Social Cohesion – Page 4 – The Wrongologist

We Can’t Give Up Hope

The Daily Escape:

First snow, Great Balsam Mountains, Canton, NC – October 2023 photo by Brandon Montgomery

“To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.” – Thomas Merton

Everyone’s talking about Hamas, the Gaza hospital and Jim Jordan. Wrongo is certain to write more about those issues, but today, let’s talk about two polls that seem to be telling us a lot about what Americans are feeling right now.

First, the survey by Pew Research “Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics” confirms that millions of Americans are feeling so exhausted and depressed by American politics that they are disengaging from it just when its important to fully engage. Some highlights:

65% of respondents describe themselves as “exhausted” when thinking about politics.
55% say they are “angry” about American politics.
Only 4% say politics makes them feel hopeful.
Pew also asked people to describe American politics in one word. The second most common description was “corrupt”—behind the first-place finisher, “divisive.”

Here’s the tag cloud from Pew:

Notice that there aren’t any positive words that made the cut from the responses. From Robert Hubbell:

“It is no wonder that people want to disengage and look away. Exhaustion is the point of MAGA extremism.”

Hubbell goes on to point out that Republicans turn every issue into an attack:

“Impeach Trump? We’ll impeach Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Christopher Wray.

Indict Trump? We’ll indict Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden.

Protect Americans from a deadly virus? We’ll undermine trust in science.

Fight human-caused climate change? We will make it illegal to discuss climate change in the classroom.”

These responses are part of a mind game designed to make Democrats and Independents give up and go away. But his great idea is this:

“We have one job: To endure, to abide, to keep the faith until this moment of reactionary extremism subsides. If we can do that, we will leave to our heirs a healthier, stronger democracy.”

John Dean Also wrote about this:

“…I was thinking about how Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. The first thing that came to mind was his iconic poster with his image and the word “HOPE.” That differentiated Obama from his Democratic party competitors…and his Republican rival, John McCain. Obama embraced hope and the future, and he won.”

Some people attribute the negative messages offered by current candidates to the fact that today’s world is troubled. But as Dean points out, the world was also deeply troubled in 2008 and only Obama was offering hope. He won two terms.

Thoughts About The Israel/Hamas War

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Town Cove, Eastham, MA – October 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo

Wrongo and Ms. Right returned today from another fine stay on Cape Cod. Time with family and friends in a special environment is always fun and refreshing. It almost made us forget that we’re in the midst of a global hysteria surrounding the Israel/Hamas war.

What has happened so far and what may happen soon should be revolting to anyone who can empathize with other humans. Wrongo has a few thoughts for today’s Monday Wake Up Call: First, as terrible as the Israel/Hamas story is, we and the media shouldn’t obsessively focus on it to the exclusion of other important events. There are other problems that we need to keep a focus on.

And while it’s important to stay current, no one should subject themselves to watching the hostage videos that Hamas says they will be broadcasting of the hostages. Watching people suffer won’t make them suffer less. You can’t unsee these things. Moreover, you shouldn’t play into Hamas’ hands.

Second, Biden has been doing a reasonably good job in this crisis. From Dan Pfeiffer:

“Biden has been astride the world stage — speaking with strength, empathy, and moral outrage about the horrendous terrorist attack in Israel. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Republicans have been involved in an embarrassing spectacle of self-sabotage and narcissistic incompetence.”

Axios reported that on Sunday, Israel resumed supplying water to the southern Gaza Strip after strong pressure from the Biden administration.

But here at home, we still have the problem of Republicans fighting amongst themselves:

“Electing a Speaker is the most basic Congressional function, yet the Republican Caucus seems incapable of doing so. The dysfunction among House Republicans has left the U.S. with only one branch of Congress. Without a Speaker, Congress cannot pass a bill to keep the government open, send military aid to Israel or Ukraine, or even name a post office.”

Third, people often say horrible things in the aftermath of an attack. But shouldn’t political officials be self-censoring? That wasn’t so with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. He said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated:

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible….It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.”

Herzog is asking: Why didn’t the people of Gaza rise up and overthrow Hamas? He implies that if they had, Israel wouldn’t have to attack them. The thought of a politician holding civilians in any country (half of whom aren’t adults) collectively responsible for atrocities committed by a unaccountable minority should be carefully parsed.

And using this as justification for destroying neighborhoods, for cutting off fuel and electricity to an entire population while ordering the mass evacuation of over a million people, seems to Wrongo to be a disproportionate response. There are a few ethicists who follow the Wrongologist Blog. Hopefully they will weigh in on Herzog’s justification for invading Gaza, and the ethics of targeting civilians in war.

From a political viewpoint, if Israel acts in a restrained way and doesn’t respond with overwhelming force, then Israel looks weak both to its citizens and to the Arab world. That’s likely to encourage more attacks, perhaps by other Middle East actors.

If Israel responds with overwhelming force, then lots of Palestinian civilians will die. Israel will be condemned and possibly other Muslim countries will join in an attack on Israel. So, perhaps Hamas’ attack wasn’t to create maximum casualties in Israel, but to trigger this lose/lose set of options for Israel’s response.

Finally, no one has a serious idea on a way to reach across the mammoth void between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Wrongo found a quote that may offer a way to think about a future for the region:

“At the end of 1918, Marshal Foch was in his Luxembourg headquarters examining with his international staff how to deal with Germany and the Germans. He had this thought: “The Germans, we either exterminate them, or we get along with them. Exterminating them is impossible. So, gentlemen, let’s work out how to get along with them.”

That didn’t work in WWI. It hasn’t worked in the Middle East. Yet, people are the same all over the world. They all want family, friends, a dependable job, and a secure place to live. That’s certainly true for both the Palestinians and the Israelis. The question is: What must be sacrificed by either side to achieve it? And is either side capable of making a sacrifice today that will largely benefit their children’s grandchildren?

Time to wake up America! Do we ever take the long view? We seem to have forgotten how to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. It’s possible that the Gazans are invoking such a sacrifice right now.

This shouldn’t be a foreign idea to Americans, particularly to Christians. Much of Christianity’s beliefs involve sacrifice. For example, Christians believe that Jesus endured the sacrifice of torture, crucifixion and death for their redemption. That sacrifice is remembered in most Christian Sunday services.

There’s a major difference between the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice about to be imposed on the men, women and children of Gaza. Christ sacrificed himself for others while Hamas is forcing tens of thousands of Palestinians to endure sacrifice for them. Those tens of thousands aren’t choosing to be sacrificed. It’s doubtful that Israelis want to be sacrificed: They’re just wishing the Palestinians would go away.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to “Zombie” by The Cranberries from 1994. The song was written by the late Delores O’Riordan, about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the decades-long conflict between nationalists (mainly Irish or Roman Catholic) and unionists (mainly British or Protestant).

The Troubles ended, while the Israel-Palestinian standoff continues.

The song was written in response to the death of two young boys, Tim Parry and Johnathan Ball, who were killed in an IRA bombing when two IRA-improvised explosive devices hidden in trash bins were detonated in Warrington, England. Ball died at the scene:

They Have No Plan Except To Fight Each Other

The Daily Escape:

Nauset Beach, Orleans, MA – October 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo

It’s already been a long year…and there are still 3 months left! Two issues dominated this week: the Hamas war on Israel and the Republican intramurals in the House.

Let’s start with the Republicans. Semafor reports that Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) gave up on his quest to become Speaker even though he had been nominated by his caucus as their candidate:

“Scalise withdrew himself from the speaker’s race just one day after colleagues narrowly nominated him for the job, as it became clear he lacked the 217 votes necessary to secure the chair. But there are serious doubts that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Scalise’s top rival, can pull together the support necessary for a win — in part due to the bad blood over his contest against Scalise.”

This isn’t a time for Republican arm wrestling. The country and the world need attention. As AB Stoddard says at the Bulwark:

“THE REPUBLICANS WHO CONTROL the House of Representatives cannot respond to a new war waged against Israel. They have rejected new aid to support Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion. They have no plan to keep the government from shutting down on November 17 when funding next runs dry.”

Right now, there’s no path forward. While many things in this world are broken, this isn’t a case of American politics being “broken”. If as many pundits say, American politics are broken, we’d have seen things just like this when Democrats controlled the House. But they didn’t. What’s broken is the Republican Party.

A few House Republicans have suggested that their only choice might be to strike a bargain with Democrats. But behind closed doors, there hasn’t been a real effort to hatch a bipartisan deal, writes Semafor’s Kadia Goba: (brackets by Wrongo)

“I don’t think there has been legitimate outreach….Sure, those members talk to the press, but not to Hakeem Jeffries [the Democrats’ Majority Leader] or leadership.”

The potentially disastrous consequences of a broken House of Representatives are real, and some Republicans understand that. GOP Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said the following after Scalise withdrew his name from consideration:

“We are living in a dangerous world, the world’s on fire. Our adversaries are watching what we do — and quite frankly, they like it. I see a lot of threats out there. One of the biggest threats I see is in the [GOP caucus] room, because we can’t unify as a conference and put the speaker in the chair…”

Brian Tyler Cohen, who hosts the podcast No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, summed up where the GOP is at with his post on Xitter:

“The fact that ALL Republicans would rather fight over Scalise (who attended a neo-Nazi event) or Jordan (who allegedly covered up rampant sexual abuse) rather than simply work with Democrats to elect a Speaker says it all.”

There are two possible paths forward: Either the Republicans unite behind one candidate for Speaker, or they accept that it will take some Democratic votes to elect a bipartisan candidate. “Bipartisan” is a dirty word among many House Republicans. They have broken the House and have zero intent to fix it.

They must be stopped before they break us all.

The murderous rampage by Hamas last weekend against Israeli civilians and Israel’s sharp response will reverberate for years to come. Eric Levitz wrote in New York Magazine:

“This weekend in Israel, a far-right Islamist group perpetrated the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust, murdering entire families, including babies…and slaughtering 260 concertgoers. More than 1,000 Israelis were killed in all, and over 100 others taken hostage.

Israel’s far-right government predictably responded by choking off all food, electricity, and fuel to Gaza’s 2 million residents and then preparing a military assault more untempered by concern for civilian casualties than ever before.”

The Israeli Ministry of Defense just notified the UN that Palestinians living in Gaza City should evacuate to the southern part of the Gaza Strip. But more than 1 million Palestinians live in this area. How is it possible for so many people to move, even if they had months to do it?

If you are a member of the center-left, It is difficult to see any positive influence on this situation. It shouldn’t be a question of whether you’re for Israel or against it. Terrorism directed at civilians is abhorrent regardless of who’s doing it.

And here at home, conservative pundits exploited Hamas’ attack to fearmonger about immigrants in America. Several right-wing media figures have baselessly warned that Hamas or other “sleeper cells” are lying in wait to attack major American cities, calling October 13 “Day of Jihad”. They also used this lie against American Muslims after 9/11.

What’s happening now between Israel and Hamas makes you want to throw up your hands in despair. It’s impossible to think of or see a solution that can satisfy all sides. Despite that, we need to take a break from so much frustration. We need our Saturday Soother. We need to stiffen our spines for what will be yet another week of horror and nonsense.

Here on Cape Cod, the weather is seasonably crisp, so we will be wearing jackets to today’s Wellfleet Oysterfest. Later, we’ll go to the beach to watch the sunset that is coming earlier every day.

To meditate for a few moments on the Hamas/Israel war, grab a comfy chair and listen to John Lennon’s “Imagine” from his 1971 album of the same name. Released during the heart of the Vietnam War, Lennon asks us to envision a world of peace and unity. “Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too”:

Sample Lyric:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Trump Could Be President Even While Serving Time

The Daily Escape:

First fall foliage, Cox Brook, Northfield Falls, VT – September 2023 photo by John H. Knox

First, although we may know if Trump has been convicted prior to the 2024 election, it’s highly unlikely that he would be serving time by then, because his convictions (if any) will be appealed. The appeal process will take us well beyond when the Electoral College votes are counted in DC.

Second, The Constitution (before it was amended) contains just three requirements to become president: the person must be a natural-born citizen of the US, 35 years or older and a resident of the US for at least 14 years. That’s it.

In 1868, the 14^th Amendment added Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the original text that:

“no person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

UCLA law professor Richard L. Hasen, a leading expert on election law, told CNN that Trump has a path to serving as president if he wins the election in 2024: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The Constitution has very few requirements to serve as President….It does not bar anyone indicted, or convicted, or even serving jail time, from running as president and winning the presidency,”

And while some states prohibit felons from running for state and local office, those laws do not apply to federal elections. More from Hasen, on whether a president may serve from prison.

“How someone would serve as president from prison is a happily untested question…”

If Trump were in jail and prevented by law from leaving jail while his sentence was carried out, that would make running the government impossible. It wouldn’t necessarily prohibit him from serving as president from a cell, at least until he could pardon himself, another untested loophole.

If he tried to pardon himself, or to commute his own sentence, we’d wind up at the Supreme Court. From the NYT:

“Either action would be an extraordinary assertion of presidential power, and the Supreme Court would be the final arbiter of whether a “self-pardon” was constitutional.”

Trump would certainly sue to be released from jail, saying (correctly) that imprisonment prevented him from fulfilling his Constitutional obligations as president. Trump’s lawyers would argue that keeping a duly elected president in prison would be an infringement by the judicial branch on the operations of the executive branch. Again off to the Supremes we’d go.

So time for a few brief reminders: Trump faces no significant opposition to winning the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Plan A among those who really don’t want Trump to win is to say:

“…he will lose in the general election.”

And there’s no Plan B. So, what will your options be if he wins? In general, your options are: Knuckling under, taking part in political violence, or leaving the country. And understand that, regardless of how submissive you are, the number of people who will die in police custody or while “resisting” will go way up. Let’s take your options one at a time:

Leaving the country is something only rich people can do and it wouldn’t dislodge Trump. It will make him more secure.
Political violence is personally risky. It requires moral compromise that makes our regular politics look almost pristine. And unless it’s large and well organized, it will fail.
Knuckling under to tyranny will probably be the response of most Americans, even though most would say that’s incompatible with their conscience.

But all that said, Ukraine’s limited success against a superpower shows that using today’s technology makes it relatively easy to hold large swaths of a country despite the other side’s having a much stronger military.

Wrongo thinks that after a Trump win in 2024, US citizens will have to think seriously about how to handle life under an authoritarian regime. Trump will start out with a soft form of authoritarianism. But later? Who knows what it becomes. A lot of people around the world live under authoritarian regimes, so while it’s awful, it’s also survivable for most people.

And think twice about resistance. As a thought experiment, list out the historical examples of a citizenry that successfully resisted a fascist takeover once the fascists had a firm grip on the judiciary and half of the legislatures.

America has one great shining example of what not to do when Bush v. Gore was decided in 2000. No Democrat (looking at you Bill Clinton!) told the Supremes to fuck off. Even Gore didn’t say “just keep on counting” in Florida. Instead, he crumbled. In a democracy, no court should ever tell the political branch to stop counting votes.

That election was stolen, but Democrats collectively just let it happen. Worse, two years later almost all of the Democrats in Congress voted for Bush’s nasty authoritarian terror bills and a war to avenge 9/11.

Wouldn’t it be much better this time around to make sure Trump doesn’t get the votes of any of your friends, family or neighbors? And better yet, that you get most of them out to vote?

Please don’t plan on sitting back and waiting for a conviction to deliver us from Trump. Why is it in the DNA of Democrats to keep looking for some external solution to our political problem?

Wrongo is an elderly white, married, upper-middle class male living in a Blue state. He’s going to be fine no matter what. He’ll worry about his kids and grandkids, but personally, Wrongo has nothing to worry about. His taxes may even go down again.

But he plans to resist, no matter what.

Should Kamala Harris Stay As VP?

The Daily Escape:

Cosmic Ashtray, Harris Wash, Escalante, UT – September 2023 photo by Michelle Strong. The rock that looks like a bird in the center sits in sand, not water.

There’s the whispering campaign among Democrats saying that Biden is too old to run, and there’s the whispering campaign that says Kamala Harris should be replaced on the ticket to help out ol’ Joe. Like the Biden whispers, when Wrongo speaks with Democrats about Harris, the vast majority are wishing that someone else would be the VP candidate on the Democratic 2024 presidential ticket.

Those two thoughts can be viewed as one, or independently of each other. Wrongo addressed the issue of Biden’s age here:

“Biden has slowed down, that’s objectively true. But he is worlds better than Trump. And if those are the choices for president in 2024, be thankful that the old guy is on the right side of history.”

Barring a Biden health catastrophe before the summer of 2024, no Democrat will challenge Biden’s running for a second term. But the same can’t be said for Harris. Some think Biden could inject new enthusiasm into his campaign by picking a new running mate for 2024.

These two whispering campaigns are linked because many Americans think that it’s crucial to have a vice president who is seen as a capable successor to a president, in this case, Biden. After all, he will be 86 when his second term ends in 2029. Even for a relatively healthy 80 year-old about to be 81, the odds of something going wrong increases steadily between 81 and 86.

Poll numbers indicate that the public doesn’t support Harris to that extent. She’s less popular than a relatively unpopular Biden. That’s not a good situation. OTOH, as the Niskanen Center says, VPs generally have little to no impact on a presidential race and almost no direct effect on voter decision-making.

Where they can make a slight difference is in targeted demographics. A candidate can pick up (or retain) support among certain groups of voters. This is where dropping Harris from the ticket would cause more problems than it would solve:

“…it is hard to imagine a core Democratic constituency that Biden can less afford to deliberately alienate than Black women, who gave the president an 81-point margin in 2020…especially at a time when pollsters keep warning that turnout among voters of color is one of the president’s worst potential problems.”

“It is…impossible to deny that Harris has liabilities or deny that she has disappointed as both a presidential candidate and now as vice president. She’s been caught flat-footed too many times by what seemed like simple queries, and she has failed to stake out a clear policy space for herself inside the party. But Biden has done her no favors, either. He put her in charge of the southern border, an effectively impossible task given that Congress has shown zero interest in addressing the many problems there.”

Yet, according to Gallup, Harris had far better approval numbers at the time of her inauguration than Pence did when he became VP.

Booting Harris from the ticket would be a self-inflicted wound. Biden’s brand (and one of the keys to a 2024 victory) is that he’s a no-drama politician (in contrast to Trump). There’d be no better way to shatter that image than for Biden to dump his VP a year before the election.

Some Dems are worried that in a second Biden term, Harris will become the Party’s de facto 2028 nominee. It’s true that current or former VPs who seriously seek their Party’s nomination often get nominated. But Harris is at well under 50% in polls that asked who Democratic primary voters would support if Biden didn’t run again. One survey from Ipsos/Reuters had her at just 20%.

But, after eight years of seasoning as VP at the national level, it might be that Harris would be a much better candidate than she was in 2020. And there is no telling how governors like Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro or Gavin Newsome might handle the national spotlight. Think how Ron DeSantis withered once everyone got to know him.

So Harris isn’t going anywhere in 2024.

But there are other troubling issues for Dems who feel less than enthusiastic about the 2024 ticket. NBC says that political ad spending is projected to reach $10 billion by the end of this election cycle, making it the most expensive two years in political history. But Michelle Goldberg wrote that:

“…panic is setting in among some progressive groups because the donors who buoyed them throughout the Trump years are disengaging…..As both big and small donors pull back, there have been layoffs across the progressive ecosystem, from behemoths like the Sierra Club to insurgent outfits like Justice Democrats, the group that first recruited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…”

Dem funding is falling just when they need money more than ever:

“It was probably inevitable that left-leaning fund-raising would fall once the immediate crisis of Donald Trump’s presidency ended. Activism, like electoral politics, is often thermostatic: There’s more energy on the right when Democrats are in power, and more on the left during Republican administrations.”

Goldberg also mentions the Dems’ never-ending funds raising via email, something that frosts Wrongo:

“If you’re on any progressive mailing lists, you surely know what I’m talking about: the endless appeals, sometimes in bold all caps, warning of imminent Democratic implosion.”

The relentless drumbeat in Wrongo’s inbox has caused him to cut off the Democratic Party completely in the past two years. If every email is “critical” then none are critical. If this month’s deadline is “crucial” then next month’s can’t be.

Small donors are punished every day for their giving to Democrats. Their information is sold and repackaged back to them from all across the political ecosystem. Wrongo won’t begin donating again until January 2024.

Finally, it seems to be in the DNA of Democrats to want a deus ex machina to deliver them from Trump and Republicans. It may be that some of the 91 counts put Trump in jail, but don’t count on the 14^th Amendment malarkey to get him off the ballot, unless he’s convicted of “treasonous conspiracy” like some of the Jan. 6 defendants.

Consistent with that, Many Dems are hoping for a savior to ride up on a white horse and “save” the Party from Biden and Harris.

But Democrats came to the dance with Biden — and that’s who they’re leaving with.

Can Biden’s Union Roots Help Him In 2024?

The Daily Escape:

Red Mountain, San Juan Mountains, CO – September 2023 photo by Daniel Forster Photography

The “the biggest auto strike in generations” got under way last week, with 150,000 US autoworkers, including employees at Ford, Stellantis and General Motors walking off the job after contract negotiations failed to reach a deal. This strike, coupled with the likely government shutdown at the end of the month, will precipitate a very dangerous moment for the Biden administration.

From The Guardian:

“The United Auto Workers (UAW) union says workers have never been fully compensated for the sacrifices they made after the 2008-09 financial crisis, when they agreed to a raft of cuts to save the industry. The carmakers received huge bailouts and soon returned to record profits.”

The WaPo had a good article asking workers why they are striking. Most cited inflation and fairness:

“We’re not making enough money” said Petrun Williams, a 58 year-old Ford repairman. “People should be able to buy their own houses, but right now it’s not possible.”

This is going to be a difficult problem to tackle, because GM, Ford, and Stellantis are wildly inefficient giant bureaucracies with cost structures optimized to make $75,000 trucks, and their move into Electric Vehicles will take a lot of money and time before it pays off.

But the Biden administration isn’t necessarily helping: (Brackets by Wrongo)

“…Biden…is in a tough spot with the United Auto Workers….Through its industrial policies,…[Biden]…is giving away billions to automakers through production tax credits and loans, while supporting the transition to electric vehicles through consumer rebates and funds for charging infrastructure. Biden has promised that those incentives will lead not only to carbon emissions reductions but also good-paying union jobs.”

But the UAW leadership isn’t buying it. As the UAW goes on strike, their members don’t necessarily support Biden, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they support Trump either. Politico asked striking members if Biden had done enough to prevent the strike. They talked to Garry Quirk, the president of the local UAW union in Kokomo, IA:

“I don’t know what he’s done…Ask him. I don’t think he knows what he’s done. Seriously. I’m not trying to be mean.”

Quirk wasn’t freelancing: Fain and the union haven’t yet endorsed Biden’s reelection, throwing into doubt Biden’s standing in autoworker-heavy communities. But Politico reported that Biden had spoken that day with UAW president Shawn Fain and auto company CEOs. The chair of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers said this week that Biden had been very much engaged.

But his efforts didn’t resonate with union member Denny Butler:

“Historically, man, if you didn’t vote Democrat years ago, and you were in the union, sometimes you got your ass kicked…I’m telling you what, the Democratic Party is not what it was 20, 30 years ago.”

So this is another Politico story about Obama voters becoming Trump voters and not looking back.

What Biden is fighting is the sense that the Democratic Party has not been truly on the side of union workers for a long time. It is true that today the Democrats are more on the side of unions. Neoliberalism is not nearly as powerful in the Democratic Party as it was during Obama’s time, or earlier.

But perceptions can be sticky. Clinton, Carter, and Obama (especially in the first term) all promoted corporate policies over the unions. Workers got screwed as factories closed, and no one offered much to workers beyond retraining programs that they didn’t want, and for the most part, didn’t lead to better jobs.

If you said that Republicans (including Mitt Romney) were no better, you’re correct. But today’s Republican Party offers a way to channel anger and resentment. Union members can opt for the GOP path even if the GOP doesn’t have the union’s interests in mind.

Despite Obama (and Biden) saving autoworker jobs through the 2009 auto bailout, they did little to hold the auto companies accountable. They allowed the expansion of two-tiered wage rates that the union is still fighting during the current strike.

The perception is that the UAW shrank and sacrificed, while the auto industry leadership got richer. Biden absolutely cares about unions, but he’s fighting against decades of belief that the Democrats aren’t what they used to be.

And no matter what Biden does, it’s going to be hard to get by that perception. There’s a mixture of anger and nostalgia that sticks in the minds of people who don’t really pay attention to the details of politics. Let’s take a look at the price of cars over the last ten years:

The Big Three automakers reported $21 billion in profits in just the first six months of 2023. Despite these enormous gains, the companies have cried poverty in response to union demands for wage increases that would make up for decades of pay stagnation. Worse, during the last year, the Big Three automakers have authorized $5 billion in stock buybacks, effectively giving those dollars to shareholders instead of to autoworkers.

The Economist had an excellent observation (paywalled):

“Late last year I took a trip…in a shiny new vehicle, Ford’s electric F-150. The car is in some ways an avatar for today’s Democratic Party. Joe Biden’s administration likes things that are made in America by union labor. It also wants to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels. The F-150 car ticks both boxes. It is also a high-end item that markets itself as a vehicle for working Americans.”

“That’s a bit like the Democratic Party too…with each passing election Democrats lose votes among actual working-class Americans and gain them with college-educated ones (some of whom can actually afford a $75,000 truck).”

“When we talked to a…UAW…representative near Detroit, it became clear the unionized workers are lukewarm on the green transition. Electric vehicles are less labor-intensive than cars powered by internal combustion, which is bad for the UAW members. In fact that is one reason why the union went on strike today. College-educated liberals, on the other hand, like electric vehicles a lot.”

Apparently union members see the problem much more clearly than the Biden Administration.

There could be a settlement reached between the unions and the companies at any moment, but it feels like this will be a protracted situation: If the UAW workers get the 40% pay increase they are asking for, they probably would learn to accept electric vehicles. Don’t hold your breath.

Biden’s relationship with America’s unions is deep and personal, but the next few months are really about his political strategy. And they’re an example of how the Democrats are always trying to balance competing aims.

Time to wake up America! Will Biden continue pursuing his environmental policies and risk losing even more support among working-class Americans? Or will he pump the brakes on environmentalism and alienate upscale Democrats? Biden won only 33% of white, non-college voters in 2020, so maybe that’s where his opportunity to expand his base in 2024 lies. But does Biden really have a path to take back more non-college voters?

To help you wake up, watch and listen to a recent version of the union anthem “Solidarity Forever”, written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915. Although it was written for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the AFL–CIO have adopted the song as their own. Here it is sung in the Wisconsin capitol building in September 2011, by demonstrators who opposed then Governor Scott Walker’s “Wisconsin Budget Repair bill.”

The bill proposed to alleviate the state’s budget shortfall by taking away the ability of public sector unions to bargain collectively over pensions and health care, as well as ending automatic union dues collection by the state. Walker stated that without the cuts, thousands of state workers would have to be laid off. After two days of arrests for “holding signs” on the first floor of the Wisconsin State Capitol, the Solidarity Sing Along took to the rotunda in joyful defiance:

The law passed and remains in effect today.

Is Biden Too Old?

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Coquille River Lighthouse, Bandon, OR – September 2023 photo by Mitch Schrieber Photography

At lunch this week with three people all who are around 80 years old, one whispered that “Biden is too old”. The rest of us agreed. In a perfect world, Biden would be considering winding up his political life and shipping his boxes to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. Biden will run for president again, and the polls show it’s likely to be a tight race against Trump. Many in the press see Biden as too frail to carry out even basic duties, leaving his aides to secretly run the country in his stead.

But as Semafor points out, in the first book that now documents the early years of his presidency, the picture is the reverse:

“The Last Politician,” the Biden-in-power book that Franklin Foer published last week….presents an aging president who’s nonetheless fully engaged in the job, stumbling more when he loses his temper…than when he loses his train of thought.”

Foer’s book portrays Biden as a leader who sounds shaky in public but is the dominant force in his White House. Foer tells Semafor that Biden: (Brackets by Wrongo)

“…buries himself in details…[and] takes technocratic charge of issues”.

Remembering 9/11

The Daily Escape:

This mass includes parts of five floors of the North Tower of NYC’s World Trade Center that compacted on 9/11/2001 during the building’s collapse. iPhone photo by Wrongo taken at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, September 2016.

The above is among Wrongo’s favorite pieces at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It is a charred and pitted lump of fused concrete, melted steel, carbonized furniture and other, less recognizable elements. It weighs between 12 and 15 tons and is four feet high. If you ever thought that humans who were in the Twin Towers when they collapsed might have survived, consider this pancake.

The 9/11 Memorial’s email today asked this question:

“Did you know that over 100 million Americans have been born since September 11, 2001?”

Although Wrongo has a grandson who was born later that week and who’s now turning 22, Wrongo had no idea that roughly 30% of Americans have no memory of this event that profoundly shaped America in the past 22 years.

What do those of us who do remember 9/11 want to tell those who can’t remember it? Maybe that there’s too much fear in America, and all of that fear is grinding us down. The visible scars of 9/11 are gone, but more than ever, America lives in persistent fear.

We distrust Russia. We worry about inflation. We worry that our budget deficit will bankrupt us. We fear for our kids’ safety while they’re in school. We worry that if we lose our job we won’t find another one. Some of us worry that we’ll never find the job we’re looking for. Some of us think the rest of us are Communists. The Lefties think the Righties are fascists, and we’re still afraid that ISIS will attack us on our streets. We fear the mob outside our gates trying to get in. We fear the immigrants already inside the gates.We think most of the news we see is fake. Many of us distrust our public school teachers.

Hell, we don’t trust our government!

Succumbing to so much fear has enabled the growth of internal threats that could end our democracy:

We’re so angry that we’ve lost much of our social cohesion
We aren’t willing to deal with income inequality
We’re seeing overt racism grow before our eyes
We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them

So today’s wakeup call is for America, particularly for those Americans born after 9/11. Don’t forget the heroes and the victims of 9/11, but please, learn to stop letting fear drive you as much as it drives those of us who are old enough to remember 9/11.

Here’s a 9/11 tune: The October 20, 2001 “Concert for New York” can’t be beat. It was a highly visible and early part of NYC’s healing process.

One of the many highlights of that 4+ hour show was Billy Joel’s medley of “Miami 2017 (seen the lights go out on Broadway)” and his “New York State of Mind”. Joel wrote “Miami 2017” in 1975, at the height of the NYC fiscal crisis. It describes an apocalyptic fantasy of a ruined NY that got a new, emotional second life after 9/11, when he performed it during the Concert for New York:

Check out the audience reaction to Joel’s songs. That doesn’t look like fear. That’s where we all need to be today in 2023. It isn’t hyperbole to say that the city began its psychological recovery that night in Madison Square Garden. Please visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum if you haven’t been there yet.

The Coming $73 Trillion Wealth Transfer

The Daily Escape:

We’ve been on Cape Cod for a few days visiting daughter Kelly. Here’s a sunset photo taken this week at Campground beach, Cape Cod, MA – August 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo. Smoke from Canadian wildfires made the sunset colors more vibrant.

Welcome to our Saturday Soother! But first, let’s talk about the coming generational transfer of wealth that’s underway as the wealthiest generation (the boomers) retire. According to Ben Carlson, 10,000 baby boomers will be retiring every day between now and the end of this decade.

The first boomers were born in 1946, meaning they’re 77 and on the fast track to 80 years old. Fortune Magazine pegs the wealth transfer from boomers to their kids at $73 trillion (with another $12 trillion going to charity). That means the boomers have $85 trillion in personal wealth!

That sounds great, since so many in our younger generations really could use a little help right now. But fewer people than you might expect will actually receive a sizable inheritance. This is due to the fact that the top 10% of America’s wealthy own something like 90% of the stock market. The concentration of today’s wealth will lead to fewer people benefiting from the generational handoff.

Here’s a chart from the NYT:

According to the NYT, ultra-high net worth households — people with $5 million to $20 million in liquid net worth — make up 1.5% of the population but will constitute 42% of the money that gets passed down in the years ahead. Many of them are boomers. From the NYT:

“A key reason there are such large soon-to-be-inherited sums is the uneven way boomers superbly benefited from price growth in the financial and housing markets. The average price of a US house has risen about 500% since 1983, when most baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s, prime years for household formation.

As US corporations have grown into global behemoths, those deeply invested in the stock market have found even bigger returns: The stock market, as measured by the benchmark S&P 500 index, is up by more than 2,800% since the beginning of 1983…”

Those rates of growth in financial and real estate assets will probably never be seen again. We’re passing a slow growth economy on to the next generations, while their own salaries and savings are having trouble keeping up with inflation.

Some worry that retiring baby boomers will crash the stock market by spending down their portfolios in retirement, leaving nothing to inherit. While it could happen, it’s unlikely that it will. The inequality of stock ownership means few people in the top 10% will never come close to spending all of their wealth in retirement.

So the wealth transfer will be more of a stream than a tsunami. Given the longevity of the wealthy, the money is going to be passed down slowly over time. A married couple that is retiring today has a 50% chance of at least one spouse living into their 90s.

Wrongo sees more and more people in the younger generations talking about how much they need help from their parents right now rather than decades down the road. The challenge is that parents need to be sure that if they make early transfers of wealth, that they keep enough on hand to maintain themselves securely in their advancing old age.

This can only be done by families having honest discussions around very awkward subjects. Talking about it can be helpful. It may be possible to work something out where some of the inheritance is parsed out slowly so the parents can enjoy seeing the kids (or grandkids) use some of the money while they’re still here.

Enough! It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we ignore the also-ran candidate show that the Republicans put on in Wisconsin, and where we also ignore the perp walk in Atlanta. Instead, let’s focus on clearing our heads for next week’s outrages.

To help clear your head, grab a comfy chair by a window, and pour a mug of cold brew over ice. Now, watch and listen to Beethoven’s “Septet, op. 20”. It had its first performance in 1800 and was one of Beethoven’s most popular works during his lifetime, much to the composer’s dismay! He ultimately wished he had never written the piece.

Today we listen to the first movement, “Adagio – Allegro con brio” played in 2014 by the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne, Germany. The WDR is a German radio orchestra:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 23, 2023

NY Magazine has an article about Biden’s weirdest White House habits. What struck Wrongo was this:

“While you might think the addition of a cat would make the White House feel more like a home, it seems that hasn’t solved the problem. In January 2023 the president revealed that his new cat Willow is adding to his discomfort.

“Willow may walk in here any time now. She has no limits” Biden said. “You think I’m kidding, I’m not. Especially in the middle of the night when she climbs up and lays on top of my head.”

No wonder Biden seems to have less hair. In Wrongo’s experience, dogs will cuddle but would never sleep on your head…although maybe nose to nose. NY Mag must be starved for real content. On to cartoons.

Florida redefines slavery’s harm: