America's Cold Civil War

                Donald Trump should concede the 2020 election now and facilitate a normal transfer of executive power.

               It's not that he doesn't have a point regarding possible fraud in this election.  Christopher Krebs' assertion notwithstanding,  the 2020 election  is unlikely to have been "the most secure in U.S. history",  and the more dogmatically our Democrats echo Mr. Krebs' avowal,  the more open to question it becomes.  Circumstantial evidence pointing to possible fraud is significant, and Trump could hardly be expected to ignore the issue.

               It should not be forgotten that Hillary Clinton herself in August of this year advised Joe Biden, should he appear to have lost the election, not to concede "under any circumstances". Her rationale was that Republicans would, in her words, have attempted to "mess up absentee balloting". Mrs. Clinton is as well-positioned as anyone in the country to know how possible this was going to be. She was also no doubt fully aware that her own party's operatives were poised to exploit exactly the same vulnerability  should it prove necessary. Trump is justified in wondering if such skullduggery is indeed what just cost him this election.

               All that said, however, circumstantial evidence accounts for nothing in court, and it's already clear that's about all Trump has to go on. This doesn't mean game-changing fraud didn't occur, but simply that it can't be proven conclusively. And proof is all that matters in the end. 

               The bar is, as it should be, extremely high for anyone attempting to overturn a called election. America is already showing disturbing signs of resembling a supersized banana republic,  and a chaotic transfer of power at this stage in our history would carry that dynamic to an embarrassing new level. The consequences for our political future would be devastating, and our ballyhooed reputation as Democracy's global champion would be gone.

               The immediate problem is, of course, that most of the key players don't really want an end to the banana republic stuff. They're all addicted to it. The Democrats, egged on by their left wing, are by now so accustomed to perpetual shaming and inquisition that they would feel politically naked if they had to depend on their ideology  alone for winning public support. They require outrage and enemies in order to sustain momentum.

               Donald Trump, for his part,  has over the last four years grown comfortable in his role as persecuted martyr. He knows that even out office, his detractors are going to  continue hounding him in court under whatever pretext they can uncover.  It would be simply a continuation of the impeachment process that seemed like such an empty can for them at the time,  but that in fact served the purpose of giving them much-needed unity of purpose. Trump has, in my opinion, always been more interested in attention than in political power anyway, and even out of office he can go on courting attention as long as he can remain at the center of inquisition. Rather like Hillary Clinton, the only thing in life he really fears is irrelevance.   

               Most importantly, the media has profited handsomely by endlessly fanning the flames of political discord. Celebrity pundits are not going to return easily to the roles of flat-footed reporters. Hence, they, the Democrats, and Donald Trump are all motivated by the same need, i.e.,  to keep the hostile extravaganza running. Even with the mantle of the Presidency in hand, Joe Biden will continue to be, as he is now, little more than a political sideshow. He's too ineffectual and a little too boring to be of much interest to anyone.   

               However, the general public is growing tired of the whole thing. Speaking for myself, I'm sick to death of it, and I know I'm not alone. Both Trump's cult and the anti-cult arrayed against him are going to start losing steam now. The media will soon discover that fanning dead embers will never re-start a fire.

So Where Does All This Leave The Republicans?

               Most people seem to have forgotten that Trump was never really a Republican. His ideological grounding has always been wobbly, and as recently as 2008 he identified more or less as a Democrat, voicing half-hearted support for Mrs. Clinton in her contest against Barak Obama. He didn't seem to be paying much attention to the Republicans in those days.

               However, he soon recognized the opportunity opening up for himself in that hapless party,  and in 2009 he registered there.  By the time 2016 rolled around, he had taken over the Party "like a bottom-feeding sea creature taking up residence in an abandoned shell", if I might be permitted here to quote myself (American Counterpoint, 5/10/20). Trump formed an alliance of convenience with traditional Republicans but neither his heart  nor theirs were ever really in it.  When he used the Party's infrastructure to clobber Mrs. Clinton in that year's election, Republicans were pleased but still wary of him. They never really forgave him for his repudiation of free trade, his isolationism, his fiscal imprudence, nor his tolerance for big government. They also mistrusted his shoddy friends and his weird personality.   

               At this point, in my opinion, the only viable strategy for the Republicans is to re-affirm their party's traditional values and cut their ties with Donald Trump. He was never really one of them, and they should now allow him to drift back to wherever his shallow roots can find a point of attachment.

               The problem for them is, however, they no longer have a viable political base without the voters he energized. He was able to take over the empty shell of the party precisely because it had indeed become empty. Without him, the shell probably becomes vacant again .

               I wish I could see a constructive forward path Republicans right now, but I'm struggling with the task. It's aspirational values are:  responsible hard work, self-reliance, economic freedom, fairness,  pragmatism, and defense of liberty internationally, all political principles that must remain as focal points for any program I'm willing to support.  I want to believe that the American public is ready to embrace these values again too if a responsible  champion can step forward. However, I'm not optimistic. The party  might survive, but only if leaders emerge who are able once again to articulate Republican precepts in a manner that has resonance for voters.

               So far as I can see, such leaders are not among us at the present time.

And What About The Democrats?

               While Democrats are trying their best to celebrate their 2020 victory, the insightful ones are troubled because they know how embarrassingly shallow it was. For one thing, they actually managed to lose ground in the House of Representatives,  thanks to the antics there of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the other unapologetic leftists whom the Dems, revealingly,  have allowed to become  their party's public face.

               Even more troubling for traditional Democrats has to be that,  in an effort to disguise their party's leftward lurch,  they lined up behind a man who was probably the weakest presidential candidate in America since Alf Landon.  Absolutely no one seemed able to muster more than tepid enthusiasm for him, and even that was largely feigned. Voters turned to him because he promised to put an end to Trumpism, and they could imagine him perhaps on a good day to be something like what he once was.    

               Given Biden's physical and mental debilities,  he may well not make it through his term. This sets the stage for what is probably going to be yet another turbulent transition in the very near future. It's symptomatic of the party's deep cynicism that they have knowingly subjected the country to the risk of this destabilizing scenario.

               The Democratic Party, like the Republican Party,  has pretty much lost its identity.  What was once the "party of the common man", dedicated to a fair deal for everyone, has today evolved into the party of upper-middle class sophisticates,  shallow Hollywood celebrities, and hedge fund billionaires, all dedicated to little more than strident outrage and the cult of victimhood. It's all quite odd. They have massive funding, outspending the GOP by 2 to 1 in this extravagant election,  but no viable political platform. In 2020, all that has really animated them was rabid anti-Trumpism. With Trump nearly out of the way now, that soon will be gone too. What's left?

Death Spiral for America's Two-Party System

               Both of our major political parties are, in my judgment,  in a precarious state. Trump may have just facilitated the final death throes of the Republicans, and the radical socialists are in the process of accomplishing the same for the Democrats. 

               The purpose of political parties in a democratic system  is to facilitate collaboration and to help keep the human proclivity for conflict within constructive  bounds. Their method is promoting cooperation among various interest groups who have different priorities but who have enough in common to allow for mutual tolerance. They build coalitions among themselves to pursue their objectives and defend against  other groups perceived by all to be the bigger threat. Hence, parties are by their nature unstable and prone to fragmentation when the allied groups no longer feel their own goals being addressed within the confines of the confederation.

               The roots of today's parties can be traced back to the early days of the American republic, but the modern parties both took shape in the chaotic years following the Civil War. They have since morphed repeatedly and today bear little resemblance to their original incarnations, even though Republicans occasionally brag about their role in liberating black Americans, and Democrats sometimes talk as though they imagine themselves still to be representing the nation's hardworking yeomen.  

               It's my guess that our parties are probably entering into another period of shape-changing,  albeit with new and troubling undercurrents that will add alarming twists to the process. Trump voters are mad as hell, and probably not particularly interested in being saddled much longer with the stuffed suits of the old GOP. On the other side of the great divide, the radical left is no doubt eager to get on with shoving Joe Biden out of the way and finally making clear what their real agenda for the country is.

               This is obviously an explosive configuration that bodes ill for our future.

 Cold Civil War

               Financier Barnard Baruch in 1947 coined the term "Cold War" to describe the deadly tension that ramped up between the U.S. and the Soviet Union when WWII's end ruptured the alliance between the two nations. In the new nuclear age, hot war was too horrible for anyone to contemplate, and yet war it seemed to be once again right on the heels of the one just ended. So "Cold War" became the metaphor that defined the geopolitics of the next four decades. The two sides entered into conflict all over the world, but mutual dread of the consequences resulting from true total war forced them to pull their punches until the Soviet Union finally threw in the towel in 1991.

               Now today in the United States Cold Civil War seems like an apt metaphor to describe the sorry condition into which our national dialogue has descended.

               Sometime prior to the election, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin on  national television said the following:

“Shunning, shaming these people (i.e. Republicans) is a statement of moral indignation that these people are not fit for polite society.… It’s not only that Trump has to lose, but that all his enablers have to lose. We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.”

Ms. Rubin is not some obscure blogger or an Antifa spokeswoman. She is a mainstream journalist writing for a major American newspaper. Talk about dog whistles!  If we alter the contemporary references here, these words could have emanated from the mouth of Joseph Goebbels. She imagines herself to be speaking metaphorically, but political metaphors invariably reveal deeper thinking.  They will do it again!  No survivors allowed!

               Even the writers of Teen Vogue  are fulminating in adolescent fury about "progressive ideas".  One Kandist Mallett cries out that these wonderful ideas  "always get shafted"  when Democrats compromise with anybody. So please, Mr. Biden, no compromising!

               Out of curiosity I did a quick google search yesterday to find out if the Communist Party USA was still in business.  Indeed it is! While still steeped in their lugubrious nineteenth century doctrines,  and still hungry for "struggle", and "people's revolution",  these folks have updated their look and feel. The posted articles are full of ebullient election chatter and complete with the latest news about Pennsylvania and Georgia. Fully aware of what's happening on the left wing of the Democratic Party, they've endorsed Joe Biden! They know he won't be around for long.

                Antifa and BLM, operating as our modern-day American brownshirts, will remain in the streets, knowing no distinction between celebration and riot.

               I don't know what's going to emerge on the Republican side at this point, but I fear the reaction to all this.  Some Dems have been loosely and irresponsibly throwing around the word "fascist" for the past four years. They've aimed it at Trump and anybody else showing the temerity to question their doctrines.

               I fear the day may be approaching when they learn what a real fascist looks like. I really don't want to be around on that day.

America's Crashing Clown Car - Part 3

(A Continuation My 5/27 and 5/10 Postings)

A Storm Of Money

          Many Republicans are, and should be, embarrassed by the fact that for all their posturing about budgetary discipline, it's been under their presidents that much of the fiscal profligacy has occurred in recent decades. They have tended perversely to embrace tax cuts and high defense spending at the same time, without showing much more real interest than their Democratic colleagues in limiting the growth of entitlement programs or the size of the nation's costly administrative bureaucracy. Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, in 1985 even resigned in protest at this hypocrisy. Stockman's gesture achieved little, however, as Reagan's Vice President George Bush was elected his successor and continued in much the same vein.

          It was only when Democrat Bill Clinton came into office that the long running economic expansion initiated under Reagan began throwing off enough tax revenue that the seemingly permanent deficit began to shrink. In 1998, the deficit actually turned to surplus for the first time in a generation and remained there for the last three years of Clinton's presidency. This embarrassment of riches even got to the point where some economists fretted that a shortage of Treasury securities loomed and potentially threatened the stability of the banking system.

          They needn't have worried. Bush's son George W. was waiting in the wings, and his presidency brought about a return to sharply rising deficits and the consequent renewed supply of Treasuries. Furthermore, his presidency ended with a scary financial crash in 2008 that was followed by a severe and prolonged recession.

          Barak Obama, his successor, entered office in the midst of this mess and ushered in four years of trillion dollar-plus deficits. While his policy was on one level engineered to stimulate the doddering economy, it did so by throwing money around to political constituencies who had been clamoring for it all along anyway. The Democrats, now in control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress, felt finally free of fiscal constraints. They started behaving like happy weight-watchers who had just been told it was healthy to gorge at their favorite smorgasbord.

          Obama was a widely-admired President - even I liked him - but his actual policies were never as popular as Party stalwarts believed. His coattails quickly wore thin and the Democrats lost control of the House in another two years, and then the Senate four years after that. The resulting legislative gridlock meant that trillion-dollar deficits seemed like a thing of the past, although deficits remained high both in absolute terms and as a percentage of GNP.

Trump Arrives 

          Donald Trump always had the instincts of a crony-capitalist and he was never in the least bit serious in his occasional throwaway lines about cutting deficits. During his 2016 campaign he even let slip the notion - surely unvetted by his advisors and probably even by Trump himself prior to the parting of his lips - that he would eliminate the debt aggregate itself during the spectacular eight years of his approaching two-term presidency!

          Orthodox Republicans quickly had cause to join their Democratic friends in bemoaning the President's lies. He never had any problem whatsoever with either big government or its associated debt burden. What actually started happening the day he assumed office was a resumption of the upward sloping deficit trend line. It in fact took only three years for the budgetary shortfall once again to cross Obama's famous trillion-dollar mark, and this while the economy remained strong and before COVID-19 blasted onto the scene!

          When the virus did hit, all stops were kicked loose. No politician of either party seemed ready to express any skepticism regarding the scale of expenditures needed. Even AOC herself in March had warm words of praise for the President's early covonovirus proposal, albeit with the hastily-considered proviso that her Party planned to "bump it up a little". Dem radicals appeared stunned into momentary comity as the enemy President was suddenly suggesting outlays that exceeded what only months earlier had been the stuff of their own fondest dreams.

          The dust is as of yet still far from settling on all this, but current estimates suggest that the 2020 deficit will approach $4 trillion, nearly quadrupling estimates that only earlier in the year had already been sounding over the moon. Furthermore, no one is seeing much light at the end of this tunnel, and fairly optimistic consensus guesswork has those trillion-dollar-plus budgetary holes continuing out about as far as the academic eye can see. Far from being scaled back or even stabilized, the debt aggregate appears to be growing at an accelerating pace.   

The Siren's Song 

          Economists have never agreed about deficits. They have no consensus formulas telling them when a fatal line is being approached. Conservatives have always talked about all deficits as reckless steps down the primrose path to hyperinflation. Liberals on the other hand, citing Keynes, have regarded them as policy devices necessary for heading off downturns, albeit mostly ignoring his caution about their use during expansionary periods. Generations of serious policymakers have indeed treated deficits as tools, while keeping a wary eye on their dangers if pushed too hard.

          Serious policymakers, however, are being crowded aside in the current environment. Desperate times breed desperate ideas.

          There is a relatively new school of economic thinking that styles itself as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Its spokespeople include Randal Wray, Bill Mitchell, Warren Mosler, Stephanie Kelton, and others. MMT's central idea - not an idea at all really, but a simple fact - is that all the world's central banks, including America's Federal Reserve, are now free of gold or any other fixed standard. These banks can thus at any time create unlimited quantities of new money, and always stand ready to do so whenever the volume of maturing debt exceeds the roll-over capacity of bond markets. Short of irrational political interventions, default is thus rendered impossible. Debt is nothing to worry about and neither are deficits.

          I became aware of these writers a number of years ago and took comfort in the knowledge that hardly anybody seemed to be taking them seriously. However, I remember thinking at the time there would be hell to pay one day should they ever start finding ears within the Democratic Party. Left-fringe ideas for unlimited government could stop sounding so silly if those show-stopping funding constraints could just be made to disappear.  

Have You Heard The Good News? 

          Well, MMT has now proclaimed these constraints to be illusions, and the Party's suddenly-prominent neo-socialists have indeed opened their ears to the good news. Bernie Sanders and AOC have both publicly embraced MMT, seeking to rescue it from the cold waters of crankishness and to reel the what-me-worry theory into the warm political mainstream. Proposals for omnivorous programs like their Green New Deal and Medicare For All are being positioned for the first time as doable schemes. Indeed, they can be paid for without even raising taxes, and hence does MMT shore up this most common angle of attack against the new socialism. It all sounds great.  

          I'm not trying to belittle the MMT theorists. They are in fact sophisticated analysts with a sound grasp of how our monetary system works. Most of them are primarily academics, but some also have pragmatic real-world experience. Warren Mossler, for example, is a hedge fund founder and automotive engineer. He also once operated a broker-dealer, and this experience provided him an insider's perch overlooking Fed operations and the mechanics of the American monetary system. He has a deeper understanding of this stuff than most economists or politicians of any persuasion. Hence, when he talks about the ease of money creation, he knows exactly what he's getting at, as do most of his MMT colleagues.

          The problem with these folks, however, is that having understood the power of unlimited governmental authority, they have allowed themselves to become seduced by it. It's not surprising then that they're now finding common cause with our neo-socialist politicians, who have long been enthralled by the promise of government free of impediments. Perhaps tongue-in-cheek but revealingly, Mosler titles his web homepage "The Center Of The Universe". And in the style of a true self-referencing zealot, he's even proclaimed a doctrine he calls "Mosler's Law", which goes: "There is no financial crisis so deep that a sufficiently large fiscal adjustment cannot deal with it". No wonder Bernie and AOC are coming to love this guy and his colleagues.  It wouldn't surprise me if Trump too, lover of HUGE things that he is, might himself be secretly falling under MMT's spell. With the power of unlimited money, his great accomplishments could be written in the stars for all eternity.  

The Deadly Cost Of Free Money 

          Economic life, however, is not so simple. All developed economies are sprawling systems functioning via a virtual infinity of moving parts. No person, party, philosophical faction or government can see any more than a small fraction of the whole picture. However, no entity at any level is forced to operate completely in the dark either, because they have small points of light to guide them in their decision-making. These lodestars are prices, which in theory allow all players in the system to acquire goods and services they need in a manner that optimizes supply and demand. Stuff in relatively short supply is expensive, while anything flowing freely out of mass factories or God's green earth is cheap. Furthermore, for many goods and services, high prices stimulate production which then lowers prices again and contributes to general abundance.

          This is bedrock free market dogma, and the problem with it is that, while prices generally do perform their allotted function, the job they do is imperfect due to the many distorting factors that are at work. As our liberals would correctly point out, extreme disparities of wealth pervert pricing because uber-rich consumers buy more stuff than they need and thus make it more expensive and less available for everybody else. Liberals, like many conservatives, would also make the case that big, inefficient corporations add to the problem, since they often undertake wasteful mass projects that exceed their managerial capacity. They consume resources and drive up prices often without adding enough value to compensate.

          What liberals generally fail to acknowledge, however, is that seen in this light, governments behave like the biggest corporations of all. Often with good intentions, they undertake the kind of mass projects to which only governments can aspire, but that even the best of managers would be unable to control effectively. The purpose that budget constraints serve is to limit the ambition of government program managers and their allied politicians to initiatives they have at least some hope of being able to administer.

Our Achilles Heel 

          Hence, when the Socialist-MMT alliance proclaims budget constraints to be illusionary, they draw attention to the Achilles Heel long hidden in plain sight at the heart of our economic system. This is that the Fed's capacity for unlimited money creation has deadly potential if ever coupled with our government's unlimited capacity for high-cost experimental problem-solving.  

          Dollars dumped lavishly and carelessly into medical care, direct transfers, environmental and energy projects, infrastructure and just about any other imaginable program or subsidy would destroy the vital pricing signals that allow our system to function. These points of light, these lodestars, would grow progressively dimmer until decision-makers at all levels would find themselves reduced to operating blindly. This is what happens when central banking excess undermines an economy's mechanism for rational pricing.

          This already dangerous problem then becomes explosive when we consider that America's Fed is not just any central bank, but is the source of the mighty U.S. dollar. As the world's primary reserve currency, the dollar is the modern monetary equivalent of gold, and the bank wielding the power to spin it out of thin air is able to operate like a cabal of alchemists. Former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, paraphrasing his predecessor Charles de Gaulle, characterized the dollar's power as America's "Exorbitant Privilege". 

          Looked at in this light, it is not all that hard to understand why chronic deficit spending has not yet led to ruinous inflation. America's bonds are forward contracts on its currency, and the world has for generations accepted this currency as though it were equivalent to gold.  By thus absorbing  our excess dollars, the global economy protects us from what would otherwise be the inflationary consequences  of  our monetary policy.

          The problem is that the rest of the world is not as gullible as we have apparently come to believe. Our fellow nations will not go on receiving dollars into their own monetary reserves if it becomes apparent to them that we are blowing our precious currency out the door like confetti.

          What our neo-socialist politicians, now encouraged by their MMT brain trust, are advocating is nothing less than the selfish and reckless abuse of America's Exorbitant Privilege.

Are We At The Tipping Point? 

          Even though economists have no formulas warning them when the monetary tipping point is approaching, the framework for considering the question is actually pretty simple. For nations, as for corporations, almost any debt burden is manageable so long as the debtor's resources are expanding. This is why, in the corporate world, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) can succeed for cases in which the target company is growing steadily. A seemingly insurmountable debt burden becomes progressively smaller in relative terms over time, until eventually the healthy firm easily absorbs its servicing cost.

          The situation is not so sanguine, however, when the firm encounters business adversity and begins to shrink. Under these circumstances, the arithmetic reverses itself and debt looms ever larger relative to the declining cash flow available to service it. If the pattern persists, bankruptcy is the only possible end game.

          Now, as the MMT folks love to point out in their lectures, nations aren't corporations and do not file for bankruptcy. Assuming debt that is denominated in their own currency, nations can and will always create new money to service it and hence technically can never default. The problem for nations occurs when the volume of new money necessary for this purpose begins to undermine the currency's value and the debt gets repaid in money that has lost its purchasing power. This point becomes the functional equivalent of bankruptcy.

          Now let's get back to the current COVID-19 crisis. Everyone seems aware of the fact that our economy is in some trouble, but I have to wonder if people are really coming to grips with how truly cavernous the hole is that has just belched open in front of us. The recent trillion dollar-plus deficit projections still assume a fairly robust economy. Yet what we are now experiencing is not only not a robust economy, nor even a normal recession, but the first stage of a deep and probably sustained depression. No one knows yet what the numbers are going to look like, but some estimates suggest that GDP could drop as much as 9% in the current year - exceeding the worst of the much ballyhooed "Great Recession".  And it will keep dropping if the economy is unable to re-open out of fear for the virus.

          The current U.S. federal debt aggregate is around $25 trillion and is now more than 100% of GDP. This ratio does not in itself have to represent an impossible burden, but quickly does so if the depression we're in sustains itself and our tax base continues to shrink.

          It's not completely far-fetched at this point to think of the U.S. economy as the sovereign equivalent of a corporate LBO. And like a leveraged company encountering a slump, the U.S. entering a depression will find that even its existing debt burden will grow relatively bigger and bigger with time.   

          And the existing debt burden is unfortunately only the starting point. In addition to the routine deficits now accumulating at a trillion-plus each year, a host of other potential claims beckon: 

• State and local governments are grappling with their own budgetary holes, some of them quite severe.
• State unemployment funds are already failing, and more are threatened if jobs don't come back and temporary furloughs become permanent.
• Public and private pension funds, which became a scary focal issue during the last recession, will again face shortfalls should stock market lose its currently inexplicable buoyancy.
• Our banks, while better capitalized than in 2008, may start to totter again.  

       

           All of these entities will appeal for federal subsidies as needed to ensure their survival. And it's not in Trump's nature, nor that of Congress, to resist such pleas. 

          Oh, and one more thing, interest on the federal debt - already a material budget item - threatens to explode when the bond and money markets awaken to the fact that inflation risk is not so non-existent as everyone seems to assume nowadays. And when inflation does return, it is likely to accelerate quickly, even in the midst of the economic downturn.

          The debt resulting from all these factors will be monetized because there is no practical alternative. Higher taxes cannot pay for it even if there was political will to attempt this option.

          The Fed is universally recognized as the backstop now for everything, and it will not hesitate to do whatever is needed to avoid systemic collapse. And why not, when the necessary money can be created in seconds by a few keystrokes entered into the the Fed's omnipotent computer system?

          I lack both the expertise and the stomach to add all this stuff up, but as Bob Dylan explained to us half a century ago, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. 

 This certainly sounds like a tipping point to me. 

  And we intend to hold a Presidential election in the middle of it all? 

America's Crashing Clown Car - Part 2

(A Continuation my 5/10/20 article. 

The following was originally posted on 5/17/20 but inadvertently deleted. We're reposting it here  with today's date. The reference in Keith's 5/21 piece is to this article.

Where Are The Democrats Heading? 

            The Democrats' presidential primary campaign has been a struggle between its left wing and its traditionalists. The Party has a problem, however, in that while it's radicals are providing the political force vitale, the Dems' only hope of winning the election seems instead to be in renouncing extremism and presenting a more moderate image to the public. Their debates have been awkward affairs in which the two sides have danced around one another in an effort to keep the radical energy alive and somehow still establish a winning framework for the election.

            The Party has chosen to allow their young NY congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to become the public face for the rising generation of Democrats, and she seems proud of how far out onto the left fringe she has been able to skate. The Party, always prone to hero worship, has even seen fit to bestow upon her one of their coveted three-letter acronyms, usually reserved for their icons. Though barely out of her twenties, she is now "AOC" and stands in the revered company of FDR, JFK, RFK, MLK, and LBJ. Someone is certainly busy marketing her career, and she has become a superstar.

Uncle Bernie 

            Bernie Sanders is a pivotal resource for the Party right now. His avuncular and sometimes even lovable persona reassures the public, even though his politics are extreme by the standards of any past political norms in America. This is, after all, a man who in his youth was a vocal fan of the old Soviet Union and who more recently has had words of praise for the Chavista Government still running Venezuela,  despite horrific evidence there of how his political principles play out in the real world. He has performed invaluable service to the radical wing of his party simply by mainstreaming the term "socialist", which historically had always been a third rail for politicians in this country. It is that no longer.

            Many of his followers today are young enough to be his grandchildren and few of them have the historical knowledge to question Uncle Bernie when he tells them it's now OK to be a socialist. He tempers the reality by describing his ideology as "democratic socialism", although not many seem to pick up on this as the a contradiction in terms it is. If the "Bernie Bros" were familiar even with fairly recent history, they would realize that the thuggish Mr. Chavez wrapped himself up that same Orwellian banner.

            Sanders is, of course, only a transitional figure. His age and poor health have always precluded any serious chance for him to win the Party's nomination this year. However, he holds the power singlehandedly to cost the Democrats this election should he urge his followers to bolt the Party or even simply stay away from the polls. He's not a stupid man, and his objective all along cannot have been actually to win the Party's nomination, but rather to gain control of its direction.

Enter Joe Biden 

            It was revealing, after all the bitterness transpiring between the rival camps, how quickly Sanders swung into line behind Joe Biden as soon as his erstwhile rival appeared to sew up the nomination. Such sudden warmth can only mean that the behind-the-scenes deals had already been made between the two camps. The leftish faction will control the Party's agenda and substantially populate any future Biden administration. The easy rapprochement also probably means that the neo-socialists will own the now all-important choice of his running mate. Everyone knows that, should Biden be elected, his VP might soon look forward to an important promotion.

            Joe Biden is a decent man who has always represented the best the Democratic Party has to offer. While left of center, he's shown respect for his opponents and earned theirs in return. He is, however, a shell of himself at this point and can hardly string five words together without losing his train of thought. He has dementia and would, if elected, be incapable of exerting much will of his own. He would be tightly controlled by the real powers behind his Presidency, who would not be moderates.

            The Party strategists certainly realize the potential disaster they face throwing a man in his condition into the rough-and-tumble of a Presidential campaign. It is my belief that right now they are surely racking their brains in an effort to bring another candidate forward to replace Biden. This jarring development would be highly dangerous for their Party and for our country, but they may well choose to risk it. They will be unwilling to sacrifice a victory that, once again as in 2016, they believe to be now within their grasp.

Election In A Firestorm 

            So what we have this year then is a Presidential contest between a blowhard opportunist on one side, and either a broken man or a last-minute mystery candidate on the other. This burlesque was already taking place against a backdrop of anger and general cynicism, but a new destabilizing factor has now emerged. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a primal emotional panic everywhere and, as an oddly under-appreciated side effect, suddenly forced the national unemployment rate to the highest level ever recorded by the Bureau Labor Statistics. Unemployment is now higher than even during some years of the Great Depression.

            In past generations, national crises have generally united Americans in the fight against a common enemy. Predictably, what's happening now instead is intensifying partisan warfare. Whatever one thinks of Trump's actions so far in combating the emergency, there is absolutely nothing he could have done that would have avoided the bitter attacks being leveled at him by his opposition. Any correct move would have been quickly overlooked in the eagerness to throw light on his next mistake.

            Following Rahm Emanuel's famous advice, our Democrats are seeking leverage from the current crisis and not letting it go to waste. In the vanguard is the strident young AOC, who seems to be taking her cues from the Leninist playbook and it is calling for something akin to a general strike. Once again, the nation's vital energy is being sucked away into the vortex of ugly politics at the very time it's most needed for rational problem-solving.

The Minefield Between Now And November 

            While it is probable that the viral pandemic itself will be receding six months from now, my judgment is that its economic impact will by then be only gaining traction. Small to mid-sized businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and many of them are being forced to shut down and to furlough their employees. And of those shuttered companies, many will never re-open, leaving employees and operators alike stranded and angry.

            To address the problem, Trump and Congress are suddenly on common ground in their desire to pour oceans of money on it. They're debating only about whether to spend a lot or a whole lot or a whole lot more. And given the magnitude of the collapse, even most free-market advocates are agreeing that massive governmental action is called for now. Most understand that the current implosion is not a normal economic downturn that might reasonably be expected to self-correct. This is instead analogous to a medically-induced coma that requires electro-shock therapy to restore functionality.

            Pushing the metaphor a little further, however, the critical question becomes whether the sick body has the vitality anymore to withstand such treatment.

            The federal budget deficit has been a political bugbear for generations now. Deficit spending has been with us since the earliest days of our republic, when Alexander Hamilton, against strident opposition, forced through federal assumption of the states' Revolutionary War obligations. Part of Hamilton's vision was that this sweeping act would bind them all to the economic development of the new nation, and it worked. Federal debt, once a bitterly controversial idea, has been with us ever since except for a few years during the 1830's when President Andrew Jackson triggered a depression by paying it all off.

Sword Of Damocles 

            Afterwards, the budget deficit ebbed and flowed over the years, but the trend line has been ineluctably up. The consequent debt aggregate has kept expanding. The deficit spiked sharply during the 1930's as government battled the Great Depression and spiked even higher during the WWII years. The great economist John Maynard Keynes provided a theoretical framework explaining why all this was OK at the time, and our politicians - who have their own reasons for embracing federal expenditures and tax cuts - responded warmly to Keynes' way of thinking.

            What they conveniently overlooked was Keynes' proviso that deficits were constructive during economic downturns, but not during expansions, when surpluses were needed as a means both for keeping inflation at bay and holding the aggregate debt down to a manageable level. No responsible economist has ever argued that debt could spike up and up forever without eventually destroying the economy and the currency.

          The only serious debates have been over how to identify and avoid that tipping point.

Two widely accepted, often-conflicting ideologies drive much of today's political animus:

The conservative ideology is based on the concept that freedom of economic action underlies prosperity. At its extreme, this view prioritizes public policy that supports businesses operating in free markets, and discourages public policy that constrains business behavior. An extension of this ideology is the sacredness of individual freedom of action.

The liberal ideology is based on the concept of protecting the community: the family, the clan, the tribe, the State, the nation, and even the world.

As an aside, I would note that the term "liberal" is often applied to both ideologies! To many economic thinkers, "liberal" and "neoliberal" refer to free markets; a liberal, then, is one like Mises, Hayek, Friedman, or Ayn Rand who advocates free markets. In today's politics, however, a liberal is almost the opposite: one who accepts freedom of economic action as the basis for prosperity, but would impose constraints for the sake of community protection.

With respect to Mark's latest posting, I would only say that the above conceptual understanding of our political differences makes more sense to me than Mark's rather conspiratorial approach. Hence, although Mark infers a cabal of Democratic (liberal) conspirators using a mentally defective Joe Biden as a Trojan horse to gain control of the country, I see the coming election as a choice between an erratic Republican candidate who has no concern for any community outside some members of his own family and who has no competence in dealing with the problems of communities, against a slightly older Democrat who respects freedom of economic action as the engine of prosperity, but is also surrounded by and responsive to people who are very good at public policy and who himself has great proven interest and competence in dealing with the policies that protect communities.

Mark seems to think that any Democrat, even the most conservative of the primary candidates, threatens radical changes to the fabric of American society, changes that would destroy both prosperity and liberty. Where we disagree, I think, is about which candidate for President represents such radical change.

Cyber crime

A Response to Gail Collins in the NYT 5/14/20

I love Gail Collin's merry take, even on such disasters as our President and the policies of his party. But when all is said and done, taking rhetorical pot shots doesn't do much, aside from reminding us of the administration's faults.

My question is this: what can those of us who fear and dislike Trump's character and the Trump's policies say to the decent people who still support the President and believe what he says about the virus? How can we speak to them, not just to ourselves, in a respectful way that allows hope for agreement? I don't mean compromising our understanding of the facts or our moral principles. I mean initiating joint conversations. Many of those who believe in Trump have reasons for doing so. Perhaps a respectful hearing and a civil way of speaking or writing will allow us to sometimes reach some common ground. If not, as both Trump and McConnell have recently intimated, a second civil war is looming.

America's Political Clown Car Is About To Crash

          My friend Keith and I founded this blog nine years ago. In our Statement of Purpose at that time we characterized our objective as "to post opposing views on a variety of political and economic issues and to encourage their resolution through constructive debate."  Idealistically, we went on to enthuse that "legitimate and useful common grounds can be found when people with different views and understandings listen to each other and synthesize new ideas from their pragmatic contributions."  Neither of us was under any illusion back then that America's  political dialogue was likely to elevate itself dramatically any time soon. What we failed to foresee was how dangerously instead the raucous party was preparing to accelerate downhill.

           The blog has been mostly quiescent for the past three years. Keith can speak for himself here, but the reason for my own passivity is that I no longer relish politics as I once did, and hence debating is no longer as much fun. I find it painful to watch  television news anymore, and even print journalism is distasteful. All sources seem biased in one direction or the other, some of them grotesquely so, and hidden agendas proliferate everywhere. The "search for truth" has become instead a search for confirmation of pre-existing opinions and for factual or pseudo-factual weapons with which to bash the other side. "Fake News" is the defining metaphor of our  era, and each side seems oblivious to how egregiously it has allowed willful distortion to corrupt its own intellectual grounding.

          However, Keith has suddenly emerged from the quiet in a flurry of three postings over the last month. As usual, he has written well and made some  provocative and  even partially accurate points, but then allowed himself to wander onto less secure ground. I can feel some of the old contrarian zeal rising back up in me and will come out of retirement here, at least briefly. Maybe I can coax my friend back to a semblance of reason. In his three posts he's thrown more material against the wall than what I have the patience to address in detail, but there are couple of salient threads, so let me go after these.

What Is Trump?

           Let me start with his 4/19/20 post where Keith accuses me of "tenacious adherence to the tenets of Trumpism". Holy Moly! I'm pretty sure he's just baiting me here because he knows better, but let me go through the motions of taking the comment seriously. As Keith well knows,  I didn't feel I could stomach either Trump or Hillary in 2016 and, after considering a personal election boycott, chose instead to cast a quixotic and half-facetious vote for Gary Johnson.

          I've followed Donald Trump's career for longer than most of his current critics, and while I feel I know him better than they do, it happens that I mostly agree with the manner in which they size him up:  He's a liar, a bully, a cheat, and, in my opinion, seriously over-rated even as a businessman. He's also an illogical thinker, an atrocious public speaker, a compulsive self-promoter, and probably the weirdest man ever to hold the office of President. However, and let's be clear about this,  he's also not a Republican in any ideological sense of the label. He opposes free trade, is a neo-isolationist, and fails to give even lip service to fiscal prudence or limitation to the size of government. In fact, he supported his then-friend Hillary Clinton and identified more-or-less as a Democrat as late as 2008, even though, to be fair about it, he was no more a principled advocate for that party than he is now for what's left mine. 

          He was an opportunist who understood what was happening to the Republican Party and simply commandeered it, rather like a bottom-feeding sea creature taking up residence in an abandoned shell.

          Nonetheless, during the Kavanaugh hearings I made the decision to vote for Donald Trump in the next election. This twist was driven not at all by any change in my attitude towards Trump, but rather by my growing horror at what I saw coming to life among his opponents. The hearings provided a public stage for what I saw as pre-totalitarian behavior.

Playtime Revolution

          I went to college during the 1960's and attended a large Midwestern university which during my final year was almost entirely shut down by left-wing student protests and a strike among radical teaching assistants. Professors attempting to conduct classes were shouted down and protests turned violent, staying that way with varying degrees of intensity throughout my final semester.

          One sunny morning my girlfriend and I walked to our local Kroger to buy groceries, only to find the store reduced to a charred ruin. Marauding leftists had burned it to the ground the night before. Months later, a University research center doing work for the military was bombed and a graduate student was killed there after having chosen the wrong night to work late.

           Radical thinking pervaded the campus,  and not only did few people speak up to condemn these crimes, but the local culture hummed to life with enthusiasm for what was interpreted as advent for the long-heralded Revolution about to transform America into a socialist nation.  Cuba was the model and Che Guevara the prophet.

          I myself remained mostly on the outside of all this, although my friends and I  flirted with the ideology. I read a fair amount of radical literature and continued to do so even after I had come to understand the problem with it all. I developed an intellectual interest in totalitarian thinking because I wanted to understand better the weird hypnotic hold it gains over people. I read the entire first volume of Marx's Das Capital, most of Lenin's major tracts, some of Trotsky's work, and even several articles penned by Joseph Stalin, who while being  better known today for his dungeons and mass murders, was also a surprisingly prolific author. Wanting to see the best of the other side, I then waded through large sections of Hitler's Mein Kampf, even though I lacked the stomach to take in this foul, rambling tome in its entirety.

          The common denominators I discovered in all this literature were a murderous self-assurance and an intolerance for dissent of any kind or even traces of ambiguity. The argot employed by these writers teems with demeaning imagery applied to opponents: vermin, rats, insects, lice, filth, and so forth. The objective in all cases was the dehumanization of adversaries,  intended as the necessary first step towards their elimination.

Show Trials

           One dimension  of totalitarianism reached its apex in Hitler's death camps. Another dimension, however, found its logical culmination in Stalin's show trials. These, of course, were not trials at all. They were propaganda spectacles designed to humiliate opponents -  some real, most imagined - and to serve as a warning to anyone even considering opposition to the regime or to Stalin personally. Charges were often invented out of whole cloth or else built around preposterous exaggerations. Victims had been browbeaten behind the scenes and often tortured in order to extract groveling confessions for crimes never committed. They had been dehumanized, and the verdicts against them were predetermined.

 

          With all this in mind, it's perhaps not hard to understand the atavistic premonitions I experienced as the Kavanaugh hearings got underway. Triggering these inquisitions was nothing more substantial than a 35-year-old repressed memory that had once been coaxed out of a young psychotherapy patient! The therapist, who was a partisan Democrat with political connections, passed the story along to activist lawyers who in turn passed it on to politicians, who for their part were looking for any promising angle from which to sink the Kavanaugh nomination. 

          The usual drumbeat commenced and a few other seemingly collaborating stories materialized - Kavanaugh had, after all,  once belonged to a fraternity - but there was nothing of a material enough nature to justify the juggernaut that now rumbled into motion. The American nation was for weeks on end dragged through a debilitating spectacle during which Kavanaugh and his family were subjected to the most vicious and salacious kind of personal attacks while an overwrought media blared non-stop coverage. The judge's wife had to remove their young daughters from the hearing room at one point because of what they were being exposed to. The entire Kavanaugh family was being dehumanized.

          Due process eventually prevailed, of course, and Kavanaugh was confirmed.  Yet the political blood lust that had been unleashed only grew in intensity with the subsequent impeachment hearings that targeted Trump directly. Once again, virulent  stories surfaced which revealed unsavory behavior but failed to rise to the level needed by the prosecutors to achieve their goal.  The narrative kept shifting as Democrats struggled for anything promising to stick. It was as though they were hoping that by making Trump appear vile enough, lacking all humanity,  any old charge would suffice.  

          They finally settled on an apparent back-door agreement between the Trump administration and the Ukrainian government to trade aid for political favors.  This was an ironic focus given, of all things, Joe Biden's own well-documented  behavior in his role as point-man for the Obama Administration's Ukraine policy. This hypocrisy was waved breezily aside, however, as the Democrats charged excitedly forward.

          It was, of course, all for naught in the end. Nothing had turned up that crossed the threshold into the realm of impeachable offence, and Trump was exonerated. The impeachment campaign had begun literally as soon as he assumed office in 2017. It had continued for over three years, consumed tens of millions of dollars and countless man-hours. It completely pre-occupied the news media and, most damagingly of all, distracted all branches of our government from genuinely serious issues in need of  their attention. Yet it arrived only at the dead end which had beckoned from the start. It had accomplished nothing.

Aftermath

          What the sorry spectacle did succeed in doing was utterly to poison political waters that beforehand had already turned dark. There is an old spiritual adage about the self-destructive nature of hatred. It is that hatred corrupts the hater and, without him even knowing it, gradually turns him into the very image of his bete noire. "Hater"  has, like "Fake News", became one of bywords of this destructive new era, and we have become a nation of haters. It's just that we all seem to believe hatred arises only from the other side.  We ourselves walk around blameless and avoiding mirrors.

          I find it alarming that we're about to hold another Presidential election in this environment. The two-party system in this country has evolved over the years in a manner designed to force diverse political factions to cluster around two separate poles and to smooth out their differences before submitting rival positions to the voters. The theory underlying this system,  a good one in my judgment, is that most factions get input into one platform or the other and afterwards have a stake in the outcome of any elections they're able to win. The truly dangerous factions become marginalized in the process because their potential support is co-opted  by groupings willing to eschew violence and exert influence through civil negotiation. While still allowed free speech, the extremists remain on the fringes where they're capable of doing only limited damage.

End Of The Democratic Party

          Our Democratic Party has a proud heritage.  A couple of years ago in an article I posted on the origins of America's modern political parties  (American Counterpoint, 11/9/17), I said that the Democrats had come to stand for "inclusiveness and the application of government power to ensure everyone got a fair share of the nation's growing prosperity".  I described the Republicans, in contrast, as champions of "responsible hard work, self-reliance and economic freedom." I said at the time, and still believe, that the natural tension between these two sets of aspirations is healthy. They have in the past,  when managed by responsible and skilled politicians on both sides, strengthened the nation and made it a better place.

          Those days appear to be long gone. As already discussed, the Republicans have turned the keys of their party over to a man who has no principles, traditional or otherwise, and who instead is driven by only an undisciplined  strain of personal ambition. The Democrats, for their part, have done something that in my judgment far worse - they have turned their party over to their own extremist  fringe.

(I'll continue these observations, and get back to Keith, in a second posting soon to follow)

Comment on NY Times article

"I speak as a conservative Republican. It doesn't matter to me if Joe Biden sits in his basement and knits until November. He'll have my vote and the votes of my entire extended Republican family. We didn't vote for Trump the first time and we certainly won't this time. It doesn't matter if Joe does not have the "silver tongue" of Clinton or the intellect of Obama. Stop pining for charisma and flash!! Joe Biden is a decent human being and that's what this country needs, NOW. And I'll let you in on a secret. There are plenty more Republicans just like me. They are just not talking about it. We're not all as stupid as you think, and none of us are going to drink bleach before the election." --Mel from Louisiana in response to Michelle Cottle op ed, "Joe Biden is not Hiding. He's Lurking." 4/29/20

Here's another good comment:

Phyliss Dalmatian

Wichita, KansasApril 28

“ When your Enemy is destroying Himself, do Nothing “. A classic, for very good reason. I absolutely agree, 100 percent. “ Lurking “ ? I don’t know who is responsible for that gem, but it’s a mistake. It has a very awkward and unfortunate connotation. Knock it off. It’s SIX MONTHS until the Election. What, exactly, is Joe Biden supposed to do, under the very unique and unexpected circumstances ? Tap dance ? I’m certain that He and his Staff are very busy, especially with the Vice President Choice. I’ll be very sorry IF Trump quits his Daily Snake Oil Salesman Show. It was hilarious, and I actually made a few bucks on bets with the Husband. It is impossible to overestimate the depths of Trumpian Stupidity. Just when you think he’s hit rock bottom, he starts excavating a sub-basement. Seriously."

Trumpist Dogma

Mark, I admire your tenacious adherence to the tenets of Trumpism. Unfortunately, it can also reveal more than you may intend! For example, by following the Trumpist dogma of silence (in response to my last postings), you demonstrate the Trumpism policy of ignoring criticisms that cannot possibly be refuted, even by the strained facts and logic of Fox/Limbaugh/Trumpian thought. I rely on you for insight into the bizarre world you mentally inhabit, since there are many millions who think as you do but without your articulateness. And I guess in this instance I have to glean what I can from silence.

On another matter: I believe we are on the verge of some wonderful innovations in democratic governance.  I am increasingly detecting from T and his courtiers hints of a new divide that they hope to create: namely,  not only to vilify the leaders of political jurisdictions who  fail to praise T, but also to punish those jurisdictions for their leaders' deviance by depriving them of federal resources. Isn't that clever? It will certainly force many of the "blue" State leaders to be more prudent in their political statements, and quite possibly injure their election chances. But is that all? As in T's famous tax bill triumph, won't all the federal agencies find ways to fiscally and otherwise punish those bad blues? I am sure that will lead to a great improvement in our nation.

Speaking of improvement, I see that efforts to reduce regulation are proceeding rapidly. Even though some meddlesome federal judges are delaying the new deregulatory rules, I am sure the ultimate outcome will make it far easier to manufacture things without concern for social or environmental costs. This deregulation promises to kill off pesky wildlife, pollute the air and ground that most people have to use, and speed global warming and the resultant climate change. The Trumpism vision is certainly correct: why should government have to protect peoples' health, especially when the people most affected are the least desirable of our citizens? Not only will these wise measures speed up the culling of our citizenry, they should increase corporate profits and, at least temporarily, raise stock prices. And who cares about the long run as long as our betters believe they can insulate themselves from any bad environmental consequences? Better yet, why worry about stuff that you don't want to happen?

4/1/20 Keith:
I have been wondering whether the mendacity and incompetence of Pres. Trump on this has changed your mind about voting for him. We should resume our blog; Verna says the country needs us.
Regards,
Keith

4/2/20 Mark: Would you feel better with Joe Biden at the helm?

4/2/20 Keith: Yes. He’s decisive and experienced in dealing with public issues. He also has access to the most knowledgeable people in the US, and knows how to work with them. If he had been our President 3 months ago we would now be in much better health and the economy likewise. Do you have reasons to disagree?

4/3/20 Mark: The man can barely remember his own name at this point. His past experience is irrelevant if he's suffering from dementia, which he obviously is now. I have a fair amount of respect for Cuomo and some of the other Democrats operating at the state level - they're honestly trying to grapple with this problem - but your national Dems are focused on nothing other than regaining power and are already in overdrive trying use the crisis to restore the momentum they squandered in their impeachment drive. There's absolutely nothing that a Democratic administration would have done in the early stages of this that would have  positioned us materially better than we are now, whatever picture their spin-doctors may be trying to paint.

Furthermore, if we can blame all our problems on Trump, what excuse do the Europeans have? They seems to be in generally worse shape than we are. Maybe the despicable Trump has somehow undermined them too.

4/4/20 Keith: It seems that we disagree about important facts: does Biden have dementia or not? Are national Dems just trying to regain power or are they proposing thoughtful ideas for reducing the damage? Could a different President have done any better than Trump? I guess that until we can agree on such facts, it would be hard to have a satisfying discussion. 

I am not entirely opposed to what Trump did. He made a good move by banning travel from China and Europe in January. But by eliminating the pandemic crisis team Obama had created, and not replacing it with an independent and competent team once the crisis became apparent, he has made the federal response much less competent than it could have been. That he has also consistently tainted expert advice by self-promotion and fecklessness is also true, I think, but probably any President would have introduced political calculations as well, so I don’t emphasize this issue.

4/8/20 Keith: Just wondering what you think of Trump firing several of the quasi-independent inspectors-general meant to supervise expenditures in the Covid-19 bailout and in various cabinet agencies. Also, that as Business Week reports, the drug he’s been touting, hydroxychrloroquine, is made by firms that he and his friends have stakes in. And the now naked Republican desire to suppress voting by likely Democratic supporters. Just curious.

4/8/20 Mark: The Dems have always been pretty adept at voter fraud. For one famous example, it's what carried JFK over the top in 1960 - LBJ working Texas and Joe Kennedy's mob cronies in Chicago. They're almost certainly getting more scientific about it now in the current environment. There's obviously a fine line between voter suppression and combating fraud, and I have to be a little suspicious of the Dems' odd obsession now with the 'suppression' issue. They never seem even to define it very clearly, much less explain why they consider it such a serious issue. I believe their real problem lies elsewhere.  I'm forced to conclude that they're fully aware of the the tactics their own operatives are gearing up for in the coming election, and they know they'll be facing credible charges of fraud. I think they're engaging in preemptive rhetoric.

4/10/20: Keith: I agree with you that Democrats have used dishonest tactics at the ballot box, and would certainly do so again. I despise it. But how is their current concern about "suppression" so odd, given the many Republican efforts to change voting rules in ways that make it harder for Democratic-leaning constituents to vote? Even Trump himself has admitted that “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”--by Quint Forgey, Politico, 4/8/20 9:48 am EDT Updated 4/8/20 10:48 am EDT.

Do you remember Kris Kobach, formerly the Kansas Secretary of State and later, briefly, head of Trump's Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, aka the Voter Fraud Commission? The Commission met only once and then disbanded. Kobach later tried to have Kansas require voters to present proof of citizenship before voting as a legitimate and necessary protection against voter fraud. He presented as evidence a study that  "Over a 20-year period, fewer than 40 non-citizens had attempted to register in one Kansas county that had 130,000 voters. Most of those 40 improper registrations were the result of mistakes or confusion rather than intentional attempts to mislead, and only five of the 40 managed to cast a vote." The federal judge, a George W. Bush appointee, overturned the legislation, holding that “the court finds no credible evidence that a substantial number of noncitizens registered to vote.” See https://www.propublica.org/article/kris-kobach-voter-fraud-kansas-trial, an exhaustive review of Kobach's efforts (and those of his sole expert witness, one Jesse Richman, a thoroughly discredited professor at Old Dominion university) by Propublica. 

Another voter fraud hunter, the current Governor of Texas Greg Abbott, likewise came up empty when he claimed there was massive voter fraud in the form of non-citizens voting. Although his Secretary of State Whitley took the fall for the false claim, Abbott had initiated it months before Whitley took office. As Newsweek wrote,  "The state abandoned the purge in April after they were legally challenged by civil rights groups, who accused Whitley of wrongly targeting naturalized citizens. After he publicly admitted that tens of thousands had indeed been wrongly identified for removal, Whitley resigned from his position last month" https://www.newsweek.com/texas-governor-greg-abbott-spearheaded-voter-purge-that-used-flawed-data-dps-emails-show-1442217

These efforts are basic Republican policy these days, as a Republican Trump adviser stated last year in a leaked recording in Wisconsin: "At a November 21 event meeting of the Republican National Lawyers Association's Wisconsin chapter, Clark spoke for about 20 minutes, and the speech was recorded by a liberal advocacy group and provided to the AP."Traditionally it's always been Republicans suppressing votes in places," Clark told the group, which included Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and the executive director of the state's Republican party."Let's start protecting our voters," he continued, partly referring to Election Day monitoring of polling places. "We know where they are [...] Let's start playing offense a little bit. That's what you're going to see in 2020. It's going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program." https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-audio-trump-adviser-republicans-rely-voter-suppression-justin-clark-2019-12

I could go on, but you get the point: voter fraud has, for quite some time, been the basis for systematic Republican efforts to make voting harder for Hispanic and black people. Republicans have spent much time, money and effort to prove the premise, that there is widespread and serious fraud. But it has been disproven in every case I have ever heard about.

Could widespread mail order voting be vulnerable to fraud? Yes. Are there ways to protect its legitimacy? I suggest the answer is "yes" again. One fairly simple approach is to use statistical sampling to verify the legitimacy of random samples of mail votes. With the use of scanning machines and data mining, this would be feasible everywhere. I am sure that there are other approaches, such as having ballots printed in a way that prevents copies. Protecting the ballot doesn't have to discriminate against voters, and it shouldn't. 

So that's my answer to your claim that the Democratic concern with voter suppression is "odd." I would also like to see your answers to the other questions I asked. 

But let me add something else: it may be fortunate for the country that Donald Trump is President during this Covid crisis. If you recall, when Obama became President in 2008, Republicans fought hard against his efforts to bail the country out, basing their effort on claims of fiscal responsibility and the dangers of larger government deficits. As a result, Obama's efforts were, indeed, too weak to fully reverse the damage. But now that a President beloved of Republicans is there, and cares about nothing except his own return to office in November, there isn't a peep of Republican opposition to the trillions he is spending--and I think those expenditures are well worthwhile.