What Is To Be Done?

Kamala Harris' Presidential campaign, and that of President Biden before her, focused their energy on the cause of defending democracy.  Millions of potential voters turned away.  That, and the betrayal of RFKJr made the difference in a close general election in 2024. 

Democratic post-mortems, of which there have been way too many, proposing a variety of solutions, seem to agree that the problem was the lack of a substantial alternative to that being proposed by the Trump candidacy, that moronic, lying, hateful, fearmongering proposition backed by a narrow plurality, just short of a majority, of those who chose to vote.  And it's true, our democracy, as it is practiced today, is barely defensible.  Defending this status quo proved to be a loser. 

The answer to Democrats' lack of a credible alternative is not an economic one, really.  The US economy was not so bad in 2024, or in 2016.  In both cases, the Democratic-led administration had made real progress, with its limited real means to control the economy, in digging the country out of deep holes created during the Republican-led administrations of W Bush and Trump I.  It didn't win the election for them. 

There is talk of the Democrats developing some kind of vision of Abundance as a policy to campaign upon.  That's pretty much just apple pie thinking--yes, we would all like to be wealthy, but promising that is only going to backfire in the long run, as the realization sets in that it isn't happening.  The failure of that promise of super-abundance is pretty much happening in real time to Trump's promises of MAGA.  Frankly, the US already has abundance, and the likelihood that it will flourish ever more doesn't look so good as global commerce fades, climate change hampers us, global competition rises around us, and AI eliminates jobs all over.  Just ask the young about the prospects. 

Yes, the economic failure that is coming at us rapidly will likely cause a reversal in the political fortunes for the Republicans, whose hold on government is strong, but electorally very thin, and getting thinner week by week.  That would just be another swing of the pendulum, though, and will not bring us any closer to a more successful, stable polity that we can believe in. 

Bernie Sanders was right when he said, recently, that the US is a "pseudo-democracy".  The fact of the matter is that the policies of this Federal government are not popular ones. I would accept that there are times when the collective judgment of our elected representatives should override the popular whims of the moment and pursue wise policies to benefit all of us, but that is not at all the case now.  The authoritarian, destructive policies being pursued incompetently now are harmful to most, but excessively beneficial to a few who control the power. This is not democracy; it is barely a constitutional republic. 

The Reinvention of Democracy is the Vision We Need

The reforms I suggest below are generally non-partisan (not bipartisan), and some will tend to weaken the Democratic party's power relative to what it controls today; however, because it will work to remove built-in obstacles to people's will, we can expect the Trumpist Republican cult would oppose them fiercely.  I am limiting myself to changes that can be accomplished without constitutional amendment, as that is out of the question in today's political environment, or any that we can foresee in the near future.  Once the people are back in control, though, I would think that we could consider it possible to utilize the Founders' other channel to change the constitution, a new convention, without preset limits.   

Number one of these obstacles to democracy is the obscene level of expenditure for political campaigns now.  There has been an exponential escalation of the costs in the past twenty years, and now it is on a scale where only the rich and well-funded lobbyists can participate meaningfully.  For the others, massive efforts are required, but as we saw in 2024, not sufficient.  For Federal elections, the only choices are accepting the implicit bribery of huge donations, constant fundraising, or, increasingly, self-funding by multi-millionaires.  2024 saw Trump's winning campaign funded by hundred of millions of dollars of support from Elon Musk, who's been rewarded by getting a free hand to steal the nation's personal data and re-jiggering any regulations that get in the way of his profit-making.  For the Democrats looking forward to 2028, their best chance may be billionaire J.B. Pritzker, whon I could support if and only if he agrees:  Ending unlimited campaign spending is the start of returning democracy to our electoral process. 

I realize that in the odious Citizens United case some ten years ago the Supreme Court ruled that political spending fell in the category of free speech protected by the constitution, but the lines that were drawn between true campaign-support funding and parallel "nonprofit" organizations' theoretically separate activity have been blurred, then practically eliminated entirely.  "Dark money" contributions have eliminated any accountability for political contributors, and guardrails to prevent foreign interference or produce any limitations on direct contributions have had workarounds making them ineffective.

Congress does have the responsibility of setting the dates and broad outlines of federal elections, a prerogative they need to exercise.  My principal recommendations are to re-energize the moribund Federal Elections Committee, give it increased powers to monitor campaign activity, levying fines proportionate to the danage violations cause to elections--and remove all partisan appointments to it.  Congress should emulate some parliamentary democracies and declare a period of some 60 days immediately prior to the elections in which political activity should be closely regulated.  Restore "Equal Time" provisions for free media, penalize factual inaccuracy (also known as "lies"), and limit direct campaign spending by individual campaigns to some ratio to population (I'd suggest 10 cents per person, at current dollar valuations.)  

I don't have much to complain about the actual methods of voters' registering their choices, or about the counting of the votes; these are controlled within states and localities, and there is something to be said about their being decentralized, and thus not subject to centralized or hacked manipulations.  I do believe that the ongoing debates about voter suppression and voter fraud are totally unnecessary:  Congress should authorize the issuance of tamper-proof Voter ID's to every citizen of age, equipped with 21st-century digital technology and easily transferable between precincts, counties, or states as people move their residence.  Issued universally without charge to the individual, for the first ID at least.  Coming of age would then bring this privilege of citizenry, reinforcing the special, though universal, benefit of suffrage.  I do not believe the issuance of this credential to be a difficult challenge for this nation to achieve, either in terms of the cost or the technology. 

The Electoral College is an ongoing irritant and distorter of the popular will.  In past elections, it transformed close popular votes into electoral vote landslides; now it evidences a much greater problem, reversing the outcome itself with greater frequency, something which undermines the whole prospect of the democratic choice of our top leader tremendously.  It is something fundamental to the original constitutional framework, though, and could never be changed to mere popular vote plurality without a radical set of amendments.*  

What is not at all in the constitution is the "winner-take-all" electoral slate, in which the candidate with the plurality of votes wins all the electoral votes of the state, something in effect in every state except Maine and Nebraska. It is something that developed in the 19th century as states competed to have their votes count more than others, another escalation that distorted popular will.  Now, because of it, 40 states or more have all their electoral votes virtually  put up on the board before the election even starts.  The entire presidential election is focused on a few states, with the resulting effects on policy subtle but clear.  All serious contenders for the Presidency have to focus on the needs of Pennsylvania, above all others, with a few others like Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin getting secondary attention, and the rest--nothing.

I would recommend that a compact of Congress prohibit winner-take-all, combined with enabling provisions. The Maine/Nebraska approach gives two electoral votes to the statewide winner, and the other electoral votes are determined by the candidate winning the individual House districts.  It's a good remedy, and one that would show no favor, if accompanying the measure is a resolution ending gerrymandering:  congressional district boundaries would be determined by nonpartisan analysis considering natural and significant man-made boundaries, trying to build around intact communities and metropolitan areas. 

The political parties' power of over elections, another "feature" which the US Constitution's authors opposed, needs to be reduced, and the narrowing of the field of practical candidates to the two parties' nominees, chosen through primaries which, though intended originally to give power to the voters, has resulted in recent times to intensify partisan division to dangerous levels.  The introduction of ranked-choice voting and instant runoff would address this problem.  In this, voters would be able to indicate the preference, in ranked order, for most or all of the candidates on the ballot (or write-in);  if no candidate gets a majority, then the votes of the lowest candidate, in first-choice votes, would be immediately allocated to the remaining candidates by the voters' second choice, and so on until someone achieves a majority.  It could be used for any and all elections of officials--even the Presidential one, which might head off the prospect of the constitution's infamous resolution method for outcomes without an absolute Electoral majority (voting by the House, with each state getting one vote).

The provision has settled in a few states' elections, but it is not clearly understood by most of the electorate--I would suggest that it is because opposing it is one thing both parties can agree to put aside.  It clearly gives greater opportunity to third parties and independent candidates. Most importantly, it would lead to the end of the discouraging prospect of having to choose between the "less-evil" of two, which so many decry in so many elections these days, with the winning candidate being truly chosen (to some extent) by a majority of voters. 

The final recommendation I'd suggest for now would be to extend the right of representation to all US citizens, through granting statehood to  1) District of Columbia, 2) Puerto Rico,  3) US Territories and expatriates.  Three new constituencies, and if possible, mandating voting rights to those citizens disenfranchised for whatever reason. 

Why should the Democratic party advocate this set of reforms, which as I say seem somewhat limiting to their partisan interests? Because they are necessary for our nation, because they embody the party's name and purpose, and because they will be politically efficacious. This platform for reinvigorated democracy would seem to be something broadly popular, difficult in the extreme to oppose without denying the fundamental principle that the political will of the electorate should not be suppressed or distorted beyond recognition. 

 

*The Popular vote initiative--to mandate that all electoral votes would be allocated to the national popular vote winner--is stalled well short of its needed objective of having 270 electoral votes' worth of states supporting it, and I see no chance of that being reached.  Even if it were, it would not eliminate the partisan firestorm that would occur if a candidate (let's say, Trump) would have 270+ electoral votes from the states under the current system, but the victory denied because of lack of a popular vote plurality. I can just see the rebellion that would result, and the chaos following when the Supreme Court throws out the popular vote-driven result.    

 For the title, I borrowed from Vladimir...Lenin, that is, and from 19th-century Russian idealist Nikolay Chernyshevsky, from whom Lenin borrowed it in his turn.

I am Furious (Yellow)*

 

 

King D------d  issued a threat yesterday in a conversation with another fascistic American President (Bukele of El Salvador), that "home-grown" US citizens would be captured and sent to Bukele's house of horrors prison there, with no recourse, as the Drumpfenreich has done with the asylum-seeking Maryland resident, the native Salvadorean Kilmar Abrego Garcia.  Just label his opponents as "terrorists", with or without any evidence, and make them disappear.

Do I find this threat credible?  No, in the sense that one cannot simply believe that anything Trump says is a) serious; or b) not a lie.  I have no doubt that he would like to be able to do it, if he felt that he could, but he's lacking the means to do such a thing to natural-born citizens, whose status and ability to block illegal arrest is different from those we are hosting as asylum-seekers or those foreigners who have no legal immigration documentation or have overstayed their visas.  If he continues to get his way with the Supreme Court, which so far seems to want to play ball with Trump in a mistaken belief he will abide by constraints they put upon him, the next step would be to try this stunt with naturalized citizens, or those whose citizenship comes from first-generation birthright within the nation's territory.  Creeping totalitarianism from the asshole contingent.

Still, a threat is a threat, and this is one of existential proportions, and in response all US citizens should consider their responses, and "nothing is off the table", as Trump himself likes to say.  Though I may be slightly optimistic in thinking this would not happen to me, I am laying down two red lines as regards myself and my dear ones.  The first is arbitrary application of the famous "no fly list" from the government  upon us, which would take away a fundamental liberty, and the second is his half-serious suggestion that he would seek a constitutionally-prohibited third term.  Sure, he could do the latter legally if he were to get a constitutional amendment--go for it!  Otherwise, rebellion in defense of our constitution is something I would be compelled to seek.  

The View from Italy

I'm in the second month of a long vacation from the US political maelstrom, my physical presence in which is intolerable to this person, at this time.  I wanted to be gone from the get-go of Drumpfenreich 2.0, but I was convinced to delay the trip a bit longer to get some of the beautiful spring weather springing out all over here.  It's about quality of life, and the 90-day limit of my visa.

Of course, one can't get away completely from it, and here it is all over the news:  the talk of the "dazi" (tariffs) and mention of "Tramp" (or, sometimes "Trampa")--Italians don't really have the short "u" vowel sound, and don't usually end words with a hard consonant, either.  There is something appropriate about calling our fraudster a tramp, or suggesting (in my mind) how he is "trampa-ling" over our republic.

Italy's current coalition government is in a unique position within the European Union, which is providing it certain advantages in the ongoing war--of words, more than actual economic warfare--between the US government and the EU.  The three parties that make up the government range from center-right (Forza Italia, the former Silvio Berlusconi party), xenophobic right (the Lega, which has successfully pivoted from a Northern Italian party hostile to Southern Italians--the Northern League-- to a nationalistic one hostile to all other nations not headed by authoritarians), to the hard-right Fratelli d'Italia (Fd'I in the local shorthand), headed by Giorgia Meloni, the head of the national government (the Council of Ministers, the parliamentary head, as opposed to the titular head of state, the non-partisan President of Italy).  The three parties are not aligned on everything:  a key example is with regard to Ukraine.  Forza Italia is very pro-Ukraine, the Lega's head, Salvini, is pro-Putin, while Meloni takes a moderate view, respecting the EU's support for Ukraine but opposed to any direct involvement of the Italian military.  They are pretty much aligned on hostility to illegal immigrants coming across the Mediterranean from Africa, and expecting the EU to back them up on preventing their assimilation into Italian society, which is probably the most important domestic issue apart from the economy.   They aren't having much trouble so far in beating down the disunited center-left and left nationally, or in several of the larger, more centrist regional and local governments.

In a lineup of the heads of European governments, or of the G7, Meloni is by far the shortest person in stature, but she is not short at all on ability.  She speaks well and has shown some agility in policy and in minimizing the obvious historical lineage of her party to the postwar neo-fascists and their nostalgia for Mussolini. She, among all the heads of European governments, has the best direct relationship with Trump, and thus she is more able to reason with the US (to the extent anyone can reason with these idiots) than the official EU representatives, whom Trump disparages and mistreats.  She can't really toe a separate line from the EU on trade, but her influence probably helped the EU getting the proposed 25% tariffs down to a more survivable 10%. Of course, the tariff rate is not reciprocal (yet), as the EU had very low tariffs with their ally and trading partner, the US, pre-Drumpf. (I am considering advising my non-governmental Italian friends to refer to him as that, which would be a good, insulting name-calling for him--it sounds, and is, German, and, though the Germans have come a long way forward, there is still some residual resentment among Italians.)

One last Italian-Trump note:  in Italian, there is a phrase called "prendere in giro" which is used very frequently.  The usage means joking, or teasing, and is only slightly aggressive.  It literally means "to take (someone) for a ride".  It applies perfectly to the Trump/Bukele disingenuity (is that a word?) about who can return poor, abducted Abrego Garcia and why neither one of them will do it.  Also, they literally took him for a ride, but not the circular one the phrase implies.

* I am quite serious about my fury, but I couldn't resist the Dad-like reference to the Swedish porno film of the '60's, "I am Curious (Yellow)".   Trump's administration is pornographic, in the worst sense of the word, but I admit to being somewhat physically a coward when it comes to frontal confrontation to it at this time.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, For Now

Apologies to Larry David--while this episode's ultimate final scene  will be the epic humiliation of the main character, it will be a prolonged one. 

While we can draw hope, and maybe inspiration, from recent successes in the efforts to prevent complete global disintegration and subjugation, we should not get ahead of ourselves.  If we were keeping score, we would still be trailing, but at least we are on the board. 

TarifFail 

The tariff plan announced by the US' King D------d I the other day exhibits the three I's typical of Drumpfenreich 2.0:  Ignorance, Incompetence, and Incoherence.  The main problem is that, at a deep level, Trump believes that a trade deficit--the value of goods and services imported being greater than those exported--weakens the country, weakens our currency, and is clear evidence the other side is cheating on trade.  The first two notions are false, and the third only true in certain cases. There are some countries, India being one, that use protectionist trade barriers to prevent imports and maintain its currency artificially high, but those measures weaken the countries' foreign investment and economic development instead of enhancing it.  Beyond that, some countries subsidize certain domestic industries excessively, and those industries might be justifiable targets for tariffs of our own.   

None of that seems to have been in the thinking of what is actually being imposed--just a shot across the bow of any country that trades with us, which will generate retaliation, either across the board, as we have done, or targeted specifically to hurt Trump-favored industries and regions.  If these tariffs linger for long, they will be a recipe for stagflation, as jobs related to exports will be lost, consumers will pay more for everything, and accompanying that will be depreciation in the relative value of our currency--perhaps even the end of the US dollar being the preferred reserve currency, which would be a tragic loss of influence for us globally. 

I suspect they will not linger.  Our government's trade people say these blanket tariffs are not a starting point for country-by-country negotiation.  I don't believe that for a moment, as Trump will want to play bully-boy and offer tariff concessions to those who give him goodies.  Moreover, as the pain begins to deepen, he will be convinced that he needs to back off or lose political leverage as the midterms approach.  Personally, I hope this is true, although the US public should get a taste of what his ignorance is producing before it ends, and then punishes his party appropriately anyway.  Perception will drive reality.

Booker Rides, High and Dry

Trump believes, or seems to believe, that these tariffs are going to provide so much revenue that he can get the tax cuts he promised in his campaign, for things like tips and Social Security income.  This is a delusion, but I suspect he will get the extension of the regressive tax cuts he was able to pass during his first term, enabled by compliant Congressional action on a budget resolution, followed by a budget reconciliation bill with phony projections, a very real and very large debt limit increase, and a host of damaging spending adjustments. 

In this regard, Cory Booker's marathon speech of over 24 hours, facilitated by days of fasting and abstaining from liquids, is laudable but irrelevant to the bigger picture.  It does show that Democratic representatives can, in extreme cases, use their words to capture the attention of the public for a short while. Going forward, I am looking for targeted attacks on specific individuals and policies, not so much overcoming strategic obstacles, though the Senate filibuster rules should prevent most harmful legislation from going forward.  I suppose it will be beneficial for Booker's political status in the party, though I don't see it propelling him into a new national campaign.  A moral victory is what he can provide for us. 

Off-year Elections as a Side Gambit

D------d I proclaimed the other day through an executive order that voters must provide proof of citizenship, and that votes must be counted the same day, and some other nonsense, I guess.  None of that will pass muster, as the constitution provides that the states run the elections, the Federal government just providing the dates of them and some of the other implementation of their results.  He did come up with the threat of withholding all funding from those states that don't follow it, something I suggested might be possible to enforce some reforms, even that of the national Voter ID, which I support in the interest of ending, once and for all, disputes about who can vote--as long as the ID is issued, free of charge, to all citizens and has smart technology to support voters' maintaining their registration when they change residence.  As for the rest of it, forget it. 

The special elections in Wisconsin and Florida were a good indication of two things:  some slippage in Trumpian support, but also the different electorate in off-year elections.  Hard to be sure exactly how to parse the two effects separately at this point.  There will be more of them this year, in Arizona for the replacement to the death of Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva, and likely for the upstate New York district of Elaine Stefanik.  Her nomination for the UN Ambassadorship was withdrawn when there was concern in White House circles that the Democrats would take one of the Florida seats and reduce further the narrow Republican majority, but that didn't happen.  They will still probably put her up for a job, one they will consider important.  Not the UN one, which they don't rate so highly--though it would be a tragic miscalculation to pull out of the UN as some idiots have suggested.  See in the organization's history how the US got the UN to authorize forces in the Korean War when the Soviet Union unwisely was boycotting the Security Council. 

What Trump didn't seem to get in his proclamation is that making voting more difficult will end up hurting his party, which has a higher proportion of low-information, low-motivation voters. 

Signal of Incompetence

The scandal around the security lapse involved in the Signal text chat isn't about the attack on the Houthis that was discussed, as that is ordnance out the bomb bay, and they are basically a bunch of resilient pirates.  Biden had them bombed also, somewhat unsuccessfully, and they will continue regardless of whether Iran makes a deal with Trump or not.   The inclusion of  The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in the chat was a hilarious error, one that will ultimately end Michael Waltz's job as national security advisor (though Trump will do it later, to cover the tracks), and Goldberg covered himself with respectability in the way he handled it. 

The real point was the look behind the scenes at decision-making in Drumpfenreich:  VP Vance is even more treacherous and evil than we knew, Hegseth just as blunt a tool, while the real power is vested in Stephen Miller as the Voice of Trump.  His say-so makes all the difference; no one need question it.  Miller is also the policy director for all the Project 2025-inspired discriminatory cuts Musk has sought to make. When Musk goes, and it will be soon, the vampiric Miller should be the focus for public calumny.

Hands Off! Demonstrations

The mass demonstrations planned for this weekend should be a good opportunity for those who are intended victims of Trumpian arbitrary violations of civil liberties to show themselves, protected by being surrounded by well-meaning people in safer status (i.e., natural-born citizens).  It will be worth watching if there is focus on the demonstrations--around the assault on free speech, on job security, or just general hatred of Drumpfenreich--or not.  

I would just advise attendees who may feel vulnerable to disguise themselves somewhat, and stay in crowds.  There will be spies, and likely provocateurs from the other side who will try to create violence as a premise for authoritarian crackdowns afterward.  Protect one another!  

(No demonstration planned here in Italy, as far as I know.)