So today Nancy Pelosi is saying that the president's defeat this year is an "absolute imperative for our country." Really?
I mean, is President Trump that far off the mid-point of anything, from political position to behavior to use and abuse of power? Is the country going to go off a cliff if the president is reelected?
See, I believe that the Democrats' problem is not so much that they have spent 4 years trying to pitch Donald Trump into the La Brea tar pits, by fair means or foul. I believe they have a bigger problem than that.
The problem is that their political world-view and program is reaching its sell-by date.
I think it was reasonable, back in the 19th century, to Do Something about the workers. After all, based on the record of the previous couple of centuries, the situation of the lower orders was extremely precarious. Agricultural workers in Britain had been starving ever since Henry VIII disarmed the nobles and the nobles discharged the excess peasants who were no longer useful as the soldiers in their private armies. But it turned out that, with or without social legislation, the workers did fine.
I think it was reasonable, back in the mid 20th century to Do Something about Jim Crow in the South. Of course, the whole point of Jim Crow was to force private actors to discriminate against Negroes, to force the railroads to have white-only and black-only railroad cars. Or, in the Davis-Bacon Act of the 1930s, to stop employers from bringing cheap black labor Up North. But, as we have seen since the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, the real problem is racist activists and liberals trying to divide the country by race and sex.
The point is that the economy is so compicated that any government effort to set it to rights is likely to be a cure that is worse than the disease.
However, I grant that all politics is a game of loot and plunder, offering the voters something for nothing. The mere fact of grocery store specials shows how ingrained free stuff is in the human psyche.
The problem is that the game of loot and plunder is running out of good options. And the truth is that the money has been wasted. Put it this way. Social Security is baloney. People will naturally save for their old age. So that's a trillion dollars a year in government expenditure wasted. Ditto Medicare. Daughters will naturally look after the health care of their end-of-life parents. To spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on Medicare is a waste.
When I say Social Security and Medicare are a waste, what I mean is that they have taken two trillion dollars a year out of the something-for-nothing treasure chest. Imagine that the politicians had instead enacted mandatory private savings programs where everyone was forced to save their own money for retirement and end-of-life health care, with a few subsidies thrown in for luck. Think of the money and the promises that politicians could swing around today with the two trillionen released from the cold dead hands of the middle-class elderly like me.
So I think that the Democrats' present enthusiasm for Medicare-for-All and complete overturning of the economy with the Green New Deal and College-for-All and debt forgiveness for all the foolish virgins that accumilated $100,000 in college debt represents a kind of buying panic you see at the top of a stock bull market, or the selling panic you see at the bottom of a bear market. It is equivalent to the Reign of Terror and Virtue at the end of a revolutionary movement. Or the end-of-the-world prophecies of a religious cult. It is the climactic frenzy before the return to normal.
And now, I read, the Democrats are planning to take their California attack on the gig economy national. Look, I get the idea that everyone should have a full-time job with benefits. Only, suppose you just want a temporary job to make a little extra money, and you don't need the benefits because you got them at your day job. Or your husband's day job. Or you are a college student and you get health benefits at school. Yeah, I get that the unions want to force everyone into the full-time-job-with-benefits model because it benefits unions. Look. The labor market is complicated, especially now that, per progressive demand, it is no longer just male-breadwinner-working-in-factory-for-40-hour-week. There is just no way that beneficial legislation is going to magically come up with a perfect labor market that is just and fair to all parties.
But think of the Democratic problem. Their political coalition is an over-under coalition of the Gentry and the Clients, the educated creative class using the subordinate marginal lower class to provide them with meaning and power. So their political program will always be offering some sort of handout to their subordinate followers while also, behind the curtain, doling out goodies to the upper-class Gentry.
But suppose the majority of Americans are Commoners. They want protection from life's vicissitudes but not exactly in the form of a cradle-to-grave array of "benefits." In other words, Commoners respond more to President Trump's politics at his recent State of the Union speech which offers limitied goodies to make people feel good. But the basic economic policy is a growing economy in which all Commoners can participate and take a certain pride in their individual achievements in job, family, their home, their car and their 401k and being a citizen in the Greatest Nation Ever.
If the subordinate Client group is becoming smaller relative to a larger Commoner group then our Democratic friends would find that, as they press the old familiar buttons that won elections for them with the votes of the Clients for the last century, something was wrong. The candy wasn't dropping into the tray as it should.
And you would expect them to start becoming desperate, starting to see Reds under the bed and conspiracies everywhere. Maybe they would even feel that the only thing to do is impeach the president and remove him from office in order to restore the old regime that we all knew and loved.
See, the logic of the good old regime was that, after you had satisfied the worthy workers and women and minorities on their plantations, then the noble elite could implement their vision of a global world order for and by the educated and evolved elite. Obviously. We are the smart ones; we are the people that freed the slaves, liberated the women, and stopped the homophobes and gay baiters cold. We are the good guys. Our vision for the world is the just and the only vision. Everything else is hate and bigotry.
So of course they are beside themselves.
But that is the point of democracy. To give the people the opportunity to give the ruling class a kick in the pants for being totally self-obsessed and blind to the rest of the world. And to get it done without actual bloody revolution.
You can see the point. Suppose the Chinese people are fed up with the corruption and the abuse of their present government and President-for-life Xi. What do they do? There is no opposition party to rally to. There is no national election for president. There is no peaceful way to throw the rascals out.
How I thank God for the genius of our American system, that started with its man-on-a-white-horse saying, OK, I'm done; I'm going home to Mount Vernon. See yer. And then the genius of Madison and Hamilton and the Constitution they cooked up.
Do you think that the Founders thought through what would happen after an aborted impeachment effort like the recently concluded episode, where foolish Democrats evidently thought that just the process would cover President Trump with enough dirt to deny him reelection? How's that going, sports fans? The impression I get is that Trump's supporters are all arrayed, rank on rank, behind him, and the Democrats are right now depressed and demoralized. Hey, Trump! This is just the moment to send the cavalry in to bust up the Democrats' rear.
Now, it is my understanding that the point of wise and seasoned political leaders is that they can see a step or two ahead and can therefore advise their more enthusiastic supporters against foolish actions that might rebound against them.
We haven't seen too much of that lately. I wonder why. It's not as if Nancy Pelosi, 79, and Chuck Schumer, 69, are impulsive young punks too young to have finished their political apprenticeships.
Surely it can't just be that Nancy and Chuck just aren't up to the job?
Could it be that they are too old for the job, and are past their prime?
I mean, is President Trump that far off the mid-point of anything, from political position to behavior to use and abuse of power? Is the country going to go off a cliff if the president is reelected?
See, I believe that the Democrats' problem is not so much that they have spent 4 years trying to pitch Donald Trump into the La Brea tar pits, by fair means or foul. I believe they have a bigger problem than that.
The problem is that their political world-view and program is reaching its sell-by date.
I think it was reasonable, back in the 19th century, to Do Something about the workers. After all, based on the record of the previous couple of centuries, the situation of the lower orders was extremely precarious. Agricultural workers in Britain had been starving ever since Henry VIII disarmed the nobles and the nobles discharged the excess peasants who were no longer useful as the soldiers in their private armies. But it turned out that, with or without social legislation, the workers did fine.
I think it was reasonable, back in the mid 20th century to Do Something about Jim Crow in the South. Of course, the whole point of Jim Crow was to force private actors to discriminate against Negroes, to force the railroads to have white-only and black-only railroad cars. Or, in the Davis-Bacon Act of the 1930s, to stop employers from bringing cheap black labor Up North. But, as we have seen since the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, the real problem is racist activists and liberals trying to divide the country by race and sex.
The point is that the economy is so compicated that any government effort to set it to rights is likely to be a cure that is worse than the disease.
However, I grant that all politics is a game of loot and plunder, offering the voters something for nothing. The mere fact of grocery store specials shows how ingrained free stuff is in the human psyche.
The problem is that the game of loot and plunder is running out of good options. And the truth is that the money has been wasted. Put it this way. Social Security is baloney. People will naturally save for their old age. So that's a trillion dollars a year in government expenditure wasted. Ditto Medicare. Daughters will naturally look after the health care of their end-of-life parents. To spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on Medicare is a waste.
When I say Social Security and Medicare are a waste, what I mean is that they have taken two trillion dollars a year out of the something-for-nothing treasure chest. Imagine that the politicians had instead enacted mandatory private savings programs where everyone was forced to save their own money for retirement and end-of-life health care, with a few subsidies thrown in for luck. Think of the money and the promises that politicians could swing around today with the two trillionen released from the cold dead hands of the middle-class elderly like me.
So I think that the Democrats' present enthusiasm for Medicare-for-All and complete overturning of the economy with the Green New Deal and College-for-All and debt forgiveness for all the foolish virgins that accumilated $100,000 in college debt represents a kind of buying panic you see at the top of a stock bull market, or the selling panic you see at the bottom of a bear market. It is equivalent to the Reign of Terror and Virtue at the end of a revolutionary movement. Or the end-of-the-world prophecies of a religious cult. It is the climactic frenzy before the return to normal.
And now, I read, the Democrats are planning to take their California attack on the gig economy national. Look, I get the idea that everyone should have a full-time job with benefits. Only, suppose you just want a temporary job to make a little extra money, and you don't need the benefits because you got them at your day job. Or your husband's day job. Or you are a college student and you get health benefits at school. Yeah, I get that the unions want to force everyone into the full-time-job-with-benefits model because it benefits unions. Look. The labor market is complicated, especially now that, per progressive demand, it is no longer just male-breadwinner-working-in-factory-for-40-hour-week. There is just no way that beneficial legislation is going to magically come up with a perfect labor market that is just and fair to all parties.
But think of the Democratic problem. Their political coalition is an over-under coalition of the Gentry and the Clients, the educated creative class using the subordinate marginal lower class to provide them with meaning and power. So their political program will always be offering some sort of handout to their subordinate followers while also, behind the curtain, doling out goodies to the upper-class Gentry.
But suppose the majority of Americans are Commoners. They want protection from life's vicissitudes but not exactly in the form of a cradle-to-grave array of "benefits." In other words, Commoners respond more to President Trump's politics at his recent State of the Union speech which offers limitied goodies to make people feel good. But the basic economic policy is a growing economy in which all Commoners can participate and take a certain pride in their individual achievements in job, family, their home, their car and their 401k and being a citizen in the Greatest Nation Ever.
If the subordinate Client group is becoming smaller relative to a larger Commoner group then our Democratic friends would find that, as they press the old familiar buttons that won elections for them with the votes of the Clients for the last century, something was wrong. The candy wasn't dropping into the tray as it should.
And you would expect them to start becoming desperate, starting to see Reds under the bed and conspiracies everywhere. Maybe they would even feel that the only thing to do is impeach the president and remove him from office in order to restore the old regime that we all knew and loved.
See, the logic of the good old regime was that, after you had satisfied the worthy workers and women and minorities on their plantations, then the noble elite could implement their vision of a global world order for and by the educated and evolved elite. Obviously. We are the smart ones; we are the people that freed the slaves, liberated the women, and stopped the homophobes and gay baiters cold. We are the good guys. Our vision for the world is the just and the only vision. Everything else is hate and bigotry.
So of course they are beside themselves.
But that is the point of democracy. To give the people the opportunity to give the ruling class a kick in the pants for being totally self-obsessed and blind to the rest of the world. And to get it done without actual bloody revolution.
You can see the point. Suppose the Chinese people are fed up with the corruption and the abuse of their present government and President-for-life Xi. What do they do? There is no opposition party to rally to. There is no national election for president. There is no peaceful way to throw the rascals out.
How I thank God for the genius of our American system, that started with its man-on-a-white-horse saying, OK, I'm done; I'm going home to Mount Vernon. See yer. And then the genius of Madison and Hamilton and the Constitution they cooked up.
Do you think that the Founders thought through what would happen after an aborted impeachment effort like the recently concluded episode, where foolish Democrats evidently thought that just the process would cover President Trump with enough dirt to deny him reelection? How's that going, sports fans? The impression I get is that Trump's supporters are all arrayed, rank on rank, behind him, and the Democrats are right now depressed and demoralized. Hey, Trump! This is just the moment to send the cavalry in to bust up the Democrats' rear.
Now, it is my understanding that the point of wise and seasoned political leaders is that they can see a step or two ahead and can therefore advise their more enthusiastic supporters against foolish actions that might rebound against them.
We haven't seen too much of that lately. I wonder why. It's not as if Nancy Pelosi, 79, and Chuck Schumer, 69, are impulsive young punks too young to have finished their political apprenticeships.
Surely it can't just be that Nancy and Chuck just aren't up to the job?
Could it be that they are too old for the job, and are past their prime?
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