Free Money?

The ideological whiplash that I have seen recently regarding the maybe-could-be stimulus checks that are possibly being sent out is dizzying. Back up a few steps to the labeling as "socialism" any program that helps ordinary people by the political right, (with the assumption that socialism is bad). I think most of us can agree that a command economy yoked to an authoritarian government with all industry nationalized (Soviet-style Communism) is bad. No one, literally no one, is proposing anything like that. The most radical ideas being talked about are (1) Medicare for all and (2) Free college. There are valid arguments to be made pro and con about the workability and cost of these proposals, but the man-on-the-street objection is usually some variation on “I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for ‘free stuff’ to people who don’t work for it”, usually followed by an allegation that it’s socialism (which “everybody knows” is bad).

So now fast forward to this past week, where Trump and the Congress are in favor of a stimulus package that includes checks of $1000 (the amounts discussed varies) to every taxpayer. Now, there are, like most things, arguments pro and con about this proposal and the details thereof, one thing is clear: this is the government giving money to people who didn’t earn it. As you can imagine, most Democrats and other liberals would have no objection to this, with the only arguments being about the size of the payouts and over who should get it (not millionaires). This is right in line with what the left has always believed: that sometimes government needs to step in and provide a safety net to assist people who are struggling. It’s in opposition to what conservatives and Trumpists say that they believe: that giving people money that they didn’t directly earn is socialism and socialism is bad. So, what has changed? One, they are benefitting from it. Everyone who benefits from programs like this think that they’re deserving while everyone else is a freeloader. Second, Trump suggested it first.

I’ve seen a lot of rationalization by Trumpists lately, trying to explain why this really isn’t socialism and how it’s the Democrats and liberals who are hypocrites. One that I have seen numerous times is that it’s not socialism because it’s actually our money that’s coming back to us. Not really. Once you pay your taxes, it’s not your money any more. We may not always agree with what the government spends money on, but once it’s collected it belongs to the nation as a whole, not the individual and is allocated as elected officials see fit. To be consistent, it can also be argued that Medicare for All wouldn’t be “free stuff”, but our money coming back to us.

Somehow the Trumpists, who are being inconsistent about accepting money from the government, are saying that it’s the Democrats and liberals who are hypocritical. One of the most common memes on this subject features a man agonizing over what button to push and has Republican and Democratic versions side-by-side. The Republican side has him dithering over “$1000 check” and “Socialism Bad” buttons. The Democratic side has as the two choices as “$1000 check” and “Not My President”. This meme seems to be suggesting that one can only accept the stimulus check if one is loyal to Trump. Aside from the fact that Trump and Congress are proposing a partial remedy that has been part of the Democratic platform for years, I find it more than a little alarming that there is a point of view that only Trump loyalists should be assisted in times of national emergency.

No one on the left is actually saying that the stimulus checks are socialism, what we are saying is that the right has been fear mongering about social programs being socialism, with the implication that socialism is bad, but when a social program benefits them it’s perfectly fine and therefore not socialism, because if it’s good (and if it benefits them, it has to be, by definition good) it can’t be socialism! Circular reasoning at its best.

Enemies of the People

I have covered this subject before, but among the many areas where Trump’s actions are causing long-lasting damage to the country I believe that his denigration and undermining of mainstream media is the most insidious. This is not to minimize the racism that props up many of his policies, or the incompetence with which he oversees the executive branch, his empowerment of white supremacists and Christian nationalists, his authoritarian tendencies or the way one-way loyalty to him is a proxy for actual qualifications. All of those things are incredibly damaging, but despite the fact that the press sometimes gets it wrong, a free press has always been an effective way to hold our elected officials accountable.

News coverage of government can be broadly divided into two categories: opinion and news. Opinion includes editorials, which are the institutional position of a news outlet, analysis, which is when the meaning of government actions is speculated upon, and columnists, who generally have a bias or point of view that colors their coverage of events. News, on the other hand, when done right, is simply reporting on what happened. A news story might report that the president said xyz, and the Speaker of the House responded abc and certain polls had such-and-such percentage approval. An opinion piece might contain musings about whether xyz was a good idea or what the results of that policy might be, or whether response abc was warranted or what the polls indicated about the president’s reelection prospects. Most mainstream news organizations, including those that we might think display a partisan bias in their opinion pieces; employ people who take great pride in getting their facts right and have a system in place to verify their own reporting. Do they sometimes get it wrong? Yes, but getting a story factually wrong is an embarrassment that is to be avoided at all costs.

Around the middle of 2016, we began to hear the term “fake news”. At first, this referred to articles and websites that were created solely for the purpose of spreading disinformation. Often they would imitate the look of an existing news organization or have a similar web address. This was one of the main weapons in the arsenal of Russian intelligence’s efforts to influence our election. It worked to the extent that many people, who had no inclination to fact-check anything that supported their preconceived notions, believed what they read on these fake news sites. Another phenomenon that had been growing for years was the proliferation of blogs. For the most part bloggers were the independent version of a newspaper’s opinion page. Most blogs made no secret of their own point of view and mainly expressed their opinion of what was going on in government and politics. (I include myself in this – even though I take great effort to be factually accurate, this blog is my opinion, and I seldom cite sources). Despite bloggers being the online version of the know-it-all at the end of the bar, or your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, well-publicized blogs became a news sources for many people.

Wading into this confusing mess was Donald Trump, then a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. He took the term “fake news” and applied it to any news story that he did not like, mainly for portraying him in an unflattering light. Trump and his supporters will refer to various studies that show that a large majority (they usually quote a percentage in the nineties) of news stories about Trump are “negative”, concluding that this is proof that the mainstream media is out to get him. However, studies by nonpartisan groups such as Pew Research calculate around 90% of stories that display a positive or negative slant and that around a third are neutral. Still, the supposedly negative coverage is overwhelming. It is instructive to note what counts as “negative”. If CNN reports that Trump is documented to have lied 3,000 times in a certain period, is that negative? The methodology would categorize it as such, but if he actually did lie that many times, then it is simply reporting the news, albeit news that reflects negatively on Trump. Consider that through most of Trump’s presidency he has been in the midst of either an investigation or an impeachment. Any mention of those two things would tick the “negative” box, but they are just facts.

Since Trump continues to do things that reflect negatively on him, this trend will continue, drowning out any positive news, like low unemployment.

Trump’s continual attacks on the free press have, for most of his supporters, undermined any credibility that formerly respected news organizations had. An independent voice, a check on corruption in government, a bright light on misdeeds, is disbelieved without any evidence simply because one man says so. Even more dangerous is the characterization of the majority of news organizations, not merely as fake news, something that can be ignored, but as “the enemy of the people”. At times Trump has attempted to finesse this by saying that it’s only “fake news” that is the people’s enemy, as if he believes there is a “real news” out there somewhere that he won’t turn on when they displease him (I’m looking at you, Fox News). Virtually every major news organization has been tarred by Trump as “the enemy of the people”. When you take this to its logical conclusion, what do governments do with their enemies? Do they let them continue to behave traitorously? (Another word Trump has thrown around) Or do they take action to somehow stop them?

As Trump stacks the courts with allies, and eliminates those who are not loyal from the Justice Department, and continues to flout the law with impunity, what means are left to stop him from rendering the First Amendment effectively null and void?

No, It's Not Rigged Against Sanders

Once again Bernie Sanders is bitching about primary rules.

In 2016 (and 2012 and 2008) in order for a Democratic candidate to be nominated on the first ballot, they needed to secure a majority of the total number of delegates, which included “Super-delegates”. Super-delegates are party leaders and elected officials who are not pledged to support any particular candidate, unlike “regular” delegates, who are allocated to a particular candidate based on the result of their states primary or caucus. 

Going into the 2016 Democratic national convention Clinton had a majority of the regular delegates, but was still short of a majority of total delegates. There were enough Super-delegates who had not revealed their preference before the convention that the result was theoretically in doubt. In the end, enough Super-delegates voted for Clinton on the first ballot that she was the nominee. The same thing happened in 2008 when Obama squeaked past Clinton for the nomination. During the campaign Sanders vacillated between denigrating the Super-delegate process as undemocratic and suggesting that enough supers would swing toward him to give him the nomination. There was a lot of rumbling that the Super-delegates had “stolen” the nomination from Sanders, when in reality, the regular delegates, the “democratic” part of the process had gone decisively to Clinton. If Sanders had gone to the convention with more regular delegates than Clinton, an argument could convincingly be made that that the nomination had been un-democratically been stolen if the Super-delegates had then nominated Clinton. There is still a belief among Sanders supporters that “the establishment” had “rigged” the primary process against him.

Fast forward to 2020. Changes had been made, in large part due to lobbying by Sanders, ensuring that Super-delegates have no role in the first ballot. If a candidate had a majority of the regular delegates, then the supers would not vote. Only if no candidate had a majority of regular delegate votes on the first ballot would there be a second (or third, or forth) ballot, with, not only Super-delegates voting, but with the regular delegates no longer pledged to the candidate for whom they voted on the first ballot. Ahead of Super Tuesday Sanders was suggesting that whoever had a plurality (i.e. the most, but not a majority of, the delegate votes) on the first ballot should be the nominee, which is contrary to the rules that he helped to write. Probably this was due to there still being several candidates like Warren and Bloomberg in the race. The popular view was that Sanders would go into the convention in the lead, but that the large number of contenders would prevent any one candidate from achieving a majority. With the Biden comeback and virtually everyone else dropping out and endorsing him, it’s a two-person race and the earlier scenario likely will not hold.

What most people fail to understand is that the Democratic Party, including The Democratic National Committee (DNC), as well as the Republican Party and Republican National Committee, are not part of the government. They are private organizations that exist to promote their own priorities and to put forth candidates for political office. The fact that ordinary citizens get any input into how candidates are selected is not guaranteed and is a relatively recent development. Part of the confusion stems from the practice in most places that party primaries are overseen in part by local election commissions or state government. Some states and municipalities, however, have removed the influence of parties in their elections, including the primaries. Candidates for Nebraska's legislature appear on the primary and general election ballot without any party affiliation identified, although statewide offices as well as Congressional races are partisan. California's primary system lumps all parties together in the primary and the top two vote-getters compete in the general election, even if they are in the same party. This applies to all offices except the presidential primary. In all states, the local parties make and enforce the rules for their presidential primaries. 

When I hear people talk about how the Democratic Party "establishment" is determined to keep Sanders from getting the nomination, my immediate reaction is "So?" - making determinations on who should represent the party is part of their job. There is nothing in their job descriptions that require them to be neutral in whom they support. But a lot of the conspiracy mongering by Sanders supporters has focused in the last week on how, on the one hand, all the so-called moderates had dropped out and mostly endorsed Biden, supposedly proving how they were all banding together against him; and on the other hand how Warren had stayed in contention until Super Tuesday, allegedly in cahoots with the moderates to prevent a Sanders nomination. 

In overly simplistic terms, the Democratic candidate flied was divided broadly into two camps: the "establishment" moderates and the progressives. There were a lot of moderates: Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg, among those candidates who managed to snag at least one delegate, not to mention Harris, Booker, Castro and others who dropped out before any actual voting took place. On the progressive side, it was just Sanders and Warren. Of course the moderate candidates, when they realized that they didn't have a chance, dropped out and endorsed the candidate that, in their view, most closely aligned with their own views. And that wasn't Sanders or Warren. Sanders supporters saw this as a big conspiracy when it was simply politics as usual. The other conspiracy theory centered around Warren's candidacy. According to one faction of Sanders supporters, Warren was running only prevent Sanders from gaining the nomination. The fact that she may have thought she was qualified herself apparently was not considered. Why didn't she drop out before Super Tuesday?, they ask. Before Super Tuesday the delegate count Sanders vs. Warren was only 50-8, which sounds like a lot, but each of them still needed over 1900 delegates to secure the nomination -1941 vs. -1982 doesn't seem like as big a difference when you frame it that way. (If Warren has dropped out and all of her delegates had gone to Sanders, Biden would still be leading)

So now it's a two-person race. All the distracting non-viable candidates are out of the way. It's a clear choice. Biden and Sanders are nothing alike. All that either of them have to do to secure the nomination on the first ballot is to convince more people than the other guy that they are the one who can beat Trump and lead the country successfully. Nothing "the establishment" can do can change that. Biden now had 664 delegates to Sanders' 573. Biden therefore needs another 1327 delegates and Sanders needs 1418. There are still 2583 delegates to be had. It is still theoretically possible for neither candidate to have a majority going into the convention. 

How can Sanders avoid any "rigging"? Secure more delegates by convincing more people to vote for him than for Biden. It's a simple as that.