Articles: Politics

What happened? Joe Biden finally got the big job. He’d get the great house, get to entertain in the front of the cool plane, (almost) everyone loved him, and he could set up a comfortable retirement. His close friends were gathered around his Christmas tree, expecting all kinds of great gifts, but all they found in their stockings were … lumps of coal. The Grinch had stolen his Christmas.

All of that is a long-winded way of saying that, by far, the most important job in the Biden administration will be director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Pity Joe Biden. He is the dog that finally caught the bus and he is soon to be political roadkill. While he celebrates his victory in the Electoral College, powerful forces already are engaged to doom him and his presidency. His two central problems are that he has set the wrong expectations and that his policies will not work in the current domestic and international political, economic and military environment.

Election results appear to be in, but any progressive triumphalism, or claims of a “mandate for radical change,” will hit a wall — radical insanity lost.

Joe Biden has a foreign policy plan that is so secret no one knows what it is, not even Joe.

The Biden/Harris public statement speaks, predictably, with election language, about rebuilding the world’s “trust” in and “respect” for America (read: not-Trump), a “middle class” foreign policy, and, of course, environmentalism.

This political year can be understood through the lens of a religious war. Both sides are doctrinal; neither will entertain the other’s arguments or points of view. Disagreements descend to personal invective. Heretics are rooted out. Rhetoric is extreme, and there is violence. It is a zero-sum game — neither side wins unless the other loses.

It is the worst of politics.

The Democrats appear to have achieved the near-impossible: They have wrecked their winning hand by making the election not about Donald Trump.

Had they remained calm and above the fray, the Democrats could have focused on the unlimited Trump excesses in character assassination, accompanied by his grating self-congratulation, and skated to a 60-40 electoral landslide. Statesmanship and political sophistication could have assured an overwhelming and sustained victory. But, in a party dominated by childlike impulse and shrill overstatement, largely devoid of political or economic balance, they may have engineered their own political suicide and shifted the electoral balance to Trump.

Poor Joe Biden. This is his third try, but the progressive wing of his party painted him into a narrow, no-win corner with the demand that his vice presidential pick be a woman of color. While it’s clear that most Americans would agree that it’s time for a female president or vice president, Biden found himself forced to pick from a pool of women who were either too radically progressive, too inexperienced to become president, or simply unable to help attract more votes to the Biden candidacy.

During the 2020 Democratic primary, the party was unable to produce a single strong, capable female national leader. Of the 3,979 delegates committed during the primaries, the Democrats voted to give only 60 of those delegates to the female candidates. After running a particularly disorganized and chaotic campaign, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) dropped out, netting zero votes and zero delegates, and was neither popular nor considered politically viable.

If there was one piece of useful stock market advice this year, it was “buy the dip” — that is, assume that the market value will form a “V” with a steep and deep decline and then a sharp and strong recovery. So, many bought into the market in mid-March, after the deep decline, with the confidence that government bailouts plus underlying economic strength in many key parts of the economy (e.g., high tech and professional services) would be lightly affected by the coronavirus lockdown and bounce back fast. They made a lot of money.

Certainly the political fortunes of President Trump have followed the first part of that curve so far this year and his poll numbers are down. But I’d argue, buy the dip.

Honestly, who can forget Joe Biden’s economic strategy during the 2008 campaign? The solution, he said, is “a three-letter word: J-O-B-S!” Putting aside another spectacular Biden gaffe, and his continued divisive pandering (they’ll “put y’all back in chains”), his white-splaining was right on this point. With painful racial strife in America, the most promising long-term solution remains jobs.

The horrific killing of George Floyd, and other fatal incidents involving African Americans, have given rise to large demonstrations for police reform. Many government bodies at all levels have moved to consider or enact police reforms, including increased training; eliminating certain police tactics such as use of chokeholds; more transparency on records of abusive behavior or excessive force by individual police officers, to put more focus on true police accountability; and more forceful prosecution of police abuse. Almost certainly, normally stubborn police unions will need to give ground on many of these issues.