Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[y66]

It’s fashionable to think that, just like his former boss, President Barack Obama, president-elect Joe Biden is inheriting a damaged economy that will struggle to recover, perhaps for years. The reality is quite the opposite, with Biden stepping into a dream scenario for economic growth on the other side of the battle with the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

When Obama took office in January 2009, the economy was still grappling with the aftermath of the housing bust and subsequent financial crisis while not receiving the fiscal support needed from Congress to boost the pace of growth. A slow recovery ensued. So, naturally, the failure of Congress to agree on another stimulus package before last week’s election and the inability – so far – of the Democrats to gain control of the Senate has raised the specter that the economy will endure a similar fate in come years.

 

But the current economic cycle is in no way like the last. The economy is instead poised for a rapid rebound for six main reasons:

 

First, there is nothing fundamentally “broken” in the economy that needs to heal. And unlike the last two cycles, there was no obvious financial bubble driving excessive activity in any one economic sector when the pandemic hit. There is no excessive investment that needs to be unwound and the financial sector has escaped largely unharmed.

 

Second, the indiscriminate nature of the shutdowns this past spring provides the economy with a solid base from which to grow. The economy collapsed in the spring because in the effort to get ahead of the virus, we shut down about a third of the economy on an annualized basis. That created a lot of opportunity to rebound when the unnecessary causalities of the shutdown came back online and began to grow around the virus. That process will continue.

 

Third, household balance sheets were not crushed like they were in the last recession. Instead, the opposite occurred. Reduced spending, fiscal stimulus, rising home prices and a buoyant equity market have all helped push household net wealth past its pre-pandemic peak.

 

Fourth, the demographics are incredibly supportive of growth. During the last recovery, the economy was still adapting to the Baby Boomers aging out of the workforce with a much smaller cohort of Generation X’ers behind them. The larger Millennial generation was just entering college at the time. Now, the Millennials are entering their prime homebuyer years in force and will be moving into their peak earning years. The resulting strength in housing is fueling higher home prices and durable goods spending, and we are just at the beginning of the trend. Housing activity should hold strong for the next four years.

 

Fifth, household savings have grown by more than a $1 trillion, providing the fuel for a hot economy on the other side of the pandemic. Sooner or later, that money is going to come out of savings and into the economy and I expect it to flow into the sectors like leisure and hospitality where there is considerable pent up demand.

 

Sixth, and most importantly, vaccine is coming. Pfizer Inc. announced its Covid-19 vaccine is 90% effective. Many other vaccines are in development using the same strategy as Pfizer. To be sure, it will take some time for vaccines to be widely available but once they are the sectors of the economy most encumbered by the virus (the same as those for which consumers have pent-up demand) will be lit on fire. Moreover, schools and day cares can reopen allowing parents to return to the workforce.

 

With Covid-19 cases surging again, it is understandably hard to look optimistically to the other side of this winter. We should see some economic softness the next couple of months, but we can afford it with the private sector creating jobs at the 906,000 monthly pace that was seen in October. Don’t let the near-term challenges distract from the economic stage being set for next four years.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-11/biden-is-stepping-into-a-dream-economic-scenario?sref=UHfKDqx7

[y66]

Interestingly, Democrats in the House passed legislation last year requiring post-election auditing (not specific to mail-in ballots). The bill died in the Republican-controlled Senate. https://nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/politics/election-security-mitch-mcconnell.html

One way of determining fraud in mail-in ballots would be to examine a random sample of a few thousand to find the rate of fraud. If fraud rate is low, voters may be convinced of the election’s legitimacy. If the fraud rate is high, then every mail-in ballot should be examined.

 

President Trump’s claims of voter fraud are resonating with many of his supporters. We should never deny anyone their day in court, and he has every right to produce evidence to support his allegations. The election results themselves, however, strongly suggest he did not lose because of fraud.

 

Mass voter fraud should be relatively easy to detect, even if it might be difficult to prove. Since we elect presidents through the electoral college, political operatives trying to nefariously produce a victory would focus on states critical to an electoral college majority. Thus, if fraud were behind President-elect Joe Biden’s win, we should expect to see significantly higher turnout increases in key states when compared to the nation as a whole. Furthermore, we should expect to see higher turnout increases within those states in Democratic areas than in Republican areas, since those regions are places where Democrats are more likely to be able to hide any stolen votes. Finally, we should expect to see significantly larger shifts in voter margins toward the Democrats from other, previous elections as the fraud alters the area’s normal voting patterns.

 

None of these early warning signs of fraud appear in the results.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/10/we-can-be-confident-trump-voter-fraud-claims-are-baloney/

[Winstonm]

I think Joe Biden learned a valuable lesson in the first debate against Trump: Do not let let him pull you into a fight

 

Biden thus far has been great at looking and acting presidential, ignoring the flailing of defeated Trump. A careful reading of the things said by most of the leading Republicans does not portend continued support after the legal challenges have been exhausted, and I seriously doubt if any of them would go so far as to try to corrupt the process by surreptitiously acting in concert with the state legislatures in a handful of swing states to steal the election - although that possibility, frankly and unfortunately, can no longer be totally ignored. It is hard to gauge how corrupt the entire Republican party has become with Trump at its head.

[y66]

For years, watching Republicans actively defend Trump’s solipsism has been unbearable. Whether he’s lying about the size of the crowd at his inauguration, or auctioning U.S. foreign policy off in exchange for dirt on his political opponents, or virtually ignoring a deadly infectious disease that could hurt his re-election, Republicans have twisted themselves in knots either vying for Trump’s affection or dodging questions about his latest vile utterance.

 

Last Tuesday, Republicans were rewarded for this strategy, picking up seats in the House of Representatives, and, depending on a pair of January runoff elections in Georgia, retaining control of the Senate. It appears only Trump can’t survive Trumpism.

 

But the lesson from voters? More of the same, please.

 

That is why, even with Trump soon to be out of office, Republicans are still spooked by his shadow, actively taking part in his campaign to misinform millions of American voters and plunge the country into a fruitless legal war. Even the supposedly “responsible” Republicans issuing milquetoast statement demanding every “legally cast” vote be counted are winking to the low-information crowds who believe millions of illegal votes were cast.

 

This, of course, includes a number of GOP presidential hopefuls, who know a ticket to 2024 will cost them their dignity in the short-term. The past is an ever-growing resource, and many of these would-be contenders hope there will soon be enough of it to distance them from the post-election freak show.

 

Some of these presidential aspirants are counting on Trump fading from view, once news networks are no longer forced to cover him. Others are trying to grab hold of the dragon Trump created and hope they can ride it for four more years.

 

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” one “senior Republican official” told the Washington Post. “No one seriously thinks the results will change. … He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”

 

Naturally, the ongoing behavior of Trump’s sycophants depends on how visible Trump remains while in exile, and whether he continues to demand fealty from weaker-willed Republicans. And much of Trump’s power will be determined by how much money he can make as a political figure once he’s out of office.

 

Even the current legal battles over the election results are a fundraising scam, with Trump’s appeals telling donors a portion of the money will be spent to retire campaign debt. As a private citizen, Trump faces hundreds of millions of dollars in debt he needs to repay—if he remains “political,” it seems his focus will be more on vacuuming money from his supporters’ pockets than refereeing disputes between Biden and potential Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

 

But in the shorter term, without any sort of condemnation from his own side, Trump will continue to put his own fundraising over the nation’s well-being as the phony voter fraud lawsuits continue. Historically, the peaceful transfer of power has relied on the losing candidate hoping to preserve his dignity and character. We are seeing what happens when we elect someone with neither of those things.

[akwoo]

Look - if Trump were serious about contesting the election, we'd be starting to hear some noise from a few very red state governments about not recognizing the Biden administration, redirecting tax withholding from the Biden controlled IRS to a different Trump controlled IRS, and so on.

 

None of that is happening.

[kenberg]

Look - if Trump were serious about contesting the election, we'd be starting to hear some noise from a few very red state governments about not recognizing the Biden administration, redirecting tax withholding from the Biden controlled IRS to a different Trump controlled IRS, and so on.

 

None of that is happening.

 

I suppose that I might agree a bit sort of. I still think we are in a potential crisis. Trump respects no boundaries, that has become completely clear. "Can I get away with it?" is the only consideration. Unlike some, I don't write off other Republicans as all being completely unprincipled. For example in Georgia we see that there will be a recount because of the close nature of the results, but I gather that the Republican Secretary of State is arranging a careful honest recount. I'm fine with careful honest recounts in close races (49.5 % versus 49.2 % be the WaPo map) But I gather that (and yes, I know it is from WaPo) some Rs think he is a traitor.

 

So we have an incomplete answer to the question of how far Rs are willing to go. Some will go a good deal further than others. Chas gets mentioned from time to time. Well, he isn't Q. There is a spectrum. Lindsey Graham seems comfortable in acting like an idiot. I really don't get it. A person can have too much to drink and say stupid things but he doesn't seem to be downing Scotch as he talks. But I don't think even LG has suggested that state legislatures should intervene in the electoral college choices. Maybe I missed it, I don't quite rule it out.

 

Briefly, I think we now all understand who Trump is. Never mind the psychological diagnoses, that's for the shrinks to do, we recognize what we see. But there are many Rs with varied interests, standards and power. What will they do? I'm an optimist, but realism is that it is not yet clear just where their limits are.

[Winstonm]

I suppose that I might agree a bit sort of. I still think we are in a potential crisis. Trump respects no boundaries, that has become completely clear. "Can I get away with it?" is the only consideration. Unlike some, I don't write off other Republicans as all being completely unprincipled. For example in Georgia we see that there will be a recount because of the close nature of the results, but I gather that the Republican Secretary of State is arranging a careful honest recount. I'm fine with careful honest recounts in close races (49.5 % versus 49.2 % be the WaPo map) But I gather that (and yes, I know it is from WaPo) some Rs think he is a traitor.

 

So we have an incomplete answer to the question of how far Rs are willing to go. Some will go a good deal further than others. Chas gets mentioned from time to time. Well, he isn't Q. There is a spectrum. Lindsey Graham seems comfortable in acting like an idiot. I really don't get it. A person can have too much to drink and say stupid things but he doesn't seem to be downing Scotch as he talks. But I don't think even LG has suggested that state legislatures should intervene in the electoral college choices. Maybe I missed it, I don't quite rule it out.

 

Briefly, I think we now all understand who Trump is. Never mind the psychological diagnoses, that's for the shrinks to do, we recognize what we see. But there are many Rs with varied interests, standards and power. What will they do? I'm an optimist, but realism is that it is not yet clear just where their limits are.

 

 

What I see developing is a fairly clear line between those Republicans who have no principles whatsoever and those who draw the line at claiming actual election fraud. As I said before, a careful reading of the statements from some say what is obvious and truthful - that the president has the legal right to challenge in court. Then there are those who care nothing about the United States and they are the ones who are fomenting insurrection talk with lies about election fraud. This group is doing lasting damage to democracies worldwide by casting doubt about the legitimacy of the democratic process of voting.

 

Only someone as deeply flawed as Stephen Miller or Mark Meadows would actively work to overturn the election results by what amounts to skullduggery.

 

The fact that we can even entertain the idea of the entire Republican party banding together for that end does not bode well for the future.

[y66]

President-elect Joe Biden has selected Ron Klain to be White House chief of staff, to fairly widespread acclaim. Klain was once a staffer for Biden on the Senate judiciary committee; since then, he’s worked for a number of Democratic big shots, eventually serving as Biden’s vice-presidential chief of staff during the rollout of the recovery act, and then as Barack Obama’s Ebola czar. He’s well qualified for the job, and seems to be well regarded by party groups and even by some Republicans (which is why I said Biden should choose him!).

 

Also presumably happy? Dwight D. Eisenhower.

 

The White House staff, in its modern sense, only goes back to Harry Truman’s presidency, and for a long time there was a serious partisan disagreement on how to run what was practically a new branch of government. Eisenhower, drawing on his military background, introduced the idea of a chief of staff and a highly structured organizational chart. Every Republican from Richard Nixon through George W. Bush followed his lead. Truman had used a much looser set-up, basically emulating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. Democrats tended to follow Truman’s example at the beginning of their terms, with either no designated chief of staff or (as with Bill Clinton) a very weak one. But over their presidencies, they gravitated toward the Ike model. The argument seemed to end in 2009, when Barack Obama began his presidency with Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, only to have Donald Trump govern — or fail to govern — in the old Democratic style.

 

It’s no surprise that Biden will follow Obama’s lead. Indeed, it’s hard to give him all that much credit for selecting the most obvious candidate and organizing his presidency in the most obvious way — except that we’ve just been through an administration that got the easy things wrong all too often. So credit Biden for ignoring any temptation to do something dramatic or unexpected.

 

Selecting a chief of staff is the single most important personnel call that Biden will make in setting up his administration. Get that wrong — as Ronald Reagan did when he chose Don Regan in 1985 — and a president invites all sorts of problems. A good chief of staff functions as both an extension of the president and as someone who can compensate for the boss’s weaknesses; see, for example, Reagan’s original choice, James Baker. All presidencies are subject to infighting, staffers who care more their own profiles than about the president’s success, and various other crises and disputes. A good chief of staff will minimize the downsides.

 

Of course, we’ll have to see if having the right experience and reputation will actually yield success for Klain. But to the extent that restoring normal, boring, competent governance was one of Biden’s key promises, he seems to be on the road to fulfilling it.

[y66]

Republican and conservative elites are beginning to bail on Trump's effort to overturn the election, which is good. But they're bailing because it won't work, not because it's wrong. They're leaving Trump as he's losing. I won't forget how few stood up to him when he was winning.

"President Trump is saying he needs your money for legal challenges...but he’s showing you in the fine print that your money won’t be used for legal challenges. What will he do with your money? Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior."

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/11/12/trump-damages-democracy-turns-profit-false-election-claims-column/6239950002/

Start a finish the wall fund?

[Zelandakh]

Start a finish the wall fund?

With small print to say that only donations above $5000 will actually be put towards anything relating to a wall.

[kenberg]

The Bernstein quote gives some history I was not aware of and then quotes with a very hopeful sentence

"But to the extent that restoring normal, boring, competent governance was one of Biden’s key promises, he seems to be on the road to fulfilling it."

Not only does this make me very happy, I also think it can win over a lot of voters. Unless the human race has undergone fundamental genetic change since I was young, a boring competence is appreciated by many people. Shove the midnight tweets.

 

[Winstonm]

The Bernstein quote gives some history I was not aware of and then quotes with a very hopeful sentence

"But to the extent that restoring normal, boring, competent governance was one of Biden's key promises, he seems to be on the road to fulfilling it."

Not only does this make me very happy, I also think it can win over a lot of voters. Unless the human race has undergone fundamental genetic change since I was young, a boring competence is appreciated by many people. Shove the midnight tweets.

 

 

I'm not so sure as you, Ken. Although the human race has not changed, the world occupied by that race has changed dramatically, most notably due to the internet and social media. Social media allows a constant turmoil as lies, misinformation, propaganda, and gaslighting become a daily - hell, hourly - obsession of many, many people. This constant turmoil has allowed people who in the past had leanings one way or another on issues like race to be engulfed by a tsunami of allowability for the worst side of their natures.

 

The only way out is for more people to grasp that Facebook, Twitter, et al, are not sources for information but simply a good way for families to stay in touch and be entertained. Strange, but the only way out of the problem caused by right-wing misinformation seems to be the right's belief in self-responsibility.

 

 

 

[shyams]

May I point out that Trump will behave unlike any other ex-President?

 

The tradition is that an ex-Pres will rarely (almost never) comment on the current President's policies or decisions. This will most certainly not apply to Trump; I would expect him to give a running commentary in the form of endless tweets ridiculing every decision or policy of the new administration.

 

Unless he is found culpable in some criminal misconduct, he would also see himself as the next Grover Cleveland (two discrete terms in office).

 

I'm afraid this thread is not going anywhere any time soon. There is still 8 more years of life left in it :blink: :(

[johnu]

Start a finish the wall fund?

Maybe a wall around Mar-a-Lago... so he can keep his undocumented aliens who work there out of sight and unable to leave.

[Winstonm]

Good that the reason for partisanship is being talked about out loud:

 

 

Those assessments are combined into the main measure in the chart above, which tracks parties' overall commitment to democracy. Lührmann points out that the Republican Party score started to edge downward during the Obama administration but fell off a cliff in 2016 with the ascent of Trump.

 

The Democratic Party, by contrast, hasn't changed much. This is a prime example of what political scientists call asymmetric polarization — a growing partisan gap driven almost entirely by the actions of the Republican Party.

 

my emphasis

 

The demoralizing part is how few Republicans care that their party is now more closely aligned with dictators than democracy. The party of individual responsibility is now nothing but slavish followers. Sad.

[johnu]

May I point out that Trump will behave unlike any other ex-President?

 

The tradition is that an ex-Pres will rarely (almost never) comment on the current President's policies or decisions. This will most certainly not apply to Trump; I would expect him to give a running commentary in the form of endless tweets ridiculing every decision or policy of the new administration.

 

Unless he is found culpable in some criminal misconduct, he would also see himself as the next Grover Cleveland (two discrete terms in office).

 

I'm afraid this thread is not going anywhere any time soon. There is still 8 more years of life left in it :blink: :(

The only important thing to know is that the ex Manchurian President has absolutely zero authority to influence the federal government. Instead of being the sociopath and whackjob president who can screw up people's lives, he will be the sociopath and whackjob private (and hopefully imprisoned) citizen who has no more influence than the sociopaths and whackjobs on Fox Propaganda Channel. or other ultra right fringe outlets.

 

Unless he is found culpable in some criminal misconduct, he would also see himself as the next Grover Cleveland (two discrete terms in office).

In 2024, he may be the 1st major candidate to run for president while still in prison B-)

[Winstonm]

Trump said that if he lost the election to Joe Biden he might have to leave the country. Personally, I don't care where he washes ashore as long as his stench doesn't desecrate Arlington National Cemetery.

[johnu]

China has acknowledged that Joe Biden won the US election, leaving Russia the only major power still on the fence

 

Putin is the only major world leader still holding out hope for the Manchurian President. Not that it makes any difference. I fully expect that a Biden Administration will impose crippling sanctions on Russia for the actions in sabotaging Clinton's campaign in 2016, and the Russian bots and Hunter Biden propaganda in 2020, in addition to other anti-social actions they have undertaken worldwide for the past 4 years. It's time for Russia to pay the piper.

[Zelandakh]

Putin is the only major world leader still holding out hope for the Manchurian President.

Did Brazil, Mexico, Slovenia and PRK congratulate the President-elect then?

[kenberg]

Trump is finishing his term with an absolutely clear demonstration of who he is . It's time for everyone to say No. Trump is Trump, so he gets a team of lawyers who will do whatever they can for Trump, to hell with anyone else. That's Trump, always has been, always will be. That's Trump. Time to say No. Time for everyone to say No.

It's really exactly that simple.

[Winstonm]

Trump is finishing his term with an absolutely clear demonstration of who he is . It's time for everyone to say No. Trump is Trump, so he gets a team of lawyers who will do whatever they can for Trump, to hell with anyone else. That's Trump, always has been, always will be. That's Trump. Time to say No. Time for everyone to say No.

It's really exactly that simple.

 

The time to say no was back in 2016. Today we are suffering consequences of our actions back then. That should be on our minds going forward.

[kenberg]

We will all see this in our own way.

[Zelandakh]

Trump is finishing his term with an absolutely clear demonstration of who he is . It's time for everyone to say No. Trump is Trump, so he gets a team of lawyers who will do whatever they can for Trump, to hell with anyone else. That's Trump, always has been, always will be. That's Trump. Time to say No. Time for everyone to say No.

It's really exactly that simple.

Bridge players all love saying No Trump! :P

[Winstonm]

The bottom line about Donald Trump:

 

 

There is no grand strategy at play, according to interviews with a half-dozen advisers and people close to the president. Trump is simply trying to survive from one news cycle to the next, seeing how far he can push his case against his defeat and ensure the continued support of his Republican base.

 

By dominating the story of his exit from the White House, he hopes to keep his millions of supporters energized and engaged for whatever comes next.

 

my emphasis

 

 

As the consummate grifter, Trump knows how to keep suckers distracted while he picks their pockets.

[Winstonm]

I found a

: