Tom Hull: 3285-Speaking-of-Which.html

Draft file opened 2024-11-06 2:00 PM. Finally posted 2024-11-11 10:00 PM. Added a couple small bits on 2024-11-12.

Also added a few more bits, all the way up to 2024-11-18, but I swear, that's the end of it.These later bits have green change bars, as opposed to red for the earlier adds.

Trump won. I don't know why. I cannot fathom why anyone, much less an outright majority of voting Americans, could stand him, or could in any way identify with him, let alone entrust him with great power. It is not inconceivable to me that this result was rigged, with every voting machine in the country shaving several points in his favor -- and that all the election denial hoopla of 2020 was just misdirection, while they worked on perfecting the software.

Or, I suppose, it's possible that a thin majority of the American people have become so soul-deadened, demented, and/or deranged that they wish nothing more than to inflict this guy on the rest of us. In which case, the obvious answer is "to dissolve the people and elect another." The phrase comes from a Bertolt Brecht poem, a bit of Communist Party humor, not really applicable here, but it does convey the disconnect when you realize that the people you got are not the ones you imagined or hoped for. We need better politicians, but we also need to become better people, not least to stop them from the temptation to gaslight us.

Personally, I was delighted when Kamala Harris ran away with the Democratic nomination. I didn't think of her in terms of categories or attributes, and was always annoyed when people brought up "first woman," etc., like some kind of milestone. She just seemed like a generic American -- at least in the America I know, which includes many years of living in Kansas, as well as some in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. I knew that she wasn't a leftist, that she was a shrewd and calculating politician, and that she circulated easily among friends in high places. But she seemed personable and relatable, flexible, nimble, like someone who could recognize problems and try to do things to fix them. She seemed much better to me than her predecessors (going back at least to 1992).

Besides, I'm old enough that I'm no longer enamored of utopia, nor patient for the long struggle, so I wasn't inclined to criticize. Surely, I figured, she must know what she's doing? And if not, if she blew it, we could unload on her then. But why give Trump any comfort from division. He was such a clear and present evil -- a word I normally abjure, but why beat around the bush here? -- that nothing could budge my vote from Harris. And now, like Hillary Clinton, and unlike -- no matter how little regard you have for him, Joe Biden -- she has committed the unpardonable sin of losing to Trump.

Still, as I'm writing this intro, I don't feel like tearing into her campaign or other shortcomings. As I collect links, I'm sure I will nitpick here and there. But it's still hard for me to see why she lost, or what else she could have done about it. That wasn't the case with Hillary Clinton: her faults, both personal and political, were obvious from the start, and the sanctimonious scapegoating for her loss only heightened her flaws. I could reconcile myself with the theory that Americans had candidates they disliked, but could only vote one of them off the island, and they chose her, because they knew her better. Surely, this year those same voters would dispatch Trump? Even as his polls held up, I expected a last gasp break toward sanity.

That it didn't happen suggests a much deeper problem, which brings us back to the voters. Or should, if I could figure it out. The one thing I'm pretty sure of is that America has been in some kind of moral decline since approximately when I was born -- in 1950, the week before Chinese volunteers entered the Korean War and reversed the American advance, forcing a stalemate, which American sore losers still refuse to accept. Sure, Americans committed many sins before I was born, but we could aim for better, and teach our children to make a better world. The Hays Office made sure that the good guys wore white hats, and triumphed in the end. I certainly grew up believing in all that, seriously enough that when events proved otherwise, I protected my ideals by turning against the actual America. But what I never lost was the notion that in the end, it will all turn out well.

We may not be at the end yet, but Trump sure seems like a serious turn for the worse. He's four years older than I am, but came from a completely different class and culture, and at each step along the way he had different reactions and made different choices, always breaking bad, which sometimes meant embracing deteriorating social morality, and often accelerating it. Oddly enough, he's the one who poses as a pious patriot. Stranger still, lots of people believe him, perhaps because he allows them to indulge their own vile impulses.

As far as I can tell, there are two types of Trump voter. On the one hand, there are people who actually like him, who get off on his arrogance and nastiness, and who like to see other people hurt. (I've previously noted two types of Christians: those who hope to help their fellows, and those who are more focused on consigning those they disapprove of to hell. Trump is practically a messiah for the latter group.) The second type are party-liners, who will always vote Republican, no matter how much they may disapprove of the candidate. The two groups overlap, but each group extends the other, nudging a minority up toward 50%.

Elite Republicans may not love Trump, but they'll do anything to win -- their whole graft depends on it -- so they go along, figuring they can control the damage (as well as profit from it). This is much like the conservatives in Weimar Germany figuring they can control Hitler -- meanwhile, Trump resembles Hitler at least in his political pitch (his ability to rouse the passions of people for whom economic conservatism has little appeal). Such fascism analogies resonate for some people, especially on the left, who know the history, but are meaningless to those who don't -- most Trump voters, although he seems to have some staff who revel in it, as they keep sending dog whistles, not least to provoke charges that never seem to work.

There is a certain genius to Trump/Republican politics, in how they've manage to flip attacks into accolades: charges that would discredit any normal candidate only seem to make Trump stronger, and that rubs off on the rest of the Republicans. The key element here has been the extraordinary success of partisan broadcasting, keyed to fear, flattery, and rage: the net effect has been to sow distrust and deny credibility to anything Democrats say or do, while championing Republicans as defenders of true America. The result is a tribe that has come to reject facts, reason, and/or any hint of moral purpose: all are rejected as tools of the devil.

Trump adds very little of substance to this toxic infosystem, but he does offer some kind of charisma or style, and disinhibition (which passes for candor if you buy it, or cluelessness if you don't), and serves as a lightning rod for attacks that only confirm the bond between him and his fans. This can be very confusing for all who are immune to or wary of his charms: his appeal makes no sense to us, and meaningful response is nearly impossible. On the other hand, they counter with the same logic and even more fervor, making even less sense to us. The double standards are mind-boggling. For example, one might try making a case that Trump has been unfairly targeted by prosecutors, but how do you square that with his threats to do much more of the same, and the "lock her up" chants?

But it's not just that Trump Republicans are easily deluded and controlled by their media. That feat is built on top of much deeper social trends that go back at least to the 1940s, with the founding of the military-industrial complex and the extension of American hegemony to serve global capitalism, with its attendant red scares, both foreign and domestic. Americans had an idealized picture of themselves coming out of WWII, which made the world Trump and I grew up in. But the task of protecting capital turned into nasty business, and we started to divide into one camp that relished the fight, and another appalled by it. We started seeing films where bad guys were recruited to do dirty work for supposedly good guys, who turned bad themselves. Before long, American presidents were ordering assassinations, kidnapping, and torture. Trump started out with his Nazi-symp father, his apprenticeship under Roy Cohn, and his mobster connections. He fit right in. He only had to wait until America became rotten enough to embrace him. Bush's Global War on Terror made that possible.

Well, the other part of the equation is the rise of the super rich, made possible by the ideological attack on the notion of public interest, and by the assertion of "greed is good," and the general belief that "might makes right" (i.e., anything you can get away with is fine). The richer the supers got, the more they leveraged their wealth through lobbies, PR firms, donations, and media to turn government to do their bidding, further increasing their wealth. They usually rented their spokesmen, but Trump, having personified great wealth on TV, gave them a new angle: he could have it both ways, claiming their authority while pretending to be free of their influence.

I'm not sure how much of the election any of this explains, although it may help explain why Democratic attack ads don't seem to be drawing any blood. As with Republican attack ads, they may do nothing more than confirm one's own virtues (or vices if that's your thing). But it does make one wonder if raising money isn't overrated.

We could, of course, look into the many ways Democrats have contributed to their downfall. The losers are always quick with thoughts, so a fair number of them will show up in links below. I may have more to say on this below, but for here I'll pass, except to point out a couple of fundamental dynamics:

The net effect is that Democrats campaign at a severe handicap. Republicans can lie, cheat, and steal, but Democrats can't -- and in many cases don't even know how. Democrats want to be liked, even by Republicans (and especially by the rich), so they are careful not to offend. (Even so, a casual reference to "garbage" gets blown up sky high, while Republican references to "vermin" get laughed away.) Republicans can exaggerate for effect, while Democrats pull their punches, and that muddies their messages. Democrats cede critical ground in arguments, seemingly legitimizing Republican stands, which only become more extreme. The media love loud and brusque, so they lap it up, amplify it, spread it everywhere, dispensing with reason and nuance, and especially reality (the most boring subject of all).

Then there are structural factors. America is divided into states, districts, precincts, all of which can be gerrymandered, as Republicans were quick to turn to their advantage. The Senate is grossly undemocratic, and the filibuster there has made it impossible for Democrats to pass meaningful reforms, even on the rare occasions when they seem to have majority power. The Republicans have packed the courts, which they're increasingly using to restrict executive power by Democrats, and to increase it by Republicans. Many judges are protected from any oversight by lifetime appointments. Many reforms, as well as redress by impeachment, require supermajorities, which Republicans use to lock themselves in power, even if they lose popular support. (Orban's system in Hungary has made extensive use of this, and is widely cited by Republicans as a model for America -- although in may have originated here, much like Nazi, South African, and Israeli race laws drew on American precedents.)

But the biggest structural problem of all is money. Republicans worship it -- even poor ones are defined by their deference or indifference to great wealth -- and the rich thank them for their service. The single most certain prediction for a second Trump term is yet another round of tax cuts for the rich. Next up is another round of regulatory loopholes, give-aways, and subsidies to needy (or just greedy) businesses. Lobbyists took Washington in the 1980s, and have only grown ever since. Republicans run "revolving door" administrations where lobbyists are as likely to work for the government as against it. The net effect is that government is as likely to work against the public interest as for it.

Republicans love this, because it reinforces their message that government is inefficient, wasteful, and useless, and should be shrunk (and ultimately "drowned in the bathtub"), except they never actually do that, at least as long as they can use it to feed their political machine.[*] While this is mostly done with money, Republicans are also looking forward to using their power in other ways: in turning the civil service into a patronage system for political operatives; in aligning information services with their political messaging; and in using coercive powers to suppress heresy and dissent, to punish their enemies, and to empower (or at least pardon) their allies.

When Democrats talk so piously and nebulously about the "death of democracy," this is what they are actually referring to. Only it's not a future threat, something that might be avoided if only enough people would vote for a Harris, a Biden, a Clinton, an Obama. It's been happening for a long time -- I used to see 1980 (Reagan) as the turning point, but now that I see it less in policy terms than as a mental disorder, I see much more originality and continuity in Nixon (which has the advantage of making Johnson's Vietnam the breaking point -- it certainly was what turned my own life upside down -- instead of the nascently-Reaganesque Carter). Maybe with Trump redux, Democrats will finally realize that they have to fight back, and stop trying to pass themselves off as some kind of prophylactic, a thin barrier to limit the contagion.

Which brings us back to money. As I said, Republicans worship it. But so do Democrats: maybe not all of them, but virtually all of the kind that run for higher office, because the system is rigged so that only those with access to money can run serious campaigns. (Bernie Sanders is the exception here, and he did come up with a novel system of small donor support, but when he came to be viewed as a threat, big donors dumped tons of money -- Michael Bloomberg more than $500M; compare that to the $28M he spent this year for Harris against Trump -- to quash his campaign.) Harris is no exception here. She raised more money than any Democrat -- or Republican for that matter -- ever. And she lost. So maybe money isn't the answer?

I'm not going to try to tell you what Democrats should do instead, but maybe they should start by waking up and looking at the real world we're living in, a world that they are at least in some substantial part responsible for creating. And that means they need to re-examine their worship of money. There's much more that can be said about this, but I've droned on long enough. I should leave it here.

[*] That machine, by the way, is a thing of wonder, which I don't think has ever been fully dissected, although there is a lot of literature on various aspects of it. If Machiavelli were here, he would write a letter offering advice on how an aspiring young Republican could rise to a position of great power and influence. (As Gramsci noted, real princes didn't need such guidance. The point of the book was to expose their machinations to those with no such experiences.) This would not only lay out the topography of institutions, but the networking, the lexicon of coded language, the spin, and ultimately the psychology of why anyone would want to be a Republican in the first place -- something I still find incredibly alien even though I often take great pains to try to understand others in their own terms.

As of Saturday afternoon, I have 144 links, 15438 words. I was planning on not posting until Monday, so I have time to make another round or two, but I have enough feedback on the election to offer a few bits of speculation about the future. I put little stock in them, given how poorly my predictions have held up. But I can hedge a bit by offering a couple of alternatives.

On several occasions, notably 1992 for the Republicans, and 2016 for the Democrats, incumbent parties seem to have felt permanently entitled to the presidency, and took their defeats bitterly, lashing out blindly. The level of vitriol Republicans directed at Bill Clinton after 1992 was almost unprecedented in the never-very-polite lore of American politics, and set a pattern that they repeated after 2008 and 2020 (arguably the most over-the-top, but by then their character was expected, and the sore loser took personal charge of the rage).

While Democrats didn't behave that atrociously after 2016, when pretty much everyone expected Hillary Clinton to easily defeat Donald Trump, her followers reacted with dismay and a massive round of accusations and scapegoating -- especially directed at Russia, although there were many other factors at work, including how distasteful and provocative Trump was, and that Clinton supporters still had a chip on their shoulders over the strong Bernie Sanders challenge to what organization Democrats expected to be a cakewalk.

Democrats' opinion of Trump has only sunk lower with four years in power and four years plotting his comeback. But so far, reaction has been mild, other than the inevitable shock and sadness. Trump's margin has been sufficient that it's hard to doubt his win. And while Harris seemed promising at the Convention, that may have largely been relief that Biden was out, the assumption that his administration had a good story that was simply poorly communicated, and the pretty conviction belief that Trump was such damaged goods that most Americans would be glad to be rid of him. But it was never really love for Harris, who's proved to be an easy (and rarely defended) target for post-mortems. This also suggests that we misread Trump -- that our loathing of him isn't shared by enough Americans to beat him -- so maybe this isn't a good time to go ballistic on him (as we did in 2016).

Trump's margin opens one new possibility that we haven't considered, which is that if he governed competently, he could actually consolidate his power and become regarded as a significant American president. Admittedly, we have no reason to expect this. His first term was a disaster of unfathomable dimensions. He's spent most of the four years since scrambling to stay out of jail. And his campaign theme has been redemption and revenge. If he attempts to put into practice even a significant share of what he campaigned on, evaluations of his legacy should sink as far below the scale of American presidents as Caligula and Ivan the Terrible.

But will he? I wouldn't bet against it, but it's just possible that having won, as ugly as that whole campaign has been, he'll change course. I don't mean to suggest that he won't be as bad as his voters want him to be on signature issues like immigration. But now that he's president, why should he adopt austerity budgets and demolish services, just to prove that government doesn't work. If he does that, he'll be blamed, and if he doesn't, he'll reap the credit. Plus the whole Fox machine is behind him, so who's going to complain? Certainly not the Democrats, who are always ready to help a Republican president do a good deed. (Remember when they foolishly thought "No Child Left Behind" would better fund education?) He's promised a better ACA. Why not rebrand it like he did with NAFTA, adding a couple tweaks that most Democrats can get behind, and magically turning it into the Republican program it always was? He'd be a hero, whereas had he done any of Paul Ryan's plans, he'd be a goat.

The big difference between Trump now and then isn't just that he has some experience to learn from, but that this time he gets to pick his own staff. In 2016, he left that mostly to Pence and Priebus, who saddled him with a bunch of assholes even he couldn't stand, including the so-called "adults in the room." This could, as most of us feared, be for the worse, but Trump was always hemmed in by regular Republicans, ranging from the Koch-controlled Ryan to the Blob-heads in the national security racket. One big reason he won the 2016 primaries was that he disagreed with hardcore economic orthodoxy. But as a neophyte Republican, he got stuck with a bunch of crooked, deranged incompetents, and their rot killed his whole administration. Granted, he wasn't smart enough to figure it out in real time, and he may still not be, but the new crew were competent enough to run a winning campaign this time. We shouldn't exclude the possibility that they're competent enough to manage him, or to let him manage, some level of competency. For which he'll handle the PR, as that's his thing, and it will probably be more hideous than the actual administration, which above all else has to keep business booming and profits soaring.

One area where he has a mandate and some real power to act is foreign policy, where Biden has been utterly disastrous. It's well past time to settle the Ukraine War, which needs a bit more art and tact than he's shown so far, but is doable without looking like too much of a surrender to Putin (but if the Democrats scream treason, that'll probably make it more popular). The obvious deal there is status quo on the ground, and dial back sanctions as stability and security is ensured. The US actually needs a cooperative relationship with Russia, and that means undoing the sanctions. He needs to do that without looking like a Russian stooge, but Putin seems to be more sensitive to how Trump looks than Trump himself.

Israel is a different matter. He'll give Israel whatever they want, with no complaints or pretense of humanitarian concern. At some point, he'll broker a deal with Egypt, the Saudis, Syria (via Putin), and maybe even Iran, to send the rest of the Palestinians Israel hasn't killed already into permanent exile. Maybe he'll get Israel to concede Lebanon, and that will be the end of it. It's a horrible solution, but in some ways it'll be a blessing. The Democrats were just going to drag it out. [*]

I could go around the world, but in foreign policy, there is virtually nothing he can do (other than start a war, e.g. with China) that wouldn't be an improvement over Biden. In general, he'll depress trade and immigration, and disengage in the internal affairs of other countries. He could easily negotiate peace deals with North Korea, Iran, even Cuba and Venezuela. He doesn't care about human rights in those places. (Biden didn't either, but the pretense was killing.) BRICS will continue to grow, Europe will go its own way, and the American people will be just fine. (Maybe fewer cheap goods and less cheap labor, but nowhere near the scare levels that liberal economists like to predict.) If Democrats complain about this, they'll only dig themselves deeper graves. The era of American global hegemony is ending. Protracting it will only make a bad thing worse.

By the way, Vance is a creep, but he's much smarter, and much savvier both on foreign and domestic policy than Pence ever was. Plus, as the heir-apparent, he has incentives not to turn the administration into the dumpster fire that Pence left with. I could go on and on, but you should get the idea by now. Having shown he can win, legitimately (as these things go), Trump has little reason to destroy democracy. He could even build on the majority he already has. He faces two dangers: one is his own bad instincts; the other is the idiot nihilism of much of the Republican Party. But he owns that party now, and the rank-and-file are basically followers, controlled by the propaganda machine, and the apparatchiki are just hired hands: they do what they're told.

Again, I have very little confidence that Trump will do any of this -- even on Israel, where he will continue to do whatever Netanyahu wants, but Netanyahu is used to and even seems to like it being a forever war, so he may not press that hard.

So it's really just up to him. As for the Democrats, all they can do is react. It's hopeless for me to try to advise, as none of them are ready to listen. They first have to figure out who they are, who they want to represent, and what they want. But this game of conning both the donors and the voters is wearing awfully thin.

[*] I could add some caveats and nuance here, but the key point is that this is what the dominant political coalition of Israel actually wants, and that Trump, both by temperament and in light of his donor support network, is unlikely to offer any resistance to anything Israel demands -- even more so than Biden-Harris, who as Democrats felt the need to express humanitarian concerns and their commitment to democracy. Trump has no such concerns, and may even see the mass expulsion of Palestinians as an exemplary model for his own mass expulsion of "illegal immigrants." But any number of things could limit this "ethnic cleansing." I'll leave this to your imagination, assuming you have enough to see that public opinion all around the world will increasingly shift as Israel approaches genocide's "final solution" -- even in the US, which should be of some concern to Trump, although his first instinct will be to fight and suppress it. He will see it as an opportunity to break pro-Israel donors away from the Democratic Party, solidifying his support, but freeing Democrats from having to toady for Israel, as Harris did and paid for. But ultimately opinion could turn against Trump/Israel here. The tide could even turn in Israel as the costs of war and isolation mount. And a massive influx of Palestinian exiles will be welcome nowhere: the US and EU go without saying, but public opinion makes this a tough sell in the Arab autocracies, which could blow up under the strain -- and which have their own major financial pipeline to Trump (e.g., Kushner's billion dollar slush fund).

I think the most likely scenario is that Gaza is totally crushed and depopulated, but that Israel is pressured to dial back its apartheid and ethnic cleansing measures in the occupied areas (including parts of pre-1967 Israel, where Palestinians are 20% of the population, and have barely-nominal citizenship) to pre-October 2023 levels. But a wide range of scenarios are possible. While Trump's election strengthens Netanyahu, they are fighting a perilous uphill battle (against a world which has been inexorably decolonising ever since 1945), where they may well wind up just retreating into their fortress-castles. [**]

[**] MAGA is clearly such a retreat, on many fronts (e.g., they want to return to a world where stern fathers can spank naughty daughters). Most of their beliefs should be resisted, but their retreat from neoliberal/neoconservative foreign policy is overdue. The world has changed since WWII, when America extended its hegemony over the "free world" and set up its quasi-holy war against the enemies of capital. Most of the capital that American armed and propaganda forces so fiercely defend isn't even American any more, and what is isn't of much value to most actual Americans. (A precise accounting of that capital may depend on how you account for Elon Musk, who I'd argue is case proof that not all immigration is good). Moreover, America's defense of that capital has lost much of its effectiveness, as American soldiers have given up the fight (why risk ruining their lives for oil moguls?), as corruption has made the war machine prohibitively expensive, and as the world itself has become increasingly unconquerable. (Phrase comes from Jonathan Schell's 2003 book, The Unconquerable World.)

Neoliberals will accuse Trump et al. of "isolationism," because that's the slur they deployed against a previous generation of (mostly) Republicans, who were wary of their schemes for one world market, dominated by American capital, and regimented by American arms. Although the US rarely had much of a standing army before 1939, Americans were widely engaged in the world, mostly through trade, not insignificantly through missionary work, but only rarely through imperialist adventures (1898 counts, as does the subsequent "gunboat diplomacy"). This willingness to engage the world on fairly equitable terms, including the resistance to European imperialism announced in the Monroe Doctrine, the pursuit of Open Door Policy to break up imperial monopolies, and the "arsenal of democracy" which defeated the final campaigns of Germany and Japan: all this earned Americans considerable good will around the world, which America's post-WWII abuse of power has only turned into a "legacy of ashes" (to borrow the title of Tim Weiner's history of the CIA). While the "isolationist" taunt will impress subscribers of Foreign Policy, it's a spent term, a piece of liberal cant that will produce more backlash than agreement.

While the "defense Democrats" have been ascendant against Trump and for Biden, I can only hope they will be seen as bankrupt now, and that Democrats will revert to something more like Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy (a kinder, gentler redressing of Gunboat Diplomacy, not that it changed things much), and a renewed interest in the UN, which the neocons sought so hard to trash. Also, I do not expect Trump to be consistent here: even if his tendency is to withdraw, institutional support for militarism and world dominance remains strong, at least as much in the Republican Party as in the Democratic, and it's easy to play on his ego as "the leader of the free world," especially when all he has to do is to follow friendly bribes.

I woke up Monday morning with the thought that I could finally add a third intro here, where I talk about what Democrats should do now that they've been driven from national power. I always planned on a final chapter to my political book where I would offer what I saw as practical political advice to save the world. (Well, in some versions of that book, I tacked on an extra section, which would describe the dystopia that would ensue if Democrats fail and allow Republicans to do all they've wanted. That much, at least, I'll spare you spoilers for.) So I have given this subject a fair amount of thought, and if I had the time (and were still so inclined) I could write about this at considerable length. However, with Monday slipping away from me, and no desire whatsoever to face this file on Tuesday, I'll try to keep this very brief: some reflections and scattered tidbits, but no structure, and no cheerleading. I'm not trying to sell my advice. I'm just throwing it out there.

Monday evening, I find I haven't written this section, and no longer have time. I think I did make many of the points I've been thinking about under various articles, so I'll leave it to you to ferret them out. Anything involving money, credibility, and trust is likely to be relevant. The biggest problem Democrats have is that lots of people don't trust them -- on lots of things, including avoiding war. They have to figure out how to fix that. And funny thing, beating the Republicans at fundraising and at advertising and celebrity endorsements and "ground game" isn't doing the trick.

Why so many of those people trust Republicans instead is way beyond me, but there is considerable evidence that they do. There is also ample evidence that trust in Republicans is foolish and sometimes plain stupid, but until Democrats get their house in order, distrust in them takes precedence. One saving grace may be that most Americans really hate corruption, and they don't much care for incompetence either. Republicans are up to their necks in both. Now if you can just show them, you should be able to score points. But it's hard to do when you're corrupt and incompetent as well.

One thought I'm pretty sure I didn't get to yet concerns "woke." I think of it as something like satori, a state of mind that if you're lucky, you find yourself in through no discernible effort of your own. It's good to be woke, but only you can know that. What it is not is a license for an inquisition, which is how most of the anti-woke have been trained to view it. And it's not that they disapprove of inquisitions in general. It's just that they prefer their own.

Top story threads:

Election notes: Some general pieces here, then more specific ones on Trump (why he won, and how horrible that is) and Harris (why she lost, and who cares) following, then sections on the Senate (flipped R), House (undecided, but probably still R), and other issues below.

Also, some more speculative pieces on what a second Trump term might do (some issue-specific, some more general). Most of these assume Trump will try to do what he campaigned on, but I suggested an alternative scenario in the second section of the intro (but even it doesn't argue against most of the forebodings here):

PS: Trying to wind up on Monday, I'm starting to see a number of early appointments (e.g., Trump picks Rep. Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations), which are beyond the scope of this post and section, as well as damn near impossible for me to keep up with. I will say that they do show that he's actually thought about transition and administration this time (unlike in 2016), he has a plan, and is executing it quickly. This certainly argues against the notion that he might not govern as viciously as he campaigned. I should also note that the Wade story above shows that he intends to dominate Congress (or bypass them wherever possible), rather than have to negotiate with anyone (even mainstream Republicans). He is basically confirming the fears of all those who predicted that Trump would turn the presidency into a dictatorship.

PPS: I know I said I wouldn't do this, but here's a brief general survey of the first two weeks of Trump appointments:

Alex Skopic/Stephen Prager: [11-21] Hell is empty, and all the devils are here: "Trump's staff picks are a rogue's gallery of cranks, oligarchs, religious fanatics, and alleged sexual abusers. He's not 'draining the swamp,' he's deepening it and adding more snakes." Section heads: The Warmongers (start with Rubio); The Oligarchs (start with Musk); the Quacks (start with RFK Jr.); The Climate Vandals (less famous, with fracking Chris Wright, Lee Zeldin, and Doug Burgum); and Miscellaneous Depravity (picture of Kristi Noem, but she's not the only one).

At the last count, more than 76 million Americans voted for Donald Trump to be president. Some of them are probably your friends, relatives, classmates, neighbors, and co-workers. But when you cast an eye over the list of his appointees, you have to wonder: is this truly what they thought they were voting for? A government composed of billionaires and lobbyists, crackpots who think the concept of medical science is suspect, and foreign policy hawks who are just itching to go to war with Iran or China? Tabloid celebrities like Dr. Oz and Linda McMahon being placed in charge of whether you get healthcare and education or not? It seems unlikely. Rather, it seems Trump -- who's built his entire career on lies, scams, and fraud -- has scammed the American people again, promising to sweep into Washington and clean it out when really he's going to do the opposite.

Resisting and coping: I've generally put the "what comes next" pieces under Trump (second section), but the corresponding "what do we do now" pieces are likely to have nothing to do with Harris (not that the idea doesn't crop up in the various pieces critical of the Harris campaign). I wasn't really expecting to do this section, but found one piece, and thought there may be more (e.g., I moved the Ganz piece in from elsewhere).

House of Representatives: I thought I'd have more in this section, including specific races, but I never even got around to looking at the numbers.

Israel: This has been my top section ever since Oct. 7, 2023, only pushed down due to the election.

Other stories:

Allen Lowe [11-07] Facebook post that somehow I managed to see on [11-15], but worth keeping for later:

One of the most annoying results of the election are those who are now standing up and saying the Democrats are gone and corrupt and that's it. Well, I'm not going to join the party of Jill Stein. And the Democrats still have a demographic advantage and still won a large percentage of the votes, and I don't care what you think, they are the only hope. Even Bernie Sanders agrees.

So I don't want to hear about how the billionaires would've won either way. I want to hear about how Biden basically eliminated 50% of child poverty only to be rebuffed by the Republicans when the law wasn't renewed. I want to hear about this huge infrastructure bill which is employing so many people and helping to make unemployment incredibly low. I want to hear about social welfare which flourishes under the Democrats because the agencies make appointments staffed by good people who take care of poor and disabled people. The Republicans staff them with people bent on destroying them and harming people like my disabled son.

I thought we learned our lessons during the prior Trump administration, when those who had told us that Hillary and Trump were the same slunk into the corner with their tails between their legs. Now they're coming out to try to tell us this is what they predicted all along.

Ridiculous, but it does show that many of them secretly hope the United States will sink into oblivion so a revolution will rise from the ashes. More people have to suffer so they can justify their own hallucinatory politics.The only thing that will rise from the ashes is more death and destruction.

Some good comments, like this one by Brian Simontacchi:

I think this is relevant to our conversation yesterday, so I'll just chime in and rebut a couple of your points:

Biden did some very good things, shockingly. My expectations weren't high initially. He exceeded them easily

As long as they try to prevent this outcome, I'll be supportive of Democrats and hold their feet to the fire at the same time. I can walk and chew gum

Billionaires always win. Why spend all that money for no return?

I think it's clear no lessons have been learned at all

I feel like you're working backwards from the conclusion that the outcome determines the causality. I don't think that. I think people, highly susceptible to misinformation and visceral tribalism, are easily manipulated, and Trump and his echo chamber are quite good at pressing those buttons. I think people change their minds with what they think is happening in the news and to them, and they don't care as much about a global or local responsibility to stability, if they ever did. When the billionaires make the global economic trends, they determine which professions and trades are most distressed and how those people will likely respond in an election. Its all coordinated; things will get worse before they get worse.

I'm just here to diagnose trends and be honest. I have no soft spot for billionaires or politicians. I want peace for my neighbors but I have to understand what's happening. Frankly, I have no loyalty to either party, only to harm reduction which I can't even impact from a blue state. If we can't have consistent progress, I'll settle for harm reduction, even though that is not my ultimate goal, or my responsibility to successive generations.

I hope we can talk about this amicably. If we can't, I'll cease and desist.

Robert Christgau: [11-20] Xgau Sez: Very late addition here, his answer to Carola Dibbell's question: "Any takes on the election, Robert? PS: I'd rather you not include your ongoing mea culpa for admiring Harris's articulateness, which you now recognize might have lost voters who thought she sounded too educated."

First of all, Harris was one of the most fluent prose stylists ever to run as a plausible presidential candidate--which despite her own considerable oratorical skills doesn't mean she was as impressive a speaker as Lincoln, Obama, Washington it says here, or the fireside FDR or as purely brilliant intellectually as at the very least Madison, who did after all play a major role in conceiving the Constitution we say we fight for and the Trumpers hope to wreck. She was also arguably the handsomest, especially if dumb-ass Warren Harding's square-jawed thing didn't turn you on. But what both impressed me and led me astray was what the polls told us was the 50-50 race it clearly wasn't--at least not in the electoral college. I was confident ordinary voters saw her brains and looks as an attractive positive, which they clearly didn't. On the contrary, let's specify the obvious. She was Black and female and both cost her. Sexism and racism. Definitive? Maybe not, and we'll never know how big they were for sure. (It is also worth bearing in mind, just as a quirky oddity if you prefer, that what I'd estimate were the two most intelligent plausible presidential candidates of my and your lifetimes were both of part-African heritage.)

But in addition I'll note that my biggest personal political gaffe is that I never glimpsed the economic factors I have no doubt cost Harris big because that seems to be how it worked all over the pan-Covid world. About that I was ignorant, to my and so many of my allies' disgrace. I've also been paying more mind than I ever thought I would to what is now, evocatively, labeled bro culture. As someone who would always rather read, listen to music, or both than resort to YouTube and/or the podcast world, I ignore both the way I avoid Rush and Kansas reissues, living without that market share, which for me is negligible economically--but not, it would seem, electorally. Now those motherfuckers scare me.

Although I've long followed electoral politics in considerable detail, I don't have the expertise or vanity to make any prognostications here. I'm glad MSNBC is operative because I find it comforting--especially for the nonce Lawrence O'Donnell, whose detailed firsthand knowledge of DC in particular I've been finding informative and on occasion comforting.

I can imagine three or four different responses to this, with the big one possibly, albeit slowly, evolving into a full-fledged book project on What We Learned From the 2024 Election, but even though I have a few ideas, I don't think we can say we've learned much yet. I do think it helps to realize that we really need to ask two different questions: what could Harris have done differently to swing a 1.6% election margin the other way? and what could Democrats have done to win the landslide that should have been possible given Trump's historic low favorability: 44.7% (-8.6) on Nov. 2; as low as 38.0% (-17.5) on Jan. 10, 2023? I'd be the first to admit that to get the landslide they deserve, Democrats need to tell a better story: one that make it clear to most people (and here we're talking 60-70%, not 50.01%) how horrible Republicans are -- that part should be pretty easy -- and how Democrats can be believed and trusted to do much better things (ok, that's the hard part).

Harris didn't have that story, and couldn't, because Democrats haven't been aiming for landslides (much less to be the party of the 99%) for, well, donkey's years. They've been chasing donor money with promises of growth satisfying everyone, while using the Republican threat to keep their base in line (while wooing supposedly moderate suburbia): a delicate balancing act, and one that risks exposing themselves as two-faced. Harris's story was what the Democrats bequeathed her with. We can debate about how well she sold it, and whether small shifts in emphasis and focus could have helped. (I think she had a big problem with Biden's wars. Others point to economics and/or cultural issues, which could have been handled better, but I regard as much less decisive.) But all the way to the end, I was happy with her as a candidate, and I expected her to win.

That she didn't, I blame on the people (and the media, but let's not go there). But in a democracy, you can't blame the people. You can't, in Brecht's phrase, "dissolve them and elect another." You have to figure out how to deal with them, to break through the highly polarized media bubble that insulates them from such obvious truths as that Trump is a greedy liar who has no practical understanding of how the world works and who is ultimately only concerned with his own vanity. You have to ask: why can't at least half of the people see that? You can't seriously think that the people who voted for him did so because they knew all that and still liked him?

Conversely, how can a large segment of Trump's voters think of Harris as a "low IQ" tramp who slept her way to the top and/or is trying to pass herself off as black because she thinks that makes her cool? There's something seriously wrong with these people, but you shouldn't say that, because they're every bit as much of "the people" as you are, and because attacking them just backfires on you -- e.g., "deplorables" or "trash," nor does it help to point out that they routinely say much worse things about you. Nor does it help to try to cozy up to them by feigning agreement on marginal issues (like Kerry's goose hunting photo-op, or Harris waving her gun).

I think this can be done, both personally -- I know a fair number of these people and get along with them reasonably well, although even in Kansas, and even in my family, most of my time is spent in a social bubble that extends to my left as well as to my right - and politically (which is not my job, and safe to say, never will be). But self-hating is always a bad look. And it's not necessary, even if it worked, which it doesn't. We shouldn't have to, or expect to, change to escape a political trap. But we do need to stop taking our prejudices and neuroses out on other people.

A couple things about Christgau's letter still bother me. His assumption that being "Black and female and both cost her" suggests a race-and-sex consciousness that most Republicans seem to have moved beyond (perhaps symbolically or cynicly, and with no real concessions to equality). Even if it is still a factor -- one might argue that race had some impact on the KY and NC gubernatorial elections, where black Republicans in red states ran and lost to white Democrats, but the margins were thin, so the effect couldn't have been large -- it's not one that does us any good to dwell on (not just because doing so attacks people can also turn people off as condescending).

I have less of an idea what to say about bro culture -- I had to look it up to get a definition, and even so I can't say that it applies to anything I've ever been part of. Still, unless it's meant to excuse assault or rape, or you try to translate it into the realm of politics, I don't see problem. "Different strokes," you know? Isn't that something we support? Maybe if we were less terrified of other people, they'd learn to cut us some slack, too?

As for MSNBC, I wouldn't know, as I never watch it, but my wife tells me that "O'Donnell is the worst" ("even worse than Maddow"), and that the whole place is a den of Clinton-Obama DNC orthodoxy ("Hillary-bot," "anti-Bernie" über alles), i.e., the same ideas and elitist strategies that keep letting the Republicans back in the door -- after Bush and Trump showed conclusively that they really have no clue how to govern, even to preserve the status quo.

But I understand the "comforting" feeling. For the last eight years I've taken much comfort from watching the anti-Trump late shows (Kimmel, Colbert, Meyers: monologues, not celebrity guest talk), not so much because of what they said -- which could be problematical -- as because their audiences were at least as partisan, and it felt good to be in the company of ordinary people who react to these outrages the same way I do. As a leftist from way back -- my initiation was a mid-1960s tabloid called The Minority of One -- I'm used to losing and lonely isolation, with my ideas rejected not on their merits but as a kneejerk reaction to the direction they're coming from (generally, like all leftists, a commitment to peace, justice, and equality). So it was nice not to feel so totally isolated for once.

Since the election, I've given up on watching those shows, as well as giving up on network news, my local paper, and even most of the center-to-left-leaning sources I faithfully collated for the Speaking of Which years. But I'm still here, and we're still here, and we're just a couple points short of inching back into majority power, which should be easy enough to make up as people increasingly realize what a complete train wreck of a political juggernaut they've handed power to. But what's driving all this has nothing to do with that I did or did not write over the past 20 years -- words that are still online, very few of which I have any regrets about (most errors were on the optimistic side, where I'm more inclined to blame the world than to admit my own fault).

But right now, I have no optimism whatsoever that people (let alone Democrats) will start reading me and learn some new tricks. But if they want to survive the Trump debacle[*], they're going to have to look at the real problems, then come up with solutions and credible ways of talking about them; they're going to have to find ways to talk to everyone, to appeal to their better natures, and to their various hopes; they're going to have to win elections, deliver results, and make this a better world for as many people as possible.

One thing I've learned over recent years is that there are a lot of smart and good people already working on this. I've noted some of them, especially in my Books posts, and I have no doubt but there is much more I haven't noticed -- needless to say, there is also no shortfall of nonsense in the Books posts. On the other hand, as much of the post-mortem analysis cited above shows, learning the hard way is often even harder than you expect. Especially given that the lessons that should have been learned from the 2016 loss and the 2020 win have thus far only produced a second, even more heartbreaking, loss.

[*] I thought I'd be witty here and use "Trumpocalypse," but that turns out to be the title of two books, both dated: one scathing from neocon never-Trumper David Frum (2020), another a delirious prophecy by Paul McGuire and Troy Anderson (2018). John Nichols also used the term in the title of his 2017 book on the initial Trump cabinet picks: Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America, which he could well be writing a sequel to right now. C.J. Hopkins also published a collection of "brave, original, enlightening, and hilarious" (sez Matt Taibbi) essays, Trumpocalypse: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. I (2016-2017).

PS: A couple days after writing this, I woke up feeling I should say something more about "comfort" in such times. I've never been one to beat myself up over what the world does, especially in spite of my best efforts. And I've always striven to make my own life as comfortable as possible. But I'm finding little comfort in familiar political haunts right now. It was easy after 2016 to blame the loss on the candidate, because I had many of the same misgivings -- just more sense than to think that Trump might be the answer. Biden's 2020 win allowed us to overlook Trump's stronger-than-expected performance, but that too was easily rationalized. But none of those explanations really work here. Harris wasn't a bad candidate. History hasn't vindicated Trump. The usual metrics did not suggest a Trump win (even a close one). But something happened, which calls into question some of our fundamental assumptions about how politics works. And until we figure that out, we should be uncomfortable. That's the only thing that keeps us from falling back into the same old rut.

My new problem with the late shows is that I suspect that their style of talking about Trump is counterproductive. I've slowly grown more aware of how attacking Trump only seems to validate him in the hearts and minds of his fans. But I never imagined the effect would be as strong as it evidently is. We need to regroup, and recalculate.

As best I recall, I've been pretty consistent in believing that Biden, and later Harris, would defeat Trump, but I saw one scenario as particularly ominous: if the wars in Ukraine and Israel drag on through election day (as they have now done), I predicted that many voters would desperately search for an alternative, which could tip the election to Trump. I relaxed my prediction a bit when Harris replaced Biden, figuring she would be seen as less culpable, but she was in Biden's administration, was involved in much of its disastrous foreign policy, and made little if any effort to distance herself from its failures. Worse still, she started campaigning with hawks like Liz Cheney.

I figured I should go back and find the quotes. I've found several bits I wrote on a possible Trump win, so I'll include them here. The main one was from July 24 (actually quoting a July 18 letter), but we'll keep them in order, starting with this one (I'm adding bold in a couple spots):

I'm sure there are more, but these at least make the point. After Harris took over, I hoped that she might be held less responsible, and other factors would give her a chance. I also resisted all the hectoring from the left, figuring that's just what we normally do, even if it's not helpful at the moment. Besides, I knew that I couldn't really do anything about it: that the forces in motion were way too powerful for whatever I think to make any difference at all. So I just went with it.

But now I'm left with all these doubts: about my own judgment and understanding, about other people, about the whole notion of sides. I'm getting old, and tired, and frustrated. And while it's premature to say that we have no future, I can't see any viable path for me to continue working like this.

Therefore, this is my last Speaking of Which post. Probably ever, at least not for quite some well. I have a Jazz Poll to run, and that's going to be enough of a time sink to last me to January. I'll keep posting Music Week, probably as long as I'm able, possibly with a new burst of energy but more likely with diminishing returns. The political book I've contemplated for twenty-some years now is definitely dead. Much of it would have been practical advice on how Left Democrats might more effectively frame issues. Clearly, I'm in no position to do that.

I may consider writing up more "blue sky" policy ideas. I've always been very fond of Paul Goodman's Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals, which gives me the perfect subtitle. But each chunk of that would take considerable work to research and whip into shape, and I have little confidence of doing that. The more serious writing project would be to return (or restart) the memoir. I don't know that will be of any interest, but it's a subject I know, have thought about, and often find myself slipping into, and it could be a springboard for anything else I wanted to slip in.

The other obvious project would be to go back and review the several million words I've written (most collected here, from the founding of the notebook and/or blog up to some point in 2022) and see what can be packaged into something useful. A couple people have looked at this, and thrown their hands up in the air. When I look, I see lots of things that still strike me as worthwhile, but I, too, have little idea what to do with them. My ideal solution would be to find an editor willing to work on spec, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to do that.

If anyone is interested in nattering on about this life decision, you can contact me through the little-used question form.

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