NO MAN'S LAND

Six years ago, before Donald J. Trump had come down the escalator to announce his candidacy for the American Presidency, I published my book ‘Neither Here nor There, A First-Generation Immigrant in Search of American Exceptionalism’. In the book, I was making an attempt to sort out for myself if my decision, made in 1983, to make America my permanent home, was warranted by everything that had transpired since that time. I chose the title ‘Neither Here nor There’ to indicate that I found myself in somewhat of a no-man’s land, not sure where I belonged, in the Netherlands where I was born, or in America, the country I had picked for the future. My conclusion was that the die had been cast, that with children and grandchildren growing up in America, I had irretrievably relocated my family, but I was still uneasy about the wisdom behind my decision. The core of my hesitation was that the forces pulling America apart were seemingly overwhelming the forces that bind America together.

Now, six years hence, it is time to update the picture. And it is immediately clear that the centrifugal forces that were pulling the fabric of the American society apart have only persisted and intensified. And the man at the top has been the catalyst for this development. There is no doubt that, over the last six years, no one has shaped the state of the nation more than Donald J. Trump. The 45^th President has, from the start of his presidential campaign and with great precision, tuned into the base instincts that, in America, have always lived right under the surface: xenophobia, white supremacy, racism, misogyny, hubris, greed, and resentment. So successful has he been at it, that he has been able to turn his political presence into a veritable cult. From the start it was clear that he had no traditional republican credentials, but he did not need them. It defies credulity, but with his cult following he was able to take over the Grand Old Party, eradicate the republican platform, and submit the republican cadre to subservience with the proverbial carrot (tax cuts and judicial appointments) and stick (purity tests, tweet attacks, and primary challenges).

That dominance has held until the election this year. It is too early to tell how the electoral defeat will affect the cult following, or if it will cause the MAGA cult to lose control of the Republican Party. But, given the 74 million votes collected by Trump, it is clear that the cult will not go away. The only question is if it will lose or gain steam as a result of the election defeat and if it will disassociate itself from the GOP.

The cult demands loyalty and purity and it is telling that Fox News is no longer considered loyal and pure enough to be serving as its mouthpiece, but getting pushed aside in favor of Newsmax and One America News Network. And, on these channels, there is increasing chatter about the desire to walk away from the GOP and create a populist ‘Patriot Party’ as a home for the purists in the MAGA movement.

That will not happen, unless Trump, after having relinquished the power of the White House, wants it to happen. It would be a remarkable turn of events. The ‘Never-Trumpers’ have, until now, struggled in vain to regain, if not control, some measure of influence within the GOP, but now they may be given their party back if, indeed, a mass exit of the MAGA cultists takes place. It would bring about the separation of the kernels from the chaff I wrote about in one of my previous columns https://castnetcorp.blogspot.com/ .

It would be ironic if democracy and effective federal governance would be restored by an act of separation or sedition by the MAGA cult that has fought toe and nail to keep control of the center of power in America. Creation of a populist third party would open the way to a political realignment that would place political power in Congress in the center, where moderate Democrats and Republicans can be expected to represent a workable majority.

This scenario, if it plays out as imagined, would offer the best, and maybe the only, chance for the Biden administration to begin to address the many challenges confronting a nation brought to its knees by the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting economic crisis, and years of political stalemate. It would allow for the extreme elements on the right and the left to be put on the fringes and away from the center of power. This assumes, of course, that Republicans, voters and politicians alike, faced with a choice between the MAGA cult and true republicanism would, in majority, come back to the Grand Old Party. The creation of the ‘Patriot Party’ would force Republican members of Congress to decide to stay with the GOP, to switch allegiance to the new populist party, or to stay in Congress as Independent. It would finally bring clarity to the depth and scope of the MAGA cult and offer a prediction of its staying power. Would the movement go the way of the Know-Nothing Party, the Bull-Moose Party, or, more recently, Ross Perot’s Reform Party and fade away or establish itself for the foreseeable future as the dominant representation of the American right?

Without a split of the Republican Party, the prospects for an effective public governance under the Biden administration are bleak. Mitch McConnell was not successful in his effort and intent to keep the Obama administration to one term (even though he successfully blocked any significant legislative initiative after the 2010 midterm elections), but he is likely to redouble his effort with the Biden administration coming in. And, even in the unlikely event that the Senate will be evenly split at 50/50 for the next two years, the filibuster rule will give him enough legislative power to block any major Biden legislative initiative with respect to voting rights, taxation, immigration, or climate control. Biden would be forced to fall back to governing, as much as he can get away with, by executive order, which is the opposite of what he would want to do and counterproductive to any effort to restore democracy by restoring the proper balance between the powers of the legislative and executive branches of government. 

When I finished my book in 2014, the MAGA cult had yet to surface and, even without it, I felt like being in no-man’s land. The intervening six years have made it clear that America has a large minority of populist, anti-democratic, and semi-fascist fanatics. We can’t be quite sure how large a minority. Let’s pray that it is only a fraction of the 74 million votes received by its leader. They would do the nation a great, be it unintended, favor if they separated themselves by creating their own ‘Patriot Party’ so that we can see who is kernel and who is chaff.

If they don’t and, in the next few years, grow into an even more controlling force than they have been under the Trump regime, I will no longer find myself in no-man’s land. I will find that I have been dropped behind the lines into enemy territory. A place where I never intended or wanted to be.

WINNER TAKES ALL

 It is going to be a very different Thanksgiving in this pandemic year, in part because our government failed us at a time when we needed a strong unified federal response to the most serious attack to our safety and security since Pearl Harbor. A response that never came. Historically, shocks of this kind open the door to changes in the governance systems with an eye on better protecting us from the attacks on our way of life. This time may be no different. Particularly, since it coincides with an election result that puts a new chief executive in place.

This year’s election has spurred a new attention to the peculiarities of our election system, particularly the unique insertion, by our Constitution, of an Electoral College between the votes of the People and the selection of the country’s chief executive. With a race between a Republican (in name only) incumbent and a Democratic challenger, the media reminded us incessantly that the last two Republican Presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, were elected to the Presidency in spite of losing the popular vote to their contenders, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. (Before then, it had happened only 3 times in history). Could it happen again?  It did not, but that does not convincingly settle the argument in favor of staying with the system we have. At issue is the Electoral College, its existence and the way it is chosen.

Here is the rub.

Almost 6 million Californians voted for Trump (versus 11 million for Biden), but they did not get any of California’s 55 electoral delegates.

5.2 million Texans voted for Biden (versus 5.9 million for Trump), but they did not get any of Texas’ 38 electoral delegates.

Almost 3 million New Yorkers voted for Trump (versus 4 million for Biden), but they did not get any of New York’s 29 electoral delegates.

More than 1 million South Carolinians voted for Biden (versus 1.4 million for Trump), but they did not get any of South Carolina’s 9 electoral delegates.

The rub is not with the Electoral College, it is with the ‘Winner takes all’ rule applied to the nomination of Electors by 48 of our 50 States and by the District of Columbia. This rule, that is ordained by the State legislatures, awards all of the State’s electoral votes to the candidate receiving the most popular votes in that State.

This situation is recognized as undesirable by many in the political arena from both sides of the aisle. It has led to a ‘National Popular Vote’ initiative that, since 2006, advocated for an interstate compact to change the ‘Winner takes all’ rule in all of the 50 States and in the District of Columbia. In fact, as a result of this initiative, a National Popular Vote bill has been enacted by 15 States and the District of Columbia and passed at least one legislative chamber in 9 additional States.

Unfortunately, this bill is proposing to remove the rub the wrong way. The bill dictates that the participating States award all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of what the voters of their State decided. It replaces one undesirable system with another. If this interstate compact had been enacted in time for the 2020 election, it would have forced all States to award all of their electoral votes to Joe Biden. Not hard to imagine how that would have gone over in Alabama, the Dakotas, Idaho, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Tennessee!

The merit of an interstate compact as a means to change voting laws as proposed is that it keeps the Electoral College in place, avoiding the need for a Constitutional Amendment, which in the current political constellation would be impossible to achieve. The more reasonable and politically palatable compact would be for the States to agree to split their electoral votes in proportion to the votes received in each State by the top two candidates in the race for the Presidential election.

The ‘Winner takes all’ method of awarding electoral votes is not enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It is enacted by State law in all but two States (Maine and Nebraska, that each split their electoral votes by District). It can therefore be changed by a vote in each of the States’ legislatures. If a system of proportional awarding of electoral votes (‘proportional rule’) had been in place in time for the 2020 elections, Trump would have been awarded 19 electoral votes in California and 12 electoral votes in New York. And Biden would have collected 18 electoral votes in Texas and 4 in South Carolina. The ‘proportional rule’ applied to all 50 States and the District of Columbia would have awarded 281 electoral votes to Biden and 257 to Trump (a fair reflection of the national popular vote of 80 million to Biden and 74 million to Trump).

Another suggestion for improvement of the existing system for the Presidential election comes from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS). In a 2019 report from the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, it proposes to substantially enlarge the House of Representatives through federal legislation to make it (and the Electoral College) more representative of the nation’s population. The AAAS report points out that the framers of the Constitution set a constitutional cap of 30,000 constituents per representative. With population growth, the House grew from the original 65 to 435 members in 1929, when Congress capped its size. As the population has kept growing, the average member of the House now represents 750,000 constituents, 25 times the number set by the framers of the Constitution.

The AAAS report leaves the scale and implementation of the proposed expansion of the House to ‘vigorous discussion and debate’, but points out that the Capitol building could easily accommodate an additional 50 members. One can imagine a House of Representatives with 500 members. The addition of 65 members would make it possible to adjust the number of Representatives for each State to better reflect their population size. The 2020 Census could provide the data that would guide the distribution of the 65 additional seats over the individual States. Since each State has as many Electors as it has members of the U.S. Senate and House, addition of 65 members to the House would automatically increase the number of members of the Electoral College (from 538 to 603), which would increase the number of electoral votes needed to be elected President (from 270 to 302.)

These two steps to adjust the existing Presidential election system to the exigencies of contemporary demography and democracy (replacing the ‘Winner takes all rule’ and expansion of the House of Representatives), would go a long way to silencing or muting the voices clamoring for abolition of the Electoral College.  They would avoid the necessity of another Constitutional Amendment. They would respect the protection of the voice and vote of each State, large or small, in the election of the holder of the highest office in the land. They would diminish the risk of a large discrepancy between the outcome of the national popular vote and the electoral vote. They would stimulate voter participation by giving a Republican in a blue State and a Democrat in a red State a further, compelling, reason to go to the polls and vote. And they would provide incentive for Presidential candidates to campaign in every State of the Union and not forego States where the ‘Winner takes all’ rule takes them out of the race.

The pandemic, the change in occupancy of the White House, and the not before seen contentiousness of the election results, are all good reasons to pause and reflect on the rules and regulations in place in our election system. Do they enhance or hamper a functioning democracy?

It turns out, the ‘Winner takes all’ rule does not make the American voter a winner.

KERNELS AND CHAFF

November 15, 2020

The election that, by many, was termed the most consequential election of our lifetime, is now twelve days behind us and the dust is beginning to settle even as the outgoing president is kicking up a storm by refusing to accept defeat. It shows a mixed picture and it certainly did not comply with mainstream predictions and expectations. Case in point: the prediction that this would be a ‘coattail’ election in which whoever would win the White House would take control of both houses of Congress with him did not come true, on the contrary.

Joe Biden won, but by a much narrower margin of 306 versus 232 Electoral Votes than the polls had made us believe; he failed to take outright control of the Senate, and lost a significant number of seats in the House of Representatives. Note, that the Senate composition will not be decided until January 5 when the State of Georgia will hold a run-off election for 2 open seats and that the race for 13 seats in the House has yet to be decided. At the time of this writing, Republicans hold 50 seats in the Senate, versus 48 for the Democrats and 203 seats in the House, versus 219 for the Democrats.

Republicans picked up one governorship in the State of Montana and flipped control of the New Hampshire legislature by winning a majority in both the New Hampshire House and Senate. Trump won half of the 50 States of the Union, but he lost the popular vote by almost 4% (>5.5 million votes).

The only ‘blue wave’ in this election was the one caused by the order of ballot counting, with in person Election Day votes being counted first, before the mail-in votes were canvassed. Trump overwhelmingly won the Election Day vote, creating late on November 3 and early on November 4, the impression that he was heading for a clear and convincing win, but, as the vote counting progressed, he kept losing his advantage and ultimately lost the battle ground States of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin and, surprisingly, also the States of Georgia and Arizona.

On the other hand, Trump won handily in key other States that had been considered to be ‘in play’: notably Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Ohio.

The bottom line is that Trump and Trumpism did not win the day, but did not get irrevocably repudiated either. In a basketball context a 78-73 score would signal a very close game. And the question is, what can the winning team, this time squeaking by, do to confidently look forward to the next contest?

The answer to that question is very much in the hands of the Republican Party. It has been taken over by Trump and his acolytes, but it has left a large number of traditional Republicans out in the cold. What are they to do in the run up to the next national elections in 2022 and 2024? Will they step in line and close ranks with the Trumpists to maintain party unity? Will they find temporary refuge, at least until the storm passes by, at the Democratic Party, if not as active members then as sympathetic outsiders? Or will they accept the GOP as a cause lost to Trump and seek to establish a new, republican party that can fundamentally change the American political landscape by giving the voters a choice for a centrist alternative for the existing two parties?

Somebody, the Democrats or these Centrists, will have to test the cohesiveness of the Trump voting block in the coming 4 years. Trump has already hinted at his intent to run again in 2024 and it is hard to see how the GOP can deny him the nomination now that he has shown to have the support of 73 million Americans. It is easy to see a repeat of the 2020 primaries in which no serious GOP contender chose to run against him.

It raises the question who will be able to peel the onion and what will it take to pry constituencies away from the defeated 45^th President? In order to break the impasse, someone will have to separate the kernels from the chaff from amongst the Trump supporters. Let Trump have the bigots, the white supremacists, the xenophobes, the fascists, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Boogaloos, but find out what drove all others to vote for him and what it will take to bring them back into the fold of traditional American democracy.

Anecdotally, we know of some of the reasons why people voted for Trump even though they would take exception to being part of the cult that has formed around the style and personality of the 45^th President:

·       Fear of the extreme left tendencies in the platform of the Democratic Party.

·       Rejection of the violence and looting that has accompanied widespread street protests against police brutality.

·       Disdain shown by the ‘establishment’ for the needs and opinions of the less educated.

·       Disregard shown by the ‘establishment’ for the negative effects of globalization on the lower income classes.

·       Desire to shake up the system that has sharply increased inequality in all aspects of life and failed to deliver on the wishes and expectations of the ‘common man’.

Who is going to compete with Trump in addressing these serious and legitimate gripes many Americans, call them the ‘righteous disgruntled’, have with the current political constellation?

In that contest, the Democrats will have to overcome three handicaps. First, unless they miraculously win the 2 open Senate seats in Georgia, they will be paralyzed in Congress to advance any major legislation. Second, because of the lack of legislative progress, they will be hard pressed to keep the support of a majority of Independents and the traditional Republicans. The Democrats can, ironically, be happy to have Trump as the opponent, because any other populist (without the personal flaws and age of Trump) would be much better positioned to capture these constituencies and address the grievances of the ‘righteous disgruntled’. Third, they will have to neutralize the extreme left wing of their party that has scared away all but the most ideologically driven voters.

The traditional Republicans have even larger handicaps to overcome. Since they have virtually no chance recapturing control of the GOP anytime soon, they would have to create a viable third party in the very short time available until the 2022 elections. And build a party on a platform that can attract the ‘righteous disgruntled’, plus a majority of the Independents and some centrist Democrats. As of the time of this writing, we detect no action in this direction. A centrist third party could be the catalyst needed to finally break through the gridlock that has dominated American politics now for decades. The election result of 2020 can be interpreted as showing a reluctance by the voters to give either the Trump GOP or the Democrats full control of the DC machinery. A constellation with a centrist party flanked by a populist, rightwing, GOP and a leftwing Democratic Party would provide the American voters with a much clearer choice, but history has proven to be very averse to backing away from the two-party system.

A reshuffling of constituencies between the parties, like we have seen in the South where, in the second half of the 20^th century, the Republicans have supplanted the Democrats, is much more likely. Unless a centrist third party gets created and takes a hold, the GOP will more and more become the party of the reactionary nationalists, the under-educated, and the rural population, with the Democratic Party capturing the urban and suburban elite and the progressive intellectuals.

Either way, the opposing powers in Washington are now confronted with the choice to allow Trump to consolidate his support with the righteous disgruntled or to pry these voters away from him by addressing their grievances by their actions and promises. Will the Democrats accept that challenge or will it be up to a yet to establish opposition party? And, whoever picks up the flag, can they pull it off?   If neither party can separate the kernels from the chaff, they will implicitly cede the high ground to the Trump GOP.

VOTING RULES

October 30, 2020

I feel compelled to comment on the confusion around the rules for nationwide elections as demonstrated by the spade of legal challenges and court rulings pertaining to the process of electioneering in the different States in America.

We all understand that the Constitution, in its very first Article gives the legislature of each State the right to prescribe the times, places and manner of holding elections, but we now find that the resulting wide variety in rules governing national elections causes uncertainty, disputes, and possible protest and violence. Our confidence in free and fair elections is not well served under these conditions.

I would argue that uniform adoption of the following rules would enhance the process.

·       Election Day is a National Holiday

·       Votes can be cast in person, by mail or hand delivery, or by dropping the ballot in an official drop box

·       Mail-in ballots will be provided only upon request

·       Ballots will be received on Election Day from 6:00 AM until 8:00 PM only at official polling stations.

·       Prior to Election Day, ballots will be received by mail or hand delivery at Board of Election offices or at official drop boxes.

·       Early voting starts 21 days prior to Election Day and stops 2 days before Election Day.

·       Mail-in ballots must be postmarked no less than 2 days before Election Day and received at the Board of Election offices no later than Election Day. Special provisions can be made for military personnel and other government representatives serving overseas.

·       All Boards of Elections will start processing and counting ballots 10 days prior to Election Day.

These simple, uniform rules would ensure that all eligible voters would have ample time and opportunity to cast their ballot in a most convenient way. It would also ensure that the outcome of the election is not unnecessarily delayed because of extended deadlines and diverging admissibility rules between the States.

Preferably, these rules would be adopted voluntarily by the legislatures of all 50 States of the Union, but if that is not feasible, they could be adopted in the form of a Constitutional Amendment.

2024

 October 23, 2020

This will be the last column I’m writing until after the November 3 election. The final presidential debate was held last night and did not deliver any October surprise. It felt like a draw and it probably has not changed any minds. There isn’t much to do with the 2020 election that I have not already written about and with less than two weeks to go in that campaign, I leave it alone, convinced as I am that the outcome has already been baked in with more than 50 million votes already cast and no evidence that anything has been able to cause a dramatic change in the polls, which have been remarkably consistent through all the upheaval we have witnessed so far this year. I truly believe that this election has already been decided, even though the votes have yet to be tallied and we are still in the dark as to the outcome. It still can go either way, but the voters who have not yet submitted their ballot, some 100 million of them, have made up their mind if they will vote and who they will vote for if they do. So, the outcome is pre-ordained. We will just have to wait and see what the oracle of Delphi proclaims.

Therefore, while this time around there is some serious validity to the overused statement that ‘this is the most consequential election of my lifetime’, let’s leave 2020 for what it is and look ahead at the election of 2024, which, after all, is only 4 years away and will be significant in many ways, including the absence of an incumbent. As much as DJT claims to be entitled to a third term, if he wins this year and is still alive in 2024, a third term will stay reserved for FDR only. And with DJT out of the way, Biden, if still alive in 2024, will almost certainly not be renominated by the Democrats even if he would run for a second term, which is unlikely.

The 2024 election will also be significant for the fact that it will have to sort out if the Trump ambush of the Grand Old Party was a one-time hiccup experienced by the Republicans or a lasting takeover of American conservatism. In the same vein, it will force the Democratic Party to sort out if it will position itself center-left in the American political theater or at the far left. We will get a hint of the direction the Democrats will move in the 2022 mid-term election.

To get a view of what we will be facing in 2024, I’ll review three possible outcomes of the 2020 elections:

1.       Trump wins and the Congress stays as it is today

2.       Biden wins, but the GOP keeps control of the Senate

3.       Biden wins and the Democrats control both houses of Congress

I rule out the possibility that Trump wins a second term, but loses control of the Senate. The ‘coattail’ effect of a Trump victory would almost certainly preclude that scenario from developing.

1.       Trump wins and Congress stays as it is today.

This scenario will signal a complete takeover of the Republican Party by the populist Trump fraction and a stunning rejection of the moderate center-left wing of the Democratic Party by the voters. It is a disaster scenario for the health of the American democracy, as it will be seen as a mandate for an authoritarian President on steroids with all the shackles of any Congressional oversight and constraint removed. Assuming that the Democrats will hold on to their majority in the House of Representatives, Trump will continue to rule primarily by executive order and further dismantle the regulatory network that protects our environment, public health, and social support system. He will be given another four years of judicial appointments to further fill the bench with conservative judges, build on his border wall and otherwise restrict immigration. No doubt, he will further distance himself from global institutions and alliances and may even take the USA out of NATO. Another four years of Trump will forever change America’s place in the realm of nations and leave America isolated, bereft of friends and allies.

For 2024, this scenario means that the Trump takeover of the GOP is complete and that the nominee for the 2024 Presidential election will be coming out of the Trump stable, possibly a Trump family member. The ‘Never-Trumpers’ will have to decide if there is still a home for them in the GOP or the time has come to split off and create a new center-right political party. Having been sidelined for eight years, the Democrats will have to scramble to keep their coalition together, settle on fresh new leadership and develop a winning formula for electoral victories down the road.

2.       Biden wins, but the GOP keeps control of the Senate

Although it will feel good to a majority of Americans that Trump has been moved out of the way (and into a world of criminal and civil legal jeopardy), this result will be a Pyrrhus victory for Biden and the Democrats as they will be denied a workable platform for the legislative initiatives they have developed in the platform on which they have campaigned. Assuming that Mitch McConnell will have won his re-election and been able to hold on to the post of majority leader, he will do everything he can to block any proposal coming out of the Democratic House of Representatives, not allowing Biden any wins on taxes, immigration, healthcare or the environment. The GOP strategy will be to convince the voters that the change they wanted could not and would not bear any tangible results, leading to electoral losses for the Democrats in the 2022 mid-term and the 2024 Presidential contest.

Biden will be a lame duck, relegated to governing, much like Trump has done, by executive order and unable to reverse the trend of filling the judiciary with adherents of the Federalist Society. The one area in which Biden would be able to achieve effective change is in foreign policy, where he can start the process of reconciling America with its traditional allies. Failure of the Biden administration to implement its agenda will strengthen the hand of the left wing of the Democratic Party and play in the hands of the GOP. Whether the GOP can take advantage of the Democratic slump will depend on its own capability to reconcile its internal differences between the Trumpers and the establishment Republicans.

3.       Biden wins and the Democrats control both houses of Congress

Only in this scenario will we have an administration that can methodically implement a legislative agenda of change, although it will have to depend on President Biden’s capacity to work across the aisle and get enough moderate Republicans on board with its agenda to secure 60 votes in the Senate. Democrats will, at least for the first two years, have only a slim 1-3 seat majority in the Senate and will have to get Republican support for their initiatives or be forced to trigger the fateful ‘nuclear option’ and eliminate the Senate’s filibuster rule. The Biden administration will be under pressure to move aggressively ahead during its first two years in order to be able to defend and consolidate their hold on Congress, which means that it will have to hold its coalition together and accommodate the left wing of the Democratic Party. In this context, highly contentious issues like Statehood for Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico and expansion of the number of Justices on the Supreme Court will come into play. How well the Biden administration will be able to navigate these troubled waters and come through the 2022 mid-term elections will decide who will represent the Democratic Party in the 2024 Presidential election. In the meantime, the GOP will have to decide if it will jettison the populist experiment with Trump and revert to its traditional conservative creed of small, fiscally responsible, government, free trade, open borders, and global alliances.

Whatever happens, it will be a whole new ballgame in 2024.

FILIBUSTER

I know I’m jumping the gun and may have to eat crow and retract my prediction, but today I’m confident enough in a Biden victory on November 3, that I shift to looking ahead at the realities that will face the Biden administration in his first (and likely only) term in office. After all, it would take more than a miracle to see the incumbent surviving (figuratively speaking) the NYT revelations on his federal income tax returns, his boorish behavior during the first presidential election debate, his own affliction by the virus that he has poo pooed from the start, all resulting in a 14-point deficit in yesterday’s NBC/WSJ poll. The authoritative election forecasting site FiveThirtyEight gives the incumbent only a 18% chance to come out victoriously.

When thinking about the weight of the responsibilities of the office of the President of the United States, we always wonder: “who would want this job”? Now more than ever. In the conclusion of their recently released book “After Trump, Reconstructing the Presidency”, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith point out that “If the new president takes office in 2021, the nation will face one of the most difficult times in its history.”

The nation will come out of a bruising election campaign, following a most destructive and polarizing Trump presidency. Bauer and Goldsmith contend that “The country will still be coping with a persistent global pandemic and, in addition, it will be struggling with vast economic dislocation, searing national debates about racial injustice, immigration, voting rights, and a deeply polarized political culture.” To that, we should add the extreme inequalities, painfully exposed by the disproportional burden inflicted by the corona virus upon the least fortunate amongst us, both in physical, emotional, and economic terms. As before, these ‘least fortunate’ include first and foremost our racial minorities. Such are the conditions facing the incoming administration on January 20, 2021. And the job will almost certainly fall in the lap of a 77-year-old career politician with not a great problem-solving record.

The dilemma for 2021, and the next administration, is the juxtaposition of the outsize scope and depth of the issues facing the nation and the record level of political polarization. The history of the Obama and Trump administrations shows that only at a time that Congress and the White House are controlled by the same party a major legislative initiative has a chance of passing and becoming law, and so only if it can pass as a measure of ‘budget reconciliation’, which requires only a simple majority in the Senate. This is the way the Affordable Care Act passed in Obama’s second year (before Republicans took control of the Senate) and the Trump tax law passed in Trump’s first year (before Democrats took control of the House of Representatives).

There is a better than even likelihood that, come January 20, 2021, the White House and both chambers of Congress are again controlled by the same party, this time the Democrats. But the matters most in need of legislative action, such as voting rights, immigration, climate change, healthcare, gun control, and the national debt, cannot be addressed by ‘budget reconciliation’ and will, therefore, under the existing rules require 60 votes to come up for debate and a vote in the Senate (the ‘filibuster rule’). We can safely rule out any chance that the Democrats could win the 13 Senate seats required to gain this filibuster proof majority for 2021 (as much as it is unlikely for either party to attain the 60-seat majority at any time in the foreseeable future in a 100 seat Senate). Thus, to govern effectively, Biden’s choice will be to find compromise solutions, for which he can obtain some Republican support, or to throw the ‘filibuster rule’ out of the window.

Even if the Democrats gain a majority in the Senate, chances are that they will still have to contend with Mitch McConnell (then as minority-leader), who has demonstrated to be a masterful tactician in keeping whatever control he has over the process. McConnell will be more than capable to string any talk of bipartisanship along until the midterm elections of 2022, betting that a lack of legislative success of the Biden administration may switch control of Congress again in the GOP favor. He has a record of allowing individual GOP Senators to engage in talks and negotiations with Democratic counterparts, without ever allowing them to bring their proposals to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Such maneuvering will put Biden under immense pressure from his party and public opinion to produce meaningful results in his first two years and before the next mid-term elections. And it may lead him to the conclusion that the only way for him to achieve results is by finalizing the process, started by Harry Reid, and continued by Mitch McConnell, of peeling the onion of the ‘filibuster rule’ and eliminating the qualified majority required in the Senate to advance legislation.

For good reasons, this choice facing the new president is dubbed the ‘nuclear option’. It will blow up the last remaining norm that sets the Senate apart from the House. It will be a choice with fateful, unpredictable, consequences for the future of our system of government. Biden will have to consider ‘what happens when the shoe fits the other foot and Republicans again gain control of Congress’.

On the other hand, he will be tempted to accept the risk involved in breaking with norms and traditions (including the risk of being chased out of office and/or lose control of Congress) for the chance of pushing through wholesale legislative initiatives, which have no chance of passing with the ‘filibuster rule’ in place, and could include offering Statehood to Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico and expanding the number of Justices on the Supreme Court (to compensate for Trump’s insistence on filling the Ruth Bader Ginsburg seat with a conservative nominee). Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico would add four reliably Democratic seats to the Senate, putting a Republican Senate majority out of reach for a long time. 

Biden has, so far, steadfastly refused to answer any questions on how he might decide this matter, if he gets elected. Understandably so. To do differently, regardless of which way he would go, could easily cost him the election. Most likely he has not made any decision in this respect and will want to see what happens on November 3 and then after January 20, 2021. Will the GOP, after a resounding and humiliating defeat at the polls, be more or less willing to work with the Biden administration on addressing the nation’s most dire problems?

It would be better for our democracy if we can keep the ‘filibuster rule’ in place. The main purpose of the rule is to make sure that the Senate is a deliberative body that invites the majority to find accommodation with the minority by means of dialogue and compromise. Unfortunately, not much of that has worked under the leadership of the last two majority leaders, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. Are we holding on to a pipe dream?

If the ‘filibuster rule’ falls by the wayside and the Senate is expanded with representatives of D.C. and Puerto Rico, there will be little rationale left for the bicameral system of our legislative branch. And the Electoral College would likely be next to be put in question (though getting rid of that will require a Constitutional Amendment). It will fundamentally and permanently alter the unique system of representative democracy put in place by the founders of the republic. We should think long and hard before embarking on that course.

Biden, and the Democrats at large, should preferably take the long-term view and consider that the demographics of our nation are trending inexorably in their favor. This reality is one of the reasons why the GOP is so focused on voter suppression.

The conclusion is that negotiations on a new voting rights bill should be a high priority for the incoming administration. They would serve as a barometer of the GOP willingness to reach across the aisle and work with the Biden administration and the Democrats on addressing the nation’s needs. If the Republicans decide for intransigency, God help us, it will leave Biden little choice but to pull the trigger and kill the ‘filibuster rule’. He will then be held accountable for toppling another monument of the glorious republic founded in 1776. But the real culprit will be our two-party stalemate and the immutable partisanship blocking the art and science of governing.

THE CASE AGAINST TRUMP

 September 17, 2020

I am a permanent resident in the USA and I can’t vote, but here is why I would vote for Biden on November 3:

·       We can’t allow an unscrupulous cheater and liar to lead our government and the world; how bad Trump is will only come out when all pending lawsuits against him and his ‘enterprises’ and campaigns are brought to verdict and the history of his (mis)administration is written. Ultimately, it comes down to character and values.

·       I disagree with people saying that a Biden presidency would result in a socialist regime. Likelihood is that Biden/Harris will govern largely in the same manner as Clinton and Obama and stay far away from the left wing of the Democrats, even if the Democrats were also to control both chambers in Congress. They are not stupid and, if they win in 2020, they won’t want to give it all back in 2022 and 2024; the American people won’t stand for Jerry Corbyn (Labour) type socialism and they know it.

·       Trump is only aggravating an already unacceptable level of inequality and he is messing with our system of government and the environment. Another four years of this will set us back further than we can afford.

·       Give Trump a second term and he will be given the power to install a Supreme Court that, for decades, will be ultra conservative and conflict with the prevailing public opinion.

·       Trump will have to accept at least partial responsibility for the mismanagement of the COVID pandemic and the toll it has taken upon the lives of people and economy of the nation. He is complicit in the death of a large share of the 200,000 COVID deaths America has suffered so far in 2020 and is solely responsible for the painful truth that America’s share of global COVID deaths far exceeds its share of the world population.

·       Trump’s trade policies will prove to be detrimental, particularly his withdrawal from TPP; it opened the space for China, which has promptly taken the territory.

·       Trump alienates all of America’s traditional allies and makes no attempt to mend fences when they accept legitimate criticism and come to the table.

·       I fundamentally disagree with any policy that abandons existing structures without putting something better in place (ACA, Paris accord, Iran accord, WHO); what is next NATO, WTO?

·       Trump’s idolization of authoritarians like Kim Jong Un, Putin, Erdogan, Orban, and Bolsonaro is indicative of where his political inclinations are; he is already speaking about a third or fourth term, no matter the XXII Amendment.

·       I fundamentally disagree with Trump’s inhumane and counterproductive immigration policies, even limiting legal immigration and access for foreign students.

·       I will judge a person in large part by the company he keeps; look at the unsavory crew that Trump has kept himself surrounded by.

·       Trump is not just a narcissistic bully; he is a danger to our most basic democratic and constitutional values and principles.

·       Yes, it is clear from the above that my vote would be more a vote against Trump than a vote for Biden (much less the Democrats in general), but that is the result of the Republican Party's abandonment of its values, beliefs and principles in nominating a populist for the highest office in the land.

IN GOOD FAITH

September 7, 2020

It is Labor Day in the United States and so we have a bonus day to take a deep breath, do some reflection, and ready ourselves for the race to the finish on November 3. A first observation is how odd and unlikely it is that the contest for the Presidency is between two people in the same age group I belong to: the people whose work is mostly done and who should spend their remaining days filling in the gaps, tending to tasks and missions that were ignored or unrecognized in the frantic business of making a career. It shouldn’t be that way. The country is facing tremendous challenges and it is unrealistic to expect that an advanced septuagenarian can lead the charge to right the listing, if not sinking, ship.

The second observation is about the unusual character of this contest. It has a third dimension that the nation has not observed during my lifetime, which started with the waning days of the FDR presidency.      

The third dimension is the cult aspect of the Trump following. Yes, Trump is the nominee of the Grand Old Party, but if he had to rely on Republicans in the upcoming election, he would certainly loose. Not only has the number of registered Republicans been dropping now for several years, but we are witnessing a steady stream of (prominent) Republicans distancing themselves from Trump and in many cases openly coming out in support of his opponent. It is no longer just the principled ‘Never Trumpers’ who declared their rejection of Trump as candidate even before the 2016 election. It is now a legion of principled Republicans from all walks of life (but notably not so much from GOP representatives in Congress). These people have been judging the President on the basis of his politics, his messaging (in tweets and public appearances), the company he keeps, and his character over the course of the first Trump term in office. And they have, belatedly and grudgingly concluded that they have been betting on the wrong horse. They now see, what should have been evident from the beginning, that Trump is not, and never was, a Republican. They now see clearly that Trump is a populist, with narcistic, authoritarian, and corrupt streaks that are common denominators in populists. Just think about Franco, Mussolini, Peron, Nasser, Marcos, Maduro and Bolsonaro. (It is notable that many populist leaders had the support of Christian churches or denominations. The Trump support from evangelicals is not an aberration.)

That none of this eroding support from Republican conservatives (and, for that matter, Independents) is reflected in the national polls, which consistently show an approximate 40% support for the President, is only explainable as confirmation of the fact that with Trump we are no longer dealing with a political movement, but with a cult. A cult consists of true believers, who are not swayed or dissuaded by facts or rationale, but are guided only by unquestionable faith in the cult leader. As any other cult, the Trump cult attracts people from all walks of life, but mostly the disgruntled and the beleaguered.

The core constituency of this cult is formed by descendants of the European settlers and immigrants who, over the last four centuries, have taken over the land of the ‘First Americans’; who have had a long history and privilege of dictating the political scene in the United States, but are now realizing that they are losing this privilege in a wave of immigration driven demographic changes. These true believers adore their cult leader, because of his disdain for other ethnicities and his suppression of immigration. These true believers have grown up with the belief in American exceptionalism as a dogma supporting America’s divine right to world supremacy, a supremacy that is now being challenged by globalization and the emergence of new economic powerhouses like China and the EU.

The November election may not give us a clear indication of how strong and widespread this cult is. Because the cultish Trump vote will be supplemented by those Americans who may hold their noses while doing so, but still vote for Trump, because they loathe and fear the alternative more. These voters have bought in to the belief that with a Trump defeat, America will be doomed to converting from capitalism to socialism and that their personal prosperity and security is at stake. We all know many of these people. They are in our neighborhoods, our churches, our offices, and also in our families.

I will not argue with the cult members. They are not open to any argument that challenges their blind faith in the cult leader. But these other likely Trump voters I ask: Would you tolerate a person like Trump, in his behavior, his personal conduct, his cronies, and his utterances, as the CEO of your business, as the pastor of your church, as the grandfather of your children? If your answer is ‘yes’, you belong to the cult and I want to distance myself from you. If your answer is ‘no’, then, in good faith, how can you even consider to hand over the leadership of your country (and the world for that matter) to a person that you would not entrust with any authority in your personal life?

I am a centrist myself. I believe in democracy, the Constitution, and the strength and resiliency of our institutions and alliances. I am an open book, politically speaking, after writing six years ago, well before the emergence of Trump, my political testament in my book ‘NEITHER HERE NOR THERE’. I have seen enough of socialism in my lifetime to know that it does not deliver on its theoretical promises. I believe in democratic capitalism as a tool to reduce the suffocating inequality that is at the core of so much of the current unrest and discontent. But, if a had a vote as a permanent US resident, I would not hesitate for a moment to vote for a Democrat, if necessary to deny Trump a second term. America has, in our lifetime, nicely survived and prospered under many Democratic Presidents, who have always been restrained by checks and balances built into our constitutional political system and by almost universal public aversion of left extremism. There is no reason to believe that this time it will be different if voters put another Democrat in the White House.

If you are not a cult member, how can you then, in good faith, give a second chance to the man who so blatantly has exhibited dishonesty, narcissism, ignorance, intellectual poverty, greed, pettiness, and racism during his first term in office? Please don’t!

IN THE RED ZONE

 August 18, 2020

In my previous column, PALACE REVOLUTION, written at the end of June, I argued that the tide had turned and that even Mitch McConnell would make sure that the man he used for his purposes ( loading the judiciary up with Federalist Society judges and lowering taxes for business and the rich) will only be a one term President. That may still happen, but today it looks less likely than fifty days ago. The GOP convention will be taking place next week and time is running out for anyone other than the voting public to change the roster. We may still get a surprise move from Donald J. Trump, who loves to be the center of attention – good or bad – and we can’t rule out that he will dump Mike Pence and put Nikki Haley on his ticket for the next four years. He will find it hard to resist upstaging the Democratic convention taking place this week by a dramatic move of his own. Would that be enough to turn the tide again and make it a close contest on November 3? It is hard to predict, we are still 77 days away from the close of the polls and a lot can happen in the intervening time.

But Donald J. Trump does not take any chances and is already bracing himself against a losing cause by, without even a shred of evidence, casting doubt on the nation’s capacity to conduct a fair, orderly and immaculate election and predicting a rigged outcome. Let that sink in for a moment: The head of our government, in charge of the constitutional election process, professes its administration’s inability to bring a about a fair and free election and casts a priori doubt on the accuracy of the election result, even before he can know if he is not ultimately declared the winner. This is not entirely new, of course, because he has never accepted that he lost the 2016 popular vote by more than 2 million voters. That result too was rigged.

Two and a half months away from election day, there is mounting concern that Donald J. Trump will not accept the election count if it does not come out in his favor and that he may refuse to leave the White House on his own accord on January 20, 2021. His objections against mail-in voting, his disparaging of the United States Postal Service, and his constant efforts to deny access to the polls for ex-convicts all point to his desire to suppress the widest possible access to the polls, particularly in likely battleground States. If these efforts fail to give him a favorable outcome on election day, he is likely to bring them to bear in his sure to follow contestation of the election result. Yesterday he confirmed that position by openly declaring that “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”

With the Donald, we would be dangerously naïve to believe that this President will abide by the constitution and established precedent in the peaceful transition of power we have come to expect in this country. We can just take his own words in support of this suspicion. When asked in recent interviews, he has refused to say that he will accept the outcome of the election if it shows him to be the loser in the contest. What can he do? Not much in case of a landslide loss if that becomes evident shortly after the closing of the polls.

But in a close contest, and with a long delay in the tabulation of the election results, he can start by contesting particular results in court with an eye on delaying the certification of the election result and the vote by the Electoral College beyond the constitutionally mandated date of December 14. He can further try to prevail over GOP Governors in battleground States to sway the vote of certain electors. If he could achieve a tie vote within the Electoral College, the deciding vote will move to the House of Representatives where, according to the 12^th Amendment, each State will have one vote. That would almost certainly sway the vote in the incumbent’s favor since the Republicans control more States than the Democrats.

So, we find ourselves in the Red Zone. There is simply too much room for mischief in our political system. This does not become apparent until we saddle ourselves with players who do not play by the rules and whose transgressions are condoned by their partisan supporters in Congress, Governors’ offices and State legislatures. The timing of this set of circumstances, within two minutes from the final whistle, is such that the constitutional remedies of Article II, section 4 and section 4 of the XXVth Amendment, do not come into play because of lack of time to execute before inauguration day. It appears that our constitution is only fully functional when it is interpreted and complied with in good faith. That element has been sorely missing in the current administration and its sycophants in Congress.

The President simply has too many ways in which he can create a constitutional crisis and the chaos that inevitably follows and we can count on the fact that he will trigger such crisis, if he does not book an indisputable win on election night. What makes this President so dangerous to our democratic tradition is that he knows that he will almost certainly be indicted and go to jail if he fails to gain a second term in office. My guess is that he is speculating on the likelihood that, if he can create a constitutional impasse and crisis, he will have given himself leverage to negotiate a ‘get out of jail’ card in exchange for ultimately conceding to his opponent.

We have just had the 2-minute warning, we are on defense in the Red Zone. We have to keep Donald J. Trump and his team out of the end zone or lose the game and, with it, our constitutional democracy

PALACE REVOLUTION

June 30, 2020

It may have happened already −we just don’t know about it yet− or it will happen in the next few weeks, certainly before the Republican Convention scheduled for August 24-27. The tide has turned. A confluence of events and utterances, all in June, has woken up the servile Republicans from their stupor and has them now quietly but inexorably looking for the exits. The Nixonian moment is here and someone will whisper in the President’s ear, if not already done, that it is time to go. There are several straws that can legitimately claim to have broken the camel’s back, but I pick the one where our Commander in Mischief responded, in an interview with Sean Hannity to a softball question of what his top priorities for a second term presidency would be, with the following (verbatim):

Well, one of the things that will be really great, you know the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I’ve always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It’s an — a very important meaning. I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington, I think, 17 times. All of a sudden, I’m president of the United States. You know the story. I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our First Lady and I say, ‘This is great. But I didn’t know very many people in Washington. It wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now I know everybody, and I have great people in the administration. You make some mistakes. Like, you know, an idiot like Bolton. All he wanted to do was drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to kill people. 

This typical Trumpian utterance (you can read transcripts of numerous prior interviews and find the same disconnectedness and rambling) turned fatal not just because of what it said and not said, but also given the time in which it crossed the President’s lips. Our President offered this incoherent and irrelevant response at the time that COVID-19, the economic crisis and the Black Lives Matter protests dominated everyone else’s agenda. None of it had his attention. Of course, he could not have answered the question truthfully. It would not have come across very well had he said that his top priorities would be to further enrich his family fortune and shield himself from prosecution for crimes committed prior to and during his first term in office. Nor, that his top priority for now would be to guarantee for himself and his family immunity from prosecution from such crimes, in case he would be denied a second term. With Bill Barr as Attorney General, there would never be a better chance to get the slate wiped clean of all crimes and misdemeanors waiting indictment upon his leaving office.

Were Donald J. Trump a true Republican, office worthy, President, he would have thankfully accepted this interview slow pitch and drilled it over the fence with an answer that his top priority would remain to keep the American people safe from any hostile action by America’s adversaries, from COVID-19 or any other virus, from cyber intrusion and from unfair competition. In follow-up, he could have told the viewing public that on his agenda for a second term would be to take effective steps to reverse the trend of increased inequality between American residents, that manifests itself in income, wealth, health, education, housing and incarceration from which ethnic minorities are disproportionate victims of disadvantage.

He could have told the audience that he would use his second term to bring America’s fiscal house back in order, to negotiate new trade deals with any nation that would side with the United States in the fight against unfair Chinese trade practices, to upgrade Obamacare and cover the cost of COVID-protection and treatment for all Americans, and to finally implement a comprehensive immigration policy. It might have required a stretch of imagination, but he could even have committed to some serious steps to address climate change. He could have made a pledge to rule in a second term by legislative action rather than by tweet and executive order.

Predictably, Trump said none of this. He never once showed that he was even aware that his constituents were in the midst of the most serious crisis of their lifetime, affecting health, the economy and their unity and solidarity. As Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic: “The true nature of the ideology that Trump brought to Washington was not ‘America First’, but rather ‘Trump First’.

Thus, is it time for a palace revolution. It is unthinkable that the GOP majority in the Senate is prepared to go down with the ship, wrecked by a President who should never have been. I confidently predict that Moscow Mitch, now with the Russian bounty scandal hanging over his head, will want to get rid of his nickname by getting rid of the man who most stands in the way of his chance to remain majority leader of the Senate. After all, Trump has served his purpose of getting 200 Federal Judges appointed, including two Associate Justices of the Supreme Court. He has become dispensable and more of a liability than an asset to the Republican cause. His fate was sealed when he foolishly cleared Lafayette Square in order to wave the bible at us in front of St. John’s church, made a fool of himself at the WestPoint graduation ceremony and again at the Tulsa campaign rally that misfired in the worst way after initially being planned for Juneteenth, and ordained an end to America’s participation in the World Health Organization at a time of the worst global pandemic since the plague. His dropping the ball in the interview with Hannity was just the icing on the cake.

Mitch McConnell will now make sure that the man he used for his purposes, be it in the most supine way imaginable, will only be a one term President.

GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD

May 15, 2020

We are down for the count. We have received a sucker punch out of the blue and it has hit us harder than anything after Pearl Harbor. The corona pandemic was not in our planning and it has caught us by surprise, just like Japan did on December 7 of 1941. But, to our credit, and in spite of the political polarization and paralysis, Congress has acted quickly to fund the repair and recovery effort and mitigate the impact on the economy and its public and business participants. As of this date, Congress has authorized the spending of $3.6 trillion, which - according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget – will add $2.4 trillion to this year’s deficit. To put this number of $3.6 trillion in perspective, it is roughly 18 % of our total economy as measured by GDP. And, this will not be the end of it. With a faltering economy and unemployment approaching or surpassing 20%, a lot more money will have to be spent to prevent this crisis from turning into the next great depression. No doubt, in an election year, that Congress will be prepared to let Treasury borrow that money. Nobody can, given the situation we find ourselves in, reasonably argue against the need for massive fiscal and monetary stimulus at this time, but the pace at which we are now adding to the national debt should make us think about the carelessness with which we have managed fiscal policy during normal times.

Let’s consider the numbers for the last three decades. In 1990, under H.W.Bush’ term in office, the national debt stood at $3.2 trillion (less than what we have now already spent on the corona crisis) and it took six years to cross the $5 trillion line. The next milestone of $10 trillion in debt was not reached until 2008, twelve years later. But then, fueled initially by the stimulus enacted to get us out of the great recession of 2008 and now by the extraordinary steps taken to combat the corona crisis, the national debt has exploded to over somewhere in the range of $25-30 trillion, where we will end up before 2020 is behind us.

Over the last thirty years we have had many good years, economically speaking, interspersed with a few years of economic setbacks, but the one constant is that through all this, our national debt has never been reduced at any year and just shown accelerated growth. That should have been unacceptable to all of us and it is a shame that we have never had the courage to hold our legislators and administrations accountable for their failing to be willing to live within their means. This is not a partisan failure. The record shows that the national debt has been growing under the Democratic administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as well as under the Republican Bush and Trump administrations. We have consistently refused to either cut spending or increase taxes and never even considered to do both at the same time. The worst part of all of this is that, in spite of all the deficit spending, we have not seriously addressed the main challenges the nation faces. All challenges that can be grouped under the larger umbrella of the problem of persistent and increasing inequality. We have, in the public sector, been mortgaging our financial future without buying anything of substance with the money we have received on loan. The cause for this fiscal misbehavior is to be found in a fundamental unwillingness of our politicians - on either side of the aisle - to approach budgeting the appropriate way of first assessing the policy needs of the country and then funding these needs by adjusting tax measures as needed to balance our books.

Our needs are rising and generally well recognized, but we are stubbornly unwilling to pay for the solutions that present themselves, so we kick the can down the road and yet keep borrowing to merely keep the doors open. We have ourselves to blame: we reward, with our votes, our lawmakers for the goodies they provide us and punish them for not lowering our taxes. But there will come a day of reckoning. We just learned that 40% of family income earners of less than $40,000/year have lost a job in the aftermath of the corona crisis. And, although good hard numbers are hard to come by, we have ample anecdotal evidence that the corona virus has hit our most vulnerable, the elderly, the incarcerated, the disabled, racial minorities, and low-income earners, much harder than the rest of the population.

This may be about the only good thing coming out of this crisis. It puts the effects of inequality in such revealing limelight, that we can, much as we may want to, no longer ignore it. The low-income earners are taking it on the chin, not only in terms of unemployment and susceptibility to the virus. Case in point: healthcare. Our dependency on employer provided healthcare worked passably well under full employment conditions that we have enjoyed for so long, but is wholly inadequate at the unemployment rate we are now facing and will have to deal with in the foreseeable future. The low-income earners are not only disproportionately losing their jobs, but also their healthcare insurance, at a time that they most need it. Other case in point: education. With the cost of education where it is today and the shifting towards more online learning, the most privileged 1% of income earners will feel no pain, but the bottom 40% will be handicapped by lack of income, no or poor broadband access, and little or no access to a working space conducive to studying and learning.

It is ironic, but deeply sad, that minorities are disproportionately represented among the lower echelons of healthcare work (EMT workers, nurses, and workers in nursing homes and long-term care facilities) and thus disproportionately exposed to the coronavirus. It is not unlike the foot soldiers at war: they are taking the brunt together with low income workers in retail and distribution. Inequality means that the people we need most in the fight against the virus and are most exposed to it, are denied the privileges that the better off in our society take for granted.

I can’t believe that I would ever say this, but in this case we should by all means throw a lot of good money after the bad money we have wasted when times were good. We need to protect the most vulnerable in our society from the worst impact of COVID-19 first, keep them a viable part of our economy by guaranteeing them a living income and shielding them from the virus. When we have that under control, we can begin to seriously address inequality in all of its aspects. But that may have to wait until after January 20, 2021.

THE WAY BACK

April 12, 2020

It is Easter and, of course, we are thinking about resurrection. We have just been hit by what may turn out to be the worst crisis of our lifetime and, because we have been told to stay home and away from each other, we have time to think about how we could have been better prepared to cope with the pandemic and the social and economic upheaval it has caused and how we get out of the crisis situation we are in.

If there is one blessing to be derived from this crisis, it is that it is bringing, unmercifully, into focus the shortcomings of our social and political structure. Now, that is obviously only a blessing if we are ready and willing to learn from it and to take steps to address, mitigate and, if at all possible, eliminate these inadequacies. Whether that will come about depends entirely on our political will and the quality and integrity of our political leadership.

What are the inequities and inadequacies brought to the surface by the COVID-19 crisis?

·       A lack of any strategic plan to reduce the extreme inequalities that have creeped up in the American society and that now result in a very uneven distribution of the burdens, health wise, economic and social, of sickness, death, anguish, despair and suffering, among distinctly separate segments of our population.

·       The negative effect of wholesale changes in agency leadership and staff and in regulatory policy resulting from changes in administration.

·       The absence of a coordinated public health strategy and plan that clearly assigns responsibilities between the various levels of government.

·       The absence of complete and uninterrupted funding of public health needs at all levels of government.

·       The absence of a reliable domestic supply chain for critical components of the medical care structure: facilities, staff, equipment, tests and testing capacity, vaccines, and therapeutics.

·       The absence of equal, reliable, high capacity broadband access in all regions and communities of our nation allowing for cyber learning and communication between all citizens and their institutions.

·       The absence of a permanent safety net structure capable of financially supporting the victims of epidemics and their economic effects, whether they are individuals or businesses.

·       The inability or unwillingness of our politicians to set their differences in ideology aside and work together on helping the country to manage through this crisis with minimal lasting damage. We constantly hear the words ‘we are all in this together’, our politicians talk the talk but fail to walk the walk.

·       The unpreparedness to safeguard the security and continuity of our political process in the absence of physical proximity, whether it is in the right of assembly or participating in elections. The public sector is far behind the private sector in the use of cyber technology in support of its most vital processes.

The best we can hope for is that the enormous damage done by and during this crisis in terms of human death and suffering and the economic collapse resulting from it will make us stop and think about what really matters to us, individually and collectively. There should be some ‘wake-up’ effect of the complete disruption of our ‘business as usual’ routine. Suddenly, our traffic problems have disappeared, the air in and above our cities has cleared up, and gas prices are lower than at any time we can remember. We get a renewed appreciation for the essentials of life, shelter, food, clean air, and good health. We learn to live without dependence on TV sports and the exploits of our favorite professional team. We do okay without the thrill of the Final Four, the Masters, Wimbledon and Major League baseball. What can we learn from this very different experience?

There is little doubt that the corona crisis will be recognized in history as a major disrupter on the scale of the Spanish Flu epidemic, the Great Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War, 9/11, and the 2008 recession. These paradigm changing events present, by their shock effect, rare opportunities for fundamental changes in the body politic. Jamie Dimon, in his letter to J.P. Morgan shareholders, points to this when he writes: “there will come a time when we will look back and it will be clear how we – at all levels of society, government, business, healthcare systems, and civic and humanitarian organizations – could have been and will be better prepared to face emergencies of this scale.”

It is not complicated. The task at hand is to systematically address and correct the inadequacies that have surfaced during this crisis. We know how to start that process: with the creation of a bipartisan working group similar to the 9/11 Committee. Special attention should be given to the issue of ‘inequality’, which, in my mind, is the defining issue of our time. The corona crisis presents again a stinging reminder of how human hardships of life, death, sickness and economic despair are unevenly divided throughout our population. Someone in the social media likened the reality of the corona experience to the last moments on board of the Titanic: “In first class the celebration was continuing, the orchestra was playing, but below decks the water was engulfing crew and passengers alike.”

When the issue of ‘inequality’ comes up in the political discussion, the focus is normally on ‘income inequality’ or ‘wealth inequality’. That focus may be misguided and unnecessarily divisive. History and human nature will tell us that a degree of income- and wealth inequality is unavoidable. The negative consequences of inequality in income and wealth are mostly centered around access to health services, education, and housing, or, rather, access to the best available resources in these categories. These negative consequences can be addressed by direct government subsidies to the institutions delivering these services to people who cannot afford the real cost. This does not mean that the government needs to take over the delivery of these services, just the preparedness to pay for equal access for all Americans, regardless of income or wealth.

No doubt, these solutions come at a cost. But, if any shock effect should come from this crisis, may it be that it is time to leave the dreamland of ever lower taxes. The American economy generates more than enough wealth to provide all Americans with equal access to fundamental living essentials like quality healthcare, quality education and quality housing. Equitable taxation structures should be designed to share the wealth and result in balanced budgets at times of economic prosperity, while allowing all Americans these fundamental living essentials. Deficit financing should be reserved for periods like the one we are living through now when a crisis forces increased government expenditures and reduced government revenues.

Before too long, we will be on the way back from this crisis. Hopefully, we will realize that this will not be the last pandemic we will experience and prepare ourselves to recognize the next one earlier and with more urgency. And hopefully we will be better equipped to tackle the next one before it can do too much damage. Like Jamie Dimon says: “There should have been a pandemic playbook. Likewise, every problem I noted above should have detailed and nonpartisan solutions.” I feel like he spoke for me.

Let’s make the way back a path to a stronger future for all Americans. We do not have a divine right to success, but we sure can help ourselves and strengthen our exceptional republic.

HAPPY EASTER!