Republicans – On Liberty Watch

On to the Midterms

The Democrats have built an impressive suicide machine which, by all accounts, they intend to deploy for the midterm elections. This theory contradicts the conventional wisdom—a conventional wisdom that was horribly wrong in 2016 and 2020. Horribly wrong in that Donald Trump won in 2016 despite prognostications of a Hillary Clinton landslide. Horribly wrong in 2020 in that Republicans generally outperformed the polls while President Biden underperformed them and barely managed to squeak through to capture the White House.

The way the 2022 midterms are shaping up, a repeat performance is distinctly possible. The Republicans may very well repeat their outperformance of conventional polls and recapture both the House and Senate. Such a result I might add, has little or nothing to do to do with any semblance of a coherent Republican strategy, which is largely non-existent.

Consider for instance the abortion controversy. For about 50 years Republicans have argued that Roe v. Wade was (1) badly decided and (2) that abortion regulation was a matter for the states decide. Well, along comes the Supreme Court with the Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturning Roe on substantially the same grounds that the Republicans have argued for lo these 50 years. But in the wake of Dobbs, despite the fact that it was leaked months in advance, Republicans were caught flat-footed.

They simply have no talking points. As in the Obamacare debacle they have proved to be much better at running against something rather than actively positing a better way. In the abortion battles Republicans have gone into a defensive crouch. In so doing they have allowed Democrats to frame the issue, however incorrectly, to their political advantage.

Democrats posit assertions that have only a passing connection, if any, to the truth. Things like assertions that the Court under the prodding of Clarence Thomas is setting the stage to overturn Loving v Virginia, a decision that found prohibitions against interracial marriages unconstitutional. Thomas, by the way is guilty of the unforgivable crime of being black and having a white wife.

Then there is the risible assertion that birth control will be declared illegal. (Note here that some Republicans have urged that birth control pills be sold over the counter in the face of Democratic resistance.) Also consider the charge that some states will make it illegal to treat Ectopic pregnancies and other medical emergencies without the ability to legally perform an abortion. Not so, as Alexandra DeSanctis points out in an exhaustive survey of abortion regulations in all 50 states. (See the article here.)

Most amazing of all is that Republicans have allow radical abortion rights activists to frame the Court’s decision as anti-democratic. This, even though the Supreme Court pointedly returned the issue of abortion regulation to the democratic process via state legislatures. It was in Roe that the Court cut out the political branches and short circuited the democratic process. And by the way, the Supreme Court was deliberately designed to be an anti-majoritarian institution whose remit is to interpret what the law is rather than to make it up as they go along. The Supreme Court is thus supposed to serve as a bulwark against mob rule in order to protect liberty.

One would think that a political party that possessed organizational and political skills only slightly superior to the average Cub Scout pack would have been prepared for this sort of onslaught. But not the Republicans. They were left staring at their shoes like the kid in the 6^th grade who got called on in class when he didn’t do his homework.

This is political malpractice on a grand scale. The Party spent 50 years inveighing against Roe and when the Supreme Court finally got around to agreeing with them, Republicans were left speechless.

Not only that, Republicans managed to nominate a whole lot of Trump backed candidates whose chief claim to fame is their willingness to kiss the Trump ring. As it turns out, the Republicans did this did with substantial assistance from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) which was busy lending backhanded support for these Trumpians on the theory that they would be easy to beat in a general election. So much for the alleged “threat to our Democracy™ ”. That said, it is important to recognize the uncomfortable fact that Trumpian candidates won because Republican primary voters selected them as their champions.

Nevertheless it is my opinion that the Republicans are likely to have a strong enough showing to recapture both Houses of Congress. The reasons are several. (1) The Democrats are fooling themselves if they actually believe the American people want the radical left wing agenda of the Party to be enacted. (2) The Democratic vote is highly concentrated whereas the Republican vote is more spread out. Consequently where the Democrats win, they will tend to do so with “excess votes” that would have served them better elsewhere. (3) Wide variations in state polling results indicate substantial variation in polling methodology, but not necessarily voter opinion.

As for point 1 (above): The overwhelming majority of polls give the Biden Administration very poor marks on inflation, crime, managing the economy and border control. Further Biden himself gets very low marks, ranging between 39% and 45% approval, on how he handles his job. It is hard to believe that voters are looking for more of the same. That is why Democrats continually attempt to change the subject.

The potential fly in the ointment is (surprise, surprise) none other than Donald J Trump. The Democrats would love to keep him front and center. Donald Trump would love to be front and center. If Trump and the Democrats manage to keep him as the center of attention, there is a reasonable chance of holding the Democratic majority in the Senate and possibly the House. It all depends on how destructive Trump will be. And since he is simply seeking revenge he could be quite destructive. Absent that, the Democrats are going to get buried.

Let’s consider point 2 (above). It is true that polls pitting generic Republicans and Democrats against each other are fairly tight with some momentum toward the Democrats, probably attributable to Dobbs. But take a look at the distribution of poll results. While the overall results are tight, the distribution of the results tells a different story.

In Congressional districts rated at least somewhat competitive by ABC’s FiveThirtyEight, registered voters preferred Republican candidates by a stunning 55% to 34% over Democratic candidates. However, in heavily Democratic districts Democrats are favored by 35 percentage points. This suggests that (1) Democratic votes are very concentrated in districts where they are likely to win anyway, but (2) they are losing the race by substantial margins in the competitive swing districts that will determine control of Congress.

Now let’s turn to the 3^rd point above that references polling methodology. Most, but not all polls, seem to show improving Democratic chances after a dismal summer. For instance Patty Murray is generally thought to be the overwhelming favorite in Washington state. In mid September one poll had her up by 12 points. But recently the Trafalgar group had her up only 2 points—within the margin of error. In Arizona two polls had Kelly beating Masters by 8 to 12 points. But the Trafalgar group has the spread at only 2 points—again within the margin of error. (The polls were conducted 5 days apart).

Trafalgar points out what he considers important differences in methodology that skews results. First, state polls tend to have small sample sizes. However, Trafalgar uses sample sizes of at least 1,000. Second, other polls tend to be rather long. His are short. He argues that people who take the time to respond to a long questionnaire tend to be political junkies who are systematically different from most voters.

Third, he contends that cancel culture and a routine demonization of Republicans has forced some underground. Consequently they are hesitant to respond to pollsters even when they are assured that their answers are confidential. They are concerned about being “outed” as conservative and are worried about both their jobs and standing in their communities. As a result Trafalgar contends, Republican votes are being systematically undercounted in polling results.

If Trafalgar is correct, and I believe he is, then the Republicans are going to capture both Houses of Congress in the midterms absent a dramatic new development.

JFB

Magical Thinking

Republicans complain that Democrats are hypocrites. Democrats reply that Republicans are hypocrites. They are, of course, both correct in a generic sense. All politicians routinely say things they know or suspect to be false, especially if they think it affords tactical advantage. In that sense, both parties are drenched in hypocrisy.

When all is said and done, it is reasonably clear that the Republicans don’t believe a word they are saying. So with respect to hypocrisy, they are guilty as charged; egregiously so. On the other hand, the Democrats appear to actually believe their talking points. If so, they are not the hypocrites that Republicans make them out to be. They are simply guilty of magical thinking. Unfortunately, magical thinking can be very expensive.

Consider for instance the Democratic outrage on display over the prospect that the Republican engineered tax cuts of 2017 would add $1.5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. The proposed budget that the allegedly centrist President Joe Biden just released projects a deficit of $1.8 trillion this year and after that about $1.3 trillion every year for the next decade. This, by the way, from a President who vowed that he would not increase the deficit “by one penny”.

This amounts to a proposed $15 trillion in deficit spending over the next 10 years. But now we suddenly discover this is not deficit spending at all—it is investment. And all this “investment” will drive publicly held debt from 79% of GDP in (pre-pandemic) 2019 to 110% in 2021 to 117% by 2031. By the end of the decade, debt service will more than double to 11% of GDP and that assumes that interest rates remain fairly stable.

The Administration projects that revenues will average 19.3% of GDP even though historically revenues have averaged about 17.3% since the 1970s. Spending, which averaged 19.4% in the post-War pre-Covid era is projected to increase and remain just under an astounding 25% of GDP. Which begs the question: How can the Administration claim that it will collect revenues of 19% of GDP and spend 25% of same and not increase deficit spending?

Even if the Biden Administration believed its own propaganda about tax collections it still wouldn’t bring revenues into line with expenditure—not by a long shot. There still remains a 6 percentage point gap between revenue and expenditure.

To call this reckless would be an understatement. The Biden Administration is attempting a huge increase in entitlement spending; a large expansion of the regulatory regime, and political subservience of the Fed, both as regulator and as Central Bank, so that the Biden political agenda can be financed and enforced.

We have seen this movie before and it never ends well. The longer it takes this one to come to an end, the messier it will be.

JFB

The Enduring Fantasy of the Moderate Democrat

Congress is poised to pass President Biden’s spectacularly misnamed $1.9 trillion Covid Relief and Recovery Act. The bill will pass on a strict party line vote. And there is nothing moderate about it. Not only does the bill contain relatively little that actually addresses Covid-19, it will almost certainly delay the recovery, or at least make it less vigorous than it might have been.

The reason is fairly simple. The bill, which essentially represents the enactment of a progressive wish list, actually pays people not to work. For instance, by adding $300 per week to State level unemployment benefits Congress made sure that plenty of people get paid more by staying home than by going to work.

Not only that, the package is going to be financed by the issuance of more Treasury debt which the Fed is going to buy. In effect financing will be accomplished by monetizing the debt the way they do in other advanced economies. Like Zimbabwe for instance.

Lest anyone think this particular $1.9 trillion package of pork is either sensible or a one-shot, it is worth thinking about a few things. First, Senator Bernie Sanders (D. Rolling Stone) is now chair of the Senate Budget Committee. He has already promised an additional $2 trillion for infrastructure spending. Second, the bill provides $86 billion in relief to bail out union pension funds on the brink of insolvency, thus divorcing performance from reward. In addition, they are providing a couple of hundred billion in relief to state and local governments even though some, like California, have experienced large increases in tax collections. Third, most of the $1.9 trillion will flow to government unions, a portion of which will find its way back to the coffers of the DNC.

Thus far over the last year the Congress has appropriated something on the order of $3.4 trillion to Covid relief. Add this latest bill and the total comes to around $5.3 trillion. To put this in perspective, Covid relief, both real and in name only, now amounts to something like 25% of US GDP. Altogether the CBO now estimates that Federal outlays for 2020 will be around 32% of US GDP, up 11 percentage points from 2019. Public debt is projected to rise to 98% of GDP in 2020 and continue to rise through 2030 at which point it is expected to rise to 109% of GDP.

One of the arguments that the bill’s champions advance is that financing all this spending won’t be a problem. The reason often cited is that interest rates are at historic lows which makes it relatively painless to borrow. There are lots of reasons why this is simply incorrect.

The first is that market interest rates have risen substantially since that argument was first tested out. Back in August of 2020 the 10-year Treasury note yielded about 0.5%. Since then the rate has more than tripled to slightly over 1.5%. Second, if now is such a great time to borrow, private firms and individuals should be able to take advantage of the opportunity without being crowded out by government borrowing. Third, financing projects by borrowing doesn’t make them costless. It just shifts the time when the bill has to be paid in full.

Fourth, it is worth noting in passing that there is a great con going on here. Basically this gargantuan spending spree is not about the acquisition if goods and services. It just represents an enormous transfer of income from disfavored constituencies to favored constituencies. That is, to put it mildly, not a productive use of capital. Finally, by expanding its balance sheet to slightly over $7 trillion to accommodate the spending blowout, the Fed is planting the seeds of an upsurge in inflation, perhaps the cruelest tax on the poor that has ever been invented.

It bears repeating that this bill is being passed on a strict party line vote. It will not receive a single Republican vote. It will receive the votes of all Democratic Senators and all but a couple of Democratic Congressman. It is blatantly partisan and there nothing moderate about it.

The fantasy that there are moderate Democrats is belied by their actions. And there is more to come.

JFB

Biden Inc

We are being treated to a new level of liberal hysteria, and that is truly impressive when you consider it has being boiling hot ever since the darkest day in American history, November 8, 2016. The proximate cause for the wail du jour has been set off by the NY Post, which had the effrontery to report on what it claims are e-mails that show that Biden Inc. used its influence for personal enrichment in the Burisma matter.

Sure enough Facebook and Twitter went into suppression mode and tried to limit the reach of the story. (Note to Republican Congressman: these companies are private actors and have every right to publish or not publish pretty much whatever they want. So butt out). More to the point, lefty journalists have been very quiet about the subject hoping it will go away. And they have been working overtime trying to silence other journalists who would deign to cover the story.

The usual routine, which is on full display here, is to refer to an inconvenient story as having been “debunked”. Which in no way means that the story has actually been shown to be false or inaccurate. That would require authentic reporting, as in asking who, what, when, where and why. We get precious little of that these days.

But the whole business does raise a rather obvious question, namely why the effort to suppress the story? Surely if the story is demonstrably false it would redound to Mr. Biden’s benefit as well as to any reporter who could produce hard evidence showing it to be false. That has not yet happened, despite the obvious incentives.

Perhaps that is because it is very likely that the story is true. That the Biden family’s financial good fortune is intertwined with Mr. Biden’s political career has been amply documented in the past. It is worth reading, for instance the Atlantic Magazine on the matter. Or this article in Politico. Biden rates an entire chapter in Peter Schweitzer’s “Profiles in Corruption”.

That Biden has used his political positions to enrich his family is not really seriously in question. What he has done may have been legal, in which case we are just talking about legal corruption. What is instructive is the frantic effort to bury the story.

Anything or anyone that threatens the power grab underway by the new authoritarians of the left will be met by whatever means necessary. And if that requires running over pesky constitutional rights, corrupting the courts, changing electoral processes on the fly, and using government power to suppress the opposition, so be it.

There are no enemies to the left, and all that matters is acquiring political power.

Anyone who doubts the Democrats’ all consuming lust for power had only to watch the performance of the allegedly moderate Senator Amy Klobuchar (D.MN) on the Senate Judiciary panel in the hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Here is what she said responding to Judge Barrett.

[“ …I appreciate it, judge, that you said that you didn’t want to be a queen. I actually wouldn’t mind being a queen around here, truth be known. I wouldn’t mind doing yet. Kind of a benevolent queen in making decisions so we could get things done…”].

That says it all.

JFB

The Virginia Senate Race

Before being elected to the US Senate in 2008, Mark Warner (D. VA) served as governor of Virginia from 2002 to 2006. In 2014 ran for a second term against Republican Ed Gillespie, winning by just under 1% of the vote. During that race Senator Warner vowed not to run again.

Needless to say, Senator Warner is running for a third term.

This time Warner is running against Republican nominee Daniel MacArthur Gade. A retired lieutenant colonel, Gade lost his right leg in the Iraq war where he served as a tank company commander. He is a graduate of West Point and has both Master’s and PhD degrees in Public Administration from the University of Georgia. Prior to securing the Republican nomination for the Senate, Gade worked as Professor of Practice at American University in the School of Public Affairs.

Gade is no slavish follower of Donald Trump. In his October 3 debate with Warner at Norfolk State University he openly criticized Trump’s response to a question on white supremacy. In the Senate debate he said “If you are a white supremacist and you are watching — I don’t want your vote. I don’t want your money, and shame on your attitudes and disrespect. Now, the president badly fumbled that question.”

He has also called on fellow Republicans to join him in support of social justice for African American citizens. Importantly he makes a distinction between thought and action. He argues that racism is an internal belief; that it is not a domestic security threat unless it is acted upon. Senator Warner on the other hand believes (or pretends to believe) that the US is systemically racist. In response to a question he said “So do I think systemic racism exists? I do,” adding pointedly, “Black lives matter.”

Gade is a self-described conservative. He is strongly pro-life; is adamant about protecting religious liberty, does not support taxpayer forgiveness of student loans and is opposed to taxpayer funded education through college. He does not believe it is up to government to provide an income; nor is it a governmental responsibility to make sure everyone has health insurance. He is a strong defender of property rights and the free market system.

All in all it is fair to describe Dr. Gade as the type of conventional conservative that dominated the Republican Party during the Reagan era.

On the other hand it is also fair to describe Senator Mark Warner as hewing closely to the party line. He is a typical abortion rights fanatic. He supports abortion on demand and is a co-sponsor of S.1645 which, if enacted, would invalidate nearly all state and federal restrictions on abortion. He also voted against confirming Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

In general Senator Warner is a conventional businessman turned politician. He isn’t a member of the wild eyed crowd populated by the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. But he is not about to lift a finger to protect liberty either. That is the crucial difference between challenger Gade and Senator Warner. Warner is a technocrat; Gade understands the importance of liberty. And that, in the end, is why Professor Gade is going to get my vote.

JFB

Government by Executive Decree

According to press reports, by Executive Order President Trump is preparing to suspend the payroll tax through the end of the year retroactive to July 1. He also intends to extend supplemental jobless benefits, although at what level and for how long remains unclear. Add to that his intent to impose a partial moratorium on evictions and assistance with student loans and you have a perfectly tuned re-election program aimed squarely at the economic illiteracy pandemic now afflicting the voting public.

The program would be a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, both in its particulars (Article 1, Section 8, clause 1) and in its violation of the separation of powers. The precedent for this Constitutional vandalism was firmly established by former President (and University of Chicago Constitutional law lecturer) Barack Obama. Notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. Constitution locates the taxing power in the Congress, President Obama ordered the IRS not to enforce the penalty for non-compliance with the coverage mandate required by the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

While on the hustings, the Obama Administration argued that the mandate did not constitute a tax. However, in front of the Supreme Court the Administration argued that the mandate was in fact a tax. The Supreme Court agreed with them and declared the mandate to be a tax. It was a tax that the Administration pointedly refused to enforce.

It is worth noting that the mandate was a necessary element of the bill for two reasons. First, the CBO used the mandate to overestimate how many young people would comply with the bill, thus reducing the cost estimate. Second, the CBO cost estimate served to bolster the Obama Administration’s risible claim that the bill would reduce unit costs and therefore consumer insurance rates.

In the event, Republicans asked a prescient question: What would happen if a Republican President announced he would not enforce a different section of the tax code, for instance the capital gains tax? Progressives gave their stock answer: “That will never happen”, they said. That by the way is answer they usually give when pressed about the potential consequences of promoting lawless activity.

Well, here we are. The president, a Republican, has said that unless certain conditions are met, he will indeed refuse to enforce the tax code in a way that is liable to help him electorally. And let’s not kid ourselves. This type of lawless governmental behavior has become the rule, not the exception.

Governors, for instance, often rely on declaring tax holidays, sometimes targeted to dates, sometimes targeted toward geographies. Except that generally sales taxes are not transaction taxes—they are use taxes, and so cannot be legally declared exempt for certain situations within the meaning of the law. And not to put too fine a point on it, there has not exactly been a rush to enforce laws protecting people and property from rioters in large American cities. Nor has much mention been made of the obvious fact that the rioters are on the whole, whiter than the police departments they are accusing of systemic racism.

So here we have a situation where a Republican president is threatening to refuse to enforce the law because he expects it to redound to his electoral benefit. It is a stunt that progressive politicians have been pulling for years (See DACA). The depth of the cynicism is notable though. Since there is no “pay for” mechanism and since it extends through election day, it is aimed at a short term goal, namely Trump’s re-election campaign.

It also creates creates several other political advantages for Trump and the Republicans. He will have the space to claim that he unilaterally delivered on several Democratic-populist goals, namely student loan assistance, and an eviction moratorium. But it does something else that could prove excruciatingly painful for progressives. By suspending payroll tax collections, it would bring the day of insolvency for Social Security that much closer.

The Social security system is already being battered by the economic downturn with its mass unemployment. A six-month month suspension of payroll tax receipts would constitute a direct and massive hit at the solvency of what we laughingly call the Social Security Trust Fund, thus bringing the day of reckoning closer.

It should also be noted that something like 75% of taxpayers fork over more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. Progressive hysteria aside, the income tax system falls overwhelmingly on people in the upper brackets. A suspension of the payroll tax would therefore have two important impacts, one direct, the other indirect. On the political side, if the Democrats were to resist, they would effectively be denying a substantial tax cut for a huge proportion of the voting population, particularly the blue collar workers they are trying to win back for the 2020 Presidential contest.

There is an important indirect consideration as well. A suspension of the payroll tax, and even more so with somewhat reduced supplemental unemployment insurance, changes the back-to-work calculation. It would raise net after-tax compensation for workers who go back on the job, thereby increasing the incentive to work and reducing the incentive to stay home. That would likely increase the pace of economic recovery.

But there is no such thing as a free lunch. The price to be paid for all this is in the disaster known as public finance. Federal, state and local governments are piling up horrendous deficits and off balance sheet obligations at an unsustainable pace. The time to address those obligations could be, and probably is, just around the corner. The problem is that a pervasive free-lunch mentality has contributed to the creation of a dependent and subservient portion of the population.

The other price we pay is continued lawlessness by government. By continuing to operate by decree justified by bumper sticker sloganeering, government becomes progressively more authoritarian. It fails to perform its primary function of securing natural rights and protecting ordered liberty. The evidence of failure is all around us, whether it is the near universal failure of urban public schools, public distrust of basic institutions, or the collapse of traditional institutions like the family, spurred on by public policies designed for centralized command-and-control of citizens’ everyday lives.

JFB

The Season is Upon Us

When January of 2021 comes rolling around it is virtually inevitable that a supremely ambitious, self-serving, vicious and ignorant partisan hack will take the Presidential oath of office. The only question is whether the hack will be named Donald Trump or Joe Biden. In plenty of respects it makes little difference; in others it could make a big difference. There is just no way to predict it.

Partisans who, for some mysterious reason, consider both themselves and President Trump to be conservatives, make two arguments for supporting Trump’s re-election. First they argue, Trump has compiled a sterling record of Judicial picks. Second, the alternative to Trump is socialism or some variant of it. While there is a real possibility of this, the jury is still out.

While it is true in this writer’s estimation that Trump has indeed done a fine job in selecting judicial appointments, it is doubtful (and I am being charitable here) that this results from some Trumpian judicial philosophy moored to originalism or textualism. Instead it reflects the work of Mitch McConnell, who does espouse a relatively conservative judicial philosophy, and has done so for many years. It also includes Senator McConnell’s ongoing vigorous defense of the First amendment, an amendment that finds no friend in either the White House or in Progressive circles.

The issue of judicial picks as an important electoral consideration begins to lose (some) of its salience when the discussion of a second term for Trump comes up. That is not only because Trump plainly has no idea what he talking about with respect to judicial philosophy (or much else for that matter), but also because a second term would introduce us to Trump unplugged. Trump without filters so to speak. In such a case there is no good reason for Christian Evangelicals to assume that Trump would continue to nominate conservative judges. After all during the Republican primary season he did refer to the possibility of appointing his famously liberal sister, then a sitting judge and an abortion rights enthusiast, to the Supreme Court.

The second argument Trump’s supporters make is that the alternative candidate is intolerable because he is either a socialist, a variant of one, or beholden to the Socialist wing of his party. Which of course brings up the alternative lout: former Vice President Joe Biden, who is busy rummaging around for a running mate whose chief qualification is the possession of two X chromosomes.

The search for a female VP is underway because Mr Biden promised in his last debate with Bernie Sanders (I, Rolling Stone) to name a woman to run with him. No other criteria were deemed important in the selection process, typically characterized as a potential President’s most important choice and one that gives potential voters some insight into the candidates thinking. Assuming that is, he is capable of it.

It is going to be difficult for Mr. Biden to find some ideological balance in his selection because he has been pretty much all over the lot in a long and supercilious political career mostly notable for its combination of vacuousness and self-aggrandizement. Consider for a moment Mr Biden’s checkered history on a whole raft of public policy issues.

After all, he did vote for the Defense of Marriage Act in the 1990s before he got around to advocating for same-sex marriage as Vice President. Although he pretends to have been a dove on the second Iraq war, he voted for it and defended it as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Here he is in 2002 according to The Hill:

“President Bush did not lash out precipitously at Iraq after 9/11. He did not snub the U.N. or our allies. He did not dismiss new inspection regimes. He did not ignore Congress,” Biden said in a 2002 floor speech given during the debate over legislation authorizing action against Iraq.

“At each pivotal moment, he has chosen a course of moderation and deliberation, and I believe he will continue to do so. At least, that is my fervent hope,” Biden said. “I wish he would turn down the rhetorical excess in some cases because I think it undercuts the decision he ends up making. But in each case in my view he has made the right rational calm deliberate decision.”

Then there is his ever shifting position on abortion rights. Way back in 1976 he voted for a law (The Hyde Amendment) prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. In 1981 he added the “Biden Amendment” to the Foreign Assistance Act prohibiting American aid from being used for abortion related research. It is still on the books. Back in 1982 he proposed a law allowing states to overturn Roe v. Wade. In 1984 he supported what came to be known as the “Mexico City policy” which banned federal funding for overseas organizations that provide or expand abortion services. Then in 1995 and in 1997 he voted for bills to ban partial birth abortions; those bills were ultimately vetoed by President Clinton.

Now, of course, Biden is in favor of federal funding for abortion on demand.

And that’s before the history of corruption chronicled by Peter Schweizer in “Profiles in Corruption”. It seems that Biden was the master of the sweetheart deal when government contracts were to be handed out. And surprisingly enough, brothers Frank and James were apparent beneficiaries of the largesse. As was son Hunter Biden.

This may be where Elizabeth Warren (D. MA) comes in handy as a V.P. pick. Consider that Biden voted for the repeal of Glass-Steagall which by 2008 had turned into a cardinal sin in left wing circles. And that Biden acted as errand boy for the credit card industry for years. Elizabeth Warren, self-proclaimed scourge of Wall Street, would provide a perfect cover for Biden’s financial shenanigans.

She has already passed the first bootlicking test for the post with predictable cravenness. Warren, who called for the impeachment of Justice Kavanaugh over fantastical sexual assault claims that never had a shred of evidence attached to them, has decided to give Biden a pass in the matter of Tara Reade’s claim against him. A claim whose credibility far surpasses the various claims lodged against Kavanaugh.

To nobody’s surprise, Warren announced that she found Biden’s denial of the allegations “credible and convincing”. This is the same woman who, during the Senate Kavanaugh hearings said:

“What the United States Senate is about to do [vote in favor of Kavanaugh] hurts,” she said. “It hurts every survivor of sexual assault who has been ignored… every woman who has been told to sit down and shut up… every person who will be on the losing end of a Kavanaugh swing vote against them and in favor of states that keep American citizens from voting, in favor of corporations that cheat consumers, in favor of gun traffickers that put our children at risk. This hurts, but I want to be clear; I am not sorry I got in this fight.”

I’d have to say she is a solid front runner in a race to the bottom. But wait, there is bound to be more: the game has just begun.

JFB

What Do Democrats Believe?

A long time ago in a faraway place—the United States circa 2016–Democrats rightly criticized Republicans for tolerating Donald Trump’s appalling behavior. Despite—or maybe because of said behavior—Trump managed to squeak past Hillary Clinton in the electoral college to win the White House. And now the Republican Party is full of sycophants who are perfectly willing to defend pretty much whatever Trump does, no matter how outrageous.

Democrats, unable to believe that they actually lost the election, went into full denial and launched the Resistance^TM. Since then they have waged a non-stop campaign to delegitimize the 2016 election results and Trump’s ascendency to the White House. Partly because of the personas involved, in the aftermath political struggles have (mostly) been about personalities.

Most of the policy disputes, with a few notable exceptions like the border wall and trade with China, have been pretty standard stuff that Republicans and Democrats have traditionally fought over. Except that Trump has essentially scuttled the Republican’s traditional defense of free trade and adopted the Democratic argument in favor of managed trade. Moreover, there is no prayer that Trump will act to restrain the exercise of governmental power, particularly in the Executive Branch.

So, we are left with a President (1) who barely understands the powers, duties and constraints of his own office, much less the other two branches, and (2) who has no philosophical understanding of our Constitutional structure. His policy pronouncements are therefore a philosophical void, untethered to a coherent weltanschauung. But they have a common thread, which is to say they are not random. The common thread is that whatever Trump believes redounds to his benefit is the definition of good policy. This is the Trumpian version of “my truth”.

What about the Democrats? What do they believe, if anything?

Well, here we have a situation in which a non-Democrat named Senator Bernie Sanders (I. Rolling Stone) is the clear front runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination. And the Democratic party establishment, which up until this point has tied itself up in knots pretending that Sanders is not a “real socialist” is in full panic mode trying to figure out a way to make sure that the pesky voters don’t vote to give the party’s nomination to the non-socialist democratic socialist who really is a socialist, named Bernie Sanders.

The interesting question is: why is the establishment so concerned?

By all accounts the party grandees are fearful that Sanders will not only lose, but that he will lose big McGovern style. Further, they fear, he would take down the House and with it, dreams of a Senate majority. Note that there has been little by way of a substantive objection to the Senator’s policy pronouncements. Pretty much all the objections are tactical and technical.

The Democratic establishment has been selling Bernie light for years. They have no argument to use against Sanders style socialism because they have not been able to articulate a difference between progressive ideology and “democratic” socialism. We should have some sympathy for the grandees here. They haven’t been able to articulate a difference because there isn’t much of one, if there is any difference at all.

And despite all the pointed remarks about Sanders not being a Democrat, the fact is, he is on Chuck Schumer’s leadership team in the Senate. Registration aside, it’s pretty hard to make the case that Sanders isn’t really a Democrat at heart when he is part of the leadership team.

So, it should be no surprise that there has been no principled objection voiced to a federal take-over of the health care system; to abolishing legal private insurance; to writing off all student loans; to increasing social security benefits even though the current system is insolvent. The party is unwilling to censure the blatant anti-Semitism of the Squad. And even the Senators who signed on as co-sponsors of the fantastical Green New Deal declined to vote for it on the Senate floor.

What Democratic Senators actually believe and where they are willing to draw a line is a bit of a mystery. Just as it is for Republicans.

But there is one issue where the respective positions of the political parties were made crystal clear in a vote on the Senate floor the other day. Senator Ben Sasse introduced a bill aptly named “The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act”. The bill would apply to health care providers present when a child is born alive during an attempted abortion. The bill would require providers to deliver the same care as they would to “any other child born alive at the same gestational age.”

The bill needed 60 votes to break a filibuster to get the Senate floor. It only got 56. All Republicans voted in favor of sending the bill for a vote. With the exceptions of Bob Casey (D, PA), Doug Jones (D, AL) and Joe Manchin (D, WV) all the Democratic Senators voted to block sending the bill to the Senate floor for a vote where a simple majority would suffice for passage. One of the Senators voting to block the bill was none other than Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA), who was last seen at the Democratic debate Tuesday night loudly proclaiming her intention to abolish…the filibuster.

So now we have clear evidence what the Democratic Party establishment really stands for and where it is willing to draw the line. They are abortion rights fanatics. They voted to permit medical professionals to withhold care from an already born baby so that it dies if the birth occurred as a result of a botched abortion. Otherwise, medical professionals are required to care for the newly born baby as is medically indicated.

Think about that the next time you hear the speech about how they are “defending our values”.

JFB