1. Donald Trump Learns His Lesson
Explaining her vote not to remove President Trump in the impeachment trial, Senator Susan Collins of Maine expressed her hope that "the president has learned from this case." The message she thought he would take from it is that "he will be much more cautious in the future."
Well, Donald Trump has learned his lesson, alright. The lesson he learned is that he can get away with anything, because Republicans in the Senate will not hold him to account.
Hence his purge of those in the administration he regards as "disloyal," and his pretty open interference at the Department of Justice in cases involving his friends and associates.
One week ago—last Wednesday afternoon—the Senate voted on the articles of impeachment.
Within 48 hours, Trump had fired a career public servant, Lt. Colonel Alex Vindman, from his White House job for telling the truth under oath to Congress. He had fired Vindman's twin brother, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, from his own White House job despite his having no role in the impeachment. And he had fired Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, who testified during the House impeachment proceedings. In a nod to Watergate, the firings were popularly dubbed the “Friday Night Massacre.” Trump has since suggested he would like to see Alex Vindman punished by the military for testifying before Congress.
Then, yesterday, the top brass at the Department of Justice apparently acted on what Trump called his “absolute right” to direct DOJ's decisions and overrode a sentencing recommendation for his buddy Roger Stone. Stone, whose prosecution was one of several to arise from the Mueller investigation, was convicted in a federal court last November on five counts of lying to Congress, one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction of a proceeding. The prosecutors working on the case recommended on Monday that Stone be sentenced to seven to nine years behind bars.
Trump complained in an overnight tweet. And lo, by Tuesday morning the DOJ had announced it would be overriding its own prosecutors and recommending a shorter sentence for Stone.
The move prompted the stunning filings in federal court of four distinguished federal prosecutors seeking to withdraw their representation of the American public in that important criminal matter. They include Aaron Zelinsky, a top prosecutor in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russia's interference in the 2016 election and Trump's attempts to obstruct that investigation; and assistant US attorneys Jonathan Kravis, Adam Jed, and Michael Marando. Kravis not only withdrew from the Stone case, he resigned from the DOJ as well.
A Pentagon official who had pushed the administration to release aid to Ukraine in compliance with the law had been nominated for a higher position. That nomination was withdrawn with the following explanation: "This administration needs people who are committed to implementing the president's agenda, specifically on foreign policy, and not trying to thwart it."
Interference at the Justice Department raised particular alarm bells. The culture of independence among federal prosecutors had been heightened after Nixon attempted to use control of the DOJ to protect himself from the Watergate scandal. So Attorney General William Barr has been facing a revolt among his employees. He responded by seemingly criticizing the president.
I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me. To have public statements and tweets made about the department, about people in the department, our men and women here, about cases pending in the department and about judges before whom we have cases, make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we're doing our work with integrity.
But there's reason to doubt Barr's sincerity, since in action he has been the willing instrument of Trump's expansive view of the president's personal authority.
Jonathan Last explains this by reference to professional wrestling.
Personally, I have never followed professional wrestling. When I first encountered it as a kid, I thought it was so transparently and stupidly fake that it wasn't worthy of my attention. And then I grew up to write about politics—oh, the irony! So it is with some chagrin that I noted that others who spent their childhoods less wisely are far better positioned to understand the politics of the Trump era. Here is Last's guide:
The business of professional wrestling is almost directly descended from carnival work. And as with carnies (small hands!) wrestlers have their own language. Herewith is a very short primer:
Marks: People who watch wrestling. Brock Lesnar really got over with the marks last night.
Kayfabe: The fictional storyline that is created by wrestlers inside the ring. The Rock'n'Roll Express were kayfabe brothers, but backstage they hated each other.
Work: Any piece of business which is pre-planned. It looked like Triple H was assaulting McMahon, but the whole thing was a work.
Shoot: Any piece of business which not pre-planned. When Brett Hart flipped out in Montreal, he legit had no idea what was going on.
Now that you've got the basics, let's talk about shoots for a minute.
There are two kinds of shoot: (1) The straight shoot—something that happens which is legitimately unplanned; and (2) The worked shoot—something which looks unplanned, but is actually completely planned....
So let's talk about Bill Barr's sudden attack on Donald Trump yesterday.
Is it possible that this was a straight-shoot?
We should stipulate that anything is possible.
But there are three tells that suggest that this was actually a work:
(1) The timing. You mean to tell me that after everything Trump has done, it was the tweets about Stone's sentencing that put Barr over the edge? Not the Rudy stuff. Not the Ukraine stuff. The AG who ran active disinformation on the president's behalf in regard to the Mueller report finally broke over a sentencing recommendation for Roger Freaking Stone?
(2) Trump's reaction. Donald Trump responds to everything. Everything. Look what he did with the comparatively gentle criticisms of Khizr Khan. Suddenly he's Mr. Calm and Turn the Other Cheek?
(3) It helps tell a good story. The whole point of a worked shoot is to move the story in ways you plan out in advance. So what does the Barr criticism do? It helps Barr by painting him as an impartial party. And it helps Trump, by giving his AG more legitimacy--and thus more cover for doing Trump's bidding.
And here's some confirmation of that.
While Attorney General William P. Barr asserted his independence from the White House this week, he has also been quietly intervening in a series of politically charged cases, including against Michael T. Flynn, President Trump's former national security adviser, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
Mr. Barr installed a phalanx of outside lawyers to re-examine national security cases with the possibility of overruling career prosecutors, a highly unusual move that could prompt more accusations of Justice Department politicization.
Moreover, Barr's complaint is part of a genre of Trump supporters who say, "I wish he'd quit tweeting." Because that's all that Barr is really upset about.
Meanwhile, consider White House press flack Stephanie Grisham's reply about that: "President Trump uses social media very effectively to fight for the American people against injustices in our country." I take this as an admission that the president sees being a Twitter troll as one of his core responsibilities and as the primary way he "fights" for the people. Saying outrageous things on Twitter is not a distraction from the important things Trump is doing. For him, it is the important thing he's doing.
2. The People Does Not Know What It Wills
Joe Biden was never supposed to win the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary, and that wasn't supposed to matter because he was so far ahead in South Carolina, with strong support from black voters, that he could bounce right back.
But Biden wasn't supposed to perform as poorly as he did in those first two contests, and that has created a narrative that his campaign is failing. That's the danger of waiting for a later primary to bail you out from poor performance in the early ones. Moreover, Biden is facing new competition that splits the "moderate Democrat" vote. Amy Klobuchar's campaign has finally been getting some real attention, Pete Buttigieg (who is not a moderate but plays one on TV) has been surging even more, and Michael Bloomberg has been spending enormous sums on television ads, which has been more effective than I expected. Then again, he's spending an awful lot of money.
So Biden has been cratering in the national polls, and his lead in South Carolina is narrowing with less than two weeks to go. Who knows, he might still pull it out, and that could revive his national standing. Voters are fickle and like to jump on a bandwagon. But we should also noted that if Biden wins South Carolina, that will be his first primary win in three presidential campaigns.
The big concern for Democrats is that this is beginning to look a lot like the Republican primaries in 2016. A lot of people don't want Bernie Sanders to win and think he will be a disaster in the general election. But the field is overcrowded, so the #NeverBernie vote gets split between all of the other options—and like Republicans four years ago, they may not coalesce around a single alternative in time to stop him.
Taken together, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden drew support from more than 50 percent of New Hampshire voters—twice as much as Sanders.
“It's clear that a majority of Democrats do not want Bernie Sanders to be the nominee,” said Ben LaBolt, who advised President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. “But if the more pragmatic candidates do not consolidate in the weeks ahead—especially those hanging by a thread in the single digits—Sanders has a very real chance of winning the nomination.”
There is one significant difference between the Republican and Democratic primaries, though.
There are structural differences between the way Republicans and Democrats pick their nominees that could make Sanders' path to the nomination more difficult than Trump's was in 2016, even if the field remains crowded. Some GOP primaries are winner-take-all or winner-take-most delegate contests, which allowed Trump to quickly amass an insurmountable lead over his rivals. Democratic contests are proportional, meaning that even if Sanders keeps winning, other candidates can stay within range and push the primary contest deep into the spring or early summer in hopes of a comeback.
This also means that if this goes to the convention, a non-Bernie candidate might be able to put together a majority by making deals with the other candidates, taking on one as a vice-presidential candidate, promising another a cabinet position. (Let's give Pete Parks and Rec.)
The dilemma for Democrats is that they need someone in November who can win over swing voters in the general election—but first they have to win over the swing voters within the Democratic Party.
Here's an analysis of a new poll about the role of "somewhat liberal" Democrats. What do the "somewhat liberal" Democrats stand for? Well, there's the problem.
I'm not totally sure what it means to be “somewhat liberal.” In fact, “somewhat liberal” Democrats don't seem totally sure either. But those voters may wind up picking the Democratic presidential nominee.
In entrance and exit polls for the Democratic primaries, and in many other surveys, pollsters often ask respondents to describe their ideology in one of four ways: very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, or conservative. In Iowa and New Hampshire, the plurality of voters—42 percent in Iowa, 40 percent in New Hampshire—described themselves as somewhat liberal.... "A CBS News analysis from 2019 looked at the policy priorities of the different ideological wings of the Democratic Party, focusing in particular on registered voters in Super Tuesday states. Not surprisingly, very liberal Democrats cared more about fighting climate change, protecting abortion rights, protecting immigrants and addressing race and gender issues. Moderate and conservative Democrats cared more about lowering taxes and creating jobs.
Somewhat liberal Democrats were...basically somewhere in between the two on almost every issue. As a group, they don't seem to have their own issues....
So what does it mean for the primary that the biggest bloc of voters is kind of unattached to any specific policy or identity? I think it's more evidence that the primary could go in a lot of different directions. A big chunk of somewhat liberal voters might embrace Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar or even Michael Bloomberg or Tom Steyer. But there's also no reason to think many of them won't eventually get behind Sanders—so analyses suggesting Sanders's base is too small for him to win aren't accounting for the fact that he can appeal to the majority of Democratic voters (those who are either very liberal or somewhat liberal Democrats). Or these voters could split among a number of different candidates, creating the potential for a contested convention."
On the basic issue of this primary—far left versus moderate left—the largest bloc of the Democratic Party has no idea where it stands and will probably just blow with the wind.
That's too bad for them, because the general public feels a bit differently. Here's another polling tidbit:
Only 45 percent of Americans say they will vote for a “well-qualified” candidate who is a socialist, according to new Gallup polling. More Americans say they would vote for a candidate who is an atheist (60 percent), a Muslim (66 percent), over the age of 70 (69), under 40 (70), gay or lesbian (78), an evangelical Christian (80), a woman (93), Jewish (93), Hispanic (94), Catholic (95) or black (96.)
The key to this muddled result has everything to do with that term "liberal," which describes an attempt to combine contradictory principles: Big Government and individual freedom. The "somewhat liberal" voters are the ones with the most muddled version of this muddled idea, and they may pay for it by getting the least liberal—the least pro-freedom—candidate.
3. How To Be Irrelevant
Don't entirely count out old-fashioned "liberalism," because its best elements still survive in certain stubborn pockets of resistance, particularly when it comes to Political Correctness.
Do yourself a favor and read George Packer's acceptance speech for the Hitchens Prize, named in honor of the late Christopher Hitchens.
As we get further away from his much-too-early death, I find myself missing Christopher more and more. Not so much his company, but his presence as a writer. Some spirit went out of the world of letters with him. And because that's the world in which I've made my life, the only one in which I can imagine a life, I take the loss of this spirit personally. Why is a career like that of Christopher Hitchens not only unlikely but almost unimaginable? Put another way: Why is the current atmosphere inhospitable to it? What are the enemies of writing today?...
First, there's belonging. I know it sounds perverse to count belonging as an enemy of writing. After all, it's a famously lonely life--the work only gets done in comfortless isolation, face-to-face with yourself--and the life is made tolerable and meaningful by a sense of connection with other people. And it can be immensely helpful to have models and mentors, especially for a young person who sets out from a place where being a writer might be unthinkable. But this solidarity isn't what I mean by belonging. I mean that writers are now expected to identify with a community and to write as its representatives. In a way, this is the opposite of writing to reach other people....
Politicians and activists are representatives. Writers are individuals whose job is to find language that can cross the unfathomable gap separating us from one another. They don't write as anyone beyond themselves. But today, writers have every incentive to do their work as easily identifiable, fully paid-up members of a community. Belonging is numerically codified by social media, with its likes, retweets, friends, and followers. Writers learn to avoid expressing thoughts or associating with undesirables that might be controversial with the group and hurt their numbers. In the most successful cases, the cultivation of followers becomes an end in itself and takes the place of actual writing.
As for the notion of standing on your own, it's no longer considered honorable or desirable. It makes you suspect, if not ridiculous. If you haven't got a community behind you, vouching for you, cheering you on, mobbing your adversaries and slaying them, then who are you? A mere detached sliver of a writing self, always vulnerable to being punished for your independence by one group or another, or, even worse, ignored.
Packer is writing for a mostly left-leaning audience, but I absolutely see this on the right, where the most devastating epithet thrown at anyone who doesn't support Trump is that we are "irrelevant," which means that we are outside the current groupthink. The irony is that those who conform to the latest dogma are the ones who make themselves intellectually irrelevant.
Fear breeds self-censorship, and self-censorship is more insidious than the state-imposed kind, because it's a surer way of killing the impulse to think, which requires an unfettered mind. A writer can still write while hiding from the thought police. But a writer who carries the thought police around in his head, who always feels compelled to ask: Can I say this? Do I have a right? Is my terminology correct? Will my allies get angry? Will it help my enemies? Could it get me ratioed on Twitter?—that writer's words will soon become lifeless. A writer who's afraid to tell people what they don't want to hear has chosen the wrong trade.
There's a long section about halfway through where Packer argues that the problem is too great a demand for certainty, which is completely wrong. He is confusing certainty with dogmatism, yet the two are opposites and spring from opposite impulses. The dogmatism and conformity we see today is driven precisely by the fear that one's views have no rational foundation and thus can never be subjected to questioning.
But he manages to get past that to a very poignant conclusion.
Between my generation and that of my students is an entire cohort of writers in their 30s and 40s. I think they've suffered most from the climate I'm describing. They prepared for their trade in the traditional way, by reading literature, learning something about history or foreign countries, training as reporters, and developing the habit of thinking in complexity. And now that they've reached their prime, these writers must wonder: Who's the audience for all this? Where did the broad and persuadable public that I always had in mind go? What's the point of preparation and knowledge and painstaking craft, when what the internet wants is volume and speed and the loudest voices? Who still reads books?
Some give in to the prevailing current, and they might enjoy their reward. Those who don't are likely to withdraw. The greatest enemy of writing today might be despair.
As someone on the upper age range he is referring to, I can vouch that this is entirely correct. Though as someone farther outside the ideological mainstream than Packer, I can also tell you that there was less openness to new ideas in the past than he imagines.
I also find an element of hope in all of this. I was in college when people first started using the term "Political Correctness," and it is precisely the generation Packer is talking about here, people in their 30s and 40s, who were the first wave of "PC" college fanatics. If the previous generation could grow beyond that, as many of them have, then today's kids can, too—and probably will.
4. Workingmen and Reformers
One of my long-term crusades is reviving the idea that capitalism and free markets are good for everyone and that advocacy of free markets ought to be a movement of "workingmen and reformers," as the 19th-Century Locofocos were once described.
A great example of this is AB5, the California law passed at the end of last year that was aimed at Uber—and hit every single freelancer and independent contractor in the state. The results have been devastating and have set off an angry reaction. Here is an overview, though it focuses far too much on the impact in terms of whether it will be good for California Republicans.
Since AB5 took effect on January 1, hundreds of thousands of Californians are finding their businesses in tatters. Musicians can't join bands for a one-night gig, chefs can't join forces with caterers, nurses can't work at various hospitals, and writers must cap their submissions per media outlet to 35 per year. Under the law, these freelancers can no longer conduct the same business-to-business transactions they have for years or even decades. Clients with whom they fostered valuable relationships are gone—as are their successful careers and incomes. An overwhelming majority of professionals in fields affected by AB5 identify as liberals and have generally voted along the blue line. Today, however, many are so disillusioned with their representatives that they're changing political loyalties....
Lorena Gonzalez, the San Diego assembly member who authored AB5, faces public condemnation wherever she goes. Online and in person, independent contractors are confronting Gonzalez and demanding a repeal of the law. Her condescending response: independent contractors need the protection of union-driven labor laws. In a damning KUSI news interview, Gonzalez denied that AB5 has resulted in widespread income loss. Her dismissive attitude has fueled outrage against Democrats. “Lorena Gonzalez is doing a great job turning everybody red,” says Rivera.
Apparently oblivious to the reaction in California, congressional Democrats have passed HR 2474, a national version of AB5, known as the “Protecting the Right to Organize” or “PRO Act.” The PRO Act, designed to boost union membership, will put 57 million independent contractors across the country out of work if it becomes law. These enterprising professionals will be forced into low-paying jobs—if they can find them—with none of the autonomy, flexibility, or opportunity that they currently enjoy. When the Trump administration denounced the bill, people who normally hiss at mention of the president's name found themselves in a peculiar position: feeling grateful.
As for Gonzalez, she's up for reelection this year and is aiming for secretary of state in 2022. Her campaigns will be tougher than she likely imagines. The movement against her is ramping up.
“I see a revolution on the horizon,” says David Mills, a musician from Lake Elsinore who created the Facebook group Freelancers against PRO Act. “[This may be the final straw that breaks the camel's back. But I think it's leading to something good. The American people on all sides are waking up. We've gotten too caught up in partisan support. Now we're paying attention. There is a huge uprising. People had to lose their jobs to find out what it was.”
I'm skeptical about how much this will amount to in the bigger political picture. National Republicans turned their back on this kind of "libertarian populism" in order to back Trump, and they are currently far more focused on defending his latest tweets. National Democrats might soon be gearing themselves up to go all in for Bernie, who represents exactly the kind of arrogant Big Government paternalism that brought us AB-5.
That said, I'll be donating to whoever challenges Lorena Gonzalez and hoping that voters make an example of her.
5. New Economic Policy
Venezuela has become the main contemporary example of the massive failures of socialism, which caused an economic collapse and an ongoing exodus from the country.
It might also end up serving as an example of the natural life-cycle of socialism, where full and consistent implementation is followed by disasters—and then, eventually, by some sort of attempt to return to markets.
Check out this extraordinary report.
President Nicolás Maduro is making tentative moves away from the socialist policies that once regulated the prices of basic goods, heavily taxed imports, and restricted the use of the US dollar. As a result, the South American nation's economic free fall is beginning to decelerate. The national inflation rate—still the world's highest—has slowed from a blistering 1.5 million last year to a relatively breezy annualized rate of 15,000 percent.
The changes might be temporary, and amount largely to an economic Band-Aid. There are no signs, for instance, of a larger strategy to reverse the agricultural land grabs and company seizures that helped lay the groundwork for one of the worst economic implosions of modern times.
But as the new measures take hold, once-empty store shelves have overflowed this holiday season with beef, chicken, milk and bread—albeit at prices so high that a significant segment of the population is actually worse off. More moneyed Venezuelans, however, are flocking to dozens of newly opened specialty stores—including at least one fake Walmart—brimming with stacks of Cheerios, slabs of Italian ham, and crates of Kirkland Signature Olive Oils, much of it bought and shipped in containers to Venezuela from Costco and other bulk retailers in Miami....
“The government had been unable to restart the economy any other way, so it's doing what the people want” by giving in to the free market, said Ricardo Cusano, president of Fedecamaras, Venezuela's chamber of commerce. The socialists are still in power, he said, but “they have lost the ideological war.”
Don't get too carried away. Even Lenin had his "New Economic Policy," a series of minor concessions to markets intended to cushion the worst impacts of his imposition of communism. Or perhaps it may become more like the turn to markets in places like China: an admission that clinging to power and their corrupt privileges is more important to the regime than all that guff about "the workers."
It's also revealing to consider the main sources of wealth that the reforms have liberated.
[T]here are simply far more dollars in the Venezuelan economy now. About 4.5 million Venezuelans have fled starvation and poverty in recent years, creating a global diaspora that collectively sent $3.5 billion in remittances this year—more than triple the amount two years ago, according to Ecoanalitica, a Caracas-based economic analysis firm. In addition, economists say, the economy is awash in dollars from illegal mining, drug trafficking, and other illicit activities.
By some estimates, there are three times as many dollars in circulation as bolivars, creating a de facto dollarization of the economy that is stabilizing inflation. Last month, even Maduro seemed to hail the almighty dollar. “I don't see the process they call dollarization as bad,” he said in nationally televised comments. “It can aid the recovery of the productive areas of the country and the functioning of the economy.”
At this rate, pretty soon the only person who still believes in communism might be the 2020 presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.