Category: Domestic Policy

35% of Americans Meet The Criteria To Be Middle Class.

The Daily Escape:

Stoney Brook Grist Mill, Brewster, MA – February 2024 photo by Michael Kerouac

Wrongo and Ms. Right spent Sunday with one of our daughters and son-in-law. We spoke about the Ezra Klein op-ed in the NYT about why Biden should step aside. One of Klein’s points is that in presidential campaigns, the candidate is always the campaign’s biggest asset, and that Biden isn’t being used by Democrats as if he is their biggest asset.

Elsewhere, some pundits are saying that the Democrats need to forget campaigning on policy: Dems always try to find things people like and tell them they’re going to help them — and after that, show them the candidate’s character, biography, and qualifications for office.

Instead, the Republicans campaign by appealing more to emotion than intellect, using a negative message to develop enthusiasm.

While Wrongo is happy that Dems want to campaign again on an anti-Trump message, he still thinks policy is the right way to appeal to at least two types of voters: Those who rarely vote, and those who voted Democratic last time but are less enthusiastic this time. These voters think our political system hasn’t produced results for them, and they’re looking for promises to change that in order to get their votes.

While we keep touting Biden’s economic performance, Wrongo recently found a very important poll taken last November by the WaPo that asked Americans how they defined being in the middle class:

“About 9 in 10 US adults said that six individual indicators of financial security and stability were necessary parts of being middle class….Smaller majorities thought other milestones, such as homeownership and a job with paid sick leave, were necessary.”

They also asked how many of those markers of being in the middle class people said they had achieved, and the results are a staggering rejection of how well the US economy is working for many people:

“Just over a third of Americans met all six markers of a middle-class lifestyle. While about 9 in 10 Americans had health insurance, only three-quarters had health insurance and a steady job. With each added measure of financial security, more Americans slipped away from the middle-class ideal.”

Let’s get into the findings. Here’s the WaPo chart about what factors Americans think it takes to be in the middle class:

It’s arbitrary to pick six, but they were the most frequently mentioned. A secure job. The ability to save. To afford an emergency. Paying the bills without worrying. Healthcare. Retirement. It’s a sensible list. And in the poll, huge majorities agreed those are the key criteria for a middle class life.

The Very Big Problem with this is that when the WaPo asked the same respondents if they had the ability to meet those criteria, the numbers are startling. Here’s the second WaPo chart:

Just 35% of people say that they meet the criteria that almost everyone, (~90%) agree should make someone middle class. If that’s true, America needs to redefine “middle” class. The majority in this survey did not have the financial security associated with being in the middle class. More from WaPo:

“The most common barrier was a comfortable retirement, something that about half of middle-income Americans over 35 felt they were on track to achieve.”

Think about what this research is really showing us. America no longer has a middle class. While ~90% of people agree on what a middle class life is, only a minority can afford it. This means we have a “phantom” middle class: Americans want to be middle class, but only a minority of them are. So what class does that make the majority?

What this research appears to show is that America is building something more like a permanent underclass.

Acknowledging this issue would be a great starting point for Biden to gain traction with low propensity voters and with the Gen X and younger voters who make up most of the low enthusiasm cohort of Democratic voters.

As Anat Shenker-Osorio puts it:

“Democrats rely on polling to take the temperature; Republicans use polling to change it.”

This time around the Democrats need to emulate Republicans who work at moving the needle instead of chasing it. And this middle class problem is an issue that will move the needle.

Fortune Magazine’s Tiffani Potesta writes that Gen Xers personify the problem of middle class life:  (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Gen Xers expect to keep working longer than they planned–and will be the first generation to go into retirement with less financial security than their parents and grandparents.”

Gen X will be the first to reach retirement under a new paradigm: the widespread move from Defined Benefit plans to Defined Contribution or 401(k) plans in the US. This is a barely cited yet fundamental societal change that shifted the responsibility to save for retirement from employers to individual employees. More:

“…the numbers do not add up: Gen Xers reported that on average they will need roughly $1.1 million in savings to retire comfortably, yet they expect to stop working with only about $660,000 saved–a savings gap of around $450,000.”

Still more:

“According to a report from the National Institute on Retirement Security, the average account balance in 2020 for private retirement accounts among working Gen Xers was $129,994. This is woefully short of the amount of savings most of us will need to be secure in retirement.”

What’s worse is that the median account balance was scarier: $10,000–and 40% have zero savings.

For a society to be staring at the next few generations not being able to retire and not to be members of the middle class is very troubling, particularly in terms of what’s likely to happen if that’s the case. Losing our middle class is almost a sure path to autocracy, possibly through the rise of fascism and/or authoritarianism.

Biden and the Democrats need to acknowledge these problems are real and pledge to do everything possible to return America to having a true, bell-curve shaped middle class. They can run generally against Trump as “order vs. chaos”, but Trump is running on “America’s decline”, which includes the financial insecurity of millions of Americans. Biden needs to call that out specifically, along with ideas on how to fix the problem. That would make financial insecurity an issue for Democrats equal to abortion, something that targets a specific group and encourages them to get to the polls in November.

If Bernie Sanders isn’t too old to rage against economic insecurity, then Biden is old enough to do the same.

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What’s South Carolina’s Democratic Primary Telling Us?

The Daily Escape:

After the storm, Southern AZ – February 2024 photo by Leila Shehab

Welcome to the Monday Wake Up Call. Let‘s start with a quick review of the South Carolina Democratic primary: Biden won. He swept every county, garnering 96% of the vote overall and 95% or better in every county. At the watch party, people were headed out the doors less than an hour after polls closed. Here’s an MSNBC screen grab that says it all:

With the Biden vote so dominant and the race so noncompetitive, turnout was low, at 131,000. In 2020, with no competitive Republican primary and 12 Democrats on the ballot, 536,949 people voted. That means we didn’t learn very much about voter engagement for 2024.

And once again, the advance polling couldn’t be trusted. Here’s what Emerson College found on Jan. 5, 2024 just four weeks prior to the primary:

This meant that there were 23% undecided in early January. We all know that there are months to go before the general election this fall. It seems certain that Biden and the Democrats are currently testing the effectiveness of messages across the various voting cohorts in the US.

Democratic politicians and MSNBC pundits keep hammering on Trump’s threat to democracy. But how to tell the story about Biden’s first term in ways that normal people can understand? Is the implied threat of an authoritarian takeover by Trump enough to propel turnout in the fall? Or should the message focus on how much better off people are three years on from Trump?

The continued strength of the broader economy is finally starting to break through to people’s consciousness. But Biden and the Democrats still have to sell the Biden recovery and not flinch from fears that voters won’t buy it because they don’t feel it. Anat Shenker-Osorio famously said in an article in 2017 for The Hill, that Democrats shouldn’t just take the country’s temperature, they should change it.

Ezra Klein offered thoughts about American’s need to vote for stability:

“Biden and his allies are framing this election as order against chaos. The party that gets things done against the party that will make America come undone.”

More:

“…Democrats are right that voters are craving stability. But…Trump is leading in many polls because voters believe that he is the one who might offer it. What Trump is pitching….is a push for order — ‘I am going to be the one who secures the border. I’m going to be the one that cracks down on crime. I’m going to be the one that tries to stabilize your prices.’”

More:

“I’ve struggled with this portrayal of Trump as the candidate of stability. I doubt it can survive the gale-force winds of the actual campaign he will run, of the things people will hear and see from him when they tune in to the election.”

Finally:

“…Democrats are having trouble persuading voters of their central pitch: that they are the party of stability. It does not feel like a stable time. It is not Biden’s fault that the world is tumultuous. But that does not mean he will not be blamed for it.”

That’s where Wrongo parts ways with Ezra. He’s not certain that voters who yearn for stability will cast their lonely eyes on Trump. Think about how effective Nikki Haley’s message is that chaos follows wherever Trump goes. Trump’s base isn’t buying that, but that criticism was successful for Haley with Independents in New Hampshire, and will be effective with the “never Trumpers”.

As far as what will motivate 2024 voters to turn out? Wrongo is struggling with how to balance the need to defend America from the authoritarian Right and the kitchen table issues. Wrongo was in high school when the John Birchers were insisting that the threat of creeping communism required a militarist leader to keep America safe. That led to the Republicans nominating Barry Goldwater, at the time a member of the radical Right. The Birchers’ Republican heirs today have moved beyond Goldwater. They hunger for a fascist strong man.

Do average voters see this threat, or are they fretting so much about overpaying for their rent and groceries to care?

And the stability argument resonates with Wrongo. This Sunday brings the Super Bowl, which used to be the one television event that would still unite America. But a significant minority of Americans now think it’s a PsyOp to make Trump lose the election. Klein says in his article that:

“The clichĂ© used to be that Democrats fell in love and Republicans fell in line. The reality, in recent years, has been that Democrats fall in line and Republicans fall apart.”

Time to wake up America! The choice whenever voting starts in your precinct this fall is between chaos and stability. We must stay obsessed with turning out Independents and unaffiliated, along with the Republican “never Trumpers” whose collective votes will ultimately determine the 2024 election.

Biden has to lead the way, and he’s got to do more interviews even though it increases exposure to his age as an issue.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Doreen Shaffer & the Skatalites tune, “You’re Wondering Now”. This was covered and popularized by the UK group The Specials in the 1980s. The Skatalites did this in 1968. But they were covering “You’re Wondering Now” by Andy and Joey, another Jamaican group who first performed it in 1963. Ska is a happy sounding form of music that featured a bass line on the off beat. In the early 1960s it was the dominant music genre in Jamaica and was also popular with the British mods. Shaffer’s voice is pure and wonderful:

Sample Lyrics:

You’re wondering now, what to do, now you know this is the end
You’re wondering how, you will pay, for the way you did behave

Curtain has fallen, now you’re on your own
I won’t return, forever you will wait

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Cartoons Of The Week

We’ve made it to Sunday, meaning we’ll see another week of speculation about the Super Bowl. But today, Wrongo wants to briefly talk about two events. First, Georgia’s Trump prosecutor Fani Willis admitted that she’s been having an affair with Nathan Wade, the man she hired to head the prosecution of Donald Trump and others for election fraud in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Since not everyone loves a lover (see Swift, Taylor), this has caused the scheduled Trump trial to at best, be postponed while Georgia figures out if there is sufficient grounds for Willis to step down.

It’s true that none of this makes any of the facts of the case less truthful. And the affair didn’t stop a unanimous grand jury from indicting 19 people. Moreover, it doesn’t make any of Trump’s actions any less damaging to our country. It’s just another way for Republicans to shift attention away from Trump, not by showing why he’s innocent, but by pretending those who are holding him accountable are actually the bad people.

This is a great example of why professional boundaries exist and should be respected. Willis and Wade have opened themselves up to scrutiny by working together on such a high-profile case while being romantically involved. It will at the very least delay and could risk this consequential prosecution.

Second, the US strikes in Iraq and Syria have been panned/condemned by many media and politicians. In truth, the strikes were on Iran’s Quds Force operating in both countries. This is an escalation from Biden’s former reactions to attacks in Syria and Iraq, and it’s a significant escalation. From David Rothkopf:

“This is a carefully thought-out attack. It is what would be called in baseball “a purpose pitch.” It was conceived to send a strong message to Iran: “Don’t mess with us”….Hitting 85 targets, with bombers from the US and aircraft from across the region…on short notice and the promise of more to come sends a message that goes beyond retaliation….I see a lot of folks calling this an escalation and striking…Quds Force targets is that. But it is also an escalation designed to deter future strikes and avoid further escalations. Which was called for in this case.”

There is so many negative narratives out there that Wrongo wanted to add his two cents on these. Now on to cartoons.

Taylor scares the MAGAs:

The  MAGA-verse is manly:

Border crisis isn’t a crisis for the GOP:

The twin Republican messages about the border:

Nikki Haley’s campaign is faltering:

What Zuckerberg should have said to Sen. Hawley:

Groundhog Day isn’t always about the weather:

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Will Texas Disregard The Supreme Court?

The Daily Escape:

Snow Canyon, UT – October 2023 photo by Cathy Mortensen

(We will not publish a Saturday Soother this week, but there will be a Sunday cartoons column)

In doing research for this week’s Fascism in America column, Wrongo came across this from Rick Perlstein:

“And I think…what…we have in the United States: a very weak political establishment, but a civil society underneath it that’s looking for a kind of expression. And the expression that it’s taking is pathological….Because the party system is unable to answer the demands they have.”

A weak political establishment means that Congress can barely get out of its own way. Our political institutions have become ineffectual. The current Congress is setting records for inaction:

“The 118th Congress is on track to be one of the most unproductive in modern history, with just a couple dozen laws on the books at the close of 2023…”

This void is being filled by judicial or political opportunists. This is even true when the US Supreme Court hands down a decision that Republicans don’t like. From the Texas Tribune:

“The US Supreme Court…ordered Texas to allow federal border agents access to the state’s border with Mexico, where Texas officials have deployed miles of concertina wire…..For now, it effectively upholds longstanding court rulings that the Constitution gives the federal government sole responsibility for border security.”

Last October, Texas sued the federal government after Border Patrol agents cut some of the wire strung along the Rio Grande, arguing the Department of Homeland Security destroyed the state’s property and interfered in Texas’ border security efforts. But in a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court vacated a previous injunction from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals that prevented Border Patrol agents from cutting the wire.

So what does a sovereign state like Texas do in response? It’s governor Greg Abbott, issued a “Statement on Texas’ Constitutional Right to Self-Defense,” following calls by numerous Texas Republicans to resist the high court’s order. Abbott’s statement says that he had invoked his state’s “constitutional authority to defend and protect itself” which “is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”

OK, is it secession time anybody?

Houston Public Media quotes Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, teacher of constitutional law at South Texas College of Law in Houston:

“That’s a real blow to our separation of powers and the way that this country has governed itself….There have been situations in the past where governors and state officials have defied the Supreme Court, but that has led to constitutional crises.”

Teddy Rave, at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, another constitutional law expert, described the calls to defy the high court’s order as unconstitutional and dangerous:

“The last time that I’m aware of that this kind of defiance actually happened was resistance to desegregation orders after Brown v. Board of Education….The Supreme Court didn’t take it kindly and issued a unanimous decision in Cooper v. Aaron explaining that states need to follow its constitutional rulings.”

But since it’s Texas, won’t the Supremes give the Republican governor a hall pass to run amuck over the Constitution? Maybe so, maybe no. The decision was 5-4, meaning that two of the six conservative Supreme Court justices said Abbott had to comply. Could one switch sides? Certainly.

What can Biden do if Abbott refuses to comply with SCOTUS’s decision?  He could federalize the Texas National Guard, which is what happened in Arkansas in 1957, when the then-governor Faubus tried to defy court orders allowing Black students to attend white schools in Little Rock.

Much like Abbott, Faubus’s fight was politically motivated. Faubus used the Arkansas Guard to keep blacks out of Central High School largely because he was frustrated by his political opponents’ success in using segregationist rhetoric to whip up support with white voters.

That eventually led President Eisenhower to federalize the Arkansas National Guard to effectively remove them from Faubus’s control. Eisenhower then sent the 101st Airborne Division to Arkansas to protect the black students and enforce the federal court order. The Arkansas National Guard later took over those protection duties, and the 101st Airborne returned to their base.

There seems to be a growing movement in Texas to fight the SCOTUS decision. A Texas nationalist urged Abbott to militarize the Texas State Guard if Biden federalizes the Texas National Guard. The Texas State Guard cannot be federalized. It has about 1,900 personnel, substantially smaller than the roughly 23,000 members of the Texas National Guard, but Abbott could attempt to beef up its headcount.

The Hill is reporting that Trump has urged states to deploy National Guard troops to Texas in support of Abbott. Various Right-wing twitter accounts are reporting that 25 Republican states have signed a statement supporting Texas against the Supreme Court. It’s not certain as Wrongo writes this is if these reports are true, but a presidential candidate and the governors of several states challenging the federal government seems an awful lot like the beginning of an insurrection.

Their joint statement isn’t in support of Texas, it’s in support of treason. This is what America has come to. It’s also symptomatic of the Supreme Court’s inability to check radical Trump-placed judges in lower courts who issue rulings with devastating consequences for democracy and human rights. States have no constitutional prerogative to nullify federal law. This principle was established during the nullification crisis of the 1830s and the Southern resistance to desegregation during the Civil Rights era. Nor, under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, can states interfere with the lawful exercise of federal authority. This rule is one of the oldest and most entrenched in all of our Constitutional law.

We often talk about Constitutional crises, and this could easily become one if Abbott and his enablers try to limit by force the US Border Patrol’s access in the upcoming days.

It’s also a test for Biden in an election year. Will he have to put down another insurrection by Republicans? If he does, what will be the political fallout?

Stay tuned.

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Dems Need To Change Their Immigration Policy

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Roan Mountain, TN – January 2024 photo by Arpana Goyal

It’s time to talk about immigration. Immigration is a huge political football not only in the US, but throughout Europe. In all cases, the hard political Right is anti-immigration while the political center and left continue to try to duck the issue wherever possible.

Immigration is an extremely complicated issue that will figure prominently in our 2024 election. So far, the debate has been largely one-sided, with Republicans on the attack, and Democrats in a defensive crouch. In essence, the arguments break down to this: Democrats want more money to process the historic immigrant backlog while Republicans want to stop people from coming here in the first place. The politics of this for Dems are fraught.

But before we get to the 2024 election, the subject of immigration and the US southern border is already at center stage in the continuing effort to fund the government beyond the current Continuing Resolution that could end with another possible government shutdown in early March.

The complicating issue for avoiding a government shutdown is Biden’s request for funding for Ukraine. The MAGA House Republicans, including Speaker Johnson (R-LA), oppose the money for Ukraine and say that they won’t approve Biden’s request without dealing with the crisis at the border. From Dan Pfeiffer: (brackets by Wrongo)

“To summarize, Johnson demands a border bill in exchange for passing Ukraine aid; the White House and Senate [are] work[ing] on a border bill; Johnson opposes the bill without even seeing it, despite repeatedly declaring that the “crisis at the border” is the House GOP’s top priority.”

When Ukraine aid became a Democratic policy priority, it pushed Republicans who were once advocates of the Ukraine war effort to abandon their support.

The Republicans see the border crisis as a huge political vulnerability for Biden and want to keep  the issue in limbo until after the election. Polling bears this out. A January  CBS News/YouGov poll shows that the number of Americans who say the situation at the border is a “crisis” has gone up 7 points since May of last year:

There’s no question the Right has used their propaganda apparatus to put the situation at the border on the radar screen for voters. The chart below shows that in the NYT/Siena college poll, Biden is lagging Trump on who is trustable on immigration:

The biggest reason for the shift seems to be the surge of illegal immigration during Biden’s term. Many would-be migrants correctly believe that as long as they can reach US soil, they will be able to stay for years.

Let’s look at some numbers for October 2022 – September 2023 (the US fiscal year):

  • There were 3.1 million attempted crossings at the US Southern border in 2023. Of that total, an estimated 600,000 entered undetected. That leaves 2.5 million migrants that were “encountered” by the US border patrol, over two and a half times the number just four years ago. 83 percent of the encounters occurred between US ports of entry, often in remote locations like the Sonoran Desert. Over half a million were expelled under Title 42, a policy enacted under Trump that allowed border officials to expel migrants without a deportation hearing. The Biden administration lifted that policy in May 2023.
  • Of that 2.5 million, 1.9 million were “processed” under Title 8 of the immigration Law, covering asylum, visas, refugees and deportations.
  • Of that 1.9 million, 1.5 million became new immigration court cases in 2023.

This has caused a huge jump in the backlog of immigration court cases. Today, it takes an average of 3 years to complete an immigration case in the US, largely due to the fact that the backlog per judge now stands at 4,500 cases, up from around 1,000 cases in 2020.

Science tells us that you can’t put two pounds of shit in a one pound bag, so despite the wringing of hands on the part of the US political Left, immigration must be addressed. For the past few months, the White House has been trying to find a compromise with Republicans in hopes of reaching a deal on border security. But so far, the talks between the designated negotiators in the Senate (Chris Murphy D-CT, James Lankford, R-OK, and Kyrsten Sinema, I-AZ), haven’t found an agreed path forward.

Presuming the details of any Senate deal are within the range of what would be acceptable, getting a border deal and passing aid for Ukraine and Israel would be the best outcome for Biden and the Democrats. Dems might be forced to play the cards as they’re dealt. Biden should take the deal and declare a victory for bipartisan politics.

The biggest shift is that the Democrats are reluctantly realizing that they are holding to a losing position. Many asylum claims are bogus and are simply people looking for a better economic life. We need to make policy about how many immigrants the US should be looking to bring into the country every year. That policy should balance the number of immigrants with our ability to help them get started on a fruitful life.

That still would be a pretty large number. It just can’t be infinite.

Time to wake up Democrats! We’re headed for the first presidential election rematch since 1956. Both candidates are unpopular and both are also extremely well-known to voters. That means for the first time in forever, a clear understanding of the policy stakes of an election will be important. That makes our immigration policy important.

To help you wake up, listen to “Why Do We Build The Wall?” from the 2019 Broadway play “Hadestown”. The song was written by Anaïs Mitchell, and this is from her 2010 album “Hadestown”. Note that this song was written in 2010, long before Trump or any politician had any interest in building a wall:

Sample Lyric:

Who do we call the enemy?
The enemy is poverty,
And the wall keeps out the enemy,
And we build the wall to keep us free.
That’s why we build the wall;
We build the wall to keep us free.

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Another Reason Why People Think The Economy Sucks

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Camden Harbor, Camden, ME – January 2024 photo by Daniel F. Dishner Photography

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has crunched the latest Social Security Administration (SSA) wage data. It shows the average American workers haven’t made much money since the 1970s:

“The latest SSA data demonstrates how vastly unequal earnings growth has been between 1979 and 2022. Over that period, inflation-adjusted annual earnings for the top 1% and top 0.1% skyrocketed by 171.7% and 344.4%, respectively, while earnings for the bottom 90% grew just 32.9%.”

That’s 33% over 43 years, less than 1% per year. The largest share of total earnings in the US economy have accumulated at the top of the wage ladder. The EPI is describing  “labor market earnings”, the pay (including benefits) of the 80% of workers who are not managers or supervisors at work. For decades before 1980, these workers’ hourly pay largely tracked economy-wide productivity growth.

When productivity growth slowed significantly, hourly pay growth collapsed even faster, leading to a growing gap between these typical workers’ pay and overall growth. That difference in missing pay for typical workers went to workers at the top or to business owners.

The EPI study shows that if you’re in the bottom 90% of wage earners, you’ve seen annual wage growth of less than 1% per year over the past 43 years. If you’re in the “upper middle class” things were very different. Here’s a chart from EPI:

Average wages in the 95th to 99th percentile have almost doubled, from $120K to $234K (all figures are in 2022 dollars). But this leaves out the real winners, the top 1%. Average wages for them went from $289K in 1979 to $786K in 2022. But even this huge growth is eclipsed by the wages of the top .1%, which increased an astounding 344%, going from $634K to $2.82 million.

Note that the data are for average annual wages which for the bottom 90% were $40,845 in 2022. Data on average wages are all that’s available, but it’s misleading. The MEDIAN wage for all workers is around $34k. That means half the bottom 90% are making LESS than 34k. Also, median household income is around $76k; which is two people working in the same household.

The media and the rest of us really have no idea how little the average person is earning.

And this is just income from wages. People at or near the top of the pyramid own the vast majority of the equity capital in the US — the top 10% of households own 85% of the total corporate stock owned by households.

The economic debate in America since the 1880s has been between those in favor of lightly regulated heavily financialized consumer capitalism, with some very modest income redistribution, sufficient — barely — to keep the losers in that economy from starving or freezing to death.

The other side are the Republicans who think England in the Industrial Revolution, is a model for what America ought to look like today. And Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon says we should listen to Republicans more. He’s specifically talking about NATO and immigration.

And this has been the GOP’s pitch forever:

Democrats need to address the negative impacts of US wage distribution as part of their 2024 pitch to keep the presidency, and return to controlling the House and Senate in November.

The Fields of Wrong are covered in snow, mostly due to temperatures being below freezing for the past several days. We had a tree fall into the road during the big windstorm last Sunday. Now it sits, snow-covered, on our property waiting for our next chain sawing event.

It’s Saturday, and professional football will be all over the television for the rest of the weekend. Good luck to those of you who follow one of the remaining eight teams. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we  try to forget about the Red Sea, the New Hampshire primaries and funding the government, and instead try to calm ourselves for a few moments. Hopefully we’ll be in better shape to launch into the roller coaster ride of next week’s horrors.

Take a few minutes and grab a chair by a window. Now, watch and listen as John Williams is persuaded to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his “Imperial March” from Star Wars during a gala to celebrate his 90th Birthday.

There are many seriously talented people on the stage, including track star Florence Joyner, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Steven Spielberg, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Star Wars actor, Daisy Ridley. Williams is 91, still going strong, and an example to those who think young Biden is too old to run again. Bravo, Maestro:

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Americans Dread The Future

The Daily Escape:

Manhattan Beach Pier, CA – December 31, 2023 photo by Michael Franich

Welcome to Wrongo’s first column of 2024. Let’s dispense with the reviews of last year and the forecasts of this year. Let’s try to describe what we’re all feeling as we say so long to the presidential campaign of 2023, and welcome in the presidential campaign of 2024.

What’s the overwhelming feeling that comes to mind for Americans when thinking about the upcoming presidential election? Dread, according to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll:

“The survey of 1,636 US adults…offered respondents seven emotions — three positive, three negative, one neutral — and asked them to select any and all that reflect their attitude toward the 2024 campaign.

Dread, the most negative option, topped the list (41%), followed by exhaustion (34%), optimism (25%), depression (21%), indifference (17%), excitement (15%) and delight (5%).”

Here’s the relevant chart:

More:

“In total, a majority of Americans (56%) chose at least one of the three negative feelings (dread, exhaustion or depression), while less than a third (32%) picked at least one of the three positive feelings (optimism, excitement or delight).”

Wrongo test marketed the idea that “dread” was the watchword for 2024 at a New Year’s breakfast with people who span the political spectrum. They universally hated it, but after a short discussion felt it was arguably, the dominant feeling that they had about what will/might happen in 2024.

From the issue:

“We are feeling an acute sense of loss….But what do you call the feeling of watching your society being taken over by fanatics, monsters, and lunatics? How about the feeling of watching democracy crash and burn—remember, it’s declining by the stunning rate of about 10% a decade, putting its extinction within our lifetimes.”

Psychology Today gives us a frame to think about dread in their 2023 article, “How to Overcome the Sinking Feeling of Dread”: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“A sense of dread may be due to an abstractly internalized experience of external volatility called “disembedding”….This phenomenon refers to our ability to interact with one another without having to make face-to-face contact. The result is an overabundance of information that comes our way. It becomes abstracted and metaphorically slips through the fingers of our minds in trying to grasp what it is. With a few clicks through an Instagram feed, scrolling through Twitter, or even just opening your web browser to search for something, your brain becomes a dartboard for world news.”

More:

“When one experiences this, there are often repeated attempts to secure a firm base. People will reassert their values as moral absolutes, declare other groups as lacking in value, draw distinct lines of virtue and vice, be rigid rather than flexible in their judgements, and punitive and excluding rather than permeable and assimilative….Another consequence of disembedding is the possibility of scapegoating: the underclass, racial minorities, new-age travelers, addicts, people with unusual behaviors, and other vulnerable social groups risk being singled out and demonized as the source of society’s problems.”

Dread makes us less tolerant of differences, and as a result, we punish them. This is the emotional backdrop for 2024, and the road ahead looks murky as hell. And facts increasingly don’t matter, since whichever side posits a fact, the other has a prepared rebuttal that says the source (even if its official statistics) are misleading if not outright lies.

The NYT’s Krugman notes that overall, the country’s in pretty good shape. The challenge is that people so far continue to blame Biden for the chaos and ugliness that Trump and his cult are creating: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The big question…was whether America would ever fully recover from that shock. In 2023 we got the answer: yes. Our economy and society have, in fact, healed remarkably well. The big remaining question is when, if ever, the public will be ready to accept the good news….America’s resilience in the face of the pandemic shock has been remarkable, [but] so has the pessimism of the public.”

The big question going forward is whether the grim narratives will prevail over our relatively sunny reality when we get to the 2024 election. Unfortunately, we are bathing in the hideous cultural nastiness caused by the Republican Right and it’s spread despair throughout the country.

Overcoming that mood (and the dread people feel) isn’t going to be easy, but disaster is certain if you give up. Individually, we each can do more than we think we can to keep America in good hands.

Start by no longer buying into the bullshit spewed by the mainstream media, in particular, the NYT. Their both sides coverage of Trump’s crooked behavior demonstrates their inability to let us know how real his threat is to the public.

The rest of the corporate media’s coverage is the same, with a few exceptions. Don’t overlook outlets abroad which had good reputations for thorough and unbiased reporting. In the age of the internet with translation capability at your fingertips, it’s not absurd to look outside of the US news rut for different perspectives.

As long as the GOP can paint the Democrats as the bigger enemy, Independent and anti-Trump Republican voters have an out; they can justify staying on the sidelines. The mainstream media’s complicit role in broadcasting the GOP strategy can’t be overstated. And the Democratic Party leadership’s long-term paralysis in the face of this simple equation is one reason why we’re in the situation we are in now.

Stop ascribing superpowers to the GOP. The Republican Party is a hot mess.

No matter what you read, act! Make a plan and act. It can be surprisingly easy to become a thought leader on the local level. Inside both Parties, the leaders are the people who show up and do the work. That’s it, that’s all it takes to begin making change happen. Show up, do the work.

We’re heading into what will be the toughest part of an existential fight for this democracy. It’s going to be an ugly, messy show, one that is certain to add to those feelings of dread. Plan on it and then show up to do the work it will take to beat back the fascists.

Think about the toll Americans will endure in 2024. How many women will die of complications from a pregnancy they couldn’t end? How many trans persons will give up because they can’t live as human beings with autonomy over their bodies? How many persons will die from Covid this coming year because of right-wing propaganda supported by elected GOP officials? How many futures will be shortened because children may not get the food, health care, or education they need?

How many families will be split up because they couldn’t find shelter?

Our message when we’re doing the work has to be about unity. It’s clear right now that Democrats are splintering in all directions. Some don’t want Biden because he’s pro-Israel. Young people find Biden to be too old. Some feel he’s too middle-of-the-road. We all need to remember American novelist Rebecca Solnit’s mantra:

“Voting is a chess move, not a valentine.”

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Saturday Soother – December 23, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Santa Christmas gondola regatta in Venice – December 2023 photo by Manuel Silvestri

Happy Saturday! Wrongo loves it when the days begin to get longer, if only by a fraction. It’s a hopeful sign of the return to more daylight and eventually, spring and summer. This may (or may not) be the last column until the New Year. If it is, Wrongo wants to end with some positive notes.

First, The Economist is out with its annual “Country of the Year” award. This year, it highlights the move back to moderation from conservative governments in three countries.

First, Brazil which swore in a center-left president, Luiz InĂĄcio Lula da Silva, after four years of mendacious populism under Jair Bolsonaro:

“…who spread divisive conspiracy theories, coddled trigger-happy cops, supported rainforest-torching farmers, refused to accept electoral defeat and encouraged his devotees to attempt an insurrection.”

The new administration quickly restored normality—and reduced the pace of deforestation in the Amazon by nearly 50%. But since Lula likes Putin, Brazil didn’t get the award.

Second, Poland had a remarkable 2023: its economy withstood the shock of the war next door; it continued to host nearly 1 million Ukrainian refugees. It raised its defense spending to above 3% of GDP. The country’s biggest problem has been the dominance of the populist-nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has run the government for the past eight years, eroding the independence of the courts, stuffing state media with lackeys and nurturing crony capitalism:

“In October voters dumped PiS in favor of an array of opposition parties. It is early days for a new coalition government, led by Donald Tusk, a veteran centrist, but if it does a good job of mending the damage PiS did to democratic institutions, Poland will be a strong candidate for our prize next year.”

Tusk is a former president of the European Council.

But Greece won the prize. We all remember a few years ago when Greece was the economic basket case of Europe. Incomes had plunged, the social contract was fraying and extremist parties on the left and right were popular. The government turned to China and sold its main port, Piraeus, to a Chinese firm:

“But after years of painful restructuring, Greece topped our annual ranking of rich-world economies in 2023. Its center-right government was re-elected in June. Its foreign policy is pro-America, pro-EU and wary of Russia. Greece shows that from the verge of collapse it is possible to enact tough, sensible economic reforms, rebuild the social contract, exhibit restrained patriotism—and still win elections.”

The Economist closes with the thought that nearly half the world is due to vote in new governments in 2024, so democracy isn’t just on the line in America. It’s on the line everywhere.

Second, a piece of good domestic news. Charles Gaba at ACA Signups reports that, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS):

“In 2022, the insured share of the population reached 92% (a historic high). Private health insurance enrollment increased by 2.9 million individuals and Medicaid enrollment increased by 6.1 million individuals.”

Another stunner from CMS: US healthcare spending as a percentage of the GDP was lower last year than it was 6 years earlier. More detail:

“With a lower rate of health care spending growth of 4.1% in 2022, the share of GDP devoted to health care fell to 17.3% in 2022, lower than both the 18.2% share in 2021 and the highest share in the history of the National Health Expenditure Accounts of 19.5% in 2020. During 2016-19 the average share was 17.5%.”

That’s all good news. Around the global headquarters of the Wrongologist, we’re starting to look toward next year. And even if it seems the news can’t get worse, it probably will. Think about Trump on trial, epic Supreme Court decisions, ongoing foreign policy crises and the most important election of at least Wrongo’s life.

2024 will be a long year that’s going to require emotional and intellectual strength to avoid despair when the media continues covering this election as they have been. It will be a lot to handle.

Here’s Wrongo’s wish that you find some comfort and joy over the next week. And please keep showing up around here in the New Year. Wrongo promises to keep trying to give you perspectives that hopefully make some sense of the world.

On to another out of the ordinary Christmas tune. Watch and listen to the Canadian singer-songwriter Loreena McKennitt perform the “Huron Carol”, written in 1642 by a Jesuit missionary, Jean de BrĂ©beuf who lived among the Huron people. It is Canada’s oldest Christmas song. BrĂ©beuf wrote the lyrics in the native language of the Huron/Wendat people. In December 2021, McKennitt sang it together with an ensemble. It’s superb and haunting:

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The Colorado Case

The Daily Escape:

Squam Lake, NH – December 2023 photo by Robert John Kozlow

”If you aren’t paying attention to the courts, you aren’t paying attention to democracy”. – Mark E. Elias

The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump is disqualified from appearing on the state’s presidential primary ballot because he engaged in insurrection was a bombshell. The plaintiffs included four Republican voters and officials, and two Independents. The organization bringing and managing the lawsuit was CREW and its chief attorney, Marc Elias, quoted above.

Some people are saying that it doesn’t seem right to toss him off of the ballot without a conviction. At issue is whether Trump is such a danger to the country that he’s ineligible to be a candidate at all, and the Colorado Court’s reasoning for this seems very tight. It’s not an interpretation about his rhetoric or an evaluation of his political extremism. It’s solely a determination of whether he took an oath to protect the Constitution, and then fomented an insurrection against the government. And although the verdict was 4-3, all seven judges agreed that Trump had fomented insurrection.

The Court found that he’s ineligible. Regarding the “he must be convicted to be ineligible” argument: The criminal cases against Trump that are wending their way through the courts are varied in their accusations. None of them were brought solely or even primarily to prevent Trump from being elected president, although the Colorado case was. The others charge real crimes. The importance of those cases transcends the individual who committed them. A failure to bring them would set a precedent that we as a country think these behaviors permissible by a future president.

As for letting the people decide about Trump, we did that already. Biden got seven million more votes than Trump. Yet Trump’s still spouting the Big Lie that the election was stolen. Even after 60 court cases, Trump couldn’t prove there was any election fraud. Conservative Judge Luttig says that the 14th Amendment isn’t about removing someone from qualifying for office. Rather it’s about meeting a baseline qualification in order to be considered a QUALIFIED candidate.

There’s also an argument on the Right that Trump shouldn’t be in court at all. But we have a Justice system and in the Colorado case, the legal process was followed. The Court didn’t take any shortcuts; no extraordinary maneuvers were made.

Jon V Last asks why Republicans were on one side of the law in 2020 and on a different side today: (brackets by Wrongo)

“So ask yourself this: All throughout December 2020, everyone insisted that, no matter how foolish or baseless President Trump’s claims might seem, he was entitled to pursue the legal process vigorously to its end.

Why is that not true in this case? Why is it that Trump…[in 2020 was] entitled to have his day in court, but the forces [today] looking to apply different laws to a different end are not?”

Last reminds us that many of the same people who insisted that Trump could pursue all available legal remedies in 2020 wanted a result that would keep him in power. Now, they’re outraged that the people in state of Colorado also pursued legal remedies and won a result that might keep him from returning to power. There’s more from Jon Last. Those who are complaining about the result in Colorado are complaining not about the legal process, but the legal result:

“Have you ever noticed how, whenever Trump does something terrible, there is always an argument that holding him accountable can only help him?

You can’t impeach him in 2020, because it’ll just make him stronger.

You can’t impeach him in 2021, because you’ll turn him into a martyr.

You can’t raid Mar-a-Lago to take back classified documents because you’ll rile up his base.

/snip/

There is a…..helplessness to that thinking: A wicked man does immoral and illegal things—and society’s reaction is to say that we must indulge his depredations, because if we tried to hold him accountable then he would become even worse.

Is there any other aspect of life in which Americans take that view?

That’s not how parents deal with children.

It’s not how regulatory agencies deal with corporations.

And it’s not how the justice system deals with criminals.”

From Robert Hubbell: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Every hesitation, reservation, and exhortation to ‘make an exception’ because of potential violence or political chaos is an invitation to abandon the Constitution. We do so at our grave peril and possibly for the first, last, and only time—because if we set our great charter aside once, there is no logical stopping point for setting it aside again when it serves the pleasure of a president who views the Constitution as an obstacle rather than a safeguard.”

The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to ban Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot for engaging in insurrection is probably on its way to the US Supreme Court. Wrongo isn’t a lawyer, so you should look elsewhere for a discussion of the finer points of the law in this case, and he has no confidence that the Supremes will decide against Trump.

But Wrongo wants to address one item, the question of whether a candidate should be tried while running for office. Just the Mar-a-Lago charges of mishandling highly classified information and then obstructing their return makes it clear that he should be tried regardless of his candidacy. The government needed to secure the secret documents Trump had stashed all over his club. Trump thwarted those efforts. And the case was developed before Trump declared himself as a candidate for 2024.

A thought experiment: Let’s imagine that Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis had run for US president in 1868. Either of them could probably win a solid South and be competitive in several border states. Making sure that they didn’t win at the ballot box what they couldn’t on the battlefield is why Clause 3 was included in the 14th Amendment in July, 1868.

Would supporters of Lee or Davis have complained that they were ineligible for public office? Certainly! But, too bad. Insurrection and rebellion (still) have consequences. And nobody said that they had to be convicted before being ineligible.

When a president of the US loses an election and attempts to stay in power through violence, there really is no way to deal with it that doesn’t have a political component. But that means nothing to the merits of the case. Should we prosecute it only to the point that the ex-president decides to run again, and then drop it?

The whole Republican “let the voters decide” talking point was trotted out after the Colorado decision. It’s hilarious. We did that. We did let the voters decide. Biden won. And Trump refused to accept the results and sent a violent mob to overturn it. That’s the whole point of this case. We must apply the Constitution and the rule of law to Trump in the same way it would be applied to any other citizen.

Whatever lies ahead, let’s not underestimate the significance of the Colorado Court findings. They will figure prominently in the outcome in 2024. Our job is to fight for the soul of democracy and for a free and responsible government by popular consent.

Let’s close with a Christmas tune that is new to Wrongo: The Tractors perform their 2009 hit “The Santa Claus Boogie”, from their second album, “Have Yourself a Tractors Christmas”. The band no longer exists, as several of the members have died:

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Saturday’s Kinda Soothing Links

The Daily Escape:

Surf, Shore Acres SP, OR – December 2023 photo by Alan Nyri Photography

Next week is the last before the Christmas and New Year’s festivities. The extended holiday time will reduce Wrongo’s output and most likely limit his posts to season-appropriate musical selections. But that’s next week. With what remains of this week, here are some snippets from longer articles.

First, from Kyle Tharp, “Inside the first-ever White House holiday party for internet celebs”:

“It’s the influencer party,” I overheard one Secret Service officer mumble to another….We were in line for one of the annual White House Holiday Receptions…where allies of the President, dignitaries, and the press are invited to gather for spiked eggnog and hors d’oeuvres while touring the newly unveiled holiday decorations. Unlike past parties, however, the guest list for the reception…was unprecedented: this event was organized by the White House’s Office of Digital Strategy….That meant the median age of attendees was probably decades younger than most holiday shindigs in DC, and the cumulative social media audience of those in attendance approached 100 million followers.”

Jill Biden gave a short toast:

“Welcome to the White House….You’re here because you all represent the changing way people receive news and information.”

Next, Politico reports that Bidenomics is a big hit outside the US:

“Bidenomics” is falling flat with American voters. But the rest of the world can’t get enough of it.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) mix of support for clean energy technologies and efforts to box out foreign competitors is also promoting a kind of green patriotism — and even some politicians on the right outside the US say that’s a climate message they can sell:

“It’s probably the most impressive piece of legislation in my lifetime,” ex-diplomat Marc-AndrĂ© Blanchard, an executive at Canada’s biggest pension fund, told POLITICO at the…COP28 UN climate talks…”

Biden’s climate law has shown leaders around the world that winner-picking is back, something that has been out of fashion for the past 40 years. The IRA is having a real-world impact as investors shift their money to the US from abroad, hungry to take advantage of US tax breaks:

“In July, for example, Swiss solar manufacturer Meyer Burger canned plans to build a factory in Germany, choosing Arizona instead.”

Third, The Hill reports that buried in the just-passed defense bill was an anti-Trump nugget:

“Congress has approved legislation that would prevent any president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without approval from the Senate or an Act of Congress.”

The measure, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and is expected to be signed by Biden.

You have to give credit to Lil’ Marco, a shameless Trump supporter who publicly slams Biden, but who clearly understands that Trump back in office is a massive threat. It’s interesting that both Houses passed this, meaning that some House Republicans are acknowledging that Trump will abandon the US commitment to NATO if he gets the choice.

Finally, Drones. They are rapidly changing how soldiers fight, and as both sides in the Ukraine War grow more dependent on them, it’s becoming clear that the US doesn’t have the countermeasures that can defeat drone attacks. From Foreign Policy magazine:

“The advent of pervasive surveillance…has created a newly transparent battlefield. Ubiquitous drones and other technologies make it possible to track, in real time, any troop movements by either side, making it all but impossible to hide massing forces and concentrations of armored vehicles from the enemy.”

More:

“That same surveillance…makes sure that forces, once detected, are immediately hit by barrages of artillery rounds, missiles, and suicide drones.”

As drones take an increasingly prominent role in modern warfare, it’s clear that the need to disable or kill them is critical. Back in the stone age, when Wrongo was an air defense officer, it was the domain of specialist units with very expensive equipment. Now, the proliferation of small, cheap drones is spreading the anti-drone role down to the infantry squad level. From the WSJ:

“Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante said…that the US needed a surge in production of counterdrone technology, and that a lack of such equipment was hampering operations in both Ukraine and Israel.”

While Ukraine has successfully used drones throughout the war, Russia has recently improved its capabilities. That’s causing Ukraine to lose 10,000 drones a month. Both sides are also expanding their capacity to make drones. More from the WSJ: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Russia has been very effective at bringing Ukrainian drones down by sending out more powerful signals to control the drone than [can] its actual operator….This ability to jam drone signals means that Ukrainian operators have to move closer to the front line to maintain a signal with their [drones]…”

State-of-the-art drone Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) are severely lagging in the West, reducing our ability to help Ukraine, and potentially endangering us here at home. Warfare has changed and America’s playing catch-up. You better believe China is going to school on drone warfare in Ukraine.

Enough of the scary stuff. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we decide to unplug from all news all the time and spend a few moments gathering ourselves before the rush of news and holiday shopping that will fill next week.

Start by arranging yourself in a comfy chair by a south-facing window. Now, watch and listen to Edvard Grieg’s  Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 “Morning Mood”. It is performed here by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1983:

Practically every human being has heard this at least once in their life.

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