Politics – Page 37 – The Wrongologist

China’s Grand Strategy

In December 2015, Wrongo linked to a year-end prediction in the LA Times:

“One Belt, One Road”, also known as “OBOR,” is a new development strategy initiated by China in 2015 to promote its economic connectivity and cooperative relationship with nations in Eurasia by helping them develop infrastructure. These initiatives should also help Chinese exports.

OBOR is called the new Silk Road by the Chinese. The Silk Road was an ancient network of trade routes linking China’s merchants with Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe in the seventh century.

Now, China’s president, Xi Jinping, wants his country to revisit the time when the Silk Road was a conduit for diplomacy and economic expansion, and when Chinese silk was sent across the globe.

OBOR has drawn remarkably little attention and comment in the US, especially by our politicians and pundits, who prefer to focus on old white men in red ball caps.

This is surprising, considering OBOR’s economic implications and its geostrategic significance.

OBOR seeks to convert the Eurasian land mass into a single economy by interconnecting a network of roads, railroads, pipelines, ports, airports, and telecommunications links, and, based on these, to create a series of logistics corridors (One Belt). Supplementing this will be a maritime component (One Road), aimed at linking Southeast Asia, Oceania, and North Africa, through the South China Sea, the South Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean. China would develop deep water ports and then build the infrastructure to link them to interior markets. Here is a graphic that shows the “One Belt, One Road” project:

OBOR Source: The Economist

China plans to commit $4 trillion to build out the OBOR project. That may sound like a lot, but China currently has $3.5 trillion in reserves, mostly in US$. The Chinese say that they have 900 deals in 60 countries in place, or in negotiation, or planned. Most would be designed, built and managed by Chinese enterprises, along with local partners. The Chinese government will directly or through several newly established funds they control, provide the financing for both the Chinese companies and their local partners, with low-interest loans or grants.

OBOR will enable China to employ the large project development capacity that it has built up during its industrialization and infrastructure development drive, much of which China now sees as surplus to current needs.

By seeking to use OBOR to create a Eurasian bloc, China resurrects Mackinder’s World Island Theory, described as: Whoever controls the Heartland of Europe and Asia will rule the world. The corollary is: Who controls the Land Power will unavoidably compete with who controls the Sea Power. Today, the US is the Sea Power, while control of the Land Power is up for grabs, and China is betting that OBOR can help it become the Land Power.

This is China’s Grand Strategy.

Russia is in an interesting position. On the one hand, China is its ally, particularly in oil and gas, with Russia as supplier, and China as the buyer. China will need Russia’s military strength along with its own to offset the military power of the US once the real competition begins. Also, Russia cannot ignore the positive significance that a strong OBOR could provide in its relations with the US and the EU.

China’s bet is that the US is losing its grip in Europe. And that the EU will not be a long-term player politically even if it is economically. The EU is challenged from within by stagnant economies, and challenged from the East by Russia, who sees the EU’s expansion to former Soviet bloc nations as both military and political threats. Possibly, Germany can be spilt off from the rest of Europe.

This is China’s plan for global economic and political primacy in the 21st century. The US response has been to continue playing geopolitics with breathtaking ineptitude: When you are number one, you ally with number three (Russia), against number two (China). Or better yet, get them to fight each other.

But when the US tries to contain both simultaneously, it pushes them together.

Most significant, an autonomous Asian nation is promulgating a global economic and political expansion through bilateral deals. It is presenting a positive and credible vision of future commercial and political success for many countries who no longer trust the West, if indeed, they ever did.

This is very much against the multilateral trade model that the US and the EU have stood for in the past 70 years. Sadly, the West has not demonstrated any positive vision for the future since the end of the cold war.

But trust Trump. He’ll make a great deal, and those Chinese will certainly stay at home.

July 4, 2016

Independence Day 2016. And 240 years later, where are we?

COW Our Sad Fourth

Our founders were willing to die for an idea. They wanted home rule, not a local dictatorship run by a representative of an English King. There were spirited debates around the ideas that founded our Republic, and there were those who worked hard to keep the rule of the King in place.

So are the contentious debates of today just more of the same? Here is a small taste of Sebastian Junger’s new book, “Tribe”: (pg. 124)

Today’s veterans often come home to find that, although they’re willing to die for their country, they’re not sure how to live in it.

He goes on:

It’s hard to know how to live for a country that regularly tears itself apart along every possible ethnic and demographic boundary.

On the front lines, GI’s know their buddies are different in all sorts of ways, but they set aside their differences and form units that transcend differences, often heroically. Yet, in 2016 America, on a different set of front lines, our politicians amplify differences, going so far as to regularly accuse rivals of deliberately trying to harm their country.

Our society is at war with itself. Depending on their ideology, people speak with complete contempt about the rich, the poor, the educated, or the foreign-born. They express the same contempt for the president, and again, depending on their ideology, the entire US government.

That’s a level of contempt we have usually reserved for enemies in a time of war. But now, we apply it to our fellow citizens. Contempt is particularly toxic because it implies that the attacker has a position of moral superiority, and through that, has the agency to attack another.

So, on our most patriotic day, put down that hot dog, and ask the question: How do we unify a secure, wealthy country that is now playing a zero-sum political game?

Time to wake up, America! And to help with that, let’s dance around the room with a little rockabilly by Elvis Presley. Elvis was treated with contempt by some in the 1950s, but it was mostly silent, and by the Silent Generation, who thought they were protecting their kids from rock & roll.

Take a listen to “Good Rockin Tonight”, and remember Scotty Moore, the original guitarist for Elvis, who died last Tuesday. He was not just our last living link to the King (assuming the King is really dead), he was the force behind Elvis’s early singles. Scotty is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

His reverb-drenched rockabilly guitar was the driver in the originally drummer-less trio of Elvis, Scotty and bassist Bill Black:

COW Elvis and Scotty

Rolling Stone ranks Scotty Moore No. 29 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, saying “The playing was so forceful that it’s easy to forget there was no drummer.”

Keith Richards has said:

Everyone else wanted to be Elvis. I wanted to be Scotty.

Here are Elvis, Scotty and Bill on “Good Rockin Tonight”:

Hillary Should Grab Populism and Run With It

The biggest change in our politics in the past 20 years is the rise of populism on the left and right. The populists believe that we are led by a selfish elite that cannot—or will not—deal with the problems of ordinary working people, and there is ample evidence that they are correct.

Trump and Clinton say they will bring back jobs that corporations have shipped offshore. They make China the scapegoat for lost economic opportunity, while the real causes are automation and the triumph of the spreadsheet in corporate strategy.

Those jobs are never coming back, and a candidate who says they can negotiate with foreign governments to bring jobs back demonstrates either their naiveté about the true cause of job loss, or a simple desire to BS the American public.

Voters can see through that.

Economic and cultural insecurity are the bedrock causes for populists. Unemployment and stagnant wages hurts working-class whites, while cultural issues are a top issue for older white Americans. The first group sees their jobs threatened by automation and globalization. They join with older whites in seeing immigrants as scroungers who work for less, grab benefits and if you believe Trump, commit crimes.

Both groups also believe that American society is being undermined by diversity and foreign-born citizens.

This is the battle line of the 2016 presidential election. The mediocre economy that has been with us for nearly 20 years has caused real harm. We remain a wealthy country, but certain groups now see their opportunity slipping away. Slow growth, or no economic growth, means only a few elites will do well, and most voters see the self-serving political class as siding with the elites.

So can a candidate unify an electorate that now plays a zero-sum political game?

The Pant Load has the better position in this game, since he can exploit pre-existing fears that are based in fact.
The Pant Suit must carefully calibrate her message, but she cannot be a “maintain the status-quo” candidate and win.

Clinton would do well to consider what William Berkson said in the WaMo:

If there is one national goal that Americans can agree on, it is opportunity for all.

Berkson makes the point that since President Reagan, Republicans have advocated a simple theory of how to grow the economy: The more you reduce government involvement in the economy and the more efficient markets become, the more the economy grows.

Sorry, but the simplistic theory of free market economics has been drowned in a tsunami of fact in the past 35 years. Berkson says:

Both Democratic administrations since Reagan—that of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—have raised taxes, and under them, the economy grew more rapidly than under the tax-cutters Reagan and George W. Bush.

This opens a path for the Pant Suit. In order to win, she must assure voters that she will deliver more and better jobs. Family income must go up. But how to achieve this?

By advocating a policy of economic opportunity through public investment in infrastructure. It fulfills the promise of opportunity for all, a populist message that has proven to work throughout America’s past. And it allows Clinton to hammer the GOP Congress and Paul Ryan about the lack of any track record for laissez-faire policies, since they have never worked, not even once, as a miracle cure for jobs and income inequality. This would be an open return to Keynesian economics. Here is Eduardo Porter in the NYT:

The Keynesian era ended when Thatcher and Reagan rode onto the scene with a version of capitalism based on tax cuts, privatization and deregulation that helped revive their engines of growth but led the workers of the world to the deeply frustrating, increasingly unequal economy of today.

And led to the low growth economy that drives today’s populist anger.

How to fund that infrastructure expense? More revenue. For the last 40 years, Democrats have been unwilling to counter the conservative argument that higher taxes are a redistribution of wealth between classes. Clinton should argue that current tax policy is really a transfer of resources from tomorrow’s generation to today’s. This is a strong populist message.

Younger Millennials understand this clearly. They already believe Social Security will not be there when they need it. She can win them over if she makes a case for new jobs and new revenues.

When conservatives say that it is unfair for people in their highest earning years to pay more taxes on that income, Clinton can point out that this is a past-due bill that they need to pay just as their elders paid higher taxes that supported the current earners when they were starting out. It was that investment in public resources such as public education and infrastructure, and in research, technology and industry that enabled today’s peak earners to get where they are.

While the strategy opens Clinton to criticism from Grover Norquist and the right about fiscal irresponsibility, it pits Trump against the Tea Party and the GOP. He would need to choose between being a populist or a doctrinaire fiscal conservative. Either way, it will bleed votes from some part of his base.

The strategy could work in down ballot races as well, particularly in the Rust Belt. Maybe working class conservatives will hear her, and not vote against their economic interests for once.

We’ll see if she will move from status quo, to “let’s go” as a campaign strategy.

More Political Lessons From Brexit

There is a neoliberal aspect to Brexit that has many Brits in the 1% quietly (and tentatively) quite happy. Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, writing in the WSJ, said the Brexiteers:

…think the vote for Brexit was about liberty and free trade, and about trying to manage globalization better than the EU has been doing from Brussels.

Neoliberalism at its finest. You could substitute “No Obama” for “Brexit”, and “Washington” for “Brussels”, and think it was the GOP talking.

Mr. Nelson says that a major problem was that the EU’s centralized, command-type structure makes local issues difficult to manage. He says that regulations issued at the European level, rules promulgated by officials whose names Brits didn’t know, people they never elected and cannot remove from office, became law in the UK. More from Mr. Fraser: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

Mr. Cameron has been trying to explain this to Angela Merkel…He once regaled the German chancellor with a pre-dinner PowerPoint presentation to explain his whole referendum idea. Public support for keeping Britain within the EU was collapsing, he warned, but a renegotiation of its terms would save Britain’s membership…Mr. Cameron was sent away with a renegotiation barely worthy of the name. It was a fatal mistake [by the EU] not nearly enough to help Mr. Cameron shift the terms of a debate he was already losing.

The EU took a gamble: That the Brits would not vote to leave. A better deal—perhaps aimed at allowing the UK more control over immigration, a top public concern in Britain—might have stopped Brexit. But the absence of a deal sent a clear message: The EU isn’t interested in reform.

The EU apparently needs fixing, but it won’t be the UK who does it. Cameron tried in a lukewarm way to fix Europe a little around the edges, and failed. A final point from Mr. Fraser:

The question is not whether to work with Europe but how to work with Europe. Alliances work best when they are coalitions of the willing. The EU has become a coalition of the unwilling, the place where the finest multilateral ambitions go to die.

Perhaps. It IS clear that not all regulations are created equal, some are inefficient, and some are just stupid. But, a business environment with fewer government regulations is the wet dream of most business owners, while it often harms consumers. It is also true that the Brexit supporters were able to conflate in the minds of voters all the discontent with UK austerity, benefit cuts, poor quality job creation and wage stagnation along with the EU’s hegemony, into a big ball of emotion.

And it worked.

The inside-the-bubble UK neoliberal view is that the EU was the problem, and the British voters solved that. America doesn’t have an analogue. We could leave NAFTA, but that has none of the earth-shaking possibilities. We could fail to pass the TPP. That would be a yuuge anti-neoliberal event.

There is an economic malaise in blue collar UK. Once an industrial powerhouse, it has become service driven, with finance and lawyering representing a significant portion of its economy. Sounds just like America in 2016.

Let’s link all of this up with our domestic political economy:

Income inequality has grown in the US since at least the 1980s.
Real median income is the same as in 1996.
Our Labor Participation Rate (the share of American civilians over the age of 16 who are working or looking for a job) is about where it was in the 1970s.
Despite a rosy headline unemployment rate of 4.7% (which counts only people without work seeking full-time employment), the U-6 rate (includes discouraged workers and all marginally attached workers, plus those workers who are part-time purely for economic reasons) is much higher at 9.7%. In human terms, that is 15.3 million souls who need a job.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both see these things. The candidate who convinces voters that s/he will really address them will win.

Trump is correct when he says if there are millions out of work, how can we permit immigration? He wrongly focuses on Mexicans, but he’s right: We need fewer people pursuing the fewer jobs we will have until at least until 2025, when finally, all the Baby Boomers retire.

America is in a class war, but it’s the working class versus the middle class rather than workers versus billionaires, as Bernie talks about. Joe Six-pack doesn’t hate the billionaire class. Therefore, Trump is acceptable.

The Pandering Pant Load sees this, and has moved to exploit their anger.

How Brexit Informs The Pant Suit’s Strategy

We are told that the Pant Suit is the candidate of the status quo, while the Pant Load is a wild card who will bring about change, possibly change that causes immediate remorse if he is elected. That’s just what the UK is experiencing. After a weekend facing the realities of Brexit, 3.5 million Brits have signed a petition for a do-over vote on “Remain vs. Leave”.

The pundits say Clinton can’t be the candidate of change because she supports President Obama, and the common view is that her first term would be Obama’s third term. But, if Brexit has relevance for the American election, she must avoid appearing to be the candidate of the status quo.

If the Pant Load can make the election about any kind of change vs. more of the same, Clinton will be vulnerable.

She should run against Trump’s fitness to govern, and the fitness of the Republicans in Congress to govern as well. After all, Republican Congressional leaders decided not to govern in January 2009, and so far, they have not paid a political price for their obstructionism. Of course, Mr. Obama tried to run against the do-nothing Congress in 2014, and the result was that the GOP took control of both houses.

Maybe it would be different this time for the Pant Suit. As Steve Waldman said about this strategy at the WaMo:

But if it could ever work, it’s now. The most recent Economist/YouGov poll reported a 9% approval for Congress among registered voters. It is literally the most unpopular Congress in the history of polling. Clinton can make the attack more effectively than Obama, because it won’t sound as much like blame-shifting.

And she could make running against Congress sound like change. She needs to shift some of her focus away from declaring the Pant Load unfit for office. That is, unless he keeps making more mistakes like his inexplicable PR disaster in Scotland. If he does that, her speeches will write themselves, and he will keep sliding in the polls.

She should run to enact specific things that Congress has blocked – infrastructure spending, ending tax breaks for corporate off-shoring, and universal background checks for gun ownership. But she needs to distance herself from more from Obama on global trade deals. Consider this from the Detroit Free Press:

CNN’s exit poll, which surveyed 1,601 Michigan Democratic voters as they left their precincts Tuesday, showed that 58% of them believed trade with other countries costs jobs, compared to 30% who believe they create them. And among those who believe trade costs jobs, Sanders won by a large margin, 58%-41%.

Michigan is a key state for Clinton, and she needs to build a firewall in a few other states that Obama won in 2012, but where she now has some trouble, if the June 21 Quinnipiac polls for Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are correct. The polls show Clinton with a clear lead in Florida (47%-39%), but locked in ties in Ohio (40%-40%) and Pennsylvania (42%-41%).

She has to keep the Pant Load from winning both Ohio and Pennsylvania, which right now, look to be toss-ups, meaning Trump could win both. Pennsylvania also has a number of swing House districts and an important Senate race, so Clinton must work hard there, even if it were completely in the bag for her. OTOH, PA elected a Democratic governor in the 2014 Republican landslide, and hasn’t gone red in a presidential election since 1988. This, from Booman:

For starters, Obama won in 2012 with 332 Electoral College votes to Mitt Romney’s 206. If we keep everything the same and award Ohio and Pennsylvania to Trump, the result is 294-244.

So, winning Ohio and Pennsylvania would be a start for the Pant Load, but without Florida, it’s hard to get from 244 to the 270 votes needed to win. In fact, without Florida, Trump would have to win Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Hampshire and Michigan, while losing Iowa in order to garner a 277-261 victory.

It’s a long way to November, and who knows who will win? It’s difficult to believe it will be close, but we lived through two Nixon wins, so electing someone you dislike and distrust is nothing new for America.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 26, 2016

Sunday cartoons return! Sorry for the hiatus, but it was unavoidable.

Quite the week. Did the sky just fall on the UK? We will have more over the next few days. There is still left-over emotion about Orlando. We had a sit-in by Dems, or as one wag said, it was the first time in years that Democrats stayed up past 10:00pm. But, did it achieve much? And of course, there is the 2016 presidential campaign.

Europe and the UK worked for nearly 70 years to put the EU together, and it is undone in an evening:

COW Brexit 2

The conventional economists’ view of what Brexit means:

COW Brexit 3

UK Prime Minister David Cameron misreads the people, pays the price:

COW Brexit 4

Orlando led to sit-ins, political and otherwise:

COW Sit In

Loyalty oaths were on display after Orlando:

COW Loyalty

Trump has less campaign dough than expected, but there was a benefit:

COW Bigger Hands

Republicans vs. Yellen

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen appeared before Congress on Wednesday for her semi-annual testimony. This, from the NYT:

Ms. Yellen’s final appearance before the presidential election in November was a master class in how many members of Congress have allowed real debate about the country’s economic challenges to be subsumed in the broader political din.

The way the kabuki play works, the Fed Chair starts with prepared remarks that all committee members already have in their hands. On Wednesday, she flagged long-run headwinds to economic growth, and said considerable uncertainties remain for the economic outlook, including risks from China and the so-called Brexit vote in the European Union. Still, she offered a dose of optimism, noting a considerable step-up in second-quarter growth and strong consumer spending in recent months.

Then the Kabuki play moved to questions by Congresspersons. More from the NYT:

It probably tells you everything that you need to know about the current state of the Federal Reserve and monetary policy that in the first ten minutes of Yellen’s Q&A, much of the questioning revolved around issues such as bank regulation/capital requirements and the diversity hiring policies of the Federal Reserve System.

It seems that Congresspersons can’t be bothered drilling down about what the Fed is really thinking about the economy. Based on yesterday’s evidence, they cannot even be bothered learning what Fed policy actually is!

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, (R-TX), said in his opening statement that the Fed is “complicit” in the failure of the Obama administration’s economic policies and the inability of the economy to grow above a 3% annual rate. (FYI, we have hit 3% or more just nine times in the past 16 years)

It got worse:

Bill Huizenga, (R-CA), said he’s worried the Fed has itself become a too-big-to-fail financial institution. Remember folks, the Fed can issue all the money it might require, so it is difficult to come up with a scenario where the Fed fails.
Representative Scott Garrett, (R-NJ), accused Ms. Yellen of unfairly aiding Wall Street and worsening income inequality. From the NYT:

“Why do you see a need to benefit Goldman Sachs?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, we are not trying to benefit the rich,” Ms. Yellen responded, before trying to interject that more than 14 million jobs had been created since the recession ended in 2009.

“Excuse me, I have the floor,” said Mr. Garrett,

Huizenga, (R-MI), said the Fed should also have to undergo a “stress test” like a big bank because of its $4.5 trillion balance sheet. Huizenga said he is worried the Fed is insolvent.

Yellen said the Fed has already undertaken this sort of exercise. Our balance sheet is very different…The Fed is very different from a commercial bank.

Then came the “excess regulations are holding the economy back” questions from Republicans:

Randy Neugebauer, (R-TX), says there has been a “buffet” of new rules put on banks with little thought of the overall impact. Yellen replies that the Fed is trying to “reduce the odds” that banks get in trouble, and that most banks are profitable.
Blaine Luetkemeyer, (R-MO), asks why no new banks are being chartered, again stressing burdensome regulation. Yellen says the challenging economic environment, not regulation, is the likely culprit.
Steve Stivers, (R-OH) says that Fed regulations have held down private investment.

Yellen says Fed regulations are not out of line with international standards and the safety and soundness of the banking sector has improved.

Sean Duffy, (R-WI) asked if government regulation was a headwind to growth, saying that businesses cite regulation as a headwind. Yellen replies: “Are you referring to our regulations?” (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

I’m talking about government regulations…Why don’t you cite it as a headwind?

It’s very hard to quantify the extent to which regulations… [are] headwind[s], she said.

After a fruitless attempt to get Ms. Yellen to call health insurance costs for Wisconsin manufacturers a headwind, Mr. Duffy gave up in a fit of pique.

I’ll accept that as a non-answer, he said.

This hearing is an object lesson in why average people hate Congress. Committee members had a chance to drill down on the country’s economic challenges, but see only another talking points opportunity.

Imagine what similarly ill-informed Congress critters might ask witnesses in front of a different committee, say, at the Judiciary Committee:

Is it really appropriate to hold confirmation hearings when your term ends in four years? Do we really want to saddle America with a Supreme Court justice nominated by a potential lame duck president?

Democrats’ Strategic Failure Continues to Haunt

When President Obama won re-election in 2012, Democrats increased their majority in the Senate, but the House of Representatives remained in Republican hands. In House races in 2012, 1.7 million more votes were cast for Democrats than for Republicans, but Republicans came away with 33 more Congressional seats.

How did this happen when in 2008, Republicans lost a “wave” election, and were looking at eight years in the minority? The Republicans were staring down a demographic tidal wave, and the Democrats were talking about a decade of changing politics. The Democrats had taken a super majority in the Senate. The real risk to the GOP was that, by the 2020 census, demographics could keep them in a semi-permanent minority for a very long time.

Then, along came a Republican strategist named Chris Jankowski. He had a strategy, one which the Democrats failed to react to. A strategy that turned a period of a likely permanent GOP minority to a GOP majority in four years. All of this is covered in “Rat-F*****: The True Story Behind The Secret Plan To Steal America’s Democracy“, by Salon’s editor-in-chief, David Daley.

Jankowski’s strategy was to gain control of as many state legislatures as possible in 2010. The plan was to control the state’s redistricting process for Congressional districts, once the result of the 2010 Census was available. That is because state legislatures draw most of the congressional boundaries across the country. The GOP’s plan was called REDMAP for Redistricting Majority Project. The idea behind REDMAP was to hit the Democrats in several state legislatures where Democratic statehouse majorities were thin. They targeted races with vast sums of money and were able to flip many state houses.

In 2009, Democrats held the majority of seats in both houses of the state legislature in 27 states. In six more, they held a majority in one house. The Presidency, the US Senate, and the House of Representatives were all in Democratic hands.

In 2010, Republicans gained nearly 700 state legislative seats, which, was a larger increase than either party has seen in modern history. The wins were sufficient to push 20 legislative chambers from a Democratic to a Republican majority.

Most significantly, the GOP took control over both houses of the legislature in 25 states.

REDMAP’s success was made possible by funding from a super-PAC called the Republican State Leadership Committee. It raised $30 million, mostly from corporations, of which $18 million was received just weeks before Election Day.

Pennsylvania is an object lesson: So skillfully were the lines drawn by the Republican legislature that in 2012, when President Obama carried Pennsylvania by 300,000 votes and the state’s Democratic congressional candidates collectively out-polled their rivals by 100,000 votes, Republicans still won 13 of Pennsylvania’s 18 seats in the House of Representatives.

In Michigan, the 2012 election was a huge success for Democrats. Voters elected a Democratic US Senator by more than 20 points and reelected President Obama by almost 10 points, but Republicans ended up with nine of the state’s Congressional seats to the Democrats’ five.

This was among the greatest political achievement in modern times. If you’re a Republican, you look at this and say, we played by the rules, we played within the law, and we won!

And the Democrats spent 2009-2011 asleep at the wheel, presiding over a catastrophic strategic failure.

Worse, the GOP plans were announced by Karl Rove in a March 2010 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Rove said they were going to use redistricting to take back the Congress. The GOP plan was in plain sight.

This takes us to Hillary Clinton’s possible choices for Vice President. Apparently, she is leaning towards Tim Kaine, (D-VA). Kaine is attractive in that Hillary needs to win in Virginia to win the presidency. Kaine is a Harvard-educated lawyer and was governor of Virginia from 2006-2010.

We mention him here since he was Chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2009-2011.

That’s right, it was Tim Kaine who the Republicans outsmarted with their REDMAP strategy. It is Tim Kaine who let the GOP place so many different locks on the door to Congress. Undoing that will take years of really concentrated effort, state by state, chamber by chamber. It’s going to take the Democratic Party at least until after the 2020 census to undo what Tim Kaine let happen in 2010 and 2011.

Perfect choice for VP. He’s the right guy to follow a Hillary Presidency.

In preparation for the next census, Democrats have come up with a REDMAP-like plan of their own. They call it Advantage 2020, and say they plan to spend $75 million.

Republicans have announced REDMAP 2020. Their spending goal?

$125 million.

The Pant Suit vs. the Pant Load – Jobs, Part Infinity

We are in a time when a presidential candidate’s personality counts for more than the candidate’s policies. Candidates obfuscate on most policy issues and the media lets them get away with absolutely outrageous declarations of near-facts or outright half-truths.

One policy we must make them nail down explicitly is their jobs policy.

The key to making America great again is adding more jobs. Wrongo is a pest on this subject, but without more jobs, growth in GDP is harder to achieve. Tax revenues are more difficult to grow. People who are idle get into trouble.

The Pant Suit and the Pant Load know this, so they will talk from here to November about adding manufacturing jobs back to cities that lost them starting in the 1970’s. Those jobs are never coming back, but both of them are working hard to convince you they can do it. Consider this, from Parallel Narratives:

We’re now being told by folks who know better that all we need to do to bring those jobs back, to resurrect a future we can believe in, or make America great again, is to elect the outsider politician who is not beholden to elite interests like banks, CEOs and politicians. Unfortunately, that horse has left the barn, those jobs are gone for good…

A great example of a politician braying the “I can bring jobs back” mantra was in Sunday’s NYT business section’s column, “Preoccupations.” In it, a young couple had the option to work from home, so they moved from Austin, TX, that hot-bed of tech, to South Portland ME, not so techie. They work for two different firms from two home offices. Then, they are invited to attend a funds-raiser for a gubernatorial candidate: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The candidate raising campaign funds was a hard-working lawyer who seemed genuinely well meaning, but no one had told him that his economic platform of protecting manufacturing jobs and Maine’s traditional industries wasn’t going to fly with an audience of health care professionals, programmers, web designers and researchers…We muttered to each other that this guy didn’t have a place in his platform for people like us, many of whom worked for employers in other states. Our checkbooks stayed in our pockets.

If you hear this kind of BS from the Pant Suit or the Pant Load, your checkbook should also remain hidden.

While the low-wage jobs problem has been around for more than 40 years, America’s politicians are still peddling the same solutions. In fact, a new analysis from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released Monday shows that only 88% of men ages 25 to 54 are participating in the US workforce. The CEA reports that the US has the third-lowest labor-force participation rate for “prime-age men” among the world’s developed countries. We have done so well that, on a percentage basis, Greece, Slovenia and Turkey all have more men working than the US does. Greece! The decline is concentrated among less educated. Here is a chart:

Male Labor Force Part by Edu

More than 95% of men used to work in 1964, regardless of their educational attainment. Today, you better have at least a bachelor’s degree if you want to be sure you will get a job. But it is worse than that. The CEA said:

In recent decades, less-educated Americans have suffered a reduction in their wages relative to other groups. From 1975 until 2014, relative wages for those with a high school degree fell from over 80% of the amount earned by workers with at least a college degree to less than 60%.

Clinton and Trump would have you believe that the problem is bad trade deals with China, the TPP, or immigration. Trump in particular, is saying that the political elites have knowingly caused this all at the expense of the American worker. There is a modicum of truth to that, but it is the American corporation and the American tax code that is closing out US jobs, and hammering the middle class. American corporations now pay about 11% of our total US taxes, down from about 30% of US taxes in 1960, as jobs (and markets) have moved abroad.

What are the Pant Suit and/or the Pant Load going to do in the face of advancing automation now facing us not just in manufacturing, but also in the service and knowledge industries?

It is time to make the candidates talk about this on the campaign trail.

The basic policy choice we have is to put people to work, or to continue to allow the profit motive to dominate. If the profit motive remains supreme, we will continue our relentless drive to reduce labor costs — by eliminating jobs, or by paying workers less for the same work.

To date, our leaders have chosen the latter path, and we have reaped the results. We have become a land of spreadsheets and flags.

Can the GOP Edge in the Primaries Carry Over?

(Note: There will not be a Sunday Cartoon post again this week. Wrongo and Ms. Right will be in Santa Barbara CA for our granddaughter’s college graduation. Blogging will resume on Tuesday, 6/14)

In 2008, the Republicans turned out a total of 20.8 million votes in 45 Primaries. In the 2016 primaries, the Republicans grew that total to 28.6 million votes.

The Democrats have 27.7 million primary votes in 2016, before the DC primary. When Clinton and Obama ran against each other in 2008, they had 37.4 million votes.

So the GOP is up 7.8 million votes or a 37.5% increase over 2008. The Democrats are down nearly 26% or, 9.7 million votes. The parties were separated by only 900,000 votes by the end of the 2016 primary season, and the GOP was on top.

The question to ask the pundits: What does the Republican increase in primary voter turnout by almost 8 million, and the Democrats’ vote shrinking by almost 10 million mean for the general election?

We could talk about the populist turn in 2016. The electorate is rebelling against the establishments of both parties. We could point to the insecurity about jobs, social security and pensions for the 98% of America who know these things are no longer certain in today’s America, and are even less certain in tomorrow’s America. These have made the Bernie promise of free education, Medicare for all, and a break-up of the banks very popular with Millennials. Trump has understood the economic fears of the white middle and lower classes, and has added fear of Muslims, fear of Mexican immigrants and a longing for a simpler world where America was unchallenged, and the 40-hour work week was nearly a right, to be the aspirational standard for tomorrow’s America.

We could talk about Hillary Clinton and the enthusiasm gap. In 2016, Hillary has garnered 15.7 million votes, and she will win the nomination. In 2008, she received 18.1 million votes, 2.4 million more than she got in 2016, and lost. This time around, she was not facing one of the best retail politicians of the last 100 years in Barack Obama, and no one thought that Bernie was real competition, until he was.

So, America is now at a point where, for the Pant Suit vs. the Pant Load, these numbers really begin to matter. Let’s remember that primary turnout doesn’t necessarily translate into a reliable indicator of the turnout in the general election.

Also, over half of the GOP turnout was for candidates other than Trump. Voter preference may change significantly for the general election.

This election will be true to previous form and will be decided in just a few states: Ohio, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania will likely decide the outcome. Obama won all but NC in his 2012 race against Mitt Romney.

Assume that Hillary will win the majority of blacks, Hispanics, other ethnic minorities and many white women. The biggest question is: What percentage of women will vote for Hillary? If Trump peels off enough, he may be able to win in a few of those states.

So, turnout will be key. As an example, Charlie Crist would be the current governor of Florida if just 50% of the African American voters who were registered Democrats, had voted in the last gubernatorial election. In just in one (populous) Florida County.

The gap in the primary voting numbers are a good indicator that the GOP primary voters were more enthusiastic than were Democratic voters in 2016. However, the Democrats were very good at “Get out the Vote” programs in 2008 and 2012. Can Donald Trump match that in 2016?

Hillary starts with better odds of winning since the Democrats have an Electoral College advantage. Romney won 206 Electoral College votes. He lost Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia each by between 150,000 and 250,000 votes. So, it’s conceivable that the enthusiasm for Trump in these states combined with less enthusiasm for Hillary could give him an Electoral College victory.

OTOH, Trump can’t change who he is. He’s not going to go toe to toe with Hillary on wonky policy details. So, he’ll continue the campaign that won him the primary in the general.

Will Pant Load fatigue set in? It hasn’t yet.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Politics