Category: U.S.

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Politics U.S.

The GOP ditches democracy

Subsumed by the news since the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3 is a study released in the closing weeks of the campaign that finds the Republican party has withdrawn from upholding democratic norms.

The finding came from the V-Dem Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, which since 1970 has studied shifts in political parties around the world. In the GOP’s illiberalism, the study finds, the party resembles the authoritarian party of Hungary’s Viktor Orban that has made Hungary country the only non-democracy in the European Union.

The Republican Party has displayed its anti-democratic drive without hesitation over the two weeks since the election. The party’s congressional delegation, with a handful of exceptions, has joined President Trump in refusing to acknowledge the results. Ditto for many Republican governors. Republican support for Trump’s claims are “delegitimizing democracy,” former President Barack Obama told CBS News.

Unearthing Trump’s motivation comes down to, as Steve Coll noted in the New Yorker, “what’s in it for him.” Trump may see a second term as the best hope for shielding himself from both prosecution and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. “It’s the office of the presidency that’s keeping him from prison and the poorhouse,” Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale, told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer.

For their part, Republicans seem to be acting out of fear for their own for survival (thanks to Trump’s sway with their base) and a determination to hold power. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, may hope that by insisting that Trump has every right to contest the results (notwithstanding any evidence of irregularity in the voting), he’ll encourage Republicans in Georgia to turn out for two Senate run-off elections that will decide whether McConnell retains his job.

For years now, Republicans have relied on partisan gerrymandering, the structural advantage the Senate confers on rural states, and other anti-Democratic devices to achieve what they’ve been unable to at the ballot box. A majority of Americans, for example, support abortion rights. So Republicans focus on filling federal courts with judges who oppose such rights.

If nothing else, the GOP’s refusal to accept the result of the election (while embracing results of elections won by its members) shows that democracy is as difficult as ever. Seventy-two million Americans voted for Donald Trump.

Misinformation matters. Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to say that social media sites likely censor political viewpoints. “It’ll take more than one election to reverse those trends,” Obama told the BBC, referring to what he termed “truth decay.”

Finding ways to show Americans what we have in common would help, too. In a memo last week, four leading progressive groups analyzed what went wrong for congressional Democrats, who nearly lost their majority in the House of Representatives. The underperformance touched off a debate between the party’s left and members who blamed the left for the results.

In their memo, the progressive groups call for an economic message that connects with working people of all races.  “Too often Democrats keep issues of economic justice and racial justice in separate siloes,” they wrote. “Data has shown that an explicit multiracial, populist message mobilizes and persuades voters. We need a Democratic Party dedicated to economic and racial justice and that names the Republican Party’s racism as a class weapon.”

Trump was a strongman without a strategy. Someday our democracy may confront one who has their act together. Now would be time to get ready.

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U.S.

Note about the presidential election that I wrote on my phone before falling asleep on Nov. 4

Awoke around 2:15 a.m. Eastern to hear Trump declare that he was ahead and had won the election… he has not won anything… the counting of votes continues in states that will decide the outcome… Trump had been expected to declare victory prematurely… which is what he’s done…

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Politics U.S.

Trump is planning his post-presidency

Until Monday, the most compelling image of a failed presidency might have been Richard Nixon’s waving goodbye from the South Lawn as he left the White House for the last time as president.

Donald Trump’s removing his mask and saluting Marine One as it left that same lawn on Monday rivals it. Even for an administration defined by chaos and unpredictability, Trump’s behavior has reached a new level of bizarre.

On Tuesday, the president instructed his administration to stop negotiating with Democrats in Congress on an economic relief bill until after the election, putting at risk a pandemic-ravaged economy and causing financial markets (formerly a point of pride for Trump) to tumble.

As with most things Trump, the country has struggled to make sense. Theories abounded. Trump is experiencing mania brought on by the steroids his doctors have administered, went one. He’s making a political calculation that a stimulus package would benefit blue states, held another.

But Trump’s actions make sense for other, more Trumpian, reasons. An investigation into the president’s finances by The New York Times shows that Trump has avoided paying taxes for years. The reporting also shows that his businesses are “beset by losses” and that he has hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due.

Trump’s best hope for financial survival may be another reality show. “The Apprentice” brought Trump a total of $427 million, the Times found, and allowed him to inhabit the character of a billionaire character that he played all the way to the presidency. It cannot be lost on Trump that making reality TV is arguably the only business in which he has ever succeeded.

Add to that the polls, which consistently show Trump trailing his opponent, Joseph R. Biden, in most of the states and counties Trump won in 2016 and would need to carry in November to have any hope of reelection. Trump has not added to his support among any voters who did not support him four years ago, the polls show.

Taken together, circumstances give Trump every incentive to make these remaining weeks of his presidency all about him (that’s been his North Star throughout) and to stage-manage pictures, like the mask-less salute, that might work as the intro to a series.

The more conflict that Trump can sow and the more visuals he can compile, the more compelling a character he can be in the television future that awaits. America has never seen a reality TV show staring a former president, let alone one who appeals to the worst instincts of his supporters.

The White House is now the set of a TV pilot. The less likely it becomes that voters will green-light a second term, the more we can expect to see Trump chasing not votes but ratings.

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Economy U.S.

Trump’s lie to Canada’s prime minister about trade suggests disregard for the U.S. economy

At a fundraising dinner last Wednesday, President Trump boasted to supporters that he told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada that the U.S. ran a trade deficit with his country without knowing whether the assertion was true.

It’s not. Though news coverage of the incident focused on the fabrication, the lie, which by now one expects from Trump, also shows that the president cherry picks the trade that he recognizes. And in the calculus of Trump, goods trump services.

As it happens, the U.S. runs a trade surplus with Canada. On the whole, Canadians buy more from us than we buy from them. Though Americans  purchase more goods – think vehicles, machinery and plastics – from Canadians than they buy from us, they buy more services, including software, movies and travel, than Americans buy from them.

Our goods trade deficit with Canada was $12.1 billion in 2016, but our trade surplus with our neighbor to the north was $24.6 billion, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

A similar dynamic holds for China, which Trump also likes to jawbone about trade. As I’ve noted previously, the U.S. imports more goods from China than it exports, but it exports more services to China than it imports. The difference was $37 billion in 2016, up 12.3% from year earlier.

To be sure, the deficits in goods are real. But for Trump, the hammering on trade deficits – regardless of facts – plays to a political base in the Rust Belt, where, apparently, the president has concluded he needs to shore up his base in the hope of reelection.

But the focus disregards the economic well-being of millions of Americans elsewhere. And it’s not just in the so-called blue states such as California or New York that house many of the software, entertainment and financial firms that trade in services.

Canada represents the largest export market for U.S. agriculture. Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, says Trump’s proposed tariffs and threats to abrogate the North American Free Trade Agreement show a preference for the Rust Belt over the Farm Belt. “I think he’s looking at the Rust Belt primarily,” Roberts told Bloomberg.

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News Politics U.S.

Donald Trump doubles down on division

Donald Trump is back to trying to divide people, this time by attacking professional athletes who protest racism during playing of the national anthem.

Faced with the failure of yet another attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the divider-in-chief used a speech at a campaign rally on Friday in Alabama to ridicule African-American athletes.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired!’” Trump told the crowd, referring to players who kneel in protest, a gesture started last year by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

“When people like yourselves turn on television and you see those people taking the knee when they’re playing our great national anthem,” added Trump, speaking about black athletes to an overwhelmingly white crowd. In Alabama.

The president later disinvited the championship Golden State Warriors from the White House after opposition to him by Stephen Curry, their star player. The comments come roughly a month after Trump refused to criticize white supremacists and fascists who rallied in Charlottesville.

“The strong contrast in language for a black man and a Nazi is very telling,” Leland Melvin, a retired NASA astronaut and NFL wide receiver who is African-American, writes in a letter to the president. “Do you have any sense of decency or shame in what you say to the American people that are part of your duty to serve respectfully with dignity, presidentially?”

For decades, Trump has preferred division and demagoguery. The president is the same person who, as David Remnick noted on Saturday, began his career in real estate with a string of discriminatory housing practices and his career in politics with a racist questioning of Barack Obama’s birthplace.

It’s also the same person who in 1989 called for the execution of group of teenagers who were convicted – only to be exonerated – in the rape of a female jogger in Central Park.

Trump’s equivocation over racism in August led a series of business leaders to abandon him. On Saturday, NFL owners – a group not usually prone to protest – criticized the president for sowing divisiveness.

“The callous and offensive comments made by the president are contradictory to what this great country stands for,” said Jed York, the 49ers chief executive.

“Our country needs unifying leadership right now, not more divisiveness,” said Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins.

The division that Trump practices follows a pattern. The less he succeeds at changing laws – he has proved unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act, abrogate the North American Free Trade Agreement, build a wall along the border with Mexico or deter North Korea’s nuclear ambitions; all of which he pledged to do – the more he seeks to divide the country.

The divisiveness Trump sows highlights a desperation to hold a base of supporters who actually agree with him. That won’t be enough to remain president.

As Nate Silver has documented, the announcement by former FBI Director James Comey 11 days before the election that he needed to further examine Hillary Clinton’s emails probably cost her the election by erasing her lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida.

Trump knows this, too. One way or another, he will struggle to stay in office.

The question now is how soon do Republicans in Congress abandon Trump for Mike Pence, who, were he to become president in the event of impeachment or resignation of Trump, would still assure the GOP and its supporters the tax cuts they covet.

Trump may have won the election, but he has lost the country. As Melvin advises him, “If you can’t do the job then please step down and let someone else try.”

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U.S.

Bravery and beauty this Fourth of July

Last Sunday, feeling down about the debasement of the presidency and with July Fourth looming, I headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in search of the American Wing.

Though I have visited the Met on at least six occasions over the past year, I tend to return each time to the modern and contemporary art, especially paintings by Picasso that I never tire of seeing. Thus, even with a map of the galleries, I asked twice for directions to the American Wing, a journey that took me across the building.

Once there, I entered the galleries and passed a series of portraits from the 18th century that led me to “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” the painting by Emanuel Leutze that anchors the wing. The massive panorama, which was restored several years ago, practically shimmers.

My gaze went to the armada of wooden boats filled with men, horses and guns that stretched a mile long like some 18th century D-Day, pushing through a river choked with ice on Christmas Day to dislodge Hessians camped on the other side. Being resolute under duress seems like something worth remembering nowadays.

Nearby hangs “Camp Fire” by Winslow Homer. The painting depicts two men camped in the high peaks of the Adirondacks. The scene captures the woodsmen seemingly lost in thought in the comfort of their camp.

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11112

I also liked gazing at “The Teton Range” by Thomas Moran. The jagged peaks of the mountains remind me of the natural beauty of the West and, for that matter, so much of America.

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11600
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U.S.

Read Etgar Keret this July Fourth

In his story “Throwdown at the Playground,” Etgar Keret tells about a visit to Ezekiel Park in Tel Aviv with Lev, his 3-year-old son.

There a question from a mother of another boy surprises Keret. “Tell me something,” asks Orit, the mother. “Will Lev go to the army when he grows up?”

Keret replies that he and his wife haven’t talked about it. “We still have time,” he adds. “He’s three years old.”

That night, Keret relays the incident to his wife.

“Isn’t that weird,” he asks her. “Talking about recruiting a kid who still can’t put on his underpants by himself?

No, she answers. “All the mothers in the park talk to me about it. I’ve been dealing with it from the day Lev was born. And if we’re already discussing it now, I don’t want him to go into the army.”

“I think it’s very controlling to say something like that,” Keret replies.

“I’d rather be controlling than have to take part in a military funeral on the Mount of Olives fifteen years from now,” she counters.

The exchange edges toward an argument.

“You’re talking as if serving in the army is an extreme sport,” Keret says. “But what can we do? We live in part of the world where our lives depend on it. So what you’re actually saying is that you’d rather have other people’s children go into the army and sacrifice their lives, while Lev enjoys his life here without taking any risks or shouldering the obligations the situation calls for.”

“No,” he wife says. “I’m saying that we could have reached a powerful solution a long time ago, and we still can. And that our leaders allow themselves not to do that because they know that most people are like you: they won’t hesitate to put their children’s lives into the government’s irresponsible hands.”

Keret is about to answer when Lev appears. “Daddy, why are you and Mommy fighting?” the boy asks.

“It’s not a real fight,” Keret tells him. “It’s just a drill.”

Keret and his wife manage to end their argument. Keret suggests that when Lev is 18, Lev can decide for himself whether to serve in the army. But his wife disagreees, contending that Lev would be unable to make a free choice with all the social pressure that would surround him.

“In the end,” writes Keret, “out of exhaustion, and in the absence of any other solution, we decided to compromise on the only principle we both truly agreed on: to spend the next fifteen years working toward family and regional peace.”