With the clock ticking down to Election Day and the presidential race too close to call, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what a win by each candidate might look like. Today I’m going to start this two-part limited series with a look at what a Trump presidency might be like. I’ll follow up with an examination of a potential Kamala Harris win later this week.
To begin with, one of Donald Trump’s main campaign promises was to enact across-the-board tariffs on everything imported into the US. Trump’s tariff plan includes 10-20 percent taxes on imports from most countries and a 60-percent tax on goods from China. I mention Trump’s trade taxes first because they would probably constitute one of his first actions as president. Back in 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case brought by steel importers contesting Trump’s earlier tariffs. This allowed a lower court ruling to stand that found Congress had delegated tariff authority to the president. In other words, Trump can impose tariffs on Day One without Congress.
What would happen if he does so? We need only look back to 2018 to see. The targets of US tariffs would impose their own retaliatory tariffs on American exports. Trump would likely respond with yet another round of tariffs and the trade war would escalate out of control.
Tariffs are taxes and taxes are paid by the end user of a product or service. In this case, that means the American consumer. Prices would rise for imported items as well as American goods that use foreign components or raw materials. Another term for rising prices is “inflation.”
American exports would also be hit hard. Under Trump’s original round of tariffs in 2018, American farmers lost export markets for their crops and manufacturers found themselves as a competitive disadvantage to foreign competitors in markets due to extremely high duties on their products. Farm bankruptcies spiked after the onset of the trade war spurring Republicans to enact massive farm subsidies to protect their rural base. Forbes notes that Trump’s payouts to farmers cost more than US nuclear forces.
At the same time, US manufacturing entered a recession before the pandemic and shed thousands of jobs. A big story at the time was the news that Harley Davidson planned to shift production to a European factory to avoid the tariffs that were cutting into their sales. Trump attacked the company for “wav[ing] the white flag” and not being patient. Per The Week, the increase in taxes from six to 31 percent would have equaled 15 percent of the company’s annual profit.
There are other factors at play as well. Some may recall that steel prices fell in 2019 amid the trade war tariff increases. Tariff fears initially led to a buying binge which drove up prices, but then a supply glut combined with softening demand caused the price of steel to drop as the Law of Unintended Consequences kicked in. Stock prices for American steel companies also plummeted. The lesson here is that inflation can be offset by an economic slowdown, and a new trade war may bring about the recession that Republicans have been predicting since 2021.
Trump’s other main platform plank is mass deportations of illegal (and possibly legal) immigrants. A big question in my mind is whether the president has the authority under current law to carry out the massive police sweeps necessary to round up millions of illegals, detain them, and deport them.
Per Axios, Trump has said he intends to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to carry out his deportations, but there are problems with this strategy. The law was invoked to remove foreign nationals during the world wars and the War of 1812, and applies in the event “any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government.”
The obvious problem is that immigration is not an invasion by a foreign country. Even though many anti-immigration activists use the term “invasion,” it isn’t an opinion but a fact that even illegal immigration is not an invasion in the legal sense as Lawfare explained last spring. Calling Immigrants “invaders” is no less redefining a common word than the left redefining “gender” and other terms.
If Trump tries to use the Alien Enemies Act to authorize mass deportations, he will quickly find himself in court as immigrants challenge their removal. This would be a court battle that he would be likely to lose. Don’t forget that there are a great many other immigration laws and rulings, many of which conflict, that the government must comply with aside from just the ones that hardliners want to enforce. That includes laws that allow people who cross the border illegally to ask for asylum.
Assuming Trump was able to push through his deportation plan, it would not be good for the economy. About 20 percentof the US workforce is made up of immigrants and five percent is illegals. Illegals are often employed in difficult jobs that Americans won’t do such as backbreaking farm labor and monotonous factory jobs. Without these workers, American farms and businesses don’t produce their goods, the economy slows, and native-born workers lose their jobs as well.
It gets worse. If the deportations are combined with more restrictions on legal immigration, as Trump did last time, replacement workers will be hard to find and many highly-educated workers who would have immigrated legally to the US will go elsewhere and work for our competitors. When Trump waged war on immigration in his first term, the Canadian economy was a major beneficiary of immigrant tech workers who did not come to work for America.
The only way the immigration problem is going to be fixed long term is with immigration reform. The current laws need to be updated and harmonized. Because of the filibuster, a one-sided immigration bill will not pass. This is why the filibuster will probably not survive a Trump presidency.
During his first term, Trump advocated nuking the filibuster, but as Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell resisted. If Trump becomes president next year, it is likely that Republicans will have a majority in Congress as well. If the GOP controls both houses and the presidency and without Mitch McConnell, the pressure on whoever becomes Majority Leader to kill the filibuster will be intense. Most remaining Republicans have little stomach for opposing Trump’s wishes, and that will be even more true if he wins the election.
Killing the filibuster would open the door to a verifiable cornucopia of Republican dreams. They could enact a national abortion ban, although Trump has said he would veto such a bill, fund a border wall, ban transgender athletes, and do whatever else else could get 51 Senate votes. The only limit would be the courts.
The downside would be electoral blowback and the fact that Democrats could undo everything the next time they were in power. But Trump and MAGA don’t typically take a long view of the consequences of their actions.
On foreign policy, Trump would work to restrict foreign aid with assistance to Ukraine a particular target. The Russo-Ukraine war wouldn’t necessarily end, but Russia would gain an advantage. Other allies would be skeptical of Trump’s backing, especially those involved as adversaries in his trade wars, and American influence would wane.
That might sound appealing to MAGA isolationists, but nature and foreign affairs abhor a vacuum. If American influence declines, someone else is going to gain power. The obvious candidates are China, Russia, and Iran or, if we are lucky, Europe and India.
Finally, Trump is 78 and his age has been showing. There is a decent chance that President Vance would finish the term. That opens up even more uncertainty since Vance is largely devoid of firm beliefs or principles, having made the journey from Trump-is-Hitler to Trump VP pick in eight short years. It’s impossible to know how a man without convictions [Trump at least has 34] would govern.
But what about the even darker side of a Trump presidency? That is harder to predict.
In a second Trump term, The Former Guy would be less inhibited by advisors than in his first term. Former aides and cabinet officials have sounded the alarm over Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. For example, we are told that Trump threatened to use the military against protesters in 2020 but backed down. He has made the a similar threat to use the military against Americans in recent days.
Such a move would likely spark resignations by military commanders, but thus would allow Trump to install commanders that are more loyal, giving him more control. To a president unconcerned with appearances and norms and bent on revenge, there is little to stop abuse, especially if his party backs him in Congress.
In some cases, the courts might intervene but standing to sue is often a problem in cases against government action. Even if courts rule against the president, there is always the possibility that Trump could simply say, “Mr. Roberts has made his decision now let him enforce it.” Keep in mind that enforcement of laws and court orders is the job of the Executive Branch.
A ruling against mass deportations might present such a crisis moment. Deportations are on shaky legal ground but are popular with Trump’s base. He would conceivably have strong Republican support if he ignored an injunction halting his deportation plans.
The American constitutional system is highly dependent on government officials doing what they are supposed to and voluntarily complying with the law. If a president refuses to comply and Congress won’t hold him accountable, there is little recourse. The courts cannot enforce their own decisions. It would be up to the military, law enforcement, and bureaucrats to refuse to obey unlawful presidential orders, and an Administration filled with Trump loyalists would not be inclined to disobey.
If our institutions hold, Trump’s excesses would provoke a backlash. Very quickly, people would remember why they fired Trump in 2020. If Democrats keep becoming more moderate, the Republican Party might become a long-term minority as voters decide not to trust the party of Trump with power in the future. Republicans would definitely see short-term losses in Congress and state governments.
It is impossible to know exactly what abuses of power Trump would commit, but we can be sure that his presidency would usher in a series of constitutional crises and a likely expansion of presidential power. Trump’s first term brought a Supreme Court ruling that presidents are above the law when it comes to their official acts. Trump would be certain to make use of this newfound immunity in new and creative ways.
One fundamental truth of the Trump era is that he consistently behaves worse than anyone thought possible. Few believed that he would refuse to accept election results in 2020 or that he would blatantly steal federal documents by the truckload or build an entire campaign around demonizing immigrants or interfere with FEMA’s disaster relief efforts in a swing state. We found out different in all cases.
It’s impossible to say where a second Trump presidency would lead, but we can say without a doubt that it would take America to a very dark place. If we are lucky, it would be a place from which we could return, but there is no guarantee of that.
The GOP has spent 50 plus years walking America to this moment within our institutions. They have captured not just the federal courts, possibly one or both houses of Congress and may yet retake the Oval Office – they have captured 26 states as well. All along aided and abetted by conservatives like you who, sadly, refused to see the damage they were doing and are still capable of.
Your personal about face has been and remains admirable, but you are in the minority of conservatives – even here – who will publicly walk away from the GOP. Because they all believe a second TFG term cements their control – and you are correct the courts and legislatures will not save us.
Clear eyed analysis is welcome, but it’s too late.Report
As others have written elsewhere, we won’t have the same old excuses as before.
Whenever it was asked why half of America would vote for a dictator, pundits always rushed to exonerate the voters- Perhaps they were confused, they said, or perhaps it was, um, economic anxiety, or maybe those smug coastal liberals, yeah, that’s it.
But no, we need to accept the fact that even with full knowledge, about half of the American voters are willing to sign away democracy and the rule of law.
The optimistic view is that this figure hasn’t grown and isn’t likely to, ever.
Unlike the 1930s, there isn’t any positive case to be made for fascism. None of the Trumpists is even bothering to declare so. Its sole claim is that it will Put Those People In Their Place.
Those people can be transsexuals, independent women, ethnic minorities or immigrants, but the claim is always the same.
Further, fascism can’t “deliver the goods”, that is, it can’t fix potholes or keep the electricity running or clean up after a disaster or bring about prosperity. Because it has no desire to- again, the entire goal, overriding all others, is to Put Those People In Their Place.
We can defeat it, but it is going to be a decades long effort. This is just the beginning, and that holds true no matter how the election turns out.Report
A lot of voters are low information and the vast majority vote on emotion.Report
Yes and?Report
We should obviously lean even more into the whole “Nazi” thing.
“WHO DID YOU VOTE FOR?”, we should ask people. Hey. Who did you vote for? Can you prove it?
We might have secret Trump voters among us even now…Report
Here at OT we know quite well who the TFG voters are going to be. Either because they have fallen silent in the last weeks heading into the election, or because they are just asking questions. It’s no mystery.Report
What is to be done with the people who don’t agree with us about the importance of diversity?
Should we expel them?Report
TFG certainly thinks so.Report
Shoot them in the street, let a Blue State governor pardon us, and then write it off as just another round of a game of iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma?Report
You gonna name names, or are you just gonna waggle your eyebrows and say “you know, THOSE guys, I don’t think I need to go on record as saying who I mean”Report
Koz is a trump voter. Pinky may be because he likes the policy proposals of the presumed administration even though he disdains trump personally. Kristen is. All his ballyhoooing and question asking not with standing I think Jay will be – because again he likes the policies and the free for all they introduce.
frankly I suspect you will be – simply because none of the alternatives are as willing to poke sticks in peoples eyes enough for you.
That good enough?Report
you honestly think Jaybird is going to vote for Trump?
the Jaybird who wrote multiple essays about how traveling to the UAE destroyed his belief in libertarian philosophy?Report
Who spends an awful lot of time writing defenses of a guy he claims to detest, who isn’t a libertarian anyway (And to my knowledge the UAE has never pretended to be a libertarian state).Report
Oh, Phil. I vote for Third Parties that you haven’t even heard of.
It’s important to me that the gap between the Rs and Ds be smaller than the number of 3rd Party votes and I am working to do my part to make that happen.
(Additionally, Maribou has told me in no uncertain terms that I am not allowed to vote for Trump, even if I think it’d be really, really funny. So rest assured that The Birdhouse remains a 3rd Party household. Colorado is a safe state anyway.)Report
If that’s true, you need to stop writing things that read as defenses of his policies and the conditions that brought him here.
Because otherwise, no I don’t believe you.Report
Trying to be honest about the conditions that brought him here is not defending him.
I think you understand this when discussing, say, Hezbollah.Report
Honesty would need to admit that MAGA is motivated primarily by racial and cultural resentment.Report
Yes, we should.
One of the biggest complaints of reactionaries, which you yourself have documented, is they hate not having “good aesthetics”, that is, they are painfully sensitive to being unpopular.
So yes, lets have people tell Grandpa his MAGA vote is why they won’t let the grandkids come to visit, lets make jokes like “There is big garbage patch called Puerto Rico” a violation of HR rules. Lets have young women put “NO MAGAs Please” on their dating profiles.
Lets ostracize and shun anyone who amplified the hateful rhetoric of MAGA. Lets hold people accountable for their words and actions. Judging from how loudly they have yelped before, its a good tactic.Report
Would you say that violence is an appropriate reaction?Report
Violence by whom and in reaction to what?Report
Is it appropriate to Punch Nazis?Report
Yes. We fought an entire war over punching them. They lost.
Your point?Report
Phil, you work for the government. You’re one of the Nazis.Report
Rest assured that should TFG get reelected I will no longer work for the US government. Most likely because I’ll be rounded up and deported as an enemy within.Report
Will you resign before that happens?Report
It is a thing we have discussed in our household.Report
Don’t you think it’s important for people to suffer the consequences of their actions?Report
Right, because a consequence of actually participating in a democracy, much less upholding the existing oath of your employer, should be forceful removal from that employer when the new guy takes over.
I bet you just loved the concept of the spoils system didn’t you?Report
” because a consequence of actually participating in a democracy, much less upholding the existing oath of your employer, should be forceful removal from that employer when the new guy takes over.”
Phil, the question was whether you would resign rather than serve in a Trump Administration.
Would you ensure that the Trump Administration would suffer the consequences of losing your skills and experience?Report
At some point yes. Still working out exactly whether that would be before or after I am told to sign a loyalty oath to him that overrides my oath to the constitution.
Of course when that time comes I have zero faith you would stand up as call them out for that transgression.Report
Don’t you think it’s important to keep innocent people from suffering the consequences of other people’s actions?Report
He doesn’t believe I’m innocent, just as most MAGA don’t believe I’m innocent.Report
The “innocent” I’m referring to are the vast numbers of people who will lose out on competent, non-political government services when the non-political public servants jump or get pushed out.Report
I don’t think DD believes that government is competant or non-political in its approach now – I think he also thinks having the government be run by loyalists will be an honest statement of how government works, though as a libertarian he prefers no government at all apparently.Report
Well, yes, I agree that that’s what DD thinks — or says, since we apparently can’t tell what people think. I was trying to clarify what I said. And think.
A lot of blameless people will suffer the consequences if TFG gets his way.Report
A lot of blameless people already are CJ. They are called women living in red states. They are called undocumented migrants. And yet their suffering is not the great cleanser – yet – of the body politic it should be.Report
We stand in violent agreement.Report
“The “innocent” I’m referring to are the vast numbers of people who will lose out on competent, non-political government services when the non-political public servants jump or get pushed out.”
Just like the Wehrmacht were defending the people of Germany from foreign aggressors, right?Report
I’d say only you would come up with something like that, but I’m no longer sure.Report
Jaybird lives in Colorado Springs. Everyone there works either directly for the feds or for a contractor whose reason for being is the DOD.Report
Yes. Of all cities in the US above some cut-off population number, Colorado Springs is most dependent on the federal government for paychecks. As I recall, around 21% of households are dependent in some part.Report
Is it appropriate for Nazis to shoot Leftist protesters in the street for no reason and then be pardoned by Red State governors?
I mean, I know you think the answer is, “Yes,” which makes the way you’re pressing Mr H on merely throwing hands pretty puzzling.Report
Man, I hope, if Trump wins, there aren’t riots.
That, right there, is a good reason to vote Harris. “Do you want riots? Then vote Harris.”Report
The only people currently threatening violence are TFG’s people – himself included.Report
I’ve long said that we should treat racists the way we treat pedophiles.Report
Elect them to office?Report
Which pedophiles have we elected to office?Report
Here are some Secret Service mileage reimbursement requests.Report
Well let’s sharpen this a bit, and bring it closer to home.
Should an open and admitted Trump voter be allowed to post here at OT?
Should someone be allowed to write jokes about Puerto Rico being a patch of garbage without being banned?Report
I think that open and admitted Trump voters should be allowed to post here and comment here.
Hell, if someone wrote an article talking about why they were planning on voting for Trump, in person, next Tuesday I would positively *SALIVATE* at the opportunity to post it.
Do you think that we should refuse to post such an essay? Like, on principle?
This may be one of those things where we have a legitimate disconnect.
I, *OF COURSE* would publish such an essay (I mean, assuming it wasn’t riddled with typos and obvious errors).
Would you say that we shouldn’t post such an essay?
Do you think that we should prevent Trump voters from commenting? Just on political posts or on non-political posts too? Because I know a Trump voter in real life who does stuff like post in the various Saturday comments about various board games and video games based on board games.Report
Sure we can publish them – as long as they are willing to endure what comes after.Report
FWIW and since I’m technically in charge of such things, the answer is yes to the first – and we have shown that and in fact will be running a Trump endorsement piece along with a anti-Trump piece tomorrow – no to the second – and we have shown that.Report
OK, and jokes about Puerto Rico being garbage?
Jokes about the Holocaust or denialism of same?
Jokes about throwing people from helicopters?
These are all part of the MAGA rhetoric, fully within its mainstream.
If it seems like I’m testing the boundaries, I am, just as they are.Report
This goes to what the point of the MSG rally last night was for MAGA: A giant middle finger to get every “against” to react to the middle finger so all the “for” folks can go “why does a middle finger bother you” without having to consider the specifics of what they are doing, saying, advocating for because “they” are just offended by “us”.
Everyone (barring an accident of some kind) reading, writing, and commenting on OT has two middle fingers. They just aren’t allowed to give those two middle fingers to everyone else on OT. Editorially speaking, of course. Something like 47% of the electorate seems, sadly and tragically for the country, to think otherwise.Report
Again, and I’m deliberately pressing the point here, where are the boundaries? What if Chip “extended a middle finger”?
If someone quoted verbatim what is being said at Trump rallies, would that result in a ban?
I’m testing the Paradox of Intolerance, and asserting that no, there is no value in refusing to erect boundaries.
I’m also asserting that there is no non-hateful case to be made for Trump.
That support for Trump is by definition, an expression of hatred.Report
Karl Popper is not in charge of America’s political discourse. Not sure which way that breaks, to be honest…Report
I’d really like to address my examples above, because they aren’t hypothetical.
There’s a good chance that someone will wander in here and express those same thoughts.
You may not have been around but years ago there was a front pager who got booted for expressions that were far more mild.
I would like to think that if I searched the archives and reposted his words, it would have the same result.
Would it?Report
I think having the pro-Trump endorsement is a massive mistake at this time (or at anytime) but especially after the Nuremberg rally yesterday, I don’t think one can be made in good faith and it will mark OT poorly. There is no way to kid away what the world saw yesterday,
And anti-Trump is different than pro-Harris which is the only way to be really anti-Trump at this time.Report
or you could just tell us.Report
You must be new around here.Report
Eh, I prefer to answer what I see as the follow-up question.
I saw the follow-up question as being some variant of asking me to prove it.Report
or you could play the game we are actually playing and answer the questions we are actually asking instead of trying to predict where we will be three iterations form now and answering that question. Which is invariably wrong.Report
You must be new around here.Report
“So yes, lets have people tell Grandpa his MAGA vote is why they won’t let the grandkids come to visit”
To which he’ll shrug and say “I guess FOX was right, they really do get brainwashed to hate America and their family, such a shame.”Report
So you don’t believe people should suffer the consequences of their actions.
Fascinating.Report
They don’t see these things as consequences, they see it as you being brain-poisoned by the rhetoric of self-hating mentally-ill people. Maybe someday you’ll work the poison out and come back, but in the meantime they don’t plan to let that define their morality.
The father in the story of the Prodigal Son was happy to see his kid again, but it’s not like he was out pounding the pavement looking for him.Report
Only Democrats have agency is getting weaker as national sauce by the day DD.Report
That’s certainly true of some, but social ostracism is incredibly powerful, and none of us are immune.Report
In the end, the wolf eats the boy’s sheep.Report
Things will get very bad for a lot of people and we will see more versions of the cruelty is the point.Report
As long as the outgroup is the only one hurt, MAGAs will not care one wit. Of course the machine will demand an ever growing number of outgroups from an ever shrinking population of the unhurt. But that’s someone else’s problem for another day.Report
Uh-oh! Bezos is living in a bubble and wants his news media to keep propping it up!
Report
And you find this surprising why?Report
I just can’t believe how many people are in a bubble and can’t even tell!Report
Bezos owns the bubble dude.Report
Obedience in advance.Report
Glad to have the OT commentariat reminding us that the biggest danger if Trump is re-elected is angry liberals hurting conservatives’ feelings.Report
Dude that’s probably the weakest troll you have ever written. Go have some more coffee and come back and try again.Report
(He’s on your side, Phil. He’s trying to help you!)Report
Coffee isn’t the issue. Fasting for a blood test is the issue.
Maybe I’ll do better after som fishing food.Report
Trump is such an obvious danger that the Democrats nominated Kamala Harris to stand against him.Report
Yes as always the only people who have any responsibility for Rightward actions are Democrats.Report
“I sent a boat, I sent a helicopter…”Report
“Over the course of two primary elections, I sent more than 20 candidates who aren’t Donald Trump.”Report
Entropy, man. It sucks.
For what it’s worth, *I* am expected to do stuff too. Even though I did stuff yesterday.Report
Yeah but your complaints about Harris are indistinguishable from “wrong rock” kind of stuff.
Like Dems were sufficiently freaked that they took the more-or-less unprecedented step of replacing the incumbent President with the VP but that’s not enough because the VP got heckled at a rally or gave some dodgy answers in an interview.Report
Oh, I was *NEVER* going to be a Harris voter. I’m 3rd Party all the way. Seriously. I talk about this every election.
That doesn’t prevent me from giving my opinion on whether or not getting rid of Biden was a good idea (for example, I thought that getting rid of Biden was a good idea) but my take was “Biden or What’s In The Box?” and “What’s In The Box?” had a chance to win when the other option did not.
As it turns out, Harris was what’s in the box.
She did pretty good, I guess. Better than Biden.
I don’t know that she’ll win, though, and while I don’t *KNOW*, I do suspect that running something like Pritzker/Shapiro would have had a much, much, much better shot at winning.
“You’re just saying that because you like Pritzker and Shapiro!”
Um… it’s more that I like Pritzker’s look. A big ol’ beefy guy, good hair, acceptable level of corruption.
I can think that there are better options than Harris even if she were the only reasonable alternative to Biden.
I understand that the $80 million in the coffers was tied to Harris and, if they picked someone else, that $80 mil would have been tied up.
I understand that the Harris budget for this election was a billion bucks. So that $80 million represents 8% of the budget.
Was that 8% worth it?Report
Yup I was right it’s totally the wrong rock.
Harris is an actual candidate with actual strengths and weaknesses, as any candidate would be.
Against that we have suspicions that Shapiro would be better, say, without considering which of the potential scandals, if any, would have blown up if he’d been the guy.
Nor is there an obvious mechanism for him being the guy, for that matter.
Like nothing in the tradeoffs you outlined indicate a lack of taking Trump seriously as a threat.
(Less familiar with Pritzker than Shapiro which is why I built the argument around him.)Report
“Generic Democrat” would be whupping Trump this election, no doubt.
I think that “Generic Republican” would have a slight edge against “Generic Democrat”, though. Just a slight one.
However, we’re not running Generics, but Actual.
It strikes me that Biden would have lost against Trump. I think that this is uncontroversial…
As such, replacing someone who would have lost against Trump with someone else is a bare minimum thing that you’d have to do if you want to win.
But you’d need to replace Biden with someone who can beat Trump if you want to beat Trump and if you don’t do that, you’re not going to beat Trump.
And I think that that’s uncontroversial too.Report
Because… why? What specific thing about Harris sets her apart from Generic Democrat?
From where I’m sitting her unusual path towards nomination makes her much more closer to Generic Democrat than usual, as it’s the primary where the differentiation happens.Report
What specific thing about Harris sets her apart from Generic Democrat?
Well, there’s the California thing. There’s the “most liberal senator in the senate” thing. There’s the whole “stuff she said when running for president in 2020” thing.
Some believe that there is also a charisma deficit that could be eliminated by a replacement level player.
That’s just off the top of my head. If you want citations for those, I can provide them for all except the whole “charisma” thing which is an intangible.Report
Burying the lede.Report
Name one.
Name one Democrat who you think would be whipping Trump.
Just one name, that’s all.Report
Jesus Christ, Chip.
Are you doing this crap deliberately?Report
So a set of liabilities that can be matched more or less one-for-one with Pritzker’s liabilities, with the exception of the intangible “charisma”, somehow prove that the Dems aren’t taking the threat posed by Trump seriously enough, and thus no one but Democrats will have any responsibility for his victory should it come to pass.
Surely not the people who vote for him, the Republicans who vote for him, the maniac billionaires who’ve bankrolled his candidacy, the media outlets that cover for him out of fear and or greed.
Just a bunch of people in the other party who disagreed with you about which plausible Presidential candidate was better than replacement level.Report
The “Most Liberal Senator in the Senate” thing is baggage that Pritzker doesn’t carry. He could well have said stupid stuff during the Mostly Peaceful Summer but a quick google doesn’t show anything.
Plus the charisma thing.Report
This is delusional barstool fantasy league stuff, like saying the Cleveland Indians could totally beat the Dodgers because [insert arbitrary stats and metrics here].
But don’t think we aren’t seeing the real argument being made here, which Trump himself has demolished.Report
We will see what happens next week, of course.
But if Harris loses, I think that it would be a huge mistake to believe that she was the best that Democrats could have possibly done.
Like they argued in 2016 with Clinton.Report
If the Dodgers lose, it will be a huge mistake to think they were the best the National League could have sent.
This is just the same dishonesty I mentioned, making excuses for Trump voters.Report
Which has to be done so that he can get his preferred policies without tainting his hands by voting for the guy.Report
Doesn’t matter.
Cynical detachment IS the Trumpian ethos, no matter who you vote for.Report
Jaybird is not detached. And only mildly cynical.Report
Yet no one will for a second question whether Trump is the best that the Republicans could have done.
Nobody even did that after he lost in 2020 and tried to steal the election by fraud and force.
Because the key thing, among Republicans, among media both right-wing and non-partisan, and among most commenters here, is to ensure that no one ever thinks that Republicans have a whit of agency.
It’s always the fault of the Democrats for not stopping them.Report
SO we should elect one office holding billionaire over another office holding billionaire because the Democratic office holding billionaire “looks better” to you?
That’s .. something … though his sister would be way better suited to being in elective office.Report
This will probably offend you but I think that government jobs should be done by people who are qualified to do them (if not good at doing them) and, as such, I’m looking at Pritzker as a candidate for the job rather than as a list of traits to check off.Report
His sister was Obama’s Secretary of Commerce. Both qualified and good at her job.
But sure, lets keep electing different flavors of billionaires. That never goes wrong.Report
Well, back to Harris, I guess.
I understand that she was California’s Attorney General.Report
I have no doubt Kamala Harris is qualified to the do the job (nor do I doubt Pritzker is).
However, when I’m looking at candidates to bet on to beat Trump, it’s really not obvious why “Illinois Governor” is anything like a safe bet.
With Shapiro, at least, you have his record of winning and generally sustaining popularity in a key battleground state.
And I’m not sure his potential scandals are more dangerous than Pritzker, what with the whole “Illinois Governor” thing and the “arguably tried to buy an appointment from Rod Blagojevich” thing.
(Yes, I did just spend a few minutes Googling Pritzker to further my crusade for Internet points. Why do you ask?)Report
I’m not saying that Republicans wouldn’t be able to find an attack surface!
I’m saying that he has an acceptable level of corruption.
(And I think that he’s a significantly better candidate than Harris and, as such, would defeat Trump handily rather than leave us in a 50/50 position.)
One thing that bugged me about 2016 is the argument that Hillary Clinton made no mistakes outside of the whole “everybody makes mistakes” set of unavoidable mistakes and that she was the *ONLY* person on the planet that could have run against Donald Trump and she won the popular vote which demonstrates how running her was the only option!
And I guess I have to resign myself to the whole “Harris was the only possible person who could have run against Trump!” thing (assuming next week goes the way I assume it’s going to go).Report
As Donald Rumsfeld once intoned “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you may need or want.”Report
Really I think this gives away too much.
Harris is a pretty good candidate doing a pretty good job.
Against that we have other plausible candidates who might have done better jobs, but the reasons boil down to vibes and alternative but comparable sets of weaknesses.
Because the real point is that Trump supporters are malignant, feral toddlers who evidently cannot control themselves, but we must never, ever says as much.Report
pillsy: Harris is a pretty good candidate doing a pretty good job.
I don’t. Her previous run generated zero nomination votes. In her interviews I hear a lot of non-answers.
Her big strengths are she’s a black woman (apparently it’s their turn) and she’s not Trump.
In an alternative universe, Team Blue would have realized Joe wasn’t up to running much earlier (rather than constantly claiming he’s totally fine) and had an actual nomination process.Report
“I have no doubt Kamala Harris is qualified to the do the job”
Honestly, if she loses, I’d point to this being an issue; more people than the rabid partisan fringes hold this in doubt.
I’m not doubting that you’ve arrived at that conclusion reasonably; I’m just not sure it’s as generalizable as one might think… I think she’s done rather a poor job of closing the deal on being qualified.
She’s running on comparative merit and negative partisanship — and that might just be enough.Report
Those people are being silly for one reason or another.
Less silly than the ones who have decided to support Trump because they’re mad about gas prices, but it’s not really a high bar.Report
I think it’s silly to positively vote for Trump.
I don’t think it’s silly to think Harris isn’t qualified.
Some people will vote for Harris thinking she’s not qualified.
Some people will simply not vote for Harris thinking she’s not qualified.
Not voting for Harris could mean voting for Trump; OR it could mean staying home or maybe voting third party.
I think there are a lot of people voting for Harris who don’t think she’s qualified…I don’t know how many, and I don’t know if they live in the right states. Maybe enough, though.
At this point I’m just plain old curious about how the election unfolds.Report
When people talk about whether Harris is “qualified” to be President, I have to ask: “If that’s your concern, the answer is Donald Trump?”
Now, compared to Johnny Unbeatable, she comes up short, but Johnny Unbeatable is fiction. Is any member of, say, Joe Biden’s cabinet clearly better qualified and electable. (I love Janet Yellen, but come on…) There may well be governors or senators who see a President in the mirror every morning, and may even be very good, but was there any conceivable realistic process that would have thrown up somebody else on short notice without tearing the Party to pieces? Any actual candidate will always pale when compared with hypothetical alternatives, especially if the actual candidate loses.Report
Janet Yellen has been disappointing. As an economist, she definitely knows that some of the things she’s said in service of Biden’s agenda aren’t true. I know he pays her to be an unprincipled hack, but…ugh. I just expected better from her.Report
In terms of qualifications, I think she’s well-qualified by the standards we apply to other (non-incumbent) major party nominees.
In terms of overall candidate quality, she seems to be in the middle of the pack. Not a Reagan or an Obama, but not a Dukakis or a McCain either.
(Like overall I have a positive opinion of McCain but he was a dreadful candidate.)Report
I’ve already covered this in my response.
Basically, a lot (millions?) of people will vote for Harris thinking she’s unqualified. Maybe that will be enough.
But I’m not sure that the appeal to historical inevitability is particularly helpful … we were already treated to the impossibility an early debate exposing Biden; then of replacing Biden, a sitting president; then of Biden the winner of the primaries; then we replaced Biden.
Every bit of this final three months has been a series of we can’t do X because it will tear the party apart; then doing X.Report
Well, you certainly said above what you say now. If that means you’ve “covered it,” well I guess you’ve covered it.Report
This probably goes without saying, but Harris is who the Democrats are now, and there’s no real way around that. That is, the Dems, particularly at the national level, are bland, message-less candidates who can keep the lights on.
In ’08, the Dems nominated a message guy with basically no experience, over a long-time party inside with a lot of experience. He was a president who basically accomplished one (extremely watered-down version of an) on-message legislative priority in 8 years, but did mostly kept the lights on. Since his second term, they’ve nominated three message-less but experienced candidates, the first two times against a message candidate whose experience was questioned (despite having been in government since forever), and at least in ’20, also against a message candidate who was supposed to be similar enough to Bernie in message, and similar enough to Clinton/Biden in experience, to be attractive to both types of Dems (the Dems who want a candidate who has principles and acts on them, and the Dems who want the lights kept on a little else). With the fading of Bernie, and as a result, the fading of his young acolytes, from relevance, and Warren’s pretty much complete disappearance, there isn’t as far as I can tell a message Dem left in the stable. And you see what message-lessness gets you against a candidate who’s all message (you can’t even say he’s experienced after 4 years in the White House, because his White House wasn’t exactly high functioning): at best, very narrow wins, with low voter enthusiasm. Maybe if the Dems lose this time, they’ll consider a message going forward? I doubt it, though, because the most visible voters, and the biggest donors, just want the lights kept on, and they’ve increasingly tried to appeal to conservatives whose primary voting motivation is also keeping the lights on.Report
Isn’t “Democracy and the rule of law are good things” the only message that matters?Report
That’s the most basic part of keeping the lights on, and no, I don’t think that’s all that matters.
Look, putting aside any specific type of message, do you really think you can convince “low information” voters that Trump is a threat to the United States Constitution and the system that rests upon it? For a lot of Americans, that’s not much different than saying he’s a threat to gravity. And for others, the idea that a senile old clown is a serious threat to our system of government calls into question the legitimacy of that system at a fundamental level. In the former case, the urgency looks like manufactured political messaging, and in the latter, there is no clear reason to participate in the system at all, as it’s clearly broken. I see a lot of both in less political fora on the internet.Report
I actually somewhat agree with observation as I observe how many red state citizens want to move on from/memory hole January 6th.
doesn’t mean it’s any less important of a message.Report
A campaign that focuses heavily on January 6 might beat Trump. A campaign that points out January 6 and also says, “Here are the things we’re going to do to help make your life better” almost certainly will.
Actually, I think if Harris beats Trump, which I find increasingly unlikely by the day, the reason will not be January 6 at all, because I think the people who are inclined to be swayed by that were going to vote for Harris anyway, but the one actual positive message I see from her regularly: reproductive freedom is a basic freedom and Harris will work to restore it where it has been lost.Report
My response RE Jan 6 was in answer to this question:
Because the people who want to memory hole Jan 6 and call the perpetrators patriots don’t see him at all this way because they don’t see the system as protecting their interests anymore. Protecting the Constitution is no longer on their radar because it doesn’t serve them because the politicians they voted for didn’t serve them.
Their problem – and Harris’s – is that the information sources they do consume have convinced them that not only does the Constitution no longer matter, the things that have hurt them economically and politically are only from Democrats. They really do believe the GOP has played no part in their current fate, nor do they care to examine that subject. Which is one of the reason that a statistically improving economy holds no sway for them. They are all about the Vibes, and the GOP has spent 50 years telling them about the vibes they want to hear.Report
My n is, I admit, relatively small, maybe two dozen people over the last 4 years, but the non-Trumpists I’ve talked to who aren’t particularly worried about Trump seem to think January 6 was a big nothingburger, and has been completely overblown by liberals. I’m not saying they’re right, just saying that’s what I’ve seen them say. I assume everyone who thinks January 6 was a big deal is voting for Harris, and you can’t get many swing voters or stay-at-homers with it.
My own position on January 6 is more complicated, but I posted on Facebook (I never do politics on Facebook) that day that I thought it would be the first of many acts of right wing violence. So far I’ve been mostly, but not entirely wrong about that, which would probably make it even more difficult for me to argue with the non-concerned swing voters that January 6 shows our democracy is facing an existential threat.Report
I remain highly concerned with the motivated reasoning that is required to get to nothing burger in regard to that event.Report
Let’s try to imagine a person who is moderately conservative in most areas, probably anti-woke, though maybe just in the sense that they feel like wokeness is preachy and goes too far. This person likely thinks both parties are too extreme right now (you hear that a lot, even here), and is distrustful of the divisive rhetoric coming at him (it’s almost certainly a he) from both directions. They saw January 6, and may even have been really disturbed by it that day, but it ended with no real damage done to the process, and MAGA has since that day been pretty tame even though they continue to believe the election was stolen. How do you convince them that January 6 is not a one-off event by sore losers, but actually a fundamental attitude towards Democracy and our Consitutional order held by Trump and his followers? What do you tell them he’ll do, and how do you convince them you’re not just trying to get Harris/Dems elected in saying so?
I think this person is somewhat common. I don’t think Harris has done much to win that person over.Report
That person is ignoring – willfully I submit – TFGs multiple speeches telling us what he would do that would indeed make January 6th look like a peaceful love fest. That person is ignoring – willfully I submit – things like the MSG rally. That person also likely has a medium to poor grasp of history, which only serves to reinforce his blasé’ belief that TFG won’t actually do any of the things he is currently threatening. He also thinks that TFG’s harming of immigrants and Democrats and Liberals is no big deal, because SOMEONE is responsible for the state of things. And he’s not a Democrat or a Liberal or an immigrant so he will be fine.
Frankly there isn’t much to be done about such a person. They won’t choose to expand their news/information sources. They can’t be forced to take him seriously, much less literally. And the significant and steady improvements in the economy aren’t enough to open the conversation because HIS gas is higher then he wants to pay as re his groceries (even though the government is not at all responsible for that). He would have to actually live through the consequences of TFG coming back to power to even be persuadable, and even then he’d likely never admit he was wrong because that’s too big a hit to his ego.
So no January 6th and all it portends can’t sway that voter. Economic reality can’t sway that voter. the end of abortion rights can’t sway that voter.
Out voting him is all we have left.Report
Also too, that person has always existed in every election we have ever had.
The voter we aren’t talking about are the rest, the well informed, engaged and involved voter.
We need to grasp that tens of millions of these people have chosen to support Trump.
They aren’t deluded, mistaken, ignorant or blind. Pretending that “If only the
czarvoters knew!” is a pointless fantasy.ReportI readily submit that more people are voting for Trump because he’s Trump than Harris because she’s Harris (and not just because she’s a Democrat or not Trump). This has been the same in each of the 3 elections he’s been in. It goes without saying that this does not reflect well on the country’s electorate, but many things don’t.Report
I don’t think you’ll convince many people by telling them that they’re willfully ignoring things you want them to pay attention to.Report
You’re assuming that Philip H is trying to convince them of — well, what, exactly? — rather than describing how things are.Report
I’m done coddling them.
The Economy is getting better for nearly all Americans, but every possible statistical measure but your alleged voter thinks Trump will be better for the economy them Harris. That’s willful ignorance aided and abetted by a cowardly media. We learned just today that gas prices will go below $3 nationally in the next week or two, but not one single one of your alleged voters will either notice or change their mind even though their out of pocket is in fact changing.
Neither younor I can convince them of a reality they do not WANT to see, because seeing it means they have made bad choices, and their egos will not allow them to admit their mistakes.Report
“We learned just today that gas prices will go below $3 nationally in the next week or two, but not one single one of your alleged voters will either notice or change their mind even though their out of pocket is in fact changing.”
Well, “as oil prices have sunk due to Israel avoiding attacks on Iran’s oil infrastructure, and seasonal decreases in demand are pushing gasoline lower, as is normal for this time of year.” …..”Those “seasonal forces” include cheaper winter-mix gas as well as the drop in driving that happens over the winter months.”
So, it’s not anything the US gov’t/administration has done, policy wise, but it’s a combo of seasonal reductions and less violence in the middle east. The seasonal part will certainly change when folks do more driving. The middle east, nah. There’s no way anyone who’s paying attention should attribute this to anything but a temporary improvement in gas prices-certainly not a reason to vote for one president candidate or another.
https://jalopnik.com/gas-prices-are-set-to-drop-below-3-1851682974Report
All of which is equally true of gas prices in general.Report
And yet its hung like a milstone around both Biden and Harris’s necks.Report
There is a cartoon I see on the internet from time to time. The cartoon features an anthropomorphic Donkey with a clipboard talking to a young man with a cap featuring a hammer and sickle and an older woman with an NPR tote bag. The younger man says “I will never vote for you.” The older woman says “I will probably vote for you.”
The second panel is the Donkey getting feedback from the woman while the young guy screams “Hey, no fair.”
I find it amazing how many people get the causation of politicians doing things exactly ass backwards. Politicians enact policies wanted by the people who vote for them. They ignore the preferences of people who do not vote for them but so many people in this country (maybe the world) find this relationship of causation so offensive that they refuse to believe it.
So Harris, if elected, will enact policies or try to enact policies, by the Black women and wineparents and others who voted for her and further lefties will just gnash their teeth about mom ignoring them.Report
Those of us further lefties who do vote for her will have a point . .Report
By the way, I am not saying this as a leftist who prefers Bernie-like candidates to non-Bernie-like candidates. I think an ’08 Obama-like candidate would beat Trump by 7 or 8 points this year. If you can create real enthusiasm around the idea that things can be better than they are, and your party’s candidate is the one to help make them better, you will get people to vote for you who otherwise will probably just stay home, or maybe even vote for the other side.Report
This strikes me as being not just unknowable but unfalsifiable.
It’s like saying if only we had a band like the Beatles, they would totally beat Taylor Swift in attendance.
It’s a sideshow fantasy sports league stuff that doesn’t really engage with what is happening or offer us any different way to think about it.Report
Getting into the knowability (and falsifiability) of counterfactuals is a philosophical path we probably don’t need to go down, here. I’m fine with you disagreeing.Report
Harris and Trump are closer to being garage bands than Taylor Swift.Report
I’ve heard the rumor that the Newsome wing of the party is hoping for a sizable crash, setting up for a RETVRN in 2028. Return to what? 1992, Maybe?
I’ve entertained crazier conspiracy theories.Report
Absent citations, I’d say you should have left that one in the closet.Report
Newsom.Report
Dang it, I’m going to keep doing that until Doomsday, I fear.Report
What is the Newsom wing of the party and how do you think it is different than the Harris wing of the party?
Newsom stood by Biden until he said he was not running and then immediately got behind Harris.Report
The more, how do you say, “technocratic” version of the party (think Pelosi and her ilk) versus the part of the party that is more into saying outrageous things for clout because they appeal to the surface-level aesthetics. (No, not the more Populist/Commie part, though there is some overlap between the two.)Report
Man, what that there were commie parts of the Democratic Party.
Though I hope people keep calling Dems commie. I think part of the reason “socialist” and “communist” are such defanged epithets among young voters is that conservatives have been calling normie libs “socialists” and “communists” for decades, and without the Cold War, using the terms for pretty benign ideas and un-radical people renders those terms near meaningless, or even positive.Report
Bernie would have won in 2016.
SMGDMFH.Report
I’m so old that I remember when the Further Left was against Kamala because she was cop and now she is a woke avatar or something.Report
The Further Left thought she was a cop.
The Further Right see her as an empty suit diversity hire who will mouth whatever platitudes required to advance.
These two views aren’t necessarily incompatible.Report
They aren’t necessarily correct either.Report
Red-Brown alliances are always so interesting and yet they never, ever workout.Report
I am not talking about red-brown alliances, and besides, we have Harris with Cheney, which is about as close as mainstream American politics has seen to a red-brown alliance.
Wait, it just struck me: do you think Obama’s movement was a red-brown alliance? Or are you getting red-brown from somewhere else?Report
Does the Further Left have any strategy for getting political power in the United States that doesn’t involve putting the fascists in power first?Report
There is no unified left among leftists interested in gaining power here: there are libertarians (ironically, the classic kind, not the relatively new American kind), various kinds of communists, democratic socialists, social democrats, and so on.
The DSA (an amalgam of pretty much all of those different flavors, but mostly DemSocs and SocDems) wants to run candidates to the Democrats’ left as Democrats, and move the party to the left. They’ve failed, I think, and there’s now active discussion among them about creating a third party, which I consider a tacit admission of defeat and irrelevance. There’s a good 3-part write-up on the DSA movement in Prometheus about the movement’s failure, if you’re interested.
The communists have a handful of different groups of varying sizes (some in the hundreds, some in the 5 digits, nothing bigger than that).
The libertarians are primarily in favor of some kind of dual power strategy (check out Noel Ignatiev’s blog), and work with a lot of mutual aid groups and co-ops. There are libertarians who disagree, but I think they’re in a largely unheard minority within that tendency.
Anyway, take your pick. No matter what the strategy, the active left remains small, probably no more than 100-200 thousand active people, with more hangers-on/fellow travelers. They (and I) remain convinced that there is a lot of latent leftism in the American public more generally, though, so the real question is not how they gain power, but how they awaken that latent leftism. That’s a long conversation.Report
Are we living in the same time line because I remember that Harris generated a great deal of enthusiasm once she became the nominee. Her DNC convention was a smashing success and millions or tens of millions of Americans seemed filled with genuine enthusiasm for her. I doubt that most of them were faking it.Report
Reminder – Her Fox News interview got 3 time the audience size of TFG’s town hall on the same network.Report
There is a lot of misogyny and racism in the people that are discounting Harris from the Right and from the Left.Report
As someone who’s actually encountered someone to your left l, well, ever, here’s what I’m seeing in the group chats and Slacks. The left is divided into 4 groups:
(1) Those who are holding their noses and voting for Harris, even when they live in states she can’t win or can’t lose.
(2) Those who are not going to vote for Harris, because she was a cop, and because she’s part of an administration materially supporting genocide and has been clear she’ll continue to do so in office.
(3) Those who wouldn’t vote for her in solidly red or blue states (because of the cop and genocide things), but will in swing states.
(4) Those who don’t participate in national elections (a lot of these people do vote for local stuff).
I am seeing a lot of conversations with (1) and (3) trying to convince (2) to vote for her, but with little success. Attempts to convince (4) to vote at all are always half-hearted.
I don’t know which part of this, or my saying she’s like Biden and Hilary Clinton, is racist or sexist, but the fact that she’s performing almost exactly like they are against the same opponent seems to back me up there.Report
Given that a year ago and more recently than that she was thought to be an albatross I think she’s done quite well. She’s turned a race that was being lost into a coin flip going into the final stretch. That’s not nothing. And I say all of this as someone who can think of quite a few others I’d have picked over her in a primary.
It’s just a tough, tough anti incumbent environment.Report
We will see. I think that Trump’s rally last night hurt him and there are nearly six million Puerto Ricans in the mainland United States in key swing states that can vote against him. There are a million Puerto Ricans in Florida. Trump needs to win by the electoral college vote in the swing stats and he probably shot himself in the foot.Report
I agree that this is by no means over.Report
Stuff like this really pushes me towards InMD’s broader point of view.
Harris was drawing dead due to broad and deep anti-incumbent backlash and fundamentals[1], but she’s a decent candidate and Trump is a wall-to-wall sh!tshow.
The MSG rally is just the latest iteration of this.
[1] I don’t know if the negative sentiment over the economy is really fundamentals due to how much of it is vibes that don’t come through in actual numbers[2], but it is at least fundamentals-adjacent.
[2] The exception here appears to be for white men without college degrees, who appear to have taken a beating in terms of real wages over the last 4 years,Report
I am not sure she was ever drawing dead. I think a lot of pollsters have their thumbs slightly on the scale for Trump because they are afraid of repeating their mistakes from 2016 and 2020. I’ve heard/read that pollsters also refuse to look at or include new voters like the hundreds of thousands of young people who registered after Harris became the nominee.
Plus I think the aggregators are less good at isolating or discounting the flood the zone polls from Republican partisans than they think they are.Report
I’m really just straight plagiarizing InMD now, but the anti-incumbent sentiment extends well beyond the US.
Strongest counter-argument is the COVID disruptions (especially inflation) hit the US pretty hard but less hard than other countries, but I still think it’s essentially correct that Harris had a high hill to climb and has at least mostly climbed it.
Also Trump is actually an awful candidate and everybody looks at him and says, “Why can’t you beat this awful candidate? You must suck!”
To an extent that’s a plausible argument for 2016 where Clinton had real liabilities and made serious tactical errors in the home stretch.
Still, 2024 is Trump’s to lose and he’s been working overtime at it.Report
Still, 2024 is Trump’s to lose and he’s been working overtime at it.
Yes. Exactly.
I remember reading an article back in January(?) about how Davos expected a Trump victory.
That struck me as waaaaay premature but I suppose that there’s a reason that they’re billionaires and I’m not.Report
Both you and Matt Yglesias. Here’s the first of his 27 takes on the election posted this morning:
The most important context for this race — what broadly distinguishes the family of takes you should pay attention to from those you should dismiss — is what’s happening internationally. The UK Conservatives got thrashed recently. The Canadian Liberals are set to get thrashed soon. The incumbent center-left party lost its first post-Covid election in New Zealand, and the incumbent center-right party lost its first post-Covid elections in Australia. The incumbent coalition in Germany is hideously unpopular. This means that if you’re asking “How did Democrats blow it?” or “Why is this even close?” you’re asking the wrong question.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/27-takes-on-the-2024-electionReport
I think this analysis is lacking, for a variety of reasons — not only are we talking about very different political contexts, but also “post-COVID” is 4 or 5 years, man, that’s not a pattern — but it’s undeniable that in Europe and the U.S., the far right is ascendant, and everywhere but the U.S. so is the far left*, should tell us something about how people see the world before them, and how mainstream political parties, including the Republicans and Democrats here, are handling it, which is to say, pretty much universally poorly.
I suppose in that case, the most interesting question is, by historical analogy, are we in the 17th century, the 19th century, or the early 20th century, or something new entirely? And if it’s the early 20th century, what can we do? Because we’re already failing the “New Categorical Imperative” on a relatively small scale, and the analogy suggests we might soon fail it on a large one.
*Whether the American far left’s brief and weak moment is over, or whether, because unlike in Europe there hasn’t really been a U.S. far left of any note since the 60s, if not since the 40s, it is merely nascent, is something we’ll discover over the coming decade or two, I imagine.Report
He makes 26 other points besides that one.
But on a larger level I think the ongoing crisis across the developed world come down to the three i’s, up from two before the pandemic: immigration, (post) industrial economies, and now add inflation. The mainstream left and right haven’t responded to any of these particularly well anywhere, (though inflation may fall off the list soon) and in a democracy that gets you voted out of office.Report
Just further pondering your point about what era we’re in, I guess I would say something without clear, recent precedent. The reason I say that is that in those past instances you reference politics was still something people did, sometimes out on the street (as opposed to something you tweet), in solidarity with each other, and they kept at it over a relatively long haul. That’s true of right and left. It’s hard for me to envision that when all directions and forces push towards lower solidarity, lower levels of trust.Report
Will the incumbent Republican governors and state legislatures also get thrashed?
Has anyone considered that when people say “incumbent ” what they really mean is “the existing set of norms about racism and misogyny”?Report
Most o the red state incumbents are 2-3 years away from running for reelection. While thrashing them should be a Democratic party goal, it often isn’t.Report
His point about coalition management stuck out to me.
I think the GOP has always had the edge here (being less diverse along most axes, very much including ideology), but since 2016 they’ve been able to outsource it entirely to Trump’s personality cult.Report
I agree. I also think a big but rarely remarked upon asymmetry is that the right is a lot easier to placate with signals and messages (and antics) alone.Report
This is because the central promise of fascism isn’t to bring peace and prosperity, but unending struggle in which they get to play the starring role of heroic defenders against the hated outgroup.
So all the organs of state and culture are turned towards real or symbolic acts of cruelty and punishment of the hated outgroups.
Like forcing companies to dismiss trans spokespeople, or punishing a company for speaking out against the government.
Fixing potholes and raising the living standard isn’t important.
What is important is that there always be a new enemy to be identified and feared and ultimately battled.
Once abortion is outlawed, then contraception becomes the next battleground; Once trans people are properly closeted, then gay people become the hated enemy, and so on in a forever war.Report
“Given that a year ago and more recently than that she was thought to be an albatross I think she’s done quite well.”
I think this is a lot of received wisdom. I have a theory and it is mine that we have not fully adjusted to negative partisanship yet and the full ramifications of what it means. Basically, I don’t think anyone is getting to Bill Clinton or Obama levels of popularity anytime soon or even Bush II before he crashed.
That being said, Harris and Walz can get polling where their favorability is in the black. Something that has alluded Trump and Vance consistentlyReport
I agree, since Trump has a hard floor of around 42% of the electorate.
Even if Johnny Unbeatable stepped up, ran a flawless campaign and gathered every single gettable vote, the election would still be close and depending on the geographic distribution of those votes, possibly lose.Report
58% v 42% puts us into “Reagan vs Mondale” territory (59 v 41). The smaller number might take a state or two.Report
I agree that the case against her became way overstated, and that there’s a certain ‘the party will unite behind anyone minimally acceptable’ factor (a bar Harris easily clears) particularly when the opponent is Trump.
But… her favorables were even worse than Biden’s for most of the administration, her primary run was a total failure, and she never seemed to rise to any of the opportunities she was given as VP. In fairness to her on the last point she seems to have been set up for failure until she kind of disappeared off the radar. But these are all just well established facts, not made up false equivalence with the Republicans or sanewashing crazy right wing talking points.
I’m also saying these things having already cast my ballot for her last week. I’m rooting for her.Report
What’s so very nuts is that the post-mortem for each party is *SO VERY EASY TO WRITE*.
If Trump loses by 3 points, explaining why would be *SIMPLE*. We could rattle off reasons right now!
If Harris loses by 2 points, because 3 points would be absurd, explaining why would be *SIMPLE*. We could rattle off reasons right now!
It’s nuts!Report
I think the stories are probably already written for anything not a surprise blowout.Report
I’ve seen several pollsters say that just because the win probabilities are close doesn’t mean the results will be — if the misses are all in the same direction, it could still be a substantial margin, especially in the EC.Report
Sure, I’ve read the same. Though I feel like the Nate Silvers, etc. have also said the possibility of that is pretty low.Report
I’m not sure I get the argument there–the way polling works I’d expect correlated errors across polls and pollsters. Even without herding, and herding does seem like kind of a real thing.
(Like I definitely agree it’s pretty much a coin flip now. Just commenting about how fat the tails are.)Report
Liberals who were gonna vote for Biden anyway being excited about getting to vote for someone more alive than Biden is great and all, but doesn’t seem to translate into a sustained enthusiasm by anyone, or even a clear advantage in the polls. The excitement for Obama was so extreme that he beat a candidate everyone thought was a shoe in, and then carried that momentum through the general. There’s a qualitative and quantitative difference.Report
Also keeping the lights on is very important and competent management is not a skill that should be underrated.Report
Keeping the lights on is important. Doing nothing but is a kind of conservatism.Report
It’s really useful to remember that Obama was picked by the superdelegates. The actual primary voters went for Clinton. (And I fully believe that they made a deal that she’d get their support in 2016, which is why she didn’t make a huge stink at the time.)Report
Talk about burying the lede!Report
My guess is that the public policy will be broadly bad but, like last time, underwhelm, while the rewarding of total nihilism will be far worse and have much further reaching ramifications this time around.Report
Trump still has no small number of crooks, frauds, and grifters in his orbit, but he seems to have acquired many more shrewd policy entrepreneurs who have spent the Biden years mapping out ways to make the policy impacts much harsher.
Like, they’ll be hindered by the chaos I’m sure, but I expect they’ll be hindered much less than last time.
And none of the people in the inner circle will be there because they’re hoping they can keep the train on the rails by working on the inside.Report
It’s certainly possible they’ll be better at it. And even if the chances of some deep, illiberal paradigm shift or failure of the system to hold up against a Trump engineered constitutional crisis are “only” 10 or 15% it’s insane to me how many Americans are apparently willing to play those odds.
That said, I don’t see Trump becoming any less venal, his charlatans getting better at bending the government for big picture ideological rather than short term self interested purposes, or the Republicans in Congress becoming less fractious. Chances are that in 2026 the House would be taken back by the Democrats, we’d have all manner of massive resistance to anything vaguely associated with Trumpism from day 1, and the courts, while conservative and more charitable than they have any business being, do a dance where they never give Trump quite as much as he demands.
Which isn’t me trying to defend it at all, it will still be deeply damaging. Absolute best case scenario is another 4 years of playing Russian roulette with the gun to our own heads, hoping to somehow get away with it.Report
Most real world dictatorships are filled with incompetent chaos rather than cool and collected people working for nefarious goals like in the movies.Report
There’s rather more evidence that we’ll get more Berlusconi than Mussolini. But I suppose campaigning against Trump as a corrupt Berlusconi comp would’ve taken too much ‘splaining to pull off.Report
A standard we can all sign off on.Report
As if Americans even know who Berlusconi is. Or I guess was.Report
We don’t even know who Mussolini is!Report
One of my favorite internet moments, to this day, was someone posting that photo of Claretta Petacci on Twitter, and Mussolini’s politically-active granddaughter chastising them for being insensitive. Which I mention in order to say, given that she has any role at all in Italian politic, I’m not sure young Italians know who Mussolini was either. That, at least, is a less unpleasant way to think about things than believing that they know exactly who he was.
(Also, dunno how I ended up with that icon; must have used the wrong email address.)Report
Heh, dozens of us are perplexed.Report
There is a small but not completely outside chance Vance tries to 25th Amendment Trump at some pointReport
Something to push for on Day One, I think.
I know that *I* would prefer a President Vance to a President Hitler.Report
A standard we can all sign on to.Report
I don’t know. I can easily imagine someone saying that Vance is even worse than Trump.
We had people saying that about DeSantis, after all.Report
I’m sorry, I thought when you said “Hitler,” you meant Hitler. There actually is an argument for Vance being worse than Trump. And you know what it is.Report
Yeah, but Trump is also currently being called Hitler.
And by the transitive property, if Vance is worse than Trump, then Vance is worse than Hitler.Report
The transitive property works only if something is something, not if it is merely called something. Vance can be (really) worse than Trump without being (really) worse than Hitler. Unless you insist that Trump is, in fact, equivalent to or worse than Hitler. Now maybe you can find someone somewhere who really thinks that. In a country of 300-odd million people, some very odd indeed, there is bound to be somebody, but you’ll have to look very hard and won’t find very much.Report
I don’t know if I can find someone who thinks anything (other than myself, of course).
I can only find people who say things.Report
I know there are lots of people who say things here. I assume that they think things somewhat related to what they say. But maybe not.Report
That is like saying would you rather swallow Cyanide or HemlockReport
Vance is the competent fascist.Report
One of the things that Trumped learned from the last time he was in office was that he needed to have people personally loyal to him rather than the office if he wanted to do everything he wanted. Vance was selected as Vice President because of this realization. So I suspect the first order of business would be a giant purge of the federal bureaucracy and a replacement with loyal cronies. Than there would be a lot of incompetent but still very carrying out of Heritage’s policy preferences along with vast amounts of corruption and Trump’s desire for personal revenge against his enemies. It will be bad, very bad.Report
sure looks that way from the cheap fed seats.Report
It’s clear that Trump can impose some tariffs via executive order. It’s less clear that he can impose the kind of blanket tariffs he’s saying he’s going to impose, as the law in question, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, applies specifically to imports of products which are critical to national defense. It’s very plausible that the Supreme Court would rule against Trump if he tried to use a bad-faith national defense rationale to impose blanket tariffs. Contrary to the what less-hinged Democratic partisans claim, there are definitely at least two Republican appointees on the Supreme Court who are more interested in upholding the law than in doing Trump’s bidding.
Still, I think the best possible outcome here is the ‘nut winning the Presidency while Republicans win enough seats in at least one House of Congress to keep her from implementing the idiotic policies she’s running on.Report
Because House opposition has worked so well against Biden, in terms of actual success for the nation?Report
Some lawyer will reword it for him. He won’t get everything in a blanket. But he’ll get enough, especially against China, that he’ll claim victory.Report
Trumpistan?Report