Top Ten Reasons to Vote for Harris vs. Trump

The following is a preliminary draft on a piece I’ve been thinking about for some time, but have only now gotten around to writing. I’m posting this draft here and now to try to get some early feedback to help edit it. If you have constructive comments, you can try the comment facility below (if I manage to figure out how to get it working), or better still, you can send me email. I will post an updated version (including the still unwritten “five reasons” section at the end) as soon as possible. I’ll also post this, and this week’s still not quite ready “Speaking of Which,” on my blog. I would be happy if other sites wish to reprint this post, and would appreciate any constructive edit suggestions. If you are interested in doing that, please contact me. [PS: Comments should be working now (but should be moderated before appearing, so please be patient.]


Two questions need to be addressed before we get down to detailed arguments. The first is why vote at all? I’d say first, because it is your right as a citizen, but must be secured by your exercise of it. People in America may have a very limited say in how the country is organized and run, but you do have the vote, and using it shows your willingness to engage in the responsibility for setting the nation’s direction.

The second question is whether you should limit your vote choice to the two major political parties, or consider voting for a third party should you prefer that candidate’s platform? History shows us that America gravitated into a two-party system almost immediately after the Constitution was ratified, and quickly returned to a two party system on the two instances where one major party disbanded (replacing the Federalists with the Whigs, and replacing the Whigs with the Republicans). No subsequent third party has been able to sustain significant followings, with third-party votes often dropping to under 5% in recent elections.

So from a practical standpoint, third parties are ineffective and unpromising.One might nonetheless consider voting for a third party candidate if: neither major party nominated a candidate you can stand, and there is no significant difference between the two candidates that can direct your choice. I can understand if you feel that both Trump and Harris should be shunned for their rote support of Israeli genocide, although I suspect that even there the nature of their positions differs enough to favor a vote for Harris.

One other possible consideration is whether one party offers a better chance for future improvement, based on the composition of the party, how open-minded its members are, and how democratic its processes are. The current two-party system is quite possibly the most polarized ever, which has led most people to select one party or the other. Moreover, both major parties have primaries that are open to all members, and as such are amenable to reform. If, like me, you are primarily concerned with “left” issues of peace and equal rights, you may have noticed that most of the people most likely to agree with you are currently Democrats. If your goal is to build a majority around your ideals, you need to establish a bond of solidarity with the Democrats, which often means voting for a candidate you don’t totally agree with. You are, after all, hoping that other Democrats, even ones that disagree with you, will vote for your candidate should that person win a primary.

The last third party candidate I voted for was Ralph Nader in 2000. I don’t feel bad about that vote, especially as I’m convinced that the Gore-Lieberman ticket would have been as gung-ho starting the “war on terror” after 9/11 as Bush-Cheney was. But I did learn one lesson from that election, which is that even in Kansas, where the Gore campaign was practically non-existent, 90% of the anti-Bush votes cast went to the Democrat. Since then, I vowed to work within the Democratic Party, such as it as, as best I could. (I did lapse once since, to vote against a particular Democrat I’ve hated what seems like all of my life, but there I went with the Republican, as I really wanted that Democrat to lose.)

Having narrowed the choice down to Harris vs. Trump, arguments that one candidate is better and/or one candidate is worse are equally valid. This being American politics, “one candidate is worse” arguments predominate. Lest you imagine there might be any suspense here, Harris is the better option, while Trump is much the worse.

And while the future is impossible to predict, the margins overwhelm any imaginable uncertainty. Trump is especially known, as we’ve actually experienced him as President. This doesn’t mean a second term will be just like his first: it could easily be worse, for reasons we’ll get into. Harris is harder to read. Although she has much relevant experience, presidency offers powers and temptations that she’s never faced before, as well as situations she’s never had to deal with. This raises doubts, which I will deal with in a separate list, following the “top ten.”


So, here are my top ten reasons to vote for Harris vs. Trump:

10. Donald Trump is a truly odious human being. That’s a personal, not a political judgment: sure, virtually all of his political views stink, but most of the people who share his political views have personal traits one can relate to, respect, even appreciate. As far as I can tell — and while I only know what’s been reported, I’ve been exposed to a lot of that — he has none. He seems totally miserable. If he’s ever laughed, it’s been at someone else’s expense. He lacks even the slightest pretense of caring for anyone, even for his wives or children (the prenups should have been a clue). He’s not unique in this regard, but most similar people are easily ignored. The only way to free ourselves from Trump’s ever-present unpleasantness is to vote him off (like in the “reality TV” shows he’s a creature of).

Harris, on the other hand, can listen, and respond appropriately. She has a generous and infectious laugh. And while I’ve never seen her cry, she is at least cognizant of situations that call for a show of concern and empathy. I don’t particularly like the idea of president as “handholder-in-chief,” but it’s better to have someone who can feign that than someone who utterly cannot.

9. Such personal failings drive most people to despair, which at least could be pitied, but Trump’s inherited wealth has provided him with an armor of callousness, which has long elicited the warm glow of supplicants and sycophants. From this, he has constructed his own mental universe where he is adored and exalted. This has produced extraordinary hubris — another of his distasteful traits — but more importantly, his narcissism has left him singularly unprepared to deal with reality when it so rudely intrudes on his fantasy life (as happens all too often when you’re President).

I should note here that the collective embarrassment we so often felt when witnessing Trump’s failed attempts at addressing events has dulled somewhat since he left office (need I remind you of Hurricane Maria? — just one of dozens of examples, ranging from his staring into the eclipse to the pandemic). The only things that have affected him that way since have been his indictments, but even there he’s been sheltered like no one else ever. There is no reason to think that Harris wouldn’t respond to events at least as well as a normal politician, which is to say, by showing palpable concern and deliberation. Trump’s disconnect from reality is unprecedented. (Good place to mention his election denialism.)

8. There is some debate as to whether Trump’s wealth is real, but even as it seems, that should be reason enough to disqualify him. Only a few Presidents have come from the ranks of the rich, and those who did — like Washington, Kennedy, and the Roosevelts — took pains to distance themselves from their business interests. Back in 2016, Trump suggested he would give up his business ties, insisting that his wealth made him more independent of corrupt influences, but after he won, he backtracked completely, and ran an administration that was outrageously corrupt — especially at the top, where his son-in-law’s diplomacy netted him a billion-dollar private equity fund, but his administration hired lobbyists to peddle influence everywhere. One might argue that Trump’s business was so large that he couldn’t possibly disentangle himself, but that’s just part of the reason why people like him shouldn’t be allowed in politics. Their inability to relate to ordinary Americans is another.

7. Aside from his abuse of executive power to staff government with corporate agents, pack with courts with right-wing cronies, and pardon numerous criminals in his circle, his record for delivering on his 2016 campaign promises is remarkably thin: he lost interest in things that might have been popular (like building infrastructure, or “draining the swamp”). He also lucked out, when a couple Republican defections saved the ACA, and then when Democrats took Congress back in 2018. The only positive bill he signed was the pandemic relief act, which he wanted desperately to save a flagging stock market, but had to accept a mostly Democratic bill that helped pretty much everyone.

Also, the full impact of many policies can take years before it is felt. The repeal of Taft-Hartley in 1947 took decades before it started to do serious damage to unions and workers (although it had the immediate impact of ending a campaign to unionize in the South, which would have been a big advance for civil rights). Deregulation of savings & loans in the 1980s and larger banks in the 1990s took most of a decade before triggering recessions. Much of what Trump did during his term didn’t blow up until after the 2020 election, including his killing of the Iran nuclear deal, his agreement to give Afghanistan to the Taliban, and his Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Harris’s ability to deliver on campaign promises will, as Biden’s has, depend much on the balance of power in Congress, but at least Democrats have a track record of trying to pass laws to help most Americans, and not just those favored by Republicans with their tax and benefit cuts. Harris will be further hampered by the Republican packing of the courts, but that’s one reason why it matters not just that Democrats win elections, but win big.

6. On the other hand, if Trump were more dedicated in pursuit of the policy positions he espouses, or if he’s just given more power by a Republican Congress, he could (and probably would) do much more harm in a second term, way beyond the still not fully accounted for harm of his first. For starters, he has a much more developed idea of what he wants to do — not because he understands policy any better, but because he has more specific goals in areas that especially interest him — and will hire more loyal operatives, eager to carry out his wishes. This will be easier, because he’s already bent the party to his will, especially promoting its most crazed cadres, while he himself has become further radicalized. Moreover, he now has a long list of enemies to punish, while his minions will be free to pursue their own grafts and obsessions. We’ve already seen how he’s turned the presidency into a cult of personality. Give him more power — not just in Congress but the Supreme Court is ready to enshrine the “unitary executive theory” — and he will only grow more monstrous.

5. Donald Trump is a shit stain on the face of America. They say that wealth is power, and that power corrupts, absolute power absolutely. America emerged from WWII with half of the world’s wealth, with troops spread to Europe and East Asia, and corporations everywhere. America has been “breaking bad” ever since, starting in the 1940s rigging elections in Italy, fighting communists in Greece and Korea, overthrowing democratic governments in Guatemala and Iran, replacing them with corporate-friendly autocrats. Still, even Reagan expected good guys in white hats to win out, so he pretended to be one, while the Bushes hid their conservatism behind fake compassion. Trump is the first US president to give up all pretense. His fans may mistake his contempt for candor, but the result is a much more brutal world. He demands tribute from allies, lest they fall into the ranks of enemies, who are expected to cower when faced with overwhelming American might, and face escalating threats when they refuse to fall in line. His is a recipe for neverending war, as we’ve already seen with Russia and Iran, with Korea and China waiting for the next break.

Nor are we only talking about foreign policy. The conservative solution to domestic matters is also to rely on force, starting with mass incarceration, eroding/stripping rights, smashing unions, purging the civil service, quelling demonstrations, stifling free speech, book bans, censoring the press, turning education into indoctrination, rigging elections, even going so far as to incite mobs and promise them immunity. While these impulses have long been endemic to Republicans, Trump is unique in he wants you to see and smell the feces, and that seems to be the basis for his popularity among his hardcore constituency. This, with its embrace of sheer power and rampant criminality, is what’s so reminiscent of the fascist movements of the 1930s.

4. Still, as bad as Trump is personally, the real danger is that his election will bring a tidal wave of Republicans into power all throughout the federal and local governments they have pledged to debilitate and reduce, as Grover Norquist put it, “to the size where I can drown it in the bathtub.” (The less often discussed ancillary idea is to hack off functions done by government and give them away to the private sector. This almost never works. When attempted, it almost always makes the functions more expensive and/or less useful.) This is just one of many deranged and dysfunctional ideas prevalent in the Republican Party. Like most of their ideas, it’s appealing as rhetoric, but unworkable in practice. Republicans have repeatedly tried to reduce government spending by cutting taxes on their donor class, but have found little to actually cut — even when they had the power to write budgets — so all they’ve produced is greater deficits, and an inflated oligarchy.

They’ve had more luck at poisoning benefits, trying to make government appear to be worthless. The idea is to convince voters that voting is hopeless, because government will only take from them, and never give back. The idea that the purpose of government is to “provide for the general welfare” (that’s in the Preamble to the US Constitution) is inimical to them. The idea of “government of, by, and for the people” (that’s in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address) is alien to those who hate most American people. Republicans created a death spiral of democracy, which they hope will leave them in permanent power, not to serve the public, but to prevent people from using government for their own improvement.

Trump has added his own authoritarian quirks to the Republican agenda, but the big risk to democracy has always come from money, which Republicans have made sure selects candidates and drives elections. Trump is less a cause of oligarchy than evidence of how far it has progressed.

3. Two important concepts in economics are externality (public costs that are not factored into product costs, such as pollution) and opportunity costs (other things that we could spend money on if we weren’t preoccupied with given expenses). Republicans, driven exclusively by their desire to help the rich get richer in the here and now, and blind to the future, have no interest in these concepts. Democrats are subject to the same donor pressures, but at least recognize that such side effects are real and important. This is because they try to recognize and balance everyone’s welfare, and not just that of their donors and voters.

Climate change is a good example of both: it is largely caused by the waste products of fossil fuels, and can only be remedied by major investment sooner rather than later. But people only see what gasoline costs when they fill up, while the climate change they’re contributing to only manifests later, and mostly to other people. This gives them little reason to spend now to avert future costs, so they don’t. Even as climate change has become a very tangible problem, Trump and the Republicans have wrapped themselves ever deeper into a cocoon of denial and ignorance, which ensures that as long as they’re in power we will never invest what we need to in sustainable infrastructure. While a second Trump term could do a lot of immediate damage, its long-term cost will largely be opportunity costs, as we belatedly realize we didn’t invest what we should have when it would have been more effective.

2. It’s impossible to overstate how completely Donald Trump has taken over and perverted our culture, what philosophers call our noosphere — the mental universe, our ability to reason. This may seem paradoxical given that few people on Earth are as disengaged from and contemptuous of reason as Donald Trump, but that may well be the source of his power. He has effectively given his followers permission to disengage from other people, to eschew reason and argument and indulge their own prejudices and fantasies, because that’s what he does, and he’s so fabulously successful. Moreover, it has the added benefit of driving crazy all those who still worry about real problems (both their own and those of other people), which they expect to deal with through science and reason. (Such people often project their own mania back onto the Trumpers, and reckon them to be saddled with problems, when they actually seem to be quite blissfully serene in their obliviousness and/or ignorance.)

Political scientists have a concept known as the Overton window, which describes “the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.” Ideas outside the window are dismissed as radical or even unthinkable, making it very hard to get any sort of coverage, as the media limits itself to more widely acceptable ideas. Events may push some ideas into the mainstream, while discarding others. For instance, there was a time when eugenics was all the rage, but no more. Climate change has become increasingly mainstream, although there are still political interests out to kill any such discussion. A big part of politics is fighting over what we can and cannot talk about. What Trump has done has been to expand the Overton window to the far right, legitimizing clusters of issues that were previously regarded as baseless (like QAnon, antivax claims, election denial). Perhaps the most disturbing of all has been Trump’s own criminal enterprises. These subjects, which at best distract from real problems and often create more, would only grow under a second Trump term.

I have no doubt that the bad policies advanced by Trump will blow up and wind up discredited, but at a great waste of effort to stop them, and a huge opportunity cost as we ignore constructive ideas from the left. Even where Harris does not have good programs, which certainly includes her continued fealty to Bush-Obama-Trump-Biden (and Cheney?) foreign policy, her election would provide a much healthier window for debate than what we’d be stuck with under Trump.

1. It’s time to turn the page on Trump and the era of Fox Republicanism. Cloture on Trump is easy to imagine, as he’s way past his prime, increasingly doddering at 78, unlikely to ever run again. Vote him out, and that’s one problem America will never have to deal with again. Not only would it give us a chance to heal, to move on, to deal with our self-protracted problems, but it could be the kindest result for Trump and even for his Party. Trump could cut his plea deals and escape most of the legal jeopardy he’s landed in. The Party could finally recalculate, trying to find a way to compete in the real world instead of trying to scam the rhetorical madness that Fox created to profit from fear and rage. Moreover, by cutting their losses, they’d escape much of the blame for the disasters their preferred policies would inevitably lead to. Progress is inexorable, so those who would resist it only have two choices: bend or break. The Republicans’ forty-year (1980-2020) era has done much damage to the social and economic fabric of the nation. Some things have broken, and many more are creaking. We might survive four more years of Trump, but time is running out. And when things do break under Trump, beware that no one will be more ill-prepared and incompetent at dealing with them.

On the other hand, Harris, like most Democrats (even the nominally left-wing of the party), doesn’t represent visionary change, but she is perceptive, analytical, and pragmatic, which suggests that she will adapt to changing circumstances, and endeavor to make the best out of them. She will be sorely tested by the influence of wealthy lobbyists, by the superficial and sensationalist press, by the still powerful remains of Republican power — which while incapable of governing competently let alone responsibly, is still a formidable machine for amplifying grievances — and by new challenges we haven’t even been able to think of yet (so mired are we in the ruins of bad Republican politics, from Nixon and Reagan through the Bushes to their ultimate self-parody in Trump, tempered ever so slightly by interim Democrats who never got beyond patchwork repairs).


Of course, one can think of many more reasons, especially if you tried to work from policies outward. I may do a separate document where I read through Trump’s “Agenda 47” and comment line-by-line. Presumably there’s a comparable Harris document somewhere, which could also be scrutinized. From them, I might be able to come up with a scorecard, but there’s no chance of a different result. As it is, I’ve concentrated less on issues and more on personalities and political dynamics: Trump is at best muddled on issues, but his shortcomings as noted are extremely clear.

Harris, as I noted, is harder to read, especially because for tactical campaign purposes she has adopted a set of views that aim to win over not just undecided/centrist voters but any Republicans that Trump hasn’t totally stripped of their decency yet. She’s had some success at that, although it remains to be seen how many actual votes follow her celebrity endorsements. At this point, I don’t see any point in second-guessing her campaign strategy. Presumably she has researched the electorate and knows much better than I do just how to pitch them. If she loses, we’ll have a field day dissecting her mistakes — which, for all the reasons mentioned above and many more, may be the only fun we can have in the next four years.

But for now, let’s assume she wins, and she runs her administration along lines it is reasonable to expect. In that case, the left will still have work to do and things to protest. So here are my:

Top 5 Reasons Electing Harris Won’t Solve Our Problems

I ran across this synopsis recently: “There are converging political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a mythical past.” Harris represents the party of “business as usual,” where “change” is acknowledged as inevitable, but is guarded so as not to upset the status quo — which may include reforms to make it more tolerable, as not doing so would risk more disruptive change.

While it didn’t occur to me in listing the “top ten reasons” above, one more strong reason is that Trump’s “nostalgia for a mythical past” — the once-great America he aims to restore and protect — is not just incoherent but impossible, so much so that his efforts to force the world back into his ideal alignment are more likely to break it than to fix anything. Reducing America to his chosen few would breed chaos and resentment, and collapse the economy, destroying the wealth he meant to protect. Moreover, his instinct to use force would only compound the damage.

It is ironic that while most of us on the left have grown wary of revolution, many on the right, perhaps due to their embrace of violence, have been seduced by the notion that might makes right. If conservatism means wishing to keep things as they are, it is the Democrats who are the true conservatives, while Republicans have turned into flaming radicals, with Trump emerging as their leader given his flamboyance and utter disregard for conventional political thinking. As with the fascist movements of the 1930s, many people are enthralled by this radicalism. Why such movements have always failed, sometimes spectacularly, has yet to sink in — although the connection does at long last seem to be entering the mainstream media.

Democrats are still uncomfortable being the party of the status quo. Many are nostalgic for the days when Republicans filled that role, providing foils against which they could propose their modest reforms — which they’ve long needed to attract struggling voters. The problem that Harris faces in 2024 is that the Trumpian romance of reactionary revolution has become so attractive — the backdrop is the unprecedented extension of inequality over the last fifty years, which has left most people feeling left behind — and so terrifying that she’s fallen into the trap of defending the status quo, making her seem insensitive to the real problems that we look to candidates to help solve. Trump at least has answers to all the problems — wrong ones, but many people don’t understand the details, they’re just attraction to his show of conviction, while they note that Harris seems wary of pushing even the weak reforms popular in her party.

She’s banking on the status quo to save America from Trump and the Republicans. If she wins her bet, she will win the election. But then she’ll have to face the more difficult task of governing, where her limits could be her undoing. These five questions loom large on the post-election agenda:

5. Perhaps most immediately, US foreign policy needs a total rethink. US foreign policy took a radical turn shortly after WWII, renouncing the “isolationist” past and assuming a militarily as well as an economically interventionist stance. This was partly a matter of filling the vacuum left by the war’s global destruction, and partly ambition. Beyond the battlefields, Europe’s colonial empires had become untenable, opening the door for businesses as the hidden powers behind local rulers. As the alternatives were communist-leaning national liberation movement, this soon turned into the Cold War — which was great news for the arms industry, which along with oil and finance became a pillar of American foreign policy. When the cold war receded, neocons came up with more rationales for more conflicts, to keep their graft going. Efforts at building international institutions (like the UN) increasingly gave way to unilateral dictates: America First, before Trump, who basically thinks of foreign policy as some kind of protection racket, latched onto the term. There hadn’t been significant partisan differences in foreign policy since the advent of the Cold War: all the Democrats who followed Republican hawks (Reagan, the Bushes, even Trump in his own peculiar way) did was to normalize their aggressiveness. Thus Biden reaffirmed his support for Ukraine and Israel, as well as his opposition to Russia, China, and the usual suspects in the Middle East, which has (so far) blown up into two catastrophic wars, while at the same time the US has made sure that world organizations (like the UN) are powerless to intervene.

Harris seems to be fully on board with this: not only does she support the current wars, she has gone out of her way to ostracize so-called autocrats — not the ones counted as allies because they buy American arms but the others, the ones who make their own (or buy from each other). This conventional thinking, based on the notion that force projection (and sanctions) can and will dictate terms for resolving conflicts, has a very poor track record: it polarizes and militarizes conflicts, stokes resentments, stimulates asymmetric responses (like terrorism), while driving its targets into each others’ clutches. Meanwhile, the reputation the US once had for fairness is in tatters.

A new foreign policy needs first of all to prioritize peace, cooperation, and equitable economic development. It should also, where possible, favor social justice (albeit not through force, which is more likely to make matters worse).

4. Restricting immigration is the one issue where neo-fascist politicians seem to be gaining significant popular support, in Europe as well as the US. Harris has chosen to lean into the issue rather than oppose the Republicans, as had Biden and Obama before her, not that any of their harsh enforcement efforts have gotten any cooperation or compromise from Republicans, who would rather milk this as a grievance issue than treat it as a practical issue. Part of the problem here is that while many voters will support Republicans just to vent rage, other voters expect results from Democrats, and no matter what results they hoped for, few are satisfied. The issue is complex and messy, and Congress is unable or unwilling to pass any legislation to help clear the mess. Which makes this an issue that will haunt Harris indefinitely, no matter what she tries to do.

Personally, this is an issue I care little about either way. What concerns me more is that the system be seen as fair and just, that it is neither exploitative of immigrants nor that it hurts the domestic labor market. I could see arguments for limiting or for expanding immigration numbers. I do think that the current backlog of non-documented immigrants needs to be cleared up, which could involve clearing the path toward naturalization and/or paying them to leave, but it needs to be done in an orderly and humane manner, with clear rules and due process. I’ve generally opposed “guest worker” programs (like the one Bush tried to push through), but could see issuing green cards as a stopgap measure. Harris will find it difficult to navigate through this maze, but what would help is having some clear principles about how citizenship should work — as opposed to just responding to Republican demagoguery.

I should also note that the biggest determinant of immigration is foreign policy. Most people emigrate because they are dislodged by war or ecological and/or economic distress, and those are things that American foreign policy as presently practiced exacerbates. Policies that resolve (or better still, prevent) conflicts, that limit climate change, and/or that extend economic opportunties would significantly reduce the pressures driving emigration.

3. Democrats under Biden made the first serious legislative effort at addressing climate change ever, but the structure of American politics makes it much easier to promote the development of new technologies and products than it is to do things like changing habits of fossil fuel use. Democrats are so wedded to the idea of economic growth as the panacea for all problems that they can’t conceive of better lives lived differently. How one can ever get to zero emissions isn’t on any agenda. Meanwhile, Republicans keep digging themselves ever deeper into their tunnel of ignorance, so they have nothing to offer but obstruction.

While prevention seems to be too much to ask of any Democratic politician, they do still have a big advantage on disaster care. Reagan’s joke — “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help'” — is easily disproven every hurricane season, yet remains as sacred dogma. Given that climate change has already happened, and is playing out in cycles of increasingly uninsurable “natural” disasters, it becomes imperative to elect a government that cares about such problems, and regards it as its duty to help people out. Harris will be tested on this, repeatedly.

Meanwhile, if you want to try out nine really terrifying words, try these: “I’m a Republican, and Donald Trump is my President.”

2. There is one political issue that close to 90% of all Americans could agree on, but it has no leadership and little support in either major party, and that is the thoroughly corrupt influence of money on politics. The situation has always been bad, but got much worse in 2010 when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of unlimited corporate spending in Citizens United v. FEC. Obama spoke out against the ruling, but did nothing to overturn it. Rather, he easily outraised his opponents in 2008 and 2012, winning twice. Biden and Harris have also raised much more money than Trump, so while Republicans are the most steadfast supporters of campaign graft, top Democrats also benefit from the system — especially against their real competition, which is other Democrats, who might be tempted to campaign on issues that appeal to voters, as opposed to having to spend all their time catering to the whims of rich donors. The 2024 presidential election is by far the most ridiculously expensive in history, which also makes it the most tainted by special interests and their peculiar obsessions (like Israel, which has kept both candidates from expressing any concern about ongoing genocide). Breaking this mold is a golden opportunity for some aspiring politician. Harris can’t do it while she’s still campaigning, but it’s not only wasteful, it diminishes trust in everyone involved, and as such discredits the whole system.

1. The worst offenders, of course, are the billionaires, many of whom — starting with Elon Musk, the kind of immigrant that even Trump can love — has been especially conspicuous this year. They are the beneficiaries of a wide range of laws and breaks that allow a tiny number of individuals to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth. And they use that wealth to steer government away from any notion of public interest, to do their own bidding, and to indulge their own fantasies. This extraordinary inequality — far beyond the historic highs of the Gilded Age and the Roaring ’20s (both, you may recall, ill-fated bubbles) — is the single biggest problem facing the world today. It may seem hypothetical, but it lies beneath so many other problems, starting with the dysfunction of government and politics, which is largely influenced by the distortions of wealth. It extends worldwide, with inequality of nations mirroring the inequality of individuals.

The problem with inequality isn’t that some people have a bit more than others. It’s that such wide variations corrupt and pervert justice. It’s often hard to say just what justice is, but it’s much easier to identify injustice when you see it. In highly stratified societies, such as ours, you see injustice everywhere. It eats at our ability to trust institutions and people. It diminishes our expectation of fair treatment and opportunity. It raises questions about cooperation and even generosity. It makes us paranoid. And once lost, trust and security is all that much harder to restore.

There is no simple answer here. It needs to be dealt with piecemeal, one step at a time, each and every day. It helps to reduce gross inequality (which can be done by taxation). It helps to reduce sources of inequality (which can be done by regulation of business, by limiting rents, by promoting countervailing powers, like unions). It also helps to reduce the impact of inequality (which can be done by raising basic support levels, by removing prices from services, by ending means testing, by providing universal insurance, and when no better solution is possible, by rationing). I don’t expect any politician, especially one who has proven successful in the current system of extraordinary inequality, to go far along these lines, but most people are at least aware of the problem, and many proposals for small improvements are in common discourse. Even if Harris doesn’t rise to the occasion, we should work to make sure her successors do.


While I think that Harris comes up short on all five of these really important points, they in no way argue for Donald Trump, even as a “lesser evil.” He personifies modern inequality, Back in 2016, he tried arguing that his wealth would allow him to run a truly independent campaign, but that was just another lie. No one in recent memory has been more obvious about selling favors for financing. He is a climate change denier, and has shown nothing but contempt for the victims of natural disasters. His signature issue is his hatred of immigrants (excepting, presumably, two wives and his sugar daddy, Elon Musk), where he puts even more emphasis on performative cruelty than on effectiveness.

His take on foreign policy is slightly more . . . well, “nuanced” isn’t exactly right, more like “befuddled.” It’s hard to make a credible case that he’s anti-war when he puts such emphasis on what a tough guy he is, on how no opponent would dare challenge him. He has shown remarkably poor judgment in defense staffing, which is only likely to get worse now that two of his former generals have called him a fascist. He has no dealmaking skills, nor would he hire someone who could negotiate (any such person would be dismissed as a wuss). His “America First” schemes are designed to strain alliances, and are more likely to break than not. He delayed his deal to get out of Afghanistan so Biden would get the blame. His handling of Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Iran-Saudi Arabia directly contributed to the outbreak of war and genocide. As I said, foreign policy needs a complete rethink. He’s already failed on several counts, starting with the need to think.

News Notes

July 22, 2022

Toddler grabs gun and shoots self in the leg in east Wichita.

1st US polio case since 2013 identified in NY.

Brutal heat from Phoenix to Boston triggers alerts.

NASA photos reveal Lake Mead at lowest point since 1937.

Wichita police officers suspended after racist, homophobic texts.

July 4, 2022

Fed’s inflation fight made tougher by state relief efforts. Bloomberg columnists, reminding us that the only way the Fed knows to fight inflation is to hurt the people at the bottom of the economy, so obviously, when states like California try to help them cope with inflation, the Fed’s just going to have to try harder.

July 3, 2022

Officer who killed unarmed man in ‘swatting’ incident promoted.

July 2, 2022

George Will: Business beware, ‘stakeholder’ capitalism is progressivism. Of course, Will doesn’t mean that as a compliment, but the companies are public inventions, so why shouldn’t they consider the interests of workers, customers, and the public, as well as the greedy and often short-sighted “owners.”

News Notes

June 30, 2022

Powell: ‘No guarantee’ Fed can tame inflation, spare jobs. In other words, no guarantee the Fed can do its job — not that it’s ever cared much about that jobs bit. Lots of factors joined to create inflation, but the only tool the Fed has to fight it is to put people out of work.

Crypto tax cheats likely to get relief as crackdown hits snag.

June 29, 2022

Gas prices are starting to fall – here’s why that’s a bummer. Retail pump prices have dropped 10-15 cents in the last week, partly reflecting a drop in crude oil prices from $120 to $110 per barrel. Nonetheless, other articles play up inflation fears. Also note: US trade deficit narrows, stock market falls.

June 28, 2022

Pompeo launches digital ad focusing on religious freedom. Title is the least interesting thing here. More interesting to follow the money behind it. We don’t actually find out here, but do learn that since leaving office, Pompeo has worked for the Hudson Institute, also with American Cener for Law and Justice, and has a PAC that has raised $5.5 million, and spent $3 million, mostly “to the Virginia-based firm Targeted Victory, for fundraising consulting and advertising.”

White House dodges calls to use federal property for abortions. I’ve long thought that the Veterans Administration should offer abortion services at its hospitals. I was originally thinking that they would be hard to picket (the VA hospital here in Wichita owns a huge tract of land), but there are lots of good reasons.

June 27, 2022

Did corporate greed fuel inflation? It’s not biggest culprit. Perhaps. But it’s always there, pressing every advantage. And why make excuses for it? It’s fundamental to the whole system. I wonder who’s paying for all these recent articles trying to deny the role of greed in rising prices? Doesn’t the sensitivity suggest there may be something to the charges?

June 24, 2022

Wall Street faces billion-dollar losses on sinking buyout debt. This comes from private equity deals, where banks provide the leverage for lucrative buyouts, leaving the companies burdened with debt. The PE firms them strip the companies, leaving the banks holding the bag when the companies go bankrupt.

June 21, 2022:

Biden considers federal gas tax holiday. That’ll really show Americans . . . how little gas is taxed. Forgoing 18.4 cents per gallon will cut prices about 3%.

Affidavit describes what led to fatal Wichita shooting in argument over dog waste. So much for “an armed society is a polite society.”

Noam N Levey: 100 million people in America are saddled with health care debt.

June 17, 2022:

Thousands of cattle die due to heat stress: Mostly in southwest Kansas, as temperatures soared over 100F this week. Such temperatures are not uncommon later in the summer, but this week was unusually humid, which kept temperatures from dropping much at night. “This is a very unique and unfortunate event.”

Prison sentence for an who shot best friend in head at Wichita apartment in 2019. Pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, after originally maintaining the discharge was accidental.

June 5, 2022:

Henry Olsen: GOP midterm wave is set; Democrats can’t change it: Cook Political Report is predicting Republicans will gain 20-35 House seats this fall, to which Olsen adds: “If history is any guide, that number will almost surely increase by Election Day.” He cites 2010 as an analogous example, where Republicans picked up 63 seats.

Texas electric rates have surged over 70%. That’s compared to a year ago. It is “the highest average rate since Teas deregulated electricity over two decades ago.” That seems to be mostly attributable to natural gas prices, but that only accounts for 44% of Texas electricity. On the other hand, the 38% from wind and solar is relatively stable.

June 4, 2022:

Wichita man charged with murder in weekend shooting that left another man dead: RG, 27, walking his dog, got into a verbal argument with EH, 30, and fired several times, also at a bystander.

Ex-Trump adviser arrested on contempt charge: Peter Navarro, for refusing to testify before Congress regarding Jan. 6. Funniest line was when Navarro said, “I was a distinguished public servant for four years!”

Jay Ambrose: Rebuild the family to stop school shootings. E.g., “fatherless children are more likely to drop out of high school, commit crimes, kill themselves and go jobless. The worst households are often dysfunctional to the point that children are ignored, rejected and abused. . . . A missing father can mean missing lessons in masculinity for the boy, less security, less self-respect, it is said, and this is common for shooters.”

Andreas Kluth: Psychology has just the label for Putin’s KGB-created mind: Deformation professionelle, because once someone is trained in an occupation (in Putin’s case, as “a spook”), that defines how he views the world, leaving him “cynical, paranoid, vengeful, unscrupulous and ruthless. And above all, mendacious.”

Grim stretch of shootings continues at church, funeral: Three dead (including shooter) at Cornerstone Church, in Ames, Iowa. Two shot at Graceland Cemetery in Racine, Wisconsin, during a funeral for a man who was “fatally shot by police following a foot chase after an attempted traffic stop.”

May 31, 2022:

Two Wichita teens die after shooting, hit and run at graduation party, police say: Police also complain, “lack of cooperation has made the investigation difficult to determine all the details of the case.”

Wichita man, 30, dies after argument during dog walk turns into shooting, police say.

NRA board reelects LaPierre despite scandal. LaPierre has headed the group for 30 years. He has been charged with misusing millions of dollars of the nonprofit’s assets.

Agatha hits southern Mexico coast as strongest may hurricane. Sidebar: Agatha remnants could spawn Alex, 1st Atlantic storm. Agatha is in the Pacific, but heading east across the narrowest part of Mexico, which would allow the storm to re-energize over the Gulf of Mexico.

NATO Pushes Its Logic (and Luck?)

Anatol Lieven‘s recent articles[1] point out that the escalating tensions between Russia and the US over Ukraine could be negotiated away simply enough: by agreeing that Ukraine should remain neutral, with no prospect of membership in NATO (similar to the 1955 agreement where Austria was recognized as neutral in the Cold War division of Europe), and by implementing a 2015 agreement to provide some degree of autonomy for the Russian-aided separatist region of Donbass. Both of these seem like painless deals for the US, and offer Putin a degree of face-saving political cover. That matters mostly because Russia overreacted to the 2014 “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine by supporting separatist groups, and got away with it clean in Crimea, less successfully in Donbass. I don’t quite understand why this is a big deal for Putin, but backing down is never easy. On the other hand, the US is the one that’s seriously overstretched and deluded in this conflict.

NATO should have been phased out after the fall of the Soviet Union, but instead sought to perpetuate itself through expansion, eventually resurrecting the Russian hostility it was meant to defend against. The key question no one is asking is whether Ukraine (or any other state) is safer in or independent of NATO. During the 1950s, Austria and Finland chose to stay out of NATO, and their neutrality was respected by the Soviet Union. Most Eastern European countries signed up for NATO not because they feared Russia but because NATO was presented to them as a stepping stone to entry in the European Union. That was mostly an economic problem for Russia, as historic trading partners looked away from Russia and toward Western Europe. But as NATO expanded, the US became more negative and more militant toward Russia — especially in the use of sanctions targeting not just the state but prominent individuals. Most ominously, the US has developed a false sense of security as they’ve tightened the noose around a Russia that is seemingly incapable of responding in kind.

It’s worth remembering why NATO was created in the first place. The “Allies” (principally the US and the Soviet Union) had defeated Nazi Germany in WWII, with American and Russian armies meeting in and dividing Germany, both intent on pacifying Europe and favoring their own interests. But occupation of Europe was expensive and potentially alienating. Under NATO, the US effectively took command of all of the military resources of western Europe, assuring that as they were rebuilt they would remain subservient to US foreign policy. But to make NATO attractive, the US had to posit an external threat. The “spectre of communism” sufficed, what with Russian armies still occupying central and eastern Europe, and labor movements in the west (especially in Italy and France) still feeling solidarity with the Soviets. The Soviet Union responded by organizing the Warsaw Pact and locking down the “Iron Curtain,” although Yugoslavia and Albania, ruled by indigenous anti-Nazi resistance movements, resisted control from Moscow.

The resulting “Cold War” served US business interests in several important ways. First, “red scares” in the US and elsewhere helped suppress and in some cases break labor movements. Second, it became clear after WWII that Britain and France could no longer afford their colonial empires — especially with their militaries circumscribed by NATO — plus there was the risk that continued colonial rule would fuel independence movements led by communists, much as communists had led anti-fascist resistance movements during (and even before) WWII. The result was that by 1960 nearly all European colonies had been handed over to pliable local oligarchies, bound to the US and their former masters through business interests and arms deals. There were, variations along the way: the US encouraged Britain and France to fight against independence movements led by communists, especially in Malaya and Vietnam. On the other hand, independent action, like Britan and France in the 1956 Suez War, was forbidden.

One can debate whether NATO in 1949 was a good or bad idea — I’d argue that it was profoundly bad, both for Americans and for everyone else — but the more pertinent question is why NATO didn’t close up shop when the Warsaw Pact disbanded and the Soviet Union split up. Aside from losing their pet enemy, by then decolonization was complete, the whole world (except for a handful of “rogue states” — ones that the US bore long-standing grudges against but that, unlike China, were small enough to dismiss) was integrated into the neoliberal order, and Europe itself had lost all interest in militarism and empire, its many nation states melting into the EU. Nothing NATO did after 1991 had to be done by NATO — the US-led coalition against Iraq in 1990 had been organized under the UN, with broad support, and that could just as well have been the model for subsequent NATO interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and/or Libya (if supportable cases had been made; with NATO the US was the only decider, so could get away with flimsier excuses and callous acts that ultimately made matters worse; NATO managed to stay out of Iraq, as Germany, France, and Turkey refused to cooperate, but that didn’t stop Bush from proclaiming his “Coalition of the Willing”). And, in due course, NATO has managed to push Russia around enough to create the enemy it needs to justify itself. That’s a consequence that was totally unnecessary, yet today threatens the world, as anti-Putin propaganda channels Cold War propaganda into a kind of brain freeze that affects many Democrats as much as it does Republicans (who at least profit from selling arms, fomenting hate, and smashing the working class).

For an example of that “brain freeze,” see Alexander Vindman/Dominic Cruz Bustillos: The Day After Russia Attacks: What War in Ukraine Would Look Like — and How America Should Respond. The most telling line here is the summary dismissal of Lieven’s arguments: “Presuming that diplomacy fails, there are three scenarios that could play out.” All of the imagined scenarios start with more-or-less-limited Russian advances into Ukrainian territory (much of which isn’t currently controlled by the Kiev regime). Some other references in the piece: “Kremlin’s network of malign influence”; “marshal a unified response to Russian aggression”; “if Russian military action is a given”; “impose additional costs on Russian invaders and contribute to deterrence when paired with other actions”; “avoiding a one-on-one military confrontation with Russia while punishing Russia for creating this harsh new reality.” By the latter, they mean that Ukrainians should bear the pain of America’s demonization and isolation of Russia, which the US can continue at no risk to its own interests. Isn’t is rather late to still believe that American intentions are always benign? Let alone that events always break favorably for the US?

Americans have been feeding off their own propaganda since the early days of the Cold War (or maybe since the Monroe Doctrine, but the quantity and quality took a huge leap in the 1950s, and became increasingly deranged through Nixon and Reagan and Clinton and Bush, to the point where US foreign policy gyrates between schizophrenia and dementia. Obama was a believer who still tried to rationalize fringe cases, leading to half-hearted openings to Cuba and Iran, but never questioning something as sacrosanct as NATO, so he wound up promoting conflict with Russia and China. Trump was a cynic, but even when he dissed NATO, his only aim was graft, so he effectively changed nothing, other than to expose “US interests” as self-serving. This needs to change, but Biden’s team is reflexively locked into the mythology, and the left has deprioritized foreign affairs given the need to advance domestic goals and oppose Republicans. But also note that the ability of the US to dictate craziness to its “allies” has long been diminishing, and could collapse. It’s one thing to blackball inconsequential countries like North Korea and Cuba; quite another to bite off one as large and connected as China, where sanctions may push nations to isolate the US instead. Russia is dangerous because no one knows the limits of possible US bullying, least of all Washington.

Moreover, it’s not coincidental that as NATO is putting the screws to Russia, the US is “pivoting” its military stance to face China. The current demonization of Russia and China is every bit as manufactured as the Cold War was, and predictably falls into the same rhetoric and logic. Why it’s happening is rather harder to understand, given that China and (especially) Russia are governed by the same sort of repressive oligarchs that the US has been happy to do business with all along. It’s possible that it’s no more than a scam by the politically influential arms industry to sell more arms. That was pretty clearly the point of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, where nations were led to believe that if they joined NATO (and bought new weapons systems) they’d get a chance to join the EU. And that, in turn, has created a cycle of aggressive pettiness that seems to be coming to a head.

Another point that should be made is that Putin (and Xi) are far from political geniuses. The US (and not just Trump) is leaving them a lot of moral high ground they aren’t showing much consideration for. Part of this is that they misjudged Trump as someone they could deal with, oligarch to oligarch. Worse was Putin’s election meddling, which served mostly to make Democrats more irrationally anti-Russian. The obvious thing would be to offer serious arms limitation talks, while trying to shift international conflict resolution back to the UN (which Russia and China would have to buy into, and which the US could still veto, but responsibility for failures there would be clearer). I could go on and on, especially if we allowed for some positive attitude adjustment on both sides. China doesn’t need to treat the Uighurs as brutally as it does, and doesn’t need to keep pressure on Taiwan. Russia doesn’t need to help its clients repress democracy movements, or to annex bits of neighboring territory. The US doesn’t need Ukraine in NATO or the EU. All sides need to cut back on the cyberwarfare. Russia did a good thing last week in arresting the REvil hacker group, but they’re not getting any credit because the US propaganda machine only ratchets toward war. All three could benefit from a change of heart that prioritizes peace, openness, and mutual respect and support over zero-sum antagonism.

[1]: Anatol Lieven articles referred to above:

There is also a recent interview with Lieven. While he’s being quite reasonable, he doesn’t seem to appreciate that NATO’s very existence, with or without Ukraine, is geared toward provoking ever greater disharmony with Russia, nudging us ever closer to war. Even well short of war, bad things happen, like Russia’s efforts to influence US elections, and recent US political efforts from both Republicans and Democrats to punish Russia for supposed transgressions. Also see Blinken’s response to Russia NATO demand is frankly disturbing. I think it’s clear by now that both sides have painted themselves into corners from which reasonable compromises will seem like politically crippling signs of weakness.

Bob Dole (1923-2021)

Former Kansas politician and Republican majordomo Robert J. Dole has died at 98, after a long and eventful life that caused immeasurable damage to American society and politics. I remember him mostly for running one of the most scurrilous political campaigns in Kansas history, when he narrowly defeated Bill Roy for his second Senate term in 1972. Dole was the first Republican in Kansas to find a way to politicize abortion and exploit the bigotry and confusion around the issue. That was the first year I voted, and not a single person I voted for — not even the Republican who was certainly the lesser evil running against Democratic Sheriff/Attorney General Vern Miller — won. It was also the last time I voted until 1996, and I found myself with another chance to vote against Dole. That time, at least, I was more successful, not that Bill Clinton was much of a prize.

They say that when one dies, if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all. I rarely follow that advice, but in Dole’s case I actually can say a few nice things (even if I have trouble limiting myself). Here goes:

  1. In 1952, Bob Dole attended my Uncle Allen’s funeral. Dole was in the state legislature at the time, from Russell, probably not in the same district Allen lived but not far. He didn’t know Allen, but saw good politics in going to the funerals of veterans, and Allen had been in the Navy during WWII. I don’t remember it at all, but that was probably the only time Dole and I shared the same roof. He had already figured out how to exploit his war injuries for political gain, as he would continue to do throughout his career.
  2. Dole could be funny. I usually regard that as a redeeming human quality, as well as a sign of intelligence (as I recall John Allen Paulos’ book, I Think, Therefore I Laugh). My favorite line of his was when he saw a group picture of former presidents Carter, Ford, and Nixon, and quipped “See no Evil, hear no Evil, and Evil.” But I read a piece today with a selection of his humor, and few of his other zingers hold up. I also read about the teary eulogy he gave at Nixon’s funeral. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he stopped regarding Nixon as Evil, as he did plenty in service of Evil throughout his career. But before Watergate, Nixon was clearly Dole’s role model of a politician on the make. They had very similar backgrounds, ambitions, and trajectories, although Nixon got there quicker, and more fatefully.
  3. Dole was probably the last person ever to make what used to be a common quip about the Democrats being the War Party. This was in a 1996 debate, and while Clinton may have been flattered, the moderator and the press were clearly baffled. The history was that Democrats had led the country into and through two world wars, and into stuck wars in Korea and Vietnam that were ultimately disengaged by Republicans (although Nixon took his bloody time). For much of that time, Republicans tended to be “isolationist” (a term invented to disparage those who prefer to mind their own business), but that started to shift with the rise of the anti-Communist crusaders like Nixon, Joe McCarthy, and Barry Goldwater. By the time you get to Reagan, Republicans had embraced militarism so utterly that Dole’s quip fell on deaf ears, while anti-war Americans had shifted to the Democratic Party, only to be frequently betrayed by their leaders. No doubt Dole was just desperately racking his brain for a debate point, but I found his choice somewhat charming.
  4. Dole spent most of his career as an extreme partisan hack, but when he finally did decide he wanted to leave a legacy, he came up with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Which is to say, he realized that the way to be remembered for doing something good was, in the New Deal/Great Society manner, to add to the “entitlements” of a class of people discriminated against. This suggests he was still cognizant of the values system that dominated the pre-Reagan era, even though he had spent almost all of his political career fighting against it. I’ve seen ADA called the last bipartisan act. In other words, it was the last time Republicans ever attempted to use government to help people (although given how many disabled were victims of war, the law also paid tribute to militarism).

But that’s all I have. I’ve never understood why people credit him with anything more. (The biggest critical lapse was by Tom Carson, who treats him as a humble folk hero in his otherwise brilliant novel, Gilligan’s Wake.) He pulled Kansas hard to the right, and for a long time remained an outlier, at least compared to decent Republican senators James Pearson and Nancy Kassebaum. It was only with the rise of Sam Brownback and Todd Tiahrt in the 1990s that Dole started to look moderate, but their demagoguery on abortion starts with Dole’s 1972 campaign. After his loss in 1996, he settled into the comfortable life of a Washington shill, never using what little political stature he had achieved to try to stem the Republican slide into and beyond Trumpism. He served his party, and was rewarded with wealth and fame and flattery and forbearance. Now he’s being showered with flowery eulogies, a symptom of the same mental collapse as we witnessed with Colin Powell and John McCain — rivals in the sweepstakes to see who could make the most mileage (and moolah) out of unfortunate military careers. And what did you get for all his success? Fucked.

Rapid Response

I’ve made next to no effort to read post-mortem analysis of Tuesday’s elections, and don’t see any reason to start now. What I was hoping for was that Democrats would hold on to New Jersey and Virginia governorships and legislatures, and maybe pick up a contested congressional seat in Ohio (where Republicans have been overperforming ever since they put those new voting machines in for the 2004 election). Had that happened, it would basically say that even if voters are dissatisfied with Democrats they at least recognize that they’d be much worse off with Republicans. As you know, that didn’t happen, although the NJ governorship was held by Democrat Philip Murphy (in something of a nail-biter). The lesson I draw from all of this is that Democrats need to communicate and campaign better. In particular, they need to drive home the point that there is no effective difference between Trump and any other Republican on any ticket anywhere.

No More Mister Nice Blog has written several good posts on just this theme. In particular, see Democrats Need to Develop Rapid Response 2.0. He starts off quoting Greg Sargent on a “lopsided communications imbalance” by which “Youngkin and his allies have pumped . . . raw right-wing sewage directly into the minds of the GOP base, behind the backs of moderate swing voters, via a right-wing media network that has no rival on the Democratic side.” Blogger SM notes:

What Democrats need to do is disrupt the messaging of the right. They need a sense of what’s being said in the right’s propaganda channels and they need to respond to it fast, before the messaging reaches voters in the middle. They need to debunk dishonest allegations and they need to make the dishonesty the story.

The 1992 Bill Clinton campaign was known for a “rapid response” capability that didn’t allow bad news to fester. Democrats need to recognize that Fox News is the Republican Party, and that they need to treat messaging on Fox as if it’s messaging from Republican campaigns. (Because it is.) They need to see propaganda campaigns like this coming and they need to counter such campaigns as fast as they can.

The facile explanation for Democratic losses is Biden’s recent drop in the favorability polls, which crossed negative around August 27. That slide started with the fall of Kabul, which had become inevitable at least since Obama’s “surge” failed to gain any traction in 2009-10, or for many of us since Fall 2001, when GW Bush responded to Osama Bin Laden’s dare and blundered into the “graveyard of empires.” I gave Biden much credit for sticking to his withdrawal schedule, and thought he defended the decision ably (if not as eloquently as one might wish for). But who in the public eye had his back? Republicans enjoyed a purely opportunistic feast of demagoguery at Biden’s expense. Since then the right-wing talk machine has been harping on things like gasoline prices, while the media has been focused on the efforts of two marginal senators to sabotage an important (and if people properly understood it better a potentially very popular) piece of legislation, making Democrats look hapless.

While it may be difficult to get an airing in the fracas-oriented mainstream media, it really shouldn’t be hard for sensible people to make meaningful comparisons Democrats, who are honestly proposing real solutions to critical problems, and Republicans, who offer nothing but complaints and paeans to magical thinking. Even more so between Biden and his Republican predecessor. Last week’s trip to Europe for G20 and COP26 should have been seen as a triumph of statesmanship, in stark contrast to the amateur hour histrionics of Trump’s foreign meetings. The G20 agreement to pursue minimum global taxation of corporations, for instance, wasn’t even on the agenda as long as Trump was president. The pledges on deforestation may not amount to much, but can you even imagine Trump caring a whit?

Trump is so ridiculous and vile he’s like a prophylactic around the mass of the Republican Party (at least those who haven’t made public spectacles of themselves, like Louie Gohmert, Matt Goetz, Marjory Taylor Greene, and Ted Cruz), protecting their reputations from his stain. But for all practical purposes, there is very little difference Trump and the average Republican conservative in Congress. SM has a post on this: The Number of Bad Republicans Is Much Greater Than One. His first piece of evidence is a Twitter thread from Diana Butler Bass (links in post) about “Bad stuff that happened in Virginia the last time we had a GOP governor” (each of these is backed by links to articles):

  • Remember the Virginia ultrasound bill forcing vaginal probes controversy?
  • UVA professors were investigated for teaching climate science.
  • Gov Bob McConnell reinstated Confederate History Month.
  • The GOP worked to subvert every environmental policy in the books.
  • The 2013 candidate for Lt Gov ran a campaign based on Democrats being the Antichrist.

SM concludes:

But this is my ongoing complaint about the Democrats: They’re up against a party of extremists whom much of the country regards as moderate, while Democrats are a mostly moderate party that’s regarded by far too many voters as extreme. Regarding the latter, Democrats like Joe Biden and Kyrsten Sinema, in different ways, send the message, “I’m moderate — I’m not like those Democrats you don’t like,” which got them elected but reinforces the Democrats-as-extremists stereotype. And when Democrats focus on Trump as a uniquely evil figure, that reinforces the belief that most Republicans are fine, decent, responsible right-centrists.

Still, what bothers me isn’t that the Republicans have become the real extremists, but that the ideas that motivate their extremism are so dysfunctional. In simpler times I might offer you a list here, but now it would take a book. They have no idea how the economy works. They have no concern for what unfettered business does to the environment, let alone the climate. They hold all but the rich in contempt, yet are convinced their attitudes will never provoke redress. After all, they figure they got all the guns. Every time you give them a piece of power, they cost us valuable time and often exacerbate the problems.

Still, as disasters go, Tuesday’s elections didn’t do a huge amount of damage. They are a wake up call for Democrats, a warning that we need to work smarter and help each other out more, and take seriously the need to explain to people why we offer hope for the future, and why Republicans don’t. And by the way, the elections did bring some victories. Here in Wichita, three progressives were elected to the city council (a net gain of two). On the other hand, the school board took a step backward, as Republicans organized a partisan slate in a nominally non-partisan election and flipped three (of four) seats, one thanks to a split among better candidates. That promises to be the end of Critical Race Theory in the Wichita Public Schools (not that there was any), but also the end of mask mandates.

The Struggle Over the Veterans Health Administration

There are huge asymmetries between America’s two political parties. One of the most maddening is how quickly Americans forget when Republicans screw things up, which is all the time, and for the simplest of reasons. The one big idea that Republicans have is that they should hobble government, to turn its functions over to private enterprise, and to free business from oversight and regulation. When Republicans prevail, three things inevitably happen: businesses turn predatory, they take greater risks in pursuit of profit, and they dump their wastes and mistakes onto the public. Well, make that four: they concentrate wealth among the already rich, while making a mockery of our belief in justice.

But if that’s so obvious, why do we keep forgiving them? Why give them another chance, as happened in 1994 and 2010, when Republicans reclaimed the House only two years after being swept out of the Presidency? And after Trump’s mob made an even greater mess, why do pundits still expect a Republican resurgence in 2022? In other words, why when Republicans screw up, so many of us trust Democrats even less to fix the mistakes?

There are two ways to look at this question, and both are relevant. On the one hand, few people understand how things actually work, which leaves us vulnerable to half-truths and convenient homilies backed by special interest groups. On the other hand, Republicans have built a relentless propaganda machine that is constantly attacking Democrats, not just for real shortcomings but for all sorts of fantastical crimes that are only rooted in the fevered imaginations of right-wing pundits. Democrats have long been ineffective at countering either of these thrusts. Explaining how things work is too boring, and responding to madness in kind is too disrespectful, so again and again they stand blinded and take the beating. If only they had opponents who were sensible and sincere, but that’s exactly what Republicans aren’t.

If you want a concrete example, took at Suzanne Gordon and Jasper Craven: The VA Is Ripe for Right-Wing Attacks. Here’s How Biden Can Stop Them. In the 1990s under Clinton-appointee Kenneth Kizer, the VHA had become the highest-performing, most cost-effective organization in the sad-but-glitzy universe of American health care, but since 2001 Republicans have been picking it apart — while flooding the system with new casualties — making it easy to air complaints about slow service and other shortcomings. The key sentence here is this:

The right knows how to undermine veterans’ health care while simultaneously winning political points on the negative outcomes their own policies have wrought.

That is, in short, the magic Republican formula: mess things up and blame the Democrats. This overlooks the one great advantage VHA has: it is non-profit, the closest thing the US has to a NHS. It can, in short, dispense with profit measurements and solely pursue health outcomes, with strong confidence that a healthier system will save money in the long run. The problem I see is that VHA is limited to veterans for its patient pool, and the percentage of the American public that serves in its armed forces is small and dwindling. Right now, VHA is having trouble serving veterans in remote areas, because the patients are too few and far between. But the system could grow considerably if we let more people use it. It could, for instance, offer its services like an HMO, at attractive prices (at compared to private insurance). One could transition from its current patient limits by adding other public employees (who, very often, provide more useful services than does the military). Not that I like the idea of limiting it to a subset of the public — least of all to the military caste many Americans like to fetishize. An expanded National Health Service could provide a nice “public option” alternative to the private sector, whose profit-seeking approaches the predatory. An easy path here would be to make VHA an option for Medicaid.

Of course, before any such thing can happen, we have to get past the mental obstacle course Republicans have laid (and Democrats have way too often fallen for). In the 1990s, the VHA proved that capable and conscientious leadership, safe from political corruption, can deliver superior health care services. That is government at work for you, in sharp contrast to politicians who serve a private sector system that is based on market failures and run like an extortion racket. But Republicans will deny that, and blame their own failures on everyone else (like their efforts to crucify public servants like Anthony Fauci). And they seem credible, because who is cynical enough to imagine that Republican intentions are as malign as their results? An increasing number, but not yet enough to definitively reject Republican rhetoric, even among Democratic leader who should know better than anyone what they are facing.

By the way, the “Here’s how Biden can stop them” section is by far the weakest in the article. All they suggest appointing a “talented undersecretary.” That would help, but we need a more fundamental sea change in thinking about what, and whom, government is for.

Notes on Everyday Life

I started writing about politics and society in 1972, when I joined a small group in St. Louis intent on publishing a underground paper, called Notes on Everyday Life. We worked on it two years, publishing a dozen tabloid issues (or so, probably less). The title reflected our critical theory that politics permeated every facet of culture, and everything everyday had implications for politics. Dialectics were fashionable, and provided a model of complex interactions. As in any political group, there were endless discussion. My career in rock criticism started in those debates.

In the mid-1970s, I moved on: got a job, made some money, got married, had friends, learned a new trade, struggled with various health problems, got past my wife’s death, kept reading (mostly science). I started thinking about politics again around 1990, when I started with my second wife. She grew up on the left, and had never wavered in her commitments, something I admired her for even though I rarely lived up to her model. We were, at least, philosophically compatible. And I was appalled by the Reagan turn to the right, even though I wasn’t an obvious victim. (As I explained to people at the time, the only growth industry in America was fraud.) My alarm continued to grow through the 1990s until September 2001, when G.W. Bush grabbed his megaphone on “ground zero” and vowed vengeance on anyone who dared challenge the power and hubris of America’s ruling class.

I had started blogging a bit before then, but mostly just noting trivia like what I thought of records and movies. Since then I’ve written several million words on political issues. At some point, I remembered my old St. Louis publication, and registered the domain name. This is the third or fourth iteration of a website there. My plan is to write occasional short notes of relevance here, not just on obvious political matters but also on broader cultural concerns — since they remain linked, probably more obviously so than at any point in my life. Not to put too fine a point on it, that’s because the post-Reagan Republicans have become dedicated degraders and destructors of civilization itself. They hate you, and they mean to hurt you. It has never been more urgent to stand up to their attacks. The only way I know how to do that is through reason, so that’s what this website is for.

I started working on the Internet back in the mid-1990s. My previous sites have been crafted using my own tools and coding, so this one, based as it is on the free software WordPress, is a bit of learning curve. Some things I expect to be easier, and some more frustrating. I hope to be able to write more short pieces, on a more timely basis. I also expect that I’ll be able to slip in some older excerpts from my previous 20 years of writing. In theory, this tool also supports collaboration more easily than my other sites. I’d especially like to see some of my old comrades join in.

This post is a divider. Anything dated before is a previously written piece (probably lightly edited, maybe with more recent comments). Anything later was initially posted here.