Assessing the Trump administration thus far

It’s a little hard to assess how President Trump is doing so far since the liberal media and Democrats are doing everything they can, including creating fake news, to make things look as bad and chaotic as possible.  Yes, a judge has put his immigration executive order on hold, just like judges did with several of Obama’s executive orders. Yes, a couple of his nominees have had to withdraw, just as happened with Obama (remember Charles Freeman?). Yes, one of his staff, Michael Flynn, had to resign over some improprieties, just as in the Obama administration (remember Katherine Archuleta, Julia Pierson, David Petraeus, Erik Shinseki or Kathleen Sebelius, among others?).

As Scott Adams says in one of his recent blog postings, there are two movies running in people’s heads. The liberals, who desperately need to think Trump is failing, see disaster and chaos. Trump supporters, on the other hand, see a guy who is making a few rookie mistakes, but moving ahead smartly to deliver on exactly the campaign promises that got him elected - something new in Washington politics.

Of course Trump is an outsider up against the entire Washington establishment and massive Federal bureaucracy, who will do everything they can to prevent him from disturbing their cozy insider’s world or disturbing their groupthink assumptions.  I fully expected them to sink him before the nomination, but clearly he is a lot smarter and shrewder than anyone expected, and thus far demonstrably smarter and shrewder than the establishment. But the underhanded (and in fact, probably illegal) leaking of classified telephone taps by the intelligence community to sink Flynn shows how far the establishment will go to preserve their power and perks.

It’s too early, of course, to tell how he will do, but some of his early moves seem promising to me, and apparently Wall Street investors think the same thing, since the stock market is rocketing upward. For example, he seems to be willing to acknowledge that the Cold War with the Soviet Union is over and we face a different, though still troublesome, Russia, something the establishment foreign policy community still can’t seem to accept. And he seems prepared to drop the establishment fictions about the Israeli-Palestinian problem, since it has been apparent for years they were not helpful. And he has finally gotten NATO members to face up to meeting their commitments of devoting at least 2% of their GDP to defense (only 5 of the 28 members do that now), instead of just getting a free ride from America

But more to the point, he is moving rapidly to address the economy by cutting regulations (did you know that the Obama administration added 20,646 new regulations over his 8 years, 81,640 pages worth in just 2016!!!), and reforming the tax system (the Federal Tax code is now over 74,600 pages long!!!).  Whether these moves will work is not yet clear, but at least he is trying something new.

So on balance I am cautiously optimistic.  Of course he still has the same character flaws he had as a candidate – a thin skin and a short temper and a tendency to shoot from the hip (though some of that may be tactical). But it is not clear to me that these will, in the long run, interfere much with his effort to reform Washington. He has put pretty competent people, most of them also outsiders, into key positions in his administration, and they may well make the difference.

As I said in an earlier post, the state if the economy is the most important thing - everything else hangs on it - and the liberal’s real nightmare will be if he manages to actually boost growth from Obama’s anemic 2% into the 3-4% range. And he may well manage that.

Activist judges vs strict constructionists

So the current battle over Trump’s immigration order is a good example of the difference between “activist” judges and ”strict constructionists.” The language of the relevant law is completely unambiguous. It reads:

8 US Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens (full text can be found here)

(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President

“Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

There is no question at all from this section of the US Code that the president has the authority to do exactly what Trump did, irrespective of whether one thinks it was wise or not (and I make no judgement here about that). But Federal Judge James Robart didn’t like what Trump did, so despite the very clear language of the law he interpreted it “creatively” to justify putting a stay in place. And the appeals court which is hearing the case may do the same, since two of the three judges also appear to be “activist” judges.

That is the difference between an “activist” judge, who tries to get the result he/she wants, vs a ‘strict constructionist”, who follows what the law says, whether he/she likes the result or not. Of course it doesn’t help that Judge Robart gave little justification for his ruling.

People love “activist” judges when they rule the way people want them to, but of course they can just as easily bend the law to results people don’t want. Personally, I think laws ought only to be made and changed by elected representatives, not by unelected judges.

Where is the Democrat’s strategy?

 If there is one thing that stands out to me about this election and its aftermath it is that the Democrats appear to be completely rudderless, completely devoid of any effective plan for going forward. Democrats in the Senate seem to be driven by their most extreme and noisiest liberal followers to useless posturing, like last night’s 24 hour talkathon against Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, a stunt they knew from the beginning was ineffective (she was approved this morning), or like boycotting committee hearings (Republicans just approved the nominees anyway).

The Supreme Court nomination battle is another example of how rudderless the Democrats appear to be. Judge Neil Gorsuch is about as highly qualified as any nominee could be.  When he was appointed to the Federal Appeals Court in 2006 the Democratic-majority Senate confirmed him with a unanimous voice vote. He is a strict constructionist replacing Scalia, a strict constructionist, so his appointment does not change the recent balance of the Court. There is zero chance that Trump would have appointed a liberal, any more that Clinton would have appointed a conservative, so there is no surprise here. And he will be confirmed, even if the Democrats force the Republicans to use the “nuclear option” and change the Senate rules, something they can do with impunity because the Democrats unwisely already did it first under Obama, and promised during the campaign that Clinton, when elected, would do it again to to get her nominee approved.

So a sensible Democratic strategy would be to grumble a bit publicly about his being a conservative, just to placate the more rabid liberal base, and then let him get confirmed. Save the real battle for the next possible nomination which might indeed change the current balance of the court. If instead Democrats decide to go scorched earth on this first battle, which they can’t win, they are weakening themselves for the next battle, which may well be far more important.  If the Democrats had anyone thinking about long term strategy, this would be obvious.

It may be true, as some writers have recently asserted, that the liberal’s core problem is that they love to make themselves feel better with mass rallies and cute saying on signs, but are unwilling to do the hard, day-to-day talking and listening to people one-to-one, especially with people who may not agree with them. As near as I can tell the noisy protests, covered extensively by the liberal media, seem to be doing nothing effective about converting more people to their cause.

Fundamentally, Democrats desperately need to expand their base. That is the clear lesson from the tremendous losses they have suffered over the last decade at both the federal and the state levels.  And expanding the base means reaching beyond their current “true believers” to new people.  So doing things that just make the current base feel better is not effective – in fact some of the more over-the-top stuff that is going on now is probably driving people away.  It certainly drives me away. I agree with liberals on a lot of the issues, but I am reluctant to put the government back into the hands of people who appear to be so inept, so illiberal, so much like petulant children, and so lacking in any perceptible strategy. 

Recommended: How Democrats are getting played

I like the Daily News the piece today How Democrats are getting played. It says about the same thing I just said in my preceding post, but in football terms, which seem appropriate as Superbowl Sunday approaches.

Democratic strategy

I want to talk more about Democrats and the Democratic Party.  As a political independent, I am always worried when one party becomes so weak. Our system works better when the two parties are in balance. Both have good ideas, and both have nutty ideas, but when they are more or less in balance the good ideas from each side tend to come to the fore in moderate compromise, and the nutty ideas tend to get restrained by the other party. When one party becomes too dominant, the extremes in that party begin to get too much power.

Why am I focused now on the Democrats? Because the Republicans, having won a no doubt temporary majority (though hardly because of their own efforts), currently have little incentive to change, though they badly need to, while the Democrats, having been defeated so decisively at both the state and federal level over the past decade, finally have an incentive (one hopes), and a desperate need, to do some serious soul-searching.

So if I were a serious Democratic strategist, trying to figure out how to recover some of the voter base the Democrats have lost over the past decade and begin again to win some elections, what might I pay attention to?

First, the shift of the Democratic base toward the more secular liberal costal urban areas has lost a lot of the more religious voters. The facts are, according to a 2014 Pew Research study, that while there has indeed been a drop in religious affiliation over the recent decades, seven in ten Americans still profess to be religious, largely Christian. So from a strategic point of view,  dismissing and ridiculing religion (as Obama did with his snide “clinging to guns and religion” comment) is not a smart move. And simply blindly opposing some of the religious views that really matter to this group, like halting abortions, is a serious mistake. It would be far wiser and more effective to work to understand their point of view, and try to find middle-ground accommodations with them.

Second, the traditional blue-collar small-town Democratic base is in terrible trouble, hollowed out by automation and globalization and urbanization. Democrats lost this block to Trump because he acknowledged their plight, while Democrats, focused on the better-off urban liberals and their issues, just ignored them.  It not at all clear how to help them, and nothing Trump does will restore more than a few of their jobs, so they are a voting segment the Democrats could someday recover, but not if they keep referring to them as dumb, racist, sexist “deplorables”. That is block of something like 40-50 million voters the Democrats have alienated and ceded to the Republicans by default, and they can’t afford to do that if they want to win elections.

Third, the Electoral College matters. Democrats keep harping on the fact the Hillary won the popular vote to make themselves feel better, but that is irrelevant – Electoral College votes are what mattered. And whatever the arguments for or against the Electoral College system, it isn’t going to change any time soon, It would take an amendment to the Constitution to change it, and the vast 85% of rural and small-town America isn’t about to disenfranchise themselves by voting for such an amendment and giving away yet more power to a few urban centers and a few more populous states.

The Democrat’s current problem, at the federal level, is that while they have a large urban liberal base, it is mostly concentrated in just a few states and large coastal cities. That gives them popular vote numbers, but not enough Electoral College votes. And in fact, while that was not the original reason the Electoral College was constructed the way it was, it does have the effect of requiring presidential candidates to appeal to and attend to the concerns of a broad swath of America, and not just to voters in a few populous states and big cities – which in my opinion is a good thing. So any successful Democratic strategy has to win over a lot of rural and small-town Americans with conservative, religious, nationalistic, patriotic family-centered values.

In that regard, the current liberal freakout over things like Trump’s immigration policy isn’t helping their cause in the long term. This is an issue Trump voters cared about, cared about enough to overlook some of Trump’s more unsavory personal traits and vote for him anyway. For their own long term good, Democrats would do far better to acknowledge the concerns and fears of these voters and find a stance that shows some accommodation to those concerns.  All the current liberal hysteria is doing is pushing those voters further away from the possibility of recovering them to the Democratic Party.

Fourth, repeated studies have shown that America as a whole is politically centrist, very slightly biased to the conservative side. And the slight conservative bias is probably largely due to the individualist nature of American society. That means Democrats can win when they are more or less centrist. But it also means going far left, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warrant would like to take the party, is not a winning strategy in the long run. (and Republicans should note that going far right isn’t a winning strategy for them either).

The Democrat’s current problem is that the base they largely depended on in this last (losing) election, the well-educated, ultra-liberal, heavily secular, internationalist, urban voters, have nothing but obvious and publically expressed disdain for the conservative, rural and small-town, largely religious, nationalistic and patriotic, working-class voters – the “deplorables”.  And those rural and small town voters in turn have nothing but equal disdain for the liberal urban voters.  Yet to win Democrats need both. Democrats have got to find a way to forge an alliance between the two groups, to find common ground and mutual respect and understanding between them.

Fifth, Democrats have got to back off of the cultural issues and focus more on the economy. It's not that women's rights and LGTBQ issues and refugee issues and  racial issues don't matter. They do matter, a lot. But a well-off urban liberal with a secure job and a home in a safe gated community can afford to worry about these trendy cultural issues; an unemployed steel worker in a decaying Midwest town is focused on more urgent issues, like paying the bills and affording medical care and keeping the family safe from the local drug gang. So long as the Democratic party remains captured by the relatively wealthy Hollywood set and urban corporate liberals, it will remain insensitive to the economic needs of the working class base it needs to recover.

The question is, can Democrats make these course corrections in time, or are they going to continue on their current self-destructive course?

Democracy and the press

It was instructive that Steve Bannon, Trump’s strategist, said recently that the press should “shut up and listen”, and all that the press heard, and reported, was “shut up” – they didn’t listen enough to hear or report the ”and listen” part.

Here is the exact Bannon quote in its entirety: “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”

Here is the New York Times Jan 26 headline about the quote: “Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’”.  Other papers and TV and online sources had similar headlines.  I am hard pressed to find any mainstream news that included the “and just listen for a while” part.

I keep wondering how democracy can function if the media is so partisan. What little most people know about the important issues they get from the media, or from friends who themselves get it from the media.  So on an important issue like immigration policy, how are people to make rational judgments if the media distorts the fact so much?

The media reports, with outrage, that Trump is barring refuges from Syria (temporarily, until a better vetting process can be established), but fails to report that Obama barred almost all refugees from Syria for the past few years.

The media reports that Trump’s order discriminates against Muslims, but the actual order itself (I have reread it several times) makes no mention of Muslims, and legal experts doubt that any court would construe it to discriminate against Muslims, since it doesn’t affect 44 other Muslim-majority countries.

The media is outraged at the seven countries selected, but fails to mention that it was the Obama administration that selected these seven countries as terrorist-promoting in the first place.

The media is outraged that Trump’s order caps the refugees at 50,000 per year, but fails to mention that, except for Obama’s last year in office, the cap under his administration and under the Bush administration before him was in the same range (50,000-70,000).

The media is outraged that religion is mentioned in the order (priority for persecuted minority religions), claiming this is un-American. Well, if it is, it has been un-American for a long time because religious criteria (persecuted because of religion)  has been part of immigration law for decades now.

Now Trump’s executive order may or may not be good policy. There are good arguments on both sides and I’m not sure yet which side I find more compelling. But we are apparently never going to get to that important debate because the partisan press has sidelined it into hysterical and emotional reactions to their misinformation.

I mentioned in a previous post how the New York Times, followed by other outlets, misreported the claim that 2016 was the hottest year on record. And this sort of partisan misreporting, spinning the facts, slanting the story, reporting only one side of the issue, and sometimes outright fabrication has been going for issue after issue this year. It’s not new, but it certainly has gotten a lot worse since Trump won the election.

In the face of this much partisan misinformation from the media, and the almost hysterical public reaction it has whipped up, how is any democracy to function?

Reality

I rather hoped that once the inauguration was over the liberal freakout and media hysteria would begin to abate, but apparently that isn’t going to happen. Nor is there any evidence that the mainstream media has learned anything from this election.

The Democratic Party is in shambles. Democrats in Congress are almost completely impotent, in part because of their own shortsighted action in exercising the “nuclear option” and changing Senate rules before they lost their Senate majority. At the state level Democrats continued to lose heavily in this election. And the Clinton steamroller has ensured that the Democrat’s bench of upcoming party stars who might plausibly run for the presidency in 2020 is very thin indeed.

In the face of these facts, a reasonable Democrat would sit back and try to figure out why they are in such bad shape, not only in this recent election but in the decade that preceded it. A reasonable Democrat would be dismayed that the party had been abandoned by its traditional working class base, and might do a little sober reflection on this problem.  A reasonable Democrat would face the fact that a fair proportion of the American public don’t agree with some of the more extreme left-wing positions that have dominated the party in recent years. A reasonable Democrat would be trying to figure out how to talk to those ex-supporters and bring them back into the party (and calling them dumb, deluded, sexist, racist “deplorables” isn’t the way to do it). A reasonable Democrat, if not blinded by the relentless media hysteria, might face the fact that many of the things Trump is doing have a great deal of support in the country – oh, not in the coastal urban centers perhaps, and certainly not in the liberal media – but in the other 85% of the country.

Democrats (and Republicans as well, for that matter) might finally learn that many people care far more about the security of their jobs, the safety of their streets and their financial situation than about the trendy social and cultural issues that preoccupy the media and the well-off coastal urban liberals. And, if they went and actually listened to these folks instead of endlessly lecturing them, they might learn how important religion and some traditional values are to these people. There is a saying I have always liked: “You can get to people through religion; their religion, not yours.” 

And the mainstream media might learn just why it is that more and more people don’t trust them, are turning to alternative sources like the internet, and are increasingly tuning them out. I am hard pressed these days to find media sources that aren’t, not just biased, but blatant propaganda outlets for liberal or conservative positions. Or as one writer recently put it, too many of the purported journalists, even on the major news outlets like the New York Times, are really political operatives with a byline.

The reality is that the Democrats have lost touch with much of their base, and they had better get back in touch with them soon or they will become as extinct as the Bull Moose Party. The noisy daily media hysteria may mislead them into thinking their opinions always reflect the majority will, but they often don’t. They seem to be hoping that Trump’s character flaws alone – and there are many – will eventually put them back in power. But in the long run it won’t be Trump’s narcissism that matters in upcoming elections, but whether the policies his team put in place make things better for the average voter, and they may well do that.

It’s time for Democrats to sober up and face reality.