Perez

The Democratic Party has a new chair. Tom Perez, civil rights lawyer, former Secretary of Labor and Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department under President Obama, won on the second ballot in a close race with Congressman Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Ellison, an exceptional communicator and progressive firebrand, had the all-in support of Senator Sanders, who clearly hoped to acquire the apparatus of the party for his movement. Some Democratic power players, notably Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, added their support because they saw Ellison as someone who could harness the energy among progressives and turn it into electoral support. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and most of the large figures in the party supported Perez.

This might seem to suggest the impression - heavily encouraged by the Ellison camp throughout the campaign - that this race was in fact a rerunning of the primary campaign. Implicit in this view is that it was a chance for the party to "correct" its earlier mistake and embrace the activist energy that propelled Sanders' long-shot campaign to prominence. It has become, since the election, an article of faith among the Left that what doomed the Democratic campaign was the successful attempt of "the establishment" to foil Sanders' populist energy and the subsequent disaffection of the base.*

Has the Democratic Party then rejected its base in favor of a moderate, temporizing policy? The answer depends largely on how one views the Obama administration. Obama set out to reshape - sometimes quite radically - the American economy and international liberal order, but he did so with a view to maintenance and redirection. His goal was not to throw off the system and create anew. The Left was consistently disappointed with him, because they saw him as timid and hesitant.** Those on the ideological spectrum between liberalism and social democracy were more pleased. Obama, Clinton, and Perez, while they have differences on issues and perhaps some daylight between them ideologically, are of the evolutionary rather than revolutionary mold. Sanders, Ellison, and the activist Left take a different view.

All this is of course a gross oversimplification. But I think it provides a useful framework for thinking about the very real divisions within the Democratic Party. The Big Tent remains big, but its diversity has made it unruly. Perez will neither heal the divide nor make it worse. Ellison has been made his second-in-command, and unified opposition to Trump will paper over a lot of differences for the time being. What the party very badly needs in the long term is a leader who, like Obama during his campaigns, supplies a vision of the future that appeals to and motivates its various sectors. The Democrats have never in their history, to my knowledge, derived their unity as a party from a general agreement on policy. They have rallied around the vision of a more egalitarian society. "Hope" and "Change" may have been frequently mocked as campaign props in the last eight years, but I cannot think of a purer distillation of the thing in the Democratic Party that appeals to people.

The Left has gained a sense of identity and power from its recent successes, and seems prepared to flex that muscle electorally. If so, it will have earned its increased influence within the party. What concerns me, though, is that it already seems to be showing signs of the same attitude that overtook the Republicans in the last ten years. The right wing activists and pundits became increasingly empowered, and they used that power to redefine Republicanism into something much more unyielding and caustic. The party of the Bush family became the party of Trump. I have some concern that if the activists are allowed free rein the party of Obama will become something I cannot support because it, like the modern GOP, will have substituted ideology for truth, conformity for ability, and purity for merit.

*What actually doomed the Clinton campaign, incidentally, was a lack of forceful message, an unhealthy insularity among Clinton loyalists, misallocation of campaign resources, and a crass disregard for what organizers on the ground in the midwest were warning them was coming. 

**That disappointment and subsequent distrust is the root of the current suspicion with which the activists view the DNC, and why some relatively mild email criticisms were blown into a plot to rig the primary.

Unintended Consequences

In their opposition to President Trump, the congressional Democrats have focused thus far on what must be an exceedingly satisfying strategy for them; delay. It was that same strategy that Mitch McConnell used to devastating effect in the first years of the Obama administration, ensuring that the Obama team could not hit the ground running and masking a year of significant accomplishment behind a wall of intransigence and partisan rancor. While the delay tactic did not succeed in preventing an overwhelmingly Democratic congress from moving forward, the constant drumbeat did whip up the Republican base into a frenzy that manifested itself at raucus townhalls and was fully realized in an overwhelming victory for the GOP in the midterm elections of 2010.

Without a doubt, that is what Schumer and company hope to accomplish in their favor over the next year and a half. Given the testy town halls congressional Republicans are already enduring, Trump's historically bad approval ratings, and the disorganization of the Trump administration to date, it would seem that they are off to a good start. Yet, I am skeptical that they appreciate the degree of the difference between the Obama and Trump administrations to this point. The premise of the Obama adminsitration was the use of the system as it existed to improve social conditions. It required adequate staffing and a respect for the process. The Trump administration proceeds from the assumption that the entire political establishment - bureaucracy, intelligentsia, media, and elected officials - is the enemy.

An unintended consequence of the delaying tactics employed by congressional Democrats has been the utter inability of the bureaucracy to fight back against the inner circle of Trump loyalists, Bannon, Miller, and Kushner in particular, who have worked agressively to undermine it. The State Department is brutally understaffed at the highest levels, and even then-Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson was uninformed about the travel orders that were the hallmark of Trump's second week in office. Professional diplomats learned about Trump's casual abandonment of America's commitment to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as he was talking about it on the news. All of this is consistent with what is already a well-documented conflict between Trump and the security apparatus.

What is less open but no less real is the degree to which the traditional operation of the entire federal bureaucracy is currently being bypassed. Neither the relevant departments of government nor the congress were consulted in the drafting of the early executive orders. Several foreign governments are being told to communicate directly with Kushner, who has acquired a free-ranging foreign policy portfolio without any clearly defined role within the White House. He and Bannon have already created and staffed a think tank within the White House called the Strategic Initiatives Group, tasked with long term policy planning in areas from national security to infrastructure and unemployment. While it will not be involved in the day-to-day grit of government, it provides an alternative group of policy advisors for a White House that distrusts the existing structure. They are purposefully circumventing the cabinet process.

Bannon, Miller, and Kushner have moved quickly to solidify their influence over the direction of the White House while most of the important positions in the "offical" government remain unfilled due to the delaying tactics of congressional Democrats. It may seem as if the delay is denying Trump important advisors at a critical juncture in his administration, but I have some fears that it is empowering Trump's already extremely influential inner circle. That group, make no mistake, is significantly more extreme and more dangerous in terms of both politics and policy than his cabinet nominees. The cabinet nominations were made more to placate the Republican party than to exercise decisive policy influence. Everything about Trump's history and psychology suggests that he depends almost solely on a small, tight-knit group of advisors and is biased toward people with direct access to him on a regular basis. Cabinet secretaries are far more distant than his personal staff. Their only influence comes from the institutional weight of their departments, which they cannot weild before confirmation. By the time the cabinet is installed, the power dynamics of this administration will be set for some time.

It may be that the increase in progressive activism and the pressure on congressional Republicans that the persistent opposition is generating will, ultimately, be worth giving the White House the upper hand on the bureaucracy in the executive power struggle that is ongoing. But Trump will almost certainly be in office for four years, perhaps eight. His closest advisors have made it clear that they regard any institutional presence in the capital as the opposition. Their ideas are dangerous, both at home and abroad. Any strategy which, even unintentionally, empowers them to the detriment of existing policymaking channels makes me deeply uneasy.

Spooked

This week, National Security Advisor and retired Army General Michael Flynn was asked to resign his post. It came to light last week that Flynn, before the inauguration and while he was still a private citizen, had several phone calls discussing sanctions with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. I do not intend to discuss the Flynn business in depth just now, but I recommend this summary for the curious. 

What finally produced Flynn's ouster was the revelation that he mislead several Trump administration officials, including Vice President Pence, about the content of his calls with Kislyak. There remains a great deal of uncertainty about who knew what and when about his calls - particularly who, if anyone, authorized Flynn to discuss the sanctions. It is worth noting that the primary point of President Trump's response to the story has been a castigation of the individuals responsible for leaking the details to the press, expressly claiming that the intelligence community itself is out to get him. This is only the latest act in an ongoing saga of mutual distrust and recrimination between Trump and the national security establishment.

From the time candidate Trump claimed that the intelligence community's findings about Russian interference in the election were politically motivated, there has been a great deal of tension.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that intelligence officials have purposefully avoided giving Trump sensitive intelligence, citing concerns that it will be leaked or handled inappropriately. When Flynn was confirmed, there was consternation within the National Security Council staff about him and the people he was bringing in with him. Adding insult to injury, the appointment of  political adviser Steve Bannon to permanent seat on the council, in a break with precedent, was seen as an overt politicization of national security. Yesterday evening, it was revealed that Trump's chosen successor to Flynn, Robert Harward, turned down the offer because the White House refused to allow him to replace staff brought in by Flynn.

It is clear that Trump blames the security establishment, in particular the FBI and CIA, for the leaks that brought down Flynn. He has gone so far as to repeatedly claim that the leaks, rather than Flynn's actions, are the "real story" of the week. His frustration with the leaks, and with the intelligence community at large, has reached the point that he is weighing inviting a Trump loyalist to investigate the leaks, and the intelligence agencies.

The tension is not confined to the security establishment. It has extended to the diplomatic community as well. Trump notoriously demanded that many diplomats return home immediately upon his inauguration without awaiting their replacements - a move that was seen as a deliberate insult. After Trump signed his travel bans, many career diplomats broke with precedent to openly protest. For their trouble, presidential press secretary Sean Spicer said publicly that they could get on board or feel free to find a new career path. Most of the high level career staff at the State Department were encouraged to resign, and did so. Even after that initial housecleaning, additional layoffs of staff at the State Department - difficult to interpret outside of a political context - are ongoing.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Trump administration itself is in more or less open conflict with the entire security establishment. On the merits of the issue this is damning for Trump, because the vast majority of the relevant expertise in the country is alarmed by both his policy and his behavior. Yet as ever in politics, the facts are only a portion of the story. Every conflict that allows Trump to play up his preferred narrative of Trump-vs-the-Establishment risks deepening the already near-mystical bond between him and his supporters, and makes building a consensus against his most alarming acts nearly impossible. Already the bellwether outlets on the Trumpist right are blaming the leaks on a conspiracy of Obama administration holdovers to hamstring the new administration.

I am not aware of any time since World War II when the entire national security apparatus of the country was so obviously at odds with its ostensible commander. There has certainly been no time when the American president has been so obviously hostile to the international consensus Americans built following that conflict, and which has been so successful to this point in preventing the kind of wholly destructive interstate conflict that marred the first half of the last century. The media are correct in pointing out that the departures from established norms are disturbing. But their consistent reinforcement of the Trump-vs-Normalcy narrative risks strengthening him at the exact time when he ought to be hemmorhaging support.

Trumponomics

In my previous post, I mentioned that the success of Trump's economic message among the white middle class will be crucial to his long term success or failure. What makes that dynamic particularly interesting is that there doesn't seem to be any significant agreement among media or commentators about what that message means or how he intends to translate it into policy. I hear conservatives saying he's too liberal. I hear the Left saying he's revealing the true face of dastardly Republicanism - a cipher owned by the wealthy interests of the country. If we insist on employing the familiar liberal-conservative labels, he seems to defy description. Yet, his own words and the backgrounds of his closest advisers reveal a surprisingly consistent economic philosophy that must be understood if we are to understand Trump.

Trump and both of his top policy advisers, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, have described themselves as "nationalists." They view the world as a place in which one is either taking advantage of others or being taken advantage of by them. Trump's campaign theme - we are governed by dithering incompetents who, instead of using our immense power and wealth to acquire further riches and authority, have allowed others to bamboozle them, infiltrate our national community, and take what is rightfully ours - is steeped in that basic belief. In his inaugural address, he said:

For many decades, we've enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military; we've defended other nation's borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

And again:

Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.

These are the words of a person who believes that the central choice for the American economy is not "regulate or deregulate", "tax hike or tax cut", or even "market or government". For him, it is "us or them."

There is a part of Trump's economic plan that fits into both his nationalist framework and more traditional conservatism - tax cuts, budget cuts, and deregulation. Unlike the traditional right, in his case it is not primarily motivated by market piety and an implicit defense of economic privilege. He observes the regulatory laxity of developing nations and sees opponents who play by a different set of rules. He is determined to ensure that American industry is unhampered in that competition by regulation. The benefit of any regulation is immaterial to him, because for him the only economic question of importance is "are we winning?" The individual, except as an abstraction, is absent from this line of thought.

On a point that is much more central to his economic theme, Trump disagrees vehemently with conservative orthodoxy; trade. He has spent several years castigating free trade agreements as "bad deals," and he has inherited this point - even if he has added a personal spin to it - from generations of Democrats and the Left more generally. The Democrats have opposed trade agreements because they craved the support of white union workers, particularly in the Midwest, and those are the workers who have been most affected by the economic trends of the last fifty years. The Left has done so because it blames global trade for the enrichment of wealthy elites. While the political reasons for Trump to adopt his anti-trade line are clear, he fails to speak in particularly personal terms about the destructive aspects of rapid change. To him, it is about other countries "stealing" industry from the nation. For him, the products belong to us to sell, the job belongs to the nation, and relocating it is indistinguishable from robbery.*

The regulation and trade-related aspects of his economic program have been well covered, if poorly understood, by the national press. What has not been adequately reported is how the other pillar of Trump's platform - immigration - fits into his overall economic scheme. To Trump and his advisors, immigrants are unnecessary competitors driving down wages for unskilled native workers.** They also see adjusting low income immigrants, and in particular the education of their children, as a drain on national resources with little return. Again, it will be noticed, concern for the individual does not have a part to play here. The idea of "the nation," which explicitly excludes the non-native born, is supreme.

If my description of this philosophy seems cold, even crass, I maintain that is because it is a cold and crass philosophy. Moreover it is one that flies in the face of the evidence, which asserts that the effect of immigration on even unskilled wages is minimal, that immigrants are net contributors to society, and that their children are significantly more productive as adults than the children of the native born.*** Yet the things I have described are believed, explicitly, by the people closest to the president in forming national policy.

The future of Trump's policy with regard to documented as well as undocumented immigrants is largely motivated by his economic worldview, and his attitude toward immigration as a whole has been lost in the media firestorm over his travel and refugee orders. The crackdown on immigration which is already beginning will not end with the undocumented. There will be a push to significantly reduce legal immigration, and the justification will be economic in nature.

While Trump's ideology has seemed porous because it transcends the liberal-conservative dichotomies to which we have become accustomed, it is surprisingly and disturbingly coherent in principle. It represents a pessimistic, scared view of the world that reduces in its entirety to "eat or be eaten." He has made it clear where he draws the line between us and them. If we reduce him to a dupe of the ruling class, or an idiot, or a loudmouth with no idea what he's saying, we will fail to understand him, and we will be unprepared when he does precisely what he's been telling us he will do all along.

* The actual effect of trade and trade agreements on the economy is complicated. Experts now agree that NAFTA has not been a significant event in changing long term economic trends, while the emergence of China has. Some of the changes have been as expected, others have not. Why that is the case is an area of active research, and there are no easy answers. I recommend this summary of the issues surrounding trade and globalization.

** This article from Vox is a good primer on the attitudes of Bannon and Miller, I refer the intrigued reader to Google.

*** Two prominent surveys in recent times have come from the pro-immigration Center for Immigration Studies and the libertarian Cato Institute.

The Long Game

In the last few days, Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions have been confirmed to their respective posts in the cabinet. I expect Tom Price will follow shortly. With that, the most charged and explosive debates in the staffing of the Trump administration will have concluded. The Democrats have made a show of their resistance. They have said much that, in my opinion, needed to be said. But their efforts were never going to bear serious fruit. Procedural changes in the Senate from several years ago make blocking most nominees nearly impossible for a minority party. With the conclusion of this phase and the travel and immigration bans locked in court battles that will probably play out over months, we seem to be nearing the end of the beginning for the Trump administration.

The long term landscape for the next few years is settling. In general, Trump has support from men, working class and rural whites and middle class whites without a college degree. College educated suburban whites, nonwhites, and women disapprove of him.* There are two things about that description that immediately stand out to me. The first, unsurprisingly, is that it tracks very closely to the relative power bases of Trump and Clinton during the campaign. The second, which I think is the most overlooked aspect of why Clinton was beaten, is that the groups who support Trump have a great deal more in common than those who oppose him. Racially, religiously, culturally, economically, Trump's opposition is much more diffuse than his support.

That condition presents obvious long term challenges for those opposing Mr Trump. A culturally homogeneous group of people is similarly affected by each policy and reacts accordingly with unity, as much as any large group of people can. They approach issues with a similar mindset formed by similar experiences. Diverse groups of people have a diversity of interests, and each new policy presents a new problem for maneuvering those differing interests to maintain a unified front. Without that melding, the opposition is unable to present as forcefully as the support.

There is a particular cleavage that gives me some pause - that disconnect between the white, suburban, educated middle class and the nonwhite population. These groups have a variety of competing interests, and the potential for division is already to be found at this early stage. The media focus has been largely on the controversies surrounding the immigration orders and cabinet secretaries, but the public at large remains primarily concerned about the economy. Trump's approval rating among whites for his handling of the economy is significantly higher than his general approval rating. That difference is located mostly among the educated middle class, whose notions of decency are offended by the immigration orders, but who also welcome ideas of tax reform and deregulation. There is no similar issue-to-issue difference in his approval rating among nonwhites. 

If Trump is able to shift the national discussion to claim he is materially improving the standards of living for the white middle class, he will be able to co-opt a significant fraction of his current opposition. If, on the other hand, the Democratic Party becomes too preoccupied with the interests of that faction, it will lose touch with the base of nonwhite voters who make up a majority of its support. One of the principal reasons Secretary Clinton lost was a decline in turnout among black voters in cities like Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia. The 2016 Democratic campaign in general, from Bernie to Hillary and everywhere in between, was inadequate in its representation of the voices and concerns of the nonwhite population. It may have been too much to ask for that community to come out in the same numbers as for President Obama, but if nonwhites had felt genuinely represented by the structure and process - and not just the promises - of the Clinton campaign, there would be no President Trump.

How is the trap to be avoided then? The answer lies, as ever, not in the decisions of the party but the decisions of the people. Now is the time for intense and deep coordination among activist groups opposed to the president to cross racial lines with the express intent of working out long term strategy and maintaining a unified front. In particular, it is past time for nonwhites to be actively and proportionally represented in the construction of an alternative platform.

Beyond that, though, nonwhites will never be truly represented in our policy until they are represented directly in our leadership. The most lasting lesson intersectional theory has taught us is that there is no one black experience or female experience, or any one experience for any one dimension of identity. As a result, even a good-natured focus on issues relating to nonwhite communities will be woefully incomplete without the actual experiences of nonwhite people involved in the making of all policy. Ultimately that is how the opposition sustains itself without being divided. If it does not commit to embracing its diversity at every level from activism to policy, it will be at risk from specialized appeals to its constituent parts.

* The polls I'm referencing specifically in this post are the most recent approval polls from the Economist/YouGov and Quinnipiac, but the qualitative conclusions are present in every recent poll I have seen that provide demographic breakdowns for their surveys.

The Battle and the War

After a whirlwind first two weeks in which he seemed determined to do whatever he wanted as fast as he could, President Trump has encountered a stiff resistance. The Women's March, large spontaneous protests against the travel ban, and a Democratic minority in the Senate that has ground the confirmation process nearly to a halt have all taken their toll. The President's approval ratings are abysmal for this early in his tenure, and some discontent has emerged within the congressional Republican Party.

In a future post I intend to analyze the future of the opposition, in particular its demographic divide and the need for intense coordination across groups to maintain focus and some unity. For the moment though, I would like to inject a note of caution into the exuberance - not to say schadenfreude - that has crept into the discussion.

Mr Trump has had a bad week, that much is beyond dispute. That being said, in the last year he has had a number of the worst political weeks in living memory. His success in spite of those weeks speaks to an important part of how he is able to survive his extreme and controversial statements. Trump refuses to give an inch. Backtracking gives the opposition more room to move in. Instead, he stands his ground and is wounded but by his very intransigence succeeds in muddling the issue enough to avoid a clear social verdict against him. On every issue, large and small, extreme or mundane, Trump asks his supporters "who are you going to believe, them or me?" It may seem absurd for someone with Trump's congenital disdain for facts to ask that question, but that point of view fails to reckon with the visceral distrust of the media and political establishment among much of America, and not just his supporters. When you believe that there is an active attempt by much of the world to deceive you, fact and fiction become much trickier concepts.

Trump is employing the same strategies that allowed him to survive the brutal campaign now that he is president. Faced with bad poll numbers he complains that the polls are rigged - a point his supporters can view with credibility given the failure of professional polling to predict his victory. When questioned about the legal merits and utility of his travel ban, he attacks judges who issue adverse rulings in sharply personal terms and claims that the media is covering up terrorist attacks. He is refusing to give an inch. Instead of confronting criticism directly, he makes an outrageous assertion that by its very implausibility changes the subject from a question of fact to competing claims. That allows him to transform what should be universally condemned actions into questions of party loyalty.

By repeatedly employing time-honored tactics, Trump is attempting to do what he has done to this point - outlast his opposition. The successes of the protests and the Democrats in the Senate this week are not to be belittled or discounted, but they should not be confused for victory. Trump still has substantial advantages in terms of both the office he holds and the fact that he will hold that office for another four years. Endurance will be the factor that determines whether this week is seen as the beginning of a successful attempt to assert American values currently under siege or as a false spring before Trump outmaneuvered his enemies. More to come on that later.