Im-Politic: Overturning Roe Could Backfire Big-Time on its Opponents

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2022 election, abortion, abortion rights, choice, Constitution, Democrats, election 2022, Im-Politic, midterms 2022, Republicans, Roe vs. Wade, Supreme Court

One of my favorite sayings has always been “Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.” And if life is remotely fair, it could well come back in spades to haunt supporters of the Supreme Court’s apparent decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.

Before explaining why, I should briefly re-lay my cards on the table on abortion generally. As explained in this May, 2019 post I’ve supported Roe because of all the evidence that it conforms with a strong, consistent, public consensus in favor of a thoroughly reasonable compromise solution to the abortion dilemma. Specifically, the national default position is that abortion should be legal, but individual states, reflecting the beliefs of their populations, should be able to impose some restrictions.

In other words, Roe never established an unqualified right to abortion – because unless we’re talking about hermits, rights in human societies, including those enshrined in the Constitution, can never be unqualified. There are simply too many rights, and they too often collide with other rights and imperatives. So durable balances need to be struck, and from time to time, they need to be modified in light of changing circumstances.

They don’t make everyone happy, and they leave important inequities. But given the existentially heated and fiendishly complex nature of abortion, despite all the resulting and inevitable controversy stirred by the ruling and by the underlying issue, Roe succeeded on those crucial grounds. In everyday parlance, it was “good enough.”

At the same time, almost none of Roe’s opponents really seem to believe that there is an unqualified right to life, much less that it begins at conception. Certainly, that’s not an argument made by the leaked Supreme Court ruling. Nor is it claimed by the Mississippi abortion law that the Court is still considering, or by the even stricter new Oklahoma statutes.

The above description of Roe doesn’t take into account the argument that the decision fails by purely legal and Constitutional standards. Indeed, even leading pro-choice Constitutional experts have agreed with that judgment. But the underlying assumption that law stands clearly apart from politics can’t withstand serious scrutiny – and certainly not in any system of representative government. In such systems, legitimate laws can’t help but originate ultimately in that society’s values and culture, and politics is one indispensible method of figuring out how to enable those preferences to govern behavior and resolve disputes in mutually acceptable ways.

As I noted in the 2019 post (quoting a prominent historian of the Constitution), a crucial test that the Supreme Court must pass, (including for its own public support), is avoiding getting too far ahead of public opinion or trailing too far behind. That is, responsible justices will be exceedingly mindful of politics, its changes, and the trends underlying them. For the past half century, the Supreme Court justices who upheld Roe achieved that objective.

So assuming Justice Samuel Alito’s draft ruling stands, how is it likely to backfire on Roe opponents? For starters, they’ll need to start thinking seriously about a challenge that the 1973 ruling has enabled them to duck for decades, especially if Roe’s demise does significantly reduce the numbers of abortions.  The Roe opponens will need to deal with making sure that all the babies that aren’t aborted under the new regime have a real chance of leading satisfactory lives. After all, if you believe in the right to life, how can you neglect the quality of that life?

So unless there’s any chance that private adoption services will be able to place all the newborns with competent, caring parents (spoiler alert: there’s no chance), then the biological mothers and, when they stick around, fathers, will need a wide range of pubicly provided services and supports. In other words, Hello, Big Government. And those services and supports, which may have to be very long-lasting for the many new moms who are teens, won’t come cheap. So get ready for much higher taxes or deficit spending or some combination of the two.

For older new mothers who need to work, these supports will need to include paid family leave – whether by government or employers or some combination of the two. And if the goal is to help all the new children, this leave will need to extend for years – not just a few weeks. Moreover, this paid leave will also be needed even for many mothers who have working spouses or stable partners of some kind, unless these spouses or partners earn enough to pay all the household’s bills on their own.

Of course, there’s an alternative for the working mothers: Taxpayers spring for childcare. For as long as it’s needed. If, as is likely, Roe opponents don’t want governments handling this responsibility, they’ll need to admit many more immigrants to fill all the new positions private providers presumably would create. But no responsible Roe opponent would ever permit just anyone care for children, whether in government or for-profit or non-profit outfits. So extensive vetting and even training systems will need to be put into place, too.

In addition, for all the states that ban abortion very early in pregnancies, when many women aren’t even aware they’re pregnant, it’s only fair that they hand out accurate pregnancy test devices or pay for tests by physicians’ offices. That is, more expenses – and taxes or debt.

Finally, Roe opponents may well rue its demise this year on political grounds. It’s true that they may be able to fire up their voters to turn out to defend anti-Roe candidates in this year’s midterm Congressional elections as Roe supporters are to mobilize theirs on behalf of office-seekers pledged to codify it as federal law, and/or support nominated judges likely to try restoring Roe or at least its protections.

But it’s also true that whereas before yesterday, Roe supporters (who tend to be Democrats and Democratic leaners, just as opponents trend the opposite way) had almost no issues with which they could inspire their voters (because of the Biden administration’s failures on so many fronts), now they may have one issue that can help close the so-called enthusiasm gap and improve their performance this fall. So that shapes up as a net loss for Roe opponents and the GOP overall.

The opponents’ losses could be even worse, however, since (as shown by the poll linked above) Roe is pretty popular with the moderate Republicans who deserted the party in the 2020 presidential election and helped Joe Biden win the White House. They may not be incredibly numerous, but by definition they’re often found in many of the swing districts and states that could greatly determines which party controls the House and Senate. (It’s their presence that makes these precincts up for grabs – when it’s not the presence of moderate Democrats.)

Nonetheless, it’s also distinctly possible that such a Roe effect may not materialize, or flare briefly and then fade between now and November. (That’s clearly been the case so far for the January 6 Capitol riot, to my surprise.)  Further, abortion won’t be the only issue on voters’ minds, and any number of events could intervene in the weeks and months ahead to alter the political odds. 

Whatever the political impact, however, the nation seems fated to deal with some serious and potentially tragic real world fall-out from the Supreme Court’s seeming plans for Roe, unless the justices reverse course. Is it too much to hope that they remember another of my favorite expressions:  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?              

Following Up: Podcasts of National and New York City Radio Interviews Now On-Line

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American politics, Bernie Sanders, Biden, Biden administration, China, decoupling, Democrats, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, Following Up, Frank Morano, inflation, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, midterms 2022, Moe Ansari, prices, recession, Republicans, Ron DeSantis, tariffs, The Other Side of Midnight, trade policy, trade war, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war

I’m pleased to announce that the podcasts are now on-line of my two radio interviews yesterday (and one technically this morning) on a wide range of foreign policy, economic, and U.S. political topics.

Click here to listen to my appearance on Moe Ansari’s nationally syndicated “Market Wrap” show, where we did a deep dive into the questions of whether or not President Biden’s thinking seriously of cutting some of the Trump tariffs on imports from China, and the likelihood and wisdom of America pulling off any kind of significant divorce from the Chinese economy. The segment starts at about the 21:40 mark.

At this link, you can access my conversation with host Frank Morano on his late-night WABC-AM (New York City) show “The Other Side of Midnight.” It covered the impact of tariffs on consumer prices, the outlook for America’s inflation-ridden economy, the chances that the Ukraine war goes nuclear, and the odds of (figurative) earthquakes down the road for American presidential politics – for starters!

In addition, click here for the second half of my interview on the U.S. government-run Voice of America – which zeroes in on Ukraine war-related global economic disruptions. (Yes, the segment was pre-my latest haircut!)

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

Im-Politic: The January 6th Card Isn’t Working for the Democrats

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Biden, Capitol assault, Capitol riots, CNN, Democrats, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, Im-Politic, January 6, January 6 committee, midterm elections, midterms 2022, Pew Research Center, RealClearPolitics.com, Republicans

Some compelling evidence emerged this past week that if the Democratic Party thinks it’s going to prevent major losses in this year’s Congressional elections mainly by beating the Capitol riot and the Donald Trump-as-deadly-danger-to-American-democracy drums, it needs a major reality check. For new polls are showing that the public is increasingly moving on from January 6^th, and is less and less critical of the former President’s role.

The most eye-opening survey results came out on Tuesday from the Pew Research Center. They showed that, since the immediate aftermath of the attack, 52 percent of the country’s adults assigned Trump “a lot of responsibility” for the riot, 23 percent said he deserved “some” responsibility, and 24 percent saw him as blameless. But of those responding to the same question in the middle of last month, only 43 percent agreed with “a lot,” 24 percent agreed with “some,” and 32 percent agreed with “none at all.”

Predictably, a big partisan split emerged. But changes in Trump’s favor were evident even among adults calling themselves Democrats and those avowedly leaning Democratic. Last year, 81 percent told Pew that Trump bore “a lot” of blame for the riot, 14 percent answered “some” blame, and just five percent let him off the hook. This year, the results were 70 percent, 17 percent, and 12 percent, respectively.

A CNN-co-sponsored poll also taken last month and released Thursday found somewhat similar results in response to a somewhat different question. Last January, 75 percent of the adult respondents surveyed called the Capitol attack a “crisis” or “major problem” for American democracy, with 36 percent choosing “crisis.” Last month, the comparable overall figure was 65 percent, with 28 percent calling the riot a “crisis.”

These two surveys also warn Democrats not to expect the House of Representative’s January 6^th committee to be a political game changer. The Pew poll reports that, since last September, the share of U.S. adults who have heard a lot about the committee has more than doubled. But it’s still just 26 percent. And only 29 percent of Democrats say they’ve been tuned in to this extent.

Meanwhile, according to Pew, only 44 percent of American adults overall are “very” or “somewhat” confident that the committee’s investigation of the riot is “fair and reasonable.” Fifty-four percent are “not too” or “not at all” confident.

CNN’s results were more favorable to the committee: Forty-four percent of its respondents viewed it as “a fair attempt to determine what happened” and just 36 percent dismissed it as a “one-sided effort to blame Donald Trump.” (Twenty percent “hadn’t heard enough to say.”) But no earlier figures were presented to enable judging any trend over time.

But maybe the most revealing poll results pointing to a big fading of January 6th’s political effects (totally contrary to what yours truly predicted) come from RealClearPolitics.com. Since August, the site has tracked polls that have asked the public whether they would back Trump or President Biden if they ran against each other in the 2024 presidential election. Of the 12 surveys monitored, Trump has won in ten and one produced a tie.

At least as revealing: In five of these polls (including two of the last three), the “Trump vote” topped his official 46.86 percent share of the 2020 vote.

As I’ve written previously, this could all change if the House committee or the press produce some genuinely blockbuster findings, or if Trump is perceived to be going unprecedentedly far off the rails or if most of the myriad challenges and opportunities sure to face America over the next few months break the Democrats’ way. And I certainly don’t rule out Republicans screwing up in some disastrous way between now and November.   

But so far, it looks very much like their “All January 6th” approach has been a bad bet for Democrats. At the same time, given Mr. Biden’s record and deep unpopularity, maybe it’s still the best bet they’ve got.

Im-Politic: Bad Polling News for Both Biden and Trump

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Associated Press, Biden, conservatives, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, GOP, Im-Politic, independents, Laura Ingraham, Morning Consult, National Opinion Research Center, NBC News, Politico, polls, Republicans

A major shift in American politics may be in the works according to some recent polling results about President Biden and Donald Trump. Specifically, they could mean that the American public has had it with both of them.

Let’s start with the President’s results…since he’s the President. Astonishingly, no fewer than three surveys during the last week show not only that his popularity and job approval are way down, but that huge and in one case slightly growing percentages of the public doubt his overall mental fitness to handle his job.

Two days ago, Politico and Morning Consult consult released survey findings reporting that only 22 percent of all registered voters “strongly agree” that Mr. Biden “is mentally fit,” 18 percent “somewhat agree,” 12 percent “somewhat disagree,” and 37 percent “strongly disagree.” So a plurality (49 percent) are in the “disagree” camp (versus 40 percent agreeing that the President is mentally fit), and the most popular answer, by 19 percentage points, was “strongly disagree.”

Of course there was a partisan split. But when it comes to political independents, those who overall disagreed that President Biden is mentally fit outnumbered those that agreed by 48 percent to 37 percent, with 33 percent choosing “strongly disagree.”

More worrisome for the President: Politico and Morning Consult asked the same question in November, and since then, those disagreeing that he’s mentally fit has inched up from 48 percent to 49 percent, and those agreeing that he’s mentally up to snuff has fallen from 46 percent to 40 percent. About the same deterioration appeared among independent voters.

Similarly, a poll this week from NBC News asked American adults (a group somewhat different than registered voters) how they would rate various Biden traits on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being “Very Poor” and 5 being “Very Good.” No party affiliation-based findings were provided. But on “Having the necessary mentally physical health to be president,” here are the Biden scores:

5: 18 percent

4: 15 percent

3: 16 percent

2: 9 percent

1: 41 percent

In other words, 4 and 5 (those believing Mr. Biden is mentally and physically healthy enough) add up to 33 percent. One and 2 (those who don’t) add up to 50 percent. And “Very Poor” leads the pack by a mile.

The Associated Press (AP) and National Opinion Research Center (NORC) reported better views of the President’s capacities – but not much. Here the question (again, for adults) was “How confident are you that Joe Biden has the mental capacity to serve effectively as president?” There was no political affiliation breakdown here, either, but here are the results:

“Extremely confident”:   11 percent

“Very confident”:            17 percent

“Somewhat confident”:   25 percent

“Not very confident”:      18 percent

“Not at all confident”:     29 percent

AP-NORC concluded that those lacking confidence in Mr. Biden’s mental fitness outnumbered those with confidence by 47 percent to 28 percent – figures not far off those published by NBC News. And once more, the biggest individual category contained those with the least confidence.

The news isn’t any better for the former President, though. Since early this year, I’ve been trying to keep track of whether Republican and Republican-leaning voters are more loyal to their party, or to Trump. And the new sounding from NBC News makes clear that Trump has been losing ground on this score.

As the survey reports, since January, 2019, although the results fluctuated some, the “supporter of Trump” position consistently registered a plurality and often a majority. (Those answering “both” never made it out of the single digits as percents of the whole sample.) Even last January (not a great month for Trump politically or in any sense), the “supporters of Donald Trump” and “supporters of the Republican Party” were tied at 46 percent.

But as of today? The percentage of “Republican supporters” topped that of “Trump supporters” by a whopping 56 percent to 36 percent. That’s the biggest such margin ever in this data series.

One other (non-poll) possible straw in the wind worth noting in this respect. In a magazine interview this month, Fox News talker Laura Ingraham said that “I’m not saying I’m there for him yet,” when asked if she would endorse a 2024 Trump presidential bid.

As is well known, Ingraham remains a fervent backer of Trump’s presidential record and policies, as well as an admirer of the former president personally. Less well known – Ingraham was dissenting in a Trump-ian/populist way from the old Republican Party orthodoxy for several years before Trump declared his first White House candidacy, especially on China-related issues. Given her wide following, that’s a clear signal that what’s been called Trump-ism without Trump is a distinct possibility for the Republican future.

But on the subject of the future, the worst news for both the President and his predecessor came from the AP-NORC survey. By a gaping 70 percent to 28 percent margin, respondents didn’t want Mr. Biden to seek reelection. That was almost identical to the 72 percent wanting Trump to stay on the sidelines and only 27 percent supporting a third White House bid.

We’re still very early in political cycle for this year’s Congressional elections, much less the 2024 presidential race. But so far, the polls are saying pretty clearly that Americans want new faces to choose from when they next choose a Chief Executive – and pretty ardently.

Im-Politic: Latinos Flocking to a (Still Trump-ian) Republican Party

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Axios-Ipsos Poll, Biden, Democrats, Donald Trump, election 2016, election 2020, election 2022, election 2024, exit polls, Glenn Youngkin, Hispanics, Im-Politic, Immigration, Latinos, NPR-Marist Poll, Pew Research Center, polls, public opinion, Republicans, The Wall Street Journal, Virginia governor's race

Remember all those those charges that former President Donald Trump made clear from the very beginning of his 2016 presidential campaign that he was an anti-Latino bigot, and the predictions that any political success he enjoyed would doom Republican chances of winning support from this increasingly important group of voters?

Apparently, many Latino voters themselves don’t. Or they’ve concluded that Trump and now dominant Republican views on sensible controls on immigration matter less to them than views on other issues. Or that they actually like Trump and the Republicans on some combination of these subjects – including immigration. Or that maybe the Republican positions aren’t terrific, but that what the Democrats have stood for lately is a non-starter.

That’s the message being sent lately by several recent polls on Latino political views that could decisively shape American politics for the foreseeable future.

First, though, some context. There’s little doubt now that four years of Trump-ism wound up boosting the former President’s support among Latinos, now further shrinking it. In 2016, Trump won 28 percent of their presidential vote. In 2020, this figure had grown to 32 percent according to the eixt polls. (This subsequent study pegs his 2020 total at 38 percent.)  And of course, in some key states, the exit polls showed, his 2020 performance was far better – notably Florida (46 percent) and Texas (41 percent). So the racism and xenophobia charges were showing signs of flopping while throughout Trump’s term in office.

Even so, the results of a Wall Street Journal survey conducted in the second half of November came as a major shock. They showed that if Trump was running for the White House against President Biden today, he’d lose by only 44 percent to 43 percent among Latino voters. And they said they’d be even split at 37 percent in their votes for Democratic and Republican Congressional candidates.

As noted in this analysis, the poll’s sample size was very small, so serious doubts in its accuracy are justified. But similar results have been reported elsewhere. Yesterday, notably, National Public Radio and Marist College released a survey showing that just 33 percent of Latino adults approved of President Biden’s performance in office, versus 65 percent who disapproved. These Biden Latino numbers were worse than his ratings from American adults as a whole (41 percent approving and 55 percent disapproving).

Moreover, only 11 percent of Latino adults “strongly approved” of Mr. Biden’s presidency so far, versus 17 percent of U.S. adults overall, and when it came to strong disapproval, 52 percent of Latinos marked that column compared with 44 percent of the total national adult population.

Nor does the evidence stop there that the longer Mr. Biden has been in office, the less Latinos like his perfomance. As this Washington Post column reminds, “In late May, Biden’s job approval among Hispanics averaged 60 percent, with a net approval margin of 32, a bit larger than his vote margin the prior year.”

Biden backers and Democrats can point to a new Axios-Ipsos survey reporting that “The Democratic Party enjoyed huge advantages over the Republican Party when Latino respondents were asked which party represents or cares about …..” But after that ellipsis comes the finding that “those advantages evaporated when it came to the economy and crime.”

Democrats own a clear edge among Latinos on one major issue, though: the CCP Virus pandemic. According to the Axios-Ipsos results “respondents were much more likely to say Democrats were doing a good job of handling COVID-19 as a health challenge — 37% to 11% for Republicans, with another 17% saying both are doing a good job.” 

But Axios-Ipsos has been a major outlier lately, as made clear in this analysis that looks not only at this year’s polls but the Virginia gubernatorial election, which saw victorious Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin actually win the state’s Latino vote.  The conventional wisdom seems to hold that Youngkin prevailed in large measure because he held Trump at arm’s length. But in light of all the other survey results, maybe that’s wishful Mainstream Media thinking?      

It’s still a long way even to the 2022 Congressional elections, much less the 2024 presidential race. But unless the President and his party can turn their sagging fortunes around, it looks like they’re rapidly running out of time with Latinos – who are increasingly flocking to a Republican Party still strongly influenced by Donald Trump.  

Im-Politic: Has Biden Bet Right Politically on Afghanistan?

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Afghanistan, Biden, border security, Charles Lane, crime, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, Europe, hostages, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jimmy Carter, Lloyd J. Austin III, Open Borders, politics, refugees, Taliban, terrorism, Washington Post

Even if he didn’t peevishly block me on Twitter, I’d consider Washington Post columnist Charles Lane’s Tuesday piece on – how President Biden can “contain” Afghanistan-related damage to his presidency and historical legacy – pretty silly. For it completely ignores some screamingly obvious ways that this debacle can greatly worsen and keep degrading his image far into the future – and of course through the midterm 2022 elections and the 2024 presidential campaign.

Not that it’s out of the question that the domestic political calculation on which Mr. Biden is widely reported to have based his Afghan withdrawal will prove correct. The American public’s attention span can be pretty short and, as the President has rightly noted, who controls that remote “country” has no bearing on U.S. national security. (I use quotes because American policy has been led astray largely because there’s so little evidence that Afghanistan is a country in any meaningful sense of the word.)

Moreover, in case you haven’t noticed, the national news cycle has sped up considerably in recent years. Therefore, any public anger over the withdrawal botch could quickly evaporate once the next crisis or Biden failure, or Biden triumph that comes barreling down the pike. And the twenty-plus year Forever War remains unpopular. (See, e.g., here and here.  For an interesting exception, see here.) As a result, Afghanistan could indeed become yesterday’s meat loaf as far as U.S. voters are concerned, and even surprisingly quickly. 

Even so, it’s easy to imagine how fallout from the withdrawal could pose genuine threats to America and keep Mr. Biden “in the woods” politically.

For example, the odds seem good that the Biden administration will not be able to pull all American citizens out of Afghanistan during the partially open window the Taliban victors seem willing to provide – for now. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has already admitted that the U.S. military can’t guarantee Americans not already at the Kabul airport safe passage to the airport, and the State Department has advised these individuals to “shelter in place.” Many could be widely scatttered throughout Afghanistan’s Texas-sized territory.

The Taliban might agree to allow the United States to keep troops in the country beyond the August 31 total military withdrawal deadline set by the President – which Mr. Biden now says may be necessary to complete the evacuation. Or it might not. And if its leaders (whoever they really are) do decide to play nice with the United States, some groups in its jihadist ranks might not.

It’s plausible to believe that those Taliban leaders would want the American military completely gone as soon as possible, and therefore have strong incentives to play ball with Washington. But it seems to me just as plausible to believe that they’d find hostages very useful – say, as leverage to prompt the United States to release large amounts of the ousted Afghan government’s funds (which are currently held at the U.S. Federal Reserve), and the International Monetary Fund to release the smaller but not negligible amount of economic credits (called Special Drawing Rights or SDRs) that the previous regime was scheduled to receive about now. (See here for the details.)

If a hostage situation does emerge, then Mr. Biden could find himself with a problem at least as bad as former President Jimmy Carter suffered after the Iranian revolution in 1979. But even if hostages aren’t taken, a Biden administration decision to keep American troops on the ground in the country in defiance of  Taliban wishes in order to find U.S. personnel and escort them to the airport, or even increase the deployment to carry out these missions, could trigger renewed fighting and American casualties. And this fighting could last for weeks and even months.

Afghan refugees admitted into the United States could vex President Biden for years to come as well – and in two ways. First, as noted, if his administration casts too wide a net (and it’s widened already), any number of Taliban or Al Qaeda members or other jihadists could wind up resettling here. Few question the desire to protect Afghans directly employed by the U.S. military or other government agencies – and I don’t, either.

But calls are being issued to extend visas to still other categories of Afghans, and as always, it’s difficult to imagine that all of them could have been adequately vetted in peacetime given that the previous Afghan government wasn’t exactly the gold standard for efficiency or honesty. Now of course, conditions in the country are utterly chaotic, so the vetting challenge looks that much greater.

If any of those resettled in the United States wind up committing terrorist acts, there’ll surely be political hell to pay for the President. In fact, although, as I’ve argued repeatedly (e.g. here) the key to preventing Middle East-spawned terror strikes on America was never sending U.S. forces to chase around that terminally dysfunctional region every new jihadist group it would inevitably spawn. Instead, it was always securing America’s borders.

Consequently, Mr. Biden can now be fairly accused of failure on both these fronts.Thanks to his Afghan pullout, the Taliban might indeed permit jihadists from re-establishing a terrorist base benefiting from the protection of a sovereign state. And it’s reasonable to conclude that Islamic extremists in other countries and regions will be emboldened as well. At the same time, his Open Borders-friendly immigration policies were making it harder to keep them out even before Kabul fell. Talk about the worst of all possible worlds.

There’s a third refugee-related problem that could stain the Biden record long-term also: crime. Europe’s naive admission of literally millions of Afghans and other Middle Easterners fleeing their war-torn lands greatly undermined public safety in countries like Austria, Germany, and Sweden. No comparable problem has yet appeared in the United States. But so far, U.S. refugee admissions have been much more limited – largely, but not exclusively, because of the Trump administration’s more restrictive policies. If their numbers greatly increase during the Biden years, either because of more indulgent policies or failure to secure U.S. borders, all bets are off.

The 2020 U.S. presidential election showed that it’s dangerous to count Mr. Biden out. After all, until his primary victory in South Carolina, he was derided as a political “dead man walking.” In that contest, however, he benefited from powerful political allies like longtime South Carolina Democratic Congressman James Clyburn. I’m straining to see any similar saviors on the ground in Afghanistan or over the horizon. 

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.