Doesn't that seem like a lifetime ago? Why? Because crazy people warp time as surely as intense gravitational fields. OK, maybe not, but they warp our perception of time, and this past week has been about as nutty as they come. Trump declared himself the chosen one, and the king of the jews, tried to buy Greenland, and then threw a temper tantrum when he couldn't, called the chair of the Fed-- his own appointment-- an enemy of the country, and he's ramping up his trade war to new levels while "hereby ordering" companies to stop doing business with China, 'cuz that's how it works, right?
One week. That's ONE. WEEK. A week ago, I was writing about the obnoxiousness of the feud between Trump and the "squad." Did you even remember that, before I reminded you?
There is nothing new I can say regarding how crazy Donald Trump is, nor how insane he has made politics. Every statement that has ever been made is an understatement. Just re-read my summary of the last week and remind yourself that it was one week. And arguably not even the craziest week of Trump's Presidency. How do we evaluate this, then?
What we need is a set of ground rules to evaluate how much any given load of Trump guano "matters." In a sense, it all "matters" because having an intellectually incompetent and psychologically unstable president is just inherently bad and dangerous. I have likened this to Captain Hazelwood. Whether or not this is a familiar name will depend partially on your age. He was the captain of the Exxon Valdez, which was an oil tanker that crashed in Alaska, causing a major ecological disaster. Why? He was drunk off his ass.
On the open seas, in clear weather, what if the captain is drunk off his ass? You won't get a crash because there is nothing into which the boat can crash. Even as the ship approaches land, you have automation and a crew which mean that the captain of a modern ship isn't exactly doing what the captain of a tiny ship-of-old would do. Granted, this still isn't some Robin Hobb liveship that'll steer itself, but a crew plus automation means that a drunk captain isn't like a drunk driver, and in open seas in clear weather, he can't do any damage anyway. But, when things get rough, you kind of want him sober. That's when bad decisions matter. Otherwise, you get the Exxon Valdez.
Trump doesn't drink. He's just grossly incompetent in every way. He could captain a ship on the open seas in clear weather, though! So could you, and so could I. The boat wouldn't crash because it can't crash. However, near land in bad weather, he'd be at least as bad as Hazelwood, and so would you, and so would I. Why? None of us would have a clue what to do. When surrounded by a crew and automation, competence matters basically in a crisis.
Matters. And here we go.
Matters, how? There are two basic ways in which some little balled-up wad of Trump guano can "matter." Directly, or indirectly. When I assert that an event "matters" directly, I assess consequences based on how many people are affected, and to what degree. Lives at stake, quality of life, etc. I take the Mr. Spock/Mr. Pump* approach here. Climate change, waterborne pathogens, malaria... This stuff matters a lot. The economy matters a lot, based on the extent to which it affects people. (See: Pump, Mr.). Performative outrage directed at Neil deGrasse Tyson for daring to point out mathematical facts? No. Not having any of that here. Evaluate what "matters" based on the extent of consequences, which are measurable. There are 330,000,000 in this country, and 7.5 billion on the planet. The politics of what we should be discussing on any scale beyond the local is a numbers game because it cannot logically be otherwise if we think that there should be a logical component to morality. Prosperously live in a lengthy... whatever.
The second way in which we can evaluate "matter" is mass, which is equivalent to energy by Einstein's famous equation and...
Oh. Sorry. You knew that was coming, right? I'd hate to disappoint. Anyway, the second way to evaluate whether or not an event "matters" is the extent to which it matters indirectly. Elections matter. Sort of. I'll get to the "sort of."
Trump is President. Why? [Cough, cough... Comey…] We had an election. One party rarely wins three presidential elections in a row, and Trump won. Don't give me that "popular vote" bullshit. There is no such thing as the "popular vote." It doesn't exist. It is nearly as imaginary a number as the square root of -1 because that's not how the contest is held, and that is not how the campaigns are run. Hence, voters respond accordingly, turnout varies across states based on state-level competitiveness, and all of that makes trying to compute anything like "the popular vote" a pointless, stupid and futile exercise. I've gone through this before. Stop it.
As a consequence of the 2016 election, which Trump won by the only rule that existed, he is... excuse me while I go cringe a moment... President. Yeah, I'll capitalize because I'm still a grammar nazi and political scientist. Since he... "occupies" the White House, there are policy consequences, which have human consequences. Therefore, there are indirect consequences.
To the degree that a wadded-up ball of Trump guano can have electoral consequences, then, it can have human consequences by influencing elections.
And this gets to the gist of how I generally address election results. As you know, I tend to be skeptical that events beyond the most dramatic can influence election results, which tend to be driven by political fundamentals. Like... the economy.
And this is where we get to Trump's trade war. Trying to buy Greenland? No world leader other than Boris Johnson took Trump seriously before Trump tried this nonsense, and nobody not named "Trump" takes Boris Johnson seriously. The set of world leaders consists of three non-overlapping groups: world leaders who see Trump as an idiot child whom they can manipulate through flattery, bribery or other means (e.g. Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un), world leaders who see Trump as an intolerable idiot child, and Boris Johnson. In other words, none of them really respect Trump.
Except... Boris Johnson, and he's just... Boris Johnson.
Basically, then, everybody except Boris Johnson looked at the Greenland flap and saw it as an idiot child being an idiot child. Translation: no new information. They couldn't lose any respect for Trump because they never had any. Donald Trump is an international joke, and for all of his "they're laughing at us" crap during the 2016 campaign, now is when they're laughing at us. Because of stupidity like Trump trying to buy Greenland and then throwing a fit when he's told he can't.
But, since there's nothing new there, it doesn't "matter" in any real sense. It's just more soul-crushing stupidity in a political era in which soul-crushing stupidity comes at us so fast that there should be a Ferris Bueller rant about it.
On the other hand, Trump's beyond-stupid trade war... For a long time, I've been telling you that the overall odds favor Trump's reelection. Most incumbent presidents are reelected, and economies don't crash either just because it's time, or because the president is a blithering moron. Recessions have causes.
A sufficiently escalated trade war will eventually cause a recession. The question is... when? And I don't know. Trump, paranoid idiot that he is, thinks that the Fed decides whether or not they like the president, and when they like the president, they lower interest rates, and when they don't, they refuse to lower rates. Why does Trump think this? Because he has no knowledge whatsoever of economics, and he is the poster-boy for narcissistic personality disorder. So, if the Fed isn't dropping interest rates to zero, Powell must hate him. In Trump's Trump-brain, this makes sense, but so did birtherism, so...
On the other hand, China really does have an incentive to keep up economic pressure, and hurt Trump. They don't have an incentive to hurt the US. They have an incentive to hurt Trump. A while back, I wrote about Trump's inability to distinguish between himself and the nation, and the pre-1776 mentality of that, along with his economic delusions, but China really must make the distinction. They have an economic interest in our economic health because... we buy their stuff! On the other hand, they have an economic interest in hurting Trump because Trump doesn't believe in capitalism or the basic market principles of comparative advantages.
There can't be any actual deal with Trump in office because a) Trump doesn't know anything, b) Trump doesn't have a clue what he wants, policy-wise, c) Trump is a mercantilist, meaning that he thinks trade is zero-sum, negating any possibility of a true deal with him, and probably most importantly, d) Trump's tariffs themselves make China unable to negotiate with him because any concessions mean they're negotiating with an economic terrorist, and giving him incentives to take more hostages. Geopolitically, they can't incentivize that.
On the other hand, ramping up the pressure, knowing that it will hurt Trump politically, and facilitating a deal with a potential successor? That's in their interests.
So, the trade war matters. A lot. It matters directly, and it matters indirectly. Trump is hurting the US economy directly with his trade war, and that has consequences for US businesses and consumers. How wide-ranging? That depends...
Indirectly? That will depend on the rate of escalation, but we are approaching the possibility of Trump being the first president in US history to throw away his own reelection through the overwhelming force of his own stupidity. Captain Hazelwood didn't crash the Valdez into anything in the open ocean because there was nothing but water out there. We're heading towards land, and the drunken idiot is playing chicken with the coastline. Move over, Herbert Hoover. There's a "new Number 2" in the village. Who is Number 1?**
So, Greenland, or declaring himself king of the jews? Unfortunately, this is just part of the noise of life in Trump's America, but it neither affects the 2020 election, nor has the kind of impact on peoples' lives of real issues. The trade war-- not only does it directly affect peoples' lives, it could affect the 2020 election, which could also have real consequences.
Could, and this brings me back to that little aside. The consequences of elections. Suppose Trump's trade war brings on a recession fast enough to hand the 2020 election to whichever insufferable twit the Democrats nominate next year. There is the ongoing question of whether or not Trump actually accepts a loss and steps down voluntarily, and the associated question of what happens if he doesn't. These are real questions that you need to take seriously, but even if a series of courts tells Trump to go grab himself and the Secret Service and marines forcibly escort him off the White House premises while he tweets about his demand for a revolution because it's a deep state coup, or something... what then?
Seth Moulton. Did you notice that he just dropped out of the presidential race? Did you ever notice that he was running in the first place? He is largely responsible for an effort in the House that shifted power away from the Speaker, and thereby effectively toward the Republican Party. Why? 'Cuz. There was an effort at the beginning of this session of Congress among some Democrats to remove Pelosi as leader... for... uh.
Really, there was no rationale. But, Seth Moulton was one of the numbskulls leading the charge, and with the narrow margin that the Democrats won in the House, the only way to put together a rules package was for Pelosi to hand power... to Republicans at the demand of idiots like Moulton. Then, there's the Senate. The Senate is where legislation goes to die. From 2009-10, the Democrats enacted a lot of major legislation during a narrow window during which they had 60 seats, and even then it was hard.
They aren't going to get 60 seats. They may not get a majority, and if they don't, nothing will happen. If they do, in principle, they could go nuclear, but given who will be in their caucus, they're still not going to pass the kinds of legislation that the current field of Democratic candidates is pushing. Banning private health insurance?! Reparations?! This kind of thing will not happen, even with the nuclear option because the Senators the Democrats would need to get even to 51 votes wouldn't support it. The debates you are hearing? This is all theater.
And a lot of what is being proposed would face major court challenges, or implementation challenges. Some of the challenges would be idiotic and frivolous (which doesn't mean they wouldn't work), and some would be serious. Between court appointments, control of state and local governments, and a variety of bureaucracies, part of the Republican goal for years has been to make it so that even when Democrats do win elections, they can't govern. And they're often successful. And those efforts will ramp up because of the basic point that I have been making recently.
The modern Republican Party does not consent to loss, and does not recognize Democrats' right to govern, even when they win. The famous quote from Grover Norquist is as follows: "We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat." That ethos has only intensified since Norquist said it, and as I regularly argue, this is one of the central problems in American democracy today because democracy itself rests on the consent of the loser. See Anderson et al., Loser's Consent.
Yes, Trump's trade war may cause a recession. That recession could cause him to lose in 2020. He might refuse to step down, though, and the Republican Party may stand with him, as they have on almost everything else. Or, he may be tossed aside amid a system in which the Republican Party simply follows the Norquist approach.
But, if you hear some hackish con artist telling you "I have a plan for that," or some other such nonsense, don't fall under the impression that it is any more likely than Mexico paying for Trump's idiotic wall.
We are surrounded by nonsense. Most of it is irrelevant. The trade war matters.
*Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
** You are, Number 6. I mean, James Buchanan. (Please, go watch The Prisoner if you don't get the Number 2/1/6 thing. At this point... seriously? The damned blog is named for a Prisoner reference.)