Posted on by rjonakait

                                                                           SOTU

The moderator for the current events discussion group is a great politician. Only after flattering me about past presentations did he ask me to comment on the State of the Union Address. Ego stroked, I agreed. Only later did I realize that no one in their right mind would consent to watch the hour-and-forty-seven-minute State of the Union speech, the longest in recorded history. You had to wring hard to get a few dollops of news out of it, and the views about it are predictable.

There is little new to report. Even if you have seen only a glimpse of Trump in the last months, you had already heard, probably many times, what he said in his address to Congress. According to him, he has turned around the disastrous economy into something wonderful. The worst inflation ever that he inherited (from Biden, of course) is now just about nonexistent. Prices are falling. My attention lapsed for a moment, but he may have said that eggs in some stores are free and at most a dollar a dozen. In Oklahoma and maybe Ohio, but definitely not Oregon, if you buy two Snicker bars at the filling station, the gas is gratis. (Subsequent events make this even more unlikely.) Job creation is better than ever, and manufacturing has rebounded. GDP is astounding as are wages, and the stock market is at an all-time high. Crime, on the other hand, is as low as it was at the Creation more than six thousand years ago. We are respected around the world like never before. We are in a Golden Age, a Golden Age he said, but definitely not in the Age of Aquarius. We have ended discrimination against white Americans, especially white males, by abolishing DEI.

I don’t possibly have room even to summarize what fact-checkers had to say, but to put it kindly, most of the State of the Union was fact-and-evidence-challenged. A rule of thumb: Just because Trump says it does not make it wrong, but that is a good starting point.

And there’s more. The Supreme Court, in what Trump has called a really, really bad decision, struck down tariffs, but customs duties will be brought back, Trump said. To the surprise of many, he was restrained and did not launch the kinds of verbal attacks on the Justices that he did immediately after the tariff decision. Similarly, he did not mention the low IQs of Republicans who sometimes have not agreed with him.  He did not create demeaning nicknames for anyone.  He did, however, attack Democrats in an unprecedented way. He said: Stand if you agree that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” All Republicans got to their feet, but only a few Democrats did. He then went on to say that Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for their continuing sittingness and that they were crazy and managing to destroy the country–apparently the only time opponents were labeled demented at a State of the Union.

A State of the Union has often been an opportunity to spell out a president’s legislative priorities. There was little of that from Trump. He did propose a new retirement account and suggested that tech companies will be required to build their own power plants for AI data centers, but he did not suggest any legislation to accomplish this. He did, however, tell the legislators to stop insider congressional trading, his one policy position that seemed to have gotten bipartisan cheers. Nevertheless, there was no grand policy proposal. To the disappointment of Republicans, I’m sure, he didn’t even propose another tax cut. But he did lobby for the passage of the SAVE Act, a solution in search of a problem, that would strip states of powers to regulate elections. He said that the only way Democrats can win is to cheat. He seemed to be foreshadowing what may happen next fall: If Democrats win in the midterms, he will claim that they had to have cheated.

Perhaps the speech was as noteworthy for what was not said as much as for what was. There was no mention of ICE, Jeffrey Epstein, plans for Gaza, healthcare, social media, Melania the movie, the Board of Peace, not even the ballroom. There was almost nothing about what once consumed conservatives–our federal debt. However, he announced a new war on fraud under the generalship of JD Vance (not Musk this time) that could supposedly end federal debt. The speech, however, did raise the now standard conservative attack on transgender people, but without any explanation of how this makes life better for our populace. (And, of course, his brief comments on Iran were quickly outpaced by his war.)

This was not just a speech. There was also stagecraft. At the fifteen-minute mark, when attention had already lagged, Trump had the Olympic gold-medal winning men’s hockey team–which did have a thrilling victory–march into the congressional arena. The women’s hockey team, also thrilling victors, were not there. He certainly did not mention that the majority of America’s medals were won by women or that America failed to win the most medals.

Was this address successful? We might like to think our elections are about persuasion. Who has the better policies? Who has the better candidates? But, especially for midterms, when fewer people vote, it is about gerrymandering and about turning out the vote of your side and suppressing the vote of the other side.

While Trump may do things to suppress votes of Democrats, this speech is not one of them, and I doubt that it changed the energy levels of his supporters. Fewer people watched this year’s State of the Union than last year’s. There were no new notable quotable lines to act as battle cries. Instead, it was mostly well-worn, well-known Trumpian tropes. It was less than a week ago and is already largely forgotten. There is much more important news.

Posted on by rjonakait · 1 Comment

Another Third Term

Their glee was evident as they promoted a third term. The conservative panel on television was positively giddy as they speculated on a fourth term. But their gaiety, I thought, should be tempered. If there can be more than two terms for Donald Trump, then there can be a third term for Barack. And Obama would present a formidable opponent.

Trump will be 82 on the next inauguration day. That is Joe Biden’s present age. Trump is an amazing physical specimen, but 82 is 82, and of course, he would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a third term. Obama, on the other hand, will be 67 on January 20, 2029.

Also consider that Obama got a majority of the votes in 2008 and won by 52.9% to 45.7%. Four years later he won by 51.1% to 47.2%. Trump in his three elections, one of which he lost, has never gotten a majority of the votes. He lost the popular vote decisively twice and won only a narrow plurality in the recent election.

We, of course, don’t know what will happen during Trump’s present term, but in considering an Obama/Trump match, let’s compare Trump’s first term with what happened under Obama.

Inflation was low under Trump for most of his term, but it was even lower with Obama even though Obama inherited the Great Recession of 2007-2009 when the GDP dropped by 4.3% and unemployment peaked at 9.5%. That recession, which was the worst since the 1930s, started under George W. Bush. It ended under President Barack Obama. Of course, under Trump we had a recession in 2020 when the unemployment rate jumped in two months from 3.5% to 14.7%. This, of course, was largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the “misery index”—the sum of unemployment and inflation rates—soared under President Trump.

When Trump took office, the cost of gasoline (“Obama’s gas prices”) was lower than the averages during the next four years.

Trump seeks to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but under Obama a system was already in place to do that. Trump scuttled that in his first term.

Trump now touts “massive” deportations of undocumented aliens, but more people were deported under Obama than have been with Trump as president.

Homelessness, which jumped under President Trump, was lower under Obama.

Deaths per capita skyrocketed when Trump was in office and had increased even before Covid. The death rate was lower under Obama, and life expectancy, which fell in this country during the Trump presidency, was longer under Obama.

Obama has spoken eloquently in favor of combating global warming. Trump has labeled climate change “a Chinese hoax.”

Murder rates increased during Trump’s first term. They declined under Obama.  

Trump said that China posed a “tremendous economic and military threat” to the United States, but on his watch, China became the EU’s largest trading partner.

Trump has voiced much anguish over our trade deficits, but those deficits were larger at the end of his first term than when he took office. 

The national debt and deficits were lower under Obama than Trump.

Opioid deaths were higher under Trump than Obama.

We could go on, but the point is to be careful what you wish for. If the conservatives gushing for another run by Trump get their desire, I will join many others by chanting, Bring Back Barack.

Posted on by rjonakait

Twelve Ways to Win

In the last post, “77 Million,” I wrote that the real story of the last presidential election was not the switch to Trump, which was not large, but the “lost votes,” the many who had voted for Biden but did not vote at all this year. A story in a Pennsylvania news source neatly illustrates the point. A Philadelphia district that is overwhelmingly Black had shifted to Trump, but in that district Trump had gotten only three more votes than he had in 2020. Harris, however, had received 81 fewer ballots than Biden had four years earlier.

After the previous post, a friend said that he agreed with my analysis but wondered what my explanation was for the lost votes. I thought more about that and realized that I did not have a single overarching explanation but only a collection of partial possibilities. Here are some of them.

One. Donald Trump is a remarkable politician. His dominant qualities—liar, ignoramus, bully, fearmonger, bad economist, embarrassing dancer—should make him a laughingstock, but despite these characteristics, or perhaps because of them, he connects deeply with a broad swath of Americans. They are devoted to him like teenage girls to a K-pop boy band. There’s a major difference, however: American devotion to him has not been a passing fancy; we don’t seem to grow out of it. Other presidents—Reagan, Clinton, Obama—had devoted admirers, but not like Trump. To me the attraction is inexplicable, but I recognize his draw.

Two. Americans have short memories, and Trump benefited. In 2020, almost all voters held strong and accurate images of the Trump presidency. Despite the pandemic, the economy was about the same as it was under Obama, with some indicators stronger and some weaker than in the previous four years. (E.g., inflation was low under Trump, but it was even lower under Obama.) However, all was not well in the country. Crime had started to increase under Trump which was disturbing. Life expectancy had started to fall even apart from the pandemic. The border was a problem, and Trump had failed to fix it. Even Obama had deported more people than Trump had. Trump’s wall seemed a joke. His attempts to erase the Affordable Care Act were disturbing. Deficits skyrocketed. He played footsy with dictators, which was disturbing. His many grift-like actions were disturbing. A lot of things were disturbing, but that was all forgotten four years later. Moreover, of all the bad things that were predicted to happen because of his four years did not happen. For example, Biden continued the China tariffs that liberals had decried ruinous. Biden continued Trump border policies that were labeled ineffectual and heartless. More and more politicians supported the border wall. Trump was still the same Trump, but to many he did not look as bad as he had in 2020.

Three. Americans are not only forgetful; they are ignorant. Americans want simple answers, and Trump benefited. The border problem has many causes. We need a reform of our immigration laws. We need more border agents. We need more immigration judges. The problem is fueled by criminal gangs and political unrest in various countries. The problem is exacerbated by poor economies in various countries. It is intensified by the wider spread of media coverage that tells more and more people that they can find a better life if they can get to the U.S. And so on. Americans don’t want to confront such complexities. They don’t want to concede that the problem has been years in the making. They want a simple answer. And to many, the border problem is simply the fault of the Biden-Harris administration. (When conservatives refer to 2017 to 2021, they never say the Trump-Pence administration.)

More simplistic thinking follows: If the border were tightened, for example, we could tackle our fentanyl problem. (We have already forgotten that Trump promised to solve the fentanyl crisis when he ran in 2016.) Inflation. Well, inflation was the consequence of many complex events, but Americans didn’t want to understand that. Neither did we want to know that many developed countries had a worse inflation problem than we had, and that perhaps our inflation, bad as it was, was not so bad. Americans did not want to hear that gas and oil trade in an international market, that supply chains are international, and that the U.S. government does not control these markets. Instead, we want a simple answer, and that answer was that inflation was the fault of the Biden-Harris administration.

Four. Fear sells, and Trump benefited. Many campaigns have tried to make the electorate fearful about the consequences of the other side’s actions. In the first election I paid attention to, JFK stressed a “missile gap” at a time when nuclear concerns were high. (That gap seemed to disappear once he took office.) This year Trump and his acolytes did a much better job of spreading fear than the other side—fear of crime generally, fear of immigrant crime more specifically, fear of immigration, fear of fentanyl, fear of transgender people. That last fear should not be underestimated. For most of the election season, I was in Pennsylvania, a swing state for the presidential election with a closely contested Senate seat and several close House races. It seemed as if every third political ad — and the ads ran nonstop — by those on the right brought up Democratic support for trans people. They damned Harris for supporting government payment for gender-transforming operations. They hinted that Democratic candidates were going to allow trans people to play girls’ sports and use girls’ bathrooms. This country may have become more accepting of gays, but many, many Americans see trans people as unsettling and dangerous. Trump and his supporters benefited.

Five. The media has had a fixation on Trump, and Trump benefited. News sources, including, or perhaps especially, liberal ones reported at length whatever Trump was doing or saying. This was not totally surprising. In the run-up to the election, Trump was on the receiving end of multiple lawsuits including his conviction of 34 felony counts in New York. Nevertheless, this coverage overwhelmed coverage of Biden’s accomplishments (how many of us can summarize what is in the Inflation Reduction Act?) and explanations for problems like rising prices or the border. Since memory-impaired Americans seemed less concerned about the bizarre and dangerous behavior of Trump in 2024 than they were in 2020, the media did Trump a favor by focusing on him and not other things.

Six. We don’t know how to handle misinformation, and that benefited Trump, too. A higher percentage of misinformation came from the right than the left, and listeners ate it up.

Seven. Liberals and Democrats are poor at messaging. Who named it the Inflation Reduction Act? I know. I know. It was meant to reduce inflation, and it certainly did help. But it was hard not to hear it as a laugh line when the cost of milk and eggs and gas and mortgages was unusually high. Why didn’t they change the name and start focusing on all the good the Act accomplished?

Eight. But perhaps the chief cause of Trump’s (narrow) victory came throughout Biden’s term. While Americans were concerned about the border and inflation, Biden seemed indifferent to those problems. He might have been able to do little or nothing about them, but he should have appeared more concerned about them. He did not. And Trump won.

Similarly, every third ad against Harris I saw featured her being asked what she would have done differently from Biden. The response was the blank look of a doe in the headlights with the answer of “nothing.” It was powerful each time, and I saw it many, many times. Such a question had to be anticipated. How could she not have had a better immediate response? (Later on — too later on — she did.) There was also the never-ending clip of her crowing about the success of “Bidenomics.” Democrats should have been ready to explain what they were hoping to accomplish and what they had accomplished. They did not. And Trump won.

Nine. In the eyes of many Americans the Democratic Party does not stand for anything, and Trump benefited. Worse: Democrats were seen as the party that stood for trans rights, defunding the police, DEI, and critical race theory. But what else? For many, Democrats didn’t stand for anything that benefited “ordinary” people. Biden’s support for the United Auto Workers made no dint in this perception.

Ten. Covid hurt Trump in 2020. It helped him this year. His inconsistent and bizarre reactions to the pandemic were fresh four years ago. Now many have selective memories of that time. Unless personally affected, few seem to remember that one million American died. Instead, today Covid is remembered by many as a time of unnecessary school closings that harmed kids and strained parents; of unnecessary face masks; of governmental overreach on vaccines and social distancing. These are all reasons to distrust the government, and Trumps surrogates did a great job of reminding us of this distrust. At the same time, some see the Democrats as the ones who believe in big government of the sort that made Covid more hellish. Trump benefited.

Eleven. Many are not ready for a woman to be the Commander-in-Chief. We cannot discount that this country continues to have a strong strain of misogyny. Trump benefited big time from it.

Twelve. What do you think contributed? I’d love to hear them.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

A well-known fact: Inflation was low while Trump was president. A lesser-known fact: Inflation was lower while Obama was president.

A wise person said: “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses a lamppost—for support rather than illumination.”

We are selling the house we have lived in for forty-seven years. We will pay a capital gains tax because the house has appreciated considerably in monetary value. That has me thinking about yet another tax advantage for those who have always had money. Imagine two people buying the same house for the same price. They improve the house in exactly the same way. They sell the house for the same price. They will both have to pay a capital gains tax on the amount they sold the house for minus the house’s base. That base will primarily consist of the price they paid for the property plus the capital they have put into the house. But one of them only had barely enough money to carry the house while he owned it so he did the work himself for every improvement. The other owner was always well-to-do and hired other people to make the improvements. The first owner’s sweat equity does not count as a capital expenditure for the capital gains tax. The other owner’s payment to construction companies and the like is a capital expenditure. Thus, when selling, the rich guy has a higher base for his house and pays a lower capital gains tax than the other person.

Political ads and stories predominantly on conservative outlets highlight murders and assaults committed by “illegal aliens.” Of course, such crimes happen and can be horrific. However, numerous studies have shown that illegal immigrants commit murder at a lower rate than native-born Americans and that legal immigrants are convicted of murder at much lower rates than the native born or illegals. You want a safer country? Deport those who were born here.

I wrote a few posts ago that I face-planted myself on a golf course and how I responded facetiously when I was asked about the noticeable face discolorations. I said that I needed more replies. Some more possibilities: “I forgot how strong the spouse is.” “Do you want my version or the truth?” “In today’s world, it is never too early to get ready for Halloween.” “I did not know that golf was a blood sport.”

Among the unwanted consequences of the face-planting is that people tell me about their falls. I only say something about my mishap if I am asked what happened. Otherwise I keep it to myself. Many, however, who have, like me, literally fallen on their faces, figuratively fall on their faces when they hit the five-minute self-involved narration point, having felt, for reasons not apparent to me, compelled to share their face-plant experience with me and anyone else who is listening. 

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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

High-Priced Gas

          People are complaining about gasoline prices. This has a note of irony since many are willing to pay more per gallon of bottled water than they do for gas. Water has regularly cost more than gas even though it is only a miniscule percentage of us who can’t just open a kitchen tap and get safe water.

          High-cost gasoline, however, has widespread economic effects, and it has a political impact that high-priced water does not. The president must at least look as if he is trying to tame the cost of gasoline even though we know that he can do very little in the short run to affect gas prices. Governors have suspended state gas taxes–modest help to the driving public. In a Catch-22 situation, suspending gas taxes limits income needed for road construction and maintenance. Voters, who may grumble about the rising price of gas, speak regularly about the substandard state of the roads.

          These politically understandable actions, however, do not address the more important issue: gasoline-powered cars cause pollution, which harms health and contributes to the death of many. Data show that gasoline-powered cars are a major part of the problem of climate change. We should be using less gasoline, but, once again, the present crisis indicates that we are not about to give up our combustion engines.

          People need cars to get to work, schools, and the grocery store. We have built a country that depends on private vehicles, and it is hard to see the path to a lesser dependence on them. Consciously or not, inexpensive gasoline has helped shape our work, housing, schooling, and recreational choices, and climate change and pollution have been the result.

          We have seen a move to electric and hybrid vehicles, and that is a good thing. Newer cars need less gas than cars made a generation ago, and there is renewed talk that car companies should increase the gas mileage for their fleets. Still, even among my friends who hug trees and clean streams, many of us drive bigger vehicles with lower gas mileage than we need. We are reluctant to give up big cars and trucks. It’s our God-given right, a right encouraged by cheap gas.

          Higher gas prices could be an impetus to lower our dependence on oil. Even so and even though our president and other sensible leaders believe we should act on climate change, politicians know that expensive gas can kill a political career. The governmental responses have been especially discouraging because they have not been targeted to help those most who are truly harmed by the pump prices—the non-wealthy working people with families who, in our present societal structure, must use their cars extensively.

          For many of us, our cars and how much we drive them are luxuries. Higher gas prices should be an incentive for us to burn less gas. And, of course, that would mean that oil companies had reduced profits. Many politicians will avoid that hard fight. After all, oil companies give big money to campaigns. It’s easier to blame the opposing party for high prices.

          The present situation is another reminder that the road to a better climate is hard and filled with potholes. Perhaps we should just give up the notion that we can stop the atmospheric devastation and figure out how to adapt to the inevitable.