January 25, 2019--Joe, Say It Isn't So!

Just as I was about to throw my support (such as it is) behind the still non-candidate, Joe Biden, feeling desperate, though it is still almost two years before the next presidential election, to find someone who can win (forget fall in love with), just as I was about to ignore or rationalize his limitations and faults, including the fact that he'll be 78 in two years, there was a front-page story in Thursday's New York Times which revealed that Joe gave a speech at the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan, to a "Republican-leaning audience" for which he received $200,000 and, at his insistence, was flown in and out on a private jet (forget carbon footprint issues), now confused and totally depressed I don't think I any longer have a candidate who can win and who doesn't make me nauseous when thinking about her or him in the Oval Office.

Two hundred thousand is an obscene amount of money for any speech other than the Gettysburg Address (you had to be there to really appreciate it), and though I hate it, the corruption and hypocrisy it reveals is not what has me bent out of shape (more or less straight-shooter Biden who grew up poor in Scranton now cashing in and flying around in private planes after a lifetime of public service is not my major problem), it's why Joe was addressing a Republican-leaning audience.

It appears he was there to, wink-wink, endorse for reelection, GOP Representative Fred Upton. Upton is not a troglodyte member of the House--there are much worse: think white supremacist Steve King of Kansas--but the recent midterm election is one in which Democrats put aside differences to regain control of the House and thereby reduce Trump's stranglehold on the nation's government. In other words every vote counted more than usual and there was pay-for-play Biden weighing in on Upton's side.

And it likely helped--Upton won in a squeaker by only four and a half percentage points. Luckily the Dems flipped enough other seats to take control of the House so perhaps Biden can claim he did no ultimate harm. After all, Biden said at the talk, Upton is an alleged "champion" in the fight against cancer and is thus "one of the finest guys I've ever worked with." I know fighting cancer is what Biden is largely about but it feels as if Joe was motivated to endorse him as much for the 200 grand he pocketed as for the cancer fighting. 

Closer to the scene, Eric Lester, who chaired the Democratic Party in Berrien County during the midterms, said he considered Biden's "supportive remarks" about Upton "a betrayal."

Sounds right to me.

November 6, 2018--Final Predictions

While people are still voting and before there are any results, to distract myself here are a few predictions and speculations--

The numbers in the Senate will remain the same with the GOP continuing to hold a one-seat majority.

Arizona and Texas will flip from Republican to Democratic with Beto O'Rourke emerging as the brightest new Democrat star. By Thursday, no, by tomorrow he will become the frontrunner for the 2020 presidential nomination and two years from now will defeat Mike Pence.

Obviously, this means that Donald Trump, for one reason or another, will not serve out his first term. Early next year he will declare Mission Accomplished and turn the keys to the Oval Office over to Pence.

In the House we will see a real "wave election." Still stung for getting 2016 wrong (no one predicted Trump would win, including Trump himself), pollsters and media pundits are being very conservative this time in analyzing the data and making projections. The consensus going in is that the Democrats will eek out just enough flipped seats (they need 23) to take control. I suspect they will do much better, winning close to 50 currently Republican-held seats.

As it should be, this will be the headline. 

Anticipating this, Trump in recent days has been saying he's been concentrating exclusively on the Senate. There are too many seats in the House for him to pay attention to, he said, and thus he won't be surprised if the Democrats take control of the House. "We'll work it out," he has been saying. 

Since he's all about winning, "losing" the House will be what will motivate him to not run in 2020. Better to declare victory than try to deal with losing.

In early January the Democrats, who will control all House committees, will begin a judicious number of investigations. To launch too many will make it look as if there is in fact a witch hunt going on, that the election to Democrats was all about the opportunity to overturn the 2016 election. 

These congressional investigations, where the Dems will have subpoena power, will focus on Trump's finances. Especially his business dealings with the Russians. The Mueller report, which will be submitted within the month, will cover the same ground, and with both dominating the discourse it will make Trump crazier than anything else that might be revealed about him. In a panic he will fire Attorney General Sessions, Rob Rosenstein, and Mueller himself. 

But this will not impede the House's work. The genie is coming out of the bottle and it will lead to Trump's downfall. Giving up the presidency will not stall this momentum much less end the investigations.

Most important, tomorrow's results will be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency and will ultimately lead to his own more personal decline because there is so much corruption and criminality waiting to come to light that even he, as nimble as he has been at surviving (his whole life has been about wiggling out of trouble) will not be able to squirm free. After decades, his luck is finally running out.

This is why people today are voting in record numbers: it is to say to him--"Enough."

Unpacking the polling data later this week we will discover that ten percent of his supporters will have either stayed home, not voted because they can't bare to vote for Democrats, or held their noses and pulled the lever for those who opposed Trump.

Republican survivors in Congress who have been among his enablers will begin to abandon ship. All they care about is having power; and with Trump now a liability, they will cut and run. Even Lindsay Graham will be looking for another macho man to suck up to. 

In addition, there is considerable pent-up schadenfreude that needs to and will be expressed. 

My final prediction is that all will begin to turn out for the best, The system will have been shown to work. That's a very big thing.

July 23, 2018--Mulligan Summit

In golf, when you hit a bad drive and your ball lands in the pond or deep in the woods, if other members of your foursome agree to your taking another shot without penalty and you do, it's called a Mulligan.  

It is named for an actual person, David Bernard Mulligan, who in the late 1920s played at the Winged Foot golf course in Mamaroneck, NY and was notorious for asking frequently for do-overs.

That's what Donald Trump is up to as he moves to schedule in the fall and in Washington another summit with Vladimir Putin. Or maybe at his Mar-a-Lago golf course. Perhaps the only place he can best Putin. But then black-belt Putin might insist on a Judo match. Vince McMahon CEO of the World Wrestling Federation I am certain would be happy to promote that.

Having to endure so much heat for wimping out at the recent Helsinki summit, Trump is not only trying to take back or redefine half the things he said publicly at their joint press conference and subsequently at last Wednesday's Cabinet meeting, ("would" was really "wouldn't" and "no" was "yes"), realizing this was not enough to take him off the hook (even Trump flunkies Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell managed to squeeze out a few choked words of criticism), Trump wants a Mulligan. And Putin will grant him one since he knows he can humiliate Trump again at a second press conference.

But then there is a possible other scenario. To me, a more interesting one--


At the summit, especially when dealing with the press, in WWF terms, Trump gets Putin to take a dive.

The meeting of course would be scheduled for a few weeks before the November midterm election to have maximum impact on the vote. 

The intention would be to pump up Trump's base (assuming they can be pumped up even more than they already are). To do so, Putin would have to agree to let Trump dominate the summit and its aftermath. Particularly to let Trump criticize him in public (Putin, though, would have to be allowed to roll his eyes). This would permit Trump to masquerade as the strongman he isn't and thereby rehabilitate his deflating persona. To shed the lingering image of him as Putin's lapdog.

Why would this be a good thing for Putin? Enough so that he would allow himself to appear to be diminished?

Out of public view (where the real action is) since Putin owns Trump and has been able to pull his strings for years, nothing would change. In fact, Trump's behavior as Putin's double-agent would be strengthened. If his image as commander-in-chief can be shored up, that would make him more effective when doing Putin's bidding. 

A stronger-seeming Trump would be a better cover story. It would make it less apparent that Putin owns him.

So look for Putin to play along. He will agree to come to Washington or Palm Beach in October for a Mulligan-summit and will let Trump strut around for a few days at his "expense."

If this is the emerging plan, I doubt that Trump without medication can pull it off. He will have a script but he is not good at following scripts and so expect the Mar-a-Lago do-over summit to turn out to be another fiasco. 

November 12, 2104--It's the Middle Class, Stupid

I promise--these will be my final comments about last week's midterm election.

My conclusion--It wasn't the economy, stupid, but the middle class.

The two are entwined, of course, but to understand what happened last Tuesday it's important to think about the economy from a middle-class perspective. This is especially true for Democrats if they, in our lifetimes, are to do better at the congressional and gubernatorial levels.

This time around, tactically, in campaigning, Democrat candidates avoided talking about the economy. This was part of their strategy to run as far away as possible from the unpopular president. The little Barack Obama said during the campaign season--again at Democrats' urging--was about how the economy was improving: unemployment was way down, the annual deficit during his first six years was more than cut in half, and the national debt was growing at a significantly reduced rate.

But if you have a job or are working two or three just to stand still, it doesn't excite or motivate you to learn that someone else, who had been unemployed, now has a job. And that person who now has a job might not be that enthusiastic either. He could be working just 20-30 hours a week, receiving no benefits, and earning only a little more than he would receive from various forms of public assistance.

So, very few in real-life situations are impressed economically, emotionally, or politically that the unemployment rate is down a percent or two. In fact, many don't even believe the numbers since they come from the government and are thus suspect. Because it has been a wageless recovery, what they are experiencing is their own precarious, deteriorating financial situation.

If you were in similar circumstances, what would you care about--the unemployment rate or your household's's bottom line?

Even more, who really cares other than theoretically about the deficit and the debt? This may sound cynical but, again, to people struggling with their own debt what's more real--what the government owes or their mortgage?

Those in the middle who are being squeezed hard--with everyone in the family working--may not know the statistics but they do know their earnings for more than a decade have not even kept pace with rising prices. They feel themselves working harder but slipping further and further behind.

And they are right.

The numbers support that perception. Since Barack Obama assumed the presidency, median inflation-adjusted middle-class income has declined. Last year it was $2,100 lower than it was in 2009. And lower still by $3,600 since 2001 when George W. Bush took office.

Blaming the government, especially those seemingly in charge (Obama and the Democrats, not Bush), is one way to deal with what has been happening to the middle class. They thought they were playing by the rules and that the miracle that has been the American economy would reward them or, more likely, their children. That trust has been betrayed.

Not to talk compassionately about this, as the Democrats didn't, not to focus all their progressive energy on the plight of the shrinking middle class, which they also didn't do, is not just politically ruinous but morally questionable.

It is hard to think what to suggest about this sad situation. What policies, what programs beyond empty promises would make a difference for the middle class? What evidence is there that any realistically realizable government policy might make a positive difference? Perhaps a middle-class tax cut? Anything else?

If true, then at least Democrats should take yet another lesson from Bill Clinton--figure out how to notice and feel people's pain and stop telling people what's good for them.