World oil production and the Biden-Harris climate policy

The climate crisis is intensifying, as everyone can see and feel, even if climate deniers of various types want to keep pretending otherwise.

But unlike more long-standing political disputes, we don't have generations of the kind of political rhetoric that help people to focus their understanding of political proposals, like "Deficits," "inflation", and "balanced budgets," for instance.

Not that economic policies are simple, either, of course. Adam Tooze walks through some of the complications of climate control in an article about a statement on oil production put out this week by Biden's National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, indicated the intent of the Biden-Harris Administration to push for international increases in oil production to limit oil and gas price increases. (By pushing for more oil production, the US is killing its climate pledges Guardian 08/12/2021)

The implications for our climate policy are serious:

Yes, you read that correctly. One of the most senior figures in the Biden administration, the administration that promised climate was “everywhere” in its policy, is declaring that an increase in petrol prices to $3.17 per gallon is a matter of national security and that the US reserves the right to cajole Opec and Russia into flooding the world with more oil.

We should not mince words: if this is the stance of the Biden administration then its decarbonisation agenda has been well and truly buried. According to no less an authority than the IEA, if we are to reach net zero by 2050, we need to end fossil fuel capacity expansion now. In Europe, the likes of Shell are being told by the courts to make plans accordingly. To fill the gap, Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producing company, has let it be known that it is expanding its capacity. Biden’s national security adviser has just given it the green light.

Politicians are very aware that rising gas prices can cause political and social problems. That was part of the motivation for the "yellow vest" protests in France that proved to be so politically vexing for just about everybody. So the political dilemma for the Biden-Harris Administration is real: "The Biden administration is committed to a foreign policy for the American 'middle class'. On Sullivan’s interpretation, that means pushing the oil oligarchs of Opec and Russia to expand production. It is completely at odds with the IPCC’s message, published only days before."

Biden, the Democrats, and voting rights in 2021-2 Is this what surrender looks like?

President Joe Biden gave a speech yesterday evening that he probably hopes will be remembered as one of his most important and effective, Biden speaks on voting rights,

A PBS Newshour report on the speech is here, :PBS post-speech report: Biden calls GOP state voting restrictions ‘un-American’ 07/ 13/2021.

The official text of Biden's speech is here, Remarks by President Biden on Protecting the Sacred, Constitutional Right to Vote.

Here are some of the things that the President of the United States said about the ongoing and fast-moving voter suppression laws the Republicans are passing across the country:

• "[T]he For The People Act [is] a national imperative."
• The GOP is engaged nationwide in "election subversion" embodied in "odious laws."
• "It’s the most dangerous threat to voting and the integrity of free and fair elections in our history."
• Georgia just passed a "vicious anti-voting law" that is " racially discriminatory."
• "Are you on the side of truth or lies; fact or fiction; justice or injustice; democracy or autocracy? That’s what it’s coming down to."

But do a quick search and see if you can find the word "filibuster" in it.

And that's the problem. Unless the filibuster rule is abolished or adjusted in a way that allows a vote on the For The People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the two laws which Biden is nominally supporting in this speech, they won't pass.

That's why my first reaction to the speech is that it sounds like a de facto surrender in the face of what the President calls "the most dangerous threat to voting and the integrity of free and fair elections in our history."

But it is full of phrases and clips that can be used in campaign ads and fundraising letters and pitches to sell voting-rights merch.

VP Kamala Harris offered this bland snippet of text on Twitter:

In 2020, more voters cast a ballot than ever before. Now, there are some pushing new laws across the country to make it harder to vote.

We are fighting back against these efforts.

— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) July 13, 2021

I just don't believe this is serious.

The Democrats control the White House and both Houses of Congress. If Biden and Harris and the Congressional Democrats are serious about blocking what Biden calls "election subversion" in that speech, they will pass those two pieces of legislation. Otherwise, we're stuck with the reality that the Democrats control the White House and both Houses of Congress and can't pass their own legislation. Even legislation as critical as this.

How serious is the Biden-Harris Administration about its own agenda, especially on voting rights?

What the Biden-Harris Administration will turn out to be is obviously still an open question. There have a been some very constructive moves, like the COVID relief and stimulus bills. Having foreign policy run by a President who is not primarily focused on benefitting his own private businesses thereby is a good thing, by definition.

But At Least They Are Better Than Trump is way too low a standard for any Presidential administration, and certainly for a Democratic one.

"LBJ didn't give up. He famously told his old friend & mentor Richard Russell...who was deeply hostile to civil rights...that he planned to pass the thing & break a filibuster 'without changing so much as a comma.'"@ryangrim on what we need from Biden.https://t.co/krm5SOxKZ8

— Kai Newkirk #EndTheFilibuster (@kai_newkirk) July 12, 2021

This AP report gives a strong hint that Biden and Harris may have abandoned the idea of a new voting right law this year, As Frustration Mounts, a White House Push on Voting Rights 07/09/2021:

President Joe Biden met with civil rights leaders Thursday in the West Wing, while Vice President Kamala Harris announced $25 million in new spending by the Democratic National Committee on actions to protect voting access ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Biden and his team stress ongoing legal efforts to safeguard voting rights. They’ve also promised a major legislative push after Senate Republicans blocked a sweeping election overhaul last month. The president has told reporters he plans on “speaking extensively” on voting rights and that he would be “going on the road on this issue.”

Friday, the White House announced that Biden would travel to Philadelphia on Tuesday to discuss “actions to protect the sacred, constitutional right to vote.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president will “go to the birthplace of democracy to make the case for the moral imperative of making voting more accessible to people across the country.”

He goes into more detail in this video, Ryan Grim: Registering Voters Is NOT A RESPONSE To Voter Suppression The Hill 07/12/2021:

The segment includes this observation:

.@ryangrim:"Compare LBJ's approach to Biden's. When LBJ was being counseled to just drop the issue by his advisors...he shot back, 'well what the hell is the presidency for?' Biden’s answer so far is that the presidency is for selling voting rights merch." https://t.co/Mxf05MgipH pic.twitter.com/c07seyzl4M

— Halalflow (@halalflow) July 12, 2021

There are other critical priorities for legislation, including a substantive infrastruture bill and a real beginning on a Green New Deal infrastructure effort.

But voting rights legislation is critical. And ConservaDems are quick to start mocking demands to fight for legislation that may not be a sure thing as "Green Lantern" fantasy. But if the President isn't willing to fight for legislation to prevent the most widespread attempt at racist voter suppression since the 1870s, then he's just not serious about it.

Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina recently told Mehdi Hasan that he was hopeful that substantive voting-rights legislation would pass. But in the same interview, he went on to make the bizarre statement that the defund-the-police notion has a "chokehold" (?!?) on the Democratic Party. Jim Clyburn: “Defund The Police” Has “Chokehold” On Democrats 07/09/2021:

The combination of not being serious about passing voting rights legislation and sneering at activists protesting against police murdering people is a bad one. The political danger is not that constituencies like African-Americans who currently lean Democratic will suddenly take a liking to Republican that are babbling in a cult-like way about "critical race theory." The danger is they will be discouraged or disgusted enough that they won't vote in their usual numbers. And in 2022, the Democrats seriously need their voters to turn out in number higher than the usual rate for midterm elections.
Mark Elias is leading the legal effort that is at least nominally supported by establishment Democrats to counter Republican voter-suppression laws in the courts. But it doesn't replace a voting right law. You can follow his Twitter feed for updates:

If you want to know what Congress can do to prevent the GOP from rigging process of certifying elections, here you go.https://t.co/r9uEXlvwPC

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) July 13, 2021

In the article linked there, he emphasizes how important and urgent new legislation is:

Though Congress has taken notice, progress has been difficult. While the House of Representatives passed the For the People Act (H.R. 1), which would preempt many of the worst of these new state laws, passing it in the closely divided Senate has so far proved more difficult. Additional legislation is also in the works — including the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore a critical portion of the Voting Rights Act that was struck down by the Supreme Court.

While most of the legislative focus has been on the registration and voting process, significantly less attention has been paid to another point of vulnerability in our election system — the rules for tabulating and certifying elections. The right to vote is hollow if it does not include the right to have your vote counted and, if your candidate receives the highest number of votes, to have her assume the office to which she was elected. Republicans are taking aim at this vulnerability. [emphasis in original]

David Rothkopf evaluates the Biden-Harris foreign policy to date

David Rothkopf has a useful essay generally praising the Biden-Harris foreign policy at this stage, Here's What Biden's Team Expects From His Meeting With Putin Daily Beast 06/14/2021. He also summarizes his major points in a tweet thread that starts here:

Yesterday, I wrote an article about the progress @POTUS & @VP have made on the int'l front this past week. I observed that it was the result of sound diplomacy, hard work, experience & vision. I immediately got slammed by some folks for suggesting I was being blindly supportive.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) June 15, 2021

I try to think of foreign policy on two different tracks. One is a more fundamental critical perspective that wants the US to not be an imperialist state and consistently work to promote peace and nuclear disarmament and to exert a leadership role is a serious effort to deal realistically with the climate crisis.

The second is to look at foreign policy as it stands, realizing that even the most enlightened approaches to foreign policy with the interests of arms manufacturers in particular completely subordinated to the US national interest as defined by promoting a peaceful, democratic, and nuclear disarmed world and climate responsibility would have to work in a world where strong conditions of interaction established in the world system.

The first perspective is something like Wilsonian internationalism without the imperialist perspective, white racism, and bad international agreements that heavily defined the actual Wilson Presidency. The second would look more like the "realist" world as seen by thinkers like Stephen Walt combined with the pragmatic perspective of strategic restraint as envisioned by the folks at Andrew Bacevich's Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Here I'm looking at Rothkopf's analysis more from the first perspective. And part of the best news in that perspective is that the Biden-Harris foreign policy team distributes real competence in foreign policy management. Competent management only produces good results if the policy is good, of course. But having the foreign policy run on the basis of perceived national interests and not on the principle of how the President's private business can wrangle good private deals out of it is in itself a good thing. In the tweet thread, he writes:

This last point illustrates another key point that has not gone unnoticed around the world. This administration is returning to alliances with a keen awareness of our own limitations and missteps at home and abroad. These are not the unilateralists of the Bush era. These are not the narcissists of the Trump era. And they act with more skill and confidence and clarity of vision than the Obama or Clinton teams certainly did in their first terms in office. None of this is opinion or spin. The facts are there. This administration, led by the president with the most foreign policy experience of any in modern history, is getting off to a better start than any of its predecessors in the last 30 years.. [my emphasis]

Rothkopf himself mentions a couple of significant reservations about the current policy, the one-sided tilt to Netanyahu's government in the recent chapter Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Cold War rhetoric about China.

I would add a big reservation about Latin American policy. I was less impressed with Kamala Harris' recent trip to Mexico and Central America than he. But he does argue in the theet thread that there was real progress: "She re-engaged in a constructive way with Mexico after the threats, demagoguery, human rights violations at the border and sheer insanity of the prior administration. She got AMLO to agree to a cabinet level security dialogue that is essential and was by no means assured."

I'm working about a post on the encouraging recent developments in Latin America. The Obama-Biden Administration's Latin American policy was poor, which unfortunately has pretty much been the case for the last two centuries. Obama tilted distinctly against the center-left governments that had been in power and for the conservative oligarchs, with Argentina as one dramatic example. And Biden hasn't ended the ridiculous clown coup attempt initiated by Trump in Venezuela. In terms of competence along, that policy is so bumbling and foolish that even close US allies surely can't be impressed by it, even ones that have cooperated in that farce.

What comes now that the "FDR 2.0" phase of Biden's Presidency is over?

Joe Biden as President is definitely Not As Bad As Donald Trump.

But I'm afraid Joe Manchin's segregationist alliance with the Republicans means that we're back in the position that Obama found himself: The Democrats control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress but can't pass their own legislation.

Obviously, there will be some things like the military budget that will gain Bipartisan support. But for major initiatives, the party that controls the Presidency and both Houses of Congress is restricted to using the "reconciliation" procedure that they used for the COVID Relief bill for infrastructure or longterm green economic programs.

And there are limitations on the reconciliation rule, also buried in genuinely arcane Senate procedures. There is a parliamentarian who works for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer who gives nonbinding advice on what can be included in reconciliation and not. Schumer could fire the parliamentarian and hire a new one. Vice President Kamala Harris as the chair of the Senate could overrule the parliamentarian's recommendations. But they've so far chosen to hide behind the non-elected parliamentarian who given nonbinding recommendations.

That's not on Joe Orbán-Manchin. That's on Harris and Schumer.

And it's also on Joe Biden. The Democrats' constant invoking of bipartisanship muddles their own message in any case, particularly when the Republicans have spent decades showing their complete contempt for any "bipartisanship" that isn't Democrats completely surrendering to Republicans.

But Biden used his own experience in making deals with Republicans like Strom Thurmond a major element of his political pitch, both in the Democratic primaries, as a major selling point for his candidacy.

Promising successful bipartisanship is foolish in this environment. Because the opposition party controls whether you can fulfill that promise. And Mitch McConnell has been mocking Biden for not achieving bipartisanship as he openly declares his partisan objective is to block Biden's agenda.

Reporters and political junkies and partisan activists love immersing themselves in this stuff. But for most voters, even partisan voters, it means the Democrats are sounding a proverbial uncertain trumpet. What voters see, though is:

• The Democrats control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress but can't pass their own legislation.
• The Democrats control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress but can't pass their own legislation.
• The Democrats control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress but can't pass their own legislation.

And, yes, the Republicans will use the Democrats' ineffectiveness in controlling the Presidency and both Houses of Congress but can't pass their own legislation as evidence of their weakness.

What this means is that Biden's aggressive use of Executive power and his administration of the government to achieve important aims so far as that is possible.

But it also means that for at least the next year and a half, it will be a struggle for Democrats and people on the left who would like to see the Democrats' more progressive policies advanced to parse the constructive parts of the Biden-Harris Administration.

Here's an example of the challenge.

Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department is required to uphold the rule of law. This is not an essentially partisan point, because that's its job in the American legal and Constitutional system. But in the era where democracies worldwide are facing authoritarian challenges, i.e., fascist-like challenges, undermining the rule of law is a major goal of the authoritarians. So, in that sense, defending the impartial rule of law becomes itself a partisan issue.

A critical failing of the Obama Justice Department was not prosecuting obvious crimes of the Cheney-Bush Administration, particularly the torture crimes. I haven't seen explicit reporting on this. But Obama even before he took office was using his infamous look-forward-not-backward slogan to justify giving effective impunity from prosecution for the previous President and his administration. So it's a circumstantial judgment. But given the well-publicized corruption (remember Halliburton?) and various abusive conduct in the Cheney-Bush Administration, and given Obama's explicit and repeated invocation of the look-forward-not-backward formula, it's very hard to believe that Obama's Justice Department was not acting on his direction to not enforce the rule of law in those very high-profile cases. (Related: Obama admits CIA 'tortured some folks' but stands by Brennan over spying Guardian 08/01/2014)

Garland's Justice Department is doing better. There have been hundreds of arrests of accused participants in the treasonous attack on the Capitol of January 6. (Although I don't believe anyone has literally been charged with treason yet.) Justice seems to be taking a normal course on those prosecutions.

And I've also seen no indication that the Justice Department is trying to impede the normal investigations of US Attorneys (who are part of the Department) from pursuing legitimate criminal investigations involving Trump's businesses.

Those are all good signs. Another is not directly related to the Justice Department, but is a very good sign: Zoë Richards, Biden Moves To Begin Closing Guantánamo Bay TPM 06/09/2021. Obama had also promised to end this blight on the rule of law by the US, and made a bid in 2009 to do so, but backed away in the face of Republican opposition. To be fair, it really was a bipartisan opposition, to the disgrace of all the Democrats who supported that, when Obama made a bid in 2009. The Senate voted 90-6 against Obama’s proposal. (Spencer Ackerman, ‘No one but himself to blame': how Obama's Guantánamo plans fell through Guardian 02/24/2016)

And just to be clear: the 90-6 vote in the Senate to limit Obama's ability to close out the Guantanamo disgrace is extremely unlikely to have happened if Obama wasn't sending strong signals to the Democrats that he wanted to see a strong vote against it, despite his official public position. Bipartisanship!

On the other hand, The Justice Department does have to make decisions about which cases to prioritize. And if the Department has been pursuing a dubious or even fraudulent case, they are also required to put a stop to it. In this case, Garland's Justice Department is making a disturbing call: Jeff Hauser and Max Moran, Why Is Merrick Garland Defending Donald Trump? New Republic 06/08/2021

Shaunna Thomas of Ultraviolet tweets:

Another important and detailed response for all of you persuaded by the defense of the @DOJPH's decision to protect Trump's right to slander a rape survivor.

The House Judiciary agrees and sent a letter to Merrick Garland urging him to stop acting as Trump's personal attorney. https://t.co/fkbpwjPrfO

— Shaunna Thomas (@SLThomas) June 9, 2021

And there's this: Olafimihan Oshin, DOJ says it can 'vigorously' defend exemption to anti-LGBT discrimination laws for religious schools The Hill 06/09/2021. I'm not familiar enough with the case to evaluation the following. But the Department claims they are doing this to defend LGBTQ rights! "The Justice Department is not only following its general obligation to defend federal laws; it’s also trying to prevent a Christian organization from taking over the defense and mounting extreme arguments that could lead to a devastating subversion of civil rights law." (Mark Joseph Stern, No, the Biden Administration Isn’t Betraying Its Support for LGBTQ Rights Slate 06/09/2021.

I sometimes find Rachel Maddow's chronically perky style annoying. But she addresses some of the relevant issues around the Biden-Garland Justice Department in Trump Corruption of DOJ Lingers Under Garland, Risks Precedent MSNBC 06/09/2021:

The brief "FDR 2.0" phase was nice while it lasted. Now we're into the Democrats-control-the-Presidency-and-both-Houses-of-Congress-but-can't-pass-their-own-legislation phase.

The filibuster, the Biden-Harris Administration, and using losses to win

Josh Marshall takes a swipe at what is going on with the Biden-Harris Administration's legislative strategy to overcome Republican obstruction on major bills. That's assuming they actually have a coherent strategy. (We Must Sail, Not Drift: The White House is Adrift and on a Path to Defeat TPM 06/04/2021)

The bottom line in his analysis:

If you’re likely to lose it is better to structure the engagement on your own terms than to drift and await the action or inaction of others. This is true both as a dignified and ethical approach to life and as the best course to achieve a positive result. Biden will have to start placing some limits on the course of events. I don’t think he can allow Joe Manchin to decide when the negotiations have run long enough, which seems to be the case now. I think he’ll have to move on to passing his own bill. Then Manchin will have to decide whether he votes for or against it. It’s entirely possible he’ll do the latter. But then we will at least know where everyone stands. And that’s a better way to go down to defeat than path we’re currently on. ...

Taking charge of the situation doesn’t ensure victory. But it’s a better shot at it than the current drift. And in any case, it’s better to lose on your own terms than the current death of a thousand cuts. [my emphasis]

Josh's analysis looks at some of the negotiating dynamics involving Prime Minister Joe Manchin. Including the fact that he himself isn't obviously using his own leverage in the negotiations to pressure Republicans to come closer to Democratic proposals.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has announced that he will bring several major pieces of legislation "to the floor" in June, including the US Innovation and Competition Act, Paycheck Fairness Act (fair wages for women), gun safety legislation (maybe), and the particularly urgently needed "For The People" voting-rights bill, That means that to block them with the filibuster, the Republicans will have to show up in person to vote on the filibuster, as opposed to the current system where they can support a filibuster by a phone call or an email.

Legislative battles and the accompanying parliamentary procedural fog can obscure the significance of the actual votes being taken. In recent decades, the Republicans with their very aggressive legislative obstructionism against Democratic President from Clinton to Obama to Biden have shown themselves to be considerably more skilled at framing the public meaning of those fights than the Democrats have been.

And I take that to be the main point of that column. The Administration and the Senate Democrats need a well-thought-out political strategy to maximize the political cost to the Republicans of voting against popular legislation. They also have to hammer home a consistent message to voters that the Republicans blocked this legislation and that is bad for you.

It can hardly be said enough that the For The People voting-rights legislation is urgent to block and reverse the segregationist voter-suppression laws Republicans are furiously pushing across the country.

The TPM TV podcast for 06/04/2021 covers the filibuster problems and other issues, Ep. 175: Two Tracks:

The "FDR 2.0" phase of Biden's Presidency seems to be coming to an early end

The Washington Post has a story about the parts of their health care program that the Biden-Harris White House has decided they aren't really serious about (Jeff Stein and Tyler Pager, White House budget plan set to leave out some health care proposals from campaign 05/21/2021):

The White House jettisoned months of planning from agency staff as their initial plan could fuel criticisms that the administration is pushing new spending programs too aggressively. The budget will not include President Biden’s campaign pledge to enact a public option to create a government-run health insurance program, or his pledge to cut prescription drug costs, the people said. ...

[With the expansion of health insurance in the Administration's American Families Plan that has already passed,] The number of uninsured Americans would drop by about 4.2 million people if these subsidies are made permanent, according to estimates by the Urban Institute, a centrist think tank.

But that measure falls short of the more expansive public option Biden touted as a centerpiece of his domestic policy platform during the presidential campaign. Biden’s campaign touted that plan as ensuring that 97 percent of Americans would have health insurance.

The article also says that the proposed measure will not include measures to reduce prices on prescription drugs, an extremely popular measure on which Biden campaigned and which is part of his electoral mandate.

This article is obviously a trial balloon to see how willing the Democrats are to swallow these rollbacks of his campaign program. Cenk Uygur and the TYT crew make their own unapproving diagnosis of this White House signal in this segment, whose on-screen title is "Biden Budget Has Jack Squat for Progressives" 05/22/2021:

In addition to the items quoted from WaPo above, their list of disappointments include the following elements of Biden's own political program on which he campaigned:

• No cancellation of student loan debt (Biden had suggesting cancelling up to $50,000 of individual student debt)
• Increasing the estate tax on the wealthiest
• Lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55

The TYT discussion gets into legislative and partisan strategy issues, which are always part of real-world politics.

My own feeling is that at this point in late May, the Biden-Harris Administration is in "Obama-Biden" mode, holding legislative majorities in both Houses of Congress but stalling out on getting even their very popular proposals passed.

To the extent that the Democrats are seriously committed to passing constructive policies that benefit large numbers of people, they need to put some real pressure on their weakest links like Prime Minister Joe Manchin to eliminate the Senate filibuster rule and pass their programs. The Democratic Party also needs to rapidly build up local Democratic party structures and set up a very strong get-out-the-vote operation in 2022. And for various reasons - commitment to the rule of law, racial justice, partisan ambition - they have to get the "For the People" voting-rights act passed as quickly as they can.

One of the sad legacies of the Obama-Biden Administration is the excuse that "we'll have more bites at the apple" when postponing efforts to pass important legislation. That administration enjoyed control of both Houses for only its first two years. Obama as President was definitely Better Than Dick Cheney and Better Than Trump. But after eight years as President being repeatedly stymied by an intransigent Republican Party in Congress, Donald Trump became President with Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress.

And if Biden pulls a silly Third Way stunt like this, we can safely assume he's switched from FDR mode to Grover Cleveland mode, i.e., back to the Biden the Crime Bill Guy and Biden the Debt Collector Guy: As State of the Union Nears, Congress Plays Musical Chairs New York Times 01/22/2011.

A year later, even the pathetic Third Way ConservaDems who had advocated this were admitting that the stunt "didn’t exactly spark the results they hoped for during the rest of the year." But they proposed to do it again in 2012 anyway! (Allen McDuffee, State of the Union: Will Republicans and Democrats sit together? 01/23/2021)

Quick takes on Biden policies

Here are some stories that focus on some significant issues the Biden-Harris Administration is dealing with.

Providing better access to COVID vaccine for poorer countries: Michael Safi, Covid vaccines: what is patent waiving and will it solve the global shortage? Guardian 05/06/2021; Sam Fraser, Biden takes a vital step on vaccine patents — but more action is needed Responsible Statecraft 05/05/2021.

That's good news as far as it goes. Notably, the EU was caught flat-footed by Biden's announcement. But the EU is not nearly as far along with the domestic vaccinations as the US is at the moment: Ashley Furlong, US shift on vaccines embarrasses Europe before India summit Politico EU 05/06/2021:

The U.S. decision to drop its objections was received as a seismic shift in Europe, with EU and U.K. officials scrambling Thursday morning to react and articulate whether they, too, would shift their position. And within the EU, cracks in the bloc's solidarity against the proposal started to form, with Italian officials expressing support for the patent waiver. [my emphasis]

Iran nuclear deal: Thomas Countryman, Biden is getting closer to a deal with Iran, and Democrats in Congress need to get with the program Business Insider 05/04/2021

Withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan: Stephen Walt, What Comes After the Forever Wars Foreign Policy 04/28/2021

Other signs of restraint in the Greater Middle East: Fred Kaplan, Saudi Arabia and Iran Are Starting to Solve Their Differences Without America Slate 05/05/2021

Interesting moment of pragmatism over NordStream 2: Marina Adami, Blinken: US ‘will respond’ if Russia ‘acts recklessly’ Politico EU 05/06/2021

The diplomat also reiterated U.S. President Joe Biden’s personal opposition to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project linking Russia and Germany. Despite the U.S. Justice Department initially deciding to allow sanctions against the company building the gas pipeline as part of new penalties against Russia, the approval was reversed in April. However, the U.S. president still believes Nord Stream 2 is “a bad idea,” Blinken said. [my emphasis]

I could really do without all the "new Cold War" talk, although that talk is more centered on China than Russia. But the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is a big negotiating point, which could turn out to be constructive or seriously problematic, depending on how it is actually fitted into the larger picture of US-Russia-China relations. It increases European dependence on Russian gas. But Russia is a petrostate, so it also makes Russia more dependent on Europe.

So it's a relief to see this bit of pragmatism in US foreign policy. It makes total sense to keep Nord Stream 2 as a negotiating point in a larger set of relationships. Which I'm pretty sure is not exactly how it was being approached by the US the last couple of years.

Biden and deficit politics

Here are two podcasts addressing a dilemma that Democrats face with raising taxes to pay for the infrastructure bill. Because while raising taxes on the wealthiest is necessary and long overdue, there is a danger that in justifying it, they may be giving credibility to deficit hawkery and the kind of austerity thinking that often results from it.

The Majority Report featuring David Dayen on Biden's first 100 days, Assessing the Biden Administration's First 100 Days w/ David Dayen 4/29/21. David's segment begins just after 15:45.

David Dayen also has a new article on how the Biden team is now sending more messaging that the deficit is important, The Deficit Obsession is Back The American Prospect 04/29/2021

TYT 04/29/2021, Ben Shapiro: Poor Don't Pay Enough Taxes!

One encouraging development in recent years is that the economic theory known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has become more familiar and popular with progressive commentators. And MMT advocates like Stephanie Kelton bring forward strong arguments against the kind of deficit worries that conservatives bring forward to justify austerity economics in good times and bad. In the US, the Republican concern about deficits is entirely cynical and instrumental. When it comes to spending or tax cuts a Republican President wants, they revert to the position Dark Lord Dick Cheney articulated privately during the Cheney-Bush Administration, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

But taxes are important is regulating the maldistribution of wealth, which has become increasingly concentrated at the top. Having a few extremely wealthy people and corporations with lots of money that can't be directly reinvested in a business leads to things like the kind of real estate speculation that not only has very negative effects in cities like Los Angeles, but also creates financial speculation that leads to crises.

So the Democrats need to find a redistributionist rhetoric, which the neoliberal viewpoint regards as heresy. (So do traditional conservatives, obviously!) If Franklin Roosevelt could campaign successfully against the "economic royalists" in 1936, the Democrats today can find a way to do it, too.

But one doesn't have to be an MMT adherent to recognize the problem with deficit fetishism. Neo-Keynesian Paul Krugman has been on that case for years: Nobody Understand Debt New York Times 02/09/2015; How (not) to pay for building back better Substack 03/07/2021; Return of the Phony Deficit Hawks New York Times 12/17/2020

Biden: a notable speech that's an occasion for cautious optimism

I worry that Charlie Pierce here is letting hope get the better of experience, to coin a phrase. This was his post before Biden's Wednesday evening address to Congress, Joe Biden Wants to Return the Democratic Party to What It Has Been Afraid to Be for Decades Esquire Politics Blog 04/28/2021.

I'm hopeful, too. But but unless the Senate Democrats can get all their 50 members to vote with Kamala Harris to abolish or drastically modify the filibuster rule, it's hard to see how a lot of the legislation is going to get through. As long as the Democrats know they won't get their major proposals passed without not just President Joe Manchin but 10 Republicans, they can propose great things knowing they will be blocked in the Senate and then they can both tell their corporate donors, "see, Biden promised nothing fundamental would change" (and he literally did promise corporate donors that!) AND the Democrats can use those proposals in their innumerable fundraising appeals to say, "Send us more money and maybe we can get these things done in 2023".

President Biden's full joint address to Congress President Biden's full joint address to Congress PBS Newshour 04/29/2021:

The prepared text for the speech is posted on the White House website.

It was a great speech. Especially considering that it was chronic moderate Joe Biden giving it!

And he sounded like a real Democrat. The speech had only two mentions of the word "deficit". Two too many, but it's refreshing. Since one of them was criticizing Republican deficit-creation, so I'm willing to count that one as only a half-mention. The COVID relief bill was actually good on the substance, and Biden did a decent job on saying, hey, this is what we delivered for you and the Republicans fought against it all. That's exactly what Democrats need to be doing.

And good on Biden for sticking with his Afghanistan withdrawal scenario. In a weird irony, Noam Chomsky of all people told Mehdi Hasan in a recent interview that he was opposed to Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal plan. Good grief!

I'm staying on trust-but-verify mode with Biden. The new voting rights bill (H.R.1 - For the People Act) has to get through, and the filibuster has to be changed to get that done. The economic and social spending Biden is proposing are good and they are popular. The good news is that large parts of that can be done through reconciliation. How much the Democrats will let President Joe Manchin determine what gets through is critical. President Manchin just said it would be awful to pass the For the People bill by adjusting the filibuster. Having these proposals of Biden's as a wishlist for fundraising letters is nice. Getting them passed would be much, much better.

The worst-case situation on this is that the Democrats let Pres. Manchin kill the voting rights bill and block most of Biden's economic proposals. That gives the Republicans a Jim Crow playing field in many states in 2022 . And they will campaign with issues like, "The weak Dem-u-crat Party couldn't get any of their librul programs they promised through! And they're Communists and culture-cancellers! Plus Biden wants to ban you from eating hamburgers, force you to wear masks forever, and only allow plant-based beer!"

But Republicans winning control of either House of Congress in 2022 would be a nightmare. The 100 Years of Darkness scenario is not a desirable one!

Biden's rhetoric against police murder was good. And he's backing it up with at least some high-profile federal interventions into local police misconduct. But the results really, really matter. And when you think that Minneapolis was considered to be a model *success* story of the Clinton-Obama "community policing" concept, that is a questionable template. Because as long as cops are trained to murder black people on a hair trigger, having them spend more time in minority neighborhoods will mean even more opportunities for more needless shootings.

Biden's making some good moves on immigration. But the current policy on asylum seekers is still in violation of international law and it's wrong. And I tend to think that when politicians talk about solving refugee problems by aiding countries to reduce the source is 99% hot air. That goes for Biden's talk last night about Central America.

For one thing, a massive economic development program in Central America would be a long-term undertaking. And the biggest single thing the US has done in the last 12 years to affect the Central American refugee situation was backing the coup in Honduras in 2009, which caused a huge deterioration in the regional security conditions. That was during the Obama-Biden Administration when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, a serious departure from the Don't-Do-Stupid-Stuff principle. "Woke" rhetoric is fine. Developing a Latin American policy that doesn't suck would be much better.

Additional material relating to assessing Biden's first 100 days:

Kate Aronoff, Biden’s 100-Day Honeymoon With the Climate Left Is Coming to an End New Republic 04/29/2021

Andrew Latham, ‘Peak China’ and the prospects for a US offshore balancing strategy Responsible Statecraft 04/28//2021.

Aysha Qamar, Surprise! The world likes the U.S. much better with Joe Biden in charge Daily Kos 04/28/2021

David Dayen, First 100: The American Families Plan The American Prospect 04/28//2021

What we think of Biden’s first 100 days in office Responsible Statecraft 04/27/2021. Short takes from various Quincy Institute experts.

Dilip Hiro, Biden’s anti-China ambitions: A reality check Responsible Statecraft 04/24/2021

Biden is popular, but the filibuster rule is still in place and the clock is ticking

I'm not on the team that says Biden is doing just fine as long as he is Not As Bad As Donald Trump.

That standard is not a low bar. It's a bar buried in the ground.

But I'm not ready to jump on the Biden-is-FDR bandwagon, either. Paul Krugman makes a case for being a bit more giddy about this (What’s the Secret of Biden’s Success? New York Times 04/19/2021):

Public support for the Obama stimulus [of 2009], never very strong, plunged in the face of a sluggish economic recovery. Voters might sour on Bidenomics, too, if the economy disappoints.

But all indications are that we’re heading for an economic boom, with G.D.P. growing at its fastest rate since 1984. If that happens, Biden’s policies might get even more popular than they are now.

How all of this will translate into votes remains to be seen. But early indications are that Biden has achieved what Obama never did: finding a way to make progressive policies truly popular. [my emphasis]

Krugman's point in the column is basically that Biden is doing well in the polls at the moment because he's doing substantial things that much of the public perceives as being good things. The vaccine rollout quickly picked up once Biden took office, and that was not a random coincidence. Trump's administration was an irresponsible disaster on the vaccine distribution.

Rick Perlstein has observed that Biden has an advantage that probably would have been there even if the previous administration's vaccination program had been half competent, which is that Biden gets to be the guy who made it possible for people to hug their grandchildren again. Because Biden's first year in office is coinciding with what looks like is going to be the turning point against the COVID pandemic in the US.

And as Krugman was predicting last year, once the pandemic situation improved enough to resume some like normal economic activity, the economy would see a notable upsurge just from that alone. Now we can add to that the COVID relief bill which is certainly a boost to that goal, even though economists like him were insistent on calling that a "relief" bill rather than a "stimulus."

This kind of comma-dancing is an emerging trend here in what is still Biden's first 100 days as President. For economists, the COVID bill was "relief" because it addressed immediate losses that people experienced because of the virus and the lockdowns, like providing extended unemployment coverage. Not a "stimulus" bill aimed at producing longer-term growth. But of course the financial provisions of the "relief" bill helped the economy. There was some attempt by the Republicans to label it "stimulus" which they tried to make a stigma along the lines of "welfare".

Now with the infrastructure bill, Republicans and ConservaDems are haggling over what counts as "infrastructure" with the same Republican goal, to stigmatize some parts of it as "welfare".

In any case, Krugman in this column is right, at least for the current moment. Biden is not only getting some substantial things done, but voters understand them as such. Including a notable number of Republican voters.

But the Republicans also have reason to believe that a strategy of fundamental opposition, i.e., obstruction across the board, at least on domestic issues, will be effective. Conventional political wisdom has it that the President's party is presumed to have a disadvantage in the midterm elections. And with the Senate split 50-50 and the House majority relatively slim, the Democrats not only need to get as much of their program passed as possible. They also need to make a strong positive impression on voters. And the party structures in the states tend to be stronger for Republicans. And, most ominously, is the new raft of Jim Crow over voter suppression laws like the one Georgia just passed.

Foreign policy is not on the front burner of political attention at the moment. But, of course, that can change quickly. Still, peace is popular, despite the militarized rhetoric of our political culture. Still, Biden's early announced that he's staying in the nuclear-arms agreement with Russia that Trump had decided to leave and his intention to re-enter the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran are both things that Biden could and should use to bolster his political support.

On the other hand, there are worrisome signs that Biden is still sorely tempted to revert to the Clintonian strategy of "triangulating" between (center-)left and right. Which in practice means caving to the conservatives. Not by coincidence, that is also the kind of thing that wealthy donors tend to prefer.

Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss this concern in the first part of the 04/19/2021 edition of TYT, talking about some of Biden's backsliding on his own announced policies. The $15/hr. minimum wage is going nowhere. Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, who often acts as a Biden surrogate, is talking about reducing the infrastructure bill (The American Jobs Plan in White House marketing) from over $2 trillion to $800 billion or so. This is the Democrats negotiating with themselves.

The filibuster rule is still in place. If it's not modified, a lot of Biden's program, including the most popular parts, have little or no hope of passing. Especially not the critical voter protection act (For the People Act) to counter Republican voter suppression. And the clock is already ticking on that. The longer the bill is delayed, the less time the Federal government will have to take the necessary legal and administrative action necessary to undo the voter suppression laws before the 2022 elections.

TYT also reports on Biden' record on immigration. Which, yes, Not As Bad As Trump. But, actually, not that good. And so far, really not much better than Trump's:

Krugman is also right in arguing that Biden coming off so far to the public as a Democrat who is actually serious about Democratic policies that visibly help people is a major contributor to his popularity to date. The fanaticism of the Republican Party has also helped. "And at this point Republicans seem so deep in the cult that they’ve forgotten how to talk to outsiders." But that was also true during Obama's first term. Yet their obstruction and their ground game in the 2010 elections was still very effective against the Democrats. The Republicans were able to take a majority in the House.

The Democrats' defeat on the $15 minimum wage

When I woke up this morning, the Twitter algorithms showed me this.

The $15 minimum wage just failed, because 8 Democrats voted against it. The Democrats broke their promise.

The Dems who voted no are:

Joe Machin (WV)
Jon Tester (MT)
Jeanne Shaheen (NH)
Maggie Hassan (NH)
Angus King (ME)
Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)
Tom Carper (DE)
Chris Coons (DE)

— Gravel Institute (@GravelInstitute) March 5, 2021

That list again:

Net worth of the 8 Democrats who just voted down $15 minimum wage:
Chris Coons: $10.13 million
Angus King: $9.49 million
Joe Manchin: $7.62 million
Tom Carper: $5.73 million
Jeanne Shaheen: $3.82 million
Jon Tester: $3.67 million
Maggie Hassan: $3.47 million
Krysten Sinema: N/A

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) March 5, 2021

AOL had a sensible reaction.

Imagine having the ganas to go home and ask minimum wage workers to support you after going back on your own documented stance to help crush their biggest chance at a wage hike during their longest drought of wage increases since the law’s very inception. Sin vergüenza.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 5, 2021

This is a bad thing, substantively and (for the Democrats) politically.

It should be a bad thing politically for the Republicans, too. But they have so QAnon-ized their brand that I guess opposing a minimum wage increase just seems like a normal part of white identity politics to the faithful. Besides, they are presently concerned wtih defending Dr. Seuss and the honor of Neanderthals, the archaic humans who disappeared as a distinct group 25 thousand years or so ago.

Substantively, an increase in the minimum wage is overdue. The US Labor Department has a helpful history of the federal minimum wage since it began, History of Federal Minimum Wage Rates Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938-2009. We are currently in the longest period since 1938 that it hasn't been raised.

Politically, the Democrats need to deliver concrete benefits to working people. And they need to support the expansion of labor unions. Living wages and labor unions are good things in themselves, of course. But if the Democrats want to strategically strengthen their own party in the face of the current Republican structural advantages combined with their fanaticism, they need to strengthen themselves with working class voters.

The increase in the minimum wage polls as being incredibly popular. For average voters, the message comes across that the Democrats control the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Joe Biden campaigned for President and won by seven million votes committed to the $15 minimum wage. And he supported including it in the COVID relief bill.

But they failed to pass it.

To the extent that people followed the procedural chatter that led up to the minimum wage vote - well, there was the parliamentarian no one had ever heard of before, and the reconciliation thing, and the filibuster, sacred Senate traditions, yadda, yadda - most will take the lesson that the Democrats had a lot of excuses but just failed to deliver on this basic vote on the minimum wage. (Which, sadly, is what actually just happened.)

The Republicans, on the other hand, are both shameless and more aggressive in their messaging. So the Republicans in Congress make a solid wall against a minimum wage increase. As during the Obama-Biden Administration, the Republicans are trying to obstruct as many Democratic priorities as they can. But that approach is not just about the policies involved. It's also performatively showing that they can slap the Democrats around.

So the Republicans in a situation like this can both vote against the minimum wage increase and mock the Democrats for being losers for not getting their own program passed. And it's easy to imagine the Trump Party's current Leader For Life declaring, "The Democrats control the White House and Congress after they sole the election from me. They promised to wage the minimum wage to $15 and then the Democrats themselves voted it down. But if I'm elected President again, I'll get it done right away!"

Trump wouldn't actually push to raise the minimum wage. of course, But he would certainly do the demagoguery. The point is, the Democrats negotiate publicly against each other to not deliver the popular policy that Biden himself ran on. That Biden ran on and won the vote by a large margin, we're not talking about Bernie Sanders' program in the primary. While the Republicans can be seen regularly fighting stubbornly for their own positions, unpopular though most of them are.

And using any procedural trick they can find to do so. While the Democrats look like they are shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Yeah, we're in control, but, hey, there are all these procedures and stuff, so we can't really do much, but elect us an even bigger majority in Congress, and maybe we can do something then."

You don't have to be particularly cynical to wonder if Biden and Harris were always intending to use the $15 minimum wage in the COVID relief package as a bargaining chip they would happily give up.

In the weeds of the procedural considerations, there were alternative possibilities. The most straightforward and sensible one would have been to vote away the antidemocratic filibuster rule, which has since the days of John Calhoun been used almost exclusively to block proposals that reactionaries and conservatives didn't like, and only amplifies the already nondemocratic representative balance in the Senate. Then the Democrats could have used their 51-vote majority (including the Vice President as presiding officer of the Senate) to pass the full COVID relief package.

A second alternative was to use the reconciliation process, which itself actually began as a workaround from the filibuster, allowing a bill to be passed by simple majorities in both Houses. (David Wessel, What is reconciliation in Congress? Brookings Institute 02/05/2021) The House passed the COVID bill including the $15 minimum wage. The Senate parliamentarian, a non-elected, advisory position, argued that the minimum wage change should not be included in a bill passed by reconciliation.

But the actual decision on that point belongs the presiding officer of the Senate,  i.e., Vice President Kamala Harris, or her designee. The procedural point had to do with whether the minimum wage adjustment would affect the federal budget, in which case it can be done through reconciliation. And there's an entirely plausible reason to think it does affect the budget.

So then the procedural question passed to the Senate Budget Committee, currently chaired by Bernie Sanders, who had to decide whether to include it in the Senate version or not. In a decision that presumably included information from the Vice President on whether she would adopt the parliamentarian's recommendation or not. If that version including the $15 change had been the bill presented to the Senate, the Democratic opponents would have had to vote for taking it out of the bill. Instead, the bill was presented to the Senate without the $15 change and the Senators were acting to vote to put it back into the Senate version.

That's not an easy thing to squeeze into a clear slogan. "We're fighting for the $15 wage and the Republicans are unanimously against it" is a clear message. On the other hand, "Well, most of the Democrats wanted it, but there was the parliamentarian, and the reconciliation, and a separate vote up or down, and we couldn't get it done. But, hey, we only control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress, you can't actually expect us to do things we said we were going to do" - that's not a clear slogan. In fact, it's nothing but an excuse.

Given that the business lobbies opposed the minimum wage increase, it would likely have failed to pass if the anti-living-wage Democrats had been forced to take the initiative to vote to remove it, instead of having to decline to vote to include it. But I tend to think the former would have been a closer vote than what actually happened.

The New Republic's Alex Pareene summarizes the results this way.

the end result of Biden and Harris deciding not to challenge the parliamentarian and force their moderate senators to take a "tough vote" is one of those senators from a purple state starring in a megaviral clip evocatively giving a thumbs down to giving the working poor a raise

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) March 6, 2021

To summarize again:

• The Democrats as a party supported the very popular minimum wage increase, an increase that is seriously overdue.
• The Democrats control the White House and both Houses of Congress but failed to pass it.
• Even though the Republicans solidly oppose the minimum wage increase, they will be happy to mock the Democrats as losers for not passing it. And they are often better at that kind of messaging than the Democrats are at countering it.

Biden's military strike in Syria and the Iran nuclear deal

The Biden-Harris Administration has not yet re-entered the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). I realize that diplomacy can be tricky. But the US left the agreement and imposed drastic sanctions on Iran even though Iran was observing its terms and the European allies were and are very supportive of the agreement.

Stephen Miles discusses the strikes in Biden’s Syria strikes: A perpetual cycle of endless war Responsible Statecraft 02/26/2021. He refences this Congressional Research Service report, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2020. He notes, "The journey from the start of 1991’s Operation Desert Storm to the present ... will take you through more than 30 long pages of airstrikes, invasions, and other instances of trying to bomb our way to peace."

The US fights too many wars.

Miles emphasizes that the JCPOA is an example of the kind of foreign policy that can move toward winding down "an endless war" in Syria and Iraq:

It was not a comprehensive peace, few ever are. Rather, it was a step-by-step process, starting by constraining Iran’s nuclear program and eliminating the risk of nuclear proliferation, that could and should have been built upon with further progress on our countries’ numerous other challenges. Unfortunately, Donald Trump chose to walk away — despite his own administration’s recognition that the deal was working — and embark on a path of “maximum pressure.” That path brought the United States and Iran to the brink of all-out, direct war multiple times during his presidency and remains one of the key drivers of the instability and conflict so violently on display this week in Iraq and Syria.

Today, as President Biden assesses his next steps, he would do well to remember how we got here, and use this opportunity to quickly and sharply change course. He should, of course, begin by ending “maximum pressure” and rejoining the JCPOA, putting the United States and Iran firmly back on the path of diplomacy. That alone, of course will not be enough to undo the damage already done not just in the last four years but the last 30. To achieve that will require the president fulfilling another campaign promise: to truly end our endless wars in the Middle East.

That will be no small undertaking, and it will require questioning and rejecting the status quo thinking that led him to his first airstrikes. [my emphasis]

Trita Parsi talks about the more specific diplomatic considerations in getting the US back into the JCPOA before Iran decides its not worth the effort, Iran rejects meeting as Biden’s slow diplomacy hits predictable snag 02/28/2021, writing that "the Biden team should have done their utmost to avoid engaging in public fights over 'who goes first' [in public steps toward reconciliation]. This is the inevitable outcome: everything becomes more politically costly. Even before real talks have begun."

Kali Robinson gives us some background on the deal at its current state in What Is the Iran Nuclear Deal? Council on Foreign Relations 02/25/2021. He warns that their is an election clock ticking currently:

Iran has called for the United States to return to the deal but has said it is not willing to discuss expanding the accord further. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told CFR in September 2020 that Iran will “absolutely not” renegotiate and that the United States should compensate Iran for damages caused by sanctions, which he says amount to $1 trillion.

However, the prospects for new negotiations could dim come June 2021, when Iran is set to elect a new president. Many analysts say a conservative, hard-line candidate will likely replace President Rouhani, whose popularity has plummeted with the unraveling of the nuclear deal.

Robinson' piece also talks about what a burden US sanction are to Iran. The mainstream foreign policy conversations tend to portray economic sanctions and embargoes as a peaceful alternative to war. But they can do severe damage and the kind of sanctions imposed on Iran are definitely on a spectrum of confrontation that could quickly turn into actual war.

And the Biden-Harris Administration did call the Syria military strike a signal to Iran.

Democrats have to fight with themselves to fight against Republicans (while Republicans fight Democrats constantly)

I worry about this, too.

Why couldn't I sleep last night?

I couldn't stop thinking about the authoritarian nightmare that awaits our country if @JoeBiden and Democrats in Congress fail to deliver big for working-class people in this brief window they have.

— Jonathan Smucker (@jonathansmucker) February 26, 2021

On the other hand, Rick Perlstein notes that Biden-Harris Administration has the opportunity with COVID relief and vaccinations to be the ones who made it possible for people to hug their grandkids again. In this case, even doing a job "not as bad as Trump" has the potential to pay big political dividends. (Rick talks about this in his recent interview with Rick Perlstein, Rumble #167: he Middle Of The Road Is Deadly 02/25/2021)

Paul Krugman has been pointing out for the last year or so that once the virus recedes as a major public health threat to the point where more normal economic activity can resume, the economy is likely to enjoy a significant and relatively quick upturn.

Of course, discussions about these possibilities always feature not only Republican obstructionist slogans but economists' jargon, as well. Part of the latter is the distinction between "relief" and "stimulus," a distinction that means something to economists but is more-or-less unintelligible to everyone else. But Krugman explains in these two Substack columns, Nonstimulus arithmetic Why the American Rescue Plan has to be big 02/09/2021 and Cooling it on overheating 02/21/2021.

Especially if the COVID relief bill is followed by a substantial infrastructure bill this year, that should be a powerful boost to the Democrats in 2022.

But the Democrats are notoriously clumsy with their messaging, even when they do something very popular. And they need to do better than they did in 2009-2010 during the Obama-Biden Administration. There's a current fight over the $15 minimum wage within the Democratic Party that's an important moment in Democratic messaging. See the TYT petition Don't Kill It, Bernie. Theres 'a hashtag #DontKillItBernie

Sam Seder and his crew talk about this Democratic problem with messaging in this Majority Report segment, How About Those $2000 Checks, Joe!? 02/26/2021:

Results are critically important. But the Democrats really need much better messaging on their actual achievements, too.

The significance of progressive narratives and organization in US politics

Joe Biden has been President for just over a month now. And for the most part, even those impatient for constructive changes are relieved at the "normalcy" of having a President who actually respects the basic institutions of the government and knows that the federal government does have responsibilities to its citizens, e.g., in responding to a deadly pandemic.

Progressives are very aware that we have to press Biden to actually enact even the program he put forward in his primary candidacy, and even more so to enact the unity program agreed on with the Sanders campaign.

Naomi Klein has been pointing out that a significant difference between 2021 and 2009 is that the progressive left has a more clear organized presence in politics, in contrast to the relative weakness of the left at the beginning of the Obama-Biden Administration. In a recent editorial (Why Texas Republicans Fear the Green New Deal New York Times 02/21/2021), she analyzes the bizarre position the Republicans and their media networks have taken on the disastrous failure of radical free-market energy policies in Texas right now, that the Green New Deal that hasn't even been enacted yet is responsible for the disaster!

She goes back to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to illustrate her point:

When Hurricane Katrina broke through New Orleans’s long-neglected levees in 2005, there was, briefly, some hope that the catastrophe might serve as a kind of wake-up call. Witnessing the abandonment of thousands of residents on their rooftops and in the Superdome, small-government fetishists suddenly lost their religion. “When a city is sinking into the sea and rioting runs rampant, government probably should saddle-up,” Jonah Goldberg, a prominent right-wing commentator, wrote at the time. In environmental circles, there was also discussion that the disaster could spur climate action. Some dared to predict that the collapsed levees would be for the small-government, free-market legacy of Reaganism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for Soviet Communism.

None of it happened. Instead, New Orleans became a laboratory for the shock doctrine. Public schools were shut down en masse, replaced by charter schools. Public housing was demolished, and costly townhouses sprang up, preventing thousands of the city’s poorest residents, the majority of them Black, from ever returning. The reconstruction of the city became a feeding ground for private contractors. Republicans used the cover of crisis to call for expanded oil and gas exploration and new refinery capacity, much as Mr. Perry is doing right now in Texas with his calls for doubling down on gas. [my emphasis]

There were efforts to block that approach and implement more constructive responses.

But there were no readily available, alternate ideas lying around for how New Orleans could be rebuilt to make it both greener and fairer for all of its residents.

Even if there had been, there was no political muscle to turn such ideas into reality. Though the environmental justice movement has deep roots in Louisiana’s “cancer alley,” the climate justice movement was only just emerging at the time Katrina struck. There was no Sunrise Movement, the youth-led organization that occupied Nancy Pelosi’s office after the 2018 midterms to demand “good jobs, and a livable planet.” There was no “squad,” the ad hoc alliance of congressional progressives whose most visible member, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, sent shock waves through Washington by joining the Sunrisers in their occupation. There had not yet been two Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns to show Americans how popular these ideas really are. And there was certainly no national movement for a Green New Deal.

The difference between then and now goes a very long way toward explaining why Mr. Abbott is railing against a policy plan that, as of now, exists primarily on paper. In a crisis, ideas matter — he knows this. He also knows that the Green New Deal, which promises to create millions of union jobs building out shock-resilient green energy infrastructure, transit and affordable housing, is extremely appealing. This is especially true now, as so many Texans suffer under the overlapping crises of unemployment, houselessness, racial injustice, crumbling public services and extreme weather. [my emphasis]

She appeared on Sam Seder's Majority Report Monday to discuss her perspective, beginning just after 17:30 in the video, Why Texas GOP Fears the Green New Deal w/ Naomi Klein 02/22/21:

But the President is career centrist Joe Biden, not Bernie Sanders. The best scenario for the next four years is that he will bicker and complain about progressives pushing him and progressives will complain about how much he falls short, and in January 2025, the left will praise him for being surprisingly more progressive than anyone really expected.

Looking at it from the perspective of the start of the second month of the Biden-Harris Presidency, two factors are likely to weigh very heavily in the public reception of this government. If the vaccination and other public health are successfully rolled out and we see a resumption of more normal economic activity in the fall, that in itself will be perceived as a huge relief. The Democrats are surprisingly inept at messaging their own successes, of course. But even with klutzy messaging, results do matter.

As Paul Krugman has been actively pointing out, the lifting of most lockdown restriction in itself will produce a notable surge in economic activity, which he compares to the "morning in America" effect from which benefitted the first Reagan-Bush Administration so much. (He doesn't suggest that Reagan's voodooo economics was the magic it was claimed to be.) If Biden actually does enact his own proposed version of the "New Green Deal," as he prefers to call it, that will also provide a much-needed economic stimulus. (Krugman explains the distinction he makes between economic relief and economic stimulus, which has relevance for the wonkier discussions among economists about economic policy, in Cooling it on overheating Substack 02/21/2021.)

I don't think the filibuster issue is going away. Things that actually need legislation will be blocked by the Republicans in the Senate using the filibuster if they are anything actually significant and important that could befit Democrats at the polls in 2022 or 2024. Comprehensive immigration reform is one. Anything like the $15 minimum wage that isn't included in a bill that can be passed with a Senate majority through the "reconciliation" procedure will also be shot down with the filibuster.

Biden is an experienced legislator and an institutionalist, so he of course knows all this as well as anybody. If the Democrats offer up something like comprehensive immigration reform in a bill that can be filibuster, they will doing so fully knowing it will be defeated. There's no need for anyone to kid themselves about that. It's not a bad thing to fight for something like loses, depending on how important it is and the kind of message the fight itself sends about what Democrats stand for.

But a bill that wins a majority in the Senate but is defeated because the Democrats would not set aside the filibuster, it's safe to assume that it's a bill that the Biden-Harris Administration wasn't serious about getting passed.

The American Prospect is a good source to keep track of Biden's progress, or lack thereof, in his Presidency, particularly on domestic affairs. This piece by executive editor David Dayen, for example: First 100: The Biden Vaccine Rollout Is Working 02/22/2021. The "first 100" refers to the decades-old convention of putting special emphasis on a Presidential administration's accomplishments during its first 100 days in office.

Biden-Harris Justice Department protecting former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos from accountability for official misconduct?

There will be good and bad things about the Biden-Harris Administration. This is one of the bad ones: Michael Stratford, Biden administration backs DeVos in fight over testifying about loan forgiveness Politico 02/10/2021.

The case has to do with students who were defrauded by for-profit college who were stuck with student loans that the Obama-Biden Administration had decided should not be collected. DeVos refused to enforce the debt relief once she became Secretary of Education.

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel a year ago provided background information on the lawsuit involved (DeVos and Education Dept. could face new sanctions for violating a court order Washington Post 01/08/2020:

A federal judge is weighing higher fines for the Education Department after the federal agency disclosed that it pursued scores of additional borrowers for debt collection — violating a court order.

Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco agreed this week to consider a request by former Corinthian Colleges students to increase the $100,000 fine she levied against the department in October. The judge imposed those sanctions and held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in contempt for pursuing loans owed by 16,000 students from the defunct for-profit chain despite a May 2018 order halting collections.

Stratford piece from this week describes the current situation:

The Biden administration is backing former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as she tries to avoid having to testify in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s lengthy delays and sweeping denials of student loan forgiveness claims.

The Justice Department joined with DeVos on Monday to fight a subpoena seeking her deposition as part of a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of some 160,000 former for-profit college students seeking loan forgiveness on the grounds that they were defrauded.

DeVos is no longer the defendant in the lawsuit since she resigned from office Jan. 7 in the wake of the Capitol riots. But lawyers for the student borrowers say they need her testimony to get to the bottom of why her agency for years slow-walked the loan forgiveness claims and then began churning out denial letters with little explanation.

Democrats for four years slammed DeVos’ handling of student loan forgiveness for defrauded borrowers under a program known as “borrower defense to repayment.” President Joe Biden has vowed to reverse DeVos’ approach and restore Obama-era policies that were designed to more easily relieve the debts of students who were misled or cheated by their college.

But the Justice Department under the Biden administration is now coming to DeVos’ defense in the lawsuit, teaming up with her personal attorney this week to fight the subpoena compelling her testimony.

This is bad in itself because DeVos shouldn't be protected from legitimate requests for testimony. If she is worried about incriminating herself, she can plead the Fifth Amendment. It's also bad because it indicates that Biden hasn't lost all of his fondness for draconian laws against debtors that resulted in his notorious support of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. Seventeen other ConservaDem Senators joined Biden in supporting it. Two of them, Tom Carper of Delaware and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, are still serving. Some of the better-known among the others were Evan Bayh of Indiana, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Daniel Inouye of Michigan, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, Bill Nelson of Florida, and even Harry Reid of Nevada.

More ominously, it may also be a signal that Biden's Justice Department may be sympathetic to de facto immunity of former Trump-Pence Administration officials from valid legal requirements. And that would be very bad.

Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur of TYT have a "salty" take on Biden's Justice Department siding with now-private citizen Betsy DeVos in this matter, Biden Protecting Betsy DeVos ... 02/11/2021 broadcast:

Biden's speech: unity vs. solving real problems

Biden's Inaugural Speech was a dramatic example of the challenge of the President acting in both of his Presidential roles, head of state and head of government. And here we saw some of the tension between those two roles. And we also see the balancing act the new President was doing between two essential roles: reassuring those who did not vote for him while straightforwardly condemning the violent if clownish coup attempt by his predecessor.

In the many democracies that have separate heads of state and heads of government, likr the Queen of England and the Prime Minister, it is customary for public messages by the head of state that go beyond routine declarations of holidays or acknowledgment of dramatic tragedies to appeal for unity and support of the established government.

A recent example came in Austria after the deadly mass-shooting terrorist attacks by an Islamist terrorist in November 2020. The President and head of state Alexander Van der Bellen dclared that, "In the center of Vienna in the middle of our republic a cowardly terrorist attack on the heart of our society took place." But he declared that hate will never be stronger "than our society", and the "our liberal democracy" faced a threat from terrorists who deeply hate it. He expressed "our deep sympathy for all the injured who in these hours are fighting for their lives. Our tears flow for everyone in our midst who lost their lives."

Sebastian Kurz, the Chancellor and head of government, also expressed his sympathy for the victims and denounced the terrorists. But even in his early reaction, he stressed more policy-oriented framing, emphasizing his determination to catch the bad guys and declared melodramatically is was a "fight between civilization and barbarism," which fits with Kurz' usual political alarmism against Muslim immigrants. The President's and Chancellor's statements were complimentary, but with different inflections reflected their official roles. (Quotes from: Kurz und Van der Bellen sprachen zum Terroranschlag in Wien Standard/APA 03.11.2020; my translatoins from the German)

The official transcript of Biden's speech is available on the White House website, Inaugural Address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. The transcript has about 100 paragraph breaks, so I'm doing my own breaks in the quotations here.

The calls for unity are very characteristic for a President in the head of state role:

History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward. And, we must meet this moment as the United States of America.

But there are also political goals that the Biden-Harris Administration has set for itself prior to the Inauguration. And they are goals that some people favor, and others oppose. Which means there can't be complete unity around those. There will be winners and losers in some way or another when substantive policies are enacted. Even last year' replacement of the Mississippi state flag with it's Confederate imagery - a important but literally symbolic decision - had winners and losers, because white supremacist fans of sedition opposed it with some amount of passion.

Biden made some acknowledgment of this: "Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, and demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial. Victory is never assured." (my emphasis)

That notion is straight out of Madison's Federalist #10. Unity around support for a democratic system and the rule of law does not mean that politics and policy disagreements end. It means that everyone agrees that those are the rules under which those battles will be fought.

One of the most familiar examples of group unity occurs in the early days of wars. The liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. observed that every war is popular during the first 30 days. The economist John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out in The Culture of Contentment (1992):

Almost any military venture receives strong popular approval in the short run; the citizenry rallies to the flag and to the forces engaged in combat. The strategy and technology of the new war evoke admiration and applause. This reaction is related not to economics or politics but more deeply to anthropology. As in ancient times, when the drums sound in the distant forest, there is an assured tribal response. It is the rallying beat of the drums, not the virtue of the cause, that is the vital mobilizing force.

He follows immediately, "But this does not last." The philosopher William James famously wrote an antiwar essay about "the moral equivalent of war," in which he hoped that the kind of concentrated energy that countries bring to a war effort could be duplicated for more peaceful ends. But despite the mobilization talents that countries can show during wartime, the feelings of patriotic national unity among the general population that facilitate such collective efforts are fundamentally also based on fear and hatred.

And as we saw during the invasion of the Capitol building January 6 by a howling white supremacist lynch mob, fear and hatred can bring other results than national unity among a people. In practice, even in those patriotic National Unity moments, zealots are quick to find enemies among the home team, as well. Just ask the members of the band formerly known as the Dixie Chicks.

In the "constant struggle" comment quoted above, Biden explicitly acknowledged that perfect unity on political matters is just not possible, although an authoritarian government can create a semblance of it.

And he wouldn't have been doing his job as head of government or head of state if he hadn't taken note of the violent insurrection of January 6 aimed at throwing out the democratic vote for the President, an action that which resulted in five deaths. Not explicitly acknowledging that event that happened exactly two weeks before in the same place he had just taken the Presidential oath of office would have been downright bizarre. As he did in this passage:

Through a crucible for the ages America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge. Today, we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy. The will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded. We have learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.

And probably the most important part of the speech: "And here we stand, just days after a riotous mob thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people, to stop the work of our democracy, and to drive us from this sacred ground. That did not happen. It will never happen. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever."

The radical Republicans, "respectable" and otherwise, won't stop their obstruction and even violent opposition yet. But if Biden hadn't made some explicit statement about stopping them like that one, they would have taken that as a blatant surrender.

Since Biden did single out the seditionists the way he did, even his less enthusiastic supporters aren't much inclined to grump about the "unity" rhetoric and the absence of explicit references to policy goals.

But this passage also shows that in the current situation, vague rhetoric about "unity" fits uncomfortably with the problems he identifies in this passage, that I believe is the first time an American President has explicitly referred to "white supremacy":

A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer. A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat. To overcome these challenges – to restore the soul and to secure the future of America – requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy:

Unity.

Unity. [my emphasis]

But since a large number of Republican voters and office holders are enthusiastic supporters of white supremacy, though at least some of them are careful not to use the term in polite company, it will take more than a vague commitment to "unity" to deal with such a deeply entrenched social pathology.

Near the end, Biden emphasized how drastically far from unity the Capitol insurrection was, "We met the moment. That democracy and hope, truth and justice, did not die on our watch but thrived." (my emphasis)

A similar tension comes in his reference to the Emancipation Proclamation:

In another January in Washington, on New Year’s Day 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. When he put pen to paper, the President said, “If my name ever goes down into history it will be for this act and my whole soul is in it.” My whole soul is in it. Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation.

And he follows that with references to various policy goals.

Now, I'm totally on board with unity in the sense of the Emancipation Proclamation. But we should remember how the Emancipation Proclamation facilitated unity. It was a wartime measure. It abolished slavery on the territory of the military enemy. Preserving slavery was the fundamental cause for which the other side was fighting. It was an approach to pursuing unity by completely rejecting the social institution to which the enemy was totally committed.

And it was an effective measure. Once news spread in the Confederacy about the Proclamation, slaves began to desert their owners and their plantations. That not only dealt a hammer blow to the Confederate economy. It also gave the Union army a large number of black recruits whose participation in the war had an immediate military and psychological effect on the Confederate enemy. And it took more than two additional years of actual war to end the Confederacy and make emancipation permanent.

Also, in the terms used at the time, the Emancipation Proclamation turned the war from a conventional war (aimed at defeating the enemy armies) to a revolutionary war (aimed at overturning the social order of the enemy, as in the post-French Revolution wars against conservative countries from Switzerland to Russia).

So there's something very contradictory in the full Hegelian sense about the notion of unity in the spirit of the Emancipation Proclamation!

One grumble: the reference to American Exceptionalism become more problematic to me as time goes on. For instance, from the speech: "We look ahead in our uniquely American way – restless, bold, optimistic – and set our sights on the nation we know we can be and we must be."

Only Americans are restless, bold, or optimistic? This is silly and embarrassing.

I'll end by noticing that Biden's speech makes use of American history as a kind of "mythical" vision, a story of progress through struggle among Americans ourselves toward greater amounts of freedom, equality, and justice. This is an aspirational, value-based, inspirational narrative of history in the Enlightenment spirit of history as progress to higher levels.

It's not entirely compatible with academic history. But it's not something that politics can't completely do away with either. And it can also be reality-based. A lot of it isn't. But I don't think the left or the center can afford to leave that kind of historical-political narrative building to the right. Because the right ain't gonna stop doing it.