Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Paul Krugman with a trip down memory lane:

You probably remember [the 1990s] as a time of prosperity — low unemployment and rapid economic growth combined with low inflation — marred by irrational exuberance in the stock market. Pets.com anyone?

What you might not realize is how closely the economy of early 2024 resembles that of the late Clinton years. People might not be feeling the prosperity — or at least they say they aren’t feeling it, because there’s a huge gap between Americans’ positive assessment of their personal financial situation and their negative assessments of the economy. But by the numbers, things look pretty good. Notably, unemployment is actually a bit lower now than it was at the end of the roaring ’90s.

He notes that inflation spiked in 2021-22 but that according to one good measure it’s actually come down to a level that’s barely above the Fed’s target rate.

What about interest rates? Well, people have forgotten that interest rates were higher during the 90s and mortgage rates were even higher than they are now:

Needless to say, the stock market was soaring as it is today. All of this leads Krugman to think that interest rates might remain high for longer that we might have thought.

[U]ntil recently it didn’t seem likely that the conditions that kept interest rates high a generation ago would re-emerge. The working-age population seemed set to stagnate or even shrink, given low fertility and the aging of the baby boomers. Technology continued to advance, but smartphones and video games didn’t seem to be generating a lot of business investment.

Then, suddenly, things seem to have changed.

He points out that weak demography was the reason for low interest rates prior to COVID. But while American fertility is still falling, a surge in immigration is changing that prospect.

He speculates that the rise in working from home has propped up residential investment and observes that there has been higher than expected business investment and that manufacturing driven by administration policies, has been soaring.

Krugman concludes:

So maybe we really are seeing a return to something like the economic conditions of the late 1990s — both the good, in the form of low unemployment and (maybe) strong productivity growth, and the not so good, in the form of persistently high interest rates.

I, for one, didn’t see this coming, and as far as I know, nobody did. But as the bumper stickers don’t quite say, stuff happens.

If he’s right, I suspect that inflation is the bigger political problem because it’s so immediate. Credit card interest rates have been high for ages and residential real estate rates haven’t been as big a problem as lack of housing. Let’s just hope there isn’t a new version of the Dot Com bubble on the immediate horizon.

And, by the way, that roaring economy led to a George W. Bush presidency (won by 587 votes in Jeb Bush’s Florida) and everything that came after.

Here’s one:

Thanks to a provision in the Secure 2.0 Act, legislation aimed at improving retirement benefits nationwide, in 2024 employers will be able to start counting student loan payments as qualifying contributions toward retirement matching programs.

That means if your employer offers to match your 401(k) contributions, you could get that matched money without ever depositing funds in your retirement account. Instead, your monthly student loan payments would count as your “contribution.” 

The benefit could be especially significant for recent graduates, who often have moderate incomes ($58,000 to start, on average) and high levels of debt (an average of $33,000 for federal borrowers aged 25 to 35). 

Does anyone know about this? I hope so.

The Biden administration has created an unprecedented number of programs to help average people, increase manufacturing and jobs and generally expand the economy from the bottom up. And yet, most people are either unaware of it or frankly, don’t care. And yet all the polling says they do care about it and think Donald Trump is the guy who will give them the things that Biden has already done.

Remember “popularism”, the idea that Democrats should campaign on a strategy of focusing on issues that enjoy electoral popularity, such as focusing on economic issues over polarizing social and cultural issues? Well, Biden has delivered, and delivered and delivered on those issues. He saved the economy, doing far better than any other industrialized country and basically nobody seems to believe it.

Those gold sneakers are the extent of Trump’s grassroots outreach.

Donald Trump says he wants to hold a major campaign event at New York’s Madison Square Garden featuring Black hip-hop artists and athletes. Aides speak of Trump making appearances in Chicago, Detroit and Atlanta with leaders of color and realigning American politics by flipping Democratic constituencies.

But five months before the first general election votes are cast, the former president’s campaign has little apparent organization to show for its ambitious plans.

His campaign removed its point person for coalitions and has not announced a replacement. The Republican Party’s minority outreach offices across the country have been shuttered and replaced by businesses that include a check-cashing store, an ice cream shop and a sex-toy store. Campaign officials acknowledge they are weeks away from rolling out any targeted programs.

Basically, Trump’s saying “you’re on your own” to his Black MAGA endorsers.

“To be quite honest, the Republican Party does not have a cohesive engagement plan for Black communities,” said Darrell Scott, a Black pastor and longtime Trump ally who co-founded the National Diversity Coalition for Trump in 2016. “What it has are conservatives in communities of color who have taken it upon themselves to head our own initiatives.”

I honestly don’t think Trump believes any of that is necessary. All he needs is rallies and free media interviews. That’s what won the election for him in 2016 and he figures everyone hated Biden as much as they hated Hillary and Bob’s your uncle.

He may be right. Those gold sneakers are so fly.

Trump on Trump 2.0

Not-so-veiled threats and rumors of political retribution are par for the course Donald Trump cheats on.

In interviews with Time magazine, the dictator-in-waiting lets everyone know just how far he will go if he wins a second presidential term.

he suggests Biden’s fate may be tied to an upcoming #SCOTUS ruling on whether Presidents can face criminal prosecution for acts committed in office. “If they said that a President doesn’t get immunity,” says Trump, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes”

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) April 30, 2024

Time:

Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”

Trump 2.0 will be the unitary executive theory on steroids.

Nowhere would that power be more momentous than at the Department of Justice. Since the nation’s earliest days, Presidents have generally kept a respectful distance from Senate-confirmed law-enforcement officials to avoid exploiting for personal ends their enormous ability to curtail Americans’ freedoms. But Trump, burned in his first term by multiple investigations directed by his own appointees, is ever more vocal about imposing his will directly on the department and its far-flung investigators and prosecutors.

In our Mar-a-Lago interview, Trump says he might fire U.S. Attorneys who refuse his orders to prosecute someone: “It would depend on the situation.” He’s told supporters he would seek retribution against his enemies in a second term. Would that include Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney who charged him with election interference, or Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA in the Stormy Daniels case, who Trump has previously said should be prosecuted? Trump demurs but offers no promises. “No, I don’t want to do that,” he says, before adding, “We’re gonna look at a lot of things. What they’ve done is a terrible thing.”

Trump has also vowed to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after Biden. “I wouldn’t want to hurt Biden,” he tells me. “I have too much respect for the office.” Seconds later, though, he suggests Biden’s fate may be tied to an upcoming Supreme Court ruling on whether Presidents can face criminal prosecution for acts committed in office. “If they said that a President doesn’t get immunity,” says Trump, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.” (Biden has not been charged with any, and a House Republican effort to impeach him has failed to unearth evidence of any crimes or misdemeanors, high or low.)

Meaning Trump will order the indictment of ham sandwiches if it suits him. And he may, just to test the loyalty of his henchmen.

American carnage was not a casual observation. It was not simply the projection of Trump’s id (and the fevered brains of Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon). It was not simply “some weird shit,” but a signal of where Trump wants to take the U.S.

Trump does not dismiss the possibility of political violence around the election. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he tells TIME. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.” When I ask what he meant when he baselessly claimed on Truth Social that a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump responded by denying he had said it. He then complained about the “Biden-inspired” court case he faces in New York and suggested that the “fascists” in America’s government were its greatest threat. “I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others,” he tells me.

Only the brainwashed or historically ignorant cannot read between those lines.

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“We do not want to be a democracy”*

Republicans want to roll back the 20th century a quarter of the way into the 21st. They’ve made no bones about it for decades. In his heyday during the George W. Bush administration prior to the September 11 attacks, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform busily strong-armed Republicans into signing his anti-tax pledge. He dreamed of returning America to “the McKinley era, absent the protectionism.” He wanted, famously, to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Norquist was a radical for his day. But not so radical that he imagined chucking the Constitution itself along with the last 100 years. Among today’s MAGA Republicans, he’s a RINO.

Nancy MacLean, author of “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” suggests the remnant of the southern planter class, economic royalists and academic libertarians, undertook affecting a restoration of elite dominance beginning in the late 1940s. Their goal: to save capitalism from democracy. They want to roll back the 20th century and have been patient about achieving it. And subtly incremental, rarely revealing the sweep of their plans. “One fish, one hook,” as Norquist put it.

Then came the first black president. Subtlety was for pikers. McKinley? They want to roll back the Enlightenment, modernity, the works. Give us feudalism or give us death!

David Frum was late to his own party when in January 2018 he declared, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” Three years later, MAGA foot soldiers sacked the U.S. Capitol at Donald Trump’s command. Last week, Trump’s attorneys argued before the U.S. Supreme Court for return to something like the divine right of kings: presidential immunity for life. The MAGA wing of the court is thinking it over.

“We do not want to be a democracy”

On the other side of the country in Spokane, Washington, state Republicans the prior weekend proved how much distance they’ve put between themselves and their party’s first president. At their state convention, they moved beyond the rhetorical “a republic not a democracy” to formally rejecting government of the people, by the people, for the people — the whole democracy thing.

We've been talking about the Republican rejection of democracy for a while now, but to see and hear them explicitly state it is still unnerving. pic.twitter.com/2DNCzPnCER

— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) April 30, 2024

Columnist Danny Westneat writes in the The Seattle Times:

A resolution called for ending the ability to vote for U.S. senators. Instead, senators would get appointed by state legislatures, as it generally worked 110 years ago prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913.

“We are devolving into a democracy, because congressmen and senators are elected by the same pool,” was how one GOP delegate put it to the convention. “We do not want to be a democracy.”

We don’t? There are debates about how complete of a democracy we wish to be; for example, the state Democratic Party platform has called for the direct election of the president (doing away with the Electoral College). But curtailing our own vote? The GOPers said they hoped states’ rights would be strengthened with such a move.

Then they kicked it up a notch. They passed a resolution calling on people to please stop using the word “democracy.”

If Democrats are their enemy, then any hint of democracy carries a taint. Out, out, damned one person, one vote.

“We encourage Republicans to substitute the words ‘republic’ and ‘republicanism’ where previously they have used the word ‘democracy,’ ” the resolution says. “Every time the word ‘democracy’ is used favorably it serves to promote the principles of the Democratic Party, the principles of which we ardently oppose.”

Ardently. “We … oppose legislation which makes our nation more democratic in nature.”

Westneat adds:

It wasn’t that long ago when Republican presidents would extol democracy as America’s greatest export. Or sometimes try to share it with others down the barrel of a gun (see George W. Bush, Iraq).

Now the party is saying they don’t even want to hear the d-word anymore.

Washington state Republicans only stopped short of demanding a swear jar in every Republican office.

Sure, our representative democracy contains flaws we are still struggling in fits and starts to perfect. But “Republicans Aren’t Against Democracy,” Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in a 2021 op-ed. “You can find the odd monarchist on the internet, but American conservatives … are generally committed to self-government.”

Ponnuru might want to review the transcript of last week’s oral arguments in Trump v. United States. MAGA Republicans are putting their opposition to democratic principles in writing.

Turn in your flags.

Maddow: In Wisconsin, Republicans are running a Selina Meyer understudy who is from California.. In Pennsylvania, Republicans are running a guy who lives in Connecticut… but wait, there’s more pic.twitter.com/bAmgknWTys

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 30, 2024

* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atomkraft_Nein_Danke.svg

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Four years ago today, as Americans were dying

Q: Without a vaccine, why do you think the virus will just be gone?

Trump: It's gonna go. It's gonna leave. It's gonna be gone. It's gonna be eradicated. And it might take longer. It might be in smaller sections pic.twitter.com/ql1Jd59u4p

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 29, 2024

Are they the new soccer moms and NASCAR dads?

Dan Pfeiffer looks at the latest (outlier) CNN poll that has the whole beltway gasping with excitement over the prospect that Biden is in the dirt with young people, Black and Hispanic voters. He noted that the polls shows that 25% of Trump voters are what he calls “conviction sensitive” voters who might be persuaded to abandon him if he’s convicted of a crime:

Even more interesting, the topline numbers are the characteristics of these conviction-sensitive voters. According to CNN:

They tend to be younger than other Trump supporters (64% are younger than 50 compared with 37% of those who would not reconsider), are less likely to be White (49% are people of color compared with 17% of those who would not reconsider), are more apt to report being Biden voters in 2020 (20% of them say they backed Biden in 2020 vs. 6% of those who would not reconsider) and are likelier to acknowledge that Biden legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency four years ago (63% vs. 22% among those who would not reconsider). They are also more apt to be political independents (49% vs. 31%) and ideologically moderate (50% vs. 38%).

In other words, these are the exact voters who propelled Trump to his very narrow lead in the polling average. Younger voters, independents, Black and Latino voters are groups Trump struggled with in 2020 but is doing better with now.

You would think that all voters would be “conviction sensitive” but we live in a world in which corrupt, criminal politicians are revered because they’re very stable geniuses so being a felon who committed massive fraud, assaulted a woman and then defamed her, paid off a porn star, stole classified documents or tried to steal an election makes you “smart.”

Pfeiffer makes the case that at least some of these voters are persuadable and contends that this poll reveals “two broader truths about this election”:

First, Trump’s putative lead is fragile. He is propped up by people who don’t like him, disagree with him on most issues, and have a long history of voting for Democrats. Holding on to this coalition for the next six months would be a challenge for any candidate, let alone a megalomaniacal narcissist with little impulse control and 88 felony indictments.

Second, I am glad to know that some people would have some qualms about making a convicted felon president, but this is more than a conviction. These voters have some doubts about supporting Trump and are looking for an offramp. In other words, they are persuadable. Because everything seems so polarized and this election is a rematch, most assume there are no persuadable voters. That could not be further from the truth. If this poll is accurate, a historically large group of voters is willing to listen to our case.

It’s going to be a long hot summer and events may have more to do with this than anything. But you do have to wonder if the Young, Black and Hispanic voters will really be willing to vote for Trump once they get a good look at him again. It’s up to the Democrats, and all of us, to make sure they do.

Probably

As DC Republicans continue trying to repeal Biden’s climate law, Republican governors are busy desperately trying to take all the credit for projects the Biden Administration is making possible. https://t.co/0ao4L2yrld pic.twitter.com/hxfogCyN6q

— Jesse Lee (@JesseCharlesLee) April 29, 2024

Georgia Republicans who believe their GOP Governor, GOP Secretary of State, and GOP legislature fixed the 2020 election only for Joe Biden. https://t.co/Tf4Vi11k7g

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) April 28, 2024

Politicians who have faith in their leadership don’t need to lie as easily as they breathe.

“Until now, no American presidential race had been more defined by what’s happening in courtrooms than what’s happening on the campaign trail.” @GStephanopoulos on the latest political news: https://t.co/vsSg1XMv5C pic.twitter.com/6LEskOurFz

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) April 28, 2024

Stephanopoulos brought the fire:

No American president had ever faced a criminal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election, or been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime. No American president has faced hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for business fraud, defamation, and sexual abuse.

Until now, no American presidential race had been more defined by what’s happening in courtrooms than by what’s happening on the campaign trail. The scale of the abnormality is so staggering, that it can actually become numbing. It’s all too easy to fall into reflexive habits, to treat this as a normal campaign, where both sides embrace the rule of law, where both sides are dedicated to a debate based on facts and the peaceful transfer of power. But, that is not what’s happening this election year. Those bedrock tenants of democracy are being tested in a way we haven’t seen since the Civil War. It’s a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media, and for all of us as citizens.

Indeed it is. And unfortunately, so far, the media is only sometimes meeting the moment. Steph meets it here but far too often the savvy DC press corps retreats into its cynical corners. Too many reporters obviously can’t stand Biden — he’s old and boring. And as a result they are not willing to be clear about the stakes or, perhaps even more importantly, fairly tell Biden’s story, which should have people emerging more decisively from their post-pandemic funk. It’s going to be hand to hand combat and journalists need to start telling the truth about just how fucked up this really is.

It’s not very convincing

Trump is highly, highly unlikely to testify in his NY hush money trial but he has been arguing his case (sort of) outside the courthouse every day. The NY Times did a fact check and it’s a doozy

He said:

“He puts in an invoice, or whatever, a bill. And they pay it and they call it a legal expense. I got indicted for that. What else would you call it? Actually nobody’s been able to say what you’re supposed to call it.”
— last Monday

The Times calls this false. Of course prosecutors know what to call them. They’re invoices for reimbursement of the $130,000 (plus taxes and bonus) second mortgage Cohen used to pay off Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet before the election.

They call Cohen’s payments “illegal campaign contributions” and the invoices “reimbursement intended to falsify business records.” In no way were they “legal expenses.”

He said

“Also the things that he got in trouble for were things that had nothing to do with me. He got in trouble. He went to jail. This had nothing to do with me. This had to do with the taxi cab company.”
— last Monday

Uh no.

Cohen did plead guilty to personal tax evasion related to the taxi medallions but the campaign finance violations were all about the Stormy scheme and they each carried up to five years in prison. He was sentenced to 3 years and he actually had to spend time behind bars as have many other Trump flunkies while he wines and dines his fans down at Mar-a-Lago.

He said:

“Federal Elections took a total pass on it. They said essentially nothing was done wrong or they would have done something about it.”
— last Monday

Au contraire

The Times reports that the commissioners deadlocked along partisan lines but an FEC OLC report found that Trump and the Trump org, along with Cohen “knowingly and willfully” violated federal election law. The GOPers on the commission wrote that pursuing the case wasn’t “the best use of agency resources.” It was enough that Cohen took the rap. (Yes, they actually said his punishment was enough.)

He said:

“I’m not allowed to defend myself, and yet other people are allowed to say whatever they want about me.”— on Tuesday

I think you know how dumb this is. He’s not allowed to talk about witnesses, jurors, court staff or their families but he can talk about the case. Obviously. He can’t shut up about it.

“This is all a Biden indictment. It’s in order to try and win an election.” –on Friday

Oh come on. It’s totally false. But here’s the Times’ fact check on this. …. sigh:

This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump again accused President Biden of orchestrating the legal woes he faces, offering no evidence to support that claim.

Mr. Bragg’s predecessor began investigating the hush money payments in 2018, years before Mr. Biden took office in 2021. As president, Mr. Biden has publicly emphasized the independence of the Justice Department. Moreover, news outlets including The Times have reported that Mr. Biden’s campaign strategy is to say nothing about Mr. Trump’s legal woes. Federal prosecutors in New York who work for the Justice Department have also declined to file charges against Mr. Trump.

Lacks evidence? Please. It’s the Manhattan District Attorney, not the Justice Department! The NY Times hedges as it so often does. Please.

That’s just a smattering of Trump’s courthouse babble. They tackle more statements at the link. And they are all 100% prime BS.