politics – Page 2 – Between Hell and High Water

Inequality Is Giving Money to Rich People

Mike Koetting April 22, 2025

Many Americans are white-hot angry at their situation in life. More and more families are having a difficult time making ends meet. The sense that they are no longer fully participating in the promised life can be found everywhere. Two-thirds of middle-class families say they are struggling financially.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many families are feeling short-changed since the richest Americans are increasing their share of wealth at the expense of everyone else. This is primarily a result of deliberate policy decisions. The surprise is that so many of the people feeling short-changed voted for an agenda promising more of the same.

In 2023, the total share of income earned by the bottom 90% of workers was less than 50%. In other words, the bottom 90% altogether made less than the top 10%. There is nothing inevitable about such a distribution. Most countries with American standards of living have more equal income distributions. In fact, America used to have a more equal distribution.

Economic Issues by Themselves Will Not Change Democratic Fortunes

By Mike Koetting March 25, 2025

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild, in her recent book, Stolen Pride, observes that in addition to a material economy there is a “pride economy.” I think recent Democratic losses have as much to do with shortages in that economy as with problems in the material economy. It’s not something voters talk about, so it the poll-centric mainstream media misses it. But I submit it is at the heart of why people vote for a person who is a known liar and is unlikely to actually deliver economic improvement for most of his voters. One way or another, he assuages the loss of self-worth that has afflicted a large swath of the population. This is certainly related to the material economy, but is in fact a different dimension and it is losses in that dimension that have made the road so difficult for Democrats.

To be fair, managing what has happened in the pride economy would have been a difficult, maybe even impossible, task for Democrats.

For openers, Democrats became the party of the oppressed as Republicans settled into the party of “let’s keep everything the way it is,” or, better yet, the way it was 50 years ago. From the Sixties on, the Democrats championed changes in society that were necessary to allow more individuals to be more self-actualizing. These changes, appropriate as they were, created major perturbations in the pride economy. Being right is no guarantee you won’t offend people who feel their status has been eroded.

What Are the Republicans Thinking?

By Mike Koetting March 4, 2025

Twice before in my life, I experienced a sensation that our basic political system was in mortal danger. Once in 1970 on the day protestors were killed at Kent State and three years later when Richard Nixon precipitated the Saturday Night Massacre. In both cases, however, the sensation only lasted for a few hours. I found I had a deep-seated conviction that the series of checks and balances would work, even if a bit wobbly for a time.

Today I am finding that confidence waning.

Throughout our history, our system has worked because powerful individuals were willing to be constrained by institutions, by the system of checks and balances that provide some assurance that a small number of individuals can’t ride roughshod over the rest.

It isn’t as if these powerful individuals were all particularly virtuous—some were and others not so much. It was more that they operated in an environment of a shared understanding that if you wrecked the system, what came next would be worse. Democracy is what allows people with differences to work together over time.

So, although there have always been individuals who would have thrown over the institution, other than the Civil War, the broader ethic prevailed. Those who would have done way with these checks and balances have been restrained. A year after the Saturday Night Massacre, a group of Republican Senators told Nixon that he would be impeached if he did not resign.

What is different about today is not so much that Donald Trump would throw over the institutions, but that there are so many people who are willing to let him do so even though they know better.

Many citizens are so deeply alienated by the current moment and feel so powerless they don’t worry about Constitutional considerations. I am disappointed, but I understand.

However, I cannot fathom what is going through the minds of various Republican Representatives and Senators. What is their rationale for allowing Donald Trump so much leeway? It is implausible that they don’t understand they are destroying the checks and balances that have been fundamental to America for 250 years. Do they really believe that putting all the power in the President is a good idea? And while they may be happy that Trump will accomplish some things that they want and whack away at some things they oppose, do they really believe this is a sustainable model for running a country?

Time to Call Out the Immigration Con

By Mike Koetting February 26, 2025

Everyone knows the story of the emperor’s clothing. No one was willing to say the truth until a child blurted it out.

There are parallels in our national discussion of immigration. Republicans, led by Trump, have inflated some real—but manageable issues—into a national panic. The fact that the panic is caused by a con gets lost in the day-to-day coverage.

It is a real problem that our system for managing immigration is broken. It is broken from lack of funding and from incoherence in our rules and laws, in large part due to conflicting interests. There are any number of feasible solutions to those problems. None of them are addressed by deporting people. Fixing the core system requires nuanced, rational political discussions of the various trade-offs—which Republicans have been systematically undercutting for 20 years.

Numbers and Conversations in the Fires’ Aftermath

By Mike Koetting February 11, 2025

The thing about numbers is they are objective. You can fudge them for a while, but eventually their concreteness wins out.

So when the insurance actuaries mull over the Los Angeles wildfires, they will issue verdicts not based on rhetoric or hope or blame, but gimlet-eyed assessments of what makes sense for insurance companies—increase rates, leave or what.

We already have a preview. In the year leading up to the fires, State Farm, the largest homeowners insurance company in California, anticipating the risk, refused to renew thousands of policies there. They had already stopped selling new policies in the state. Other insurers are similarly trimming their sails.

Bad Faith in Immigration Policy

By Mike Koetting January 14. 2025

The recent election demonstrated that a large share of Americans want more control placed on immigration. Fair enough. But the Laken Riley bill that recently passed the House is a deeply troubling response. Presented as a plan to “deport criminals” it is in fact a stealth attempt to rewrite fundamental constitutional provisions. It exemplifies the partisan bad faith with which current politics are being waged.

This law would mandate the detention of anyone who is “unlawfully” in this country who is “charged with, arrested for, convicted of, or admits to having committed acts that constitute the essential elements of burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.” Note this does not require the person be convicted of anything. Presumption of innocence is cancelled. Merely arresting someone for a crime is sufficient. Or having once been convicted, regardless of subsequent events, you could be detained.

Lots to Blame on Elites….But This Isn’t the Best Case

By Mike Koetting October 30, 2024

A speaker at a University of Chicago event two weeks ago said that the rising level of political polarization is among the elite and not shared by the mass electorate. Just a few days earlier, David Books made a similar, though goofier, argument that the polarization is primarily a function of the “high priests” of the right and left insisting on orthodoxy. Both arguments imply that the voters are mostly innocent bystanders, maybe even victims, and left to their own devices, we wouldn’t have this polarization. While there are elements of truth here, this argument is more wrong than right and masks how difficult it will be to address the sources of our polarization.

Reality Can’t Get to the Table

By Mike Koetting October 10, 2024

Twenty years ago, we were all a twitter about a George Bush adviser deriding “reality- based media.” He may get the last laugh. We in the reality-based world are still struggling. Close to half the electorate is committed to various fables. The delusionary nature of that bubble is clear to those on the outside. But, in the short run, a large part of the nation seems wedded to this cartoon version of the world.

There are plenty of legitimate differences between Harris and traditional Republican positions that should be open for debate. But Trump has simply turned his back on reality-based discussion and, in the process, opened a whole lot of territory in which people can find all kinds of responses and reasons to believe. It also makes it easier for the truly extreme to feel they are licensed.

Causes versus Institutions

By Mike Koetting September 17, 2024

Just before taking off on a short trip with our grandson, I read a review in the Washington Post of a political thriller, Charles McCarry’s Shelley’s Heart, that it described as “unnervingly prescient.” While written 25 years ago, plot elements include a highly contested vote count, renegade Arab terrorists, impeachments and a rogue Supreme Court. Sounded just like the thing for a trip to Washington DC.

It was, as promised, an exciting thriller that I had a hard time putting down. It also turned out to be an interesting meditation on the philosophical orientations toward politics and government, specifically, what is the right balance between strongly-held values and maintaining the institutions of governing?