Havana on the Hudson - Part 3*

With the results of last Tuesday’s primary victories for the TikTok Jacobins and the enactment of a rent freeze on one million rent stabilized apartments, New York City drove a few more nails into its coffin. The congressional primary victories of DSA members Claire Valdez and Derializa Avila Chevalier along with the anti-Zionist Jew, Brad Lander, defeating Congressman Dan Goldman demonstrated the power of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s machine. To be sure he was pushing against a hollowed out Democratic Party. Put bluntly the socialist left in the Democratic Party is copying the Tea Party/Trumpian takeover of the Republican Party a decade ago.

 

Of particular note is that Chevalier is a stone-cold communist of the third world variety.  My guess is that she would take what I just wrote as a compliment. She doesn't beleive in prison terms for murderers. Her political support comes not from the Black and Latino populations of her district, but rather from the white intellectual leftists that seem to have found a home in New York City.

 

As expected, the Rent Guidelines Board froze rents on one million apartments under its authority. Because most of the rent stabilized housing stock is old, the likely outcome of a rent freeze would be speed up the deterioration of the buildings. Indeed, the not so hidden agenda of the Mamdani is to bankrupt the existing owners to enable the city to buy up the buildings.  Recall that the city is already the biggest slumlord through its housing authority.

 

While New York City seems to be prospering on the surface and benefitting from the Wall Street bull market, beneath the surface the socialist termites are eating away its foundation. So, just as the speed of the socialist takeover seemed to surprise, so too will the speed of the city’s demise. Havana here we come.

 

*-   See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/11/havana-on-hudson-part-2.html

The Redistricting Melee

Donald Trump started the redistricting melee by calling on Texas to undertake an unprecedented mid-census congressional redistricting to create five additional Republican seats. California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom responded in kind by calling a successful referendum to redistrict California to create an additional five Democratic seats and the partisan war was on. It came crashing down for the Democrats in Virginia this week when their Supreme Court ruled their redistricting referendum unconstitutional. That plan would have created four more Democratic seats. Along the way Trump unseated candidates in Indiana's Republican primary that opposed his redistricting plan for the state.

Then of a sudden the U.S. Supreme Court declared parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 unconstitutional paving the way to redistrict a host of Black (Democratic) seats across the South. Tennessee and Louisiana have already acted. Further, by 2028 elections there will be a raft of redistricting across Democratic and Republican states. I don't know who the ultimate winner will be, but I do know the American voter will be the loser. Simply put voters should choose their politicians, not the other way around.

Meantime after being down in the dumps all year, the Republican Party now has some spring in its steps. To me their optimism and the Democrats pessimism is premature. Why? In a wave election, and if there is to be a wave, it will be the Democrats that sweep and instead of helping, redistricting will hurt because it dilutes a party's strength where it was presumably strong.(See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2018/07/gerrymandering-wont-save-republicans-in.html ) Second, I would hope that the electorate gives a big F-You to both parties by voting Republican in California and Democratic in Texas. It maybe too much to hope for, but I fear that both parties are now circling the drain. We need something new.

Donald Trump (National Socialist*)

President Donald Trump is nominally a Republican, but in reality, he is putting us on the road to an American version of the national socialism of the 1930’s. Domestically he is attempting to seize the commanding heights of the economy by taking ownership positions in Intel and U.S. Steel and by taking a 15% cut from NVIDIA’s sales to China. ( https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/07/on-road-to-serfdom.html ) Remember that under national socialism businesses remain under private ownership but are under the control of the government. This is a far cry from capitalism. 

 

Further Trump is challenging the independence of the Federal Reserve by demanding the removal of Lisa Cook from the board for allegedly committing mortgage fraud. How did this come about? His minion Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, pulled the mortgage of files of Lisa Cook as well as the files from such Trump adversaries as New York Attorney General Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff. Let us be clear, this was no accident and soon the IRS and other federal agencies will get into the act.

 

To enhance his powers domestically Trump has appointed his cronies in the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the regulatory agencies and on the courts. Indeed, one of his private attorneys, Todd Blanche is now a deputy attorney general, and another, Eric Bove, was just confirmed to the Court of Appeals. Perhaps more serious is that he has purged a host of officers in the military and the CIA who might be more loyal to the constitution than to him. A defining feature of national socialism is loyalty to the leader, not to the law.

 

In keeping with his national socialist tendencies Trump is in the process of establishing a 150,000-member national police force in the form of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. These officers could at the stoke of a pen be empowered to engage in broader law enforcement activity and unlike the military they would not be subject to the strictures of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. Indeed, Trump seems to be using the military in violation of that act anyway. Meantime many U.S. citizens have been caught up in the roundup of illegal immigrants.

 

Internationally Trump through his tariff policies is attempting to turn the open economy of the United States into more of an autarky where domestic production would be sheltered from international competition. In imposing his tariff regime Trump ignored Congress which has near exclusive power over tariffs and taxation. Trump has now lost twice the courts on his tariffs; and it will soon be up to the Supreme Court to rule on them. Further Trump has imposed punitive tariffs on our allies all while cozying up to dictators Putin and Xi. This all part of the national socialist playbook. It might be stretch, but could there be a Trump, Putin, Xi axis?

 

All the while the moral eunuchs of the Republican Party have either cheered Trump on or silently acquiesced. ( See from 2019:  https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-republican-moral-eunuchs-and.html ) Similarly, fearful of retaliation, the business community has remained silent and bowed to his wishes. Thus, in eight short months Trump has seized control of a good part of the economy and the security apparatus of the state.

 

To be sure this not the first time the U.S. experimented with national socialism in peacetime. In 1933 President Roosevelt used the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to take control of a good part of the economy. Fortunately, the NIRA was declared unconstitutional in 1935 and the RFC withered away. Let us hope the Supreme Court does the same thing to Trump’s tariffs.

 

Later in 1971 President Nixon imposed a system of price, wage, rent and dividend controls on the entire economy. Nixon also used the IRS against his enemies and spied on his political opponents. The Nixon controls expired in early 1973 and he was impeached in 1974. Say what you will about Nixon; he respected the process. I doubt that can be said of Trump. In 2009 President Obama temporarily took control of the banking and automobile industries.

 

To conclude Trump is in the process of creating an American version of national socialism. I am not going to use the polite words of state capitalism or American Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics. Forewarned is forearmed!

 

*- The reference to national socialism is derived from Germany’s Nazi Party. The official name of the Nazi Party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei  or NSDAP which in English is the National Socialist German Workers Party. The Italian version of national socialism was called Partito Nazionale Fascista, PNF which in English is the National Fascist Party.

After Action Report on the 2024 Election

Shulmaven did not cover itself with glory this year. We thought Harris would win because she would be successful in casting Trump as the incumbent. (See: Shulmaven: The Turning Point in the Election and Shulmaven: A Realigning Anti-Incumbent Election)       She obviously failed in that task. We also thought that the Democrats would retake the House, which is still possible, but unlikely. Our Senate call had the Republicans ending up with 52 seats: they ended up with 53.   

What we did get right was that the election would signal a major realignment in American politics. We wrote “Simply put, the Republican Party, by eating into the Democrats hold on Black and Latino voters, has put together a broad multi-racial working-class party with a strong populist bent. This is a far cry from the business and country club-oriented party of two decades ago. Lurking behind all of this is an ever-widening gender gap.” 

 

We also wrote: “At least to me, if Harris loses Pennsylvania, her biggest mistake would be not picking Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate (See: Shulmaven: Kamala Harris Fails Her First Test with VP Pick)  and her failure to counter Trump’s attack on her position supporting federally paid for gender reassignment surgeries.” Both of these points were spot on. Finally, we noted: “I also have a hunch that the election might not be as close as the polls suggest. It is equally likely that either candidate will receive more than 300 electoral votes.”

Harris lost because her one-billion-dollar campaign and the near full support of the propaganda arms of the state, were insufficient to overcome the underlying fundamentals of the race which were:

1. Inflation is the graveyard of administrations.

2. 70% of voters thought we were on the wrong track.

3. The Biden-Harris Administration had a 40% approval ranting.

4. She failed to counter Trumps ads attacking her support for federal funding for gender assignment surgery for prisoners and immigrants held in custody.

5. Her much-vaunted ground game was over-rated.

Further she made two unforced errors. She failed to appear at the Al Smith Dinner and didn’t accept Joe Rogan’s invitation to appear on his podcast.

Perhaps most interesting the election, contrary to earlier thinking, where women fearful of losing their reproductive rights would drive turnout, instead turnout was driven by a wave of noncollege educated men of all races. It is this group that is driving the realignment towards the Republican Party. Also, of note in the deep blue states of New York, New Jersey and Virginia, Trump’s share of the vote surged. The blue governing philosophy is failing. Net Net. The Democratic Party is in a world of hurt relegating itself to be the voice of a cloistered college educated elite led around by its nose by the mainstream media and the boorish snobs of the faculty lounge.

 

A Realigning Anti-Incumbent Election

I normally write my election outlook on the weekend before the election. (See my earlier commentary: Shulmaven: The State of the Presidential Race) However, this year, because of my travel schedule I am hesitantly putting it out now. When historians 20 years from now look back at the 2024 election they would note that a major political realignment between the two parties took place. (See: Shulmaven: Political Realignment is Here) Simply put, the Republican Party, by eating into the Democrats hold on Black and Latino voters, has put together a broad multi-racial working class party with a strong populist bent. This is a far cry from the business and country-oriented party of two decades ago. Lurking behind all of this is an ever-widening gender gap.

On the other hand, the Democrats have picked up voters from hitherto high-income business oriented suburban Republican voters, especially women. The Democrats are now firmly the party of the elites buttressed by Black and single women voters. The union-oriented lunch pail Democrat is a relic of the past. The Democrats are the party of women, and the Republicans are the party of men.

Part and parcel with the realignment is that the county is moving towards Trump on many issues, specifically on trade, immigration, and crime. Witness Democratic Senator Bob Casey praising Trump on trade. In contrast the country is moving towards Harris on the potent issue of abortion. It remains to be seen which dominates. What is really surprising is that the race is so close given that nearly all of the propaganda arms of the state are firmly in the Harris camp.

Further the global electorate including ours is in anti-incumbent rage. (See: Shulmaven: Incumbents Beware) This is crucial for both Trump and Harris. Whomever the electorate perceives to be the incumbent will lose. That is why Biden had to drop out. To be sure Harris is the incumbent vice president, but we have been living in the age of Trump for nine years. My guess is that the electorate will not want to witness another four years. The problem for Harris is that she is too tied to Biden, and she has yet to articulate a clear vision of the future. Her closing argument is that Trump’s narcissistic criminality has to be stopped.

The electoral college arithmetic for both candidates is challenging. For example, if Harris holds the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and picks up the one electoral vote coming out of Omaha, Nebraska she will hit the 270 electoral vote magic number. However, if she loses one of those states, she going to have to make it up in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. Given today’s polls, which is doable, but difficult. At the end of the day the key to a Harris victory is her ground game. She has paid staff and volunteers everywhere, while Trump’s campaign is sorely lacking in this regard. At least to me, if Harris loses Pennsylvania, her biggest mistake would be not picking Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate (See: Shulmaven: Kamala Harris Fails Her First Test with VP Pick)  and her failure to counter Trump’s attack on her position supporting federally paid for gender reassignment surgeries.

I also have a hunch that the election might not be as close as the polls suggest. It is equally likely that either candidate will receive more than 300 electoral votes. Stranger things have happened in the last two weeks of the election and if there is going to be a wave, I would give the edge to Harris. Recall that the polls were wrong in 2016, 2020 and 2022.

In keeping with my anti-incumbent thesis, I think the Democrats will retake the very dysfunctional House and end up with a majority of around 10-12 seats. On the other hand, the Democrats will lose the Senate with the Republicans ending up with 52 seats. Although most Senate Democrats are leading in the polls there are too many targets of opportunity for the Republicans.

Most disappointing about the election is that two particularly critical issues, the elephants in the room, are not being discussed. The first is the out-of-control deficit spending of both parties that putting the U.S. on the path of have highest debt/GDP ratio in history and the underspending on defense that will put our country at grave risk in the years ahead.

 

My Review of David Brown's "A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas......."

 1854: The Hinge Year on the Road to Civil War

 

Historian David Brown has given us an important and very readable book on how the events of 1854 set America on course to our civil war. The critical event was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act which broke the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing the territories north of 36 degrees 30 minutes latitude to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to allow slavery under the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Prior to that enactment slavery was prohibited in most of the Louisiana Purchase. The notion of popular sovereignty was first introduced by Senator Stephen Douglas in the 1850 compromise that brought California into the Union, but, allowed for the New Mexico and Arizona Territories to vote on whether or not they wanted slavery. Stephen Douglas would then build on the 1850 compromise to champion the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

 

The notion of popular sovereignty seems quaint today, but I would note we are yet again living with this on the issue of abortion. The overturning of Rowe v. Wade returned the question of abortion to the states where each state would determine how it deals with this question.

 

Leading the charge against the Kansas-Nebraska Act was Free Soil Party Senator Salmon P. Chase. Chase would go on to help found the new Republican Party in 1854, become Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, and then become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. His leadership on this issue established him as a national figure and the issue brought Abraham Lincoln out of his successful law practice into the national limelight. The growing chasm between north and south was occurring against the backdrop of rising industrialization and a growing abolition movement. It would become a battle between free labor and slavery.

 

So great was the controversy over the act, that the Whig Party would collapse as the northern Whigs could no longer countenance being in the same party as the southern Whigs. Most of the northern Whigs became Republicans and the Democrats solidified their position in the South and picked up those northern Whigs who didn’t become Republicans. The reason why the act passed was because the slavery-oriented Democratic Party was at the height of its power controlling the presidency and both houses of Congress. Indeed the New Hampshire native Franklin Pierce was the last Democratic president to receive a majority vote for president until Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

 

Brown brings into the mix Harriet Beecher Stowe of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” fame published in 1852, Henry David Thoreau and his “Walden Pond” (1854), and Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad. All of this was going on in and around 1854. Further, in 1854 the full ramifications of the Fugitive Slave Law, part of the 1850 compromise, was being felt in the North, especially Massachusetts.

 

David Brown gives us a very real sense of our country heading towards civil war. Unfortunately, the parallels for today are more than disquieting.

Kamala Harris Fails Her First Test with VP Pick

Kamala Harris picking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her VP cemented her identity as a San Francisco Bay liberal. She also demonstrated that she will have no backbone when it comes to standing up to the noisy and sometimes antisemitic Left of her party. By not picking Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania she lost all credibility in her election year conversion in support of fracking and by not picking Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona she lost her credibility on securing our southern border.

In picking Walz she got a big spending liberal who dawdled while Minneapolis was burning during the George Floyd riots of 2020 and his signing of an executive order in support of gender affirming care for minors she got a candidate who is to the left of Europe's social democrats on this issue. Oh, and one more thing, Walz only received 52% of the vote in his reelection in heavily Democratic Minnesota in 2022.

Harris had a real opportunity to move to the center with her VP pick. She failed miserably in this task and gave Donald Trump and the Republicans the best news they have had since Joe Biden left the race. If the Democrats had hopes of attracting Nikki Haley voters to there cause, those hope were dashed today.  

Political Realignment is Here

In 2016 and 2018 I authored two blogs on the coming realignment of American Politics ( Shulmaven: The Coming Political Realignment and  Shulmaven: The Coming Political Realignment: Part II ) I believe the realignment I spoke of then and in subsequent related blogs is now here. The recent Republican convention once and for all buried the Right Hamiltonian* roots of the party and firmly made it over into a rightwing populist party combining the 19^th century Jacksonians and Know Nothings into one 21^st century coalition. Consistent with that, the party renominated Doanld Trump for president and JD Vance for vice-president. The party is now firmly isolationist, anti-free trade, anti-immigrant, pro-entitlements, and in many respects anti-Wall Street and above all “anti-woke.”

 

Prior to his withdrawal from the race, Joe Biden was veering sharply to the left with calls for national rent control, more student debt relief, medical bill relief and restructuring the Supreme Court. No longer a Left Hamiltonian, Biden was moving in the direction of a new social democratic party with policies along the lines of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. My guess is that Vice-President Kamala Harris who as of today seems the likely Democratic nominee, will pull the party in same direction Biden was headed with an even greater emphasis on identity politics.  Afterall, she grew up in the hot house of far-left San Francisco Bay Democratic politics.

 

Now, where does that leave the Right Hamiltonians of the Republican Party and the Left Hamiltonians of the Democratic Party. For the time being they are without a home. Furthermore, the mood of the electorate seems to be very anti-establishment which will make it very difficult for the Hamiltonians of both parties to gain traction. However, it is likely that either political party will unfortunately drive our country into a ditch, making it likely that in 2028 a merged Hamiltonian Party will come to the fore. That will either be within the Democratic Party sans its social democrats or as a centrist third party.

 

*- I broadly define Right Hamiltonians as those who would use the power of government to support business and Left Hamiltonians who would use government to support labor. Both wings are internationalists.

Incumbents Beware

The tide of elections around the world are sending an ominous signal for incumbents everywhere. In India Prime Minister Nerendra Modi failed to achieve the widely expected super majority in parliament, the Conservatives in the UK got wiped out with their vote total dropping from 44% to 24% in the prior election, and while Labour won a huge majority in Parliament sending Keir Starmer to 10 Downing Street, it did so with only 34% of the vote. The spoiler was Nigel Farage's fringe Reform Party which took 14% of the vote. In France the votes are still being counted with the French Left winning a surprising plurality of the votes, while Marine Le Pen's rightwing party disappointed, but the real loser was French President Emanuel Macron

What all this means for the United States is that President Joe Biden. with all of his age related troubles. is in a world of hurt. Even if Vice President Kamala Harris succeeds Biden as the nominee, she will be viewed as an incumbent and hence a loser. The only choice the Democrats have would be to nominate a new candidate in an open convention. That candidate would certainly not be an incumbent. Indeed, in the minds of the voters Trump would then be the incumbent and headed for a loss. I know it is high risk, but that is the only path for a Democratic victory. 

Before the past few weeks was my view was that we would see a reversal of fortune in American politics with the Republicans retaking the White House and the Senate and losing the House to the Democrats. However, if things don't turn around soon, we could be headed for a Republican sweep.

Reliving the 1930's - Part 5

We started this series in March 2014 ( Shulmaven: Reliving the 1930s)  with Putin taking Crimea and using his proxies in eastern Ukraine and the last one was in April 2017 with  Trump’s and Obama’s vacillation in Syria in 2013 and 2017. ( Shulmaven: Reliving the 1930s - Part 4) With this blog I go further in that I now believe that we are no longer in the Post-Cold War Era, but rather we are now in what future historians will call a pre-war era.

 

Instead of facing the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis we now face the Russia-China-Iran North Korea Axis We see this new axis playing out in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Taiwan Straits. All the signs were there in the 1930’s with Japan invading Manchuria in 1931 and the heart of China in 1937; Italy invading Abyssinia in 1935, and Germany reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936. However, it was not until 1938 that they were taken seriously.

 

In terms of economic policy protectionism was the order of the day in the 1930’s and we now witness the Biden Administration continuing and amplifying Trump’s protectionist trade policies. Although Biden’s trade policies conflict, he remains a committed internationalist. However, the Republican Party is reverting to its 1930’s form with its America First withdrawal from the world.

 

At home America’s college campuses look like prewar Germany where in many cases it is no longer safe for Jews to walk freely to class. Although anti-Zionism has always been a cover for antisemitism, recent events have ripped off all of its pretentions of being anti-Israel while still liking Jews. Nevertheless, unlike the 1930’s, Jews in America have more to fear from the Left than from the Right when the Father Coughlin’s of the world ruled the airwaves.

 

Further unlike the 1930’s when America had real leadership under Franklin Roosevelt, today’s divided government is challenged by a Putinista faction in the Republican Party that is implicitly allied with the new axis of evil. Be warned the clock is ticking.

  

My Amazon Review of Matthew Continetti's : The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism"

 

Triumph and Tragedy

 

As I write this Liz Cheney, the scion of Reagan Republicanism and what used to be the heartbeat of American conservatism, lost her primary battle to a Trump acolyte in Wyoming. Simply out, the Republican Party is no longer a conservative party, but rather a cult of personality populist party. This is the end point of Matthew Continetti’s hundred-year history of American conservatism. Continetti, now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has been a writer/activist on the conservative scene for two decades and is the son-in-law of William Kristol, a leading neoconservative and one of the foremost anti-Trumpers on the Right.

 

Continetti begins his history in the 1920’s when the conservative Republican Party stood for protectionism, anti-immigration and more or less and isolationist foreign policy. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. However, there is a major difference from today that Continetti doesn’t mention. That is in the 1920’s conservatives were an optimistic bunch believing in the new technologies of automobiles, electrification, radio, aircraft, and talking pictures that was underpinning an economic boom. Thus, when the Great Depression came, it was truly a shock turning optimism into pessimism about the future of the country under the New Deal.  

 

As a result, conservatives stayed in the political wilderness for years as the Democratic Party and liberal Republicans dominated the scene. However, beneath the surface a disparate group of conservatives rallied around anticommunism and the leadership of William Buckley and his National Review. Elitist to the core Buckley and crew became the backbone of conservative revival, but beneath the surface their remained vestiges of racism, antisemitism, and authoritarianism. Those would resurface many years later.

 

When liberalism cracked up under the strains of the Vietnam War and the stagflation of the 1970’s, conservatives were ready to seize the mantle of power. Instead of the dour conservatism of say, 1940’s Bob Taft, conservatives were led by the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan who offered economic growth at home and the defeat of communism abroad. Reagan united social, economic, and foreign policy conservatives under one banner. However, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and with that the unity of the conservative movement fell.

 

In fact, one year later, in a forerunner to Trump, Pat Buchanan mounted a populist challenge to President George H.W. Bush and soon Ruch Limbaugh would dominate the airwaves of talk radio.  For a time, the conservative establishment held these forces in check, but failures in the Iraq War and the Great Financial Crisis destroyed its legitimacy. All the while a populist revolt was brewing against trade, immigration, and foreign wars that Continetti and his intellectual buddies in the think tanks and K-Street were oblivious to. They were too busy talking to each other rather than going out into the country to visit the dive bars and fast-food joints of the Midwest and the South. They soon would have discovered that there was a revolt brewing against the know-it-all coastal elites of both parties who in the words of Hillary Clinton, called them “deplorables.”  I hate to break it to Continetti, but all too many conservatives felt the same way.

 

Continetti’s goal is to blend historical conservatism to the new populism. My guess is that train has passed the station, at least for now. When CPAC features Hungarian autocrat Victor Orban as a speaker, you know the world has changed. Thus, it looks like that conservatives will once again be spending long years in the wilderness. If it is to recover it will have to come with an optimistic vision similar to what happened in the 1920’s and the 1980’s.

For the full Amazon URL see: Triumph and Tragedy (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)

 

 

The Party of Moral Eunuchs

 Yet again the Republican Party proved itself to be the party of moral eunuchs. This is my fifth blog calling out Republicans as moral eunuchs. (See:  Shulmaven: The Republican Moral Eunuchs and the Magnificent 13,  Shulmaven: The Coming Political Realignment: Part II, Shulmaven: A Funeral in Washington, Shulmaven: An Open Letter to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell) Save for 10 members of the House and 7 members of the Senate, congressional Republicans refused to acknowledge guilt in the impeachment of Donald Trump for inciting a riot that sacked the Capitol building, caused death and injury to the Capitol Police and the near assassinations of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Pence. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has a portrait of his hero Henry Clay in his office. If he acted like Clay, who worked to save the Union from 1820-1850, he would have voted to convict Trump. My guess is that if he now looks closely at that portrait he would see tears in the eyes of Clay.

All I can say to the Republican eunuchs is to quote Oliver Cromwell, "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!  It will be up to the voters to render the ultimate verdict.

The Republican Party Implodes

The Republican Party founded in 1854 by anti-slavery Whigs is in the process of imploding. In just two days the party lost two Senate seats in Georgia, witnessed the sacking of the Capitol by insurrectionist vandals incited by President Trump and then two-thirds of Republican House members including their leader Kevin McCarthy and eight senators voted to overturn the lawful election of Joe Biden. Particularly repugnant was the behavior of the faux populist Senators and former Supreme Court clerks Ted Cruz (Princeton, Harvard) and Josh Hawley (Stanford, Yale).  These two made their beds with Trump and they will now have to lie sleepless in those beds of thorns.

It is beyond me how Senators Romney, Thune, Toomey and Saase and Congressmembers Liz Cheney and Kinzinger can remain in a party where the Trump-Cruz-Hawley retain the backing of a majority of the membership, even after the attack on the Capitol. Thus my guess is that the Republican Party is about to split along the lines of my November 2018 blogpost (See: Shulmaven: The Coming Political Realignment: Part II ) where the establishment Republicans, the right-Hamiltonians join up with the Democratic Party, the left-Hamiltonians. They have more in common with the Democrats than what remains of the Republican Party which will become a modern version of the 1840's Know Nothing Party. 

The split will be exacerbated by what I expect to be a Trump Pardonpalooza late next week (See: Shulmaven: Trump's Pardonpalooza Coming Christmas Eve ) when he pardons himself, his family and all of his co-conspirators. And if that won't be enough the Trumpistas will be wallowing their "They stole it slogan" a version of Weimar Germany's "stab in the back" and "November criminals" memes of the fascists of that era. (See: Shulmaven: Trump's Big Lie and the Legacy of 1918 Germany)

Make no mistake the Democratic Party with its cancel culture left, defund the police mobs, high tax mentality and its elite haughtiness is no bed of roses, but at least for the most part, it respects our constitutional processes. Moreover if enough Republicans join, the Democrats just might be moved ever so gently to the Right. As that happens with or without this movement the Democratic Party will likely split with the Left forming a social democratic party, a la Eugene Debs in the early 1900's.

My Amazon Review of Rick Pearlstein's "Reaganland: America Turns Right, 1976-1980"

 

Reagan Ascendant

 

Rick Pearlstein, a man of the Left, has written a very long (1120 pages in the print edition) and very important history of American politics from 1976-1980 through the twin lenses of the flowering of the American Right and Reagan’s successful campaign for the presidency. This is his fourth volume on the history of the modern American Right that starts in the 1950’s. (See my earlier review of his “The Invisible Bridge…” https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2014/08/my-amazon-review-of-rick-pearlsteins.html) As with his prior volumes he is very good at discussing the day-to-day politics of the era. The liberals were literally out of gas and there was a thunder on the Right led by the evangelical community, the revival of business lobbying and the new ideas coming from the neoconservatives. Standing athwart all of this was the hapless Jimmy Carter who found a way to upset the liberals on his left and the moderates on his right which leads to a challenge by Senator Edward Kennedy.

 

Pearlstein delivers terrific portraits of John Connally, Nixon’s Treasury Secretary and presumed Republican front runner in 1979, and anti-Equal Rights Amendment firebrand Phyllis Schlafly who successfully organizes the Right to defeat the amendment. We see the young Paul Manafort and Roger Stone practicing their dark arts that would become the basis of a powerful political consulting firm in the 1980s whose lives would turn into ignominy with the election of Donald Trump. We also see the rise of the direct mail wizard Richard Vigueri and his cohorts on the Right, Howard Phillips and Paul Weyrich.

 

The religious Right draws its strength from its opposition to abortion and gay rights. In its opposition to abortion American Protestants linkup with Catholics for the first time to form a powerful urban-rural coalition which undermines Democratic dominance of the eastern and Midwestern urban centers. In their opposition to gay rights, the Right finds a spokesperson in singer Anita Bryant who leads the charge to repeal a Miami gay rights ordinance.

 

Through it all we see Ronald Reagan methodically plodding along his path to the presidency with the ups and downs of his campaign culminating with his debate win over Jimmy Carter. To be sure he fires his first campaign manager, the egotistical John Sears and there are many gaffes along the way, but Reagan is opportunistic enough make a major issue out of the Panama Canal Treaty as sign of American retreat. Of course he and the Republican Party is helped along when everything falls off the tracks in 1979. We have the Iranian Revolution, the tripling of the price of gasoline, gas lines, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident and the Iranian hostage crisis.

 

What Pearlstein misses is the sociological earthquake that was happening the 1970’s that gave rise to the religious Right. For example the birthrate collapsed from a peak of 4.3 million births in 1957 to a low of 3.1 million in 1975 with a modest increase to 3.6 million by 1980. The number of divorces more than doubled from 500,000 in 1970 to 1,200,000 in 1980 and the number of legal abortions increased from 500,000 in 1971 to 1,300,000 in 1980. There was good reason for Americans to be worried about the traditional family.

 

And if you overlay that on an increase in the female labor force participation rate from 43% in 1970 to 51% in 1980 which meant that the traditional one breadwinner household was falling further and further behind you can add an economic reason for the growing disenchantment of evangelical Christians. Now overlay that with a double-digit inflation you have a formula for deep resentment. To quote Karl Marx, “all that is solid melts into air.” That was the America of 1980.

 

To focus more on the economic side of things the roaring inflation was forcing the average worker into higher and tax brackets, a product of a tightly bracketed tax code. Further, if a second family member entered the labor force the marginal tax rate could very well be as high as 40%. Then of a sudden, the California tax revolt leads to the passage of Proposition 13 which cut property taxes by 60%. Pearlstein is very good with his discussion of this. I was in the middle of it and was quoted in the Howard Jarvis Time magazine cover story that he cites. Its passage gives succor to the Republicans in Congress supporting the Kemp-Roth 30% across the board income tax cut. That will pass later under Reagan.

 

However Pearlstein leaves out three critical factors as to the cause of Proposition 13. First the tax revenue coming in from rising property values was spent by government, not rebated in the form of lower rates. Second, the Crawford vs. L.A. Board of Education decision calling for crosstown busing made the local school less important to the typical suburban voter. Similarly the Serrano vs. Priest decision equalizing school finance detached local property taxes from support of local schools. Both those decisions took place in the early 1970’s which rendered ineffective the anti-Prop 13 message that the schools would be destroyed if the measure passed.

 

One thing that really bothers me about the book is Pearlstein’s reference to corporate lobbyists as “boardroom Jacobins.” He fails to understand that the real Jacobins were in the regulatory agencies who running a regulatory reign of terror against the business community. To be sure much regulation was needed, but the way they went about with little attention paid to cost/benefit analysis created a tough adversarial environment. Further effective business taxation was on the rise because the great inflation was rendering depreciation allowances woefully inadequate and stock prices measured in real terms collapsed. Even Senator Kennedy was supportive of increasing depreciation allowances and he said so in response to me at a rally in Los Angeles.

 

As far as the average industrial worker was concerned the Democratic Party was nowhere to be found. On September 16, 1977 the Youngstown Sheet and Tube factory closed firing 5,000 workers in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley. Within a few years 50,000 steel jobs were lost. The Democrats controlled the White House and had huge majorities in both houses of Congress. They did nothing and it is no wonder that Reagan got the bulk of their votes in 1980. Pearlstein does not mention this.

 

The Reagan we see in Pearlstein’s book is sunny optimist. He is pro-immigration, pro-trade and was way ahead of his time with respect to NAFTA and he had live and let live with respect to gay rights. He opposed the Briggs Amendment, a California anti-gay measure on the ballot in 1978. Thus the Reagan of 1980 is a far cry from the Republican Party of today. Simply put there is no way the wackos in today’s Republican Party would nominate him.

 

Rick Pearlstein gives us great history. It very detailed and well sourced. Despite my quibble above it is a must read for serious students of America’s political culture.

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

My Amazon Review of A.J.Baime's "Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul"

Never Give Up, Never Sit on a Lead

Political journalist A.J. Baime tells the often told story of Truman’s come from behind victory over Dewey with great insight and drama, no easy feat. Simply put President Harry Truman never gave up and New York Governor Thomas Dewey sat on a lead. Further Truman was handicapped by having Progressive Henry Wallace run to his left and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond run well to the right thereby splitting the Democratic Party.

Of interest is that contrary to the title the election was not about America’s soul. Dewey and Truman agreed on international affairs, expanding social security, supporting a federal role in housing and on civil rights. As governor of New York Dewey pushed through the first major civil rights legislation in country. To be sure during the campaign Truman was far more full-throated in his support for civil rights. Dewey along with his running mate California Governor Earl Warren were perhaps the two best governors in America at the time. Had they won, my guess is that it would have been a successful administration.

What Truman understood is that there was a fundamental split between liberal Dewey and the largely conservative congress. Truman was not running against Dewey, per se, but rather on cross country whistle stop tour he lambasted the do nothing Republican Congress while begging for cash to keep the campaign going. While Truman was outlining specific programs, Dewey was mouthing the platitude of “unity.”

Truman had more on his mind than winning re-election. He was running the Berlin Airlift, negotiating with the Russians in Paris and dealing with the Arab-Israel War. He also found the time to order the integration of the armed forces.

Baime is especially good on his discussion of the Wallace campaign, a campaign largely run by a Communist Party cell. Wallace praised Stalin and attacked the Marshall Plan with great vehemence. Along the way he attracted a coterie of celebrities who objectively acted as, in Lenin’s term, “useful idiots.”

Then why did Truman win against all odds and with 90% of the newspapers against him including The New York Times. Baime suggests it was a combination of broad prosperity, strong labor union support, the Black vote in the great urban centers, technical changes in farm legislation that made it hard for farmers to profitably store their 1948 bumper crop and perhaps most important, the American people admired Truman’s spunk. It makes for a great read.

For the full Amazon URL see:https://www.amazon.com/review/R1J52ZAO05J9HG/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv 

A Change in Registration

Today I walked into my county clerk's office and changed my registration to Democratic from Republican. Many of my friends asked, "what took you so long?" I guess I was hoping against hope that there would be real opposition to Trump within the Republican Party. That has obviously not happened and to the contrary the party has become even more sycophantic so much so that Republican House and Senate leaders have become mouthpieces for Putin. It is a far cry from the party of Ronald Reagan and John McCain.

The reason why I didn't register as an Independent is because I want to have a say in the Democratic nomination. No Bernie or Liz for me. Further history maybe playing out as I previously envisioned where the U.S. is realigning to three party system. A Hamiltonian Party (centrist Democrats and moderate Republicans), a Social Democratic Party (Bernie and his acolytes) and a Know Nothing Party (The zanies that make up most of today's Republican Party). My new home will be in the Hamiltonian Party. (See https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-coming-political-realignment-part-ii.html)

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

My Amazon Review of Eric Rauchway's "Winter War: "Hoover, Roosevelt and the First Clash Over The New Deal"

Not Quite a War

UC Davis economic historian Eric Rauchway elevates the personal dislike between Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt into a war that would determine the future of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Simply put, he way overstates his case and demonstrates his very clear left-liberal bias. To be sure Hoover is a sore loser and acts that way, but their disagreements can hardly be characterized as “a war”.

Rauchway’s thesis is that Hoover consciously acted to abort the New Deal in the womb.  To me the disagreement was far more personal than political and given the economic crisis it would have been far better for both of them to work together the way George Bush and Barack Obama did in 2008, but alas that was not the case. Beneath the surface while Hoover and Roosevelt were having their spat Hoover treasury officials Ogden Mills and Arthur Ballantine were working hand-in-glove with income treasury secretary William Wooden to deal with the banking crisis. In fact Jonathan Alter in his "Defining Moment" noted that “the Hoover men essentially designed the blueprint of FDR’s rescue of the banks.” Thus if the generals were at war the lieutenants certainly were were not.

Rauchway argues that Hoover’s ideas were a precursor to the Republican southern strategy of the 1960s. To his credit he does note that the African-American vote began deserting the party of Lincoln in response to Hoover’s treatment of them during the 1927 Mississippi River Flood and his failed supreme court nomination of the racist John Parker in 1930. That is all true, but the fact remains Roosevelt sold out to the southern barons of the Senate to pass his program and it was the Republican Party that was the party of civil rights well into the 1960s and especially with the nomination of Wendell Willkie in 1940.

He also argues that Roosevelt as early as 1932 was well aware of the threat that the rise of Hitler presented to the democracies. Yet he blew up the 1933 World Economic Conference that sent a clear signal to Hitler that the U.S. was abandoning Europe. Indeed from 1933-38 was probably the most isolationist period of the 20^th Century. Being worried about Hitler and acting are two different things.

Moreover while Roosevelt was worried about fascism abroad he was implementing it at home. What else can you make of the cartelization caused by the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act, if not a form of proto-fascism? Moreover it was hardly progressive to plow under crops and slaughter piglets to prop up farm prices during a period of real starvation. Thankfully the Supreme Court saved us from these failed experiments.

Rauchway conveniently leaves out the crackpot ideas of Cornell economist George Warren who influenced Roosevelt on farm and monetary policies. He also ignores that one of the causes of 1920s farm crisis was the mechanization of agriculture as 40% of cropland was devoted to forage crops that were no longer needed.

Let me say that this review is not intended to be an all-out attack on the New Deal. Much good came from leaving the gold standard, banking and securities reforms and the beginning of massive public works projects. The country was in a crisis and we have to put ourselves into the shoes of the decision makers of the time, but we also have to heed Keynes admonition that “reform is the enemy of recovery.” I wish Rauchway would see things that way.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1VJ9V9PPKXS9F/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of David Levering Lewis' "The Improbable Wendell Willkie: The Businessman who Saved the Republican Party...."

Republican Rebel

NYU historian David Levering Lewis tells the story of how and why Wendell Willkie, a lifelong Democrat temporarily seized control of the Republican Party to become its presidential nominee in 1940. This often told story normally focuses around the Republican Convention where the eastern establishment finance and media elite orchestrated Willkie’s sixth ballot victory. Out of that flowed enough Republican support for conscription, the destroyers for bases deal and lend lease which enabled Roosevelt to overcome the isolationists in both parties to move our country closer to confrontation with the Axis powers.

Lewis’ book is far more than that. He takes us back to Willkie’s progressive roots in rural Indiana where is his family was enraptured by Bryan and Wilson with the latter’s influence being making Willkie a full-throated internationalist. Moreover Willkie was a serious activist as he attended the 1924 and 1932 Democratic conventions. While being an activist Willkie develops a very strong legal reputation and he rises to become president of Commonwealth & Southern (C&S), a giant utility holding company that lives on today as The Southern Company. In his position at the C&S he takes on the newly formed Tennessee Valley Authority and then most of the New Deal.

Willkie becomes nationally known as a critic of the New Deal, but with the coming of the 1937-38 recession his criticisms begin to bite. Although supportive of Social Security and collective bargaining, he attacked the growing tax and regulatory state that was stifling business and thereby inhibiting the recovery from the depression. He bests solicitor general and future Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson in a national radio debate in 1938 and from there his presidential prospects take root.

It is here where I have my main difference with Levering because it was Willkie’s attacks on the New Deal that made him palatable to the largely isolationist Republican Party. Levering should have devoted far more effort in this regard in flushing out Willkie’s economic ideas that drove a dagger into the heart of the tax and regulatory state the New Deal was building.

I gasped when Lewis recounted Willkie’s acceptance speech to hundreds of thousands of people in Ellwood, Indiana. He attacked Nazi Germany for its “barbarous and worse than medieval persecution of the Jews” calling it “the most tragic in human history.” Roosevelt never went close to making comments like that, to his eternal discredit. Willkie was also far ahead of his time with respect to race. He was close friends with NAACP chief Walter White and he called racism a form of “domestic imperialism.”

Lewis also touches on Willkie’s affair with Irita Van Doren, book review editor of the New Yok Herald Tribune, who introduced him to New York literary society. His marriage to his wife Edith was largely loveless. He also had an affair with Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who was using him to further her husband’s political goals.

After his defeat in 1940 Willkie becomes Roosevelt’s personal emissary to Churchill and in 1942 he does a round the world tour for the Administration. Out of that came his bestselling book “One World” which outlined a new era of de-colonialism and global integration. That was too much for the Republican Party and Willkie was rejected in the 1944 primaries. He died at 52 in late 1944 just when Roosevelt was toying with the idea of forming a new liberal political party with Willkie.

Lewis as offered us a good read into an important aspect of our history where one individual really made a difference and it saddened me to see how today’s Republican Party is digging itself back into the isolationist hole of the 1930s.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/RR5GROLG3YQIJ/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv