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Tag Archives: election 2020

Making News: New Article on the GOP’s Future Now On-Line

14 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Making News

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Capitol riots, conservatives, election 2020, GOP, impeachment, Making News, Republicans, The National Interest, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that my newest freelance article is on-line – an essay for The National Interest on the Republican party’s post-Trump and post-second-Trunp-impeachment future (and whether the former President is even likely to be left behind).

Here’s the piece, which I think you’ll find unusually interesting because of the poll results it describes about the demographic and ideological makeup of Trump voters last November. After all, they still comprise the vast bulk of Republicans. Please note: This is not a re-posting of a previous blog item. 

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: The Case That the Virus and Not the Fraud Beat Trump

02 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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Anthony S. Fauci, battleground states, Biden, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Donald Trump, election 2020, Im-Politic, mask mandate, Politico, Tony Fabrizio, Wuhan virus

So Donald Trump legitimately lost last November’s presidential election and it was his handling of the CCP Virus pandemic that largely did him in. That’s an argument recently made by one of the former President’s own pollsters, and I take it seriously because the pollster was Tony Fabrizio.

I first became familiar with him in the late 1990s, when he and then partner John McLaughlin (another pollster who worked with the Trump campaign) published a groundbreaking analysis that first identified major opposition in the Republican base to pro-free trade positions and other longstanding GOP stances. In other words, he’s not your typical conservative Beltway mercenary who just hopped on the Trump bandwagon when it became convenient and is now jumping ship and frantically swimming back to establishment shores.

According to an election post-mortem from Fabrizio that was leaked to the news website Politico, Trump lost in 2020 five of the ten battleground states he won in 2016 (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) largely because the virus was by a wide margin the single most important voter concern, because Americans decidedly rejected the Trump campaign’s argument that economic revival counted for more, and because they disapproved of his pandemic policies.

In the five battleground states that flipped against Trump, fully 42 percent of voters according to the exit polls identified the virus as “the most important issue.” “The economy” did come in second, but garnered only 28 percent support. Another major Trump emphasis, law enforcement, barely moved the needle on this question, with only three percent agreement. Moreover, when explicitly asked to rate the importance of virus mitigation versus economic revival, 60 percent in these flip states chose the former. And by a 48 percent to 39 percent, these voters rated candidate Biden as likelier to deal with the virus best.

More confirmation of the CCP Virus’ major role: In these flip states, respondents backed mask-wearing mandates by a huge 75 percent to 25 percent margin, and they approved of the job being done by Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, by a nearly as big 72 percent to 28 percent.

And these virus-related gaps exerted a considerable effect on actual voting behavior. Mr. Biden carried flip state voters who prioritized handling the pandemic by three-to-one.

The CCP Virus clearly wasn’t the only reason for the election verdict. And as I’ve written, in my view, the mass mail-in voting last fall created a system “veritably begging to be abused.” But given the closeness of the flip state votes, disparities this wide on any single issue can generate make-or-break impacts all by themselves.

And although as known by any regular RealityChek reader, I don’t consider Trump’s virus policies to have been distinctively ineffective by any stretch (although the messaging was often off-key), I never joined the Cult of Fauci, and I’ve found President Biden’s pre- and post-inauguration virus statements and policies to be monumentally unimpressive (see, e.g., here) , Fabrizio has marshaled evidence that Trump and his supporters shouldn’t ignore. It’s not that America’s CCP Virus history is likely to repeat itself exactly. It’s because many of the leadership do’s and don’ts it’s exposed are likely applicable to a wide range of potential future crises.

Im-Politic: Looking Backward and Forward on Trump and Trumpism

13 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

cancel culture, Capitol Hill, Capitol riots, China, climate change, Congress, Conservative Populism, Constitution, Democrats, election 2016, election 2020, election challenge, Electoral College, establishment Republicans, Hillary Clinton, identity politics, Im-Politic, Immigration, impeachment, incitement, insurrection, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, left-wing authoritarianism, mail-in ballots, nationalism, Populism, Republicans, sedition, separation of powers, tariffs, Ted Cruz, Trade, trade war, Trump, violence

(Please note: This is the linked and lightly edited version of the post put up this morning.)

The fallout from the Capitol Riot will no doubt continue for the foreseeble future – and probably longer – so no one who’s not clairvoyant should be overly confident in assessing the consequences. Even the Trump role in the turbulent transition to a Biden administration may wind up looking considerably different to future generations than at present. Still, some major questions raised by these events are already apparent, and some can even be answered emphatically, starting off with the related topic of how I’m viewing my support for many, and even most, of President Trump’s policies and my vote for him in both of his White House runs.

Specifically, I have no regrets on either ground. As I’ll make clear, I consider Mr. Trump’s words and deeds of the last few weeks to represent major, and completely unnecessary, failures that will rightly at least tarnish his place in history.

All the same, legitimate analyses of many developments and resulting situations need to think about the counterfactual. Here, the counterfactual is a Trump loss to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. And I’m confident that her presidency would have been both disastrous in policy terms (ranging from coddling China to moving steadily toward Open Borders immigration policies to intervening militarily more often and more deeply in numerous foreign conflicts of no importance to the United States) and heatedly divisive in political terms (because of her grifting behavior in fundraising for the various supposedly philanthropic initiatives she started along with her husband, former President Bill Clinton; because of her campaign’s payment for the phony Steele dossier that helped spur the unwarranted and possibly criminal Obama administration investigation of the Trump campaign; and because of intolerant and extremist instincts that would have brought Identity Politics and Cancel Culture to critical mass years earlier than their actual arrivals).

As for the worrisome events of the last several weeks:

>As I’ve written, I don’t regard Mr. Trump’s rhetoric at his rally, or at any point during his election challenges, as incitement to violence in a legal sense. But is it impeachable? That’s a separate question, because Constitutionally speaking, there’s a pretty strong consensus that impeachment doesn’t require a statutory offense. And since, consequently, it’s also a political issue, there’s no objective or definitive answer. It’s literally up to a majority of the House of Representatives. But as I also wrote, I oppose this measure.

>So do I agree that the President should get off scot free? Nope. As I wrote in the aforementioned post, I do regard the Trump record since the election as reckless. I was especially angered by the President’s delay even in calling on the breachers to leave the Capitol Hill building, and indeed the entire Capitol Hill crowd, to “go home.” In fact, until that prompting – which was entirely too feeble for my tastes – came, I was getting ready to call for his resignation.

>Wouldn’t impeachment still achieve the important objective of preventing a dangerously unstable figure from seeking public office again? Leaving aside the “dangerously unstable” allegation, unless the President is guilty (as made clear in an impeachment proceding) of a major statutory crime (including obstruction of justice, or incitement to violence or insurrection), I’d insist on leaving that decision up to the American people. As New York City talk radio host Frank Morano argued earlier this week, the idea that the Congress should have the power to save the nation from itself is as dangerously anti-democratic as it is laughable.

>Of course, this conclusion still leaves the sedition and insurrection charges on the table – mainly because, it’s contended, the President and many of his political supporters (like all the Republican Senators and House members who supported challenging Electoral College votes during the January 6 certification procedure) urged Congress to make an un-Constitutional, illegal decision: overturning an election. Others add that the aforementioned and separate charge not includes endorsing violence but urging the January 6 crowd to disrupt the certification session.

>First, there’s even less evidence that the lawmakers who challenged the Electoral College vote were urging or suggesting the Trump supporters in the streets and on the lawn to break in to the Capitol Building and forcibly end the certification session than there’s evidence that Mr. Trump himself gave or suggested this directive.

>Second, I agree with the argument – made by conservatives such as Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul (often a Trump supporter) – that authorizing a branch of the federal government unilaterally to nullify the results of elections that the Constitution stipulates should be run by the states is a troubling threat to the Constitutional principle of separation of powers. I’m also impressed with a related argument: that sauce for the goose could wind up as sauce for the gander.

In other words, do Trump supporters want to set a precedent that could enable Congress unilaterally to overturn the election of another conservative populist with something like a second wave of Russia collusion charges? Include me out.

>Further, if the Trump supporters who favored the Electoral College challenge are guilty of insurrection or fomenting it, and should be prosecuted or censured or punished in some way, shouldn’t the same go for the Democrats who acted in the exact same ways in other recent elections? (See here and here.) P.S. Some are still Members of Congress.

>Rather than engage in this kind of What About-ism, and help push the country further down the perilous road of criminalizing political behavior and political differences, I’d much rather consider these challenges as (peaceful) efforts – and in some cases sincere efforts – to insert into the public record the case that these elections were marred by serious irregularities.

>How serious were these irregularities? Really serious – and all but inevitable given the decisions (many pre-pandemic) to permit mass mail-in voting. Talk about a system veritably begging to be abused. But serious enough to change the outcome? I don’t know, and possibly we’ll never know. Two things I do know, however:

First, given the thin Election 2020 margins in many states, it’s clear that practices like fraudulent vote-counting, ballot-harvesting, and illegal election law changes by state governments and courts (e.g., Pennsylvania) don’t have to be widespread. Limiting them to a handful of states easily identified as battlegrounds, and a handful of swing or other key districts within those states, would do the job nicely.

Second, even though I believe that at least some judges should have let some of the Trump challenges proceed (if only because the bar for conviction in such civil cases is much lower than for criminal cases), I can understand their hesitancy because despite this low-ish bar, overturning the election results for an entire state, possibly leading to national consequences, is a bridge awfully far. Yes, we’re a nation of laws, and ideally such political considerations should be completely ignored. But when we’re talking about a process so central to the health of American democracy, politics can never be completely ignored, and arguably shouldn’t.

So clearly, I’m pretty conflicted. What I’m most certain about, however, is that mass mail-in ballots should never, ever be permitted again unless the states come up with ways to prevent noteworthy abuse. Florida, scene of an epic election procedures failure in 2000 (and other screwups), seems to have come up with the fixes needed. It’s high time for other states to follow suit.

As for the politics and policy going forward:

>President Trump will remain influential nationally, and especially in conservative ranks – partly because no potentially competitive rivals are in sight yet, and possibly because Americans have such short memories. But how influential? Clearly much of his base remains loyal – and given his riot-related role, disturbingly so. How influential? Tough to tell. Surely the base has shrunk some. And surely many Independents have split off for good, too. (See, e.g., this poll.) Perhaps most important, barring some unexpected major developments (which obviously no one can rule out), this withering of Trump support will probably continue – though the pace is tough to foresee also.

>The Republican Party has taken a major hit, too, and the damage could be lasting. In this vein, it’s important to remember that the GOP was relegated to minority status literally for decades by President Herbert Hoover’s failure to prevent and then contain the Great Depression. Those aforementioned short American memories could limit the damage. But for many years, it’s clear that Democratic political, campaigns, and conservative Never Trumper groups like the Lincoln Project, will fill print, broadcast, and social media outlets with political ads with video of the riot and Mr. Trump’s rally and similar statements, and the effects won’t be trivial.

>What worries me most, though, is that many of the urgently needed policies supported and implemented by the Trump administration will be discredited. Immigration realism could be the first casualty, especially since so many of the establishment Republicans in Congress were such willing flunkies of the corporate Cheap Labor Lobby for so much of the pre-Trump period, and Open Borders- and amnesty-friendly stances are now defining characteristics of the entire Democratic Party.

The Trump China policies may survive longer, because the bipartisan consensus recognizing – at least rhetorically – the futility and dangers of their predecessors seems much stronger. But given Biden’s long record as a China coddler and enabler, the similar pre-Trump views of those establishment Republicans, and their dependence on campaign contributions from Wall Street and offshoring-happy multinational companies, important though quiet backtracking, particularly on trade, could begin much sooner than commonly assumed. One distinct possibility that wouldn’t attract excessive attention: meaningfully increasing the number of exemptions to the Trump China and remaining metals tariffs to companies saying they can’t find affordable, or any, alternatives.

>Much of the political future, however, will depend on the record compiled by the Biden administration. Not only could the new President fail on the economic and virus-fighting fronts, but on the national unity front. Here, despite his reputation as a moderate and a healer, Biden’s charge that Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have used Nazi-like tactics, and race-mongering comments accusing law enforcement of handling the overwhelmingly white Capitol Rioters more gingerly than the racial justice protesters earlier this year represent a lousy start. And as his harsh recent rhetoric suggests, Biden could also overreach greatly on issues like climate change, immigration, and Cancel Culture and Identity Politics. Such Biden failures could even shore up some support for Mr. Trump himself.

>How big is the violence-prone fringe on the American Right? We’ll know much more on Inauguration Day, when law enforcement says it fears “armed protests” both in Washington, D.C. and many state capitals. What does seem alarmingly clear, though – including from this PBS/Marist College poll – is that this faction is much bigger than the relatively small number of Capitol breachers.

>Speaking of the breachers, the nature of the crimes they committed obviously varied among individuals. But even those just milling about were guilty of serious offenses and should be prosecuted harshly. The circumstances surrounding those who crossed barriers on the Capitol grounds is somewhat murkier. Those who knocked down this (flimsy) fencing were just as guilty as the building breachers. But lesser charges – and possibly no charges – might be justifiable for those who simply walked past those barriers because they were no longer visible, especially if they didn’t enter the Capitol itself.

>I’m not security expert, but one question I hope will be asked (among so many that need asking) in the forthcoming investigations of the Capitol Police in particular – why weren’t the Capitol Building doors locked as soon as the approach of the crowd became visible? The number of doors is limited, and they’re anything but flimsy. The likely effectiveness of this move can be seen from an incident in October, 2018 – when barred Supreme Court doors left anti-Brett Kavanaugh protesters futilely pounding from the outside when they attempted to disrupt the new Supreme Court Justice’s swearing in ceremony. Window entry into the Capitol would have remained an option, but the number of breachers who used this tactic seems to have been negligible.

What an extraordinary irony if one of the worst days in American history mightn’t have even happened had one of the simplest and most commonsensical type of precaution not been taken.

Im-Politic: The Case Against (Another) Impeachment

10 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

25th Amendment, Capitol assault, Capitol riots, Constitution, election 2020, election challenge, election integrity, Im-Politic, impeachment, incitement, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, obstruction of justice, Trump, Trump rally

These last few days have been a great example of the adage that timing is everything. I was in full politics mode early this week because of the run-up to the eagerly and anxiously anticipated Georgia Senatorial runoff elections on Tuesday, and therefore decided to post Wednesday morning on the likely (and indeed eventual) results and the impact of the Democratic sweep on Republican Party politics.

I put up the post in the very early afternoon, and then almost immediately afterwards came the assault on the Capitol Building. Ordinarily, I’d have followed up with commentary on that outrage on Thursday or Friday. But as known by RealityChek regulars know, I focused instead on the new official U.S. foreign trade figures that came out on Thursday and the official U.S. jobs report issued Friday. In part I wanted to spend my time away from politics because I was trying to think of something original to contribute to the torrent of thoughts and emotions that followed the Capitol chaos, but also because to such an extent I’m an economics type, and the economy and its various problems haven’t gone away.

So it wasn’t until late-ish Saturday afternoon, as the news continued its own assault, that I’d collected my thoughts and reviewed the available evidence sufficiently to start writing on what has emerged as the question of the moment: What should the American system of government do about President Trump? More specifically, since (reportedly, at least) Vice President Mike Pence has ruled out using the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove the President from office (and rightly, in my view), should Mr. Trump be impeached again? 

My answer: No.  Let him to serve out his term. But before making the case for that course, here’s one idea suggested by a friend yesterday (and that I subsequently found out also has been suggested here and here): Mr. Trump’s best option for Mr. Trump would be resigning as part of a deal in which new President Mike Pence would pardon him, and thereby shield him from prosecution for any crimes he might have committed as President (more on which below).

Such a pardon would still leave Mr. Trump vulnerable to civil and criminal indictments by state and local law enforcement authorities (described here). But even though there are no signs that President-elect Biden wants to pursue the possible Presidential offenses, foreclosing this option entirely would clearly leave Mr. Trump much better off than leaving it open.

As for impeachment, it’s important that Mr. Biden hasn’t yet endorsed such an effort. But he hasn’t opposed it, either. I hope he will, for the following reasons:

>The Senate trial that would follow an affirmative vote by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives would further deepen and enflame national passions that clearly are more than deep and enflamed enough already, thank you very much.

>Reportedly, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is still the upper chamber’s majority leader, has sent out to his colleagues a schedule for a possible trial that serves as a reminder that, under existing Senate procedures, no such event could even start until January 19 – the day before Inauguration Day – without the consent of all sitting Senators. Since the President retains fairly substantial support from the Republican side, this means that the Senate vote required to approve the impeachment would take place after Mr. Trump has left office – an action that could easily be portrayed as one of pure vengeance, and that would further intensify political divisions.

>At least as important, for those claiming to be worried (as they should be) about the possibility of hostile foreign powers moving to capitalize on U.S. political turmoil, a full impeachment and trial would significantly lengthen this window of danger. It’s true that America’s adversaries have held back so far, but why increase the odds of a crisis, especially after the President is gone from the White House?

>Similarly, a full impeachment process would represent a major and completely unnecessary distraction for the federal government at a time when major distractions, even leaving aside national security considerations, are exactly what America doesn’t need right now. In case you’ve forgotten, a second (or third?) CCP Virus wave is still mounting, the economy remains in the toilet, and even with a major new stimulus/relief bill, months more of widepread suffering for many individuals, households, and businesses seems certain.

You don’t need to believe that the Trump administration excelled at dealing with the pandemic’s arrival to recognize that the previous impeachment effort preoccupied the attention of both the Executive and Congress for many critical weeks. Would the likely benefits of indicting President Trump and then seeking to remove him from office (at a Senate trial that would certainly take place after Inauguration Day) really outweigh the risks? And outweigh them significantly? Even though my belief has always been that any political leader or government worth its salt needs to be able to handle multiple challenges at once, I can’t see the wisdom of adding unnecessary challenges.

>One argument for impeachment and conviction is that the latter would prevent the dangerously unstable Mr. Trump from ever again holding public office at any level. That’s an understandable goal for those viewing the outgoing President as an incorrigible menace to America’s democracy and way of life. But even for such Never Trumpers, is it a goal consistent with democratic principles?

I’d answer “Yes,” if smoking gun-type evidence existed for Trumpian offenses. But as explained further below, based on what’s currently public knowledge, I don’t see a viable case. And in its absence, shouldn’t the final verdict on the President’s political future be left up to the American people? Don’t opponents trust in the electorate’s judgment? And in their ability to keep Mr. Trump away from official power-wielding via politics?

As for the Wednesday events themselves, and the issue of the President’s responsibility and the case for other instances of criminality during the last weeks of his presidency (which Constitutionally can be prosecuted once he’s out of office):

I watched the entire video of his speech to the rally that morning and have now examined the transcript. The only phrasing I heard that could even by the wildest stretch of the imagination be considered “incitement” was the President’s single use of the word “fight” and statements like “We’re just not going to let that [a final Congressional certification of the Electoral College vote] happen.”

In addition, on December 20, the President sent out this tweet: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

I agree with Fox News talker – and generally strong Trump supporter – Tucker Carlson that these remarks were “reckless,” because national passions are running so hot. But terrible judgment alone is almost never criminal according to both common sense and the American legal system.  

Further, the above remarks were accompanied by Trump statements like “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”; and ”[W]e’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country”; and “We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

In other words, the only explicit instructions or advice or whatever you want to call it given by Mr. Trump to the crowd entailed peaceful, not violent, behavior. And anyone seizing (in isolation) on the use of “fight” needs to ask themselves if they’ve never heard a politician exhort his followers with that verb? Or characterize a campaign as a “battle”? That’s why the only reaction justified by the “fight charge” is “Oh, please.” The same goes for his claim that neither he nor his followers should ever accept the election results. That’s a far cry from recommending that they commit violent acts.

Regarding the December 20 tweet – which was sent out weeks before the Capitol attack – the “wild” reference was clearly meant as a description of the anticipated rally scene, and used to convey boisterousness, excitement, etc. Good luck contending in a court of law that this amounted to a request or demand to act in an out-of-control, much less illegal, manner, and using it as a basis of an incitement charge.

>Arguments have also been made that the President’s phone calls to the Georgia state officials and especially his January 2 declaration that he “just wanted to find 11,780 votes” amounted to solicitation of election fraud or participating in a conspiracy against people exercising their civil rights.

Ironically, though, one of the President’s best defenses harkens back to one of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s explanations for why there was no airtight case for charging Mr. Trump with obstruction of justice based on the evidence he uncovered in his probe of the so-called Russia collusion scandal: The President arguably had no criminal or corrupt intent because he genuinely believed he was being framed. Similarly, Mr. Trump’s phone call was motivated by a sincere belief that the election had been stolen. (See Volume II, p. 89 here.)

The election fraud etc argument is also ironic because of all the pre-Capitol riots talk of indicting the President for obstructing justice based on the Mueller probe’s findings. Even Mueller wasn’t terribly confident about Mr. Trump’s culpability on this score.

The only caveat to this analysis that needs to be kept in mind is that the standards for determinations of guilt in civil law suits are lower than for criminal prosecutions.  So in principle, those kinds of legal avenues are plausible, and convictions might obtained in at least some cases – even though these procedings won’t do wonders for the cause of reasonable national unity, either. 

But overall, just as genuinely good options are usually awfully difficult to find during hot messes like that which the United States faces now, options that satisfy everyone or even a majority of Americans will be scarce at best, too. So permitting the Trump presidency to come to as normal a possible end seems the best of an unsatisfactory lot – provided of course that new news shocks don’t shake up an already disturbingly settled national scene over the next ten days.

Im-Politic: Georgia Evidence that Trump-ism Needs to Transcend Trump

06 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

CCP Virus, conservatives, coronavirus, COVID 19, Covid relief, election 2020, election integrity, establishment Republicans, Georgia, Georgia Senate runoff, GOP, Im-Politic, Populism, Republicans, Trump, Wuhan virus

Good luck to anyone (including me!) in trying to figure out what the results of yesterday’s Georgia Senate runoff elections will mean for American politics – especially since there are so many reasons to waffle, and lots of them are very compelling. For example, although as of this morning, it looks like a Democratic sweep, but because the margins are so close, and non-trivial numbers of military and other mail-in ballots won’t be counted until 5 PM EST Friday, the final verdict may not be known until Friday. Largely as a result, recounts are practically certain.

In addition, so much about this entire national election cycle was unusual, and not at all sure to cast long shadows – especially the CCP Virus pandemic and its damaging economic consequences. As a result, on top of events’ impressive abilities to throw curveballs, it’s intimidating to try predicting two years out (when the 2022 midterm elections will be held) much less the outcome of the 2024 presidential and congressional races.

Weirdly, however, despite these yawning uncertainties, today at least I’m feeling more confident about a big question I found tough to answer shortly after the election: whether it’s best for the kind of Trump-ian populist policies I generally support strongly for the President to run for reelection the next time around, or call his political career quits.

Many of my reasons for equivocation still matter greatly. But the passage of two months, and particulary the apparent Democratic Georgia victories, have now convinced me that both Trumpers and therefore country will better off if with Trump-ism without Trump. And even though America’s pollsters overall still need to work hard to get their acts together and rebuild their reputations, it’s been the Georgia Senate exit polls that have mainly tipped me into the anti-Trump column, and two sets of findings in particular.

Several of these surveys are available; I’m using the one conducted by Fox News and the Associated Press because it featured what I regard as more of the most pertinent questions. As for the two sets of findings?

First, it’s clear that Georgia voters back the kind of unorthodox mix of policies that have marked Trump-ist economics. For example, by a whopping 72 percent to seven percent margin, respondents said Congress is doing “too little,” rather than “too much” to help the “financial situation” of “individual Americans” during the CCP Virus crisis. (Twenty-one percent credited Congress with doing “about the right amount.”) This sounds like a strong endorsement of the President’s (last-minute) call for $2,000 virus relief checks, and equally strong disagreement with the opposition of most traditional Republican politicians.

Ratings of Congress’ efforts to help small businesses were nearly identical to the individuals’ results. By 52 percent to 28 percent, however, these Georgia voters felt that Congress was providing “large corporations” with too much rather than too little support. (Twenty-eight percent viewed these efforts as about right.)

Yet by an almost-as-impressive two-to-one, respondents favored “reducing government regulation of business.” Nothing was asked about one of Mr. Trump’s signature issues – trade – but with China so deeply and increasingly unpopular among Americans, it’s tough to imagine that most Georgians would object to his tariffs and other crackdowns on Beijing’s economic predation. Immigration is a tougher call. Only four percent viewed it as “the most important issue facing the country,” but answers to this question understandably were dominated by “the coronavirus pandemic” (43 percent) and “the economy and jobs” (27 percent).

All told, though, these Georgians look like they’d be entirely comfortable with at least much of Trump-ism. But the President himself? Not nearly so much. Thus:

>Mr. Trump himself earned 51 percent-to-47 percent unfavorable ratings from the sample, which consisted of 52 percent Republicans or Republican-leaners, 42 percent Democrats or Democratic-leaners, and seven percent Independents; and 43 percent self-described conservatives, 34 percent moderates, and 23 percent liberals.

>The greater concerns expressed above about the CCP Virus than about its economic consequences clashes with the President’s clear priorities over the last year.

>Indeed, they also endorsed mandatory mask-wearing outside of the home by 74 percent to 26 percent. 

>Moreover, by 62 percent to 38 percent, respondents expressed confidence that, nation-wide, November’s presidential votes “were counted accurately” (with 56 percent “very confident”) and by 61 percent to 39 percent, they think Joe Biden “was legitimately elected president.”

>Therefore, Mr. Trump’s handling “of the results of the 2020 presidential election” were disapproved by a 56 percent to 44 percent margin.

And more signs that the President himself turned off many Georgia runoff voters – especially with his election challenges: According to the RealClearPolitics averages, as his protests of the presidential votes continued, both Georgia Democratic Senate candidates, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock gained momentum at the expense of their Republican (incumbent) opponents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively.

None of this is to say that creating a politically successful Trump-less Trump-ism will be easy. As I wrote right after the presidential vote, the President’s charisma-based ability to excite a large mass of voters is not yet remotely matched in Republican ranks. Yet the Georgia runoff results strike me as more evidence that his disruptive instincts represent a growing liability, and Mr. Trump’s insistence that he was the actual 2020 winner virtually rules out the chance that he’ll change spots that he obviously believes won him both election and reelection.

Right now, therefore, it seems clear that, as someone wrote someplace yesterday (unfortunately, I can’t find the quote), Republicans can’t win with Trump, and they can’t win without him.

Yet going forward, I suspect that two truths will begin weakening the President’s support. First, the fact that (as I’ve seen first-hand during my working life), the founders of movements tend to be lousy managers and sustainers of those movements. Second, any movement so heavily dependent on a single personality won’t likely be a lasting movement. So for those reasons, along with the Mr. Trump’s age, the sooner his supporters and leaners can choose a successor, or identify a group of plausible successors, the better.

But don’t think for a minute that I’m highly confident that this transition can take place in time for the 2024 campaign cycle’s kickoff. In fact, I am highly confident that the process will be loud and heated and messy – that is, pretty Trump-y.

Im-Politic: Big Media Praise for Trump’s Trade and Manufacturing Policies…Post-Election

31 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Biden, Bloomberg.com, Carrier, China, election 2020, Im-Politic, Indiana, Jobs, Mainstream Media, manufacturing, Mexico, Nelson D. Schwartz, tariffs, The New York Times, Trade, trade war, Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome

Boy, here are two Mainstream Media articles that President Trump and his supporters (like me) sure would liked to have seen come out before Election Day in November rather than afterwards. Not that their appearance would have made much difference in the apparent outcome. But they did resoundingly vindicate high-profile Trump decisions that epitomized his approach to the trade and manufacturing issues so central to his agenda, and that were roundly criticized by his opponents – including apparent President-elect Joe Biden and union leaders.

The first came from Bloomberg.com, and it declared on December 20 that “Biden Will Inherit a Strong Hand Against Xi, Thanks to Trump.” That header was nearly as much of a stunner as the lead sentence: “Joe Biden will take office next month wielding more leverage over Beijing than he would have ever sought.” And the first reason cited? “Biden will be sworn in as president after Trump’s administration spent years ramping up pressure on China, including levying tariffs on $370 billion in imports….”

I call these statements stunners not because I don’t believe them, or because you may not believe them. Instead, they’re stunners on two main counts.

First, the apparent President-elect himself apparently doesn’t believe them. After all, he claimed earlier this year that, because of the Trump trade curbs, “Manufacturing has gone into a recession. Agriculture lost billions of dollars that taxpayers had to pay.” And last year, he argued that “President Trump may think he’s being tough on China. All that he’s delivered as a consequence of that is American farmers, manufacturers and consumers losing and paying more.”

Obviously, no one who really put any stock into these propositions could possibly also believe that such self-defeating moves could be of much use against foreign antagonists. Employing them or even threatening to employ them would be tantamount to vowing to hold your breath until you get what you want.

Maybe Biden regards the costs created by the Trump tariffs as smaller than the pain they’ve inflicted on China, and/or that they’re a reasonable price to pay for advancing or protecting U.S. interests threatened by China? Maybe. But the former Vice President has never made those points. At the same time, he’s also (since the election) decided to keep the tariffs in place pending a policy review. That makes no sense, either, if he really views them as an unmitigated disaster, and as a result, it will be fascinating to see if his deeds as President match these lastest words.

What seems certain, though, is that the political impact of a pre-election Biden acknowledgment that the trade levies have served any useful purpose would have had an awfully interesting impact on those manufacturing-heavy Midwestern battleground states that swung so narrowly back into the Democrats’ presidential corner after backing Mr. Trump in 2016.

But the Bloomberg article was also stunning because the folks at Bloomberg themselves never seemed to believe that the Trump tariffs did any good for Americans. For example, in September, 2019, a Bloomberg analysis (by a different author, but it ultimately was approved by the same editors) contended that “China is Winning the Trade War with Trump” because “On just about every metric that matters, China is ahead. At every turn, Trump seems to have been outplayed and outsmarted throughout the global trade war that began shortly after he took office.”

Two months later, Bloomberg readers were treated to this header: “How Trump’s Trade War Went From Method to Madness.” And let’s not forget December 10, 2019’s article with the news that “Trump’s China Tariffs Boomerang on America” because “Thanks to trade wars, companies are skimping on new U.S. plants and equipment.” Maybe I’m missing something, but none of these developments sounds like a source of leverage to me.

The second stunner article came out two days after Bloomberg‘s post-election paean to Trump-created trade leverage, and concerned the President’s efforts, which began early in his first White House run, to save jobs at Carrier manufacturing facilities in Indiana that were slated to be moved to Mexico. As a December 18 piece by New York Times reporter Nelson D. Schwartz reminded, the saga began with the company’s announcement in February, 2016 that was closing an Indianapolis furnace factory and sending its operations – and of course jobs – south of the border, where wages are much lower.

Candidate Trump quickly seized on the situation as a perfect example of how the offshoring-friendly trade policies of recent establishment Presidents, like the North American Free Trade Agreement were shortsightedly hollowing out the U.S. industrial base, and enriching executives and stockholders at the expense of American workers. And he quickly declared that, if elected, he would force the company to reverse the decision and save the jobs.

A not neligible firestorm ensued, with economists insisting that Mr. Trump’s actions amounted to pointless at best and bad at worst economics, and the usual gang of free market zealots in the media and think tank worlds condemning the candidate for seeking to move the United States well down the road to socialism and even worse. At least one local union leader called the arrangement reached by the then-President elect a “phony operation” and “a dog and pony show.”

And I wasn’t crazy about the specific measures eventually used by Mr. Trump to keep much of Carrier in Indiana, either – arguing that although such jaw-boning had major uses, tariffs were greatly preferable to the tax breaks that kept some of the company’s work and employment in the Hoosier State.

To their credit, Schwartz and other reporters didn’t forget about the story, but their follow-ups were overwhelmingly downbeat. (See, e.g., here, here, and here.) Schwartz’ own coverage sounded pretty grim, too. (See, e.g., here and here.)

So imagine my surprise to read the December 18 article’s headline proclaim that the “Carrier Plant is Bustling” and the text inform readers that

> “The assembly line is churning out furnaces seven days a week”;

>“overtime is abundant”;

>“Carrier has been hiring, adding some 300 workers and bringing the total work force to nearly 1,050”;

>”the Indianapolis plant offers a shot at a solidly middle-class lifestyle, with wages of more than $20 an hour, with time-and-a-half pay on Saturdays and double-time on Sundays”; and that 

>”it’s clear that without Mr. Trump’s intervention even before he took office, the factory would never have become so prominent, if it had survived at all.”

Yes, Schwartz also noted that Carrier workers still feel highly insecure. But he also made clear that the reason is because they don’t trust Biden to look after them the way the President has.

As RealityChek has documented time and again, the Mainstream Media has displayed more than its share of Trump Derangement Syndrome over the last four years. Now that the President seems certain to leave office, is a wave of Trump Revisionism Syndrome in store?

Im-Politic: Goya Adds to the Progressives’ Losing Streak

08 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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Tags

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, authoritarianism, boycotts, cancel culture, CCP Virus, consumers, coronavirus, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, Goya, Hispanics, identity politics, Im-Politic, Julian Castro, Latinos, Lin-Manuel Miranda, progressives, Robert Inanue, The Squad, Trump, Wuhan virus

It’s almost enough to make even their opponents feel sorry for New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her fellow members of Congress’ “Squad,” and the rest of Progressive World, especially those who have tried to use Cancel Culture to enforce their party line.

Since the Election 2020 period results have come in, these lefties, and their intolerant, extremist positions have been pilloried for their party’s setbacks in the House and lost opportunities in the Senate by many of their more moderate fellow Democrats.

Recently, however, reliable evidence also has appeared that one of their leading recent Cancel Culture campaigns has backfired spectacularly – their call for a boycott of Goya Foods products.

Goya says it’s America’s biggest Hispanic-owned food company, so at first glance, it would seem an odd target for the ire of Identity Politics-obsessed progressives. But at a July White House event for Hispanic business leaders, CEO Robert Unanue (whose family hails from Spain) committed the supposedly cardinal sin of praising President Trump.

Out came the progressive thought police, including not only Ocasio-Cortez (known of course by the pop culture-type monicker “AOC”) snarkily urging supporters to make their own adobo sauce without Goya’s popular seasoning mix, but Obama administration Housing and Urban Development Secretary and failed presidential candidate Julian Castro, and Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda.  (See here for the details.)  

For several months afterwards, I tried to find some hard data on the boycott’s impact, but failed – mainly because Goya is a privately held company. The boycotters and much of the press coverage contended that Goya was taking it on the chin, while Unanue claimed his business was profiting from a powerful backlash. But nothing more solid was available.   

Now it is. In October (sorry I didn’t spot this earlier), Goya announced plans for an $80 million investment in a factory in the Houston, Texas area. The facility, which serves as the company’s main hub for producing and distributing its products to the western United States, will be adding equipment needed for a product line that includes new organic offerings. Moreover, this project comes just two years after Goya completed a doubling of the factory’s square footage. So it should be clear that Unanue’s claims were reality-based.

And yesterday the coup de grace was delivered – in a devilishly clever way. Unanue revealed that the company had named AOC “Employee of the Month” for “bringing attention to Goya and our adobo.”

Ocasio-Cortez responded by calling descriptions of her boycott role “made up fantasies” and arguing that Goya’s increased sales stemmed from the shift from restaurant dining to home cooking prompted by CCP Virus lockdowns. And maybe there’s some truth to the latter – although American consumers have plenty of choices other than Goya for Hispanic food products. As for the former, though, it’s just an example of AOC lacking the courage of her convictions, and trying to wipe the huevos off her face.

I can’t help but close, though, by noting that even though President Trump – who joined the Twitter war on behalf of Goya – not only suffered no damage from this episode, but notably increased his support from Latino voters in last month’s election, can learn a lesson from Unanue. The Goya CEO (who also professed to excuse AOC for being “young” and “naive”) just killed a leading critic with kindness. Imagine if even just some of that kind of wit and subtlety had characterized the Mr. Trump’s own statements as candidate and President.

Making News: Podcast Now On-Line of Today’s Wide-Ranging NYC Radio Interview

02 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Making News

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Tags

America First, Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, China, conservatism, election 2020, Frank Morano, globalism, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Making News, Populism, Republican Party, Trump, voter fraud, WABC-FM

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now on-line of my interview this morning on WABC-FM radio with Frank Morano on headline issues including President Trump’s future in American politics, the prospects of conservative populism staying nationally competitive whatever his plans, the real foreign policy lessons of the Trump years, and yesterday’s post on disturbing charges that apparent President-elect Biden’s financial connections with China didn’t end with his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

Go to this website to listen and click on the play button on the “The Future of NYC and Trumpism” episode. My segment begins right about the 24-minute mark.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: Trump-ism Without Trump for America as a Whole?

16 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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Tags

"Defund the Police", allies, CCP Virus, China, climate change, coronavirus, court packing, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, enforcement, Executive Orders, filibuster, Green New Deal, Huawei, human rights, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Biden, judiciary, lockdowns, mask mandate, masks, metals, multilateralism, Muslim ban, Phase One, progressives, Republicans, sanctions, Senate, shutdowns, stimulus, Supreme Court, tariffs, taxes, Trade, trade wars, Trump, unions, Wuhan virus

Since election day, I’ve spent some time and space here and on the air speculating about the future of what I called Trump-ism without Donald Trump in conservative and Republican Party political ranks. Just this weekend, my attention turned to another subject and possibility: Trump-ism without Mr. Trump more broadly speaking, as a shaper – and indeed a decisive shaper – of national public policy during a Joe Biden presidency. Maybe surprisingly, the chances look pretty good.

That is, it’s entirely possible that a Biden administration won’t be able to undo many of President Trump’s signature domestic and foreign policies, at least for years, and it even looks likely if the Senate remains Republican. Think about it issue-by-issue.

With the Senate in Republican hands, there’s simply no prospect at least during the first two Biden years for Democratic progressives’ proposals to pack the Supreme Court, to eliminate the Senate filibuster, or to recast the economy along the lines of the Green New Deal, or grant statehood Democratic strongholds Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. A big tax increase on corporations and on the Biden definition of the super-rich looks off the table as well.

If the Senate does flip, the filibuster might be history. But big Democratic losses in the House, and the claims by many veterans of and newcomers to their caucus that those other progressive ambitions, along with Defunding the Police, were to blame, could also gut or greatly water down much of the rest of the far Left’s agenda, too.

CCP Virus policy could be substantially unchanged, too. For all the Biden talk of a national mask mandate, ordering one is almost surely beyond a President’s constitutional powers. Moreover, his pandemic advisors are making clear that, at least for the time being, a sweeping national economic lockdown isn’t what they have in mind. I suspect that some virus economic relief measures willl be signed into law sometime this spring or even earlier, but they won’t carry the total $2 trillion price tag on which Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to have insisted for months. In fact, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of relief being provided a la carte, as Congressional Republicans have suggested – e.g., including popular provisions like some form of unemployment payment bonus extension and stimulus checks, and excluding less popular measures like stimulus aid for illegal aliens.

My strong sense is that Biden is itching to declare an end to President Trump’s trade wars, and as noted previously, here he could well find common cause with the many Senate Republicans from the party’s establishment wing who have never been comfortable bucking the wishes of an Offshoring Lobby whose campaign contributions it’s long raked in.

Yet the former Vice President has promised his labor union supporters that until the trade problems caused by China’s massive steel overproduction were (somehow) solved, he wouldn’t lift the Trump metals tariffs on allies (which help prevent transshipment and block these third countries from exporting their own China steel trade problems to the United States) – even though they’re the levies that have drawn the most fire from foreign policy globalists and other trade and globalization zealots.

As for the China tariffs themselves, the latest from the Biden team is that they’ll be reviewed. So even though he’s slammed them as wildly counterproductive, they’re obviously not going anywhere soon. (See here for the specifics.) 

Later? Biden’s going to be hard-pressed to lift the levies unless one or both of the following developments take place: first, the allied support he’s touted as the key to combating Beijing’s trade and other economic abuses actually materializes in very convincing ways; second, the Biden administration receives major Chinese concessions in return. Since even if such concessions (e.g., China’s agreement to eliminate or scale back various mercantile practices) were enforceable (they won’t be unless Biden follows the Trump Phase One deal’s approach), they’ll surely require lengthy negotiations. Ditto for Trump administration sanctions on China tech entities like the telecommunications giant Huawei. So expect the Trump-ian China status quo to long outlast Mr. Trump.

Two scenarios that could see at least some of the tariffs or tech sanctions lifted? First, the Chinese make some promises to improve their climate change policies that will be completely phony, but will appeal greatly to the Green New Deal-pushing progressives who will wield much more power if the Senate changes hands, and who have demonstrated virtually no interest in China economic issues. Second, Beijing pledges to ease up on its human rights crackdowns on Hong Kong and the Muslims of Xinjiang province. These promises would be easier to monitor and enforce, but the Chinese regime views such issues as utterly non-negotiable because they’re matters of sovereignty. So China’s repressive practices won’t even be on the official agenda of any talks. Unofficial understandings might be reached under which Beijing would take modest positive steps or suspend further contemplated repression. But I wouldn’t count on such an outcome.

Two areas where Biden supposedly could make big decisions unilaterally whatever happens in the Senate, are immigration and climate change. Executive orders would be the tools, and apparently that’s indeed the game plan. But as Mr. Trump discovered, what Executive Orders and even more routine adminstrative actions can do, a single federal judge responding to a special interest group’s request can delay for months. And these judicial decisions can interfere with presidential authority even on subjects that for decades has been recognized as wide-ranging – notably making immigration enforcement decisions when border crossings impact national security, as with the so-called Trump “Muslim ban.”

I know much less about climate change, but a recently retired attorney friend with long experience litigating on these issues told me that even before Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court, the Justices collectively looked askance on efforts to create new policy initiatives without legislating. Another “originalist” on the Court should leave even less scope for ignoring Congress.

The bottom line is especially curious given the almost universal expectations that this presidential election would be the most important in recent U.S. history: A deeply divided electorate could well have produced a mandate for more of the same – at least until the 2022 midterms.

Im-Politic: Most of the Flip Vote Stayed with Trump

09 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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Tags

Barack Obama, battleground states, election 2016, election 2020, forgotten Americans, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Populism, racism, Trump, Trump flip voters, xenophobia

Since I haven’t yet come across any reason to suppose that the Election 2020 exit polls are any more accurate than most of the surveys throughout the campaign, and especially during the general election, worthwhile post-mortems are going to be really difficult to produce.

One exception: It’s clear what happened with the hundreds of counties across the country that voted twice for Barack Obama for President, and then flipped for Donald Trump in 2016. I’ve written repeatedly (most recently here) that these mainly lower-income counties are especially important because they clearly contain lots of Trump voters who couldn’t possibly be the racists who are so often viewed as the majority of the President’s base.

Moreover, they not only look like a representative sample of voters who bought Mr. Trump’s promise that he would champion their economic interests. They also look like voters who made a smart bet in this regard, as the majority of these counties saw their annual pay grow faster under Trump pre-CCP Virus than during the most comparable Obama administration time frame.

And how did they vote earlier this month? Recounts and challenges could change some of the numbers we have already, but as of this writing, an overwhelming majority of these so-called “forgotten Americans” stuck with the President a second time around. So did nearly all of those whose economic fortunes – at least by that wage measure – improved faster under Mr. Trump than under his predecessor.

First the overall numbers. In 2016, 194 counties for which the aforementioned wage data are available from the Labor Department supported the Trump candidacy after voting Obama in 2008 and 2012. Three other counties for which no such data have been kept followed this pattern.

Of the 194, 173 (89.17 percent) stuck with the President this time around, along with two of the data-less counties. Just as important, of the 194, 116 (59.79 percent) saw faster pay growth under Mr. Trump than under Obama, and 102 of them (87.93 percent) pulled the lever for the President in 2020. To me, that adds up to a pretty powerful case that a great deal of the President’s appeal stemmed from his economic populist pitch.

These outcomes can’t possibly be either-or. That is, just because a flip county prospered more under Mr. Trump than under Obama doesn’t necessarily mean that this performance was foremost in every voter’s mind. And it can’t be assumed that counties that have supported the President despite worse relative economic performance were filled with racists and xenophobes and other deplorables.

Nonetheless, a strong relationship between greater prosperity for these flip counties and their support for the President held up well through Election 2020.

Of course, the presidential vote this time around was awfully close, especially in the six key battleground states where the talleys seem certain to decide the final outcome: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Yet it doesn’t seem that the Trump flippers relatively few flops back to his Democratic opponent made much of a difference in any of these states.

Of the total 49 Trump flip counties in these states, only five flopped back last week. Moreover, the 49 were highly concentrated – 23 in Wisconsin alone, and 12 in Michigan. Arizona had none and Pennsylvania only three. Interestingly, two of the Wisconsin flippers supported Biden in 2020, as did two of their Pennsylvania counterparts. But even given the closeness of the statewide totals, their populations appear too small to have made a difference.

A stronger argument can be made for the floppers’ importance in three states that were not as close as expected. Iowa, for example, was long thought to be up for grabs despite the handy margin it gave candidate Trump four years ago. It’s arguable that his repeat performance in 2020 stemmed in part from the decision of all 27 Trump flip counties to remain in the Republican column.

Minnesota was considered a Trump possibility this year, since Mr. Trump came within five percentage points of victory in this traditional Democratic stronghold. But President Trump actually lost some ground this month, and the decision of four of the state’s 19 Trump flippers to support Joe Biden clearly didn’t help.

Finally, New Hampshire looked like another possible Trump pickup. But two of its three flip counties (including Coos, for which there’s no economic data), opted for Biden.

All told, the numbers represented by these shifts were pretty small, too. But they could have reflected changes in sentiment elsewhere in these states that accounted for the somewhat surprising outcomes. A similar argument can be made for the six high-profile battlegrounds, but in my view the number of floppers returning to the Democratic camp was so small that it’s much weaker.

Again, some or even many of these results could change in the near future. But if they don’t, then no doubt many of the Americans who agree with President Trump that they’d been forgotten before are hoping that they’re remembered better over the next four years.

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Current Thoughts on Trade

Terence P. Stewart

Protecting U.S. Workers

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So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Alastair Winter

Chief Economist at Daniel Stewart & Co - Trying to make sense of Global Markets, Macroeconomics & Politics

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So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

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