The Carpentariat

The Ivy League, reaping billions. As it must. It should. It always will.

Now here's a touch of real-world social justice.

"University endowment managers, long criticized for the fees they pay out to private equity firms and hedge funds, have something to show for it: eye-popping returns. Yesterday, M.I.T. reported that its endowment had gained 56 percent in its most recent fiscal year, which ended in June. Yale also published its latest returns yesterday, with its endowment up 40 percent over the same period, its third-highest annual return since 1970. Dartmouth posted a return of nearly 47 percent. Duke reported a 56 percent return."

Private equity firms. A euphemism for corporate raiding, gotcha-by-the-balls takeovers, brutal layoffs and family destruction.

But hey, I live in the real world. Such is capitalism.

I accept it. Especially since Marx's famed "proletariat" — in America, at least — hasn't the balls their keepers have. Believe me. There is no "worker solidarity." I've worked with American workers in some of the least desirable jobs imaginable. And each one of them would sell out his or her workmates for an extra dime an hour. That's not a criticism. It's an acknowledgement of life.

I taught for one year at an exclusive boy's school. Nearly all the seniors were guaranteed a placement in some Ivy college. Their final year of "education" was, to them, a joke. One senior blurted this to me in class: "So what? So what if we're privileged? That's life, I'd say to the poor. They just weren't lucky." He lacked any intellectual potty training at home. Thus go the generations.

At one "luncheon" sponsored by the boy's school (one never invites others to "lunch," only luncheons will do), a batty old broad sat next to me, brimming with unearned pride in her fucking loser of a son. This, excluding the untimely death of my loved one, was the most painful hour of my life.

Her "boy" was headed to Yale, she preened. "They think differently at Yale, you know," she kindly informed me. I gathered that meant, well, you know. At that very moment my proletarian guts heaved up into my vocal chords and blasted this: "Your son would get a far better education at a state university. PhDs teach there. At an Ivy school, he'll get nothing but TAs."

Her look? Priceless: total unawareness but mostly shock that anyone would dare deflate her privileged hubris.

It has haunted me ever since. Not because I may have hurt that lady's feelings. Fuck her, and fuck her progeny. What haunts me is this: They'll never be fucked. Ever. They'll go right on enjoying the welfare of their privilege. Without even a simple acknowledgement of its unfairness.

But damn am I glad MIT had a 56% return on its investments last year. Lord knows they needed it. One must maintain the image of superiority, you know.

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With my advance thanks, — PM

Women, Virginia, and a path to sobriety

Now here's the sort of news — coming momentarily — that will cause you to pour that pre-sun-over-the-yardarm inebriant, swirl it affectionately in your warm grasp, down it, and pour another. Until your lights go out.

Until today I believed, I thought, I trusted that Democrats at least had the women's vote to count on. Men, having atavistically regressed into their manly caverns of beer, sports, comfortably shared ignorance, prehensile preening and, it follows, love of Trumpism, have become pretty much worthless, by and large.

But not to worry, right? The marching, voting forces of distaff superiority are Democrats' backstop; they'll always have the women, whom even reactionary H.L. Mencken, in 1918, defended as much wiser than men. He was onto something, then. Today's developments, however, are throwing his confessions into doubt. And mine.

What propelled me to write this? What caused me to pour that liberating elixir, so warm, so inviting, so … inevitably insidious? This:

"A raft of evidence suggests that female voters, whose engagement and activism fueled the gains that Democrats made during Donald Trump’s presidency, are increasingly tuning out politics. In one survey conducted in May by the Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, nearly half of women in key swing states said they were 'paying less attention to what happens in Washington' than they were when Trump was in the White House. This was particularly true among female Biden voters who are independents, under the age of 35, college graduates and city dwellers."

You can read the whole, politically and intellectually gut-punching "raft of evidence" here — if, that is, you prefer to escape into chemical rescue. As I have. Commonly the realization of doom comes at some indefinable moment, a gathering of mindful evidence, a slow, rather hazy realization of, "We are fucked." And sometimes it comes like train suddenly heading right at you.

Of course we are fucked, as is so steadily evident, but …

I have written about just how fucked we are over the next several years. Yet I've accompanied those downers with exhortations of massive Democratic pushback. Only in that way can we expose Trumpist-Republican electoral fraudulence, and exhaust the fraudsters. Numbers count.

Now I read that "nearly half" of Democratic women have forfeited the game. They're "tuning out" politics, precisely when their engagement is more important than ever.

I shall leave you with this observation from America's most astute political observer, an early 19th-century traveler — a foreigner — who from his remove could see us most clearly: "Let us therefore have that salutary fear of the future that makes one watchful and combative, and not that sort of soft and idle terror that wears hearts down and enervates them."

I'll recover from my idle, heart-wearing terror and the booze-soaked depression which enervates that which makes my existence possible. That will be of no beneficial consequence, however, if America's women fail to do the same and accept their indispensable place in American politics.

Swizzled I may be, but I remain optimistic. Mencken was right in 1918, I believe, and I believe I was right in my enduring confidence in women's superiority.

Now, the shit's on the line. Get out there, ladies, and vote. In Virginia. And onward. 

It's time. Pass the damn bill.

A peculiar difference between Democrats' far-left wing and Republicans' far-right "wing" is that recklessness from the far left hurts Democrats internally, since the party is essentially moderate and mainstream, while recklessness from the far right actually benefits Republicans internally, since the party at large is far right and thus reckless to its core. The crazier the better.

What's more, Republican condemnations of reckless progressive slogans — e.g., "defund the police" — are used effectively in painting the entire Democratic Party as reckless, while Democratic condemnations of far-right recklessness — e.g., CRT hysteria — actually accrue to Republicans' benefit, since such pointed condemnations merely remind Republican voters rather fondly of what their party is all about, which is craziness galore.

Nowhere are these political axioms more observable than in Virginia's gubernatorial race, pitting former governor Terry McAuliffe against Trumper Glenn Youngkin. After the serial horrors of the Trump administration, this contest should be a cakewalk for Democrat McAuliffe, a certain calamity for Trump-endorsed Youngkin. But it isn't.

Though McAuliffe is leading, polling shows the Trumper within the margin of error in what is now, pretty much, a blue state; it also shows Republican enthusiasm greater than Democrats'. Why? How can this be, given that Youngkin is, at best, Trump lite? And Dems are still seething? The why and how have easy answers. In the past couple years, the Democratic far left handed to Youngkin a perfect Republican platform.

David Leonhardt provides a superb summary:

"Much of [Youngkin's] advertising has focused on a negative message, trying to tie McAuliffe to what Youngkin calls 'the radical left'…. In one Youngkin ad, uniformed sheriffs criticize McAuliffe for accepting endorsements from 'extreme Democrats'….

"It’s a strategy that helped congressional Republican candidates win some seats in 2020. Like them, Youngkin is focusing on slogans and positions that many progressive activists hold, like Defund the Police or Abolish ICE. McAuliffe does not hold some of these positions, nor do most elected Democrats. But at a time when politics have become nationalized, some voters treat each election as a referendum on an entire political party — and they judge the Democratic Party partly based on its high-profile, progressive wing."

As Leonhardt further notes, "Youngkin is essentially trying to run against 'wokeism.'" One of his crazier pledges to voters is that as governor he will ban the teaching of critical race theory in Virginia's public schools, which is not taught in Virginia's public schools. Nevertheless, Youngkin has the state's enthusiastically unhinged raging against a nonexistent "peril." And though the far left's absurdity about defunding police in communities which happen to be crying for more police protection is, mostly, a thing of the past, Republican pols such as Youngkin keep it fresh and alive in more than the dark recesses of the excitable Republican mind.

And so the race is a statistical dead heat (but in an unrigged state, an obvious upside). This is more than a gubernatorial contest, however. It's a probable harbinger of 2022, which is already loaded nationally in Republicans' favor. Democratic strategists nationwide are panicking, and Democrat McAuliffe is, understandably, bordering on a nervous breakdown. "Are we blowing this?" blared a recent campaign email. Generally such tactics are overwrought, but not in this case.

Because another notable reason for McAuliffe's strained nerves stem from what he told supporters in a video call: "We are facing a lot of headwinds from Washington, as you know." Yep, they know it, and we know it. By headwinds, McAuliffe more accurately means a headwind. And that would be the now-recklessly progressive-bottlenecked infrastructure bill, the passage of which might gin up Democratic enthusiasm in the governor's race, which could influence how Democrats fare in 2022. Can they actually get shit done?

"Why haven't we passed this infrastructure bill," asked McAuliffe on CNN Sunday. "It passed the U.S. Senate with 69 votes two months ago. We're tired of the chitty chat up in Washington. Get in a room and get this figured out…. Get this done."

A month ago, this would have been poor politics. If McAuliffe today possessed a comfortable lead, this would be poor politics. But a month has passed, McAuliffe's position is precarious, the Virginia election is but days away, and he and the Democratic Party need a win — now.

Thus I have changed my thinking on the infrastructure bill. There was once good reason to hang its future on a social-climate agreement. But by all accounts, internal party debate on the larger bill is likely to extend beyond November 2.

Yet progressives, in all their politically damaging recklessness — commensurate with party-wounding yelps about police defunding, reckless immigration policies and the like — still say no, no way, we ain't gonna budge. Perhaps Speaker Pelosi can corral them well before Virginia's drop-dead date — Oct. 31 is cutting it awfully close. 

Don't mistake. We need progressives. I like progressives. I share their objectives. Far-reaching visions, though, are rather useless when divorced from the harsh arena of everyday politics.   

Pass the damn bill.

To reject Trumpism, accept it. Furiously.

In "Only one thing can solve Biden’s political dilemma: Donald Trump," Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman ponders a reversal of depleting fortunes. While the column's headline plainly suggests Democrats' salvation, he adds this:

"It’s the job of activists to criticize the administration, to point out elected leaders’ shortcomings, to advocate for change, to fight against compromise and complacency, to always tell those with power they ought to be doing more. But the core of the problem is that expectations for a Democratic president will never be met. The only question is how profound the disappointment will be."

True enough. Yet the core problem with activists is their chronic, in-bred refusal to couch criticisms and calls for action within acknowledgements of immovable, political reality. Just pass the spending bill, they say; just pass a voting-rights bill, they yell; just abolish the filibuster, they demand — as though ungovernable elements not merely within Congress, but within the Democratic Party itself, are somehow negligible. In this way, profound disappointment is a lock.

Waldman warns against notions of successful legislation as a workaround to Democratic woes. Perhaps the most notable example to the contrary: "In the two years after his landslide election in 1964," he notes, "Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, and a slew of programs on the environment, housing and many other needs — then in the 1966 midterms, Democrats lost three Senate seats and 47 House seats." That, merely two years after pundits declared the GOP dead.

What doomed Democrats in '66? A confluence of conservative America's swift resurrection and disgruntlement among the left. There was regional fallout from the Civil Rights and Votings Rights Acts, coupled with racist resistance to social welfare programs; the right's exploitation of urban violence; a precarious economy; and of course the intelligentsia's growing disenchantment with Johnson's mushrooming Vietnam policy. The path from America's high-fiving the president's sociopolitical ambitions to a retreat into comfortable racial attitudes, fearmongered panic and familiar conservatism was a short one. Here too is a lesson never learned, or at least never accepted, by progressive activists.

Waldman, however, misreads reality himself. "If passing worthwhile legislation isn’t going to do much for Biden politically, what could?" he asks. "Only one thing: Trump. Trump is the one force that can animate Democratic voters and get them to the polls…. The more Trump visibly moves toward a possible 2024 run, the better it is for Democrats, who may be able to translate their voters’ loathing for Trump into turnout."

This, as the argument goes, would lead to Democratic triumphs. Others of such bizarre optimism are chiming in. Immediately after reading Waldman, for instance, I encountered Robert Reich: "How Trump Might Save The Democrats."

I find this sort of analysis dumbfounding, and more than a little maddening — not only because of Democrats' historically suggestive apathy during midterm campaigns, but because of Republicans' determined, and so far grandly successful, efforts to sabotage Democratic turnout in both 2022 and the next presidential cycle through voter suppression and, far more effective than that, election rigging and outright theft.

Waldman, as noted, is not alone in his mystifying prognosis. In the last several weeks I have read countless analysts, activists and strategists blindly salute the potential power of Democratic turnout — not as a forceful, long-game countermeasure to Republican fascism, but as both an achievable firewall and even a quick-fix hurrah.

For sure, huge Democratic turnouts are advisable things; they won't soon win a lot of elections, but they are necessary. With a bit of my own ahistorical yearning, I wrote this on Monday: "About the most that rank-and-file Democrats can do is turn out on Election Days like the Red Army confronting Barbarossa, which will make an inescapably transparent farce out of the GOP's rigged and stolen contests. That may not seem like much, but over time the wholesale absence of Republican legitimacy will wear on the party; majority voters will become, shall we say, more and more 'kinetic' in their frustration and fury. Republican pols will also flee to public bathroom stalls — where they just might sit and begin rethinking their electoral strategy."

Neither am I alone in that analysis. Other political analysts — pace Waldman, et al. — are coming around to conceding the dreary unavoidability of Trumpian supremacy for some number of years. We must face the fact that democracy is almost certainly dead; not that it will be dead, but that it's already dead.

Of most recent fact-facing was conservative Michael Gerson's opening paragraph: "It is increasingly evident that the nightmare prospect of American politics — unified Republican control of the federal government in the hands of a reelected, empowered Donald Trump in 2025 — is also the likely outcome." Gerson wrapped his column with this: "Catastrophe is in the front room. The weather forecast includes the apocalypse."

The point of all this is the precise opposite of any intent to inflict mental pain or promote thoughts of resigned helplessness. Its impetus, rather, lies in the need for grueling, long-term, mass motivation to fight the bastards.

We now find ourselves thrust into the Weimar Republic, late 1932. Next year will come Republicans' congressional self-appointments; two years later, the re-enthronement of political evil at the highest level. Most citizens of the aforementioned republic either hailed the bulldozing entrenchment of fascism or simply, though nervously, accepted its permanence. But we're not Germans. We're a multiracial, multicultural, pluralism-oriented society with a history of expanding democracy. The U.S. will suffer no Thousand Year Reich or even a 12-year reich. Not if we don't let it.

Over the next 10 years, I envision a kind of rolling revolution

Democrats once reasonably believed that dramatic, diversifying shifts in U.S. demographics would put the fundamentally racist Republican Party at an insurmountable disadvantage. Population growth in, and its peripheral diaspora from, black and brown communities, especially, would cost Republicans control of the House until that party either withered away or changed its colors, so to speak. This was Democrats' thinking, of which I partook.

Rather than accepting America's ethnic diversification, however, the GOP went to work, capturing statehouses around the country and laboring particularly hard where ethnic diversity could do them the most harm. The party's efforts paid off. It now controls 30 statehouses; Democrats, 18. And state Republican legislators are popping redistricting corks just about everywhere one looks.

In Texas, Democrats were targeting the 23rd congressional district, which Trump won by less than 2 points. In 2022, the district's partisan makeup will be as though he won it by 7. Joe Biden won the 24th district by 5 points; next year, Trump would have won it by 12.

In Indiana, "Republicans eliminated the state’s only competitive seat by shifting it from a district former president Trump won by two percentage points to one he would have won by 16," reports the Washington Post in an excellent survey of what amounts to the nation's kidnapping.

In Ohio, Biden earned 45%+ of the vote, yet Democrats' House representation will likely reflect only 20% of voters — a mere three seats out of 15.

In Arkansas, Republicans have moved "predominantly Black and Hispanic precincts out of the 2nd District," reports the AP, the only district Democrats had a shot at winning. The state's four U.S. reps will remain Republican.

In only four states — Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Texas — Republicans will gain anywhere from six to 13 seats, according to one recent analysis.

Republicans need a mere five seats to flip the House.

(If, down the road, growing ethnic populations in gerrymandered districts become too much for Republicans, the party can always resort to election theft, throwing out "fraudulent" minority votes.) 

In the few states where Democrats control redistricting, well, they're barely worth mentioning; it would be like comparing Irag's military to U.S. firepower in the First Gulf War, or Trump's bank account against a real billionaire's. Nevertheless, Republican pols are whining. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, for instance, complained to the Post that Illinois Democrats' redistricting is a "prime example" — a prime example — of terrible, horrible partisanship. Kinzinger also retweeted fellow Illinois representative Rodney Davis' wounded innocence: "The Dems' sham redistricting process shows they only care about protecting their own political power." As they say, it would be funny, if …

Hence the House appears to be in Republicans' bag. The Senate? Analysts estimate that Democrats will need a 4-point nationwide advantage over the Republican vote — in disadvantaged midterm elections, mind you — just to break even and maintain the majority. In 2024, should historical voting trends hold and Democrats prevail nationwide with 51% of the vote, one respected elections model projects a Democratic loss of seven seats. As Ezra Klein writes: "Sit with that. Senate Democrats could win 51 percent of the two-party vote in the next two elections and end up with only 43 seats in the Senate."

On the presidential level, Republican state legislatures are busy — as parenthetically noted above — enthroning election nullification into law, thereby creating phantom Electors. (Roughly the same will occur in Senate elections. How many believe Georgia will ever return a Democratic senator?) And should a contested, perfectly corrupted presidential election be thrown into the House, Republicans will control that body.

To say that federal legislation banning redistricting and election subversion is urgently needed is a pitiable understatement. Yet Democrats are the victim of their own, "big tent" diversification, which is helpful at times but lethal at others. Any such bans must overcome a Republican filibuster, as you know, but conservative Sen. Joe Manchin — and a few, anachronistic others — are holding onto the myth of bipartisanship über alles, as you also know.

They appear to believe that the Senate today is something like the Senate, say, of the civil rights era, when conscientious Republicans, who no longer exist, would align with Northern Democrats to form a voting majority. Yet even if Manchin et al. were to join rational Democrats in abolishing the filibuster as it pertains to voting rights alone, Manchin would present himself as a one-man, internal filibuster against the most vitally needed reforms.

The upshot of all this? Republicans are almost certain to acquire congressional and presidential control for the next 10 years. For those of you seeking happy news, I wish I had some. But facts are facts, reality is reality, and Republicans' imminent dominance is what it is.

As I see it, about the most that rank-and-file Democrats can do is turn out on Election Days like the Red Army confronting Barbarossa, which will make an inescapably transparent farce out of the GOP's rigged and stolen contests. That may not seem like much, but over time the wholesale absence of Republican legitimacy will wear on the party; majority voters will become, shall we say, more and more "kinetic" in their frustration and fury. Republican pols will also flee to public bathroom stalls — where they just might sit and begin rethinking their electoral strategy.

Because at some point over the next 10 years, the personified shifts in U.S. demographics won't take it anymore. Trump's secret police will do him little good against 100 million really pissed-off Americans. In short, what I foresee is a kind of rolling, slow-motion revolution — assuming Democrats don't retreat into their infamous apathy, which is the greatest threat: themselves.

A short tale of Twitter

​​​​​Just a quick note on the insidiousness of Twitter.

Under its "abuse" and "harassment" policies, the site banned me Friday night (for 12 hours) for having cracked a humorous, truthful joke upside a Mike Pompeo tweet. He was preening about having met with and spoken before some typically fascist organization, which is to say, a bunch of Republican activists. I tweeted this to Mike: "Just kinda hanging around while hoping the Donald chokes on a cheeseburger, huh?"

Merely a touch of humor enwrapping an undeniable truth. I wished no one harm, I cast no abuse at Pompeo. What I did was reflect on human nature — with Pompeo's sort being especially keen in presidential contenders who aren't particularly fond of frontrunners; those who hope time and, ahem, circumstances might resolve the problem.  

A moment before I tweeted that, I saw this from Sen. Tom Cotton:

Many of Joe Biden's problems are caused by his incompetence.

But not the border crisis.

This attack on our fundamental sovereignty is by design.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) October 8, 2021

The Arkansas senator was directly channeling Tucker Carlson in saying that President Biden is intentionally, even criminally "replacing" white Americans with immigrant people of color. He didn't even bother with a spot of humor, if indeed he possesses that sense. If that's not tweeted abusiveness and harassment, then I really don't know what either one is. Yet, by Twitter's standards, Cotton's tweet was just fine.

Ah, but his was against a public figure and therefore fair game, you say. To which I would answer, so was mine.

Social media is one bizarre place. 

Essential reading. Really.

The NY Times' Ezra Klein has a lengthy piece on one Mr. Shor, an uncannily accurate election analyst for the 2012 Obama campaign and now a pain in the butt for Democratic strategists. If you haven't a Times subscription and are therefore limited to a few articles each month, make this one of them: "David Shor Is Telling Democrats What They Don't Want to Hear."

The two of them, Klein and Shor, consume much of the post with a discussion of how "screwed" Democrats are in future Senate elections. The reasons for this seemingly unavoidable development are well known — namely, the Senate's overrepresentation of rural states — hence you can skip through most of this analysis without losing the article's more important upshot. Which is this, in Shor's estimation:

"Democrats are sleepwalking into catastrophe…. They need to internalize that they are not like and do not understand the voters they need to win over. Swing voters in these states are not liberals, are not woke and do not see the world in the way that the people who staff and donate to Democratic campaigns do."

This, as I see it, along with Shor, is what's killing Democrats at the polling booth. The party's progressive caucus in Congress and its army of likeminded columnists and commentators are braying about the hard left turn that Democrats have taken, which will accomplish nothing more than the alienation of millions of centrist voters who, obviously, don't identify leftward. They may agree on the desirability of various elements of the social spending package now under debate, but when leftist ideological labels are hurled at them, they recoil. They also remember — on Election Day.

As self-wounding as party's the "liberal" (read: progressive) emphasis is, Democrats' identity politics of insistent wokeness is just downright mind-boggling. Although it isn't, wokeness is perceived by much of the Great (or unGreat) American Middle — that particular voting bloc that swings elections — as minority favoritism by government, a favoritism which unfairly excludes the rights and, dare I say, social standing of white voters. Wokeness is a complex construction, but national elections hinge not on complexities.

As Shor puts it: "Traditional diversity and inclusion is super important, but polling is one of the only tools we have to step outside of ourselves and see what the median voter actually thinks." And what they "think" about wokeness is this: They don't matter to Democrats. The party's strategists, however, are "trapped in an echo chamber of Twitter activists and woke staff members." They are, simply put, unwoke politically.

I would add one other Democratic pitfall to Shor's complaints: triumphalism. Give progressives so much as one, temporary victory, such as Jayapal & Co.'s House delay of the infrastructure bill, and they promptly declare their absolute dominance within the party, now and forever. This is junior-high pom-pom stuff; it's embarrassing, and electorally harmful nationwide.

One minor case in point. Contrary to so much recent news analysis, Senate Democrats just handed Mitch McConnell a major victory on the debt ceiling. They allowed him to scurry out from under thunderous disapprobation of his hardest-line stance, which he can now resume. Democrats are back where they started — facing, soon, another debt ceiling crisis. They say they'll hold the line in December. OK, but why didn't they hold the line in October? Nevertheless, upon leaving a closed meeting on Wednesday, progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren bragged: "McConnell caved." He did no such thing, but progressive triumphalism was just too inviting for Warren.

At any rate, Klein's discussion with Shor is a must-read for anyone interested in, perplexed by, or simply disgusted with Democrats' strategic paths, which, again, have been excessively marinated in the isolated wants of "Twitter activists and woke staff members."

Here is one thing Republicans get cynically, opportunistically right every election season: The Democratic Party, in its liberal or progressive self-celebratory conceit, is out of touch with Middle America. (Joe Biden won because he was in touch.) That includes, by the way, growing segments of the black and Hispanic community, which prefer to think of themselves as just plain Americans, and not as distinct cultural conclaves and political pawns.

Should you disagree with me and Shor — I, for one, happen to disagree with some of Shor's recommendations — take heart, for Klein provides counterarguments. His is a fair-minded, balanced presentation of Democrats' strategic options. And it's a debate going largely, tragically undebated.

On the debt ceiling, and compromising with the Devil

For years ​​​​​I have studied politics as a philosophical abstraction and followed its on-the-ground realities. I confess that nearly all my learning has come to naught. I've accepted that it's pretty much useless. For spectacular surprises still lie in wait — surprises that ordinarily would be the reaction of only the politically unschooled.

Which is to say, I find myself astonished that as Republicans have chosen to dispense with every political norm, tradition and rule of engagement, Democrats still insist on observing once-commonly expected political behaviors.

Republicans have thrown American politics into a new age of no rules; they countenance no decency, entertain no acts of perceptible reason, embrace no generally acceptable conduct of yesteryear. They have become not a political party but a feral throng of sociopathic cutthroats, endorsing any means to an end.

Meanwhile, Democrats consult rulebooks, history books and Miss Manners guides to proper political etiquette. They bring not even knives to gunfights. They toss pillows as the unAmerican opposition fires off bazookas and hurls grenades.

Republicans thus come across to weak-minded voters — a disturbing plurality if not the electorate's majority — as strong willed and abundantly determined to achieve ... whatever it is they've cooked up. Democrats, on the other hand, look like a bunch of Little Lord Fauntleroys, lacking the necessary cajones to confront evil and proceed with accomplishing the good.

Case in point: Yesterday's afternoon news, from Politico: "Senate Democrats are considering a new offer from Republicans that would temporarily raise the debt ceiling into December." Then this, from the Washington Post: "Senate Democrats are planning to accept a short-term debt limit increase offer from Mitch McConnell."

Continued the Post: "McConnell will let Democrats raise the debt ceiling into December without filibustering the bill, kicking the can on the fight over the debt." (Note the verb: McConnell will let Democrats raise the ceiling.)

The negotiated deal is being characterized by the media as a victory, albeit a minor one, for Democrats. McConnell blinked, say news outlets. But it was Democrats who blinked. Had they stuck to their guns (or rather, pillows) on an October vote, McConnell would have faced exponentially growing pressure to capitulate. Democrats, however, are granting him a pass.

Moreover, a short-term debt limit increase is a deplorable proposition. The Dems will be subjected to Republican abuse once again, in mere weeks, and the abuse will coincide with another potential government shutdown, since a funding bill was also recently passed only short term.

Continued the Washington Post's story: "But even as [Democrats] accepted part of McConnell’s entreaties, they said they will not bend on rejecting his demands that they use budget reconciliation for a longer debt ceiling increase."

Who believes that? Who, any longer, possesses any faith in a Democratic insistence, ultimatum or imperative? Whom do I believe? This guy, as quoted by the Post: "Chuck Schumer is going to surrender" — Sen. Ted Cruz, tribal chieftain and perfect Republican politician.

The rules of American politics haven't just changed. They have been washed away. Congressional Republicans have adopted the tactics of brownshirted street brawlers, with, accordingly, the will to power as their only navigator. They pose no less a threat to the United States than did the original brownshirts. Their ultimate objective: one-party rule, absent any rules of law.

And yet congressional Democrats are still practicing the politics of Norman Rockwell. Even Norman, however, would tell them that one mustn't cut deals with the Devil — such as agreeing to a short-term ceiling lift. The Dems had Mitch cornered, and they let him go. So he'll be back, and soon.

The politics I studied and learned involved a two-party system. That no longer exists. America has only one party — a party still abiding by the politics I learned — while what used to be the second party has rapidly morphed into a loose aggregation of apolitical criminals, hellbent only on power.

Which they're accomplishing in brawl after brawl, in state legislature after state legislature.

Hence the system — the center, if you will — cannot hold.

The irony is that when the complete breakdown of traditional American politics arrives, we'll credit not Republicans, but those Democrats who persisted in the belief of a still-operable two-party system — in which compromising with the Devil could somehow buy you unshackled time, and long-term survival.

Our children always come first, right?

Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value — Joe Biden

Richest nation in the world, my ass. In some ways, we're the poorest — PM Carpenter

What gerrymandering has done to Texas

If you're looking for a powerful argument against the powerfully destructive practice of gerrymandering — which Republican pols, almost exclusively, control nationwide — look no further than this economic developer's observations about Texas:

"People outside Texas often believe that the state is almost monolithically white, rural and conservative. In fact, less than 40 percent of Texans are white non-Hispanics. For every new white resident that Texas welcomed over the past decade, there have been three Black residents, three Asians, three people with multiracial backgrounds and 11 Hispanics. Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and Houston also have large L.G.B.T.Q. populations."

To boot, Texas's urban centers are hubs of economic innovation, advanced medical care, world-class education institutions and cultural sanity.

And yet, mostly through gerrymandering's suffocating power in terms of political representation and expression, Texas stands proudly as a model of political mossbackism, philistinism, racial intolerance and official misogyny. The state's Republican pols have their citizens in a retrogressive headlock, slicing and dicing the electoral scenery from precincts to congressional districts.

Which takes us back, once again, to the immense challenge that lies before congressional Democrats. Among the assorted reforms in their proposed voting-rights bills is a federal end to gerrymandering. Absent such a ban, Texas — as well as others states with populations increasingly incommensurate with redneck politics — will go right on sending more Louie Gohmerts to Congress, retarding essential state legislation (climate change, anyone?), violating women's rights, discounting minority needs and depriving the poor of accessible healthcare.

Yes, the Dems have a lot on their plate. But, along with a half-dozen other electoral reforms, gerrymandering's total abolition cannot be served as a side dish; not if American citizens, everywhere, are to have the right to true representation.

President Biden should be thanking President Xi

Joe Biden's China policy is getting a rather hefty boost from … China.

Specifically, President Xi, whose youthful studies in chemical engineering, mixed with Beijing's mandatory lessons in Marxist economics, seem to have instilled the notion that industrial societies and the economies they're based on can be manhandled by a supreme leader, with prosperity to follow.

He might want to ask another Joe — the one formerly of the Soviet Union — how that worked out for his motherland.

"Under Mr. Xi, China is reshaping how business works and limiting executives’ power. Long in coming, but rapid in execution, the policies are driven by a desire for state control and self-reliance as well as concerns about debt, inequality and influence by foreign countries, including the United States," reports the NY Times.

"Chinese tech companies are reeling from regulation. Nervous creditors are hoping for a bailout for China’s largest developer. Growing numbers of executives are going to jail…. [Analysts] worry that [Xi's] new policies could hurt competitiveness and favor the inefficient, monopoly-dominated state sector."

I'm all for reducing inequality and ending corporate corruption. Who isn't? Much of Xi's policies, however, appears to be geared more pointedly toward the greater acquisition of his power than bettering Chinese society.

Stalin's heavy-handed economic policies, case in point. Uncle Joe devastated Russia's economic potential ruthlessly and early on, following Lenin's realization that less state control would be the only workable path to a prosperous Russia. Lenin was right, Stalin was wrong.

The Times' article is titled "The End of [China's] 'Gilded Age.'" Obviously comparisons of China today and, as well, the U.S. of the late 19th century are strained at best. But this much can be reasoned out, I think:

Had the U.S. government reined in the immense financial, industrial and, indeed, brutal power of the nation's Rockefellers, Carnegies and Morgans in, say, 1880, America would not have become the global economic dynamo that it was by the 20th-century's early decades.

True socialism is for advanced capitalist societies. Those well matured beyond their pre-industrial and industrial days. Even Marx understood that. China's president, it seems, does not. And President Biden can be thankful.

"Post Lost." A brief remark on Trump and 2024.

I just wrote a 600-word post and lost it in the transfer from word processor to Typepad window. (That hurt.) So you'll have to live without any of my flourishes. 

But, essentially what I wrote about is this: Kellyanne Conway has told the Washington Post that in the matter of Trump and 2024, "there has been a shift from intention to urgency." Most of his other advisers agree that he does, in fact, intend to run.

I noted that some readers will welcome his intent, seeing it as the Republican Party's coup de grâce. Others will fear it, given the electorate's fickleness, as demonstrated so hideously in 2016.  I tend to side with this sentiment; it's just too early to say with any confidence.

Anyway, one thing is for sure. With Trump anywhere in the political picture, America's next three years will persist in deterioration. He is Milton's Satan, plotting the nation's further corruption with God-damned glee.

Trumpers like the evil Democratic Party's policies

The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics polled 1,000 Trump voters and 1,000 Biden voters on a sweeping range of issues and found that among Trumpers, the following majorities at least "somewhat agreed" with:

* raising taxes on incomes in excess of $400,000, 55%

* improving the electric grid, 85%

* funding rural broadband access, 74%

* investing in universal pre-K, 59%

* providing for national paid family leave, 52%

Percentages for Biden voters were, of course, higher. Still, majorities of Trump voters were in rough alignment with much of Biden's agenda.

UV's Center for Politics then offered these statements to Trump respondents: "I have come to view elected officials from the Democratic Party as presenting a clear and present danger to American democracy"; and "You or someone close to you might experience personal loss or suffering due to the effects of Democrats' policies in the future."

To the first statement, 84% of Trump voters said they somewhat agreed, 57% strongly agreed; to the second statement, 82% of Trumpers somewhat agreed, 54% strongly agreed.

Hence, although nearly 60% of Trump voters agreed that, say, investing in Democrats' proposed pre-K education is a rather good idea, virtually all Trump voters — more than four out of five — believed Democratic policies might cause them to suffer.

What UV's polling suggests is what we've known all along: not all Trump voters are buffalo-horned nihilists with severe anti-social tendencies.

The polling also confirms, however, that damn near all Trump voters are clearly disassociative when it comes to connecting Democratic policies with Democratic intent. They can't.

They can't because of their party's leaders, activists, columnists, on-air commentators and, most of all, Trump — a rancid bevy of propagandistic hoodlums assuring the base of Democrats' vast evil. Yet nothing will change, since nine out of 10 Trump voters also believe that the "mainstream media" — outlets from which Trump voters could discover the real world — "might as well be a part of the Democratic Party."

Which means there is no way to get to them — to educate or persuade — bubbled, as they are, listening only to their party's leaders, activists, columnists, on-air commentators and, most of all, Trump.

"Any future for the Democratic Party runs through a resurgent progressive wing." Which future?

It's like helplessly watching a friend slide toward suicide. You know his thinking is distorted, detached from most reality and mortally self-destructive. But your intercessions are useless; he "knows" what he knows, and his knowing will not end well.

Mary Small, of the progressive Indivisible Project: "It’s undeniable that this is a new era of progressive power."

Max Burns, progressive writer for the Daily Beast: "The progressives’ successful power play indicates something more fundamental about how quickly the Democratic Party is shifting left…. Any future for the Democratic Party runs through a resurgent progressive wing…. [Our] confidence is deserved…,"

since polling has shown a majority — 52% — in favor of a full, social-spending package, observes Burns.

Joy Reid, too, opened her MSNBC program last night with sonorous pronunciamentos of progressives as the now-"dominant" wing of the Democratic Party, also citing the aforementioned polling as proof of having the American electorate on progressives' side.

Of course 52% of respondents favored the full spending package. You offer the public "free" stuff and they'll jump on it like Chuck Schumer on a TV camera, particularly when the free stuff for them will be paid for by somebody else. I'm only surprised the majority isn't 92%.

Don't get me wrong. I too support $2 trillion, or better yet $3.5 trillion, or best, $6 or $7 trillion in a social- and climate-spending bill. Just like the 52%. I prefer as well a return to Eisenhower-era tax brackets. The 52% would agree. None of this, however, means that a happy "future for the Democratic Party runs through a resurgent progressive wing."

Reality, simply put, is that the American electorate remains centrist, imbued with significant segments of the center-left and center-right. The electorate has not shifted left in tandem with the Democratic Party's progressive wing. Polling on the spending bill means nothing in relation to voting in the midterms.

There, the Democratic majority in Congress will hang on the fate of the moderates. The Times also notes this reality, putting it simply: "Liberal lawmakers, who by and large come from safe Democratic districts, have the political luxury of holding firm, but they will now face the ire of Democrats in swing districts who gave their party its slender majorities in the House and Senate … [and] are at the highest risk of losing their seats in the midterm elections" (emphasis mine).

As if Democrats hadn't enough headwinds in 2022, they'll now face the suicidal prospect of fielding a "progressive party" before a centrist electorate, with Republicans eagerly reminding voters that the progressives themselves have announced that they are in charge.

Congressional progressives, along with (possibly) a few surviving moderates, will then assume the minority position in both chambers. Because progressives not only asked for it, they demanded it — "knowing" what they knew, which was delusional and suicidal.

It's no wonder non-ideological independents now constitute the largest "party" in the U.S. That Great American Middle is there for Democrats' taking — especially given the right's increasing extremism — and progressives, wearing blinders, are robbing them of it.