THE DEMOCRATIC VEEP RACE: HOW ABOUT A FEMALE TIM KAINE…OR A NAME OUT OF LEFT FIELD?

4/29/20

While yours truly would not normally be spending two posts on the much-overrated office of vice-president, I do so for two reasons.   First, the title of last week’s post, THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL VICE-PRESIDENTIAL PICK SINCE 1944, suggests all one needs to know about the importance of former Vice-President Joe Biden’s choice for a 2020 running mate.  Second, given that both nominees have been decided and yours truly does not like to engage in discussion of lurid charges of a personal nature that contain all the drama of a post-Supremes Diana Ross single, there is little more to talk about than who will figuratively hold Mr. Biden’s coat and perhaps inquire after his health for the next four or so years.

Summarizing the main points of the aforementioned last post, Mr. Biden faces both a governmental imperative and a political imperative in the selection of his running mate.   The governmental imperative, given Mr. Biden’s age, the demands of the White House, and the questions regarding his ability to handle the demands of the presidency, is that Mr. Biden select somebody capable of being president yesterday if need be.   I don’t know what that means in the context of today’s troubling world, in which some combination of celebrity, a largely concocted life story, and the ability to hire a competent team of spinmeisters seems to make one qualified, in the eyes of many voters, to be president.  Further, yours truly, who has increasingly come to believe that mere desire for public office should disqualify one for public office, is no one to decide who is qualified to be president.   However, one would be reasonably safe in concluding, as I did last week, that “this is not Geraldine Ferraro, Dan Quayle, John Edwards, or Sarah Palin time.”    How seriously Mr. Biden will take the gravity of his selection we don’t know, but, judging from his long experience in government and the consequent presumption that he has thus acquired a sense of the importance of the office he seeks, there is more than hope that Mr. Biden will take more than politics into consideration as he continues his Veep deliberations.   The necessity of selecting somebody who is ready to be president is made more difficult when one considers that obscurity, if not virtual anonymity, should be a paradoxically salient characteristic of a Biden running mate, which brings us to Mr. Biden’s political imperative.

The political imperative that Mr. Biden faces is to avoid, at all costs, his morphing from “not Donald Trump” into “Joe Biden.”   As others have put it, Mr. Biden has to keep this election a referendum on Donald Trump.  The Democrats have not selected their best candidate, but at least they have avoided selecting a disastrous candidate whom Mr. Trump had a decent chance of defeating.   Now they have to keep the focus on Mr. Trump rather than on their mediocre candidate himself.   Drawing attention to Mr. Biden, and away from Mr. Trump, by making a big splash of a pick can only transform this race from a virtual lock for the former Vice-President (See PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED, 4/22/20) into a race that President Trump could conceivably win.

Nobody, least of all yours truly, is able to get into Mr. Biden’s head; hence I cannot predict what Mr. Biden will do regarding his Veep selection.   But here are some of the specific decisions that should follow from the above imperatives if Mr. Biden wants to maintain his sizeable lead in the race and leave the country in reasonably good hands should he not be able to serve out his term(s):

·         He shouldn’t pick someone from the leftmost wing of his already far to the left party.   This would only give people, largely in the suburbs, who really want to vote against Donald Trump a reason to vote against Joe Biden.   So no Elizabeth Warren.

·         Mr. Biden should unite the Democratic Party to the extent anybody can unite this herd of cats.  In this regard, he would do well to avoid selecting one of his erstwhile opponents in the race for the nomination.   During the circus that was the primary season, just about every candidate was situated, and usually not by himself or herself, into one of two camps:   the “progressive” camp (One strains to find how or where the quasi- or outright socialistic policies espoused by “progressives” ever resulted in much actual progress, but I digress and will, after these parentheses, refrain from using quotation marks around the misnomer “progressive” for the duration of this post.  Thank you.) and what passed for the moderate camp in that field.   Given the antipathy these two groups developed for each other, selecting a candidate from one of those camps runs the risk of antagonizing the other.  Why take the chance?   Adhering to this admonition excludes some good candidates and some, er, not so good candidate, but it does have the virtue, in addition to keeping the Party less fractious, of limiting the field to those with the good sense to stay out of what in retrospect looks like the pointless scrum that was the Democratic primary season.

·         Mr. Biden should not throw any “long balls;” why throw a Hail Mary when one is a yard from the opponent’s goal line with an already big lead?   Just put your head down, push the ball into the end zone, and get the damn game over with.   So none of this Michelle, or even Barack, Obama nonsense.  And no “co-presidency” and other such silliness.   Just pick somebody who can do the job and won’t draw much attention either to herself or to Mr. Biden.

·         Too bad Tim Kaine is a man; he would be perfect.  He was virtually unknown before Hillary Clinton selected him as her running mate and he remains virtually unknown today, which is a big plus in a race in which the Democratic ticket is striving for anonymity.  He hails from what could be considered, if one contorts one’s vision sufficiently, a swing state.  He is a senator and has been a mayor and a governor.   His selection would make the Democratic ticket the first major party all-Catholic ticket in the history of this country, and, leaving aside internecine arguments in my Church, the Catholic vote wins elections.  Alas, Mr. Kaine is a man.   As I said last week, while Mr. Biden’s pledge to limit his search to women was ill-advised, the consequences of breaking it would be, while probably not disastrous to a candidate who will have a hard time losing this election as long as he stays as far from the public eye as one possibly can while running for president (See, again , PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED, 4/22/20), definitely not worth the problems that would ensue.

So how about naming a few names?   Here are three, two of whom are being mentioned often and doubtless are being seriously considered.   One is completely out of left field, but is at least as meritorious as the other two.  

·         Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.  She’s from the upper Midwestern battleground state.  She has both legislative and executive experience.   She is a good speaker and manages to exude the quality of “every-womanness,” at least to an easily manipulated electorate.   Further, the media love her because she misses no opportunity to grandstand during the COVID crisis and/or to beat up on President Trump.   Her ideology is non-descript to unknown, at least on the narrow continuum deemed permissible by the Democrats.  However, she’s only been governor for a little over a year and her legislative experience has been entirely at the state level.   So she comes up a bit short in the “ready to step in” category.

·         Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.  (I can hear many of my readers emitting various verbal manifestations of exasperation, but, remember, this has nothing to do with what yours truly wants; this is, instead, part of a “call ‘em as I see ‘em” analysis of what Mr. Biden should do.)   Senator Duckworth is not from a battleground state, but she is from a state that is very similar demographically to its neighboring states, most of which are indeed battleground states.  Her experience is limited…three years as a senator and four years in the U.S. House of Representatives, but, compared to Ms. Whitmer, Ms. Duckworth is an old-hand at national government and politics.   Ms. Duckworth’s personal story is compelling:  Iraq war veteran who lost both her legs in action, Asian-American, and the mother of a six-year-old and a two-year-old which, for reasons that would baffle H.L. Mencken and do baffle yours truly, makes one more qualified for high office in the eyes of legions of voters.  

·         Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago.    Yes, she’s “only” a mayor and will have only been a mayor for a year by the time the upcoming weekend gets here.   And before that, she was one of those civic-minded lawyers and business executives who seem to spend quite a bit of time being civic-minded and very little time being lawyers or business executives.    So she is nearly completely bereft of the “ready to step in” pre-requisite.   However, from what can be seen so far, she has done a beyond passable job at the nearly impossible task of running the at least formerly greatest city in the world.  Further, if Mr. Biden should somehow decide that Ms. Whitmer is qualified to be president, objective lack of qualifications should be no barrier to Ms. Lightfoot.  And the politics of picking Ms. LIghtfoot are compelling; as Ms. Lightfoot herself put it when she was running for mayor, she is a “three-fer:” a Black gay woman.   She also has an attractive family complete with a photogenic daughter, not quite as young as Ms. Duckworth’s kids, who proved to be quite an asset in Ms. Lightfoot’s mayoral campaign.  Despite her tendency to talk a big game before caving into her opponents’ demands, as she did with the Chicago Teachers’ Union during the strike it sent her as a gift during her first  year in office, Ms. Lightfoot has, with the help of a hosanna chorus of a media, managed to acquire a reputation for toughness.  And no one enjoys skewering Donald Trump as much as does Lori Lightfoot.   Selecting Ms. Lightfoot would indeed be a long ball that doesn’t need to be thrown, but Ms. Lightfoot’s being on the ticket might help Joe Biden maintain, and even stretch, his already big lead.  Given her reputation as something of a moderate, the Ocasio-Cortez/Sanders/Biden wing of the party might not like Ms. Lightfoot, but are they really going to vocally oppose the first gay Black woman to be nominated by a major party?   Come to think of it, they might, claiming that nothing about one’s race, gender, or sexual orientation necessarily makes one sufficiently woke. Thank God this decision is Joe Biden’s and not mine or yours.

Concluding with two thoughts, and another name…

First, despite her not complying with one of the above criteria, yours truly cannot help but think that the best candidate available is Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; see the first bullet point in PRESIDENT TRUMP CANNOT WIN, BUT THE DEMOCRATS CAN LOSE, IN 2020, 1/9/20.    She is a moderate, by Democratic standards, and has shown the ability to debate intelligently and steadfastly.   She’s been in the Senate for over thirteen years and, while perhaps not making as many friends among her staff as she would like, seems to get along, and get things done, with her fellow senators, the latter two of which were traits that made Mr. Biden attractive to Mr. Obama when the latter was selecting his running mate.   At 60 by the end of May, Ms. Klobuchar is no kid, but is young enough to assuage some of the fears surrounding Mr. Biden.   She is from the upper Midwest, with Minnesota being something of a battleground state and, more importantly, demographically and electorally similar to outright battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio.   And I have heard from several people who are just dying to vote against Mr. Trump but who still harbor doubts about Mr. Biden that Ms. Klobuchar’s being on the ticket would make them sure votes for Mr. Biden.   Keep in mind that one of the advantages yours truly has in observing such matters is that I have a very wide circle of friends and acquaintances.

As I wrote in the aforementioned January piece, Ms. Klobuchar would have been a compelling, and I think the most compelling, Democratic presidential candidate; if she had won the nomination, this race would have been even further into the bag for the Democrats than it is.   But Ms. Klobuchar is an example of a public official, from either party, who would make a great general election candidate and maybe even a decent president, but who has little to no chance of getting his or her party’s nomination.  That’s a shame.

Second, Mr. Trump could provide a spark of hope to his all but doomed campaign for re-election by making an adjustment to his ticket.    But that is grist for another mill.

Since I have mentioned a Chicago mayor in this post, I will use the opportunity to promote my books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics.  Both provide illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL VICE-PRESIDENTIAL PICK SINCE 1944

4/24/20

More than eight years ago, I wrote about the silliness of all the attention we pay to a party’s standard-bearer’s selection of a running mate; see TIME FOR THAT QUADRENNIAL PARLOR GAME “WHO GETS THE WARM BUCKET OF (SPIT)?”, Insightful Pontificator, 3/20/12.   John Nance Garner, who held the Vice-Presidency for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first two terms, described the office as being “not worth a warm bucket of spit” …only he didn’t use the noun “spit.”  Mr. Gardner was correct in this observation.  This office, as I argued back in 2012, holds no power, sways few votes in the general election, and gives its holder far less of a leg up in the nominating process for the real job than most people suppose.   But in 2020, as in 1944, the Democratic nominee’s selection of a vice-presidential candidate could hardly be more important.

Yours truly will avoid characterizing the parallels between the 2020 and 1944 Veep selections as “eerie,” but only because that adjective is vastly overused in that context.  I will instead point out that the points of intersection between the two are interesting and worth pondering.

In 1944, the Democrats, including FDR, knew that they were in reality selecting not a running mate or a vice-president, but the next president.   FDR was very sick, sicker than the general public had been allowed to know while we were still in the thick of World War II, and would not serve out what would be his fourth term.   His vice-president was thus certain to be his successor, and sooner than most people thought. And we would likely still be in the War when the new guy became president.

FDR’s then vice-president, Henry Wallace, who had succeeded the aforementioned Mr. Garner, was selected as FDR’s running mate in 1940 because the popular Mr. Garner had planned to run against FDR that year before Mr. Roosevelt had decided he would run for an unprecedented third term, and thus his loyalty came into question.  Further, Mr. Garner had grown tired of imbibing in that warm bucket of (spit) and hence was no longer interested in the job.  (It’s interesting that one of Mr. Garner’s proteges, Lyndon Johnson, came to have the same regard for that office; perhaps LBJ should have listened more carefully to the advice his mentor, but things worked out for Mr. Johnson.  But I digress.)   Mr. Wallace was selected by FDR to be his running mate in 1940 because Mr. Wallace was a loyal New Dealer and, as an Iowa native who was Agriculture Secretary at the time, could bring rural votes to the ticket.  

In 1944, however, when it was a sure bet that the vice-president would become president, Mr. Wallace was completely unacceptable to powerful elements of the party because he was, to put it pointedly, the Bernie Sanders of his day, only more radical.  The southern segregationists, who were at best cool to Mr. Wallace in 1940, wanted no part of him in 1944.   They pushed for one of their own, former Senator from South Carolina and former Supreme Court Justice Jimmy Byrnes.  The party bosses in the big cities of the north, most notably Ed Kelly in Chicago and Ed Flynn in New York, who normally didn’t care much about ideology, feared that Wallace’s overt radicalism would hurt the ticket but, more importantly, since FDR was a shoo-in in 1944 and might not last past 1945, would not be good for the country or their role in it.  Roosevelt was no fan of Byrnes, however, because of Byrnes’ segregationist image and his unpopularity with organized labor.   While FDR would have preferred Wallace, he finally embraced the compromise candidate, Harry Truman, a product of the Pendergast Machine in Kansas City who had only recently emerged from obscurity in the Senate with his chairmanship of what came to be called the Truman Committee.   The Democrats thus settled on a relative no-name and it worked out quite well for them, and for the country, not only in 1944 but also in 1948.

In 2020, the Democrats have as their candidate a man who does not, as one of my readers might put it, have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, as did FDR in 1944.  However, Mr. Biden is 77 years old and, while sometimes showing signs of vigor, often shows his age and not in a flattering way.  Such occurrences, including an assortment of non-sequiturs, bewildering proclamations, and other seeming senior moments, have led to questions about his fitness for the rigors of the office.   Fortunately for Mr. Biden, his opponent evokes similar doubts about his fitness for office, though usually not because of Mr. Trump’s age, leaving Mr. Biden with what yours truly considers a commanding lead in the 2020 race; see 4/22/20’s PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED.

Still, most observers do not share my confidence that Mr. Biden will defeat President Trump in November, so politics becomes a consideration.   Plenty of voters who are on the fence are concerned about Mr. Biden’s stamina or, more to the point, capacity for office.   And while 77 is no longer considered by many to be too old to be president and Mr. Biden is in good health, the chances of anybody who has attained the age of 77 being around for the next four, let alone the next eight, years, especially when dealing with the pressures of the White House, are far less than those of someone who is, say, in her 50s.   So for the sake of keeping voters who are desperately seeking to vote against President Trump (Again, see PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED.) but still worry about Mr. Biden’s capacity for running this nation, Mr. Biden’s selection of a vice-president is as important as was Mr. Roosevelt’s in 1944. 

More importantly, for the sake of the future of the country, Mr. Biden’s selection of his vice-president is nearly as important as was Mr. Roosevelt’s in 1944; the person Mr. Biden selects is, while not as likely as was Mr. Truman in 1944, highly likely to be our next president.   And COVID-19, or at least its economic ramifications, might still be with us when she becomes president.  So she better have what it takes, whatever that is in this discomfiting age in which anybody is considered capable of running this country.

Like FDR in 1944, Mr. Biden is faced with a split in his party, though the split is not nearly as wide as it was in 1944.   The wings of the Democratic Party are not nearly as wide as they were in 1944.  There are no more segregationists in the Democratic Party of the type that backed Mr. Byrnes.  There are no more non-ideological big city bosses. There are no conservatives in the Democratic Party.  There are no moderates in the Democratic Party; as Mr. Biden himself said just last month

“There will be no ‘moderate Democrat’ on the ballot in 2020.”

What we have now in the Democratic Party is barely varying shades of deeply “progressive blue.”   And even the most “progressive” elements of the Party, personified by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are arguably not as radical as was Mr. Wallace, except, maybe for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.  Still, what the split in the Democratic Party lacks in substance it compensates for in rhetorical hysteria; from the sound of the various factions’ protestations, you’d think there is as wide a gulf between, say, Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar as there was between Jimmy Byrnes and Henry Wallace.  Mr. Biden thus is in a tough spot in making this decision, and he has further limited his latitude by making a pledge to select a woman as his running mate.

Mr. Biden could mollify the left-most extremes of his Party, those who are popularly referred to as the Sandernistas, by selecting someone who hails from that corner of the Party.  Though one never knows given the petulance of the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez crowd, perhaps Elizabeth Warren, a Sandernista in all but name, would be acceptable.   But if Mr. Biden does make such a selection, he risks losing plenty of the voters I described in my last post who are dying to vote against Trump but can’t stomach someone as overtly liberal as Ms. Warren and her comrades.  While yours truly doesn’t think there is much political danger for Mr. Biden since he would have a hard time losing in 2020 almost no matter what he does, smarter people than I do not agree with that assessment and political considerations must always be taken into account, as they were in 1944 when nobody, least of all Thomas Dewey, was going to beat FDR.

On the other hand, Mr. Biden could pick a perceived moderate, like Senator Amy Klobuchar or, if he were willing to break his “I’ll pick a woman” pledge, which would be ill-advised, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is getting plenty of publicity, and much praise from certain quarters, for his performance during the COVID-19 crisis.  Such a move would not scare away the moderate to conservative suburbanites who are desperate to vote for anybody but Trump but don’t want to turn the country over to a crowd who thinks socialism is an idea whose time has come.  However, if Mr. Biden makes such a move, he risks antagonizing the lunatic elements of his Party, who might stay home or launch some kind of quixotic third party or write-in campaign, as did Henry Wallace in 1948.

While the Democratic Party is not seeking advice from the likes of yours truly, I feel compelled to outline how Mr. Biden should proceed in this very important deliberation:

·         As hard as this might be, Mr. Biden must come to terms with his own mortality and realize that he is, in all likelihood, selecting his successor and thus should pick someone fully capable of running this country, or at least its executive branch.   This is not Geraldine Ferraro, Dan Quayle, John Edwards, or Sarah Palin time.

·         Mr. Biden should NOT break his pledge to select a woman.  While the pledge itself was ill-advised and not necessary to win the nomination, breaking it would be more ill-advised.  From a purely Machiavellian point of view, where are the voters pining for a woman on the ticket for the sake of a woman being on the ticket going to go?  To Donald Trump?  On the other hand, why incur ill-will when there are plenty of women around who are at least as qualified as the potential candidates of the male variety? 

·        Mr. Biden should avoid picking one of his opponents in the primary elections.   This would only infuriate the faction from which Mr. Biden did not pick.  Besides, there are plenty of equally qualified, or unqualified, people who had the good sense not to get involved in the circus that was the 2020 primary season.  So no Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar.

·         As tempting as it might be to throw the long ball and do something unprecedented, selecting Michelle Obama would not be a good move.   Yes, it will help Mr. Biden’s chances on election day because nobody would unify the Party like Michelle Obama, except her husband, who also could legally accept the nomination, but such a move is so crazy as to be beyond the pale.  However, Mr. Biden doesn’t need to throw the long ball; he only needs three yards and a cloud of dust, which is to his benefit since the election will be decided in Big 10 country.   And, as much as the die-hard Obama crowd does not want to hear it, Michelle Obama has no (zero) qualifications to be president.  While that has not stopped a lot of people from seeking the office, and some from actually winning it, Mr. Biden wants to play a careful, inside game right now.

·         What Mr. Biden needs is a nobody, a largely unknown high office-holder who can unite the Party, largely by not offending anybody, and who has shown at least an inkling of capacity for the big job.   He needs someone who can, as I said in my last post, keep Joe Biden from morphing from “not Donald Trump” into “Joe Biden” and who could step into the Oval Office on virtually no notice, if need be.  He needs a competent nobody who has made plenty of friends and few enemies.   The Democrats stumbled upon such a candidate in 1944 and it worked out well for them and for the country; they need to do so again 76 years later.   But this time, they don’t have big city party bosses like Ed Kelly and Ed Flynn to help in this effort, which is not the unmitigated positive the enlightened types seem to think.

Again, the above points are opinions regarding what Mr. Biden and his Democrats should do.  Yours truly is not prepared at this point to predict what they will do.   Given the Democrats’ longstanding tendency toward self-sabotage, such speculation at this point is just that.

In the course of this post, I mentioned Ed Kelly and Ed Flynn.    These two are the types of characters I will write about if I write a prequel to my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, both available at Amazon and a variety of online book sellers.

PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED

4/22/20

The 2020 presidential election is a little over six months away and, as the cliché goes, that is an eternity in politics.   However, it’s safe to say even at this early juncture that the chances of Donald J. Trump winning re-election are microscopic and the COVID-19 crisis only helps his opponent, the latter for reasons that most people miss.   Further, just as I suspected something was wrong with the polls in 2016 (See TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16), yours truly simply cannot believe any poll that shows the 2020 race as being even remotely close.

I base my confidence in former Vice-President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory on many things that can be encapsulated in two observations.  The first observation comes out of county in which I reside, DuPage, in the far western suburbs of Chicago.    DuPage County has long been Illinois’ largest GOP stronghold.   Legend has it that Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley would never report the Cook County results on election night until he saw how big a lead the Republicans had built in DuPage so that he could report enough Democratic votes to render that majority irrelevant.   While such a tale may be just another highly charged figment of our state’s rich political lore, that Richard I felt compelled to give DuPage such consideration is evidence of that county’s importance to the politics of the state of Illinois and especially to its Republican Party.

Then came 2016.    While the Republicans did relatively okay down ballot, Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump in DuPage, with Trump getting less than 40% of the vote, beyond unheard of for a Republican in DuPage County.   And things got worse from there for the GOP.   The Republicans took a pounding in DuPage in 2018, losing, in addition to seats in the state legislature,  the two Congressional seats that had DuPage County as their bases, including one, that of Peter Roskam, that was gerrymandered by Illinois Democratic boss Mike Madigan to be so packed with Republicans that they could neither lose the seat nor cause much mischief for the Dems in surrounding districts.   It was as if, in the case of Mr. Roskam, the GOP muffed a lay-up fed to them by the opposing team.   The GOP also lost County Board seats, emerging with an 11 to 7 majority that is slim not only by historical standards but especially by comparison to neighboring Cook County, where Democrats hold a 15-2 margin.   Can you possibly imagine the Dems holding, say, a 10 to 7, or even a 12 to 5, margin, in Cook?   Neither can I.     

It’s easy to determine why the GOP had been beaten up so badly in DuPage in the last two elections:    Donald J. Trump.  Multitudes of voters in this rock-ribbed, salt-of-the-earth, nearly stereotypically GOP County abhor Donald Trump, and this is especially true of the women voters in DuPage.    DuPage voters have expressed this, er, dissatisfaction not only by voting against Donald Trump but also by voting against the Party that has made him its standard-bearer.   This trend will only accelerate in 2020.   Back in 2016, there were plenty of voters who were uneasy with Mr. Trump but were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially against Hillary Clinton, while not being sufficiently brave to give any indication of the latter in public, or at least in polite company.  (See, again, my long classic 11/4/16 post TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, written when “everyone knew” that Secretary Clinton was going to do to Donald Trump what the Bears did to the Patriots in the ’86 Super Bowl.  (Given what both teams have done in the intervening years, one could be forgiven for thinking that the ’86 Super Bowl was as real as Mrs. Clinton’s certain victory, but I digress.  At least I do so doubly parenthetically.))   Those voters are gone; now that these traditional, moderate, upper middle-class voters have seen Mr. Trump in action, their doubts have been erased, and not in Mr. Trump’s favor.   He will thus struggle to reach even his pathetic 40% of the vote in DuPage.

One might ask who cares about DuPage County.   The County is, after all, in Illinois and there is simply no way that Mr. Trump or, in 2020, any Republican running for any office, is going to carry Illinois.  But DuPage is important not of itself but because of its similarity to so many suburban counties throughout the nation and especially in the key Midwestern states that President Trump will have to carry in order to win the election.   These relatively moderate, economically well-off while not being crazily wealthy, suburban counties are the core of the GOP’s strength.   The GOP does not win elections on the votes of the conservative true believers; it wins elections when it carries the moderate suburban districts inhabited by voters who work for a living, have accumulated at least a modicum of wealth, much of which lies in their homes, and whose primary interests lie not in politics but in maintaining the financial position they have built for themselves and in preserving the country and its system that has enabled them to do so.    And President Trump is not going to win in those counties, or at least he will not win by sufficiently large margins in those DuPagesque counties to overcome the big majorities Mr. Biden will run up in traditional Democratic bastions in both the working class and uber-rich precincts of the big cities.

One might counter that President Trump doesn’t need the traditional moderate Republican base because he has built a new base of white working-class voters, primarily, but not exclusively, male, who have not gone to college.   One would be wrong in making this contention.   The GOP wins the White House only when it carries both the traditional Republican base and the white working-class vote, and has done so since the implementation of the Nixon Southern Strategy in 1968.   The President will not be re-elected with only the votes of the white working class; he also needs the vote of the middle managers who live in places like DuPage.   And he is not going to get that second vote.  He will thus lose the election by a wide margin.

Some ardent Trump fans will also cite possible inroads Mr. Trump might make into traditional Democratic constituencies.   They argue that the President will do better than anticipated among Blacks and possibly Hispanics due to the strong Trump economy and the pre-COVID declines in minority unemployment rates.   Trump supporters further argue that Mr. Trump will do better among Jewish voters than typical GOP candidates because of his strong pro-Israel credentials.   This argument as it relates to all three of the aforementioned Democratic constituencies is a long shot, but even if Mr. Trump does marginally better among any, or all three, of these groups, the numbers will be, extending the above football analogy,  the equivalent of the Patriots’ kicking a field goal (if indeed they did) in the fourth quarter of the ’86 Super Bowl; they won’t come close to making any difference.

The second observation behind my confidence at this point in Mr. Biden’s impending victory is really a reflection of the first:   the results in the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election.   In that race, liberal challenger Jill Karofsky, endorsed by Joe Biden, beat conservative incumbent Daniel Kelly, endorsed by President Trump, by 11 percentage points in a surprisingly strong turnout, especially considering that the primary was run in the thick of the COVID isolation/social distancing order.   Ms. Karofsky ran well in most constituencies, but won the election primarily because she ran so well in those traditionally Republican, dare I say DuPagesque, counties around Milwaukee, Madison, and Chicago. 

Further, Wisconsin really matters in the 2020 election.  First, Wisconsin is a toss-up state that delivered a surprise victory for Donald Trump in 2016.  Second, Wisconsin is important not only of itself but also because it is so demographically similar to fellow Midwestern states like Michigan and Ohio, and even to Pennsylvania, all of which will be crucial to the 2020 election.  Simply put, if Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidate can be eviscerated so badly in Wisconsin, Mr. Trump is in deep trouble not only in Wisconsin but also in Ohio. Michigan, and Pennsylvania.   And we know what that means for the election.

So what about the coronavirus and this election?

People are arguing about whether his handling of the coronavirus is helping or hurting the President.  However, these arguments, while centering around the effectiveness of his response and its reflection on the President’s leadership, miss the major point.  

Repeatedly on this blog, I have made the point that I made most emphatically and succinctly in the title of my 1/9/20 post PRESIDENT TRUMP CANNOT WIN, BUT THE DEMOCRATS CAN LOSE, IN 2020:  while, largely for the reasons outlined in today’s post, Mr. Trump can’t win the election, the Dems could surely lose by nominating the wrong candidate or by manifesting another of those talents that repeatedly enable them to snatch proverbial defeat from the jaws of victory.  

At first, I thought the Dems might send this gift horse to the glue factory by nominating one of their more overtly looney-tune lefties.   While the Dems dodged this bullet by dispatching both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, I was not, and still am not, convinced that the swift and seemingly not sufficiently pondered nomination of Joe Biden was the wisest choice for the Party; I touched on that theme in my 3/2/20 post THE SOUTH CAROLINA PRIMARY AND THE ENSUING MAD DASH FOR THE EXITS:  ARE THE DEMOCRATS GOING TO WAKE UP AND SAY “I DID WHAT?”?   However, given the near impossibility of the Dems’ blowing it while running against Donald Trump, I have become confident that the Dems will win with Joe Biden if Mr. Biden can avoid saying enough silly and/or embarrassing things that reinforce concerns people already have regarding his capacity for the job he seeks.  

Simply put, as long as Mr. Biden can be kept from saying or doing something really astonishing, the cover the media will provide for him, combined with moderate, and especially GOP moderate, antipathy toward Donald Trump should make him our 46^th president.   And that stipulation is where the coronavirus helps Mr. Biden.  

Those who don’t understand politics, Mr. Biden, or the major issue in this race contend that COVID-19 hurts Mr. Biden by denying him a platform and/or a spotlight.   The proponents of such a view correctly contend that Mr. Biden can’t conduct a conventional campaign with big rallies and the like, the news media are devoting themselves nearly exclusively to COVID, and all the attention is focused on Mr. Trump.  But they miss the obvious, to wit, when you have a candidate who is likely to say or do something at any time that will cause eyes to roll and voters to sigh in bewilderment and frustration, you want to keep that candidate as far from the public eye as possible.    In this case, the COVID-19 crisis keeps Mr. Biden from the public eye, giving him fewer opportunities to say something or do something that will confirm people’s suspicions that he is no longer equipped to handle the responsibilities the White House entails; therefore, the travails our country is suffering right now work to the benefit of Mr. Biden.

Some who find the above argument appealing might further argue that, given Mr. Trump’s penchant for buffoonery, the exposure he is getting from the COVID crisis also works to Mr. Biden’s benefit.   This is not a bad argument until one considers that the risks involved are not symmetrical.   There are no, or few, Trump devotees out there who will abandon the man if he does or says something stupid; they have repeatedly seen the man say and do stupid things and such behavior has done little or nothing to lessen their enthusiasm for him.   However, there are plenty of people out there, in DuPage County and elsewhere, who really want to vote against Donald Trump but aren’t all that comfortable with Mr. Biden either.  The minds of such voters are capable of being changed, albeit barely so at this point, if enough doubt about Mr. Biden should arise.   The minds of Mr. Trump’s base are incapable of being changed or, more properly, if they have been willing to excuse Mr. Trump’s inanities so far, further inanities are not going to make any difference.

To put it succinctly, as long as Mr. Biden remains “not Trump” rather than “Joe Biden,” he wins because there are so many people out there who can no longer stomach Mr. Trump.   Since the COVID crisis keeps Mr. Biden under wraps, thus minimizing the chances of his metamorphosis from “not Trump” to “Joe Biden,” it works in his favor.   While Mr. Biden is far too decent a man to hope for a continuation of the crisis, such a continuation would virtually assure that the crisis will wind up in his lap come January.

Early in this post, I mentioned Richard J. Daley and the Cook/DuPage shenanigans of those long since passed times of politics of Illinois.   See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work, or rather, used to work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

MAKING A LITTLE MORE LEMONADE FROM THE BITTER LEMONS OF COVID-19

4/11/20

It goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic is beyond horrific, but some good can emerge from even the most horrendous situations.  While these positives can never outweigh the negatives of such ghastly circumstances, at least they can partially balance some of the horror.  In yesterday’s post on my Faith blog,

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND THE WILL OF GOD

https://faithblog2018.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-covid-19-pandemic-and-will-of-god.html

yours truly discussed the more profound possibly positive by-products of the COVID-19 pandemic.   Today, I present some of the more secular benefits that could arise from the dystopia into which the coronavirus has thrust us:

CORPORATIONS AND PEOPLE MIGHT TAKE BETTER CARE OF THEIR FINANCES

In the wake of the pandemic, we are hearing tales of numerous people and corporations, some of the latter of which are quite large, that aren’t going to make it financially without government help because they are either out of work or out of business for a couple of weeks.   While one can understand not being able to be out of work for an extended period of time, shouldn’t people and companies have built a financial cushion capable of sustaining them for longer than the financial equivalent of the blink of an eye?

First, corporations…

Corporations, as a class, have been taking on debt (i.e., in finance speak, leveraging themselves) with the fervor of a repeatedly self-proclaimed “just social” drinker on his way to his fifth cocktail party of a given evening.  Total corporate debt in the U.S. has reached $10 trillion, or 47% of GDP.   Ten years ago, while we were still struggling our way out of the debt crisis by issuing more debt (the financial equivalent of the hair of the dog), corporate debt constituted 40% of GDP; it was high then, it’s higher now.   This debt was taken on, to at least some extent, to buy back stock and pay dividends, providing a double dose of leverage to the balance sheets of the companies engaging in such financial engineering.

Yours truly is not going to join the ranks of the economically illiterate yet politically powerful in castigating stock buybacks as the biggest financial swindle since the Teapot Dome scandal of the previous ‘20s.   Stock buybacks are often a very intelligent application of a firm’s capital, taking money away from corporate bigwigs who think they are the firm’s owners and returning it to the shareholders, the firm’s real owners, who, because of the nature of a buyback, can decide whether they’d like to take out the cash, possibly to invest in another opportunity, or to stay onboard, so to speak, and enjoy the “other things being equal” increase in the price of their underlying stock.   How it is wrong to give people voluntary access to their own money is beyond me, but, then again, yours truly understands economics and finance.   And dividends?  The usual “widows and orphans” argument trotted out by Street denizens to justify sustaining, and even subsidizing, dividends is okay, if a bit tread-worn.  A more convincing argument for dividends is that, without dividends and/or the prospect of future dividends, a stock’s intrinsic value is nothing, nada, bupkus, zero (0).   We could also add to the argument for the salubriousness of dividends the above observation regarding buybacks, to wit, it is difficult to see the patent immorality of giving people their own money.  

So yours truly has no problems with stock buybacks and dividends under normal circumstances.   However, it simply isn’t prudent for a corporation to engage in such otherwise desirable activities by taking on debt to the point at which one must assume nearly perpetual continuation of good times, and hence ever-increasing operating earnings, in order to keep that corporation from falling over the financial edge.   Given the demands for immediate government help from many of our major corporations, one has to assume that they had been engaging in such reckless leveraging.   Yes, the government and, mostly, the Fed nearly demanded that they do so by making credit so cheap and abundant, but the people who run these corporations are paid enough to display the fortitude and good sense to say “no” even when everyone is demanding that they say “yes.”

While no one can expect a company to stay alive for prolonged periods of little or no business, especially when that downturn was both nearly impossible to foresee and the fault of entities and events far beyond that company’s control, corporations shouldn’t have been operating with balance sheets incapable of surviving even a short blip in economic activity.   Being sufficiently conservative to wait out a crisis of the duration the COVID-19 pandemic might involve is nearly impossible and, indeed, undesirable.   But being more conservatively capitalized than was much of corporate America going into this crisis is far from too much to ask, especially when many of these corporations are asking for, even demanding, public money.

Next, individuals…

Much of the same can be said on the individual side as well.   As long-time readers know, one of my recurring themes is the dismal, and largely self-induced, financial shape of the average American.  The statistics are stunning but, since they are boring to normal people who, unlike yours truly, don’t get excited over economic and financial minutiae, I will list only a few:

·         Total household debt reached a record $14.15 trillion, a record and 2/3 of GDP, in the fourth quarter of 2019

·         Total credit card debt reached $930 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019, well above the pre-2008-’09 crisis peak.

·         The proportion of credit card debt more than 90 days late was 5.3% in the fourth quarter of 2019, the highest level in eight years.   For those 18-39 years old, that number was 9.4%, the highest since 2010.

·         The average car loan’s maturity just reached 70 months.   A third of all car loans are in the 73-84 month range.

Simply put, many people are living beyond their means.   Some people have no choice; their means are so limited that they must live beyond them in order to live.   But such people constitute a small percentage of this problem.   Yes, many people live, as those who advocate for the poor, and those who advocate for themselves while pretending to advocate for the poor, put it, paycheck to paycheck.   But this condition arises, in many, if not most, cases, not so much from the size of the paycheck as it does from the size of the expenditures made using that paycheck as the foundation for debt.   While many who practice such financial masochism can keep the financial plates twirling when times are good, that china comes crashing down when times suddenly turn bad, as we are seeing now.

There are many ways to economize, on small things, like, bottled water, hideously over-priced vending machine snacks,  and $5.00 coffee drinks, to medium sized things, like the phones we carry, the frequency with which we eat out, the places at which we choose to eat out, and the vacations we take, to big things, like the cars that we drive and pretend to own and the houses in which we live.   Many Americans, out of pride, weakness, ignorance, or some combination thereof, simply choose not to economize, but, as the great Dave Ramsey has said, spending money you don’t have on things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like is not a winning financial strategy.  

Maybe this crisis, and the precarious position in which it has left so many people, will convince people that financial scolds like Mr. Ramsey and yours truly are not such killjoys after all.   Maybe people will come to see that, say, six or nine months of living expenses in a reserve fund, a long-term investment plan, and an absence of debt are more important than the next trendy piffle they are convinced will make them happy.  

THE SUDDEN ENTHUSIASM FOR HANDWASHING AND OTHER MANIFESTATIONS OF GOOD PERSONAL HYGIENE MAY CONTINUE

As loyal readers already know, handwashing, along with living beyond one’s means, has been a long-time topic of interest to yours truly.   The third bullet point in

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON CHRISTMAS, CRUISES, KARAOKE, PERSONAL HYGIENE, THE RIGHT TO VOTE, ETC.

https://mightyquinn211.blogspot.com/2019/12/random-thoughts-on-christmas-cruises.html

is only the latest example of this obsession put to writing.   Now that we have been repeatedly told to wash our hands (It is indicative of the poor state of personal hygiene in this country that adults have to be told to wash their hands, but I digress; at least I do so parenthetically.),  perhaps people will change their disquieting and dyspeptic ways in this regard.   Maybe when we return to restaurants, the reaction to the sign in the washroom that reads

“Employees must wash hands”

will no longer be “Hey, I’m not an employee, so I don’t have to wash my hands.”

PEOPLE MIGHT COME TO REALIZE THE POINTLESSNESS OF THE MODERN POLITICAL CONVENTION

The Democratic Convention in Milwaukee has already been delayed, and the Party’s apparent standard-bearer has already talked about the possibility of a virtual convention.   The GOP can’t be far behind.   Maybe the electorate, and maybe even some of the pols who like to use such circuses to bask in the glow of their own manifest wonderfulness, will come to realize that political conventions as practiced since at least 1976 are simply useless.   Yours truly, as an only somewhat recovering political junky, used to love political conventions…when they meant something.   But now that the nominee has already been chosen weeks, or, usually, months before the convention, these affairs are little more than opportunities for politicians to listen to each other, and to themselves, blather on about how terrific, generous, wonderful, thoughtful, and mindful paragons of humanity they are.   Their minions also get to argue over the Party’s platform, which, once put in place, is ignored by everybody, even the pols who make a feint at pledging loyalty to its planks despite not having read the tedious tome. 

While blathering on about themselves and bickering over things of absolutely no interest to anyone with a real job are among the favorite activities of politicians and their sidekicks, perhaps the people will demand an end to being subjected to such nonsense, the networks will oblige by ceasing coverage altogether, and the entire vestigial machinery will collapse of its own weight.   We are most of the way down this road already; perhaps COVID-19 will complete this journey.

MAYBE INTERVIEWEES WILL CEASE STARTING THE ANSWER TO JUST ABOUT EVERY QUESTION WITH “SURE,…”

If you have yet to notice this tendency, you will after reading this post. This malady tends to afflict interviewees who have not yet attained a certain age, but it is spreading to afflict larger portions of the populace. 

Why COVID-19 might have anything to do with alleviating this relatively recent bastardization of the language is beyond yours truly…but we can always hope.

Blessed Passover and Easter to all of you.  Please stay well and do all you can toward that end.

TAKING THE SLOW ROAD TO HELL TO SAVE THE ECONOMY FROM A QUICK SPRINT TO THE SAME DESTINATION

4/3/20

Rather than go into all my feelings about the coronavirus bailout, I will, in the interest of keeping my readers alert and awake, summarize these feelings and avoid too much detail unless absolutely necessary.

·         We needed some kind of bailout (and, no matter what euphemism the pols and the recipients like to use, this is a bailout), but nothing of this size, scope, and expense.   As could easily have been predicted, the pols took the advice of one of the most skilled among them and didn’t let this crisis go to waste.

·         At the expense of sounding like curmudgeon, one of the many troubling aspects of this bailout is the additional $600 per week of unemployment benefits offered to recipients for four months.   People need help and I sympathize with the argument that if we can help major corporations and the plutocrats who run them, we can help the proverbial little guy in a more direct manner.  So the intentions of this provision are admirable.   But bad policy is usually the result of admirable intentions, and the pernicious result of this policy may be a delay in the return of the post-corona economy to full employment.   $600 per week is $15/hour, more than a lot of people make.    Unless we assume, as does most of our nation’s political, business, and entertainment elite,  that the ability to think is harbored only in those who have “made it” in the trendier enclaves of  New York, Washington, or Hollywood,  one suspects that a lot of people will wisely extend their period of unemployment rather than take a job that pays less than they would be getting on unemployment.   And many people making that very understandable decision are employed in the sectors of the economy that are now hardest hit and must ramp up quickly if we are going to get to normal.   Fortunately, four months in not a long time.

·         What most troubles me about the bailout is its further reinforcement of the notion that we can summon up money like Merlin the Magician whenever we need it simply by putting the Fed, which by now has surely reached the end of the process that has transformed it from the nation’s central bank to the world’s economic uber-tsar, into action.  Already, quarters of the Democratic Party are asking why so few are concerned about where all this money will come from and suggesting that we apply the same nonchalance to any spending program their febrile minds can concoct.   It sure looks, to the uneducated voter, like the source of money is not a cause for concern when the money is used to help the “rich” but suddenly becomes a problem when it used to finance programs that are designed ostensibly to help the “working person.”   One suspects that there will be hell to pay.

·         This is probably an arcane point, but I haven’t heard anybody mention this in the discussion of the Treasury’s taking equity positions in companies, most saliently airlines, it will save with the $50 billion portion of the bailout money that is to be used more or less at the Treasury’s discretion.    Anybody lacking socialist impulses, and certainly yours truly,  is appalled by the notion of the government’s taking equity positions, even small equity positions, in private companies, let alone companies in the most vital sectors of the economy and hence considered worthy targets for this discretionary pot of money   Yet, there is the feeling that taxpayers should get some kind of return, and more than what would constitute a penalty rate of interest in this low yield environment, on the money they will advance to bail-outees, a word yours truly has just made up.   So people are crying for equity stakes in companies that grab the spondulicks, and some have mentioned warrants, in a generic sense, as an attractive form for such stakes.   But, still, the very notion of government ownership troubles those of us who still maintain an understanding of the origins of this country and what has made it great.  

So why not have the bailed-outees issue the Treasury warrants that have as perhaps their most salient condition that the government cannot exercise those warrants?   When the airline, or other bailed out concern, gets back on its feet, its stock has gone up and the warrants have gone up in a leveraged manner, the government could sell the warrants in an auction or other public offering.  The companies that the Treasury has decided need saving get saved, the government makes a pile of dough and is compensated for its risk, and the government does not own any portion of the company.  Problem solved.

               

The CEOs of some of these companies, Boeing and a few of the airlines being the most notable, have said that they would refuse any bail out that involved the government’s taking an equity stake, whether that stake involve stocks or options.   These CEOs are concerned about diluting their shareholders.    Yours truly has two immediate reactions.   First, if the CEOs are so concerned about dilution of their existing shareholders, they probably don’t need a bailout and the Treasury should keep the money.   Second, if the subject companies really need the bailout money, the choice would appear to be between diluting their existing shareholders and wiping out their existing shareholders.   It shouldn’t take the kind of money these guys make to attract people with enough mental horsepower to make that choice.