British election a preview of U.S. contest

 

Gordon L. Weil

Before you pick a movie, you can often watch a trailer offering a brief preview, designed to induce you to see the whole feature.  Wouldn’t it be great if we now had a trailer for the 2024 election story?

It looks like a cliffhanger.  More than a struggle between two candidates or parties, it may be a drama about the changing country itself.

Breaking news:  a preview is now available.  This trailer is the British campaign, which leads to the U.K. election to be held on July 4, believe it or not.  Like all trailers, it leaves a lot out.  You can wait for the American version, but there’s much relevant across the pond.

The British electorate is mainly divided between the Labour Party, which has become moderately liberal, and the aptly named Conservative Party, also called the Tories.

Each voter is not of equal weight, just as in the U.S. presidential vote.  The population from one U.K. constituency to another may vary, just as the American electoral vote gives more influence to rural state voters. In neither country is there a national popularity contest despite national polling.

In the U.S., the Republican Party has been taken over by extreme right MAGA forces.  They label traditional GOP partisans as RINOs – Republicans in Name Only – and they are either driven out or marginalized. Where the RINOs end up on Election Day and what they do might have a major effect on presidential and congressional elections.

In Britain, the hard-right takes the form of the Reform Party, created to promote Brexit, when the U.K. left the European Union.  Nigel Farage, its leader, is closely aligned with Donald Trump.  Reform will take votes away from the Tories.  In fact, combined with them, conservatives could come close in the polls to Labour, the expected winner by a landslide.

Farage comes across as a brash and outspoken leader, like Trump.  Rishi Sunak, the Tory Prime Minister, seems to be a wealthy technocrat out of touch with the people, and Keir Starmer, his presumed Labour successor, suffers from a charisma deficit.  Farage mirrors Trump, while Starmer, though much younger, recalls Biden’s diminished dynamism.

Both MAGA and the Reform Party favor more authoritarian rule but less government regulation and taxes.  Political opinion may be flowing in their direction.  Last week, in elections for the European Parliament, right-wing parties across the Continent made big gains, pushing governments in France and Belgium to call for immediate, new national elections.

The agendas of the right-wing, from the U.K. to the EU to the U.S., reject the legacy of the Second World War.  After that global conflict, international cooperation emerged as the alternative to more wars.  Traditional nationalism was to fade in favor of alliances and peacekeepers.  The U.N., NATO and the EU itself were the tools.

But nationalism is back. The expected value of international organizations has not been realized and they have mostly weakened.  Sunak and Farage even talk of taking the U.K. out of the European Convention on Human Rights, an effective judicial organization that Britain helped create. 

Even the U.S., China and Russia increasingly look inward. The right-wing agenda has become popular around the world. 

Conservatives divide in Europe, with the extreme and nationalist elements rising, as is also true in the U.S.  Many Republicans seem ready to let Ukraine fall to Russia.  Reform might win more votes, if not more seats, than the Tories.  The British election could be a preview of the U.S. vote.

While Donald Trump is really his own political party, he has successfully adopted the hard right’s demands as his platform and path back to the White House.  Having found their spokesman and been legitimized by him, extreme conservatives want to pursue the same kind of policies as the Reform Party.

There must be one reservation about all this, as the U.K. trailer shows – the unexpected event that can change everything.

Sunak abandoned the D-Day anniversary events in France to do a political interview, causing major outrage even from his own party.  He assured his defeat and may have given Reform an election boost that could kill the Tories, just as MAGA is killing the GOP.

Either Biden or Trump could make a major campaign error or age could catch up with them. That could change everything.

This year, the U.K. trailer may be a preview of coming attractions.  How can the U.S. save its system and avoid the chaotic change that may be this year’s scenario?

The national popular vote for president, approved by Maine, would make every citizen’s vote equal.  Either Maine’s ranked-choice voting or California’s primary for candidates of all parties, with the “top two” meeting in the general election, deal with fracturing parties.

But the U.K. preview reveals that politics this year could be a horror show.

Trump trial: Dont gloat or groan, it hurts America

 

Gordon L. Weil

You can’t gloat or groan about the Trump guilty verdict.

It was a bad day for America.

His critics seem to glory in highlighting his felony conviction as the first for a U.S. president.  His allies strive to dismiss the entire trial as being nothing more than pure politics.  The pundits run wild with speculation about the election effect of the Trump conviction.

The pundits ought to take a deep breath and a step back.  They focus too much on speculating about immediate effects and provide little perspective.

Both sides may be right about Trump and the pundits may provide some wisdom, but what of the effect of the trial on the country and how it will affect our sense of American exceptionalism or the world’s sense of us?

Maine’s congressional delegation shows the split between partisanship and patriotism.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins doesn’t like Trump but remains a partisan politician.  She loyally reverted to GOP form to condemn the politics leading to the trial.  Maybe she was announcing her next re-election bid and wanted to discourage a future primary challenge from a hard-right opponent.

Middle-of-the-road Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, who served in the military, focuses on praising the functioning of the American judicial process.  That’s safe ground and ought to be the bipartisan truth.  Also, it’s patriotic.

The problem is not the substance of the case.  Trump was guilty.  How do I know?  Because the jury, 12 randomly selected citizens, said he is.  We have never devised a better way of determining the facts in a criminal case.  Given all the evidence and a reasonable judgment of it, he is guilty.

Of course, you can disagree.  That’s a right everyone has.  In the end, it’s likely that anyone who either gloats or groans is influenced by their own political views.  It is difficult to say that a partisan conclusion is better than the work of a jury, whatever their personal prejudices, trying patriotically to follow the careful and complete instructions given them by the judge.

The problem is that the case was even brought.  While the guilty verdict may seem to justify the decision of the Manhattan District Attorney to start the process, it obscures the question of whether it was in the best interest of the United States to try a former president for this kind of felony, even given its political overtones. 

Trump is correct. Guilty or not, this case was politically motivated. That’s because everything in public life is politically motivated.  For example, Trump brags that he intentionally appointed justices to the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade.  Those appointments surely were politically motivated.

The former president claims that President Biden is behind the cases that have been brought against him. Obviously, Biden does not control county DAs. To the extent that Trump’s claim is true in the federal cases, it turns out he has a friend in the White House.

Merrick Garland, Biden’s Attorney General, seems to think he is still a federal judge.  Going slowly to avoid any impression that his president had primed him to get Trump, he handed Trump, the candidate, what amounts to a free pass in an election year.  It is difficult to believe that Trump would have done the same if the situation were reversed.

Garland’s delay in starting the federal trials gave Trump a good chance of avoiding any major negative decision during the campaign.  And that break has nothing to do with pardoning himself.   Garland’s hand-picked prosecutor managed to ensure that he would get Trump’s lackey on the Florida bench in the documents case that should have been a quick win.

Trump’s “America First” policy launched the U.S. on the path to international irrelevance.  If he’s elected, leaders in friendly countries might worry the American world role will further weaken.  Then there’s the worldwide embarrassment of House Speaker Mike Johnson and actor Robert de Niro standing in the street outside the courthouse, campaigning for or against Trump.

Threats aimed at jurors, requiring their anonymity and police protection, are worse than embarrassing.

Collins and other Trump cheerleaders undermine respect for the judicial system when they join his ceaseless complaining.  Trump and the GOP say the real decision on his guilt will be made by his political appeal to voters in November.  The problem is that if he loses, he’ll claim electoral fraud and not admit guilt.

Certainly, voters can decide whether voting for a convicted felon matters and for many, it won’t.  But votes cannot overturn or affirm a court decision.  Meanwhile, stand by for endless appeals, mainly designed to confuse or delay a final result.

What matters more than the 2024 election is preserving the American system of government from partisan sabotage.  Attacking orderly justice to score short-term political points doesn’t help.

Covid’s ‘new normal’ is here to stay

 

Gordon L. Weil

Covid has affected everyone, whether or not you were vaccinated.

Not that Robert Kennedy, Jr. is right about shots.  Despite his claims, vaccinations can protect your health.  But they can’t shield you from the changes Covid has brought to the American economy.

The post-Covid world is often labeled negatively as the “new normal.”  Despite broad economic recovery, many people are unhappy and hope for conditions that are long gone. 

“Make America Rich Again” could be their slogan.  Polls suggest that people ignore the economic recovery and blame Joe Biden for not giving them the kind of personal prosperity that had supposedly boosted their purchasing power and assured their retirement.  

There probably never was an “old normal.”  Whatever the state of the economy in 2000, it was hit by the double whammy of the Great Recession of 2008 and the Covid pandemic in 2020.  Covid got us, and no president could provide a quick fix.

The Great Recession brought a massive slowdown and kept inflation low between 2009 and 2020.  People may have grown accustomed to low inflation, but it zoomed when Covid caused shortages and the government pumped recovery dollars into the economy.  To reverse inflation, the Federal Reserve has boosted interest rates.

The Fed’s anti-inflation efforts are working, but the higher interest rates have made some major costs, like buying a new home, much higher than they were.  The collapse of aggressive lending brought on the Great Recession and then the resulting slowdown kept housing costs well below traditional levels.  It will not again be as easy to buy a house.      

Covid changed almost everything.  Employment, retirement, remote work, and what we purchase and when we buy it were all affected.  Prices will not recede to the unusually low levels of a few years ago.  There’s no political magic that can change that.  The “new normal” is here to stay.

The good news is that unemployment caused by Covid has come down.  The bad news is that we are left with a shortage of workers.  Businesses cannot fill slots and low joblessness affects the economy in areas ranging from home building to restaurants. Wages are higher, but are not attracting the new workers that are needed. 

Why isn’t the labor supply better?  One major reason is that some people who might normally have been at work have decided to stay out of the labor force.  There’s been an increase in people who remain at home as caregivers and in people taking early retirement.

Some older workers lost their jobs during the pandemic and choose not to return to work or have not found jobs at their former pay level or requiring their skills.   More people accept reduced Social Security payments at age 62 rather than struggle to find suitable full-time work.  

Covid made remote work more common.  The pandemic’s spread required more people to evacuate the workspace. Though many have been required to return, the percentage of workers in remote locations has remained relatively high.  Downtown buildings have empty offices, permanently abandoned as the popularity of remote work has gained.

The limited labor force has meant that home builders are scarce.  Housing demand has grown faster than the available labor.  Less new housing has reduced sales and driven up home prices.  The construction labor shortage may partly be the result of the uncertain availability of workers thanks to a nonexistent immigration policy.

People have become more uncertain about their ability to finance their retirement. Added to worries about the future of Social Security, essential to many retirees, are concerns about their vulnerability when technology transforms the demand for skilled workers.  Their doubts can affect their spending and their purchasing decisions then flow back to promote more change.

People now hold on to their cars for 12 years.  Previously, frequent trading up to a new model was an American tradition. A pool of traded-in cars was created, and now they are in high demand.  Auto dealers continue to see service and parts grow, far surpassing their profits from sales of new and used cars. 

People worry about high inflation.  Some believe personal savings have increased, cutting into consumer buying.  Most think we’re in a recession. These beliefs are wrong.

The Fed is bringing inflation down.  Personal savings are not unusually high and, while personal consumption faltered, it is once again soaring.  The American economy grows steadily, ahead of most other countries.

Biden gets little credit for the good economic news and blame for the bad, whether real or imaginary.  Donald Trump left office before having to face most of the pandemic’s economic effects.

Biden does not deserve the blame nor does Trump deserve credit for the economy.  More powerful than any presidential policy, Covid’s unavoidable impact has left us all worried about our economic future.