The Debate Sucked But Doesn't Change The Stakes or Clear Choices in the Election

I didn't watch the debate tonight; I couldn't. I've avoided Biden video for awhile because it makes me worry about how old and frail he appears. And, more generally, I can't tolerate more than small doses of TV news anymore. It's ridiculous superficiality and reductive bothsidesing, rarely amounting to more than a headline and two or three vague bullet point factoids. 

Before I gave up cable a few years back, I watched a lot of MSNBC at the beginning of the Trump era, which is dismissed by conservatives as partisan TV news for liberal left Democrats, but was rarely liberal left enough for me and way too much of a kind of outrage porn. Every week for months, even years, we were kept on the edge of our seats anticipating some course correction by Republicans, finally the moral pivot we'd been waiting for. Repubs, we desperately hoped, would finally figure out Dump was bad news and a national security threat, obviously more interested in enriching himself than building a better future for America. A pivot that would never come to pass, sadly, barely a peep of country-over-party from the fake news MAGA Repugs in congress, then as today. 

Anyway, I finally had to give cable news up; probably not long after Biden won, like everyone else hoping the fascist crisis was over and I could return to my life. Too much doom hysteria. I'm not saying I'm above the TV news, or the 24/7 media environment, but actually as susceptible to it as anybody else. 

So I'm not insensitive to the power of the image and TV performance. I'm just too squeamish to take it in unfiltered. But based on Biden's recent SOTU speech, recent snippets of Dump's dead-end Vegas act at his rallies, and the last debate in 2020, I was reasonably hopeful about the debate, even if I couldn't stand watching it live. Regardless, according to my sources-- i.e., people who did watch the debate-- the consensus is Trump appeared strong and vital and Biden weak and very weak. The live blog commentary I refreshed incessantly for the duration of the debate created a cringingly bad image: Biden standing-in-place, lost, mumbling hoarsely, stammering confusedly, while Grump ran circles around him with relentless energy; Trump's unchecked lies in full effect. 

Of course the Repugs are now jubilant, Biden has at last been exposed as old and incompetent, as they've been trying to tar him with for months, but, additionally, and more concerning, I'm seeing all kinds of Dems that watched the debate, some of my most trusted sources, that in the aftermath of the debate were like, 'OMG, Biden's toast, he must resign immediately, and be replaced at the Democratic Convention,' like Ezra Klein was suggesting back in the spring. I can't say anything otherwise about the performances of the two candidates at the debate. But I can say I don't see how their relative performances, however bad they were, really changes anything about their contrasting positions on the political issues or the stakes those stark choices represent in the upcoming election. 

I know, issues are not the way normies choose a POTUS. They have to identify with the candidate, like they were buying a box of cereal. They vote for the political charisma; the candidates' media packaged persona. I'm sure this is broadly true but in the spirit of hoping significant margins of voters actually can understand the issues, i.e., discern some qualitative differences about the cereals inside the boxes, let's review a few of the most salient political issues at stake in the election: 

Women's rights. There is no grey area between the two candidates here. If you'd rather women, the individual woman, and pregnant women have the right to decide privately with their family and doctor what to do with their pregnancy, and would rather it not be left to some anti-abortion edict from the state, one that we can already see from documented evidence endangers the health of pregnant women, then you will vote for Biden, no matter how old he appears on TV. The Repugs on SCOTUS, that Dump put there, ended a women's right to choose with the Dobb's decision. And wherever they are in power they are trying to extend those restrictions to IVF, contraception, and by criminalizing reproductive health care as we speak. Any Repug vote at this point is a vote against basic women's rights and endangers women's reproductive health care.

Immigration. Biden recently implemented some executive order that reduced asylum seeking border crossings by 40%. The Democrats and a small handful of Republicans crafted a bipartisan bill to address the border and immigration "crisis" more comprehensively this past spring, reportedly, including numerous conservative priorities, but it was shot down by Trump because he was afraid the bill's effectiveness might reduce the border's value as a campaign issue. The southern border with Mexico really isn't about the Dems wanting "open borders" and only the Repubs wanting "secure borders," as Republicans like to frame it. It's really about one party, Dems, trying to reduce illegal immigration, and the other, Grump's MAGA Repugs, bragging about how they're going to throw a bunch of immigrants into concentration camps on day one of a second Dump term; by the millions, and then flying them back in army planes to where they came from, all paid for by Mexico, of course. The Republicans don't want to solve a border crisis. They want to abuse and do violence against immigrants. Takeaways: First, Trump is a sick humanitarian crime; fascist Nazi stuff. Second, any non-white or non-English speaking or non-Christian person should recognize this as preliminary to a bigot attack on them and should, of course, vote accordingly for Biden. And, third, any shocking, Big Bang, removal of labor on the scale trumpeted at Trump's rallies would be inflationary and likely catastrophic economically.  

Climate Change is obviously a thing, a very serious thing. We see the increase in extreme weather events around us, the devastation wrought by these events. We know we have to curb carbon emissions and transition our economy to sustainable energy sources. Biden, and the Dems, even if belatedly, have done more to address climate change than any admin before. Ever. By contrast, Grump talks about eliminating all environmental regulations and "drill baby drill," again, from day one. He is so extreme he warns of the dangers of EVs, electric motors, and windmills, like he used to bad mouth masks and vaccines. A vote for Biden continues to pressure the gov to support progressive reforms that effectively address climate change. A vote for Trump isolates the US and further endangers the planet. 

Economy. Dem admins have done considerably better than Repub ones on the economy for going on half a Century now but a conviction persists that the latter are better on the economy. As a friend frames it, the Repubs in power always find some way to screw up the economy and run up deficits and the Dems in power are left to invest in economic development and clean up the mess. More generally, business people prefer the way Republicans stick to Big Biz's free-market dogma. They still insist their tax cutting and deregulating policies are economically expansionary, even though the evidence piles up over the last four decades that they are not. But if you want the gov to protect worker's rights, to promote living wages and shared prosperity, to tax the rich fairly and promote sustainable economic growth, to curb corporate monopoly and reduce the cost of living for everyday Americans, or at least try to do these things, then again, however old and frail, you will vote for Biden, because that's what he's already been doing for going on four years now. Trump's economic model, by contrast, is crony capitalism and the rich-get-richer-while-the-poor-get-poorer, and only really benefits billionaires and conmen hustlers like him. That's it. In fact, if Dump's extreme plan for trade war tariffs and labor deportation were really enacted, as he promises and already alluded to, the economic impacts would be at best counter-productive and at worst catastrophic for the economy.  

Crime. Most absurd of all, at this point, is the claim the Republicans are the party of law and order. Their candidate is a convicted felon. He has been indicted for trying to overthrow the 2020 election by violent force. Hundreds of his followers, his disheveled Brown shirts, have already been found guilty of attacking the police and trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election. January 6, 2021 was obviously a failed attempt at "insurrection or rebellion," we all saw it on TV. If Trump were found guilty of instigating Jan 6 he would be in violation of the 14th Amd, Article 3, of the Constitution and disqualified from holding any office in the federal government. The effort of SCOTUS to delay this prosecution, rather than expedite it, or make the completion of his legal prosecution and due process verdict, a necessary prerequisite to his candidacy, is a colossal dereliction of duty and betrayal of the US Constitution. Conservatives hope instead, presumably, by delaying the legal process that he can be re-elected and thereby stop his prosecutions altogether (like Netanyahu in Israel). And more or less the same applies to Trump stealing boxes of top secret documents. Delaying his prosecution is a threat to US national security. Or his election interference in Georgia, or his fake elector scheme, or his cheating with Russia and Wikileaks in 2016. All these assaults on our free and fair elections and the failure to prosecute them constitute a Constitutional crisis. And if all this were not bad enough, the highest of high crimes, abetted by SCOTUS and corrupt elements in our legal system, MAGA Repugs promote and spread criminal violence, like nothing we've ever seen before. Trump inspires mass murderers and violent lunatics. And his MAGA minions spread domestic terrorism and death threats against public officials, public health professionals, public school officials, judges, election workers, you name it, like nothing before in American history. A vote for Trump is a vote for more criminal violence and conflict.  

And this list is leaving out or not giving due attention to foreign policy and other issues. Maybe Biden isn't doing enough to stop the violence in Gaza but Trump cheers on calls for more violence against civilian Palestinians. Of course, we want, like Biden, to ally with Europe and other democracies around the world, the United Nations, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and various peace treaties and international humanitarian law protecting human rights. Not the murderous dictators and dirty oligarchs and violent imperialists Trump pals with. And we want to protect the meager social safety net we have in this country, Social Security, Medicaid, and Obamacare, or affordable health care, that the Republicans wish to destroy. Again, I can't remember in my lifetime a starker choice between two candidates and their leadership. 

So maybe Trump looked like an activated Superhero and Biden a doddering Zombie at the debate. It doesn't really matter how strong Trump or how weak Biden appeared. A vote for Biden and the Democrats this fall is the vote for progress and a better future. A vote for Trump and the Republicans is a vote for more crime and more violence, more inequality and environmental destruction, more financial fraud, more sadistic bigotry and crony capitalist corruption. Whether Biden presides over his second term from a hospital bed or Kamala Harris has to finish his job this remains the case, the stakes, and the choices before us.  

Addendum: Well, surveying the morning-after postmortems I saw some clips of Biden on the Jon Stewart show. I can better appreciate now some of the panic responses. Biden has some frightening looking senior moments. HCR points out Biden was scoring points, evident in the transcripts, but what I heard was muffled and indecipherable. Word is Biden got stronger and Trump's lies more ragged, less poised. Some sources called the debate for Biden. Here's CNN's Daniel Dale's fact check on the debate and Heather Cox Richardson's take, making the case for Biden better than he can. 

CNN's Daniel Dale fact check's debate claims

Letters from an American, HCR

Oops, Biden's prep team, apparently, didn't get to this story from 2023 about Gish Gallop:

How To Beat Trump in a Debate? By Mehdi Hasan, The Atlantic

The NY Times Abridged Version of Recent Inflation

 As usual NY Times does a story about recent inflation without mentioning that it was global, or comparing the US inflation ride with the rest of the world's experience, and not a word about the many stories of corporations using the cover of post-pandemic supply-shock inflation (to be expected after any big disruption in global economic operations) to engage in price gouging and record making profiteering. Again, we're counting on the electorate being able to see through the fascist turn in corporate rule and the major media are NOT helping. Beware. 

Inflation's Wild Ride, NY Times

Yup-- The US Supreme Court just basically legalized bribery

Or, of course they did, since several of its members have already been taking such 'gifts' and 'gratuities', reportedly worth millions, for awhile now.  

Legalizing corruption at the Supreme Court, By Moira Donegan @ The Guardian

Russia and Conservative Economics Behind Why You Can't Buy a Car Right Now

Had to take my car in for service at a dealer the other day and found all the software systems were down and they were doing everything by pen and paper. The service guy said they'd been down for over a week and likely could be down for a few weeks more. A Russian hacker group called BlackSuit is behind the attack, apparently, it's nation wide, no doubt part of Russia's ongoing attack on our economy and elections, and also as it turns out part of the monopolizing private equity termite economics Matt Stoller has been chronicling for awhile now: 

Monopolization and vulnerabilities to hacking go together, because monopolies produce poor quality software. And that’s the story with CDK Global and Reynolds [the auto industry data software firms recently hacked and shutdown]. The whole crisis was avoidable, because there were possible entrants into the market that could have forced them to offer better software at cheaper prices. “Anybody who knows anything about the conduct of American business,” historian Richard Hofstadter noted in 1964, “knows that the managers of the large corporations do their business with one eye constantly cast over their shoulders at the antitrust division.”

That’s no longer true. And Wood and Easterbrook, dancing to the tune of Scalia, butchered antitrust law, which led to CDK Global’s investment in lawyers instead of quality assurance engineers. And so now people can’t buy cars.

Bigger backdrop to this monopolizing private equity nightmare we find ourselves in: 

Schumpeter hated antitrust law, arguing in his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy that antitrust was foolish for two reasons. First, monopolists were inherently checked by the ever present potential of disruptive new technology. “A monopoly position is in general no cushion to sleep on,” he wrote, defending then-monopolist Alcoa in its ongoing antitrust litigation. “As it can be gained, so it can be retained only by alertness and energy.” And second, monopolies were the entities who delivered innovation precisely because their market power afforded them the luxury of long-term planning and investment. Big business is “the most powerful engine of progress… not only in spite of, but to a considerable extent through, this strategy which looks so restrictive when viewed in the individual case.”

The logic from Schumpeter to Trinko is direct. And yet, it’s also quite obviously wrong. From Boeing to Too Big to Fail banks, many examples, far beyond the CDK Global and Reynolds situation, where incumbents used their consolidated position to hinder innovation and lower quality, shows that Schumpeter’s thinking about commerce is both old and odd.

In other words, again, it is not the case that free markets, unfettered markets, maximize technological innovation but in fact in an effort to gain and secure market share often discourage or undermine innovation. 

A Conservative SCOTUS is why you can't buy a car right now, @ Big by Matt Stoller 

The Right Response to China's EV Subsidies

According to Gernot Wagner and Shang-Jin Wei, Economists at the Columbia Business School: 

Some of the Chinese government’s EV subsidies are justified, both on the supply and the demand sides. They can represent the best option for internalizing positive learning-by-doing and scale externalities, and for helping producers climb the learning curve and slide down the cost curve beyond what the market would deliver on its own. That is especially true for batteries, a key input in the EV supply chain. The patent system provides crucial incentives for private innovation, but it does so highly imperfectly. Research and development has positive social spillovers, making it deserving of taxpayers’ support. Targeted demand subsidies are similarly justified, because they speed up EV adoption, helped by positive learning-by-doing and network externalities. The latter calls for direct support for an increase in the number of charging stations, itself deserving of direct subsidies (though over time, policymakers should phase down subsidies and instead increase gasoline taxes). While the success of Chinese EVs has spooked Western car manufacturers, some of the pain is self-inflicted. Having bet on massive gas-guzzlers for too long, they delayed the all-but-inevitable switch to EVs. But that’s not all: Chinese EVs are cheaper for the same reason that most everything manufactured in China tends to be cheaper than American or European products. Introducing EV tariffs in response to intense lobbying by Western car manufacturers might make for good election-year politics. After all, taxing one’s own citizens – including via carbon taxes – is politically difficult, while “taxing” others is sometimes viewed more favorably, especially by those with lower trust in government. But while some tariffs, like Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), are eminently justifiable, because they specifically address the negative carbon externality, those aimed at Chinese EVs or other products such as solar panels, which are crucial for the global green transition, are not. A much better idea is to subsidize domestic manufacturing, an approach reflected in the US Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and in targeted EU subsidies. Some of these subsidies can be justified simply as a politically feasible, second-best alternative to carbon pricing, including as a stepping stone toward pricing policies.

The Right Response to China's EV Subsidies, Project Syndicate

Reggie Jackson on Playing Baseball in Alabama in the 1960s

Last Thursday, June 20, MLB held a game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, billed as the oldest professional ballpark in the US, between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals. The game was played to honor the recent passing of baseball great Willie Mays and the Negro League baseball that was once played at Rickwood. Reggie Jackson, along with other old baseball greats, spoke to the Fox Sports crew to honor Willie and the occasion. But Reggie, in his remarks, lingered on what a racist and cruelly segregated place Rickwood and Birmingham were when he played there in the 1960s and thanked his white teammates, and friends, who helped him through it. It's primary source history racists would prefer was glossed over and forgotten and an old but still flinty Jackson telling it like is. All respect for Mr. October. 

The Murdochian Takeover of The Washington Post

Rupert Murdoch is a billionaire business magnate and media mogul. He owns hundreds of news outlets, print and TV, first in Australia and New Zealand, and now in UK and the US and all around the world. 

In particular, he owns Fox News, which, so far, has been fined three-quarters of a billion dollars for falsely reporting election interference by Dominion Voting Systems, thereby horrifically bolstering the Big Lie with a conservative audience (who in large numbers still believe this QAnon-like crackpot conspiracy crap). And while, in fact, the Republican candidate himself had already been exposed several times for schemes to cheat the US election system, both in the '20 and 2016. 

Jeff Bezos, another billionaire, and one we might have hoped was reliably hostile to Grump's political corruption (in particular because he has been the target of that corruption in the past), has now hired a team of Murdoch news hacks to revive the supposedly failing Washington Post (lost 77 million last year, sources say).

And is doing so in the final run-up to the 2024 election, when the convicted felon running for POTUS is desperately trying to work conservative elements in the legal system and government and big business, like the Murdochs, to evade being prosecuted for a failed violent coup attempt, cheating the democratic process with fake electors, trying to change vote totals, and for stealing boxes of top secret national security documents, that he likely shares with his murderous dictator friends around the world. For a price, of course.  

Meanwhile, the New York Times has decided to largely ignore Dump's criminality and treason, or downplay it as somehow hopelessly entangled in partisan campaign attacks by Democrats. And the Wall Street Journal, the other national newspaper of record, also owned by Murdoch, fosters the idea that Biden and the Democrats are a greater threat to the economy (for potentially taxing and regulating the rich, presumably) than the convicted felon is a threat to democracy and the rule of law and humanity. And this is not to mention how this corrosive ethno-nationalist bigotry is reinforced and embellished by Sinclair Broadcasting, who owns hundreds of local news outlets around the country. 

You really couldn't make up shit so crazy backwards and upside down. I repeat: Grump's election this fall, should the American electorate prove to be that stupid and doomy self-destructive, will NOT nurture peace and economic prosperity at home and will NOT strengthen US standing in the world. It will hasten US decline and isolation and increase violent conflict. This is so obvious that the Murdochian makeover of WaPo might represent one of the biggest media gaslighting projects in history. Democracy Dies in Darkness, indeed-- greased by Big $ and a bunch of insider trading fueled by idiotic elite panic. 

WaPo CEO Supresses Corrupt Past, NY Times

Beware the Conservative Takeover of WaPo, Press Watch