The Presidency – Page 6 – The Wrongologist

Saturday Soother – Veterans Day, November 11, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Drone view of the Bentonite Hills, UT – November 2023 photo by Hilary Bralove

Today, Veterans Day, (there’s no apostrophe before or after the “s”) honors those who served, while Memorial Day honors those who died in military service.

Wrongo served in the US Army during the Vietnam era, although not in-country. Wrongo’s dad served in the Army in France and Germany in WWII. Wrongo didn’t get to meet his dad until dad came home from France after the war. Wrongo’s Grandfather served in the Navy in WWI, captaining a small boat on the east coast of the US. It is not clear exactly how he earned the nickname “Captain Sandbar”; that story is lost to history.

With few peaceful exceptions, wars are always going strong somewhere in the world. In the many centuries of European history up to 1945, an army crossed the Rhine on average once every 30 years. War was an important occupation for all of the major nations of Europe. But, in the 78 years since WWII, they’ve not only decided to not make war on each other, Europe has become a federation that has brought peace to the continent.

At least until Russia invaded Ukraine.

But it’s Saturday, our usual day to relax and try to escape the polycrisis we’re experiencing at home and abroad. This week, Democrats had a pretty good Election Day. And while some are concerned that Joe Manchin’s retirement will cost the Dems a Senate seat, Wrongo thinks we’ll just have to win elsewhere.

He’s also reasonably certain that last Tuesday’s results show polling isn’t capturing how Americans really feel about the economy. From Simon Rosenberg: (brackets by Wrongo)

“….[here’s] a reminder of this data from YouGov/Economist and the Conference Board I’ve been sharing of late that shows far more contentedness than is conventional wisdom:

Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the way things are going in your life today? Satisfied 64%, Dissatisfied 35%

How happy would you say you are with your current job? Great deal/somewhat 80%, A little/not at all 19%.

Do you think your family income will increase or decrease in 2024? Increase 45%, stay the same 41%, decrease 15%.

Do you consider yourself paid fairly or underpaid in your job? Paid fairly 56%, Underpaid 38%.

Here’s a chart that makes it clear that job satisfaction is higher than it’s been in 35 years!

This gives a very different sense of where people are at compared to the NYT/Siena polling on a related question: “Thinking about the nation’s economy, how would you rate economic conditions today?” The answers were Excellent: 2%; Good:18%; Only Fair: 29%; Poor: 49%; and Didn’t know: 2%.

How do you square the idea that 62.3% of people surveyed said that they’re satisfied with their job with 49% of the people in the NYT poll saying that economic conditions are poor? Nobody who’s happy at work thinks the economy is poor.

Think about where we are: Over the next year Dems are going to spend $1 billion+ to tell swing state voters what Biden has accomplished on their behalf, while reminding them how historically awful Trump and the entire Republican party have become.

That gives Wrongo hope for 2024.

And if you are still craving bad news, Republicans are almost certain to shut down the government next week. The new House Speaker, Mike Johnson (R-LA), sent Congress home a day early for a long(ish) weekend, apparently because Johnson is giving a speech in Paris?

“The New Republic reported Friday that Johnson — who still has yet to present a plan to fund the government before the November 18 deadline — gaveled the House of Representatives out of session on Thursday so he can make it to the Worldwide Freedom Initiative’s (WFI) upcoming conference in Paris, France, where he’s due to speak Friday night.”

Johnson is expected to roll out his plan to fund the government by today as Republicans aim to vote Tuesday on some sort of plan. Chances aren’t great for a clean extension of the current deal.

As JVL says:

“The Republican party’s single biggest legislative initiative of the last three years—one championed by a Republican president and a majority of congressional Republicans—has been an attempt to overturn a free and fair election.”

The Republicans can’t get their shit together, so 8 days from now, America’s soldiers, air traffic controllers, food safety inspectors, IRS agents, border patrol and more will all go without pay. Some will be furloughed. Every government function will be effected.

They’re harming our economy and for what reason? They’re going to shut down the government because they mistakenly think it will be good for them politically.

But it’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we forget about Mike Johnson, Joe Manchin and the Israeli/Hamas war. Instead let’s find an oasis of calm for a few hours. Here on the fields of Wrong, we are still waiting for the oak trees to give up their leaves. Although they are always last to fall, this year it’s doubtful that we will be able to schedule our final fall clean-up before Thanksgiving. That’s weeks later than usual.

Now grab a comfy chair by a big window and watch and listen to J. Offenbach’s “Barcarolle”, from his “Tales of Hoffman”. A barcarolle was originally a Venetian gondolier’s song typified by gently rocking rhythms in 6/8 or 12/8 time.

Offenbach’s is the most famous example. Here it is performed by the Attika plucked string orchestra which includes eight mandolins:

Bob Dylan’s song “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” from his 2020 album “Rough and Rowdy Ways” uses Offenbach’s “Barcarolle” as a riff.

Hot Takes On the Election

The Daily Escape:

Brant Point Light, Nantucket, MA – November 2023 photo by Ken Grille Photography

Let’s look at the election: You probably know that the Dems had a very good night. If polls and pundits didn’t exist, the narrative would be about how Republicans are in total disarray after six consecutive years of election losses and embarrassing nonperformance. That’s reality.

Add this from Rick Wilson:

“Joe Biden is old. Own it. I’ll take old and accomplished over old and evil every time. I don’t pity Joe Biden because he’s old. I honor him for still doing the work that has broken younger and stronger men…..For me, he is still the candidate.

He is still the man we need as President, taking on the fight to preserve America at home and abroad and taking on the world with faint-hearted support from his own party and an avalanche of vitriol from the GOP…”

You don’t need Wrongo to tell you who won/lost on Tuesday, but here’s some context: Democrats have won more votes in 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections than the GOP, the best popular vote run of any political party in US history.

In the last 4 Presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the vote, their best showing over 4 elections since FDR.
Democrats only received more than 50.1% of the vote ONCE from 1948 all the way to 2004. That was in 1964, the year after JFK’s assassination.
That Dems have been above 51% in 3 of our last 4 presidential elections is pretty remarkable.
In the 2008 race, Obama managed 52.9%
In 2012 Obama got 51.1%
And in 2020 Biden received 51.3%

The flaw is that with the Electoral College, where you win is more important than how many you win by.

Still, Dems continue to outperform expectations. In 2022, the so-called “red wave” year, Democrats gained ground from 2020 in 7 key states: AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA. They picked up 4 state legislative chambers, 2 governorships, and 1 US Senate seat, although they lost the US House.

In 2023, the Dems have outperformed again. From winning big in about 40 special elections earlier this year to winning contested elections on Tuesday in KY, VA, NH, PA and OH, we’ve seen very encouraging results. The Dems also added a new Congressperson in RI, and far Right school board candidates got defeated all over the country.

Also, Democrats elected mayors in five cities in Indiana. And Democrats picked up seats in the New Jersey legislature.

In Texas, the legislature has now defeated Gov. Abbott’s school voucher plan three times this year after building an alliance between Democrats and conservative rural House members who represent small school districts. The Dems adopted “Vouchers Kill Friday Night Lights” as a slogan in those places. In addition, Prop 9, to give retired public school teachers a pay raise, passed yesterday by 86% to 14%, the largest margin of any of the propositions. That shows real enthusiasm in Texas for public schools.

Wrongo is looking forward to how the NYT and CNN can explain that this is actually bad news for Biden. The WaPo, however, has already beaten the Times on the “it’s bad news for Biden” beat: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“As for how much solace this night provides a year before the 2024 election? There’s a real question about whether Republicans just don’t turn out when Trump isn’t on the ballot. Beshear was an incumbent. Virginia leans blue. And even if Democrats as a whole are well-poised, that doesn’t necessarily mean Biden, with his various liabilities, will be able to take advantage.”

But looking at the big picture, does it make sense after everything we’ve seen in this week’s elections that Trump is going to have his best election ever in 2024 by doing better than any Republican since GHW Bush in 1988?

What series of events do the pollsters think will cause that to happen? Can the GOP in a presidential election year get the turnout they’d need to cause that to happen? Wouldn’t that mean polls and pundits have to forecast yet another red wave like they forecasted in 2022, which didn’t materialize then, but will for certain materialize now?

Or are we supposed to think that 2024 is going to see a huge wave of pro-Trump “young” voters along with pro-Trump “black” voters who just didn’t show up in this week’s election?

Right now, nothing is at stake, and nothing will be at stake politically until 11 months from now. At that point, people who are polled today will have to make a choice. Until then they are free to be annoyed at Biden or anyone else. But when the implications of casting their ballots are clear, it will be a different story.

But until then, don’t expect the media to abandon its hyping of the “Biden in trouble” narrative.

The pundits are quick to report and slow to learn.

Can A Peace Be Brokered Between Israel And Hamas?

The Daily Escape:

Tug pushing barge Tongass Provider in Dutch Harbor, AK. This is the last big load of the season heading north before ice prevents boat travel – October 29, 2023 photo by Richard McKinley. Note how small the trucks and RVs look relative to all of the goods on the barge!

Saturday is when the Wrongologist expects to offer his readers a chance to calm down after what has become our all-too-common weeks of domestic and international horrors. We call this the “Saturday Soother”, but this week, once again, it may prove difficult to find soothing.

Wrongo’s column on Tuesday ended by asking:

“Can Biden broker a peace when neither side wants one?”

Friend of the blog, Brendan K. who has military experience in the Middle East (ME) said in response:

“A peace does need to be brokered, but by Arab leadership with Israel. Biden has no relevance in the Arab World…”

The point is that the US cannot be a staunch supporter of Israel and also be an honest broker between the combatants. That the US isn’t trustable isn’t a new idea in the Middle East; this has been an issue in most conflicts involving Israel for decades.

But it seems that the window on a brokered end to hostilities in Gaza may not be open for long. The idea that Israel has crossed the line of proportionality in their attacks on Gaza is growing among western countries, while the idea that Arabs must stand in solidarity with Hamas vs. Israel also seems to be growing throughout the world.

We don’t need to look very hard to find examples of how US actions with Israel compromise its possible value to broker peace. The Intercept has a story about the US building a secret base inside Israel:

“Two months before Hamas attacked Israel, the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build US troop facilities for a secret base it maintains…within Israel’s Negev desert, just 20 miles from Gaza. Code-named “Site 512,” the longstanding US base is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel.”

In addition to hosting a radar site that is pointed toward Iran, the Army is constructing a “life support facility” there, which is military-speak for barracks for personnel. All of this is despite Biden insisting that there are no plans to send US troops to Israel given the war on Hamas. But the Intercept claims that a secret US military presence in Israel already exists. Apparently sites like this can house as many as 1,000 troops.

Add what the NYT reported on Friday about US drones over Gaza:

“The US military is flying surveillance drones over the Gaza Strip, according to two Defense Department officials and an analysis by The New York Times. The officials said the drones were being used to aid in hostage recovery efforts, indicating that the US is more involved than previously known.”

The Defense Department told the NYT that these unarmed surveillance flights are not supporting Israeli military operations on the ground. Instead, the goal was to assist in locating hostages, and pass potential leads to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Wrongo finds the claim that these drones have a single mission to be laughable. In addition, several dozen American commandos are now on the ground in Israel. This view of drone flight patterns is from the NYT:

Flights shown here are from Oct. 28 to Nov. 2, of which at least six flights were over Gaza. Flight path data is from FlightRadar24. Paths are approximate based on each flight’s reported position about every minute.

Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah in Lebanon offered a warning to Israel and the US when he spoke for the first time since the start of the Israel/Hamas war. The WSJ had some key takeaways from his televised address:

It isn’t yet time for a wider, regional war: “For those who say that Hezbollah should start a war in the entire region, I say wait. These are the beginnings.”
Hezbollah had no advance knowledge of Oct. 7 attacks: The decision “was 100% Palestinian and it was this specific utmost secrecy which made it so successful.”
Arab and Muslim states must enforce the diplomatic and economic isolation of Israel: “It is not enough to just issue statements.”
Israel can’t eliminate Hamas: “One of the biggest mistakes that Israel is making right now is setting goals that it cannot achieve, such as eliminating Hamas and the power of Hezbollah.”
There should be a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip: “The Arab and Islamic nations must at the very least make an effort to achieve a cease-fire, even if some of them do not want to…sacrifice anything.”

Nasrallah also cautioned Israel against launching a preemptive strike:

“I tell the Israelis, if you are considering carrying out a preemptive attack against Lebanon, it will be the most foolish mistake you make in your entire existence.”

Worse, the WSJ reports that the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary outfit, plans to send air defenses to Hezbollah, which would be a major escalation in the Israel/Hamas war.

As expected, Netanyahu barked back with his own threat, warning Israel’s “enemies in the north” not to make the costly mistake of escalating the war:

“You cannot imagine how much this will cost you.”

It is very clear that Israel has forgotten 2006. Back then, Hezbollah attacked Israel, who responded by attacking civilian targets in Lebanon in an effort to make the Lebanese government and people think that Hezbollah brought death and destruction to their country. The opposite effect happened with most Lebanese Muslims increasing their approval or support for Hezbollah, while even Lebanese Christians, normally not friendly to Islamic parties or militias, blamed Israel for attacking civilian targets as an act of punishment.

Doesn’t that sound just like the Israeli strategy in Gaza today, 17 years later? US Secretary of State Blinken also issued a warning:

“With regard to Lebanon, with regard to Hezbollah, with regard to Iran, we have been very clear from the outset that we are determined that there not be a second or third front opened in this conflict. President Biden said on day one to anyone thinking of opening a second front, taking advantage of the situation, don’t. And we’ve backed up those words …with practical deeds.”

Wrongo is unsure what “practical deeds” Blinken is talking about. But it seems apparent that the warfighting strategy for Israel’s opponents is to continue to push the US into a position to overcommit until we can do no more. Wrongo thinks that Nasrallah will be reluctant to order a large missile attack against Israel because he knows that Israel will again attack Lebanese infrastructure with the complete blessing of the US.

As it presently stands, the Israel/Gaza situation is grim. There aren’t any reasons to expect Israel to voluntarily stop its ground operation, nor any indications as of yet that the Arab states are seriously considering attempting a diplomatic effort to achieve a cease fire.

Wrongo asked friend of the blog Brendan K. if he had an idea about how to extract Biden from the Israeli briar patch. And now Wrongo asks all readers: How/who has the ability to bring both sides to the table?

And here’s a music interlude that attempts to take our minds off of the ME for a few minutes. Watch and listen to “Hedwig’s Theme” by John Williams from Harry Potter performed at the BBC Proms Film Music night in 2011:

The Stakes For Biden (And The US) In The Hamas War

The Daily Escape:

First snowfall, Tanglewood, Berkshires, MA – November 1, 2023 photo via Tanglewood Music Festival

For Wrongo, there have been few events that seemed immediately to foreshadow a change in our lives. The first was the assassinations of JFK and MLK. Although they were five years apart, they each signaled turning points. Wrongo felt that way about Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. Both conveyed the thought that our government was helpless against forces it didn’t control or understand.

Then came the election of Donald Trump, and now, the Hamas/Israel war — threats that we couldn’t process with conventional thinking.

In all of these cases, it was clear that something truly catastrophic had occurred, and that we had no idea how America, or the world, would respond.

Now we face the Hamas/Israel war. We’re trying to sort out how to react to what is in front of us every night as the day’s reports from Gaza arrive. It’s hard to watch the discourse around what’s happening in Gaza. The messages from both sides are depressing, since they both look the death and destruction in the face and say it’s caused by the other guy. It’s difficult to see how this ends.

Israel remains under rocket attacks both from Hamas in Gaza and from Hezbollah in Lebanon. We know that Hamas is holding hundreds of hostages in tunnels that are below densely-populated neighborhoods.

The security systems that were designed to protect Israelis were proven wholly inadequate on Oct.7. Netanyahu and the coalition government have been discredited yet remain in power. The people demand justice and that security be provided somehow.

Israel doesn’t want a cease fire, yet that is what Hamas and a growing number of countries are pushing for.

OTOH, what Israel is attempting to do is nearly impossible. How do a million people get moved from the north of Gaza to the South? What makes sense about Israel’s plans to dismantle many of the homes and much of the infrastructure that the northern Gazans depend on, along with some 300 kilometers of tunnels? Why is it a moral war if Israel is willing and able to kill anyone who remains in the area? And when Israel is finished in the north, is there any assurance that they won’t turn to the south where they told the northern Gazans to go?

But as Simon Rosenberg says:

“It’s important to listen to the actual words of Hamas: – Israel must be eliminated, more attacks are coming – Killing of Jews/Americans in Israel is justified – Loss of life in Gaza is acceptable, as we are a “nation of martyrs”

Rosenberg shows this video by Hamas Official Ghazi Hamad in which he says:

“We Will Repeat the October 7 Attack Time and Again Until Israel Is Annihilated; We Are Victims – Everything We Do Is Justified”

And do you really think that Netanyahu will get some kind of deal for hostages done? We need to accept that most of them will be martyrs to the Israeli cause if the war continues. Does anyone believe that Hamas can be made to release the hostages and then surrender to Israel? Even though Hamas initiated this conflict and they could save their own people by taking responsibility, that’s not going to happen.

Where does this leave the US? Biden woke up on Oct. 7 to find himself thrust into the middle of the second major foreign-policy crisis of his term. He embraced Israel, along with what now look like two conflicting imperatives: Support Israel and prevent an escalation of the war.

There’s also a brewing political crisis at home. Polls show that most Americans side with Israel in the conflict and approve of both Israel’s retaliation against Hamas and US support for it. Republicans tend to be more supportive of Israel than Democrats, who have become more sympathetic toward Palestinians over the past several years. But majorities in both Parties are broadly supportive of Israel.

Yet Biden’s unconditional Israel support also brings the risk of regional escalation. Despite his efforts to convince the Israeli government to limit the scope and scale of its military response to Hamas’s attack and consider a “humanitarian pause,” Israel launched its ground invasion anyway.

The offensive will inevitably inflict large-scale Palestinian casualties (especially since Hamas will continue to put civilians between them and the Israelis). It will also lead to a marked escalation in attacks on Israel and US interests across the Middle East that could easily destabilize the region.

Unlike the war in Ukraine, where the US has worked hard to ensure that support of Kyiv doesn’t risk direct military confrontation between them and Russia, the US risks becoming directly involved in the Israel/Hamas war. For better or worse, Biden owns it, if it happens.

While most voters are aligned with Biden’s stance on the war, it poses two political challenges to Biden’s 2024 prospects from the Left and the Right.

From the Right, Biden will be accused of projecting weakness on the global stage. Trump is already making the false case that the two major wars of Biden’s term happened only because Biden’s weakness emboldened our adversaries. Trump will argue that the relative ME calm during his administration was due to his strategy of “peace through strength,” particularly with Russia and Iran. He’ll claim that neither would have dared test the US had he been in office.

Will this be compelling for Republican-leaning swing voters? Remember that Trump’s Abraham Accords – which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, ignored the Palestinians and helped sow the seeds for the Oct. 7 attack. Also that Trump’s constant threats to NATO were a gift to Putin.

Regardless of what happens next, Biden will always be the president on whose watch these two wars – both of which the US is funding, started.

From the Left, Biden will be accused of enabling Israel’s killing of innocent Palestinians. A CNN poll from earlier this month shows that just 27% of 18-to-34-year-olds view Israel’s military response to the Hamas attacks as “fully justified,” compared to 81% of those 65 or older. Then there’s Muslim and Arab-American voters, around two-thirds of whom backed Biden in 2020. Recent polls show that very few of them plan to vote for Biden again in 2024.

Faced with the Biden vs. Trump choice, these voters (who were an important part of the Democratic coalition in 2020 and 2022) would probably stick with Biden as the lesser evil (or stay home and thereby benefit Trump).

But third-party candidates like Cornel West, who is critical of Israel, could hurt Biden. A USA Today poll shows West already picking up between 4-7% of the vote nationally, primarily from Biden. It would only take 2-3 percentage points for West to be a spoiler in a swing state like Wisconsin, potentially tipping the balance to Trump in a close election.

At the same time, a Middle East crisis that Biden can’t fix could hurt him particularly if the war escalates. Biden will also bear the burden for any terrorist and antisemitic attacks in the US between now and the end of his term.

Can Biden broker a peace when neither side wants one?

For now, Biden is the narrow favorite to win reelection, largely because of Trump’s extraordinary criminality and his unique weaknesses. But if the ME is still dominating our headlines in November 2024, all bets are off.

Autoworkers Have A Deal

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Northern VT – October 2023 photo by Kristen Wilkinson Photography

The UAW announced Monday evening it had reached a tentative agreement with GM, the last of the Detroit car companies to complete negotiations with the Union. So all three have a tentative agreement which will now be voted on by UAW members. This is a big deal, even if nobody’s talking about it.

Some details from The Insider:

“The 25% pay increases by April 2028 agreed to in the new contracts raise top pay to about $42 an hour, according to the union. That starts with an 11% immediate boost upon ratification, three annual raises of 3% each, and a final increase of 5%. The UAW said restoration of cost-of-living increases, which were suspended in 2009, could boost the total increases to more than 30%.”

Some industry analysts have estimated that Ford’s contract, if ratified, would add $1.5 billion to the company’s annual labor costs. Ford estimated that this could add up to $900 in labor cost to each vehicle rolling off its assembly lines. Another analyst says the pact will reduce profitability by 1%. To put these numbers into perspective, keep in mind that a fully loaded Ford F150 can run over $80k. That means the car companies can afford this deal.

Labor accounts for 4-5% of the average cost of making a car for the Big Three. Also, the Big 3 have made $250 billion in profits over the past decade and have diverted a substantial amount of that money into stock buybacks to enrich wealthy shareholders and top executives instead of investing in their businesses or paying their workers.

So please spare us the tears about the workers’ hard-fought gains putting the Big 3 in peril. The NYT wrote:

“The terms will be costly for the automakers as they undertake a switch to electric vehicles, while setting the stage for labor strife and demands for higher pay at nonunion automakers like Tesla and Toyota.”

To paraphrase, the NYT says that those evil unions are ruining shareholder value and will cause strife at Tesla, a company renowned for its fantastic working conditions.

Be it ever thus in the media: Unions demand, management offers. Note how the media framing is always “the automakers” as the protagonists, with workers as a mob that’s making trouble. Why can’t those workers be happy and content with their lot in life, which is ordained for them by the Higher Power?

Back in the real world, the tentative UAW agreement rewards autoworkers who had sacrificed much during and since the Great Financial Crisis. They now get record raises, more paid leave, greater retirement security, and more rights at work.

The UAW win is a testament to the power of unions and collective bargaining to build strong middle-class jobs, while helping a few of our most iconic American companies to thrive. The UAW workers have not only seen many of their jobs automated and offshored, they also hadn’t received an inflation-adjusted raise since the early 2000’s.

That the UAW prevailed shows that unionizing on a large scale is a viable path to rebuilding America’s middle class. Fed up with continual economic hardship at the hands of the Big 3’s management, these strikers achieved something good for themselves and their families. Moreover, they did it legally. Despite the NYT’s protests, they didn’t steal anything from anyone. They didn’t ask for handouts. They demanded a good future for themselves and their families.

This should be a lesson to all people whose labor is undervalued. You can organize and negotiate better contracts for yourselves.

And don’t underestimate how important a low rate of unemployment is to low-wage and working-class Americans, and how that also gives unions leverage. Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provided an economic stimulus that boosted US consumer purchasing power to the point that we avoided the expected recession. And today’s scarcity value of labor helped close the deal with the Big 3.

For some context, these landmark gains by the UAW, along with what the Teamsters secured with their UPS contract, and what health care support staff got at Kaiser Permanente go far beyond the pay and benefits that workers receive at their non-union counterparts. Except for railroad workers, it’s been a very good year for unions.

Once again, Biden took a risk that he hadn’t before by explicitly siding with the UAW. It paid off for him and the Union as well.

Finally, kudos to Shawn Fain and the UAW negotiating team!

Wrongo appreciates that Fain seems to understand class consciousness by describing the workers as working class. And their strategy was pure divide and conquer.

The final word on these tentative agreements will ultimately come from UAW members themselves when they vote on the new contracts.

More Chaos

The Daily Escape:

Lenticular clouds over Mt. Adams, WA – October 2023 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

The news is awful and the time to cover it is short. So here’s a few thoughts on the fly:

First, about Lewiston. This is another American tragedy caused by the AR-15. The effort to paint the problem as another mentally-ill person who unfortunately happened to snap has already begun.

And on average, more than one gun per capita is owned by Americans. The Framers couldn’t have conceived of such violence from one gun. Wrongo is fully aware that it is highly unlikely that guns will ever be brought under better control, unless we happen to become the autocracy that many on the Right want us to be.

The Supreme Court’s ideas about originalism and what was meant by a “well-regulated militia” back in the 1770s, made Wrongo take a look at the demographics of the era. In 1790, the US population was around 3.9 million people, excluding Indians and slaves (as they did back then).

And if you try to determine what a rifle owned by one of America’s well-regulated militia cost in the 1770s, you uncover an almost insoluble problem. There was no national currency, each state had its own. Most were expressed in pounds, but each varied in value in relation to the English pound that they were based on.

Despite all of the problems of comparisons, in 1775, a week’s wages for a Massachusetts agricultural laborer were about 3.75 MA pounds. Across the colonies, a long rifle of medium quality cost between 4-7 pounds, so an average worker could acquire a rifle for less than two week’s wages.

That probably meant that like today, there were at least as many guns as men in colonial America.

The well-regulated militia as a deterrent to tyranny made sense until the time of muzzle loaders came to an end. From roughly 1500 – 1850, militias could fight on relatively equal ground with professional soldiers. But once artillery got good enough to chew up massed formations with only a few cannons, the rifle and other small arms became of secondary value in the fight against tyranny because citizen militias could no longer stand up to formal militaries.

Today, small arms play a different role in combat than when the Constitution was written. If the Second Amendment people were serious about wanting to be able to fight off their government they should be arguing to legalize artillery and explosives. They should conduct anti-armored drone drills, weekend artillery practice, and crowd-fund air defense systems.

Think of it as: Today, guns are worthless for fighting tyranny, but they’re perfect for imposing it.

Now, onward to the House of Representatives, and the new Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, (R-LA). We now have an insurrectionist religious fundamentalist conspiracy theorist who’s second in line for the presidency should something happen to Biden. The House GOP caucus just unanimously elected a traitor.

This needs to be on billboards nationwide.

The election of Johnson represents the surrender by the remaining non-MAGA Republicans to the minority MAGA fringe of their Party. It is a debacle for what the GOP used to stand for in America. And given that funding for the government runs out in a few weeks, a fight between what is now a fully-controlled MAGA House and the House Democrats is inevitable.

To say you’re a Republican in America in 2023 but don’t support Trump makes about as much sense as saying you’re a Communist Party member in the USSR in 1950 but don’t support Stalin.

We should expect a very long shutdown.

House Democrats have to make their fights with House Republicans as loud as possible. They need to make public remarks every day, regardless of their impact on private negotiations. Dems need to make sure everyone knows what the demands by Johnson and the MAGA extremists he leads mean to citizens.

We have to expect that Beltway pundits and the editorial boards of the WaPo and the NYT will attempt to push Biden and Democrats to work with the new Speaker. But, that is a lost cause. House Democrats should work in a bipartisan manner with the (slightly) more reasonable Senate and then turn the fight back to the GOP House in a big public event.

Here’s a tweet by Politico’s Jonathan Martin:

Martin sees this as giving a political advantage to Democrats, but the problem he ignores is the chaos. Is it possible that any order can come out of the MAGA chaos? Johnson is still vulnerable to the rule that a single disgruntled Republican House member can initiate the process to oust him, just as Matt Gaetz (R-FL) did with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

If four of the other 220 House Republicans agree, he will lose his job. So a reasonable view is to expect more Republican chaos.

Buckle up, it’s going to be a roller coaster ride from here to next November.

When Perception Isn’t Fact

The Daily Escape:

View of fall colors and Linn Cove Viaduct, Banner Elk, NC – October 2023 photo by David Peak

Polls continue to show that people think the economy is terrible and that it’s Biden’s fault. Biden supporters chalk it up to the general unreliability of surveys: Asking people questions and then assuming their answers are accurate or honest. But often, they are not because people find it difficult to say, “I don’t know.”

A second issue is the astounding changes in polling data over the past decade: People’s self-reported emotional state in 2022 was worse than the very worst events of the past few decades. But are things as bad as people seem to think? From Barry Ritholtz:

“From an economic standpoint, things are much better than people seem to be willing to admit: The rate of inflation has plummeted by two-thirds from 9% to a little over 3%, but 60% of respondents believe inflation is “continuing to increase.” The economy is not on the right track, even as Americans’ Net Worth Surged by Most in Decades During Pandemic.”

And the political fallout may be worse than you think. Bloomberg’s recent poll reveals some significant danger for Biden:

“Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in several key swing states as voters reject the economic message that is central to Biden’s reelection bid….Trump…leads Biden 47% to 43% among voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The results across those seven states had a margin of error of 1 percentage point.”

Thirteen months before the election, Biden lags Trump in head-to-head matchups in five of the seven swing states. These states will be particularly important in delivering the electoral votes that decide who will be the next president. More from Bloomberg:

“A 51% majority of swing-state voters said the national economy was better off during the Trump administration, and similar numbers said they would trust Trump over Biden on the economy going forward, 49% to 35%. Among independent voters, the chasm on trust to handle the economy is even wider, with a 22-point advantage for Trump.”

Seems like a problem. This is despite the fact that, since 2019, households invested more, home values have jumped, and savings levels have risen. Here’s more from Bloomberg’s polling partner Morning Consult’s Caroline Bye:

“Right now, Biden is not getting any credit for work he’s done on the economy….Almost twice as many voters in the swing states are saying that Bidenomics is bad for the economy, as opposed to good for the economy, which is a really startling fact if you’re the Biden campaign.”

Why is it that people’s perception doesn’t match the data? Back to Ritholtz, who thinks the fault may lie with the media:

“…the 2010s seems to be when they shifted their online presence to a much more aggressive stance. Perhaps most significant is in the way coverage became increasingly “click-bait” oriented via headlines filled with emotionally loaded language….Words that conveyed “Disgust” rose 29% and “Sadness” was 54% higher; words that reflected “Anger” were up 104%. The biggest gain was from perhaps the most emotionally loaded word: “Fear” skyrocketed by a huge 150%. And the words expressing “Joy” or “Neutral?” Down 14% and 30% respectively.”

But it isn’t just the media’s headlines that are hurting people’s perceptions; it’s also the choice of what the media covers that can lead us astray. Ritholtz provides us with a fantastic chart about the causes of death in the US from Our World in Data comparing actual causes of death with what was reported in the NYT:

This shows that the way the media covers deaths this is totally inverted: The things least likely to kill you get the most coverage: The bar chart on the right shows Terrorism, Homicide, and Suicide capture about 70% of the column inches. This is despite the odds that you are most likely to die from heart disease (30.2%), cancer (29.5%), or a car accident or fall (7.6%). The very bottom of the list are suicide at 1.8%, homicide at 0.9%, and terrorism at 0.01%.

So do negatively-laden headlines matched with wildly disproportionate coverage combine to send sentiment readings to places that do not match the reality of the economy or more broadly, the real world around us?

We’ve always had sensationalist journalism. The media’s response to social media is to approach news coverage in a similar manner to social media. Apparently the business plan is: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. It’s important to remember that we are what we eat, including our media diet. It’s making us unhappy, and increasingly detached from reality.

There are a few economic realities that may help explain where the public is right now:

Gas prices are both very volatile, and something that annoys an enormous percentage of Americans, because of the need to spend large amounts of money on a weekly basis to fuel their gas guzzling vehicles.
The housing market is a mess. The median sale price of a house in the USA went from $313,000 in 2019 to $480,000 in 2022. Since then the massive spike in interest rates has reduced median price to $416,000, but coupled with high mortgage rates, this is bad news for people wanting to buy homes in this market.

From a behavioral economics viewpoint, the extent of peoples’ reaction to price inflation may reflect the concept that people are loss averse: that is, they dislike what they perceive as losses more than they like what they perceive as gains.

This means if prices and wages were to increase at the same rate, politicians might assume that people would be indifferent to the nominal changes in prices, since they would be offset by wage increases. But if Americans are loss averse, when prices and wages both go up by a significant amount, (as they have over the past three years), people feel worse, because the “loss” incurred through higher prices feels worse than the “gain” of higher wages.

Time to wake up America! Perception isn’t fact until it is. How Dems fight this will determine the outcome of the 2024 election. To help you wake up, watch and listen to Bruce Springsteen perform “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live”, live at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 2006. This is one year after Katrina, which Bruce focuses on at the start of the song:

Sample Lyrics:

Well, the doctor comes ’round here with his face all bright
And he says, “In a little while you’ll be all right”
All he gives is a humbug pill, a dose of dope and a great big bill
Tell me, how can a poor man stand such times and live?

What’s Israel’s Strategy If They Eliminate Hamas?

The Daily Escape:

Escalante NM, UT – October 2023 drone photo by Brete Thomas

Last night, President Biden said that the world is at an inflection point. The next stage of the Israel/Hamas conflict is beginning. From the WaPo:

“Israeli troops are massing around the Gaza Strip, poised for a ground invasion that could involve heavy urban combat in the densely populated territory. The buildup of force comes after attackers from the militant group Hamas, which controls the enclave, crossed into southern Israel, killing at least 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages.”has and will be written about the next stage concerns what is a “justifiable” retaliatory action by the Israelis. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have already pummeled Gaza with airstrikes, killing more than 3,000 Palestinians, according to the Palestinians.

Much of what the Israelis seemingly are planning on doing is entirely justifiable, so long as there is an overarching strategy behind it. What we do know is that Israel has vowed to “destroy” Hamas. That means an extensive ground war in Gaza.

Without a strategy for what happens after Hamas is rooted out, this will look more like a reprisal strike whenever the IDF leaves Gaza. And there’s absolutely a moral problem with reprisals that kill many civilians. The law (and custom) of war would say there isn’t a problem with reprisals in which you’re killing only Hamas. But if the IDF happens to kill a lot of civilians along the way, even if it is lawful, the world would want to see that Israel has a long-term strategic objective that justifies those actions.

The WaPo quotes Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at Rand Corp: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“Basically what the Israelis are aiming for is complete regime change in Gaza, which is a notable break from past campaigns….If you want to root out Hamas, it’s going to last a lot more than 50 days like Protective Edge, (referring to the IDF’s 2014 Gaza operation)”.

The general rule is that armies are not allowed to target civilians, but you are allowed to target combatants or belligerents of the other side. Urban warfare has always shown that civilians and belligerents are not necessarily distinct from one another. Often the fighters aren’t wearing uniforms.

The US military saw this in Mosul and Raqqa while fighting ISIS. The bad guys are basing themselves in the same buildings that civilians live in. That means the military has to weigh factors like the necessity of the military strike, and whether the expected civilian harm is proportionate to the expected military gain.

Let’s game out how it might look on the ground in Gaza. Remember, that Hamas is thought to have a membership of between 20,000 and 25,000.

First, Israel will have control of the airspace over Gaza. That will make rooftops a very poor place for Hamas sniper and rocket positions.

Second, Israel has amassed artillery and tanks to provide massive firepower. This is an advantage to IDF troops since overwhelming firepower will reduce risk to its soldiers. But it is a huge disadvantage to civilian populations, and it’s incredibly destructive to the city. Also, tanks could be vulnerable to antitank weapons and will be limited by narrow urban streets.

Third, urban warfare tactics will probably be stalemated at the start. Expect Hamas to take up positions in buildings where they will have cover against attacking IDF forces. But Israeli soldiers will bring explosives to blow through walls and enter buildings or rooms from unexpected directions. The size of the IDF forces will gradually wear down Hamas.

Fourth, Gaza has many tunnels built for allowing Hamas to move around the city undetected. The IDF will either flood the tunnels or permanently entomb Hamas soldiers in them using explosives.

Regardless, many people in Gaza will die, some of whom will be Hamas members.

So the big questions are what is Israel’s exit strategy? How will Gaza be governed post-Hamas? And how will the IDF minimize civilian casualties?

Here’s some context. You can read this and say “what about” a fact or two? But the overarching issue is: Can these two peoples with different religions live peacefully in very close contact, given all that has happened since the Balfour Declaration? Israelis came to a land that already had a native population, and the land to share between them wasn’t very large. That required that some of the people who were already on the land had to be moved.

Sounds like America and it’s manifest destiny move westward.

A reality on the ground in Israel and in Gaza is that the Palestinian population is growing faster than Israel’s. This makes for continued contests (legal and illegal) over control of land, and this frozen conflict has now once again burst into active warfare.

And regarding strategy? It may be as simple as let’s get rid of Hamas. Let’s end the cycle of violence and rebuild. No one asked FDR what to do with Germany on D-Day.

If Israel can eliminate Hamas while minimizing civilian casualties, that would be a good start. Then if the Palestinians can put together a government that actually wants: a) to build a functioning economy (without having its existence justified by perpetual war) and b) can check the “Israel has a right to exist” box, perhaps peace could happen.

The Israelis will likely have to be pushed to accept a viable Palestinian state, since this will mean political conflict with its West Bank settlers. A critical question is how hard the US and other nations are willing to push for peace between the parties. It seems likely that the current conflict may create an opportunity to push for peace. Let’s hope Israel is ready to grasp it.

The Arab states are looking on nervously. The outraged response to the hospital bombing in Gaza reminds us that even authoritarian governments sometimes must be responsive to their citizens. It’s possible that in the future, Israel may still face active challenges from hostile regimes in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. To assume otherwise is just wishful thinking.

The world is staring down the real possibility that this local conflict might morph into a regional war. There will be both short and longer term global consequences for America regardless of Israel’s strategy post-Hamas.

(Sorry, no Saturday Soother today. Instead, let’s hope for minimized deaths and casualties from the Israel/Hamas war.)

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:

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: The Presidency

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The Stakes For Biden (And The US) In The Hamas War

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What’s Israel’s Strategy If They Eliminate Hamas?