Im-Politic: Aftershocks

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abortion, African Americans, America First, CCP Virus, China, climate change, coronavirus, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, election 2022, election interference, establishment Republicans, Green New Deal, Hispanics, Hong Kong, House of Representatives, human rights, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Biden, mail-in ballots, mail-in voting, Mainstream Media, nationalism, polls, Populism, recession, redistricting, regulations, Republicans, Senate, social issues, state legislatures, tariffs, Trade, traditional values, Trump, Uighurs, women, Wuhan virus

I’m calling this post “aftershocks” because, like those geological events, it’s still not clear whether the kind of political upheaval Americans are likely to see in the near future are simply the death rattles of the initial quake or signs of worse to come.

All the same, at the time of this writing, assuming that the final results of Election 2020 will see Democratic nominee Joe Biden win the Presidency, the Republicans keep the Senate, and the Democrats retain control of the House, the following observations and predictions seem reasonable.

First, whatever the outcome, President Trump’s campaign performance and likely vote percentages were still remarkable. In the middle of a re-spreading pandemic, a deep CCP Virus-led economic slump that’s left unemployment at still punishing levels, and, as mentioned before, unremitting hostility from the very beginning on the part of most and possibly all powerful private sector institutions in this country as well as much of Washington’s permanent government, he gave his opponents a monumental scare. If not for the virus, the President could well have won in a near landslide. And will be made clear below, this isn’t just “moral victory” talk.

Second, at the same time, the kinds of needlessly self-inflicted wounds I’ve also discussed seem to have cost him many important advantages of incumbency by combining with pandemic effects to alienate many independents and moderate Republicans who backed him four years ago.

Third, the stronger-than-generally expected Trump showing means that, all else equal, the prospects for a nationalist populist presidential candidate in 2024 look bright. After all, how difficult is it going to be for the Republican Party (whence this candidate is most likely to come) to find a standard-bearer (or six) who champions the basics of the Trump synthesis – major curbs on trade and immigration, low taxes and regulations but more a more generous economic and social safety net, a genuine America First-type foreign policy emphasizing amassing of national power in all its dimensions but using it very cautiously, and a fundamentally commonsense view on social issues (e.g., recognizing the broad support of substantial abortion rights but strongly resisting identify politics) – without regular involvement in Twitter fights with the likes of Rosie O’Donnell?

Fourth, these prospects that what might be called Trump-ism will outlast Mr. Trump means that any hopes for the establishment wing to recapture the Republican Party are worse than dead. Ironically, an outsized nail-in-the-coffin could be produced by the gains the President appears to have made with African Americans and especially Hispanics. After Utah Senator Mitt Romney’s defeat at the hands of Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, the Republican conventional wisdom seemed to be that the party needed to adopt markedly more tolerant positions on social issues like gay rights (less so on abortion), and on immigration to become competitive with major elements of the former President’s winning coalition – notably younger voters, women, and Hispanics. The main rationale was that these constituencies were becoming dominant in the U.S. population.

The establishment Republicans pushing this transformation got the raw demographics right – although the short run political impact of these changes was exaggerated, as the Trump victory in 2016 should have made clear. But it looks like they’ve gotten some of the political responses wrong, with immigration the outstanding example. However many Hispanic Americans overall may sympathize with more lenient stances toward newcomers, a notable percentage apparently valued Mr. Trump’s so-called traditional values and pro-business and pro free enterprise positions more highly.

If the current election returns hold, the results will put the GOP – and right-of-center politics in America as a whole – in a completely weird position. Because the party’s establishment wing still figures prominently in its Senate ranks, a wide, deep disconnect seems plausible between the only branch of the federal government still controlled by Republicans on the one hand, and the party’s Trumpist/populist base on the other – at least until the 2022 mid-term vote.

Fifth, as a result, predictions of divided government stemming from Election 2020’s results need some major qualifications. These establishment Senate Republicans could well have the numbers and the backbone to block a Biden administration’s ambitious plans on taxing and spending (including on climate change).

But will they continue supporting Trumpist/populist lines on trade and immigration? That’s much less certain, especially on the former front. Indeed, it’s all too easy to imagine many Senate Republicans acquiescing in the Democratic claims that, notably, the United States needs to “stand up to China,” but that the best strategy is to act in concert with allies – which, as I’ve explained repeatedly, is a recipe for paralysis and even backsliding, given how conflicted economically so many of these allies are. As suggested above, the reactions of the overwhelmingly Trumpist Republican base will be vital to follow.

One reason for optimism (from a populist standpoint) on China in particular – Senate Republican opposition to anything smacking of the Green New Deal should put the kibosh on any Biden/Democratic notions of granting China trade concessions in exchange for promises on climate change that would likely be completely phony. Similar (and similarly dubious) quid pro quos involving China’s repression of Hong Kong and its Uighur Muslim minority could well be off the table, too.

Sixth, their failure to flip the Senate, their apparently small losses in the House, and disappointments at the state level (where they seem likely to wind up remaining a minority party) means that the Democrats’ hoped for Blue Wave was a genuine mirage – and looks more doubtful in future national contests as well. For state governments are the ones that control the process of redrawing Congressional district lines in (very rough) accordance with the results of the latest national Census — like the one that’s winding up. So this is a huge lost opportunity for the Democrats, and a major source of relief for Republicans.

Meanwhile, on a symbolic but nonethless important level, the aforementioned better-than-anyone-had-a-right-to-expect Trump showing means that the desire of many Democrats, most progessives, and other establishmentarians to crush the President (and other Republicans), and therefore consign his brand of politics and policy to oblivion, have been sort of crushed themselves. So it’s an open question as to whether they’ll respond with even more vilification of the President and his supporters, or whether they’ll finally display some ability to learn and seriously address legitimate Trumper grievances.

Seventh, as for Trump Nation and its reaction to defeat, the (so far) closeness of the presidential vote is already aggravating the nation’s continued polarization for one particularly troubling reason: A Biden victory aided by the widespread use of mail-in voting inevitably will raise charges of tampering by Democratic state governments in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Call it domestic election interference, and the allegations will be just as angry as those of foreign interference that dogged the previous presidential election. As a result, I hope that all Americans of good will agree that, once the pandemic passes, maximizing in-person voting at a polling place needs to return as the norm.

Finally, for now – those polls. What a near-complete botch! And the general consensus that Biden held a strong national lead throughout, and comparable edges in key battleground states may indeed have depressed some Republican turnout. Just as important – a nation that genuinely values accountability will demand convincing explanations from the polling outfits concerned, and ignore their products until their methodologies are totally overhauled. Ditto for a Mainstream Media that put so much stock in their data, in part because so many big news organizations had teamed up with so many pollsters. P.S. – if some of these companies are fired outright, and/or heads roll (including those of some political reporters), so much the better.

Im-Politic: Why the Crucial Abortion Debates are (Long) Over

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abortion, abortion rights, Constitution, Gallup, heartbeat bills, Im-Politic, Kaiser Family Foundation, National Opinion Research Center, Pew Research Center, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, Quinnipiac College poll, Robert G. McCloskey, Roe vs. Wade, Supreme Court

If only most of the major challenges facing Americans were as easy to meet as arriving at a satisfactory compromise over abortion. In fact, in the key respects, the challenge has already been met, as a general consensus is staring the nation in its collective face, has been in place literally for decades, and looks guaranteed to remain solidly in place for the foreseeable future.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it, given the political and policy brawl that has erupted in recent weeks over a handful of states’ approval of laws dramatically reducing the circumstances in which abortion will remain legal?  But this contention is backed up strongly by the national legal regime regulating abortion right now, by all the polling, and by everything known about how the Supreme Court – which it’s thought on both sides of the issue could well transform the status quo it’s created since its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision – historically has handled such explosive questions. Moreover, abortion is one of those matters in which the politics, the law, and the history powerfully reinforce each other.

Let’s start with the law. The major Supreme Court decisions are of course the Roe case – which established a Constitutional right to abortion but also authorized states to infringe on it in various ways during a pregnancy’s second and third trimesters – but also a ruling in the 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey case. In it, a 5-4 majority of the Court created a standard to govern such state restrictions on abortion, holding that such measures could not impose an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions that “created a substantial obstacle” to undergoing the procedure “before the fetus attains viability.”

Revealingly, that guideline nicely describes the current U.S. consensus on abortion rights: Women deserve a fundamental right to abortion, but (like most other rights), it’s not absolute. More specifically, the most widely agreed on exceptions involve what are clearly exceptional (and exceptionally tragic) – mainly rape, incest, serious threats to the pregnant woman’s health, and a high likelihood that the new baby would suffer from serious defects. (See this recent Gallup summary for some representative data.)

Still more revealingly: These public attitudes have been remarkably stable over time. At least three separate polls – shown in the aforementioned Gallup summary, by Pew, and by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) – make this point emphatically.

And at least as important – NORC’s findings show that a sizable gap has existed between public support for the “tragic” exceptions to the right to abortion on the one hand (which have demonstrated at least 70 percent backing for the four decades examined), and other proposed exceptions (whose support generally has remained between 30 percent and 50 percent).

In turn, these legal and political considerations both create towering obstacles even to a Court now featuring a conservative majority overturning either the Roe or the Casey regimes. And least plausible of all is the wish-dream of abortion rights opponents and the nightmare of abortion rights supporters – that the Court bases such a reversal on cases brought deliberately in order to uphold the highly restrictive new state laws. For outlawing abortion even in the aftermath of rape and incest, for example, would seem the epitome of creating a Casey-violating undue burden on the fundamental right to abortion. The various “heartbeat” bills for their part can’t be squared with the Court’s determination in Roe and other decisions since that a fetus isn’t viable until long after the six weeks at which this function can first be detected.

Indeed, such laws repeatedly have been struck down in various courts, and the Supreme Court has refused to consider the two that reached it on appeal. And don’t think it’s a coincidence that the high court’s recent record tracks well with public opinion (including on the heartbeat bills, according to Kaiser Family Foundation and Quinnipiac University survey results presented in this sweeping summary of decades of abortion poll findings).

But couldn’t the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority decide the time is ripe to get rid of Roe and follow-on decisions? Not if it bears any resemblance to its predecessors since the New Deal era. For one of the seminal findings about the Court came back in 1960, in Harvard political scientist Robert G. McCloskey’s classic study, The American Supreme Court. As McCloskey argued compellingly, the Court is most successful when it pays attention to public opinion, and runs into its greatest troubles when it gets too far ahead of or too far behind these attitudes. If you’re skeptical, just think of the tumult that followed the pre-Civil War Dred Scott case and its invalidation of crucial pieces of New Deal legislation during the Great Depression.

None of this is to say that lots of thorny abortion-related decisions will continue to face Americans – like federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide a wide range of women’s health care services, including abortion services; and about what kinds of reproductive health services like birth control religious organizations should be required to provide for female employees in their health insurance plans. And few of them have generated enough polling evidence to identify consensus with any justifiable confidence.

But the broadest, most important abortion-related questions have been decided – especially in the court of public opinion. The procedure will remain a strongly protected Constitutional right early in pregnancy, and a more weakly protected right in later phases. Throughout pregnancies, this right will receive virtually absolute protection in genuinely traumatic circumstances, and be subjected by states to curbs on its availability that don’t “substantially” nullify it in practical terms — and that therefore should not be reflexively condemned as stepping stones to wide-ranging bans.

So abortion rights supporters need to give up on extending strong protections deep into pregnancy. And abortion rights opponents should forget about overturning Roe and Casey. It’s true that medical advances that keep pushing fetal survivability (if not viability without pervasive support) back closer to conception will one day resume adding fuel to the abortion debate fire. And public opinion is by no means set in stone. But for more than forty years since Roe, Americans collectively have been saying that the general abortion debate is over, and the courts have plainly agreed. It’s high time that politicians and activists across the spectrum got the message.

Im-Politic: A Moral Quandary Surrounding American Morals?

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abortion, Gallup, gay marriage, Im-Politic, marijuana, moderates, morals, polling, public opinion, social conservatives, social liberals, Trump, values

This’ll be one of those posts where I confess I just don’t know what the heck is going on. But the info seems so compelling – and possibly contradictory – that it can’t be ignored.

The first half of the puzzle comes from Gallup’s new finding that a large (81 percent) of Americans judge the country’s moral values to be “only fair” or “poor,” and that 77 percent believe that this problem is getting worse. Although I know there will be many who are tempted to respond with something to the effect of “Ah, Trump,” keep in mind that these numbers haven’t changed dramatically since the company began asking such questions in 2002. (Somewhat greater shifts – for the worse – are evident since the early 1990s, when Gallup’s questions were somewhat differently worded.)

Another intriguing result: More than a third of respondents rated the state of U.S. morality as “fair” – which isn’t necessarily negative. In fact, combining the 36 percent of Americans taking this view with the (dwindling) share who view it as “excellent/good” (17 percent) sums to a majority that’s arguably pleased with the nation’s ethics. And these sub-categories (called “internals” by polling insiders) have remained broadly stable over the last decade and a half as well.

Less intriguing: Over the last year, self-identified social liberals have become much more concerned about America’s morals, with the share perceiving a worsening spurting from 58 percent to 71 percent. Social moderates became markedly more pessimistic, too, and that definitely looks like a Trump effect. So does the less dramatic drop in the share of those considering themselves as social conservatives telling Gallup that moral decay intensified during that time.

But here’s where the real mystery comes in. Another Gallup survey, taken just a few weeks ago, reported “Americans Hold Record Liberal Views on Most Moral Issues”. Give the company credit: It’s recognized the apparent paradox: “Even liberals, who seemingly should be pleased with the growing number of Americans who agree with their point of view on the morality of prominent social issues, are more likely to say things are getting worse than getting better.”

Gallup offers two possible explanations, but I don’t find them especially convincing. The first, after all, assumes (at least logically) that social liberals believe that many Americans who have swung their way on gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, and the like are still insensitive (at best) toward racism and poverty. Or even have become more so. The second assumes that liberals believe that these same, increasingly tolerant Americans keep displaying “lack of respect or tolerance for others,” or are getting even coarser.

Nor am I persuaded by another possible explanation that could well be proposed by social conservatives: that although they increasingly support more liberal moral positions and views, deep down inside, liberals and moderates recognize them as dangerous and therefore perceive American morals to be declining.

So I’m left in the dark, but certain something important is taking place within the national psyche. What do all of you think?

Im-Politic: New Survey Shows Surprising Areas of National Consensus

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abortion, American Values Survey, blacks, China, Democrats, Donald Trump, equal opportunity, family leave, Hispanics, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, independents, inequality, Islam, minimum wage, multinational corporations, Muslims, offshoring, parental leave, police killings, polls, Public religious Research Institute, race relations, regulations, Republicans, same-sex marriage, Trade, whites

Just when you think you’re getting a handle on the American public’s mood in these raucous political and social times, along comes some polling data that rock your world. And I’m pleased to report that, in the case of the new American Values Survey published by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRII), the net results strike me as encouraging as they are surprising. Specifically, they indicate that the U.S. public is much less divided on many hot button social and cultural issues than politicians and the national media coverage have been indicating. In fact, the findings of this November survey suggest the gathering of a common sense consensus on these supposedly bitterly divisive matters.

The unexpected areas of agreement start with a subject close to the leading headline-maker of the day – Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s call for a temporary ban on travel by all non-citizen Muslims into the United States. It’s too early for a poll on this specific proposal. But I found it instructive that, according to the PRII, Americans agree by a 56 percent to 41 percent margin that “the values of Islam are at odds with American values and way of life.” In 2011, only 47 percent agreed and 48 percent disagreed.

Moreover, although breaking the results down by political leanings produces differences, even 43 percent of Democrats share these suspicions of Islam. For Republican and independents, the figures are 76 percent and 57 percent, respectively.

The survey shows an even split on the question of whether immigrants “strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents” (47 percent agreed) or “constitute a burden on the U.S. because they take jobs, housing, and health care” (46 percent). But only last year, the “strengthen” option won out by 57 percent to 35 percent. The partisan gap is indeed wide, with 63 percent of Republicans holding such negative views of immigrants and 66 percent disagreeing. But 32 percent of Democrats were focused on immigrant-created economic burdens as well.

Even more suggestive of consensus on this issue, though, are the results for a slightly different question. Fully 45 percent of Democrats agreed that “illegal immigrants are at least somewhat responsible for America’s current economic woes” (as well as 70 percent of Republicans and 53 percent of independents). And check out the racial split: Majorities of white and black Americans (58 percent and 52 percent, respectively) told held illegal immigrants “at least somewhat responsible” for the nation’s economic troubles – along with 40 percent of Hispanic Americans. For good measure, so do 44 percent of the white and college-educated, who often benefit from low-wage illegal immigrant labor.

The PRII survey will scarcely comfort President Obama, Congress’ Republican leadership, or the multinational corporations who all support America’s current trade policies. Breakdowns were not provided, but 86 percent of Americans hold “corporations moving American jobs overseas…somewhat or very responsible for the present economic troubles facing the U.S.” That’s up from 74 percent in 2012. “China’s unfair trade practices” were cited by 73 percent. Not surprisingly, 72 percent of Americans believe the country is still in a recession, a figure that’s remained pretty steady 2012. Keep in mind that the current recovery began, at least technically, in mid-2009.

Large majorities also believed that “the current economic system is heavily tilted in favor of the wealthy” (79 percent); that lack of equal opportunity in America is a “big problem” (65 percent); and that “hard work is no guarantee of success” (64 percent – including 52 percent of Republicans).

And these majorities extended to numerous economic policies. Just over three-quarters of all Americans favor increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour (including 60 percent of Republicans). Eighty five percent support paid sick leave and 82 percent back paid parental leave. And although no questions were asked about desired regulatory policy changes, 69 percent of respondents blamed “burdensome government regulations” for at least some of the nation’s economic predicament.

Signs of common ground were also evident on domestic social issues that are thought to be highly polarizing. For example, relatively few Democrats (36 percent) or Republicans (43 percent) considered abortion important to them “personally.” And the partisan split on same-sex marriage was smaller, and at lower levels of salience – 28 percent for Democrats and 29 percent for Republicans.

Big divides remained on numerous issues, to be sure – like confidence in the federal government, and a $15 minimum wage (lots of Republicans climb off that boat), and police treatment of minorities. Interestingly, in this vein, minority Americans are significantly more optimistic than whites that “America’s best days are ahead of us.”

But it’s hard to finish this latest American Values Survey feeling deeply pessimistic that the nation can’t overcome its differences and create that better future. In fact, one of my biggest reasons for hopefulness is the following finding: “Nearly two-thirds (66%) of the public agrees that, ‘everyday Americans understand what the government should do better than the so-called ‘experts.’ There is broad agreement across racial, generational, and partisan lines.”

Im-Politic: So Why Not Trump-Sanders? (Or Vice Versa?)

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2016 elections, abortion, Bernie Sanders, campaign finance, Democrats, Donald Trump, Im-Politic, Immigration, New Deal coalition, politics, realignment, Republicans, Trade, Wall Street reform

As long as we’re in this political Annus Bizarricus (or whatever the Latin-ism would be), why not take it one pattern-shattering one step further.  Why not make the case for a Trump-Sanders (or Sanders-Trump) fusion ticket?

I’m not saying that it’s likely to happen, or that it’s even possible. Nor am I saying that it should necessarily happen for the good of the country. What I am saying is that it’s nothing less than stunning at how strong a case can be made for this merger, at least on paper.

Clearly, there’s a vast stylistic gap between the two candidates. Real estate tycoon Donald Trump flaunts his jet set, billionaire lifestyle. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders clearly is proud of his Ben-and-Jerry set Sixties roots. The core Trump and Sanders constituencies seem dramatically different, too – downwardly mobile, socially and culturally traditional older middle class and working class white men and women for the former, college-educated, relatively affluent younger whites, and aging Baby Boomers who remain socially and culturally young at heart for the latter.

But odd couple pairings as such are hardly unknown in American politics. Think Obama-Biden. Or Reagan-Bush. Or Carter-Mondale. Or JFK-LBJ. Nor is it unknown for voting blocs that appear to have nothing in common suddenly to link arms to transform the political landscape. Think “New Deal coalition” – which ruled American politics for decades thanks to southern Democrats joining with Catholic workers from the big northeastern cities. And the modern Republican party has succeeded largely by appealing to a wide variety of conservatives who lately seem increasingly and deeply resentful of each other: one percenters and other “country club conservatives,” those downwardly mobile middle- and working-class whites, evangelical/cultural conservatives, and libertarians.

And think of the issue stances that Trump and Sanders themselves have in common – which include the hottest-button subjects of the present campaign. Both plainly have it in for Wall Street and its unearned and often destructive privileges. As a result, both obviously want an end to a campaign finance regime that favors the plutocrats and other moneyed special interests. Both strongly opposed the second Iraq War. (Although Trump has promised to defeat ISIS militarily, mainly with American power, he’s also hinted at a more standoffish approach, at least at first.  Sanders has suggested that Middle Eastern countries themselves should do the heaviest military lifting.) Both have been outspoken critics of America’s current, offshoring-happy trade policies. And although Sanders has recently sought to assure Democratic Hispanic voters of his Open Borders bona fides, his earlier stance on immigration issues made clear his grave – and Trump-like – concerns that mass influxes of poorly skilled and educated newcomers in particular would kneecap American workers’ wages.  

Moreover, largely as a result of these broad areas of agreement – and potential agreement – both are suspect partisans in the eyes of many Republicans and Democrats – and for entirely understandable reasons.

It’s even easy to see, at least in theory, where certain stretches of Trump-Sanders common ground could foster consensus in areas where they don’t appear to see eye to eye. For example, fighting climate change has been one of Sanders’ major political passions. Trump has said little on the subject. But trade measures that significantly cut imports from China would limit total global greenhouse gas emissions and pollution levels by slowing the growth of China’s appallingly filthy manufacturing sector. And by doing so, it would enable domestic manufacturers to accept stricter regulations on their own emissions etc without losing global competitiveness, and/or feeling greater pressure to send production to China and other pollution/greenhouse havens.

Another example (though not remotely such a no-brainer): Sanders is strongly pro-choice. Reacting to charges that Planned Parenthood has engaged in and even profited from trade fetal tissue, Trump has been highly critical of the organization and the government subsidies it receives. Yet abortion clearly isn’t an issue that excites Trump one way or the other. So if he really is a master deal cutter, he would surely be open to some kind of compromise.  

One possibility;  He emphatically endorses the essence of Roe vs. Wade and the principle of women controlling their own bodies – and futures – in exchange for a wrist-slap for Planned Parenthood and even a promise by the organization to steer widely clear of the body parts business (in a way that skirted the issue of its actual record, which is as yet unclear). In turn, it’s possible that supporters of both candidates have become so trusting in their apolitical instincts, and so tired of the dueling talking points of more conventional politicians on both sides, that a deal along these lines could pave the way for a stronger national consensus on the issue.

In fact, the main obstacles to this “Dream Ticket” arguably are personal. And, as The Donald might put it, “Yuuuuuuge.” Who would get top billing? Could they work out some kind of co-presidency deal (which would need to be informal due to Constitutional issues)? Could they exchange the presidency and vice presidency after two years?

I’m sure that readers will be able to think of many more pro- and anti-arguments – and I hope you’ll bring them up in comments! But I also hope that the skeptics in particular will keep two points in mind. First, although America’s major political parties in their current forms make sense in many other respects, in many others, they’re completely illogical and inconsistent – as is being made clear by the strength of “outsider” candidates, and in particular by many Republican voters’ lack of interest in Trump’s ideological purity. Second, American politics has seen major realignments before, and generally within the two-party framework.

So even if Trump and Sanders won’t or can’t pull this revolution off, it still might simply be awaiting a different, more ideological and temperamentally compatible, and more imaginative group of leaders. Which is to say, it might simply be awaiting a better generation of politicians.