MaxSpeak, You Listen!

I’m seeing a bunch of lefty “O.K., now let’s go after Joe Biden.” I expect to be in that game myself, but some preliminary cautions are appropriate. At the very least, shouldn’t we hold back criticism until some proposals are rolled out? Some of them will be in the form of trial balloons, which can be shot down as needed. Others will be more forthright. In either case, our brickbats should be substantive.

The fate of Senate races in Georgia will of course be enormously consequential, but they don’t make as much difference when it comes to our longer-term aspirations. Whether or not the Senate ends up even (with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote), our vision for social transformation is the same. What is different will be the short-term bargaining situation.

One thing to avoid is binary, all-or-nothing responses. For instance, Biden will propose to expand coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Rejecting any such proposals because they are not “Medicare For All” would be unwise. The convenient and inconvenient thing about health care is that it is infinitely divisible along a continuum. There are always ways to get a bit more, or a bit less. Of course we should demand more than what we expect to get in the end. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with the M4A slogan.

Even so, Medicare For All is an empty box. I’m on Medicare, and I can assure you that in its present form, by itself, it is woefully inadequate as health insurance. M4A proposals in Congress substantially expand Medicare benefits and coverage. With a hostile Senate, expansion of Medicare will be daunting. It will also be a potent political demand. M4A will come to signify universal coverage, something hard to reject for Republicans who are up for election in 2022.

The Biden plan will put a ceiling, at least in the short term, over what is possible. Any such cap is — should be — vulnerable to criticism. Ironically, the more intransigent a Republican Senate could prove to be, the more flexibility it lends to the side of full-blown M4A. If McConnell refuses to deal and keeps his people in line, then there is no incentive to noodle with compromises. If the Senate isn’t blue by January, M4A can make it so in two years.

Aside from genuinely popular initiatives of the sort introduced by Bernie Sanders, Biden has another source of leverage: executive decisions that do not require legislation. Threats on this front might motivate some stray Republican votes on measures that do require legislation. We have every right to expect a blizzard of executive orders that fill the hopper and will be ready to go, the day after the inauguration. The other immediate priority is another Covid/recession relief measure, since anything negotiated with Mitch McConnell and Trump prior to January 20^th is likely to be inadequate.

Two things worry me the most.

One is a return to the old-time religion of deficit reduction. Most Democrats have wised up to the political chicanery embodied in this issue. Republicans care about deficits when it comes to Democratic proposals, never when it comes to their own. The problem is, some Democrats, including some liberal economists, still think the national debt is a Problem. Like Obama, Biden might be gulled into some kind of ‘grand bargain’ that entails cuts in Social Security and Medicare and tax increases. It will be marketed as “Saving Social Security.” Such a decision would certainly lead to disaster in the next midterm elections, as did similar decisions by Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010. It would also pave the way for Trump: The Sequel in 2024.

The other thing that bothers me is the prospect of Biden returning to the traditional, bipartisan posture of U.S. world policeman hegemony that leads to debacles in Libya and Iraq. The flashpoints include North Korea and Iran. I count the latter as less likely since Biden would probably resurrect the agreement with Iran made by Obama. But by and large, this is an appetite that is never satiated. Ironically, Trump’s signal contribution to the national well-being lay in his aversion to any such grand-scale projects. His violence was focused on defenseless drone victims in the Middle East and desperate asylum seekers at the U.S. southern border.

One tip-off will be the new administration’s plans for the military budget. The need for the “empire of bases” or the ability to fight a couple of ground wars has never seemed less persuasive. The most evident threats to U.S. national security would seem to be in cyberspace, where meddlesome state actors and potential terrorists communicate.

With all the loose talk about negotiations over the next stimulus package, I am compelled to rise in defense of Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi. This is a new role for me. She is getting grief from the so-called Problem Solvers’ Caucus in the House and that nitwit, Andrew Yang. Rep. Ro Khanna, of whom I think well, has also brought some shade. The question has blown up in recent days after an interview Pelosi did with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

The short and inadequate summary of this debate is that the Administration has offered a $1.8 trillion relief package, in response to the Democrats’ proposal for a somewhat higher number. People hampered by low information, such as Blitzer, can’t really evaluate either proposal because they have no clue as to the contents of either proposal. In the interview, Blitzer just kept repeating “$1.8 trillion” as if he had an actual argument. He does not. The government does not necessarily solve problems by spending money. It matters how it is spent.

The conservative bias against the public sector is to apply reductionist criteria to policy. In this case, we are asked to fixate on the total ‘headline’ number in a proposal, or to elevate sending cash to individuals as the be-all and end-all of public policy. Even then, it matters how much cash, and to whom. From a radical standpoint, this is commodification writ large. Even from a mainstream economic standpoint, cash assistance is not a substitute for public services. In particular, we need money spent on services to deal with the pandemic, and we need aid to state and local governments, so that they can maintain the services that make civilized life possible.

The reductionist frame for stimulus is being championed by the right wing of the House Democratic Caucus, the aforementioned ‘problem solvers.’ This caucus consists of both Democrats and Republicans and thrives on the bogus polarization frame of U.S. politics: why or why can’t ‘both sides’ get together and get things done? The simple answer is that one side is deeply insane. A massive rebuke at the polls next month might bring some of them back to Earth, or it may simply shrink the Republicans in Congress to a more intransigent, hard core. That is a problem for later.

Blitzer accused Pelosi of being narrowly concerned with denying Trump any possible boost to his campaign. A compromise would give the stock market a bump up and provide a political win for Trump, but it is too late for the money to have any political effect on the ground before November 3. Even so, there is a case for denying Trump any such benefit, because he is the most awful president ever, remember?

It can also be said that Pelosi has the leverage. It’s a curious progressive critique to fault a Democratic leader for failing to exploit any such leverage. The criticism from the “problem solvers” makes more sense. The problem they are dedicated to solving, including a Member in my own state of Virginia named Abigail Spanberger (a former CIA agent), is getting elected in Trump-friendly districts.

Blitzer’s elementary-school understanding of politics, besides the implied, bogus “gridlock” idea, neglects the fact that there is no reason to think Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would let any compromise measure to come up for a vote in the Senate. Arguably, Mitch is looking past the impending defeat next month to considering how to sabotage a Biden Administration. Blocking stimulus now or before January 20 is one way to do that. Blitzer also asked, without embarrassment, why Pelosi didn’t call up the president and do the deal. Trump doesn’t operate that way. He doesn’t do things. He tweets.

I’ve never had much use for Pelosi. She’s a skilled legislative operator but has no policy vision. She needs a president to follow. In this case, however, grounds for criticism from the outside seem notably thin. Unless you can read minds, you don’t know the details of what is at issue in the negotiations. My guess is that the Democratic bill reflects a constructive use of funds, while the Republican proposals are a pile of stinking monkey crap. Which side are you on?

Showtime’s two-day replay of Trump’s ascent to power is a useful repackaging of the entire disgraceful episode. It is evidently based on the perspective of James Comey himself, with all the possible biases that might entail.

The foundational bias is Comey’s judgment that he was compelled to torpedo the candidacy of Hillary Clinton to protect the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is an historical parallel in the colossal flop of the Mueller probe. Mueller was similarly constrained in his pursuit of Trump, evidently in observance of Department of Justice conventions.

In both cases, neither of these lifelong Republicans seemed to have considered that their attempt to protect institutions in the near term would set the stage for their utter corruption subsequently. We see that now in the form of Attorney-General William Barr’s rubbishing of the Department of Justice.

A couple of characters’ reputations are well skewered in this account. The lead shitweasel is Rod Rosenstein, who betrayed Comey and the FBI. He had been on a high-level career track but was used and discarded by Trump. He is now mothballed at the elite King and Spaulding law firm. There are worse fates.

A bit more surprising was the nonfeasance of Obama Attorney-General Loretta Lynch, who permitted Comey to destroy Clinton and committed the blunder of meeting with Bill Clinton in the middle of this clusterfuck. She is now ensconced at the elite Paul, Weiss law firm. Obama himself could be accused of low energy throughout the affair.

And then there is Comey himself. Jeff Daniels plays him as if he has a stick up his arse. I wonder, does Comey realize it? If not, it explains a lot.

The story takes decided note of the Russia connections but does not overplay them. Indeed, there is no way to confirm the true extent and impact of Russian interference. Proof of collusion is also murky. And there’s not a lot of evidence the public cares much about Russia, one way or another. We’re a long way from Ronald Reagan’s bear-in-the-woods commercials.

The real locus of Trump Administration criminality is less in the Russian agent sphere than in the dazzling display of abuse of power and garden-variety graft, all for the most part arcane matters that fail to excite the public. The Democrats’ signal failure in this vein was trying to make more of the Russian side than could be supported and making little or nothing of all the other shit.

The Left’s conceptual difficulties here are twofold.

One is indifference to the national security frame used by the House, especially in the impeachment resolutions. Not surprisingly, the left is internationalist in orientation. There is no moral case for criticizing Russian interference, such as it was and is, while ignoring the long history of much more egregious acts by the U.S. government.

However, the case need not devolve to Cold War jingoism. After all, Russia is no longer Red, and V. Putin is no friend of the international working class. Any interference by Russia in any other nation’s politics cannot be welcome.

Second, we on the left are not instantly motivated to rise in defense of “The Rule of Law.” In the past, this formulation, or its more agitational cousin “Law and Order,” have been deployed against both legal protest and non-violent civil disobedience, frequently to justify criminal behavior by the authorities.

But there is a use for the law. Otherwise thousands of attorneys in the ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, etc. have been wasting their time. We want public officials to be bound by the law, rather than able to ignore it willy-nilly, as Trump does. We spend a lot of time trying to improve the law. The rule of law is flawed but potentially benefits us, at least to some extent. At the very least, it would be impossible to protest, organize against, or vote out a completely lawless regime. So be careful how you discount the Rule of Law.

“The Comey Rule” ties up with a bow the utter failure of ordinary criticism of Donald Trump and his Republican Party. As the recent debate showed, we are no longer in a political contest. Trump is running against democracy, and democracy is a law we need.

People seem to be confounded by Donald Trump’s repeated assertion that more testing for the virus has generated more cases. It sounds incredibly stupid on its face. Even for Trump, it is hard to believe he is that stupid, or that anyone is stupid enough to believe him. Actually, his statement makes perfect sense, in one perverse respect.

When Trump refers to cases, he is referring to the tragedies suffered by other people, people to whose welfare he is explicitly hostile. It is well-known that people of color have been more stricken with the virus, on average. When Trump says more testing brings more cases, he means that more testing imposes a greater communal obligation on the country by revealing more black and brown people requiring medical care, more absorption of hospital capacity, and often depending on subsidies from the government.

Of course, in absolute terms, more white people are getting sick and dying. But as in the debates on poverty, welfare, or food stamps, this reality gets erased, not least by white people at risk themselves. Susceptibility to the virus due to benighted financial circumstances, as with poverty, is a source of shame that needs to be glossed over. The pretense of poverty or the virus being a racial matter helps to insulate the Administration from criticism within its own racist constituencies.

At this writing, in the U.S. there are 157,000 recorded fatalities, with an end nowhere in sight. Without doubt, the actual total is higher, but 157,000 should be quite enough to commend the worst fate possible for our current overlords.

The president’s more recent babbling about saving the suburbs testifies to his dependence on racial politics. And if that isn’t enough, we also have the more recent story of political calculations within the White House associated with the idiot-child Jared Kushner that the virus was mostly a blue state problem that could be discounted in hopes of a more rapid economic recovery.

It is impossible to imagine a U.S. regime deserving of a worse fate than the current one. There is no comparison to Ronald Reagan or George Bush. Suggestions to the contrary reflect profound ignorance. To be sure, previous presidents have visited disastrous harm on other nations, as well as on the original, indigenous populations of the Americas. Under current circumstances, however, these comparisons are meaningless since there is no telling what calamities lie before us. The U.S. is not merely a danger to itself. It is a threat to the world.

The current danger can be tied to two types of error on the part of some on the left. The obvious one is any ghost of an implication that Joe Biden would be no better than Trump. We might ask, is there any fatality count prior to the election that would lead one to reconsider this premise, assuming 157,000 is not enough?

The other is more arcane, the difference between cash transfers and what economists call “public goods.” Most of my career has been about cash transfers, to families and to state and local governments. Without doubt, people need cash. There is no getting around that. But people, especially lower-income people, also need public goods.

What is a public good? It is a good or service that can be shared without any reduction in a given individual’s use. If the government sends you $10 that you spend for personal consumption, nobody else benefits. The money could be subdivided into nickels, but the same stricture applies. But the extent to which that money is devoted to something that benefits many persons at the same time ‘supercharges’ the spending power of the government.

The preeminent public good today is public health. Free vaccines and treatments benefit the community as a whole, as do restrictions on behavior and regulation of commerce that reduce the incidence of the virus. Public goods equalize well-being by raising the floor of consumption, by expanding collective consumption.

Not a few on the left have become infatuated with schemes such as Universal Basic Income. Its other myriad deficiencies aside, no UBI can substitute for public goods. Only the very wealthy can afford to forego the benefits of public services and facilities, though even they are not entirely immune. Rich people have contracted and died from the virus too.

The obsession with cash is a surrender to commodification, a devolution from even a basic idea of communal well-being. Socialism means a lot more than equalization of personal money incomes.

I’m no expert on criminal justice, but that never stops anybody else from holding forth, so here goes. I did have a career in public policy, so I do think I have a few words of wisdom to impart. I’m also thinking aloud, since these issues are not cut and dried, as far as I’m concerned. As Marx (Groucho) said, “These are my views, if you don’t like them I have others.” Feedback is welcome.

First we have to back up a bit. Do we think we are going to smash the capitalist state? If we do, I’m afraid we are drunk. As long as there is a State, it will have a police force, or under current circumstances, several police forces. Not surprisingly, these police forces will be obliged to preserve the power of the State.

Next question, do we think the State is an irremediable institution impervious to reform? If we do, we can simply stop reading now. We are doomed. But like the joke about the man who responds to a dire medical diagnosis by resolving to find a different doctor, we could choose to begin with different presumptions.

A more optimistic view is that the State is a contested field. It can do both good and bad things. The idea that it cannot possibly do anything good is usually cast in illogical terms, and usually by people with a weak grasp of the details of policy. If for instance you are moved to denounce some new act of commission or omission by the State, I’m afraid you are stuck with the idea that constructive reform is indeed possible. After all, if you are outraged by some new, terrible development, it means that ex ante, things were somewhat better, or less bad.

What Lenin referred to as special bodies of armed men are surely one of the tougher nuts to crack, among other State institutions and policies. Unlike Lenin, we are not confronting a czar, at least not yet. In the interest of honoring #BlackLivesMatter, we should be interested in measures that are both effective and practical. In that spirit, I want to try to sort out the proposals that are floating around right now.

In one corner is the slick #8cantwait campaign promoted by Campaign Zero, under the leadership of Deray McKesson. This is often identified as a Black Lives Matter project, and McKesson has claimed to be a leader of BLM. The truth is that Black Lives Matter is a wholly separate organization that does not overlap with Campaign Zero.

McKesson came out of the anti-union ‘Teach for America’ operation and is networked into the Democratic Party and the NGO/foundation world (as was I, on a limited, obscure level). From where I sit, #8cantwait’s reform proposals are a mixed bag, and certainly wonky food for thought. Whatever you think of it, however, it is not the product of any sort of consensus among BLM activists. To the contrary, the project looks like a one-man operation by someone who rejects working directly with the plethora of BLM groups around the country. Campaign Zero is really striving to take ownership of the BLM brand.

Unfortunately, to some extent the protests have gravitated to a polar opposite of Campaign Zero, an abolitionist “defund” stance. Now I understand that can be an abbreviation for some kind of radical restructuring of policing, or a kind of opening bid to generate political pressure. We could reduce police budgets and allocate the funds for other purposes. It’s all good.

“Defund” does not necessarily mean a fantasy world without any police, but it does beg the question of alternatives. What it would look like is often left to the imagination, and there are voices literally calling for zero police. After all, abolition is an entirely negative position. Absent some more substantive proposal, the audience for this slogan is likely to default to a literal translation, namely that we will not have a police force.

That’s just ridiculous. It’s a dead end. It will never happen. People can keep yelling it, but eventually the protests will thin out. People have lives to get back to. There is burn-out. Police enforcement magnifies the attrition, in the form of physical injury and legal entanglement.

One angle to keep in mind, reminiscent of my younger years, is that the intensity of the moment drives one to seek deep, radical explanations. Back in the day, the twin evils of the Vietnam War and racism drove students like myself to hackneyed vintages of Marxism-Leninism. A tough problem required a tough solution. Today we see a tendency to reject reforms with tortured arguments that they are not sufficiently radical.

So in the other corner, a prime example of the desire for ruthless criticism, which I share, is this well-circulated graphic. Its authors are obscure, if not anonymous. The basic frame for criticism is the above-cited principle of abolition. Reforms must reduce the power of the police, regarding which “defund” is the signifier. The desired alternatives are reforms that challenge the legitimacy of policing itself. This is a horse of a different color.

My preferred remedies lie somewhere in the space between #8cantwait and abolitionism. I share some of the abolitionist critiques of #8cantwait proposals, though for different reasons. For instance, the plea for better police training. The wave of assaults on demonstrators and innocent bystanders that we observe are not the result of inadequate training. To the contrary, they are the fruit of malice unencumbered by fear of consequences.

I’ve also a jaundiced view of ideas that rely on what could be called self-regulation of police behavior, like an honor system, such as the demand for body cams. This requires that officers actually turn their body cams on, or leave them on during times when they have a substantial interest in turning them off. Another is the plea to show badges not covered by tape to prevent their identification.

In principle the government can discipline police who failed to self-regulate. In practice this is difficult. Police are a political power unto themselves. They can make life difficult for citizens and business owners. When they unionize, their power is enhanced. When one or a few screw up, the rest rally in support.

We ought not neglect low-hanging fruit – changes that are simple and easy to verify. For instance, deprive the police of military equipment that has no place in the community. Problem is, this has little practical import. Police brutality is not committed by fancy equipment, but by means of the most primitive of instruments – the billy club. The exception is weapons of chemical warfare. Removing that from the police arsenal would be welcome and is simple enough to implement.

The most relevant policy neglected in the protests is a demand for institutions capable of policing the police, what used to be called civilian review boards (CRB). In my ideal set-up, these boards would command the internal affairs division of the police department and have the power to investigate, discipline, fire, arrest, and prosecute police officers guilty of misconduct.

In an era of ubiquitous camera phones where police are under constant threat of being recorded committing crimes, the workings of a CRB could have a significant impact on behavior. The abolitionists reject CRBs on the ground that they have never been effectively stood up before. But on these grounds, we could reject the entire abolitionist platform.

Finally, there is the matter of policy, which goes to whom we elect to public office. Over the past few weeks, a wide assortment of liberal mayors, both black and white, have been exposed as either incapable or unwilling to direct their police forces to focus on public safety, rather than counterinsurgency. In other words, if less police manpower was wasted on the pointless task of moving around large crowds of law-abiding demonstrators, they could be deployed to prevent property damage.

The failure of local governments in this regard is mystifying. You might say they need to demonstrate the power of Capital to brutalize the population, to assert control, or ‘domination,’ as the president demands. I’m skeptical. Or perhaps police forces in conditions of mass upsurge are simply impossible for their elected bosses to control. I don’t have a better explanation. Maybe you do.

In any case there is a lot of good that could be done, by ongoing mobilization. Pressure works, and the State will react. Its legitimacy, which underlies the consent of the governed, is in worse shape than ever before. Even the Amish have come out.

The failure of a medley of liberal mayors opens up a new political space, but to fill it, a new movement needs organization and an appealing program that goes beyond three-word slogans. Thus far the local BLM agitation has a way to go in this regard. A demand to defund the police might fill a town square, but it will not win an election. In the vacuum, the danger is that an #8cantwait posture of noodling with reforms and herding people back to supporting lackluster Democratic politicians will coopt protest energy and stave off more compelling solutions.

The new political opening places a new burden on the opposition. It will have to get more specific about positive reforms and self-avowed reformers. After all, some of the failing mayors themselves came up as critics of police misconduct. Now more than ever, there is potential for progressive electoral campaigns, founded on candidates who make hard commitments to reforms. In this context, the Democratic Socialists of America, to which I belong (but do not speak for), could play a crucial role.

An account of the right way for DSA to engage the agitation, from my standpoint, is here. I am not referring to the demands themselves, which smack a bit too much of the abolitionist error discussed above. The two key takeaways for me are: 1) cooperate with local leadership of the protests, and do not pretend to be leading them, unless there really is no other leadership; 2) be clearly identified as DSA, with banners if possible, and do not be shy about inviting others to learn more about DSA (literal recruiting on the spot would be ham-handed).

We should not require candidates to declare themselves socialists; such affirmations are as easily abandoned as anything else. But we can take steps to cement them into progressive positions. The key disciplining mechanism is the establishment of independent progressive organization, which can make credible threats to withdraw political support when necessary. An added source of flexibility is that third party candidacies are more feasible at the local level. There is not as much of a penalty if a left campaign causes a centrist to lose to a right-wing candidate. We can survive conservative mayors. Surviving another four years of Trump is altogether a different thing.

In general, the objective should be to create something durable out of the current, unprecedented upsurge. Very few such opportunities present themselves. It would be a tragedy to let one pass by, not least considering the burgeoning, multiple crises with which we are now confronted.