Donald Trump

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Bad and Badder, Dumb and Dumber

The Conservative leadership process has whittled the runners down to two. This may be as a result of an incompetent attempt to game the process or it may be the will of the Party but the two candidates are vying with each other to appear farthest to the right. The continuous drift in that direction over the past decade has resulted in a number of bizarre decisions. With “One Person Toryism” exemplified by Boris Johnson removing the whip from such giants of “One Nation Conservatism” as Michael Heseltine and perhaps culminating in the appointment of Liz Truss as Prime Minister. Someone whose blind ideological fervour was only excelled by her gross incompetence and lack of personal insight.

At one time this drift to the right would be seen as a strategic mistake. The orthodox view being that there were bedrocks of political support on the right and the left and in order to win, parties had to extend their appeal as far as possible in the direction or their opponents to secure the floating voters who would determine the outcome of the election. This had a moderating effect preventing parties drifting too far away from the centre ground.

It may be argued that this balancing process reasserted itself at the last election. However other “theories” are available to explain this landslide shift. The “pendulum theory” which suggests the electorate just feel its time to give the other side a go. A theory based on young children’s universal appeal to fairness when they have not “had a turn” on the bouncy castle yet. Another is that a party which has been in government for a long time has “run out of steam”. They are “exhausted” and unable to come up with new ideas to address the evolving challenges they face. Again it relies on an analysis which simplifies and anthropomorphises a complex social/political reality.

My own guess is the main driver of the last election was, above all, the complete lack of credibility of the Tories, informed by their spectacular incompetence in managing, public services, the economy, a global pandemic, the national finances, in fact, pretty much anything they turned their inattention to.

Supporters of the Labour party may rejoice at the options being put forward for the Conservative Party leadership. They may feel the option of bad or badder for their opponents is a positive thing as both candidates seem set to push the party further away from the “centre” where elections are supposed to be won.

This view may be too optimistic. If we look across the Atlantic we have in the Republican Party a situation which could be characterised as dumb and dumber but none the less may have a winning strategy. A strategy based on moving the bedrock.

Donald Trump is certainly not the sharpest knife in the draw. His record demonstrates he does not have the moral insight, the intellectual capacity nor the personal interest to address the fundamental problems facing the United States at the moment. His shortcomings are well documented and largely come out of his own mouth.

He does have one real strength however. He has, inadvertently, acted as a lightening rod for the broad discontent which has been building across America for at least the last two decades, but with roots going much further back. The growing awareness that the age of the American Dream has passed and the sense that history might be moving East has created a level of uncertainty about the future which has not existed previously for many Americans. Whilst the Dream may never have existed as promoted, there was a long period of sustained and significant growth in the US which meant it was normal for parents to expect their offspring to be better off than they were.

The tectonic plates of growing inequality, a concentration of economic power and willingness to use this to exercise political influence/control, ignored by both Republicans and Democrats, began to reveal themselves in tensions and fissures in the body politic. This process exploded into sharp relief in the earth shivering event which for short hand was called the credit crunch in 2007/8. The credibility of the political elite was significantly undermined by its response to this crisis created by the purely profit motivated innovations of the banking and wider financial sector. To address the rapidly building catastrophe Main Street was sacrificed to Wall Street. Millions of hard working Americans lost their homes and their life savings whilst the banks were bailed out.

Prolonged austerity, “difficult decisions”, technological change and globalisation seemed to be leaving huge numbers of Americans behind. Low wage, short term jobs replaced the blue collar jobs that had sustained decent lifestyles for millions, their circumstances becoming increasingly challenging and, indeed, desperate if any members of the family fell ill. A widespread feeling they were the victims of processes they did not understand but a strong feeling of unfairness, being ignored and left behind.

Fertile ground for someone to come along with slogan simple solutions. Particularly, ones which focused the blame on foreigners in general and immigrants in particular. This approach has manifest risks both for the United States (indeed their very unity) and the wider world given the pivotal role the nation plays in global economics and diplomacy.

To blame the current problems of the United States just on Donald Trump, even accepting the wide range of personal failings he suffers from, is unfair. The leadership of the conservative right in the US has to accept a substantial proportion of the blame. They have remained dumb when some of their number have turned their back on bipartisan politics and the conventions which resulted and sustained that approach. The refusal of a Republican Senate to confirm appointments to the Supreme Court of the sitting president was a particularly egregious example of this, which happened before Trump was elected.

When you start down this road you are faced with having to rationalise and make sense of statements and policy proposals which are incomprehensible, inconsistent or even contradictory. A lot of very clever people have to race around trying to minimise the damage being done. Ultimately you end up having to support a convicted felon as your candidate for the White House.

Remaining dumb in the face of a clearly unqualified candidates ramblings, or “weavings”, results in a spiral into a realm of dumber and dumber actions which may have existential implications not just for the United States and not just for countries around the world but indeed for the future of the planet.

The party political system has many functions. One of its key functions in the past has been to train and develop political leaders. And, perhaps more importantly to winnow out those who are simply incapable of doing what is a very difficult task. On both sides of the Atlantic the parties of the right have failed in this critical function. Their desire for power has overwhelmed all other considerations. Leaders and political policies have become judged first and foremost on whether they will secure power not whether they will contribute to the welfare or wellbeing of their citizens.

Such a value free environment is set I fear to end badly. Conservatives who should and probably do know better need to stand up and be counted. Easier to propose than to do. Liz Cheney, a person of impeccable right-wing conservative credentials took a very public and brave stance against Trump and paid the price as her party turned against her and ousted her. Indeed there are many Republicans who have made a stand but the Republican party machine is so much in awe of Trump’s ability to shift a bedrock of voters that they continue to boost his credibility by backing him.

Going back to the theory about how the floating voters in the centre of politics are a reassuring stabiliser against extremist positions. This mechanism breaks down if the bedrocks of political support move and the centre ground is shifted to the right or indeed the left. What The Republicans have done in the US has been to shift the centre to the right. This process has been going on for many years however it became supercharged when Donald Trump came to dominate the political landscape. His character, or lack of it, has raised the stakes significantly. His challenge to the rule of law, constitutional conventions, the very notion of rational argument and, indeed, any view of the world other than his own has changed the very nature of politics.

This same process of the centre right being undermined from the far right is evident in the the United Kingdom but has not had a character as egregious as Trump to supercharge it. However problematic they are bad and badder do not constitute the same level of threat to democracy as the dumb and dumber issue that the States face… yet.

It may seem odd for someone on the left to be concerned about the health of the right. However, democracies have to be based on compromise. There needs to be a broad degree of agreement of what is acceptable and what the aims of government, in the broadest sense, are. When this breaks down, whatever the longevity or sophistication of its institutions and conventions might be, democracy is at risk. When this is combined with an unstable demagogue much worse may happen. If Donald Trump is elected in November the Republican Party will have to take responsibility for what follows. They may regret this for a very long time.

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Which McConnell?

Yesterday the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, provided a startling example of decisive leadership in the Impeachment trial of Donald J Trump. He made clear that all charges have been proven so obviously he had to vote to find him… not guilty!

Like much in the Impeachment trial nothing was what it seemed to be. The lawyers for the defence did their best to secure an indictment. The jury were also the judges and, uniquely in this Impeachment, the victims. Having voted on and secured a bipartisan majority in favour of the constitutionality of the Impeachment procedure, most of the GOP of law and order, acquitted the accused on the grounds that the procedure was unconstitutional. It was trial in Wonderland.

But one has to wonder what “hare and hounds” strategy Mitch McConnells thinks he is pursuing? He starts by voting against Impeachment. “Hurrah!” shout 43 Republican Senators and 74m Trump voters. “Boo!” shout 50 Democratic and 7 Republican Senators, and 81m Biden voters.

But no sooner has he voted to prevent Trump’s indictment than he gets up, decries the appalling acts of mob violence on 6 January and is crystal clear about the cause: “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”

“What!” shout 99 Senators and 155m voters?

Clearly this is an attempt by Senator McConnell to support Joe Biden’s calls for unity. In the twinkling of an eye he unites both bases and both parties representatives against him.

What is he thinking?

I struggle with this given he is one of the most experienced senators in Congress having been first elected in 1984 and then chosen as leader of the Republicans in the Senate in 2004. He must have a clear eyed view of what he wants to achieve, but what is it. Is he for or against Trump?

Could it be that after 4 years of unqualified support for the worst president in American history, and that is not a low bar, he has seen the light and recognises the threat Donald J Trump represents to US democracy? Have the scales dropped from his eyes? Is he now a convert to bi-partisan unity?

Or, alternatively, does he have some Machiavellian plan to steal the base?

If the latter he must be playing a long game. He cannot think the joy of the acquittal experienced by the Trump base will override their anger at his attack on their hero! If those storming the Capitol are anything to go by that judgement call would look doubtful.

But maybe he has taken a more sophisticated view about the Trump base and its stability. Perhaps he thinks, whatever the hype of the moment, Trump is likely to be a decreasing force in American politics. One which might be loud on the fringe but unlikely to gain centre stage again.

No longer with access to the most powerful pulpit in the world, nor able to use social media the ex-presidents voice will never be what he was as president. There will be no publicly funded PR machine making sense of, and reinforcing, what he says. Indeed he may find himself having to go to court to answer questions on accusations of sexual assault, business and taxation matters, campaign funding offences and much more.

As a defendant he will have to plead the 5th if he wants to stay out of prison. He will also have to take care of what he says outside of the courtroom if he wants to avoid contempt charges. But being respectfully silent is not his strong suit.

As these cases grind along they will feed deep state conspiracy theories amongst his base, base supporters but for many ordinary Republicans the drip, drip on his credibility will start to wear it down.

As more and more evidence comes to light about the actions of those invading the Capitol, and the precise role of Mr Trump, that too is unlikely to strengthen his position. Whilst a recent poll showed a disturbing 55% of Republicans in favour of violence to defend the American way of life, it also confirmed that 43% were opposed to the use of violence for that purpose. So a lot of Mr Trump’s base may well feel increasingly uncomfortable if they feel his leadership is promoting violence.

But even the base, base may start to have doubts. As insurrectionists come to trial and use Mr Trump as part of their defence and perhaps call him as witness to their patriotism, will he turn up in court to defend them under oath? Will he use some of his war chest to fund their defence? You only have to write it down to know it wont happen.

If he does refuse to support them, or denies their claims they were doing his bidding will he become part of the deep state conspiracy? That would be a delicious irony but history is rarely that kind.

How he uses his quarter of a billion dollar war chest may also start to ring alarm bells. Will he fund the defence costs of any of the invaders? No. Will he fund pimarying? Maybe. Will he fund the mid-term campaigns of those who flatter him most? Maybe. Will he fund the 2024 campaigns of those who go large and long on flatter? Maybe.

But, Mr Trump is notoriously difficult to get cash out of, ask his lawyers. The multi-billionaire Donald J Trump did not make the top 35 list of self funding candidates which goes down to a total of $1m of own funds.

Mitch McConnell is the latest of an increasingly partisan line of leaders of the Republicans in the Senate. It would be a mistake to assume he has changed his spot in that regard. He is also one of the most wily and politically savvy and it would be an even bigger mistake to think that has changed. He may be presenting a Janus faced strategy to the world but it is difficult to not think he sees Trump as a dying star. One which may explode rather than fade but one whose time is limited.

The mid-term are only 23 months away, however, a week is a long time in politics and Senator McConnell has lived through a lot of them. He may well have judged he will be able to pull the majority of Republican supporters away from Mr Trump. Those who do not support insurrection.

However, he will still have to figure out how to address the base, base which Mr Trump has fired up. Their actions are a stain on American democracy incited by Mr Trump who claims he is now the Republican party. His response to Senator McConnell’s comments will not be judged to pour oil on troubled waters. Going forward the good Senator may well need eyes in the back of his head.

The Republicans are in a hole and as yet no sign they have stopped digging.

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Republican Risk

President Trump did remarkably well in the election. He got the most votes of any Republican presidential candidate. He inspired the largest turnout since the Civil War. He increased his vote with black and latino voters. He ran an amazingly energetic campaign in the last weeks which was particularly impressive for a man of his age recovering from Corona Virus. Whatever you think of the man these are genuine achievements and the Republican Party should recognise if not celebrate.

However, he lost. He lost the popular vote by some 6m votes, around 4% of the electorate. This loss was magnified via the “quaint”electoral college system to a 14% loss with Joe Biden getting 306 out of the 538 votes available. Interestingly the result in 2016 gave candidate Trump the White House with exactly the same majority of electoral college votes despite candidate Clinton having a 2.8m (2%) majority of the popular vote.

In October 2016 Candidate Trump claimed the up coming election was “absolutely rigged” by the “dishonest media” and “at many polling places”. His attempt to undermine the democratic process did not start when he lost, it started before he won. What is rather different is that in 2016 Mike Pence his running mate made clear he would accept the outcome of the election. Four years on Mike Pence and pretty much the whole of the National Republican Party, its representatives in the legislature and senior members of the executive either passionately or spinelessly supporting baseless and evidenceless claims of electoral fraud. There are a few honourable exceptions.

The toddler tantrum of President Trump is currently doing untold damage to the United States. He is attempting to overturn the result in increasingly desperate and dangerous ways as he flits between bunkers on the golf course and in the White House.

As in 2016 he started early claiming before a vote was cast that the system was rigged and riddled with potential fraud because of postal ballots. A system he uses himself and which has worked in the past without issue.

Once the voting stopped he waited until the votes counted gave him a majority and then attempted to claim the election. When people continued counting the vote he became increasingly agitated and aggressive. Claiming that the election was being stolen.

Once the election results were clear and gave Biden the election the President refused to concede and started legal action to demonstrate that votes for him had been hidden, destroyed, suppressed and that votes for Biden had been counterfeited and multiplied. His followers wound up by all this claimed that in state elections the same ballot papers had secured tremendous wins for seats in the Senate and the House which should stand but cheated the president out of his second term so should not be counted!

Rudy Giulliani explained, on Fox news, in stark terms why the election was stolen and what evidence he was going to take to courts in the swing states to get votes for Biden rejected. His passion was such as to melt his clown paint. In court under oath his mountains of evidence turned into molehills of hearsay which were rebuffed at every turn.

Given that he it looks increasingly clear he cannot change the results of the popular vote the president has turned his attention to the electoral college. He “invited” the Republican members of the Michigan legislature as part of a strategy to secure the votes for the electoral college despite the outcome of the election. In anything like normal circumstances this would not even be considered an option and most feel it is doomed to failure.

However, what president Trump has demonstrated time and again is that when he is supported by the GOP in the legislature and senior cabinet members in the executive he can challenge even the most basic precedents of democratic government and indeed the founding principles of the constitution.

The adults in the room that were so frequently talked about when president Trump entered office, have gone AWOL. Either they are consciously engaged in what has all the hall marks of an attempt at a soft coup or they are so spineless that they cannot face standing up to someone who is actively engaged in undermining the democracy they profess to love.

They fear that because of his popularity a tweet from the president could destroy their career. To be fair they have good reason to do so based on what has happened in the past. However there are things the members of the GOP should now think about.

Firstly, do they have any higher moral purpose than reelection? The good news is there are republican legislators and officers across the country who do and take their oath to protect the constitution seriously.

Secondly, just how powerful will Donald Trump be when he leaves the White House. No one should underestimate the shift in power that will happen when Joe Biden walks into that building.

Finally, how much political credibility is Donald Trump using up as he continues to wage an increasingly desperate war against the US electorate?

The Pew Research Centre has been monitoring elector’s views post election. The bad news is opinions about the election are sharply divided along partisan lines. This is corrosive of trust and is something that Mr Biden needs to address.

However, there are some positives which could be built upon. Firstly there is a clear majority, 59%, of voters who believed either “very” or “somewhat” that the elections were “run and administered well”. Clearly some of these must be republican voters.

When you look at whether voters were confident that “their votes were accurately counted”, again a majority, 59%, were “very” confident and 26% were “somewhat” confident.

Perhaps most interesting is the view voters have of the conduct of the president and president elect since the election. This shows 54% of electors think president Trump’s conduct has been poor since the election and only 13 % think it excellent. This compares with 20% who think Biden’s conduct poor and 38% who think it is excellent.

It looks as though more than those that voted for him think Biden is doing either an excellent or good job whereas far less than those that voted for him think the same of the president.

These results followed a survey conducted between 12 and 17 November. Just as President Trump lost the election through his own efforts he may now lose the transition through his ongoing denigration of American democracy. He may be alienating even those that voted for him by his increasingly outrageous behaviour.

The election process involves hundreds of thousands of Americans in the direct process of polling and counting. Their work is observed by thousands of members of the political parties. The process is overseen by thousands of elected officials. At every level there are probably as many Republicans as Democrats engaged in this mammoth exercise in democracy. These people, many volunteers, will have worked their socks off over the past month. Their reward for administering the most secure election in American history? Claims by their president that they have overseen the most corrupt election ever.

At the same time as the President expends every ounce of energy he does not use on the golf course in running down the work of American patriots the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be very low on his radar. Now 250k people have died. Conservatively assuming that each one of those was known reasonably well by 50 people that means 12.5m Americans now have some direct contact with the disease. Word of mouth will obviously expand this enormously.

The Republican leadership should start to wonder how these experiences are shaping opinion in the States. Yes there are millions who would follow Trump to hell in a hand cart whatever he did. But it is risky to assume that all of the 74m that voted for him will do the same. It may well be that some of them are already experiencing buyers remorse over the expenditure of their vote.

As he tweets and screams about fraud ever more aggressively he may be losing credibility with traditional Republicans that voted for him in an exceptionally partisan election which ironically has lowered the bar for Mr Biden with those Republican and Democrats in the centre ground. If president Biden fails to declare all power to the Soviets on 21 January tens of thousands of Republican voters will heave sigh of relief but start to wonder what other misleading information they were given. If the Republican leadership are not careful their credibility may go the same way as Mr Trump’s. They might just consider the arc of popularity of the ex leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, Nigel Farage.

By supporting Trump the GOP leadership are: fomenting division within the States, making the country increasingly difficult to govern, whoever is in power; reducing the credibility of the US in the eyes of its allies; delighting its opponents and all those who oppose liberal democracy; overseeing the decline of a global superpower. That is before one thinks about the basic failure in governance to protect the nation against harm in the shape of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The GOP leadership face a real choice. Are they for democracy or against? It is as simple as it is profound. Time is against them.

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It’s a Landslide!

Back in June I predicted Joe Biden would win the 2020 presidential election under the contrarian headline “Why Joe Biden will not win the US Election”. My point was President Trump would lose it. However, for a second, I will bask in the glory of calling the outcome correctly so far out.

At the time I berated myself for thinking that the future was my specialist subject and I was correct. As the months went by and the CovEcon-19 leviathan killed people and employment I convinced myself we were in for a “blue wave” election with a Biden landslide.

I was wrong. President Trump actually secured an increase in his popular vote. He was only beaten by a record turnout which favoured Biden by 4m votes or just over 2% of the electorate. It pains me to say it but it is a real achievement for Trump to secure that much of the vote in a democracy.

Much will be made of this incredibly close and highly contested election. It will be called in evidence of the partisan divide. Illustrating how far apart Americans are. And it is true there is an enormous amount of reconciliation to be achieved by a Biden presidency, which will not be easy as some of the issues are not susceptible to a compromise solution.

However, the true winner here was democracy. Whether they supported Biden or Trump the American people, in unprecedented numbers, chose to do so by voting. Yes, there have been dark noises off, not least from the incumbent, but at the end of the day 70m+ Trump supporters thought the way to provide that support was through the ballot box.

It is early days and trumped up legal challenges, poisonous tweets and attempts at transition sabotage may well raise the temperature but 146m Americans have thrown their weight behind a system which provides for a peaceful transfer of power. Neither candidate may have secured a landslide but democracy did.