As it now appears that Trump's refusal to recognize the electoral victory of President Elect Biden is likely more grifting and not a true play to stay in office, one wonders why elected Republicans have been so slow to recognize the election results and, moreover, why they didn't immediately repudiate the behavior as a threat to democracy. I confess that for a while I was quite preoccupied with the possibility that this was a real threat and I'm still having trouble letting go of the idea entirely. But at least now I can think forward to other considerations about our national politics.
So, let's begin with a series of questions where we can't know the answer but we can guess at the likelihood of the answer going one way or the other.
1. If there had been no pandemic, would Trump have won reelection?
2. If the Republicans in the Senate had a crystal ball at the time of the Senate Trial after Trump was Impeached in the House about all the events that would follow, not just the pandemic but also how Trump mismanaged it, would they then have taken the trial seriously, allowed additional evidence to be presented, and found Trump guilty, in which case Pence would have become President?
3. Is Trump the likely front runner for the Republican nomination for President in 2024 or will he be out of the picture by then? If not Trump, is Pence the front runner?
4. Will the Republicans become the minority party for some time to come until they find a new message and way to appeal to voters that stands in contrast to the approach taken by the Democrats?
These questions are about the future. I now want to talk about the past and the unholy alliance between Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration. There was an implicit contract of the form:
a) The Republicans in Congress would unequivocally support the President as long as he continued to deliver on his side of the bargain.
b) President Trump, on his part, would deliver the goods - tax cut legislation that benefited the very rich and nominating very Conservative Justices and Judges.
As long as this implicit contract would continue to hold, each party to the contract could otherwise behave as they might. The Republicans in Congress felt secure in appealing to Trump's base, as his loyal supporters, so could count on that in the elections. That the House flipped in the midterm election of 2018 showed there was perhaps some weakness in this underlying assumption that held the contract together. Trump, for his part, could make Twitter posts that were utter fabrications, but in this way speak directly to his base. He could do likewise with his public utterances. The vast majority of the Republicans in Congress acted as if this Orwell-speak was perfectly normal. As most of those messages were meant to fire up the base, this actually served to cement the deal.
In other words, the implicit contract meant there would be no Republican Congressional oversight of President Trump, apart from those items in the contract. Thus, Republicans in Congress share a good deal of the blame for Trump's mismanagement of the pandemic. Of course, there were other enablers. Attorney General Barr is probably the most prominent, especially his turning the Mueller report into a dead letter. So, Republicans in Congress don't bear all the blame. But many of them will continue to be in Congress in 2021. Barr and other enablers currently in the Executive Branch will not.
Then, considering judicial appointments, the stark difference in circumstances between not taking up President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, which happened on March 16, 2016, while taking up President Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, on September 26, 2020, shows there was absolutely no principle that guided these two decisions, at least no principle that Democrats could respect. Instead, this was done for pure expediency. Further, the first of these almost surely had material impact on the Presidential election in 2016, as religious voters who supported Trump turned out in great numbers, because it seemed a possible path to repealing Roe. This has left an incredibly bad taste in the mouths of many Democrats, one that won't improve unless drastic steps are taken. The Democrats demand retribution for these bald acts of hypocrisy. But what drastic steps are there? I wrote about this not too long ago in a post called Honor Among Thieves and Supreme Court Justices. The best possible solution would be for at least one of the three Justices appointed under Trump to step down from their position and do so of their own accord, for the greater good and to unify the country. I don't expect that to happen, but it would work wonders if it did. Absent that, I will speculate on other possible drastic steps below.
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I've always hated it when Conservative pundits would write a piece about what the Democrats should do, as if they knew better. I'm saying that here because I'm going to indulge a little on this in the other direction, a Liberal telling Republicans what they should do. But, mainly, the message is to simply tell the truth, where before there has been nothing but denial. Now I want to note that this can be difficult psychologically for the recipients of the message. So, before doing anything else, I would recommend a collective viewing of The Ox-Bow Incident. This should be coupled with a discussion after the movie. How would they (the movie viewers) have reacted if they were for hanging the men who ended up being hanged in the movie, only to find out later that those men were innocent? Frankly, I don't know that such a discussion would be sufficient preparation and, further, it may seem rather quaint to rely on a movie from 1943 to get the message across. But the reality is that Republican voters have been played and have come to believe things that are patently false. It's easy enough to see this as an outsider. It is no small task to have this change in perspective happen when a true believer.
The elements of what is going on can be considered, by analogy, from the film The Insider, which itself is not about politics. It is about Big Tobacco scamming the public, particularly teenagers who would be the next generation of smokers, by putting additional addictive drugs inside cigarettes, so the effect was much stronger than just the nicotine from the tobacco. This making customers addicted was part of the business model for Big Tobacco. The main character is the chemist who supervised this program then severed from the company, an act of conscience, and afterwards violated the non-disclosure part of his separation agreement by bringing the story to Sixty Minutes, where Big Tobacco was a sponsor. It's a good movie, so I won't give away more of the plot, but even this little bit does foreshadow much of the kind of things the Republican party has been doing.
For the Republicans, the addiction comes in the form of messaging. Perhaps Rush Limbaugh is a good example as his syndicated radio program started in 1988 and is still popular today, so he spans from the end of the Reagan administration to now. There are, of course, other messengers, Trump himself with his Tweets and public announcements, Fox News, etc.
It is not, however, just the messaging. There is something else, in addition. The metaphor is kind of insulting, I admit. But it is worth considering. The recipients of the messaging regard it as truthful, even though it frequently is not and is instead designed to stoke their anger. We should ask why that is. For those long in the Republican fold, this can be explained by confirmation bias - the message is in accord with the recipient's prior held worldview. But for those who weren't always in the Republican fold (or their parents weren't) one should consider first causes, that made allegiances change. I'll mention a few here. There may be others.
The decline in manufacturing and the concomitant weakening of private sector unions is a biggie, from my perspective. The reality is that a blue collar worker has much worse economic opportunities now and there is strong sense that these people were abandoned by the Democratic party. A different but related explanation comes from Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone. Our views about the world were once normalized by the social organizations we belonged to. (Being in a bowling league is an example, but only an example.) As membership in these social organizations declined (because economic opportunity declined) it created a space for messaging that was harsher and more angry. There was receptivity to this messaging to fill the void. And the lack of economic opportunity meant there was already a level of anger in the recipient, so the message would be favorably received.
Let's consider a couple of the bigger lies. One is the anti-science view, particularly that global warming is a hoax. Of course, among the Evangelicals, the anti-science attitude goes back far longer, to viewing Darwin's Theory of Evolution as a threat to the literal meaning of Holy Scripture. But Evangelicals are not the majority of the Republican base. What explains the anti-science view of the others? I conjecture that it is two factors working in concert. One is a lack of critical thinking, in this case the inability to ask the question - who benefits when enough people believe global warming is a hoax? The evident answer is the big energy companies - oil and natural gas - and other producers who don't need to invest in technologies that reduce carbon emissions. Are the CEOs and high level ownership of these companies Democrats or Republicans. A way to investigate whether the Republican base is aware of this argument is to survey them on this simple question: Are they aware of the Koch Family? And then one should follow up by asking whether they are aware that much of the messaging that global warming is a hoax is supported by "research" that the Koch family finances.
The anti-science bias among the Republican base is surely partly responsible for why so many have refused to wear a mask during the pandemic. I'm not sure there was anyone who benefited from this anti-social behavior the way the Kochs have benefited from the viewing global warming as a hoax. But it is clear that Trump played this card, based on a delusion that the economy would perform better if people were out and about rather than hunkered down in their own dwellings, even if that spread Covid-19 at a much greater rate. Will the Republican base see that in retrospect?
The other big lie concerns racism and anti-immigration views. The Republicans have no plans to substantially raise incomes for blue collar workers and provide decent healthcare for them. The attack on Obamacare without a viable alternative makes it clear what's going on. The very rich Republicans don't want to pay the tax that generates the subsidies in Obamacare to make it affordable for ordinary Americans. Being racist and anti-immigration is a way to refocus attention away from the bread and butter issues and use these as a means for generating anger as a visceral reaction. It is a bait and switch, which it seems the Republican base has not caught onto.
This next bit might be entirely wishful thinking on my part. I'm envisaging a post-Trump Republican party, that remains Conservative at its core but embraces honest messaging. It has younger champions, who are devoted to making the lives of those in the Republican base much better, but if that can be done by cooperating with the Democrats that would be much preferred to giving them the finger. And there must be some agreement that we're all in this together. Republicans should not be in a civil war with Democrats.
To get to this, there must be some reckoning with the Trump years, pre-pandemic and then after as well. From a bread and butter point of view, how did members of the base do? From a messaging point of view, did these members realize that Trump lied, early and often? Would they prefer lying in the future or do they now want to hear the truth, even if a good deal of it is grim? And to the extent that the lying goes well beyond Trump, with much of it originating in the media, there needs to be some way to hold a mirror up to the media, where before they were agents of propaganda, but moving forward they too embrace honest messaging, which sometimes means being self-critical within the Republican fold. Drawing a connection between Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump might facilitate this.
Would the Democrats welcome this change in the Republicans? Tactically, it is unclear to me. The Democrats are certainly not a monolith. There is one piece after another to read about divides in the party between the Center and the Left. A Conservative Republican party that had none of the thuggish tendencies of Trump might peel off quite a few Centrist voters among Democrats and Independents as well. But it does seem clear that this would be much better for the country. The parties would be far more representative of the population as a whole. The uber rich would be consigned to a back seat, where they belong.
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I want to get to the title of this post. President Elect Biden has already announced a series of Executive Orders that he will put in place as soon as he takes office. He can do this quickly, without Congressional approval. In contrast, for legislation that gets through Congress, all eyes are on the runoff elections in Georgia, to see who has the majority in the Senate. If the Republicans retain control there, the assumption is that mostly it will be gridlock. Compromise between the two parties to produce legislation that both sides can live with now seems a historical artifact, nothing more. In this sense Congress is broken and it has been broken for some time. Consider this piece by Evan Bayh from ten years ago. And then consider the high volume of those not seeking reelection in the House in 2018. Serving one's country as a representative of the people isn't what it used to be. Indeed, this morning while my wife was tuned into MSNBC, I heard a commentator explain the Republicans who've been reelected for 2021 and who haven't yet recognized Biden's victory are still frightened of Trump, even though he is a lame duck. Being afraid of the backlash from disobeying the current party leader apparently dominates doing the right thing.
Evidently, Trump will want to keep pulling the strings, even after he's out of office. What will stop that from happening? For the sake of argument, let's say the Biden-Harris team has the ability to force Republicans in office out of the current stasis, and to act more as the opposition party has done historically. Further, imagine that the new regime is successful - in ending the pandemic, in reviving the economy, and in creating a sense for all Americans that we're in this together. In this case, surely Trump's power would wane, and the seeds would be set for a new Republican party, as sketched above.
If this actually were possible, a game theoretic approach would describe the situation as a coordination problem. Currently, we're in a low level equilibrium where things are a mess. But a high level equilibrium is possible, if only the beliefs of the players (in this case Republicans in government) recognized that's where we're heading. The tough love in the title then should be considered a kind of shock treatment to get those beliefs to change. It's not merely punishment for past injustices rendered. Although, let's face it, the Biden-Harris team has a real reason to bear a grudge given the present circumstances.
If this makes sense, so far, then the next step is to agree that the tough love would first be applied to individual Republicans, for the purpose of demonstration. And that demonstration must make others serving Republicans in government fearful that they'll soon be the recipients of the same sort of tough love. Idealists, and I normally consider myself in that category, would surely prefer to appeal to the better angels of these government officials. But that clearly won't work. Even before Trump, Republicans in Congress largely acted as in the low level equilibrium. The piece by Evan Bayh linked about argues as much. So there needs to be pressure applied, not just to get out from under Trump's thumb, but also to stop the old form of obstruction and replace it with a collegial opposition party.
I'm sure the reader wants to know what sort of actual punishment will serve as this tough love. I want to know too. The ideal punishment would achieve the goals but then not be recklessly used by future generations, when there is no need for it. I'm not fully conversant with the powers the Commander in Chief can wield, but this much I would be willing to offer. Suppose the then President Biden aggressively exercises some power and perhaps abuses power to a certain extent. (Following Trump would seem to give some license to doing that.) Congress would then want to curb that power and Biden would agree to legislation that does that. Passing the legislation would reign in future abuses, one would hope. Until the legislation is passed, the power would be used quite aggressively.
By means of illustration, suppose the President asserts that for National Security reasons, Senator X must be detained indefinitely and while in detention the Senator will be incommunicado, even with family. Likewise, this will happen for Representative Y, Federal Judge Z, and even one of the Supreme Court Justices appointed under Trump. President Biden will say that others who might potentially receive such punishment can avoid it either by resigning or, in the case of elected officials, by stopping the obstruction and playing the game as it should be played. Then, let this sink in for a while, become the new normal for a certain amount of time, and let the frustration on the Republican side build, while the cooperative behavior in Congress also increases.
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The Republicans have treated the Democrats as if they're wimps. And perhaps they have been wimps in the past, while operating under more normal circumstances. But we're in a crisis now and we're bordering on a coup d'etat that has weakened us a great deal. A wounded animal, facing the possibility of death, fights aggressively for survival. That's what's needed here.
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