Category: 2020 Election

Biden’s Economy is Booming

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise with moon, Utah Lake, UT – December 2021 photo by Karen Lund Larsen

Bloomberg reported on Monday that the US economy is outperforming the world by the biggest margin in the 21st century. Surprisingly, they say that there’s a good reason:

“America’s economy improved more in Joe Biden’s first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years…”

They say that the objective economic data are pretty convincing about the Biden Boom of 2021, notwithstanding the contrary media narrative that seems to be driving poor public opinion. Biden is either in first place compared to recent American presidents, or at number 2 on all the big economic indicators, says Bloomberg’s Matt Winkler:

“Exceptional returns…especially the S&P 500 Index in both absolute terms and relative to its global counterparts, can be attributed to record-low debt ratios enabling companies to reap the biggest profit margins since 1950. Corporate America is booming because the Biden administration’s Covid-19 vaccination programs and $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan reduced the jobless rate to 4.2% in November from 6.2% in February, continuing an unprecedented rate of decline during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Also, inflation-adjusted GDP surged at an average annual rate of 5.03% in each of the first three quarters of 2021 and is poised to hit 5.6% for the year based on the preliminary estimates of more than 80 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. If that forecast holds up, it would be more than 2.8 times the average performance between 2000 and 2019. And double the average since 1976.

More from Bloomberg:

“All of which makes Biden’s first year in the White House the standout among the seven previous presidents, based on ten market and economic indicators given equal weight. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, no one comes close to matching Biden’s combination of No. 1 and No. 2 rankings for each of the measures:

Gross domestic product (1)

Profit growth (1)

S&P 500 performance (2)

Consumer credit (1)

Non-farm payrolls (2)

Manufacturing jobs (2)

Business productivity (2)

Dollar appreciation (2)

S&P 500 relative performance (2)

Per capita disposable income, which rose 1.08% this year, is the only comparable weakness for Biden, trailing Donald Trump’s 2.17%, George W. Bush’s 2.01%, Jimmy Carter’s 1.80% and Ronald Reagan’s 1.42%.”

GDP growth in year one of each new administration during the past four decades had never exceeded 2.74% until 2021. Bloomberg goes on to say that Biden might surpass Carter (5.01%) as the GDP growth champion of presidents since 1976.

Much of the credit goes to The American Rescue Plan, which poured $66 billion into 36 million households. The child tax credit reduced the child poverty rate by 50%, helping the US recover faster from the pandemic than most other nations.

That’s the same child tax credit that just expired, and that Sen. Joe Manchin is vociferously against.

The downside to those record corporate profits is that they are not being shared with workers. We know that in 2021 economic inequality got considerably worse, even with Biden’s recovery act putting $ billions in the pockets of American families.

Like Jimmy Carter, Biden now faces the political fallout of accelerating inflation. The NYT’s Neil Irwin wrote about how high inflation and  the never-ending pandemic are depressing Americans’ attitudes about the economy. He adds that it’s easy to recall Carter’s inability to deal with inflation in the 1970s, until the Fed’s Paul Volcker threw the economy into a deep recession. Back then, Carter took the political fall for the Volcker policy. Reagan got full credit for the recovery.

Once again, fear of inflation is everywhere in the press, but as Wrongo wrote:

“Back in 1980, when then-Chair of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker raised interest rates high enough to throw the US into a recession and end inflation, inflation had averaged 6.9% for the previous 11 years.”

And while inflation’s averaging 6.81% for this year, it isn’t comparable, because of the amazing growth in US GDP and corporate profits, along with the chronic product shortages due to supply chain issues.

But contrast today to December 1981, when Reagan had been president for 11 months, just as Biden is now. Conditions were substantially worse: The unemployment rate was 8.5% and would keep rising throughout 1982. Inflation was 8.9%, and consumer sentiment was in the tank.

People believe what they’re told by the press and pundits. That in part explains Biden’s low approval ratings, along with the GOP’s master class of blaming Biden for a disastrous economy that was really caused by Trump’s inaction on Covid.

Keep all this in mind. Overall, Biden’s doing a very good job with the economy.

Time for another Christmas season tune. Here’s a group of UK theater performers called Welsh of the West End performing the Mariah Carey classic, “All I Want for Christmas is You” on a zoom call. Perfectly appropriate for Christmas with Omicron:

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Facing The Music

The Daily Escape:

First snow, New Hampshire creek – December 2021 photo by Betsy Zimmerli

“It’s always been about the music. And when it’s not, it’s about facing the music” – Wrongo

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. It is also Wrongo’s favorite day because he prefers daylight to darkness. This is an optimistic day since every succeeding day for the next six months will bring more daylight to the land.

But Wrongo struggles to see any political daylight at the end of this extremely dark year. Here is a summation of the three events most important to Wrongo in this dark, dark year:

The January 6 aborted coup. Nothing that happened this year can overshadow the effort to subvert our democracy. While it may be doubtful right now that the outcome of the Jan. 6 committee will bring justice for the coup plotters, let’s compare it to the Watergate scandal. Those plotters were held accountable. And Watergate occurred at a time when we didn’t have mobile phone, email, and text message electronic tracing to reveal what had happened. In this Jan. 6 case, proving accountability should be easier. We don’t need to know everything, we just need to know enough to prosecute people. With all the digital information that’s available, that should be an easier job than it was during Watergate.

The recent revelations by the House Select Committee are an encouraging sign because they moved quickly on passing a contempt resolution for a former Congressman, Mark Meadows. The Committee got to tell their story three times in 24 hours. They embellished it with juicy new details (texts from Trump’s family members, Fox News personalities, reporters, members of Congress) every time they told it. If they can keep that up through the early part of next year, maybe we’ll start getting somewhere with this.

Ending the Forever War. Biden was crushed by the media and the public for walking away from Afghanistan and the subsequent chaos around the pull-out, but it was the right thing to do. Nearly 2500 US service members were killed, 20,698 were wounded, and more than $2.2 trillion in American taxpayer funds were spent on warfighting, reconstructing programs, building the Afghan National Security Forces, and promoting good governance.

In the end, we have nothing to show for our time there except for more national debt and soldiers who will need care for the rest of their lives. We deserve a full and complete accounting of our 20 years in Afghanistan. After all, it’s another military defeat that requires a fundamental examination to ensure that we never again jump into a country when we fail to understand their social and cultural dynamics.

Losing the Covid war. We’ve failed as a country to work together to beat the virus variants, despite having a vaccine that offered protection. The politicization of Covid treatment is the second worse outcome in 2021, to the politicization of the January 6 attempted coup.

Anti-vaxxers believe that their strong natural immune system will beat the virus, and that “healthy lifestyles” will give you a healthy immune system. They think using a vaccine to enhance the natural protection offered by their beautiful immune system is a bad idea because [insert the excuse of the day]. Perhaps they don’t realize that you can’t have natural immunity to a virus that your body has never encountered. An unvaccinated but fit person can get Covid because their body has no idea how to fight it.

There’s also the argument that Covid only kills older people. While the facts don’t support that idea either, maybe the anti-Vaxx community views it as an experiment to see if “having living parents or grandparents” is an evolutionary advantage for the kids who didn’t lose their relatives.

These issues show America must face the music. Wrongo’s sure we’ll face more 2021 music, but this is his top-of-mind thinking.

We’re going to have Christmas or seasonal music in each post this week. Today let’s listen to U2 – “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)” filmed in November 1987 at the Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. These guys were children back then. Maybe this tune has a special relevance in a world where Covid has taken so many lives:

Be kind. Not just during this season, but all the time.

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Whose Side Are You On?

The Daily Escape:

Capitol Reef NP -December 2021 photo by Jonathan Vandervoorde

Shouldn’t we be on the side of democracy? Georgia’s Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock says yes. He spoke in the Senate on Tuesday, and what he said is consistent with Wrongo’s thinking.

Warnock asked why the Senate could suspend its rules in order to pass an increase in the debt ceiling by a simple majority but couldn’t do the same thing for something as critical to our democracy as voting rights. From Warnock:

“Before we left Washington last week, we in this chamber made a change in the Senate’s rules in order to push forward something that all of us think is important. We set the stage to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, and yet as we cast that vote to begin addressing the debt ceiling, this same chamber is allowing the ceiling of our democracy to crash in around us….Be very clear, last week we changed the rules of the Senate. To address another important issue, the economy. This is a step, a change in the Senate rules we haven’t been willing to take to save our broken democracy, but one that a bipartisan majority of this chamber thought was necessary in order to keep our economy strong.”

The Jan. 6 attempted coup and the many state anti-voting laws passed by Republicans subsequent to that, come from the same poisonous well: A growing anti-democratic movement of fellow travelers including American conservatives, Right-wing extremists, and political entrepreneurs on the Right who have made the Republican Party their political vehicle.

They’re close to winning in the 2022 mid-terms. If the Senate adjourns without acting on voter suppression, it will help them get there. Buzzfeed reports that in some states, Republicans are going door-to-door in order to “check” to make sure there aren’t any illegal voters in your home:

“Individual election deniers and grassroots groups are canvassing for election fraud in states…including New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, and Nebraska.”

They’re targeting registered Democrat voters. It’s part of a broader effort by Trump supporters and Republican Party leaders to cast doubt on our elections going forward. In Colorado, a member of the Three Percenter militant group is helping lead the canvassing effort. According to the Colorado Times Recorder, that member suggested volunteers carry firearms to provide security for the group as they went door-to-door.

Let’s call this what it is: Voter intimidation on a multi-state scale. It’s a message that if you are a registered Democrat, the Trump cultists know who you are, and where you live. This intimidation should be illegal, but it’s not.

And it’s another part of the problem that the Senate needs to address right now.

The Democrats have what amounts to less-than-a-majority in the Senate in favor of suspending the filibuster rules for voting rights. In June, Majority Leader Schumer outsourced an effort to garner a filibuster-proof majority on voting rights to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVA), but Manchin’s effort failed.

Despite that, Schumer was able to finesse the filibuster to act without Republican votes to increase the debt ceiling. He was also able to corral all Democratic Senators, including Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, who are on the record as being against any change in the filibuster rules.

But voting rights, the most fundamental of all Democratic principles, are being sacrificed to the crusty parliamentary rule that these same two Democrats have so far refused to consider. This week, Schumer appointed a group of Democratic senators, who lead the talks on voting rights legislation, to spearhead discussions with Joe Manchin about how to change the Senate rules. They met with Manchin on Tuesday.

It’s time for Sen. Schumer to wrestle Manchin and Sinema to the ground, and make them vote to suspend the filibuster rules a second time.

Barton Gellman, who wrote a recent Atlantic magazine article that Wrongo quoted last week, recently told Terry Gross of NPR:

“This is, I believe, a democratic emergency, and that without very strong and systematic pushback from protectors of democracy, we’re going to lose something that we can’t afford to lose about the way we run elections.”

We’re facing a crisis. Biden and all Democrats have to make this a “whose side are you on?” issue for Washington politicians and for voters everywhere.

Warnock has a powerful message. He’s the one Democrat willing to speak about the elephant in the room. Watch his speech:

 

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Tuesday Wake Up Call – December 14, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Capitol Reef NP – photo by Jeff Kofoed

The Republicans plan to run out the clock on Congressional oversight.

The WaPo reports that the execrable Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, told the House committee probing the government’s Coronavirus response that he will not comply with its subpoena.

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attempted coup released their contempt report for Mark Meadows, former WH Chief of Staff to Trump. It recommends that the full House bring contempt charges against Meadows. Their report describes some of the more damning evidence already obtained regarding Meadows, mostly derived from documents Meadows had already turned over to the Committee. It shows Meadows’ role in sowing disinformation about the election and his early knowledge of the violence that might result from the MAGA rally on Jan.6.

Most damning, as Politico reports, is one fact describing Meadows emailing someone, saying that the National Guard would “protect pro-Trump people” at the rally.

That’s particularly interesting since, as Marcy Wheeler reports, when DOJ-indicted Proud Boy Charles Donohoe while at the Capitol, saw a public report about the Guard being called in on the afternoon of Jan. 6, he responded with surprise that the Guard would “attack…Trump supporters.”

Did the Republicans plan to bait Democrats into attacking the MAGAs at the US Capitol so that Trump could declare a national security emergency, and suspend the counting of Electoral College votes?

Meadows has sued the Jan. 6 Committee and Nancy Pelosi to block enforcement of the Committee’s original subpoena, as well as the subsequent subpoena it issued to Verizon for his phone records. This is another effort to run out the clock, cutting into the time required for the House Select Committee to reach its final conclusions about the attempted coup.

Steve Bannon has initiated legal action to avoid testifying before the Jan.6 Committee, and his case won’t  be heard until July 2022, more of the Republican effort to run out the clock. He’d like nothing more than to have a big show trial heading into the mid-terms.

These are coordinated efforts by some of the principal Trump coup actors to obstruct Congressional oversight.

The Republican plan to run out the clock assumes that the GOP can take control of the House in the 2022 mid-terms. That would shut down any Congressional oversight of January 6, so the Democrats have a little over 12 months left to get their work done on the attempted coup. If you think their report would swing votes in November, then Democrats have just 10 months.

And they better scan all of the documents they have and put them in a warehouse beyond the reach of Republicans once they’re back in power, or all of their work to date will be destroyed.

Few are following this story. Eric Boehlert complains:

“The coup blueprint still hasn’t appeared on the front page of single major American newspaper, nor has any influential editorial page weighed in.”

Plans for the next coup attempt will intensify in the coming months, meaning we can’t afford to lose the House in the 2022 mid-terms. Dan Pfeiffer’s newsletter discusses Democrats’ 2022 political messaging in light of what we know about the coup attempt and the GOP’s overall assault on democracy. He asks: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“If democracy is really in grave danger why aren’t Democrats doing anything about it? Why aren’t more Democrats – including President Biden– more vocal about raising the alarm?”

You’d think that what we know would be enough to get Dems to sing from the same song book. But it seems that the Democratic political playbook is still to focus on “kitchen table” issues while moving to a more moderate message that appeals to suburban independent voters.

Why aren’t the Dem moderates like Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), along with Sens. Manchin and Sinema stepping up to fight back against the anti-democracy efforts by the Republican Party? Pfeiffer says that the Dems should run on saving democracy, but that didn’t work in the Virginia governor’s race. From Pfeiffer:

“The idea that Republicans are a danger to democracy and election integrity is unquestionably true. It is also true that their anti-democratic authoritarianism is the greatest danger they pose in the short term.”

The problem with running on saving democracy is that we don’t know how many people really care that much about it.

Time to wake up America! It’s only Tuesday, but there’s already much to do if we are to save our democracy. To help you wake up, listen to “The Burden of Freedom” by Kris Kristofferson. It originally was on his 1972 album “Border Lord”:

Sample Lyric:

I stand on the stairway, my back to the dungeon
The doorway to freedom so close to my hand
Voices behind me still bitterly damn me
For seeking salvation they don’t understand

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 12, 2021

Despite saying that there wouldn’t be Sunday cartoons, it turned out that Wrongo found some free time to put them together. Let’s start by learning more about January 6. Hugo Lowell, Congressional reporter for the Guardian, found some disturbing news:

The Guardian reports that the PowerPoint was presented on January 4 to a number of Republican senators and members of Congress. Apparently the pitch is 36 slides that lay out a road map for the Jan. 6 attempted coup. Seems like the House Select Committee now has it literally in writing that senior advisors to Trump plotted to declare a bogus national emergency in order to cancel a national election, and possibly, seize the government by force.

Only time will tell given our unwavering commitment to adhering to due process, whether justice for the coup plotters will prevail. On to cartoons.

It didn’t end on January 6:

Maybe it’s time for Dems to shelve Build Back Better and concentrate on voting rights:

Democracy needs a booster:

The GOP Magi arrive bearing gifts:

Imagine if vasectomies were mandated:

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Saturday Soother – December 11, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley NP, photo by Ed Kendall

(This week’s Sunday Cartoons will appear on Monday)

Wrongo understands that the Jan. 6 investigations are looking in depth at who was behind the attempted coup. But he’s very unhappy with the Democrats’ inability to keep the issue alive, fresh and in front of the American people.

Apparently, communication with the public is too difficult for Democrats.

There are two investigative efforts underway, one by the DOJ, and another by the House of Representatives. Here is the current state of play: DOJ has arrested close to 700 people (possibly more, once you consider cases that haven’t yet been unsealed).

The House Select Committee has already met with about 300 witnesses. They have litigated and won a case against Trump’s assertion of executive privilege. A federal appeals court rejected Trump’s request to block the Jan. 6 Select Committee from obtaining executive branch records. Trump’s path now is to go to the Supreme Court before New Year’s.

The truth will ultimately come out. The question is if anyone will care.

It’s been obvious that Trump’s Big Lie would be the organizing principle of the GOP ever since January 6. It was a delusion to think that the GOP would sober up and fly right, and it’s now clear that they are going to continue to drink the Trump-spiked Kool-Aid for the foreseeable future. It’s highly unlikely that Trump’s followers will allow any Republican candidates to hedge on the Big Lie or pretend to distance themselves from Dear Leader.

The Atlantic’s Barton Gellman wrote a major piece about how the GOP plans to steal the 2022 mid-terms and the 2024 general election. He makes a compelling case that Trump and his cronies are laying the groundwork for a coup in 2024 using the tactics they attempted leading up to and on Jan. 6.

The Congressional investigation is proceeding “top down” and unlike the DOJ, it’s without the constraint of needing near-certainty of a conviction before going public.

The DOJ is proceeding “bottom up” albeit with vast investigative resources, and (hopefully) with a keen sense of what NOT to say prematurely lest it compromise their investigations. The DOJ investigation starts at the Capitol crime scene, building from the useful idiots and militia foot soldiers towards the inciters and commanders.

Congress OTOH, can focus directly on mid-to-upper-level conspirators, like Bannon and Meadows. In a way, both groups are building a bridge from opposite banks of the river. Maybe, someday the two spans will meet. We have to pray it works out that way.

Republicans are rewriting January 6th and are trying to flush it down the memory hole. It’s certain to work on at least 40% of the country. The issue is whether they can convince another 10% of voters to think there might be nothing to it.

Enough of politics for this week. It’s time for our Saturday Soother!

The weather in Connecticut is unseasonably warm and dry. On the fields of Wrong, it’s time to put up the temporary fencing that keeps the deer from nibbling on leaves and bark. That constitutes much of their winter diets.

Then take a few minutes to brew up a vente cup of True Grit Peaberry coffee ($14.00/12oz.) from Nguyen Coffee Supply, a Brooklyn, NY based roaster that is the first specialty Vietnamese coffee company in the US.

Now grab a seat by a window, settle back in your comfy chair. Watch and listen to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, played by the Cellista Cello Ensemble from Korea. Here it is played by 12 cellos in an arrangement by Sung-Min Ahn:

The iconic opening riff is usually played on clarinet. But here, it sounds great on the cello.

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Rehabilitating Our Democracy

The Daily Escape:

Christmas lights, New Milford Green, New Milford CT – December 2021 photo by Tom Allen. New Milford was founded in 1709.

James Fallows writes a column called “Breaking the News”. His most recent article looks at the growing mismatch between the formal structure of the US government (two Senators per state and the House ceiling of 435 members), and the astonishing population growth in the US since the Constitution was ratified in 1788.

Fallows says the main problem is that modern America is running on antique rules that are too hard to change and too easy to abuse. He sees a Constitutional shift from protecting minority rights, to enabling minority rule, which ultimately means a denial of democracy. A system that is not steered by its majority will not survive as a democracy.

Fallows outlines the changing nature of big vs. small in America. When the Constitution was being negotiated, two issues were big states vs. small states, and slaveholding states vs. non-slave states. At the time, the three most populous original states had around 10 times as many people as the three smallest. That was behind the agreement to the two-Senators-per-state deal. But today, the three most populous states—California, Texas, and Florida—have about 45 times the population of the three least populous, Wyoming, Vermont, and Alaska.

Second, the ceiling on the size of the House of Representatives must change. Fallows observes that when the country was founded, there were 65 members of the House. For the next century-plus, the size of the House increased after the Census, following changes in the US population. Just before World War I, the number was capped at its current level of 435. Today, the US population is about 90 times larger than it was in 1788, but the House is just 7 times as large.

Today there’s a bias against the needs of urban and suburban populations. There’s also a distinct small-state bias in the Electoral College. Each state’s representation in the Electoral College votes equals it’s number of Senate and House representatives. As House membership expanded through the 1800s from 65 to 435, House seats became relatively more important in Electoral College totals, and Senate seats relatively less so. From Fallows:

“To spell it out, in the first presidential election, Electoral Votes based on Senate seats made up nearly 30% of the Electoral College total. By 1912, the first election after House size was frozen, they made up only 18%.”

If the House were expanded, then the Electoral College outcome would more closely track the national popular vote.

Jill Lepore writing in the New Yorker, says that the US Constitution was the first national constitution that provided for its own revision. Article V is the amendment clause. The founders knew that the Constitution was imperfect; Article V left a Constitutional means for making it “more perfect.” Without an amendment provision, the only way to change the rules is to overthrow the government.

But it’s extremely difficult to amend our Constitution. Lepore says:

“The US Constitution has been rewritten three times: in 1791, with the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments; after the Civil War, with the ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments; and during the Progressive Era, with the ratification of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments.”

She points out that by contrast:

“…American state constitutions have been amended over 7,500 times, amounting on average to 150 amendments per state.”

While state governments freely change, the US Constitution doesn’t. America’s older, but not necessarily wiser.

We could approve the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes. The Electoral College has 535 votes, with 270 needed to win the presidency. In 2020, had 21,461 Biden voters actually switched to Trump, Trump would have won the Electoral College with 270 votes, despite Biden winning nationally by 7 million votes. Each of those 21,461 Biden votes (5,229 in Arizona, 5,890 in Georgia, and 10,342 in Wisconsin) were 329 times more important than the other 7 million votes.

The Compact would end the “winner-take-all” laws in the 48 of 50 states. If passed, the Compact would award their electoral votes in proportion to the votes the candidate receives. Article II gives the states exclusive control over the choice of method of awarding their electoral votes, so they can reform the system if they choose. The Compact would go into effect when enacted by states comprising at least 270 electoral votes.

Time to wake up America! Our current ineffective federal government must change. Otherwise, democracy is doomed.

To help you wake up, watch “Peace Train”, the 1971 anthem of hope and unity written by Yusuf/Cat Stevens, performed here by Playing for Change. This version features Keb’ Mo’ playing in CA, along with Yusuf playing in Istanbul, Rhiannon Giddens in Ireland, along with musicians from 12 countries:

This song is more relevant than ever.

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Should Biden Run Again?

The Daily Escape:

Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley NP – November 2021 photo by Ed Kendall

Paul Campos asks: “Should Biden run again in 2024?” While Martin Longman asks what explains Joe Biden’s steep decline in the polls in the latter half of 2021?

Jonathan Chait has an idea:

“Nobody can say with any confidence if this fall can be reversed. Indeed, given the US’s steady job growth, nobody can ascertain exactly why the public has turned so sour so fast. Biden is like a patient wasting away from some undiagnosable disease. What is clear is that if the presidential election were held this fall, Biden would enter the contest as the decided underdog against Trump.”

All of us have been on the wrong side of failing someone’s unstated expectations. We didn’t know we were taking a test; we didn’t know our actions were being scored, and naturally, we failed. That’s where Biden is today. Regardless of the analysis, it seems clear that Biden would lose an election to a Republican if it were held today, probably even to Trump.

But the reasons for Biden’s poor poll numbers are at least to Wrongo, unclear. At the 2020 presidential election, people were crying out for a return to normalcy. Back to Campos:

“It’s clear that a big underlying reason for Biden’s success in 2020 was a widespread…belief/hope among voters…that electing an anodyne middle of the road elderly white man — you know, a normal person, as opposed to a woman or a minority or a Jewish radical leftist [sic] — would calm things down after all the Trump craziness, and the Republican party would at least trend back toward being a center right party…”

We didn’t return to normal, and maybe, there isn’t a normal to return to. If that’s true, “Make America Great Again” will again have tons of appeal.

Wrongo detects among Democrats a perception that Biden and the Democratic Party are all in on tying their policies to racial justice. While that’s well-intended, and good strategy for energizing the base of People Of Color, it’s causing some dissatisfaction among Whites and certain Hispanic sub-segments.

That showed in this year’s Virginia and New Jersey elections. White suburban women moved away from the Dems in both states.

In Passaic, NJ, Hispanics make up about 70% of the population. Trump won 22% of their vote in 2016, and 36% in 2020. The 2021 Republican candidate for governor won a similar percentage. A Republican won a seat on the county board of commissioners for the first time in more than a decade.

These results should be a wakeup call for Democrats.

A recent Pew Research study divided the electorate into nine affinity groups, four Republican, four Democratic and a disaffected group that didn’t fit well into either Party’s coalition. Pew found that among: (brackets by Wrongo)

“….the four Republican-oriented typology groups…[fewer]…than…a quarter say a lot more needs to be done to ensure equal rights for all Americans regardless of their racial or ethnic background; by comparison, no fewer than about three-quarters of any Democratic group say a lot more needs to be done to achieve this goal.”

This gulf on one of the central questions facing our nation suggests that for now at least, Republicans have a powerful message to take to Independents and undecideds in the mid-terms and beyond. From Tom Sullivan:

“The MAGA squad on Capitol Hill sees waging culture war as the very point of holding political office: stoking anger, provoking fights, “owning the libs,” and advancing conspiracy theories.”

Everything isn’t about Dems being too pro-equality. Things like the withdrawal from Afghanistan, inflation, the supply chain disruptions, and the Delta variant of Covid have something to do with Biden’s poor numbers, along with no prospect of returning to normal.

Should Biden not run in 2024? Do the Democrats have a viable national candidate who could step into Biden’s shoes? Having a president candidate in their early to mid-80s, like Biden will be, isn’t optimal. That would seem to rule out both Sanders and Warren.

Kamala Harris looks to be doomed at least for now as a national candidate. She polls behind Biden. About the only thing low-information voters know about her are her gender and ethnicity. All else being equal, being nonwhite and female are probably national electoral handicaps this time around. She does appeal to many minority voters. But are there enough minority voters in swing states who would be willing to vote for her?

Given the ossification of the Democrats, the question of “Who should run?” feels like shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We’re one election away from permanent Republican rule that will bring with them “show elections”. So far, no Democrat with the exception of a few dark horses, like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg or Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, appear to have the smarts and charisma to be credible with the disaffected middle road of American voters.

Maybe the Dems have no realistic alternative to Biden in 2024.

Who do you think should run?

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Expanding The Dem’s Voter Base

The Daily Escape:

Artist’s Point, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, AZ-UT – October photo by Alan Seltzer

Ruy Teixeira explains the political (and messaging) dilemma facing Democrats in 2021:

“A recent Gallup release confirmed that Democrats now have about as many liberals in the party as moderates or conservatives. That liberalism has been mostly driven by increasing liberalism among white Democrats which has spiked upward 20 points since the early 2000s. White Democrats are now a solidly liberal constituency. Not so black and Hispanic Democrats who are overwhelmingly moderate or conservative.”

The contrast is particularly striking among Whites who are college graduates and working class (non-college) nonwhites. The Gallup data show that two-thirds of White college grads are liberal while 70% of Black working class and two-thirds of Hispanic working class Democrats are moderate or conservative.

This takes on additional relevance because in 2020, 63% of voters did not have college degrees, and 74% of voters came from households making less than $100,000 a year. This should make it painfully obvious that, if issues and rhetoric that appeal mostly to college-educated White liberals are promoted, Democrats could see serious attrition among Democrat working class nonwhites who dislike those issues and rhetoric.

It’s hard to build a majority if you’re focused on a minority of the electorate. The internal conflict between Democrats, displayed by the Gallup poll mentioned above by Teixeira, pits the Party’s progressives against its moderates, its college-educated against its working class.

Like the modern Democrats, the Whigs cobbled together their party in the late 1830s out of an assortment of constituencies, many of whom had little in common. The Whig Party was formed to counter President Andrew Jackson and the Jacksonian Democrats. They were one of the two major political parties in the US from the late 1830s through the early 1850s and managed to elect two presidents: William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor.

By the mid-1850s, the Whigs were divided by the issue of slavery, particularly as the country had to decide whether new states would be admitted as slave or non-slave states. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 overturned the Missouri Compromise and allowed each territory to decide for itself whether it would be a slave or free state. Anti-slavery Whigs then spun off to found the Republican Party in 1854.

Is the modern Democratic Party on the precipice of becoming the new Whigs? The Whigs were a coalition of bankers, lawyers, and the Eastern mercantile class. In the South, Whigs worked to put a moral face on slavery. This allowed the Whigs to cultivate political distance from what was becoming a party of southern Democrats happy to extend slavery in new states, and a northern base of what we call “blue collar” (white) workers.

The Whigs couldn’t continue bridging the ideological distance between the Northern industrial states section of the party and the Southern agribusiness/slavery Whigs. Faced with this dilemma, the party broke apart.

If the Democrats are to remain one Party, a new poll by Jacobin, YouGov, and the Center for Working-Class Politics offers a perspective on how to win among working-class voters. They found that:

  • Candidates who prioritized bread-and-butter issues (jobs, health care, the economy), and presented them in plainspoken, universalist rhetoric, performed significantly better than those who had other priorities or used other language. That preference was even more pronounced in rural and small-town areas, where Democrats have struggled in recent years.
  • Candidates who named elites as a major cause of America’s problems, invoked anger at the status quo, and celebrated the working class were well received among working-class voters.
  • Potential Democratic working-class voters did not shy away from candidates who strongly opposed racism. But candidates who framed that opposition in identity-focused language fared significantly worse than candidates who embraced either populist or mainstream language.

The survey proposed multiple sound bites spoken by potential candidates to survey respondents to rank. The most popular sound bite was the “progressive populist” one:

“This country belongs to all of us, not just the super-rich. But for years, politicians in Washington have turned their backs on people who work for a living. We need tough leaders who won’t give in to the millionaires and the lobbyists, but will fight for good jobs, good wages, and guaranteed health care for every single American.”

This has implications for the 2022 mid-terms. Keep Trump off the table unless, by some miracle, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attempted coup refers charges to the DOJ and the DOJ acts on it. Another key finding was that those surveyed felt Democrats run too far left on certain priorities:

This is also key for building Democrats’ messaging in 2022. You can read the full report here.

Democrats need to think about what it will take to do two things simultaneously: How to stay together as a Party, and how to retain majorities in the House and Senate.

It won’t be simple, but everything depends on it.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 7, 2021

A few start-of-the-week thoughts. First, compare and contrast: The result of New Jersey’s election for governor must be “legal and fair” no matter the outcome, Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli said in his first comments after the AP declared incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy the election’s winner. BTW, Ciattarelli hasn’t conceded the election. Republicans say NJ’s Murphy won in a squeaker, an almost illegitimate (and certainly embarrassing) margin of 77,000 votes.

OTOH in Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin won a landslide victory by 79,000 votes. Terry McAuliffe the Democrat in the Virginia race, conceded. And Youngkin’s 17 year-old son was reported to have tried to vote twice for his dad. That’s a problem since he’s underage. And attempting to break the law twice, well, that’s just youthful exuberance.

Republicans are all about election integrity. It must be nice to not care about hypocrisy or inconsistency. Maybe that’s what Republicans mean when they say they are defending freedom — it’s the freedom to have no principles.

Second, the economy: The Dow is over 36,000, unemployment has dropped from 6.3% in Jan. to 4.8% today. Over 5.6 million jobs have been added, that’s more jobs added under Biden in 9 months than in the 16 years of the last three GOP administrations combined. We’ve managed to give 220 million shots of Covid vaccine in 10 months. But only 30% of Americans think the US is on the right track. Democrats have a huge messaging problem. On to cartoons.

NOW they don’t see a problem:

Will Dems get the message?

The message didn’t work for those nice Aryan people:

Kids ask questions. Answers are simple:

The GOP hits keep coming…

2006: Gay people will force you to gay marry
2010: Muslims will make you conform to Sharia law
2016: Bad brown people are coming in caravans to kill you
2020: Socialism is coming. It will give everyone healthcare, not just the elderly
2021: Teachers will teach white kids to hate themselves if they learn about Emmitt Till

Biden deals with two climate crises:

Republican wet dream:

 

 

 

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