Posted on by rjonakait

A Response to a Friend

A knowledgeable friend concerned with the state of America asked me to comment on some of his views. He thinks that Biden does not understand that people don’t care much that the rate of inflation is dropping when they see that things still cost more than they did a year or two ago. The Southern border is a “mess and leadership demands some reasonable proposals to stop the bleeding in a fair amount of time.” He concludes that while he could never vote for Trump, his many issues with Biden will make it hard to vote for him just because he is “less of a disaster than the other choice.” The friend says he may vote for a third-party candidate and choose “to throw my vote away.” I responded in the following manner:

I agree with much of what you say. The inflation rate may be dropping but, as you point out, Americans in general may not care much about that. Those of us who lived through the regular inflation of the 1960s and 1970s might be impressed with the current lower rate of inflation, but many Americans only remember a world that for practical purposes had no inflation. I sometimes think that the presidency largely depends on the cost of gas, milk, and eggs, and those costs are higher than in recent years.

This hurts Biden, but as with much of the economy, I don’t know how much the president should be held responsible. Developed countries everywhere had inflation. It was not just an American problem, and our inflation rate was less than almost all of the European countries. By that measure, we did well on inflation. And, of course, by many standard measures—job creation, unemployment, GDP, average wages, the stock market–the economy is doing ok-to-quite good. If Biden is to be held responsible for inflation, then he should be given credit that it was lower than Europe’s rate and that the rest of the economy has performed well. However, the administration is going to need to amp up its messaging if this going to penetrate to the American electorate.

Many forecasters over the last 18 months predicted a recession. That has not occurred. I am not sure that Biden should be given much if any credit for this, just as I am not sure how much blame he should get for the inflation, but if a recession had occurred, he would be blamed for it. Inflation is a reason why Biden might not be reelected, but it is not a rational reason not to vote for him. But as someone observed, “A great president is the one who happens to be on the job when you are on a run of good luck.”

Immigration is both a political and policy mess. Biden comes across as not caring about the border, and that is a huge mistake. I thought from the beginning of Biden’s administration he should have tried to seize control of this issue by saying that it is not a southern border issue. We need comprehensive immigration reform. Biden should have been making it clear that we need immigration and that such statements as Lindsey Graham’s recent one that “the country is full” is silly, dangerous demagoguery.

I believe that the birth rate is below the replacement level. Without immigration we will have a shrinking workforce. If a 55-year-old wants to get social security, we need more workers, which means more immigration. Biden should have been making that clear. Many industries depend on immigrants. Biden should have been enlisting these industries into reform proposals. Of course, many conservatives are happy with the border crisis because it is such a potent political issue.

Biden should have put forward proposals to the Republicans that he would support massively increasing border security personnel if they massively increase the number of immigration judges — which requires additional government spending — and accept DACA reform. Of course, the conservatives would not do that. Compromise is not part of their game plan, just testosterone-fueled “solutions.” But Biden should have been stressing that our whole system is a mess and needs reform.

I have learned how little I know about our immigration system from many of the people I have met in my local biergarten. Many are immigrants, both legal and not, with at least one seeking asylum. I had little idea how complicated our system is and am still amazed that Viktor asked for asylum over five years ago and still does not have an answer. Every one of these immigrants works hard and has added to this country, but they live under an incredibly bad system.

I do have my criticisms of Biden, but I also believe that he has accomplished more than is generally recognized. Most important is the infrastructure bill, which is only a start on what is needed. Trump regularly talked about infrastructure but did nothing while Biden got something passed. It is always interesting when conservatives who voted against the bill have something from it rolled out in their district and then try to take credit for the coming improvement.

Democrats have many failings. One of their biggest, as mentioned above, is messaging. They have not touted their successes on infrastructure. Or on the economy. When Obama was President, I heard frequently how bad the economy was when it wasn’t. Most of the important indicators were favorable. Many of those economic trends continued under Trump, but by then the indicators were publicized to show how great the economy was. It was basically the same economy under both, but the conservatives messaged better about it, as they do now.

Biden has accomplished other things that fly under the radar. The spouse reads Heather Cox Richardson who regularly reports on Biden accomplishments that the spouse was not aware of. I was reminded of this while watching a Sunday morning show. A firefighter was talking about the high cancer rates among his colleagues. This has something to do with the protective gear they wear, and he was saying how changes needed to be made to improve the health of firefighters. He then went out of his way to thank Biden and Debbie Dingel for their efforts in this regard. Who knew?

Throwing away your vote where you live may not matter. Your state is likely to go Biden no matter what, but throwing away votes is how Trump got elected. In spite of popular perceptions, there was no great surge to Trump in 2016. He got almost the same percentage of the vote that Romney had four years earlier. However, an important percentage of the population apparently felt that they could not vote for Hillary Clinton. I guess that most of those thought she would win. They could not stomach voting for Trump so they voted for third party candidates. In most places that did not matter, but it proved decisive in enough battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — to give Trump the presidency. In those closely contested states, Trump did not get majorities. Sometimes he did a little better than Romney had, but not much. Hillary, however, underperformed in these states and did not get the majorities that Obama had. Apparently a sizeable group decided they would “throw away” their votes. The third-party totals, while small, often doubled and tripled. This allowed Trump to get the pluralities in these states and their electoral votes. And thus Trump became president. In 2020, the percentages for the third-party candidates followed the pre-2016 historical trends, and Trump lost. Fewer people threw away their vote in 2020.  

“Throwing away” your vote can have unexpected consequences. This year, the consequences are too dire to contemplate. Sometimes a thrown away vote is not really thrown away; it just goes into a trash pile you didn’t anticipate.

Posted on by rjonakait

Viktor is Still Waiting

Viktor, tall with sharp facial features, intentionally or not, often flattered me. In pre-Covid days, he was a server in DSK, a biergarten in my Brooklyn neighborhood that I frequented. I am sure that I stood out in this place for my wit, knowledge, good cheer, and distinguished looks, but probably more so because I was much older than any other semi-regular. Even so, Viktor, who was in his early twenties, would often sit next to me at the bar when his shift ended, and we talked. That pleased me. At some point he estimated my age as the same as his parents, and I laughed and told him I was then seventy-three. He did a double take and, after a pause, said that was how old his grandmother was. Viktor’s mother was forty-four and his father a year older. He told me that his mother had told him that he was a “mistake,” and so I was surprised to learn that he was an only child.

 Viktor was born in Ukraine where his parents live. Without bragging, he said that he was a smart kid who graduated from high school when he was sixteen and got a master’s in marketing by twenty-one. Then he came to the United States. Like many who staffed the establishment, he had other gigs. He was helping American friends to open a restaurant in the Queens part of New York City. He told me that he also did some video editing. That had started in Ukraine where he and a friend shot videos from a drone and posted them on YouTube. Viktor said that the videos were not particularly good, but back when they did it, few had seen videos from a drone’s perspective. He and his friend got a following.

We often talked about food. He told me that a recent addition to the bar’s menu was very good—a vegan sausage primarily made from beets. He insisted on getting one and splitting it with me. (I said that I’d pay, but he told me that he got free food when his shift was done.) It was not my favorite, but presumably healthier than the bratwurst I often got. In spite of this mediocre recommendation, I listened when he told me that he had a favorite Ukrainian restaurant. Manhattan’s lower east side was once chock-a-block with Ukrainians, and a Ukraine presence still lingers there in a few well-known restaurants. Viktor said that their food was not nearly as good as his favorite, which was in a different part of New York. He insisted that we go to lunch there, and we set a date. However, Covid intervened, and the favored restaurant closed during the pandemic.

I know little about Ukraine, and Viktor was eager to answer my questions, including about the comedian who became prime minister or president or whatever the title for their head of state. (Viktor was ambivalent about the guy.)

During one of our conversations, I jokingly asked Viktor what he was going to do when he got rich. He replied seriously that being wealthy was not his goal, but he did want to make enough money to be able to buy his parents a home in America. He said that when he first came to this country, his parents indicated no desire to move to the United States, but their feelings were changing. It sounded like he missed his mother and father tremendously. He told me that he talked to his mother daily via computer. I asked when he had last been home, and he said that he had not been back since he came to the United States, three years ago. He told me that while he was expecting to get one, he did not have a green card, and without one, he was not sure that he could reenter this country if he left.

During another conversation, however, Viktor indicated that his immigration status was a bit more complicated than just waiting for a green card. He came to the US on a tourist visa although I suspect that he entered planning to stay. He had an introduction to a friend of a friend of a friend in Baltimore. With this tenuous connection, he started living with a Russian couple and had some sort of job. For some reason, however, the man thought that Viktor was sleeping with his wife—“even though I am gay,” Viktor told me. The husband went to Viktor’s employer, said that it was illegal for Viktor to work, and threatened to report the business to the authorities. Viktor’s boss was apologetic but told Viktor that he had no choice but to fire him.

Unemployed and homeless, he begged a friend to allow him to stay with her. She said that she couldn’t take him in but knew a place where he could stay. Viktor: “He was a drug dealer, but he was nice.” I don’t know how long Viktor stayed there, but eventually the drug dealer said, “You need to start over. Here’s $50. Go to a new city and begin again. You can go wherever you want, but if I were you, I would go to New York.” Viktor came to New York.

Homeless again, he called LGBT groups for help, and he got the name and number of someone. Almost immediately, that man came to the phone booth Viktor was using and gave Viktor a subway card and directions to that man’s apartment. Viktor lived with that guy for months. Viktor, without using the man’s name, said that he was Black, about 45, worked in IT in the healthcare industry, and made a comfortable living. The man was gay, and Viktor thought sex was going to be involved, but the man never even hinted at that. Viktor proudly told me, “I have never had sex for material gain.”

(concluded November 10)