My Review of Josh Dawsey's, Tyler Pager's. and Isaac Arnsdorf's "2024: How Trump......."

Slow Motion Train Wreck

Washington journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf have written a personality-driven account of the 2024 presidential election. Starting in 2022 they take us behind the scenes of the Trump, Biden, and later Harris campaigns for the presidency. There is an inevitability to it all, but after all the book is an after the fact accounting of the election.

What the book lacks is a review of the structural backdrop to the election. There should have been tables of polling data on the relative popularity of the candidates along with the electorate’s view on whether the country was on the “right track” or the “wrong track.”

Much of the ground here was discussed in “Original Sin,” but that book ended with Biden dropping out of the race. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/06/my-review-of-jake-tappers-and-alex.html) Both books are consistent in the view that Hunter Biden’s legal problems weighed greatly on Biden. The authors are sympathetic to Harris, but they do note her many unforced errors, specifically her failure to fully rebut her 2020 positions on hot button social issues, her failure to separate herself from Biden and picking the lackluster Tim Walz as her VP selection.

 

I learned much about the Trump campaign and how Suzie Wiles brought a modicum of discipline. She was instrumental in neutering Ron DeSantis, her former boss and the real rival to Trump. I also didn’t realize how important Steve Witkoff and Laura Loomer were to Trump. Witkoff was his consistent consigliere and is now a special ambassador to the Russia/Ukraine and the middle east. Loomer, despite being somewhat of an unguided missile, rallied support for Trump before and during the campaign.

 

The book also reinforced my view of Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff and campaign honcho. Klain instinct was always to seek support on the Left. This was true post-debate and well before, when he was in charge of policy. In my opinion it is was his predilections that kept Biden tacking Left while in office which, in my view, doomed his presidency.

 

This authors give us a real fly on the wall perspective to both campaigns, but I said at the outset, a full review of the structural parameters of the race would have been helpful.

My Amazon Review of Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future"

A Disservice to the Politics of Climate Change

 

Sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson has done a disservice to those of us who care about the peril of climate change. It isn’t clear from his book that he cares more about dismantling capitalism than solving the problem of climate change. His book will convince the diehard climate activists who are already convinced, but it rouses the suspicions of those of us who view the politics of climate change as a ruse to upend capitalism.

 

His Ministry for the Future, a U.N. body, is headed up by Mary Murphy a former Irish foreign minister. Operating out of Zurich in 2025 and beyond she is charged with solving the climate crisis. However, what could have been a very interesting personality, Murphy is a one-dimensional character as are all of the other characters in the book.

 

The book opens with a catastrophic heat wave in India and features the flooding of the Los Angeles plain along with other climate horrors. As the crises deepens Murphy convinces the central banks of the world to engage in quantitative easing by issuing a carbon currency. Although this sounds novel, it really is a modified cap and trade system, and it ignores the inflationary consequences of the currency issuance. Robinson is partial modern monetary theory (MMT), but the book was written before the inflation of 2021 and 2022 which discredited MMT and huge fiscal deficits.

 

Most troubling is Robinson’s tacit approval of eco-terrorism where swarms of drones take down aircraft and container ships triggering a global depression. Somehow the populace of the industrial west remains strangely compliant. Obviously, Robinson didn’t witness the panic of $5 gas in 2022 and how such enviro-friendly politicians as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren attacked the oil companies for high gas prices. Both of those politicians were cynically ignorant of the fact that high gas prices promote alternative energy.

 

Although Robinson to his credit seems to favor geo-engineering and carbon capture to reduce emissions, he does not mention nuclear power as a potential carbon free source of energy and further there is nary a mention of expediting permits for alternative energy projects. I guess he can only go so far for fear of losing his environmental constituency.

The book has a “happy” ending with climate emissions declining in the 2040’s, but Robinson’s path in getting there strains credulity. For example, has the northern plains depopulated and returning to grasslands and many corporations turning into industrial coops.

For the full Amazon URL see: A Disservice to the Politics of Climate Change (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Maggie Haberman's "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America"

Sleazeball

Perhaps like no other reporter, Maggie Haberman knows Donald Trump. In fact, Trump calls her his psychiatrist. Although Haberman now writes for the “hoity toity" New York Times, she cut her journalistic teeth writing for the two “peoples dailies” of New York, the Post, and the Daily News. It was in the tabloid hothouse of the 1980’s and 90’s that Trump found his way to great fame and Haberman was there to chronicle it. This was the world of Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, Roy Cohn Al Sharpton, heightened racial antagonisms, and the Central Park 5. It was also the world of Trump’s tabloid divorce from Ivanna and his affair and later marriage to Marla “the best sex I ever had” Maples.

 

Into this world came this very narcissistic and resentful kid from Queens. Although born with a silver spoon in his mouth from his very successful outer-borough developer father, Trump felt like an outsider in the very clubby world of New York real estate, a male Eva Peron if you will. Later, as a presidential candidate, he would channel and enlarge his resentment of the Manhattan elites into a broader criticism of the bi-coastal elites to gain the support of a large swath of Americans who felt condescended to by those very same elites.

 

I too am a kid from Queens. Maybe it takes one to know one. I met Trump only once in business meeting in January 1992 when Trump was in the middle of his divorce and effectively bankrupt. His early real estate empire was built on debts that came crashing down on him in the 1990 real estate recession. I came away from the meeting thinking Trump was a sleazeball not worthy of doing business with. That was true of all but one of the major banks. Unfortunately, what was so obvious to me wasn’t so obvious to the millions of Americans who later voted for him.

 

Haberman’s book is much more than Trump in New York. She covers his Apprentice TV show and White House years. Throughout all of that time a consistent pattern of his being a congenital liar rings true and his tenure in the White House was consistent with his life in Manhattan in the 1980’s.  Haberman is correct that there is a straight line from Trump’s life in Queens to the White House. Her book is therefore an important addition to our understanding of the 45^th president of the United States.

For the full Amazon URL see: Sleazeball (amazon.com) It appears that Amazon has taken down this review.(11/3/22) I am looking into it. Review restored under new URL:Sleaze (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Mark Leibovich's "Thank you for Your Servitude"

 It’s a Miracle we Survived

 

Former New York Times reporter and current Atlantic writer Mark Leibovich has offered up a readable, humorous, and a downright scary account of the Trump years, which are unfortunately still with us. He spends most of his time not on Trump, but rather on his bootlicking lackeys in the Republican Party and a coterie of sycophantic hangers on in search of lucre. It is a miracle the country survived Trump’s four years in office.

 

What becomes very clear is that the Republican Party has become a party of moral eunuchs. With the few honorable exceptions of the late John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Liz Cheney the party luminaries cowered before the great orange one. It makes you want to puke just to think about all of these grifters at the seat of power living large and paying tribute at the Trump International Hotel.

 

I met Donald Trump at a business breakfast at the Plaza Hotel in 1992. It was obvious to me that he was a complete slime and what boggles the mind is how he conned the Republican electorate which then forced his acceptance on the grand poohbahs of the party, who were in on the joke all along. Yet, they did nothing. It was all about power.

 

What is most troubling is thus far from there has been no real explanation how this spoiled child of privilege has such a hold a large chunk of low-income white Americans. Trump doesn’t have a clue about the lives they live, and he really can’t stand them. The standard explanation on the Left is racism, but that does not account for Trump’s and the Republican Party’s growing support in the Latino community.

 

My explanation is that Trump channels their disgust with America’s cultural elite who constantly look down on their folkways by thinking of them as, using Hilary Clinton’s word, “deplorables.”  Afterall it is hard to support a Democratic Party that foists pronouns and the ill-conceived term Latinx down the throats of the general public. Thus, it pains me to say it, a Trumpy Republican can win again.

For the full Amazon URL see: It's a Miracle we Survived (amazon.com)

 

 

My Amazon Review of Walter Russell Mead's "The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People"

 

America’s Changing Views on Israel

 

Bard College professor and Wall Street Journal foreign policy columnist Walter Russell Mead has written three books in one. The first is a history of the U.S- Israel relationship, the second a history of American foreign policy and the third is a recent history of domestic politics in the United States. In Mead’s view all three are inter-related. This book is above all on the how’s and why’s of the American view on Israel. I write this just as President Biden has left the middle east after visiting Israel and Saudi Arabia signaling a reconfiguration of the region’s chessboard.

 

At the outset Mead completely debunks the view that U.S.-Israel policy is controlled by the so called “Jewish Lobby.” To be sure there is a pro-Israel lobby, but it is far from controlling and it suffers from as many failures as successes. Further American presidents, Nixon, Reagan, W. Bush, and Trump who did much to cement the relationship between the United States and Israel were decidedly unpopular among the largely liberal Jewish community.

 

Mead starts his history in the late 19^th century where a group of Philo-semitic Protestants articulated the support for a return of the Jews to their ancient homeland. Steeped in the bible and the classics these Christians thought it was only natural for the Jews to have a state of their own especially after Greek independence earlier that century and the creation of new Rome in the form of Italy. These views predated Herzl’s Zionism.

 

Mead goes into great detail the policy arguments that took place in the Truman Administration concerning the formation of the State of Israel. His Secretaries of State and Defense were firmly against it, but Truman finally came down on the side of independence. Much was made at the time of the importance of the Jewish vote in the upcoming 1948 presidential election. However, Truman needed the support of the liberal internationalists under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt who viewed the success of the U.N resolution on Israel to be critical to that organization’s future. Truman needed to keep Roosevelt from supporting the far-left candidacy of Henry Wallace.

 

Of interest in 1948, Stalin, motivated by his need to make trouble for Britain and the United States in the middle east, gave the greenlight to Czechoslovakia to sell arms to Israel. Those arms made the crucial difference in Israel’s war for independence. It also supplied hard currency to the Czech’s who desperately needed it after turning down Marshall Plan aid.

 

As difficult as it seems today, the American Left was the home to most of Israel’s support in the 1950’s and 60’s. Israel, for all practical purposes, was a struggling socialist country supporting the dispossessed Jews of Europe and the Arab world. However, today the Left sees Israel as militaristic, capitalistic settler-colonialist state. It seems that the American Left just loves to penalize Israel’s success in building a modern state in an otherwise impoverished middle east. Those are the very attributes praised by the “Jacksonian evangelical Zionists” of the American Right.

 

Nevertheless, Mead leaves much out of his history. Not much is said about the 1956 Suez War where Eisenhower backs Egypt against Israel, France, and Britain; the 1982 Lebanon War which turned American public opinion against Israel, and the taking out of the Iraq nuclear program. Mead resumes his discussion U.S.-Israel relations in the 2000’s and highlights the failures of the magical thinking of George W. Bush’s neocons with the Iraq War and Obama’s with respect to the Arab Spring, Iran, and Israel. Ironically Obama’s missteps in region led the Abraham Accords and burgeoning alliance between Israel and the Sunni Arabs.

 

Although Mead supports the need for a Palestinian state, he like most others doesn’t present a roadmap to getting there. Regardless, Mead has offered up a work of history at its best.

For the full Amazon URL see: America's Changing Views on Israel (amazon.com)

 

The Unravelling

 

The world as we have known it for the past 30 years is over. The era of low inflation, ever-falling interest rates, ever-rising stock prices, globalization, and geopolitical stability among the major powers is unravelling. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has signaled that a new Cold War is upon us and making things worse was the Xi-Putin communique at the Beijing Olympics which marked the beginning of a renewed authoritarian alliance against the West. What this means is defense spending is going to ramp up bigtime with inflationary consequences.

 

The COVID pandemic has taught us that globalization and just-in-time inventory processes have made supply chains far more fragile than we had thought. As a result, higher buffer stocks and the moving of production closer to final demand will increase economy wide costs.  The inflationary process is being exacerbated by the rush to decarbonize the economy with its attendant underinvestment in oil and gas.  As they say, short term pain for long term gain. We are also relearning that reckless fiscal and monetary policies can bring about the high inflation we are now experiencing. It seems that Milton Friedman and his ideas about money are being resurrected from the dead.

 

Domestically there are too many eerie parallels to 1940 America where the Charles Lindberg America First group linked up with the Communist Party to oppose U.S. intervention in support of beleaguered England. Just the other day showboating lefties Alexandra Ocasio Cortez and Cori Bush linked up arm and arm with the right-wingers Paul Gosar and Matt Gaetz seeking Congressional preauthorization before sending troops in support to Ukraine, a move that President Biden said is off the table. And, of course, we have Tucker “Tokyo Rose” Carslon singing Putin’s praise every night on Fox.

 

This witch’s brew means inflation will remain higher for longer, a secular bear market for bonds, a very volatile stock market and as ugly as our politics are today, it will get worse.

 

My Amazon Review of Colin Woodard's "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America"

 

Uneasy Alliances

 

I wish I read Colin Woodard’s book ten years ago when it came out. He hypothesizes that the United States instead of being one united nation, it is more akin to an uneasy alliance rival regional cultures. His eleven cultures formed early in the days of the republic ignore both state and national boundaries. The book is in the tradition of Kevin Phillip’s “The Emerging Republican Majority,” Joel Garreau’s “The Nine Nations of North America” and the more scholarly “Albions Seed” by David Hackett Fischer. I too used a similar approach in an article on the economic geography of the United States.

 

From the beginning the early settlements in the United States were divided on the Revolutionary War with Yankeedom leading the charge while New Netherland (New York City and environs) and the Deep South being more reluctant. He notes that the politics of today mirror those early divisions. Specifically, the Blue State alliance includes Yankeedom, New Netherland, the Left Coast and El Norte (Joel Garreau’s Mexamerica) while the Red State alliance includes the Deep South, the Far West, and Greater Appalachia. The swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa are in what Woodard calls the Midlands.

 

On a minor point I would differ with Woodard when he called SDS’s 1962 Port Huron Statement the “founding document” of the youth movement. Although there were many political aspects to the youth movement at its core it was all about sex, drugs and rock and roll. This is a far cry from the original Yankee (Puritan) and Midlander (Quaker) values. To be a bit snarky what the late Tom Hayden the author of the Port Huron Statement had in common with Puritan values were rigidity in beliefs.

 

My major point of difference is that Woodard is too locked into the view that the Deep South continues to be run by a neo-colonial oligarchy. That was true prior to World War II and it far less so today. The rising cities of Atlanta, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham and the Appalachia city of Austin have more in common with Yankeedom and the Left Coast than the old agribusiness oligarchy. In fact, those cities vote Blue. Further just as Yankeedom has an innate fear of a southern theocracy, the Deep South and Appalachia fear Yankeedom’s religious-like faith in secularism. Further the hitherto reliable blue voters of El Norte are drifting away from Yankeedom as cultural values predominate over economic ones.

Close to the end of the book Woodard offers up the horrifying possibility that a pandemic might induce the suspension of civil rights, the dissolution of Congress and the incarceration of Supreme Court justices leading to a break-up of the United States. In 2011, when the book was published, that had the sound of complete fantasy; not so much today. Despite my quibbles this is a terrific book for those readers interested in the origins of our country and its politics.

For the complete Amazon URL see: Uneasy Alliances (amazon.com)

An Open Letter to Minority Leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy

Dear Leaders:

 

I want to wish you a Merry Christmas but unfortunately, I do not believe you will have a happy New Year unless you mend your ways. It seems that every day you are working to divide our country and to be sure many Democrats are playing the same game. Nevertheless, you do not have to participate in allowing the “Squad” following Democrats to wreck our country too.

 

Here are a few suggestions:

 

Go all out in supporting COVID vaccinations and get your respective caucuses to make public service announcements in their states(districts) urging vaccinations. You do not have to worry about Trump on this; he already gave you all the cover you need. Afterall do you really want fewer Republican voters come November?

 

You should encourage Mitt Romney to get together with Biden/Schumer/Pelosi to make a deal on the child tax credit. Romney has some very good ideas on this topic.

 

On voting rights, you should sit down with Joe Manchin and produce a reasonable compromise that can get 60 votes in the Senate that you can sell to the Democratic leadership. Let the Democrats turn it down if they chose to do so.

 

Lastly, and perhaps most important, you should censure any one of your members who refuse to testify before the January 6^th Committee. I know this will go against your grain, but history is a stern judge.

 

Yours in the Spirit of the Season

My Amazon Review of Peter Baker's and Susan Glasser's "The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III"

 

The Realist

 

Husband and wife journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser have written tour de force biography Jim Baker who was perhaps the most consequential appointed politician of the past five decades. Baker was consequential because he understood the role of politics is to govern and Baker sure knew how to use the instruments of power to successfully govern in support of Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

 

Baker and Glasser spent eight years on the project and they had the full cooperation of Baker. They not only discuss Baker’s public life, but we get a real sense of his private life as well. The authors had access to Baker’s lover letters to his first wife who bore him four children and died way too young of cancer. We then see Baker marrying one of his wife’s friends who brings three children to the marriage. It truly was a Brady bunch with an eighth child thrown in later. Baker was a devoted husband, but his children suffered from a myriad of problems involving drugs which were not helped by Baker’s absence caused by his very public life.

 

Jim Baker is scion of the Houston establishment. Until his late 30’s he had no interest in politics while he was building a very successful law practice. He enters politics through his tennis buddy, George H.W. Bush who was elected as a congressman from Houston. They essentially become brothers along with the sibling rivalry that entails. As Bush rises in Washington, so too does Baker. So much so that Baker runs Ford’s 1976 campaign for president and he then runs Bush’s primary campaign in 1980. After Reagan’s nomination Baker becomes a key figure in Reagan’s campaign that leads him to becoming his chief of staff.

 

It is generally recognized that Baker set the gold standard for White House chiefs of staff. While working for Reagan he controls the various factions within the White House and puts together a congressional coalition to pass Reagan’s economic package through Congress in 1981. He also keeps a lid on an effort to militarily intervene in Nicaragua during the first term. His absence in Reagan’s second term opened the way to the Iran-Contra scandal that almost brought down the Reagan presidency. His one black mark as chief of staff was his attempted bullying of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.

 

In 1984 Baker runs Reagan’s successful “Morning in America” reelection campaign and he then moves on to become Secretary of the Treasury. As treasury secretary he pushes through Reagan’s monumental 1986 tax reform act. The authors ignore the key role that Houston’s Rice University economist on leave to the treasury Charles McLure had in fashioning the underlying framework for the new tax law.

 

Baker also was the architect of the 1985 Plaza Accord that orchestrated a global policy to devalue the dollar. That was done without Volcker, a mistake in my opinion. The authors ignore two key side effects of the accord. First it created a sea of global liquidity that created the Japan stock bubble and led to a flood of money into the global real estate market. Both Japanese stocks and global real estate would crash in 1990. Second the weaker dollar led to a temporary renaissance in Midwest manufacturing which would become of great help to H.W. Bush’s election in 1988. Baker then resigned as Treasury Secretary and ran Bush’s presidential campaign.

 

In 1989 Baker becomes Secretary of State where he orchestrates a successful end of the Cold War and German reunification. We also see Baker hiring Democrats on his staff including Dennis Ross. Along the way makes friends with Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze. While dealing with German reunification issues Iraq invaded Kuwait triggering the first Gulf War. Baker organizes an international coalition and gets Russia to go along and China to abstain at a critical U.N. meeting. With the Gulf War over Baker tried to broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This led to the Madrid Conference of 1992 which ultimately paved the way to the 1993 Rabin-Arafat meeting in 1993. To me his strong arming of Israel was a bit much, but it did get results.

 

With the 1992 Bush campaign in disarray Baker returns to the White House. His efforts were to no avail as Bush lost to Clinton. He then goes back to private life where he spends much time working for private equity giant Carlyle Group relaxing at his primitive Wyoming ranch.

 

With the Florida recount jeopardizing the 2000 election of George W. Bush, Baker is called back into action to aid the Bush family. He organizes the Bush efforts and puts together an all-star legal pick up team consisting of now Senator Ted Cruz, now Chief Justice John Roberts and now Justice Brett Kavanaugh. They win in the Supreme Court with Republican super-lawyer Ted Olson arguing the case.

 

After that Baker returns to private life, but he still finds the time to co-head an Iraq study commission in 2007. He his now 90 and Baker and Glasser shine a light on his personality and his service to our country.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R3NOZ2CCBLTG9M/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of David Paul Kuhn's "The Hard Hat Riot: Nixon, New York City and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution"

The Day the New Deal Coalition Died

On May 8, 1970, the 25^th anniversary of VE Day and four days after the Kent State shootings a mob of construction workers, many of whom were veterans, assaulted a large group of anti-war demonstrators in New York’s financial district. With great acuity political journalist David Paul Kuhn not only describes with fully sourced details the progression of the riot, but he also sets the stage by describing the New York City of the 1960s and the political aftershocks of the riot.

For the most part the police stood by as the construction workers assaulted the demonstrators. After all the police sympathized with them and they lived in their neighborhoods. Theirs were the neighborhoods of Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn, not the elite upper eastside of Mayor Lindsay and the suburbs of Westchester and Long Island from whence most of the students came. Simply put is was a class war. Remember the Vietnam War was fought by the children of the working class of all races, not by the children of the elite.

Interestingly the construction workers also opposed the Vietnam War, what they didn’t like is the appearance of a strain of anti-Americanism among the antiwar demonstrators. Removing American flags from flagpoles and shouting support for the Viet Cong hardly improved the situation. But perhaps far more important was the image of privileged upper-middle class college students protesting a country that had given them everything. The typical construction worker only wished that someday his children would be able to go to college.

Beneath the veneer of a construction boom in low Manhattan (i.e. the World Trade Center was under construction) New York City was falling apart. Crime was rising rapidly and the profligacy of the Lindsay Administration was undermining the fiscal health of the city. Further the workers knew that they not only would pay higher taxes to fund the fiscal profligacy of the city, they would also bear the brunt of school busing and scatter-site public housing projects.

In the White House President Nixon and his aide Pat Buchanan were watching with great interest. In the hard hat riots the saw the collapse of the New Deal coalition which at its core was the white working class. To the extent that the Republican Party could pick off these voters a political realignment of monumental proportions could take place. The fruits of which were harvested 10 years later with Reagan’s victory in 1980 and in 2016 with Trump’s surprising win. Simply put the Democratic Party became an image of Mayor John Lindsay’s coalition in New York City, upper-income liberals, minorities and young voters and that coalition haughtily looks down as white working class voters as know-nothing racists. That is certainly not the way Franklin Roosevelt viewed them.

To me Kuhn’s book was very personal. I grew up in middle-class Queens and in 1970 I was going to graduate school in Los Angeles after just getting out of the army.  While in the army I watched with my fellow soldiers the demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Most of us were all for the demonstrators until they flew the Viet Cong flag and with that most of their support melted away. To me that reaction typified the hard hat reaction two years later. In 1972 I canvassed the working class neighborhoods of Los Angeles with other veterans for George McGovern and after that experience I knew McGovern was a goner.

Now 50 years later, America has changed. The white working class is a shadow of what it once was and for the most part real wages have gone nowhere so perhaps the Democrats can resurrect the Lindsay coalition in 2020. But I would warn them that with crime once again on the rise, public safety will once again become a potent political issue that will affect all races. Read this book to see how we got here.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/RW7IZ05D0KKZB/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Jonathan Rodden's "Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide"

The Geographic Roots of Political Polarization

Stanford political science professor and sometime Democratic Party consultant Jonathan Rodden has written an important book on how and why urban Democratic voters appear to be under-represented in Congress and state legislatures. At its very essence the median congressional/legislative district is more conservative than the median voter. This phenomenon is a result of urban liberals being geographically concentrated in overwhelmingly Democratic districts while more conservative rural and suburban voters are more geographically spread out in majority Republican districts. Thus the elimination of partisan gerrymandering would help, but not cure the fundamental disadvantage urban voters’ face.

Rodden’s data driven book goes back to the late 19^th Century where urban working class oriented parties established themselves around worker housing near major railroad lines and mines. He not only discusses the U.S., but he is international in his outlook with case studies from the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands. He notes that where there is proportional representation urban voters are not under-represented, but with community based winner take all districts, the urban voter is under-represented.

His solution to the problem in the U.S. is for urban Democrats to be more tolerant of the views of their country and suburban cousins and therefore allow “blue dogs” into their party. That was true in the 1970s and 80s, but far less so today. In fact there are little Robespierre’s seeking to eliminate those Democrats through the primary process who don’t hold to the current liberal orthodoxy.

My guess is that the logjam will be broken when the dominant Republican and Democratic parties break up into three parties which I would name a Trumpist Populist Party, an establishment Democratic Left Hamiltonian Party and a Social Democratic left party.

Rodden’s book is very dense with data and sometimes the read is a slog, but an interested reader trying to understand the polarization of American politics can do no worse than to read his book.

The full amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2NCFHO2516E4C/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

The Republican Moral Eunuchs and the Magnificent 13

Yesterday the House approved a resolution of disapproval on President Trump's "national emergency" to fund his border wall by a vote of 245-182. Simply put Trump usurped the power of Congress by declaring his intention to spend $5.6 billion that was previously rejected by the Congress. 182 Republicans voted against the resolution that had President Obama done a similar thing not only would they have voted for the resolution they would have immediately started impeachment proceedings. To my mind these Republicans are moral eunuchs and deserve to be defeated in the 2020 election. They failed to uphold their oaths office to support and defend the Constitution, especially Article I which gives Congress the power of the purse.

However, standing up intense pressure from the White House and Leader  Kevin McCarthy 13 Republican Representatives voted for the resolution. I call them the magnificent 13.  They are libertarian Justin Amash (MI), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Mike Gallagher (WI), Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA), former CIA agent Will Hurd (TX), Dusty Johnson (SD), Thomas Massie (KY),former leadership member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), Francis Rooney (FL),
veteran member Jim Sensenbrenner (WI), rising star Elise Stefanik NY), veteran member Fred Upton (MI) and former leadership member Greg Walden (OR). These magnificent 13 members ought to be complimented and financially supported in future elections.

Let's hope the Republican members of the Senate have more backbone than their House counterparts and vote to support the resolution of disapproval when they vote in a few weeks.

My Amazon Review of Laurence Leamer's "Mar-A-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump's Presidential Palace"

The Sun King

Writer and Palm Beach resident Laurence Leamer has written a very breezy and gossipy history of Donald Trump’s involvement with Mar-a-Lago and through that he confirms pretty much all we know about Donald Trump. He starts with Trump’s enchantment with the Mar-a Lago estate that was formerly owned by the heiress, Marjorie Merriweather Post. Trump buys the asset for about $10 million dollars with only $300,000 of his own money. Not bad for an asset that has been much improved could now be worth $500 million.

Trump’s entrance on to the Palm Beach scene shakes that the then very stuffy community to its very foundations. He doesn’t play by the rules, sues the town many times over zoning issues and he ultimately gets his way. Where Trump does some real good he breaks the anti-Semitism of that insular community with the aid of his Jewish lawyer Paul Rampell. By the way it was Rampell’s idea to convert the estate to a club.

Leamer has obviously walked the halls of Mar-a-Lago where he has keen sense for detail and Trump’s obsession with gold. He has talked with many members and employees who tell tales of Trump’s mercurial temper, especially with his employees. To call him mean and rotten would be an understatement. But make no mistake, Trump is the Sun King of Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s affair and later marriage to Marla Maples is a highlight of this book. Here Leamer notes that Trump did whatever he could to prevent being known that Maples had sex with one his body guards on the beach. After Maples there is, of course, Melania and their 2005 wedding was the highlight of the social season and Trump paid for it by selling the photography rights.

We also encounter the National Enquirer and Trump’s buddy Christopher Ruddy of the rightwing website Newsmax.  Leamer’s thesis is that the Donald Trump we see today was honed in the hothouse of Palm Springs. Leamer’s book isn’t great history, but it is a fun read.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R3O7R1E3QLZYZ8/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Jon Ward's "Camelot's End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party"

Collision Course

Journalist Jon Ward tells the story of how and why the Democratic Party cracked up in the late 1970s through the lens of the Carter-Kennedy fight for the 1980 presidential nomination. The peanut farmer from Georgia and the son of privilege from Massachusetts were on a collision course that began in the early 1970s. Each had an intense dislike of the other at first site.

Ward argues that Kennedy Camelot era ended with the first political defeat of a Kennedy in 1980. Here I beg to differ. Camelot died when Kennedy drove his car off a bridge in 1970 in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts killing Mary Jo Kopechne.  As an aside although Ward is technically correct in placing Kopechne from Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania but she, in fact, grew up in the suburban New Jersey town of Berkeley Heights since infancy.

The author is very good at describing the give and take of the 1980 campaign. He is especially good at describing the famous Roger Mudd interview of Kennedy where Kennedy couldn’t explain why was challenging the president of his own party and stuttered throughout most of the interview. I have my own experience with Kennedy in 1980 at a rally in Los Angeles. After Kennedy finished speaking he asked for questions and he just happened to call on. With all of the TV lights on me I asked him what he proposed to do about increasing capital formation. It was not a question he expected from this very liberal audience. After hemming and hawing he brought up the Republican sponsored 10-5-3 depreciation program. Kennedy blew it.

My main quibble of the book is that Ward defines the Kennedy-Carter clash in breaking the Democratic Party. To me that was a proxy war for the real problem. Simply put under the weight of stagflation followed by very high inflation, the Democratic nostrums stopped working coupled with the appearance the Democratic Party became the party of retreat abroad opened the way for the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s sunny optimism became the antidote for the failed Democratic policies of the 1970s.

I enjoyed reading Ward’s book. It brought back many memories and he put us in the room where the Carter and Kennedy strategies were made in the face of a very fluid political environment.   

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R39KFZF48WUKFD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

   

The Coming Political Realignment: Part II

Two years ago I wrote that both the Republican and Democratic parties were hollowed out shells that would inevitably lead both to split up (See https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-coming-political-realignment.html) I envisioned a Trumpian Jacksonian/Know Nothing Party ( hostile to nontraditional lifestyles, anti-immigration, anti-abortion protectionist,  isolationist and skeptical of environmental regulation with more than a tinge of racism in its strong white identity and supportive existing entitlement programs), a Right Hamiltonian Party consisting of establishment Republicans (business oriented conservatism favoring low taxes,  entitlement reform, open trade, high skilled immigration, live and let live social policies, moderate environmental regulation and an internationalist foreign policy), a Left Hamiltonian Party consisting of establishment Democrats (supportive of big government, friendly to finance Silicon Valley and Hollywood, open trade, skilled immigration,  pro-abortion, the regulatory state especially with respect to environmental regulation,, affirmative action, and thoroughly believe in the educational meritocracy that runs the country)  and a Social Democratic Party (hostility to capitalism, supportive of an expanded welfare state, pro-abortion, very pro-immigration,  great willingness to sacrifice the economy for the environment, and identity politics)  headed by a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren, for example.

What we learned from last week’s election is that the Republican Party as we knew it is dead and because there are so many moral eunuchs (i.e. Paul Ryan, Lindsey Graham) cleaving to Trump there is little hope for the emergence of a Right Hamiltonian Party. Indeed the Republican Party has become irrelevant in California, New York and California and in practically every big city and is on its way there in many high income suburbs (witness Orange County, New Jersey, Philadelphia and yes Dallas and Houston for example). Thus the Right Hamiltonians in the Republican Party have two choices. They suck it up and betray everything they once believed in and stay with the Trumpians or they can find common cause with the Left Hamiltonians in the Democratic Party.

Such a move would be analogous to the neocons in the Democratic Party of the 1970's who bridled against the flaws in the Great Society, the failure of Keynesian economics and the weakness of the Carter foreign policy who then found a new home the party of Reagan. In fact it is many of the very same people who left the Democrats in the 1970’s and 80’s are now moving towards them.

While, for the most part, the Republicans welcomed their new converts with open arms, the same cannot be said of the Democratic Party as it is now constituted. Simply put the Social Democratic wing does not want them. Hence the Left Hamiltonians in the Democratic Party also have choice to make. Do they continue to make common cause with the activist Social Democratic wing or do they join with their natural allies, the Right Hamiltonians. And if they do, will the Social Democrats walk and form their own party. Of course the activist/Social Democratic wing might be powerful enough to kick out the establishment Democrats in an open convention. The underbelly of the Social Democrats is identity politics and taxation. There are simply too many identity politics erogenous zones to stroke to maintain coherence in one political party; it is too exhausting. Further the Left Hamiltonians won’t countenance the high rate of taxation required to enact the Social Democratic agenda.

The evidence from the election is that the far left candidates did rather poorly in competitive districts while the more establishment types cleaned the clocks of their Republican opponents. So my guess is that in 2020 instead of the drama being in the Republican Party all of the drama will shift to the Democrats where a split is inevitable, maybe not in 2020, but certainly by 2024.

How it all sorts remains open to too many questions, and this might be wishful thinking, the political party that rises above our current infatuation with the identity politics of both our current parties to become the party of E Pluribus Unum, out of many one, will become dominant. This was the insight of the 19^th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli where he linked the concerns of the elite with that of the masses under the slogan of “One Nation Conservatism.” The American version of this is as old as our Constitution, E Pluribus Unum.

After Action Report on the 2018 Elections

Shulmaven had a very good night. As of this morning it looks like the Democrats will pick up about 35 seats in the House inline with our forecast gain of 35-40; assuming Tester wins in Montana and McSally wins in Arizona the Republicans will pick up 3 Senate seats close to our forecast of a 1-2 seat gain and the Dems have gained seven governorships which is spot on with our forecast of a gain of 7-8 state houses. As we predicted the xenophobic Republican Kris Kobach would lose his governor race in very red Kansas and we just missed by about a percentage point that the Democrat Ned Lamont would lose his governor race in very blue Connecticut.

At least for the Democrats, money in politics was devalued. The big spending liberal trifecta of O'Rourke, Gillum and Abrams went down to defeat. Those defeats raise questions about where the big liberal donors will be in 2020. Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris have to be rethinking their plans.

Given the antisemitic themes used by too many Republican house candidates it was heartening to see former synagogue president Jacky Rosen elected to to the Senate from Nevada. We also saw how important the Kavanaugh nomination fight was for the Republicans.  Democrats Heitkamp, Donnelly, and McCaskill all voted against Kavanaugh and went down to defeat. While Manchin who voted for him won in very red West Virginia. And don't forget Democrat Tester is hanging on by his fingernails.

Going forward we have ended up with a much more Trumpian Republican caucus which means that the wreckers in the House will gain ascendancy and the Senate aside from Mitt Romney will rollover for Trump on practically every issue. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have her work cut out for her in dealing with the loony left of her party and the wacko Republican caucus. At least the White House will face accountability as the subpoenas fly.

I follow up with future blog post on the coming realignment in American politics.

2018 Elections: A Long Night for the Republicans

Although my forecast for this Tuesday's elections is uncomfortably close to the consensus of the pundit class, I really do believe that the Democrats will do quite well and that the Republicans, especially those in the House and the state houses, will be crying in their beer. Given how strong the economy has been, by rights the Republicans should be cruising toward a huge victory, but this year it is certainly NOT "the economy stupid," it is instead "Trump, stupid."

On a seat by seat basis I have the Dems picking up 32 seats, but because most of the excitement is on their side, I think the Dem gains will be on the order of 35-40 seats. In the state houses the Republicans are going to take a licking with the Dems picking up 7-8 governorships. More than a few of those gains will be in historically Republican states. 

In contrast the biggest Republican margins will be in very blue Maryland and Massachusetts where the incumbents are extraordinarily popular and I wouldn't rule out a Republican pickup in the very blue and very ill-governed state of Connecticut. The sweetest Democratic pickup will likely be in the very Republican state of Kansas where the anti-immigrant xenophobe Kris Kobach will go down to defeat.

The Senate will be a different story. The Dems face a horrible map and in that body the Republicans figure to pick up one or two seats. There are too many Senate elections in the margin of error so the range of outcomes here is quite large.

As they say in poker, "read em and weep."

My Amazon Review of Bob Woodward's "Fear: Trump in the White House"

LOSER

Famed journalist Bob Woodward has written a book about an undisciplined narcissist who also happens to be a congenital liar; unfortunately he is the President of the United States. Much of the juicy tidbits in Woodward’s book have already been widely disseminated in the media so I won’t bore you by repeating them.

What comes across loud and clear is that Trump hates trade. He even writes in a briefing packet “Trade is bad”.  Like a stubborn 14 year old he is unyielding in his beliefs about trade even the face of strong evidence placed before him by his staff. As was widely noted Trump was ready to blow up the Korea –U.S. trade agreement just when we were working hand in glove with South Korea on the North Korea nuke problem. Woodward demonstrates how that jerk, Peter Navarro with his mercantilist views, plays to Trump’s worst instincts and somehow has easy access to the Oval Office.

Woodward was very successful in getting leading administration figures to talk to him mostly on deep background, but sometimes on the record. We can hear the voices of Steve Bannon, Gary Cohn, Trump lawyer John Dowd, Lindsay Graham, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Rob Porter, Reince Priebus, and Rex Tillerson. We continually see Priebus, Cohn, Porter and McMaster valiantly trying save Trump from his worst instincts. Although they had some successes, in the end they failed. It is a shame that Porter’s domestic difficulties forced him out; he was a real check on Trump.

The book ends in March so there is no discussion of the North Korea, G-7 and Putin summits. Hopefully Woodward will soon give us some insights into those events. Further for those looking for evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy, it is not here.

Let me close with what Steve Bannon said with respect to the effects of #MeToo on the coming election.

  “Trump is the perfect foil. He’s the bad father, the terrible first husband, the

     boyfriend that f*****d you over and wasted all those years and (you) gave up

     your youth for, and then dumped you. And the terrible boss that grabbed you

     by the p***y all the time and demeaned you.”

Woodward gives the reader a real flavor of how the Trump White House works and he proves that Jeb Bush was dead right when he said that Donald Trump would be the “chaos president.”

The full Amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3T7G4N8GXMMXZ/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B075RV48W3

My Amazon Review of Amy Chua's "Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations"

The Return of Tribalism

Yale law professor Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua has written an important book on the role of tribalism in our modern world. She demonstrates how U.S. foreign policy went awry in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Venezuela because how we completely failed to understand the tribal motive behind those conflicts. In particular she highlights the role of economically dominant minorities who breed resentment among the broader population. In particular the Vietnam War was more about deposing the economically dominant Chinese minority rather than a struggle for and against communism.

She then moves on to the U.S. where after years of promoting multi-culturalism it is not surprising to see a broad section of the white community seeing themselves as being victimized by an economically dominant coastal elite. But this is not new to the rise of Donald Trump. In the 1990’s we witnessed New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani criticizing a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum that depicted Christ in a jar of urine entitled “Piss Christ.”  The exhibit stood, but what if the museum exhibited “Piss Moses” or “Piss Mohamed.” Later “The Book of Mormon,” a satire on the Mormon religion became a hit Broadway show. I doubt if Broadway would have run “The Book of the Koran.”

What I liked about Chua’s book is that she notes that tribalism through years of evolution is built into the human psyche so we shouldn’t be surprised to see it manifested in the United States. A tribe needs to include and a need to exclude. Quite a bit of this, unfortunately, is based on race.  However, for the most part, we rose above tribalism by establishing a “super group” (her words) to rise above it to become Americans. With the return of tribalism the notion of America is pushed into the background.

I also like her noting that the coastal elites have become a tribe of their own as they dominate most of our culture. On the far left the culture has become so strict that the doctrine of intersectionality, which means to be in our tribe you have to be with us on everything to be with us at all. A world where deviation is not tolerated sounds very much like the worlds of Hitler and Stalin in the 1930s. Unfortunately that is where the left is today. To be sure Amy Chua is not as harsh as me, but is clear-eyed on the issue.

All told, Amy Chua has written an important book about where we are in America today. It should be read in conjunction with the works of NYU professor Jonathan Haidt.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R73L2N1MYL46U/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

Too Soon for the Democrats to Break Out the Champagne

All of the signs are now pointing to a Democratic wave election this coming November. Both the President Trump and the Republican Congress are in the doghouse in terms of poll numbers and 2018 is looking like a mirror image of the Republican sweep in 2010. For example in the 2009/10 period the Republicans took the governorships in New Jersey and Virginia and won a surprise victory in the special election for a Senate seat in Massachusetts. This year the Democrats won in Virginia and New Jersey and won a special election for a Senate seat in very red Alabama. Moreover the Democrats passed Obamacare with a straight party-line vote and this year the Republicans passed a massive tax cut on a straight party-line vote.

So what's wrong with this picture? Unlike 2010 when the economy was in the dumps the economy appears to be entering a boom phase. The unemployment rate in November 2018 will approximate a very low 3.5%. Moreover the expectations for the Trump tax cuts are so low that most voters will be pleasantly surprised when they see the tax cuts in their pay checks in February and the real pain on the limitation of state and local tax deductions won't show up until tax filing time in 2019. Thus the Republican poll numbers have nowhere to go but up.

Of course we shouldn't under-estimate the ability of the Republicans to screw up. For example Trump could blow up NAFTA triggering a stock market drop and increasing the likelihood of a recession in 2019. And over all of this looms the ongoing Mueller investigation of the 2016 election and likely a host of irregularities in the Trump Organization.

As a result the Democrats will make big gains in the House of Representatives, but whether it will be  enough to take control remains to be seen.