree.

And one reason stopping the virus before it reached the U.S. would be the most effective approach would be that most Americans would not be aware it was happening and therefore would not oppose it.**  Once the pandemic hit the U.S., we have probably reached such a stage of political dysfunction that any attempt to check the spread would be impossible.

Our best bet would be a highly competent Republican President.  Jeb Bush comes to mind.  Jeb Bush is the former governor of Florida, a state that gets hit by so many hurricanes that it has regular protocols in place for dealing with routine summer loss of electricity.  If Jeb was unable to stop the virus from coming to the US, he would doubtless have handled it competently once it got here.  Republicans would trust him because he was the head of their team.  Democrats would trust him because he listened to the experts.

But for the most part, competent government that can achieve anything useful is against Republicans' most basic principles.  They call it "socialism" and consider it the first step to either tyranny or complete social breakdown.  Government is an evil to be destroyed, in an orderly fashion if possible, or by corruption and incompetence if not.  I am inclined to believe that most Republican administrations would run into a milder version of what we have seen with Trump -- simultaneously a belief that nothing really bad can happen when Team Us is in charge and a belief that any government attempt to stop the outbreak would be intolerable tyranny.

And if a Democrat had been in charge, Republican response would be obvious.  Republicans would simultaneously run around warning that we were all going to die because of the President's failure to protect us (see Obama Administration, Ebola) and shutting down any attempt to protect us as intolerable tyranny.

And, in fairness, there might be some method to their madness.  Recall the much-cited quote:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

Apply this approach to fighting a pandemic.  It allows only one pandemic response:  To cut off all contact with the infected area.  Keep the spreaders of disease out.  It does not allow any concern for, or attempt to help, people in an infected area.  If any of our people choose to help, they do so on their own risk and cut themselves off from us entirely.

That was all Obama's opponents expected during the Ebola outbreak.  They wanted him to cut off all contact with infected area.  That included not admitting American missionaries who were working in the area.  Yes, they were our fellow citizens, but they were tainted and to be cast out.  When Obama sent the Army in to engage in disease controls, there were calls for his impeachment if even one soldier was infected.  And when a Liberian with the disease made it into the country and two nurses caring for him caught it, the rage off the charts.  But no one actually made any proposals to halt community spread.  Nor, indeed, were any such measures needed.  Ebola, though extremely deadly, is not very contagious.

I think this may also answer the puzzlement of some as to why the normal right-wing responses of fear and disgust have been suspended in this pandemic -- why Trump supporters have neither fear nor revulsion toward this virus.  The obvious reason (offered by the author) is that the MAGA cult has taken over and members are unwilling to admit that anything bad can happen so long as Trump is in charge.  No doubt this is part of it, but based on my conversations with Trump supporters, I think there is something else at work as well.  Fear and disgust are emotions directed toward outsiders -- toward the "Other" as left-wing jargon puts it.  Calls for masks, for social distancing, for thorough cleaning of surfaces and so forth are statements to Trump supporters that they are potential spreaders of contagious disease, that they are to be feared or (worse) seen as disgusting and a source of contamination.  And, in my experience, such a suggestion makes right wingers very, very angry.***

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*Global Argus relies on open source information, but the ability of computer programs to track open information these days can be creepy.

**There are probably American who have such an aversion to any sort of international cooperation as an infringement on US sovereignty that they would prefer out-of-control pandemic spread to international cooperation to stop it.  Fortunately, most of them would not know it was going on.

***In fairness, our side is not wholly blameless.  Whenever we chuckle about the need to decontaminate the White House when Trump moves out and Biden moves in, or talk about decontaminating an area after Ivanka visits, we are investing this disease with a moral stigma that will be an obstacle in controlling and treating it.

COVID New Mexico: An Update

 I follow New Mexico COVID trends and right now they are very, very bad  The state keeps a map of counties, marking them red, yellow or green depending on the outlook.  Right now one county is marked yellow and the rest are a sea of red.  The number of cases is consistently between 1,000 and 2,000 out of a population of 2.1 million.  And recently it has been a lot closer to 2,000 (nearly one diagnosis per thousand population per day).  The positivity rate ranges between 10% and 20%.  The last two days have been high -- and that has been on a weekend when resting is low.  And all of this follows a two-week shutdown and very high mask compliance.  It was never anywhere near this bad in the spring, except in the northwestern, highly Navajo, counties of San Juan and McKinley.

The governor is naturally trying to find a positive spin.  She argues that the R0 factor (the number of new infections for each case) is at an all-time low, so new infections should start going down any time.  I am not holding my breath.  In fairness, at least new infections are not going up at an alarming rate, but seem to be stabilizing, albeit at a very high rate. The number of people in the hospital has stabilized in the 900's.  In the spring it peaked at 223.

The percentage of people who have recovered is slowly inching up.  That hospitalization rate (i.e., percentage of infected people who are hospitalized) and the mortality rate, after dropping sharply, are stabilizing.  This might seem bad, but probably just means the system is not being overwhelmed with new cases.

But this does not mean the outbreak is declining.  It just means that approximately 1,800 new case per day is becoming the new normal and hospitalizations, deaths, and recoveries are catching up.  In the Dakotas, where over 10% of the population has been infected, the great majority have recovered.  Infection rates remain high; the high recovery rate just means this has been going on a long time.  North Dakota has imposed a mask mandate and experienced a sharp drop in cases.  South Dakota not imposed any sort of mandate and has seen a significant decline, though infections still remain high.*  I can only take this to mean one of two things.  Either South Dakota residents have been sufficiently alarmed by the outbreak to change their behavior, or the state really is achieving a degree of herd immunity.

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*New Mexico and South Dakota new infections relative to population are similar, both down from their peak, but South Dakota much further down from a higher peak.

A Modest Proposal for How to Placate Trumpsters While Preserving Democracy

This American carnage ends right now

 The Supreme Court having rejected the latest last insane attempt to overturn the election, the reality is finally hitting home for Trump supporters and maybe even Trump himself that they really won't be able to overturn this election, and the end is at hand.  The Electoral College meets on Monday to make the obvious official.

In some ways, it seems almost a shame, because I had just come up with a Modest Proposal to make all sides happy.

Donald Trump has achieved extraordinary success at simply disregarding reality and governing in a fantasy world, so why not take this approach to the ultimate conclusion -- the question of who is President.  While Joe Biden holds a real inauguration, takes up residence in the White House, and takes commands of the government, Donald Trump can stage his counter-inaugural.  We can build a TV set of the White House for him and allow him to play act at being President for right-wing TV.  He can tweet, sign papers, give speeches, hold rallies and even announce "policies."  Fox, Newsmax, and OAN can hold regular shows on his brilliant leadership, bring on members of his mock-Cabinet, and even some Republican members of Congress to talk about his latest legislative initiative.

Meanwhile, Biden can take control of the actual federal bureaucracy, appoint competent officials, clean up the mess Trump left, and even work with Republicans in Congress to pass COVID relief.  The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and other mainstream media can report on the doings of the actual government, and Trump supporters will never be the wiser because they never follow these sources anyhow.  To the extent reports of the actual government penetrate even the right wing bubble, talking heads can always right it off as "fake news" from the "lamestream media."  

Why, Republicans could even cooperate minimally with a Biden Administration.  Why not, even they could just go on right wing TV and deny it?  All incentive to hurt America for political advantage would vanish, since their supporters would think Donald Trump was still in office, and good news would be good new.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

The Squeaky Hinge Gets the Oil

 So, just how large is the "release the kracken" wing of the Republican Party?  

This article may be revealing.  As we all know Georgia's governor, Brian Kemp, is refusing to overturn the election.  It has hurt his popularity among Georgia Republicans, but not all that much.  His approval rating among Republicans has fallen from 86% to 77%.  And his disapproval has fallen from 10% to 19%.  So apparently nine percent of Republican voters have turned against him.  That suggests that the Kracken voters are about nine percent of all Republicans.

Other estimates I have read have place the numbers higher -- about twenty percent.  Either way, this would suggest that the real nuts make up only a distinct minority of Republican voters.

Unfortunately, in a close state Republicans cannot afford to have twenty percent or even nine percent of their voters stay home or vote third party.

What Will Be the Fallout of This Election?

At least we got a tax cut

Donald Trump will not succeed in stealing this election.  Given the Republican sweep everywhere but the presidency, there have not been many opportunities for other Republicans to contest their defeat.  (As I understand it, a few have, but not as aggressively as Trump).

What Trump's challenge of this election has accomplished is to allow future Republican candidate to probe for the weaknesses in the system and understand better how to overturn an election next time.

Clearly the number one lesson of this election is that the courts are not the way to do it.  Judges, even the most right wing judges, are not willing to throw out an election.

But the aftermath of this election has reviewed some more promising targets.

The vote counting and vote certifying system is the most obvious point of attack.  This time, Georgia's Republican Secretary of State held firm and insisted on upholding the integrity of the election.  Can anyone doubt that he will face a primary challenger next time around?  Can anyone doubt that Republicans will be running as voting officials on a promise to "count all the legal votes and none of the illegal votes," which will be code for never certifying a Democrat, no matter what.  

Granted many of the other swing states had Democratic Secretaries of State who were not subject to such pressure.  Republicans will challenge all of them, no doubt.  Maybe they will fail.  But there are other election officials as well.  The usual county level elections official is the County Clerk. Given that counties are units of geography rather than population, most County Clerks can be expected to be Republicans for the foreseeable future. What if County Clerks just throw out all Democratic votes in their counties as fraudulent?  It may be enough to close statewide office to Democrats.

In Michigan, the state and each county has a four-member elections board, consisting of two Democrats and two Republicans. In Wayne County and statewide, some board members resisted certifying the results.  What if in the future Republicans on Michigan elections boards refuse to certify Democrats regardless of the vote?  

And then there is the matter of state legislatures. Between gerrymandering and the normal tendency of election maps to favor less concentrated populations, all the swing states have solidly Republican legislatures. Following the census, they will reapportion so as to ensure Republican domination for the next decade.  State legislatures could not override the popular vote after the election.  But suppose they change the law to move voting for Presidential electors from the people to the state legislature.  Such a move would clearly be constitutional.  And at least one Supreme Court theory holds that state governors would not have the power to veto such a change. 

The only question can be, will Republicans pay a political price for such measures.

Will Republicans Ever Acknowledge the Pandemic?

 

But her e-mails

So let us concede that Americans are really, really tired of COVID restrictions.  And let us further concede that many of the restrictions are irrational and are driven more by political than scientific considerations.

Nonetheless, the virus is raging out of control and is getting really bad.  At what point will it become apparent to the casual observer that there is a problem?  At what point will the virus itself, rather than efforts to control its spread, start to become disruptive.

The obvious answer is that I don't know, that it may depend on the local culture.  And above all, the answer may be "never."  It may be that a disease that is only two percent fatal, and that most people recover from in about two weeks will never, by itself, become disruptive enough to persuade your casual observer to make lifestyle changes.

Obviously, the virus will be a serious problem in confined populations like prisons, nursing homes, or homeless shelters.  But will it be socially disruptive in the broader society?  I have no idea.

I can think of ways it might become disruptive.  It may be some workplaces will have to close down because so many employees fall sick.  How often will that happen with a disease most people recover from after two weeks?  How many businesses will have to shut down for people to perceive a problem?  I have no idea.

But it seems to me the most obvious weak link in the chain is the healthcare system.  That is, after all, the real reason for shutdowns -- to keep the healthcare system from overloading.  Because if the healthcare system overloads, our ability to treat the disease will seriously suffer, and the mortality rate will rise above two percent.  And a healthcare system overloaded dealing with COVID patients will become less able to treat other medical problems as well.

So my guess is that if anything does drive home the point that there is a problem, it will be people starting to be unable to get routine healthcare because the system is overwhelmed with COVID cases.  How many people will that be?  Probably not all that many, but word can get around.  

Of course, in that case most people will probably blame the healthcare system and not the virus.

Whither the Biden Presidency and Why Georgia Matters

Make America Great Again

 Let's face it.  Joe Biden is not going to enact an ambitious agenda, even if by some miracle Democrats win both Senate seats in Georgia.

He just doesn't have the mandate for it.  The American people have made perfectly clear this election that they don't want any sweeping change; they just want everything to go back to normal.  Any measure will face the Senate filibuster, and Joe Manchin has made clear he will not vote to overturn it.

And that is OK, really.  That fact is, Biden's hands will be more than full making America normal again.  He will have to get the COVID vaccine distributed, get the economy up and running once enough people are vaccinated, and offer relief until then.  And that is to say nothing of repairing -- and exposing -- all the damage Trump has done to the executive branch.  That should be more than enough to do.  Reforms can wait -- until a future administration, if necessary.

But even that will call for some degree of cooperation from Congress, and that isn't going to happen if Republicans control the Senate.  

I know some people are so naive as to believe that Biden will be able to work constructively with Senate Republicans.  Biden is, after all, the first real Washington insider elected President since George H.W. Bush, who was generally effective.  His Senate colleagues like him and have worked with him in the past.  This article sets forth why Biden might be better able to work with Senate Republicans than Obama.  Describing Biden's role in the Obama Administration, it makes clear he did not have an Ivy League degree, was "cerebral" and not a wonk.  "Obama always seeking data for the most logical or efficient outcome, while Biden told stories about how a bill would affect the working-class guy in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was born."  When the Administration reached an impasse with Republicans in Congress, Obama had a tendency to lecture Republicans about why they were wrong that came across as condescending.  Biden accepted that disagreements were normal and was prepared to politic. 

In short, Biden does not have the sort of traits that Republicans find so particularly off-putting.  He knows Senate Republicans well and thinks of them as colleagues to work with.  And if it were only Joe Biden and the Senate, they might come to a reasonable agreement.

But it is not just Biden and the Senate.  It is Biden, the Senate, and the Republican base, who regard Biden's victory as illegitimate and will rush to primary anyone who cooperates with the vile usurper.  And also Mitch McConnell and his discovery that total obstruction, even if it hurts the country -- indeed, especially if it hurts the country -- is politically advantageous.  

And there is almost no limit to what Republicans might do.  Most obviously, one can expect that they will refuse to pass any legislation whatever, except a budget with massive spending cuts.  It seems a safe assumption that they will refuse any COVID relief.  I would not put it past them to refuse even funding for vaccine distribution. It seems a safe assumption that a Republican Senate will refuse to confirm any judicial appointments, and will investigate all possible minutia involving the Biden Administration.  

Admittedly, in really important matters like COVID relief and funding vaccine distribution, there might be a few Republicans (such as Romney, Collins and Murkowski) would would be willing to side with the Democrats, and the filibuster could be evaded by budget reconciliation.  But so long as Republicans hold the majority, Mitch McConnell decides what comes to the floor and could thwart such legislation by not allowing it to come to a vote.

And that is just assuming Republicans will do the same things under a Biden Administration that they did under an Obama Administration.  Given the degree of crazy overtaking the Republican Party these days, it is easy to imagine a Republican Senate doing even worse.

Recall that a federal judge recently struck down actions by President Trump's Acting Secretary of Homeland Security as invalid because he had not been confirmed by the Senate.  Well, suppose the Senate refused to confirm any Biden nominees, in order to prevent him from taking any meaningful executive action.

Or it might refuse to raise the debt ceiling, no matter, no matter what concessions it might extort, and inflict the consequences of a debt ceiling breach.

Or -- well, who knows the depths of Mitch McConnell's evil genius.

In short, it is vitally important for Democrats to control the Senate. It is also most unlikely that they will win both Senate seats in Georgia.  If they win one, maybe they can persuade some relatively sane Republican to switch parties.  (I am thinking of Patrick Toomey, who is retiring at the end of his term and therefore has no career to lose). If they lose both (considered the most likely possibility), I see no way forward.

But if Democrats somehow manage to retake the Senate, I would urge them to use budget reconciliation to do two things.  Pass COVID relief.  And eliminate the debt ceiling altogether.