Joe Biden

Midterm Strategy: Ditch the Corporate Consultants for a GOP Performance Review

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

We’re 30 days out. Democrats look like they’re looking at a blue wave that could shift control of Congress from Republican to Democrat, maybe even the Senate. I want to talk about strategy a little bit because I’m seeing a lot of ads on TV that boil down to, “we gotta stop insider stock trading.” And you’re seeing that from both sides…even the guys that are doing it are bragging about voting for legislation that would stop it.

But Democrats are giving us the same old ads about how mom and dad taught me to work hard and I’ll work hard for you. I was a good prosecutor or state legislator or governor or businessman.

This is the same old corporate consultant bullshit that Democrats have been using to lose since 2016, and it’s time to change it up a little bit. Trump’s been president twice. The GOP has controlled all three branches of government for two years. And they still blame Biden for high gasoline prices.

It’s not Biden’s fault. They’ve had a chance to fix it. They haven’t fixed it.

So it’s time to do two things as a strategy for the midterms for Democrats in these last thirty days.

First, make this election a performance review. The GOP asked for control of Congress and the Senate and the presidency two years ago, and Americans gave it to them. They promised to make life more affordable and keep us out of war.

They did neither, and this begs the old Reagan question: Is your life better now than it was when we gave it to them?

The American people gave them control. We gave them power. What’d they use it for? Tax cuts for billionaires. They didn’t use it to bring your grocery prices down. They didn’t use it to bring your gasoline prices down. They didn’t use it to bring your housing prices down. And in fact, they got us into a war they promised not to get us into that raised all those prices.

Make Republicans talk about their performance just like you would at a job. If you’re a manager at a job, someone’s not performing, you talk to them and you fire them if they don’t straighten up and fly right.

The second thing we need to do is point out that the hundreds of millions of dollars corporations and billionaires and special interests are spending to try to win these seats demonstrates that they like the status quo. They want the status quo.

Seven dollar diesel is good for them because they’re selling diesel. It’s not good for you because you have to buy it to fill your truck up.

The same old corporate consultant stuff doesn’t work. These TV ads don’t change anybody’s minds. They just don’t. They may be good for pointing out to people who don’t pay much attention that there is an election, but they’re not changing anyone’s minds. No one is voting for Shannon Taylor because she said “Mom and dad taught me that hard work would bring success, but that doesn’t happen if we don’t stop the corruption” in a TV ad.

She’s right about that, but it’s not changing anyone’s mind. Instead, Shannon Taylor and other democrats need to be online saying it again and again: they promised to fix it and they just broke it even more.

Hammer home the fact that we gave the Republicans control of all three branches of government two years ago, and they’ve done nothing but create chaos and make things more expensive for everyone. It’s time to hold their feet to the fire because they didn’t do the job we hired them to do.

Point out that the corporations like the status quo just fine because they have power, they have no regulation, they have their tax cuts, and if they keep the same people in power, they’ll just get less regulation and more tax cuts.

And your housing will go up, your fuel costs will go up, your grocery bill will go up. Your interest rates on your credit card will go up because that’s all good for them. It’s all good for the corporations that are dropping millions in these elections blaming immigrants and trans people for the problems they caused.

You can’t blame Joe Biden for $7 diesel. The trans person is not causing $7 diesel fuel. Women who want reproductive health care are not causing $7 diesel fuel.

Republicans have had two years to fix it and they’ve only made it worse.  It’s time to hold their feet to the fire.

Wouldn’t the States Have the Receipts?

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

We’re right to worry about whether the Republican Party as an organization would sanction executing the plan outlined in this Newsweek opinion column. I have no doubt in my military mind that Donald Trump would do anything he could to stay in power, and that the Conservative movement (defined as the GOP and associated think tanks and interest groups) would do anything to keep a conservative in power. If those interests align and leaders see a unique opportunity, an attempt to establish a Presidency that lacked popular support is not out of the question.

I’ve written before about the Republican Project as I see it: a long-term conservative effort to capture the legal institutions necessary to keep power without having to bother assembling a coalition that can win elections, and block progressive legislation when they can’t. They would use these institutions to protect friends and hurt enemies, and to uphold orders restricting the right to vote while blocking local rules that would protect it. Once in control of these institutions, conservatives would use that control to protect their power if possible.

As I read the Newsweek scenario, it boils down to this: Biden wins the popular vote as well as the Electoral College on the strength of wins in four swing states which all have GOP legislative majorities. Trump and the GOP establishment challenge the result arguing that counterfeit ballots printed by China (presumably an anti-Trump Chinese intelligence operation) made the difference in those four states. Trump declares a national emergency and a national security investigation, which delays appointment of their Electors. Neither candidate assembles a majority in the Electoral College and the House, with its majority of GOP state delegations, would decide the election in favor of Trump.

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Sunday Morning Coffee

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

A few of the articles I read this morning over coffee with short comments on each.

Protests against lockdowns and stay-at-home orders begin. Are these starting organically or driven by right-wing organizations?

Back in January when SARS-COVID-2 began to spread from China, a good friend of mine told me government would eventually have to shut down businesses and limit large gatherings of people in order to limit the contagion and protect the health care system. I responded that even if necessary, lockdowns like this would generate protest and backlash in the US if they lasted more than a week or two. Those protests have started.

This week a few dozen people gathered at Capitol Square in Richmond to demand an end to stay-at-home orders in Virginia by 1 May.

Both Capitol and Virginia State Police were on hand and had to remind the protesters to maintain social distancing guidelines since they said the groups encouraged participants to hug and share food during the event.

“The reason why I’m not wearing a mask is that I’m not going to have someone tell me I have to,” said protester Benjamin Wright, who lives in Richmond.

This kind of right-wing virtue signaling will spread across the US and could seriously limit the ability of US institutions to deal with this crisis. And make no mistake: it’s driven by right-wing organizations like the Proud Boys and part of Trump’s reelection campaign.

It can also lead to this kind of tragic outcome when people believe what they hear on propaganda networks instead of members of their own family.

In Pursuit of PPE

This story about an executive for a Massachusetts hospital system buying personal protective equipment for his staff demonstrates both the failure of markets to allocate resources to filling an urgent need and the failure of government to protect public health. Shortages will generate higher prices, but government should work to improve the situation by taking action to increase production, not throw up road blocks and threaten to redirect shipments on a whim.

Awarding high-dollar contracts for the purchase of masks from bankrupt firms with no staff that have never made a mask does not seem like the best way out of the PPE shortage mess.

The New England Journal of Medicine is a good general resource on SARS-COVID-2, by the way.

Just so this isn’t All Coronavirus All the Time…

As the Bernie Sanders campaign ended and the Democratic Party continued coalescing support around Biden’s candidacy, I got into it a bit with some Our Revolution folks on Twitter. I tried to make the point that for now policy has to take a back seat to ending the Trump disaster (not to mention what looks like nascent fascism) with little success. But I also pointed out that politicians like Sanders and Warren, supported by activist groups like the Indivisibles and Resistance organizations, have moved American politics to the left. So the reason Sanders’ Our Revolution movement failed to achieve electoral success has more to do with the failure of their “unite the working class” strategy than with refusal by Democratic Party elites to back progressive policies. More to come on this in the coming days.