What Biden can learn from Trump -- promote yourself

 

Gordon L. Weil

There’s a huge difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. (You knew that.)

Last month’s unemployment numbers, reporting the fewest new applicants over more than 50 years, showed the difference.

Trump would have trumpeted that news and claimed that it was due to his historic efforts. No matter the truth of his claim, you could not have missed that the news was good, unusual and important. If you might consider voting for Trump, his loud and proud announcement could have left a favorable impression.

Biden failed to aggressively link himself to that good news. It passed in the daily parade of “breaking news,” but without the fanfare and credit-taking of his predecessor. The low unemployment sign-ups could boost an incumbent president, but not Biden.

The Dems seem to follow a Republican tactic – trickle down. The GOP often argues that when the rich do well, benefits trickle down to workers. The Dems seem to favor trickle down news. They expect benefits from their policies will effortlessly gain them political support from grateful recipients.

That approach failed for Barack Obama. In 2010, after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans attacked it. The Democrats offered no coordinated national support, and the party was drubbed in the congressional elections. Obama’s good deed did not trickle down, at least not then.

The New York Times headlined “the disconnect between Biden’s popular policies and his unpopularity.” It cited programs that had brought direct and immediate benefits to people, but who claim he hasn’t helped them.

Maybe they separate the president from his policies. Maybe they are disappointed that he hasn’t ended Covid-19, his major focus at the outset.

The Times notes that other Democratic presidents also did not gain the acclaim Franklin D. Roosevelt received for his popular policies. But it misses the fact that FDR was a master of public relations and kept the focus on himself. Similar to Trump, he was always in the news and elicited strong reactions for or against him.

Biden is hampered by a splintered party. “Every little movement has a meaning all its own” was an old pop tune. The late Frank Mankiewicz, a true political insider, flipped it, noting that having many reform agendas meant “every little meaning has a movement all its own.”

Progressive groups saw Biden’s victory and Democratic congressional control as a rare opportunity to undertake major social legislation and for each to achieve its desired reforms. His inability to deliver on all their hopes has deflated their enthusiasm, weakening the Democrats’ chances of preserving their control after the 2022 elections.

On the right, moderate Democrats led by Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) resist major reforms and worry about losing swing supporters to the Republicans. Manchin has a critically needed vote in the Senate and has blocked large parts of Biden’s social program, strong election reform and ending the filibuster.

As a conciliator, he has tried not to confront Democrats whose support he needs, and has sought little recognition for his significant changes in government policy. It would be unrealistic to believe that Biden could have satisfied House progressives while pleasing moderate Manchin in the Senate.

In fact, he will have done well to get Covid-19 recovery spending, infrastructure and some major social policies adopted. Economic uncertainty and his public struggles with Democrats may cost him popularity. Perhaps he counts on using next year purely to campaign on his achievements. But he has to come back from a low point.

Gaining votes may be as much a matter of political packaging as about what’s in the package. Biden could pay for being too conciliatory. As a result, he has not aggressively promoted his role in producing major new initiatives designed to put money into the pockets of average people or deal with Covid-19.

He does not project the image of a powerful president who gets things done. Perhaps he needs to resist Manchin, even at the risk of losing his vote on a major issue. Does Manchin really want to take sole responsibility for killing his president’s proposal? If so, can Biden gain some esteem for fighting for himself?

His needs to have a strong, clear message. He has been in office for less than a year, and the progressives expected too much, too fast. Biden could claim his efforts are a work in progress. He needs stronger Democratic congressional control, which calls for Democratic unity, not Capitol Hill internal infighting.

If they are to succeed, Biden and the Democrats should understand that good deeds do not trickle down to people, but must be sold to them. People are not grateful beneficiaries; they are voters who respond to strong political messages.

In short, Biden could learn from FDR and maybe even from Donald Trump.

From Golden’s gambit to Rittenhouse verdict, a political grab-bag for the season

Gordon L. Weil

It may be early for packages under the tree, but Thanksgiving has offered a seasonal grab-bag of intriguing and important stories.  They range from Jared Golden’s gambit to almost unnoticed talks about the future of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The political system worked in mysterious ways.  As the U.S. House of Representatives struggled to decide on Biden’s social and environmental bill, two people stood out by their unusual moves.  One was House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and the other was Maine Democratic Rep. Jared Golden.

McCarthy apparently read the results of the 2021 elections as a sign the Republicans are on a roll. If he used opposition to Biden’s Build Back Better bill as a rallying point, he might give a new push to his hopes of becoming Speaker in 2023.

No great orator, he may have hoped that a record-breaking speech would gain him attention that his words might not.  He spoke longer than anyone ever had on the floor of the House.  It was about as impressive as the longest partial lunar eclipse in over 500 years, the same night. Few people stayed awake for either.

His questionable tactic failed. All he accomplished was to delay the House vote on BBB for a few hours.  No Republican vote was changed and Golden, the sole Democrat who voted against the bill, was likely engaging in a political maneuver that might work and make him look good to both sides.

Golden opposed one feature of the BBB among its many benefits for a lot of quite different groups.

Under current tax law, taxpayers who itemize their deductions can exclude no more than $10,000 in state and local property taxes. People in high-tax Democratic states, especially if they are wealthy enough to own expensive property, may pay a lot more than that. The bill would raise the limit to $80,000.

Many in Congress dislike that feature, but their districts would derive great benefits from BBB. So they reluctantly voted for the bill.  But Golden strongly opposed this aid to the wealthy, and he voted against the bill.

BBB now must be considered by the Senate, which is likely to cut that piece out of it.  The House will probably have to accept the Senate version.  Golden could then vote for the final bill. Running in a swing district, he could skillfully take credit for both finally lining up with the Democrats, but having stood alone against a tax break they favored.

Unlike such inside politics, the Rittenhouse case in Wisconsin grabbed national attention. Did young Kyle kill two people in self-defense or was he a right-wing vigilante asserting gun rights?  After his complete acquittal, sages lined up on both sides, drawing sweeping meaning from the decision.

The 12 jurors may not have seen their role as taking a position on these big questions.  Their first responsibility was to see if he was guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” of illegal killings.  The system left it to these people to exercise their judgment on one person’s case, not to make a political statement for the country.

Maybe the prosecutors brought charges that were too extreme. Maybe Rittenhouse should not have gone to Kenosha, in a state where he did not even live.  But those factors could not count for the jurors.  Each juror had a reasonable doubt about his guilt. That’s all.

Cutting through all the clashing punditry, President Biden got it right.  "Look, I stand by what the jury has concluded," he said. "The jury system works, and we have to abide by it."

With public attention directed elsewhere, few were aware of a public session of the commission considering Supreme Court reforms. Yet it’s possible that such reforms would be more important than the other events.

Two interlinked issues dominate the Supreme Court review.  The Court is likely to be controlled by conservatives for many years, and it has come to act like a lawmaking body as much as a court.  Similar situations have existed earlier in American history.

With slim congressional majorities, the Democrats would like to make changes, especially those that can by handled by Congress without a constitutional amendment.  Enlarging the Court is being discussed, but the commission is divided on making such a recommendation.  It’s possible the reform effort could fizzle.

But the commission could look at two ideas.  Congress controls what the Court covers, making it possible to block some of its legislative moves. And, as I have previously proposed, Congress could authorize temporary justices, similar to what it now does for other federal courts.  That could improve the balance without permanently enlarging the Court.

What’s common to all these dubious gifts of the season, except possibly Golden’s, is how they mirror the deep political division in the country. 

Climate change comes slowly, at high price for consumers

 

Gordon L. Weil

The weak agreement at last week’s Glasgow climate change summit and double-digit rate increases for power and its delivery in the bills of Maine’s largest electric utilities have a lot in common.

They both showed that fighting climate change faces daunting obstacles, and it comes at great cost.

Facing entrenched economic interests, the U.N. summit struggled to agree on a new target for halting the steady increase in the world’s temperature.  It renewed hopes without much assurance they can be realized.  It recognized that goals set just a few years ago are being missed.

Some small island nations, facing the prospect of literally going under, issued desperate pleas. For example, the government of the Maldives, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, claimed the country could soon be drowned out of existence.  Meanwhile, India, its big neighbor, refused to kick the coal habit.

Countries broadly agreed on the need to fight climate change. Who pays and how much could not be settled at a meeting of diplomats, where talk is cheap but change is not.  Tougher action might come next year.

Some countries have promised to fight climate change, but not kept their commitments.  The dangers remain. But, would American taxpayers back a seawall around the Maldives?  What about helping developing countries exposed to expensive energy standards that had not applied earlier to American and European industry?

The advanced economies grew partly thanks to the use of fuels, especially coal and oil, that are major contributors to rising temperatures.  Even today, U.S. taxpayers keep subsidizing oil producers, encouraging them to find more fossil fuels especially using high-cost fracking.

If Chinese, Indian or Australian coal production or the fate of far-away island countries seems beyond the reach of the daily lives of Americans, the issue of climate change and who pays to fight it comes home with every electric bill.

To get all electric production worldwide to come from renewable sources is estimated to cost between $8 trillion and $14 trillion.  After China, the U.S. is the second largest electricity consumer, so it faces a big bill to eliminate fossil fuel power.

When federal or state governments set out to reduce the huge American share of the total cost of reducing the effects of electric generation, they support few of their mandates with new taxes.  Openly advocating higher taxes for any purpose has become politically hazardous.

Paying the cost of moving to non-polluting power is left to electric customers. Politicians get to vote for laudable environmental goals without leaving fingerprints on the bill.  It encourages many of them to generously back new renewables and major power lines. 

All electric service is composed of two elements -- power generators and the wires for getting the power to the customer.

Power supply prices are supposed to be set by the market.  But governments can require that an increasing amount must come from renewable sources, displacing fossil fuels.  As these new resources develop, customers must pay the high start-up costs, and rates increase.

It will take many decades to phase out fossil fuels.  Meanwhile, their prices continue to be set without true competition. When state-market countries in the Middle East and Russia decide to manipulate prices, American oil companies, whose own costs have not increased, promptly follow the prices set by those countries.

When Mainers are told that their electric supply rates will increase because of higher fossil fuel costs, they have to accept bigger bills still mostly dictated by political decisions made elsewhere. Nearing self-sufficiency in fossil fuels means little to the U.S., if Americans pay Arabian prices. And it slows reductions in warming.

Economists delete fuel from what they call “core inflation.”  Inflation is supposed to show increases in production and distribution costs.  Fuel prices bounce around largely free from true cost changes while reflecting the price gouging practices of state-run economies.

The situation is even worse on the wires side of the electric business.  The federal government gives utility monopolies attractive profits to build lines connecting remote renewable sources to consumers.  The utilities like to build major transmission lines, paid for by end users, because that business produces good profits. 

In fact, the federal government gives utilities better profits for building high-voltage lines than the states give them for updating local delivery lines. 

The effort to reduce harmful emissions and halt climate change is widely supported.  If they try to accomplish more than merely making Glasgow-style promises, legislators tell regulators to shift the enormous bill onto consumers, boosting generator and utility profits along the way.

The increase in Central Maine Power and Versant bills will carry out government energy policies, both fighting climate change and boosting oil and utility industry profits.

That may look like a rate increase, but it will really be a tax increase that nobody sees.