Ending the Inquisition

One of the greatest gifts the political class could give itself and the country this holiday season is an end to the Trumpian inquisition: the effort to use support or opposition for Donald Trump as proof of an individual's moral worth.  Some devout Trumpists insist that all who oppose President Trump are enemies of the republic.  This is basically a mirror image of the claims by some anti-Trumpists that all of Trump's supporters (or "enablers") are absolute moral cretins and maybe traitors to the country.  According to one group, all criticism of the president's decisions is disqualifying; according to the other, it's praise that disqualifies the speaker.

Both these purist approaches underestimate the complexities of politics, which stem from our fallen nature as human beings.  Politics involves complex moral and empirical calculations, and people of good faith might come to different conclusions about which political party and candidate to support.

The United States has had incredibly flawed presidents before.  Woodrow Wilson waged an all-out assault on constitutional norms and individual liberties, attacking checks and balances while imprisoning his political opponents.  And yet plenty of decent people voted for Wilson and worked for him.  As Robert Caro's books show in (at times, nauseating) detail, Lyndon Johnson indulged in corruption and vulgarity; he used his political power to make himself quite wealthy and treated his staffers in a repellent way.  And yet plenty of decent people supported and worked for him, too.  Moreover, these people did not lose all moral standing because of this support.

A similar point could be made in the opposite direction.  The United States has had great presidents, too, and yet plenty of decent and honorable people opposed them.  Even Abraham Lincoln got only 55 percent of the vote in the 1864 election.  Are the 45 percent of Union voters who voted for George McClellan (Lincoln's Democratic opponent) really unredeemable deplorables?

Moreover, the heterogeneity of human experience suggests that flawed leaders can make good decisions and that noble leaders can make bad ones.  This means that commentators might praise certain aspects of an administration while criticizing others.  For instance, many conservatives object to Lyndon Johnson's personal corruption and find that many of his plans for the "Great Society" inflicted great damage on the fabric of the nation, but many of these same conservatives also agree with a number of his civil-rights efforts.  Are conservatives supposed to attack civil-rights legislation because they view Johnson as otherwise grotesque?  Do conservatives somehow compromise their principles by signalling support for legislation that they otherwise agree with?  Likewise, Richard Nixon is the bugaboo of many progressive nightmares--but you rarely see progressives say the EPA shouldn't exist because Nixon created it.

Politicians leave complicated legacies, and part of a serious, empirically-informed politics is attending to those details.  That might mean praising things in the record of a politician you otherwise oppose, or criticizing things in the record of a politician you otherwise support.

The legitimacy of disagreement is one of the cornerstones of republican politics, so, in order for politics to work over the long term, we need to sustain the norm that it is okay for individuals to disagree about whether to support a given politician.  The mode of apocalyptic politics--"we face impending doom so the norms of civic disagreement need to be overthrown"--can be appealing; it carries a thrilling charge of urgency.  But it is also corrosive when carried over time because it eats away at the necessary presumptions of republican life.

The opposite of inquisitorial politics might be more modest, but it's also healthier (in part because it is more modest).  It means calling out bad arguments when you see them, supporting what you think is good, opposing what you think is bad, and not reducing all questions of principle to factional allegiance.  It means resisting paranoia and preferring reasonable skepticism to the eddies of public hysteria.  It means surrendering the tactics of excommunication and instead embracing those of empathy and charity.

With that...

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

Respecting the Dead

As I've written before, one of the many threats to healthy political norms at the moment is the risk that those who oppose Donald Trump will throw over those norms in the name of supposedly protecting them--to destroy the public square in order supposedly to save it.  Jack Goldsmith raised a similar point in this extended piece (the latter of which looks at how the anti-Trump "resistance" could itself be sabotaging norms).  A particularly dangerous strategy has been what I sometimes think of as the falsification of norms: the effort to pretend that current norms are very different from what they are in order to say that President Trump is somehow breaking them.  It's all well and good to argue that certain norms should be changed (that's healthy politics); it's quite another to rewrite history.

Masha Gessen has written some interesting material in the past, but her latest piece in the New Yorker--provocatively titled "John Kelly and the Language of the Military Coup"--might present a distorted perspective about the role of honoring dead soldiers in American culture.  Gessen argues that Kelly's press conference this week, in which he excoriated the politicization of contacting the families of the military dead, somehow offers the logic of a military coup.

Gessen's analysis seems to suggest that there's something totalitarian about public officials expressing great esteem for fallen soldiers:

But, later in the speech, when Kelly described his own distress after hearing the criticism of Trump’s phone call, the general said that he had gone to “walk among the finest men and women on this earth. And you can always find them because they’re in Arlington National Cemetery.” So, by “the best” Americans, Kelly had meant dead Americans—specifically, fallen soldiers.
The number of Americans killed in all the wars this nation has ever fought is indeed equal to roughly one per cent of all Americans alive today. This makes for questionable math and disturbing logic. It is in totalitarian societies, which demand complete mobilization, that dying for one’s country becomes the ultimate badge of honor. Growing up in the Soviet Union, I learned the names of ordinary soldiers who threw their bodies onto enemy tanks, becoming literal cannon fodder. All of us children had to aspire to the feat of martyrdom.

Celebrating fallen soldiers, though, is not exactly specific to the Soviet Union.  For generations, American school children were (and, in some cases, still are) taught about Nathan Hale precisely because of the great composure he showed while being executed by the British as an American spy during the Revolutionary War.  Hale's famous (and perhaps apocryphal) "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" was treated as showing great courage and great patriotism.

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address uses a reverential tone about the dead of the Civil War (emphasis added):

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln specifically spoke of both the living and the dead as "consecrating" the ground of Gettysburg.  He said that "the world" will not remember political rhetoric but will remember that martial struggle.  He claimed that these dead made it even more important for the Union to win the Civil War--in order to ensure that they have not died in vain.

Only a few years ago, Barack Obama argued that we could never repay the military dead for all that they have done for the country:

The patriots we memorialize today sacrificed not only all they had but all they would ever know. They gave of themselves until they had nothing more to give. It’s natural, when we lose someone we care about, to ask why it had to be them. Why my son, why my sister, why my friend, why not me?
These are questions that cannot be answered by us. But on this day we remember that it is on our behalf that they gave our lives -- they gave their lives. We remember that it is their courage, their unselfishness, their devotion to duty that has sustained this country through all its trials and will sustain us through all the trials to come. We remember that the blessings we enjoy as Americans came at a dear cost; that our very presence here today, as free people in a free society, bears testimony to their enduring legacy.
Our nation owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we can never fully repay. But we can honor their sacrifice, and we must.

In fact, only last year, President Obama said that "Gold Star families" (the families of the military dead) represent "the very best of our country."  It's true that here President Obama was praising the families of the dead rather than the dead themselves, but he drew attention to those families precisely because they were related to someone who had died.

Gessen and others have suggested there's something troubling about Kelly's high praise for military life, but it's important to note that praising the military does not necessarily mean support for rule by the military.  For instance, Douglas MacArthur's final speech at West Point spoke reverentially about the military, but MacArthur also insisted that the military could not decide many of the vital questions of public life.

If folks want to argue that we shouldn't praise dead soldiers--well, it's a free country (in part because of those dead soldiers).  But celebrating the nobility, integrity, and importance of those who fell in the nation's service has been a mainstream, bipartisan tradition.  Just as every government program is not necessarily a step down the road to serfdom, all celebration of the military dead is not a prelude to totalitarian tyranny.

The Populist Explosion

For some reason, I didn't get a chance to read John B. Judis's The Populist Explosion until this month.  Published in the fall of 2016 (between Brexit and Donald Trump's election), The Populist Explosion offers a revealing--and concise--survey of the populist energies coursing through political systems across the world.  The first three chapters focus on populism in the United States, from an overview of populism in history to the 2016 campaign.  Judis identifies both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump as manifestations of populism, and he argues that populism can be seen more broadly on both the left and the right.  The second half of the book looks at populism in Europe.  Judis finds that, whereas many right-leaning parties have harnessed populism in Northern Europe, populists in Southern Europe have gravitated more to the political left.

One of the strengths of Judis's book is that it avoids the foam-flecked rhetoric that accompanies many discussions of populism.  He does not make populism the root of all evil.  Instead, he carefully diagnoses some of the causes of populism as well as some of the challenges populists face.  The conclusion of the book is especially worth reading.  There, Judis distinguishes populism from fascism and claims that populists are responding to real political problems (such as the breakdown of economic opportunity).  It's become de rigueur in certain parts of punditworld to find that populism is purely some atavistic force--the barbaric howl of cretins, bigots, and deplorables.  Judis, however, argues that the rise of populism points to substantial issues that need to be addressed.  Much of my own writing on populism takes as a premise the idea that the populist insurgency is a sign of deeper political challenges, so I'm obviously sympathetic to that reading of populism.

We can only address the current political crisis by understanding its roots, and Judis's book offers an instructive exploration of some of those underlying forces.

DACA Negotiations

In NRO yesterday afternoon, I argued that the White House undermines its political position (and that of congressional GOP) if it decides to champion a trade of "border security" for a DACA replacement.  Today, Trump had this to say on Twitter:

CHAIN MIGRATION cannot be allowed to be part of any legislation on Immigration!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017

Is that a sign the president is going to demand that elements of the RAISE Act be part of any DACA bill?  We'll have to see...

Some Good News in Latest Census Report

The annual Census report on income, poverty, and health insurance always has interesting data--though sometimes its data are more depressing than inspiring.  The Census report released today (and covering 2016) has some good news.

Perhaps the big takeaway: The inflation-adjusted, median household income has, for the first time, exceeded the median household income of 1999.  In 2016, it was $59,039; in 1999, it was $58,665.  Granted, this is only a 0.6 percent increase (or about 0.004 percent a year), but it is an improvement nevertheless.  Households lower on the income spectrum still remain below their earlier peaks (and higher-income households are well above their earlier peaks), but at least the median is now up.

The poverty rate is also down from 2015 (falling from 13.5 percent to 12.7 percent); the poverty rate is now where it was in 2004.

But it's not all rainbows and sunshine.  The median earnings of full-time male workers actually fell between 2015 and 2016--from $51,859 to $51,640.  That discrepancy could be within the margin of error, but, when adjusted for inflation, the full-time median male earnings have been stagnant for decades; full-time female worker earnings have gone up more substantially over the past forty years (by about $10,000).

Fixing DACA

In NRO this afternoon, I look at the political dynamics of trying to replace DACA.  If the GOP stays united, it can help advance conservative policies on immigration and strengthen its political hand going into 2018.

A Few Words on Mark Lilla

Columbia University professor Mark Lilla's The Once and Future Liberal has been generating a lot of debate.  I'm not giving to give the book a full treatment right now (alas!), but I thought I might make a few points after reading it this week.

Basically, The Once and Future Liberal is written by a man of the left for the left (and for others who want to eavesdrop).  In it, he argues that the political left has become too dependent upon identity politics; this dependence has helped the Republican party gain power.  I don't agree with all of it, but it is an illuminating read.  See these interviews with Lilla by Rod Dreher and David Remnick for more.

One of the things that many of Lilla's critics on the left miss about his book is that Lilla is not calling for the left to ignore questions of discrimination, racism, etc.  Instead, Lilla is calling for the left to rethink the way it approaches these questions.  Rather than pitting identity groups against each other, Lilla argues that the left should instead emphasize a common citizenship.  This common citizenship would mean that, if a person is being mistreated because of his race, this mistreatment should of course be redressed because his rights as a citizen were being violated.  Lilla hopes that the appeal to a common citizenship would be a vehicle for righting social injustices (and he suggests that the civil rights movement of the Sixties was motivated by such a vision).

One of the more interesting themes of Lilla's book is his effort to confront some of the forces that have made our public debates so intolerant and broken in recent years.  Obviously, the intellectual causes of our current political stagnation have been of great interest to me recently, so I enjoyed his comments on those topics (even, again, if I might not necessarily agree with all them).

A good summation of Lilla's enterprise comes near the end, where he lists some priorities for reforming our politics: "the priority of institutional over movement politics; the priority of democratic persuasion over aimless self-expression; and the priority of citizenship over group and personal identity."  Lilla argues that those on the left need to think harder about how to win over concrete political institutions (instead of nurturing amorphous movements), how to persuade Americans rather than endlessly shame them, and how to stress the virtues of a common citizenship.

Lilla's diagnosis points to broader issues, too. We've suffered a diminished appreciation for both political and civic institutions, and strengthening a diverse range of institutions could help counter political hysteria.  We've also experienced a crisis of persuasion, with ideological slogans and identity-politics primal screams replacing reasoned debate.  As I've written elsewhere, the right has had its own problems with undervaluing political persuasion, as the 2016 campaign made clear.

In recent years, we've seen thinkers on both the left and the right become aware of a loss of civic solidarity.  A bigger project of mine right now is thinking about the conditions of civic solidarity and their implication for a free society.  Lilla's work represents one effort on the left to think through what has weakened that solidarity and what it would take to restore it.

Stars and Stripes during Trial

It's fitting that July 4 should take place after the anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3).  The American union was forged through a war and has been maintained through many trials.

Currently, many American institutions are in a state of crisis.  Failure has compounded failure, the mighty nurse their petty grievances while ignoring the real suffering of those around them, and blame-casting usurps the seats of good faith and judicious deliberation.  It's easy to be dispirited in this environment, just as it was easy to be dispirited in Valley Forge or the killing fields of Gettysburg.

But our republic still has great strengths--in its founding principles, in its inherited traditions, and in the hearts of its people.  In adversity, we should forget neither those strengths nor our deeper ethical duties.  Fireworks can still glow on victories and on a renewed republic.

Against Civic Division

In National Review, I dig into the implications of Bret Stephens's satirical proposal to deport poor Americans.

Comey Questions

This New York Times story raises a host of questions.

The first, and likely most important, is did President Trump ask James Comey to stop the Flynn investigation?  If he did and if he fired Comey because Comey would not stop that investigation (two huge--absolutely HUGE--ifs), this situation rises above a political spat to being a Constitutional issue.  Of course, these are only ifs right now--not established facts.

But there are other questions, too.

If the president's request occurred and constitutes obstruction of justice (again, if), why did Director Comey not resign and announce this request when it was made?  Speaking purely hypothetically, if the president committed an impeachable offense, a government official would have an obligation to do all he could to ensure that this offense was known so that Congress could proceed with impeachment.

Have other government officials, including in the Obama administration, committed acts of obstruction of justice that Director Comey knows about but did not act on or announce to the world?  What else could be revealed by reading Comey's private memos?

What is the journalistic justification for the New York Times publishing a story about a non-classified report that it has not seen?  According to the story, sources only read portions of the memo over the phone.  If mainstream newspapers want to distinguish themselves from tabloids, they will need to think hard about sourcing policies.

As many have suggested, the first step to answering some of these questions is for Congress to subpoena the Comey memos.  That will help us distinguish facts from innuendo from lies.  In a time when institutional trust is under assault, the rigorous attention to facts grows even more important.

Groping Toward Fusion

The  current draft of the omnibus spending bill to keep the government open includes a provision that would expand the number of H-2B visas; these guest-worker visas target jobs that do not require a college degree.

For the project of making the GOP a party of broad-based opportunity, expanding guest-worker visas seems like a counterproductive effort.  Guest-worker programs make a mockery of the market and of civic belonging.  In an age of stagnating wages for many working-class Americans, increasing the number of guest workers is a confusing strategy.  Moreover, guest-worker expansion risks splitting the GOP by further aggravating populists, who already have complaints about other elements of the omnibus.

Unlike other elements of the omnibus bill, however, Democrats were not going to shut down the government to expand the H-2B program.  In fact, the top Republican and top Democrat in the Senate Judiciary Committee (Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein, respectively) both slammed the inclusion of the H-2B expansion in the omnibus.

Imperfect Comparisons

Looking at (some of the very real) disruption in the retail sector has cause some in punditia to try to draw parallels between the evolution of the retail sector and changes in manufacturing over the past thirty years.  This New York Times story on the decline of malls exemplifies that trend.  This trend has caused some on the left to wonder whether identity politics explains why so much press attention has been given to manufacturing while the supposed decline of retail has been more ignored.  However, there might be a more quotidian reason why retail employment has gotten less attention than manufacturing: retail employment has grown over the past 15 years while manufacturing has shrunk. 

The New York Times piece on the decline of retail referenced the job losses in the "general merchandise" subsector.  However, looking at specific subsectors obscures the fact that retail jobs have been overall growing.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more people work in retail jobs than ever before in American history.  Nearly 14.5 million worked in retail in 2010, but almost 16 million work in retail now. About 400,000 more Americans work in retail now than worked in it in 2008, the last peak of employment in that sector.   Department stores might be declining, but employment in "health and personal care" stores is booming, as is employment at "nonstore retailers," which have added over 100,000 jobs since 2010.  While there has been a slight correction in retail employment after the holiday season (not exactly unusual), there is little evidence of a sustained decline in retail employment.  The retail market may be restructuring, and that restructuring may lead to dislocations and economic difficulties (things policy-makers should take seriously).  The phenomenon of zombie malls could exact social costs as well as provide opportunities for innovation.  And it is certainly possible that, in the future, ecommerce will destroy the retail sector.  (I'm not making any projections about the future here.)  But over the past fifteen years, retail employment has done relatively well in terms of job numbers.

Manufacturing tells a very different story.  There are over 5 million fewer manufacturing jobs now than there were in 2000.  While manufacturing employment has grown somewhat since the Great Recession, there are close to 2 million fewer manufacturing jobs than in 2007.  Inflation-adjusted manufacturing production in 2016 was only a little above the production level of 2008.

Whether one believes that decline in manufacturing employment to be a positive or negative development, it seems clear that there has been a decline--unlike in the retail sector.  If manufacturers had added jobs over the past 15 years, I doubt that the loss of manufacturing jobs would be getting that many headlines.  Retail may indeed be headed for difficulties in the years to come, and changes in the field could cause some dislocations.  But, over the past 15 years, the employment patterns of manufacturing and retail have diverged.

Changing Contours of Young Adulthood

A recent report from the U.S. Census about changes in living patterns among young adults from 1975 to 2016 has some interesting findings.  It reports the delayed forming of families.  In 1975, 57 percent of adults 18 to 34 were living with a spouse; that number dropped to 27 percent in 2016.  Meanwhile, the percentage living with their parents climbed from 26 percent to 31 percent.

Part of this change might be because of increased college attendance and changes in sexual mores, but part of it might also be because of increased economic pressures.  In 1975, only 25 percent of men between 25 and 34 were making under $30,000 a year (in 2015 dollars); by 2016, 41 percent of men were making less than that.

Populist Triangulation

At NRO today, I outline one possible way forward for the Trump White House: populist triangulation.  This strategy would target areas where the interests of populists and conservatives (including perhaps some Democrats) overlap.  An infrastructure program, reforms of guest-worker policies, and changes to the health-care marketplace could all be opportunities for this mode of triangulation.

The Dog That Didn't Bark--Or Did It?

In a special election in Kansas's Fourth Congressional District, Republican Ron Estes won by about 8 points the seat formerly held by CIA Director Mike Pompeo.  This is a solidly Republican seat, so a GOP victory would be expected.  Pompeo won it by about 30 points in 2016, and Donald Trump crushed Hillary Clinton in that district.  Is this relatively narrow 8-point victory margin a warning siren for the GOP nationally?  Maybe--but only maybe.

Overinterpreting special-election results is a bit of a DC parlor game, and we should be wary about reading too much into them.  Estes still won handily, and his Democratic opponent, James Thompson was a Republican until 2016.  Congressional elections are in part shaped by candidate quality and local circumstances, and Kansas's Republican governor Sam Brownback struggles with a low approval rating.  Moreover, a special election tends to be dominated by more motivated voters, and, with Democrats locked out of power in Congress, they certainly are more motivated.  So a slightly narrower GOP victory margin might be expected.

That said, certain national factors do suggest that the GOP could be facing some electoral headwinds going into the 2018 midterms.  The party of the incumbent president usually loses seats during midterm elections.  The approval rating of the congressional GOP could be higher, as could President Trump's rating.

None of those broader forces mean that Republicans will necessarily lose Congress next year.  But they do suggest the risks of policy deadlock on Capitol Hill.  Republicans would be wise to think of areas where they can pass popular reforms that live up to the campaign promises of the president and the Republican party overall.

Nuclear Detonation

Well, the nuclear option was invoked on Supreme Court nominees.  I'll get around to writing about something other than the filibuster shortly (really, there are other things to talk about?).  But a round-up of some filibuster-related links for now:

Fred Barnes on how Chuck Schumer tried to cut a deal to confirm Gorsuch and keep the filibuster.

61 Senators sign a letter to defend legislative filibuster.

Ed Whelan notes that we should not overstate the number of Republican filibusters of Obama nominees.

Still Trying to Avoid the Nuclear Option

In NRO today, I explore using Senate Rule XIX to work around a filibuster in order to confirm Gorsuch without using the nuclear option.

Dr. Strangelove Cometh

Today, Democrats made clear that they had over 40 votes in order to sustain a filibuster of Gorsuch.

I'll have a piece coming out shortly that looks at how Republicans could try to avoid going nuclear over Gorsuch while still confirming him.  I'll post the link when it's live.

More Gorsuch (Oh no!)

I hope you'll forgive my continued attention to the vote totals for Gorsuch.  But this vote-wrangling could set up a major confrontation in the Senate soon.

Two interesting announcements over the past few days:

The first is that Missouri's Claire McCaskill has announced that she will filibuster Gorsuch.  This is a significant change for the Missouri Democrat, who styled herself as a moderate when she first ran for the Senate and said in 2006 that she would not support a filibuster of Samuel Alito and would even vote to confirm John Roberts.  Now, Senator McCaskill will filibuster a nominee who doesn't seem any more out of the mainstream than Alito or Roberts.

What's interesting about this decision is that Senator McCaskill acknowledged earlier in March how counterproductive a Gorsuch filibuster would be.  In a leaked recording of her meeting with some major Democratic donors, Senator McCaskill made the following comments:

“The Gorsuch situation is really hard. There are going to be people in this room that are going to say, ‘No, no, no. You cannot vote for Gorsuch,’ ” McCaskill said in the recording. “Let’s assume for the purposes of this discussion that we turn down Gorsuch, that there are not eight Democrats that vote to confirm him and therefore there’s not enough to put him on the Supreme Court. What then?”

She pointed to the list of potential nominees that Trump released before the election to galvanize conservative support. “By the way, Gorsuch was one of the better ones,” McCaskill quipped.

“So they pick another one off the list and then they bring it over to the Senate and we say no, no, no, this one’s worse. And there’s not enough votes to confirm him. They’re not going to let us do that too long before they move it to 51 votes,” she said.

So why is McCaskill supporting a filibuster when she foresees these consequences?  (More on that in a second...)

The second announcement is that Joe Donnelly of Indiana will vote for Gorsuch.

This means that 3 Democrats--Donnelly, Manchin, and Heitkamp--have announced their support for Gorsuch.  One senator from a heavily Trump state remains publicly undecided (Montana's Jon Tester).  According to Decision Desk HQ's count, other unannounced votes include Michael Bennet (Colo.), Chris Coons (Del.), Pat Leahy (Vt.), Angus King (Maine), and Mark Warner (Va.). Some other folks report that Ben Cardin (Md.) and Dianne Feinstein as up in the air about filibustering Gorsuch.

So is a nuclear stand-off guaranteed?  Maybe--but only maybe.  Gorsuch needs 8 Democrats to agree to cloture, and he already has 3.  There are at least 6 Democrats outstanding.  One is from a solid Republican state (Tester), one presents himself as a postpartisan independent (King), and one is from Gorsuch's home state (Bennet).  So all 3  2 of these could vote for cloture.

That would leave Gorsuch in need of 2 3 more.  Many of the remaining undecided votes on filibustering Gorsuch are broadly popular in safely Democratic states.  "Progressive" institutions like Pat Leahy could likely weather a primary challenge.  Senators Feinstein and Cardin are up for reelection in 2018, but some observers think that they may decide to retire from the Senate rather than run for reelection.  Thus, the handful of unannounced senators on the left side of the Democratic caucus could decide to vote for cloture in order to spare some colleagues (like McCaskill) the risk of a primary challenge while also preventing a nuclear stand-off over Gorsuch.  (One reason for the delay in votes could be negotiations among these Democratic senators to see who has to risk the wrath of "resistance" activists by voting for Gorsuch.)

Thus, there's a chance--a chance--that enough Democrats could vote for Gorsuch in order to avoid a nuclear stand-off and to preserve some leverage for the minority party during Supreme Court nominations.

UPDATE: Jon Tester just announced that he would vote against cloture on Gorsuch.  The "Doomsday Clock" for the nuclear option gets closer to midnight.  There's still a path to avoid a nuclear stand-off, but it gets narrower.

Tough Choices

In her latest Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan reflects on the challenges currently facing the Trump administration and lays out an interesting scenario:

2008 and the years just after (the crash and the weak recovery)...changed everything in America, and...the country [is] going to choose, in coming decades, one of two paths—a moderate populism or socialism—and...the former [is] vastly to be preferred, for reasons of the nation’s health. A gifted politician could make his party the leader toward that path, which includes being supportive and encouraging of business but willing to harness government to alleviate the distress of the abandoned working class and the anxious middle class; strong on defense but neither aggressive nor dreamy in world affairs; realistic and nonradical on social issues while unmistakably committed to protecting the freedoms of the greatest cohering force in America, its churches; and aware that our nation’s immigration reality was a scandal created by both parties, and must be redressed.

I'm not sure that "moderate populism" or socialism are the only two choices on the political menu in the years ahead.  But it does seem that, if you want to check the risk of a shift toward more radically socialistic policies, you have good reason to address some of the forces driving the populist insurgency.  Strained social networks, economic decline, identity politics, etc.--all these challenge the future of limited government in the United States.

Furthermore, due to the nature of the two-party system, there is a very real risk that the failure of a populist-conservative alliance will not lead to the return of Conservatism (TM), newly purified.  Instead, it could empower an aggressive and aggrieved "progressivism."

Many of the policy points that Noonan suggests for this "moderate populism" could indeed by part of a potentially successful governing vision.  We'll have to see if the GOP will try to implement it.

Manchin, Heitkamp Back Gorsuch

Democratic senators Joe Manchin (W.V.) and Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) have come out in support of Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court.  Both offered praise of the nominee.

As Senator Heitkamp said in a statement, Gorsuch "has a record as a balanced, meticulous, and well respected jurist who understands the rule of law."

Senator Manchin was even more effusive:

During his time on the bench Judge Gorsuch has received praise from his colleagues who have been appointed by both Democrats and Republicans. He has been consistently rated as a well-qualified jurist, the highest rating a jurist can receive, and I have found him to be an honest and thoughtful man. I hold no illusions that I will agree with every decision Judge Gorsuch may issue in the future, but I have not found any reasons why this jurist should not be a Supreme Court Justice.

Some Senate Democrats have argued that Gorsuch is wildly out of the mainstream or somehow suspect.  But their colleagues from West Virginia and North Dakota don't seem to agree.

More Gorsuch Vote-Grubbing

Today, a number of Democratic senators thought to be swing votes on a Gorsuch filibuster came out against him.  Jeanne Shaheen (N.H), Maggie Hassan (N.H), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) all have announced their support for the latest talking point: a "60-vote threshold."  As Senator Shaheen's press release reads:

As Judge Gorsuch’s nomination comes to the floor, I will support a 60-vote threshold for approval, an appropriate high bar that has been met by seven of the eight current Supreme Court justices.

In fact, 6 of the current 8 Supreme Court justices were confirmed with fewer than 60 votes (Alito and Thomas), so 25 percent of the Supreme Court was approved with fewer than 60 votes.

In addition to being novel, the "60-vote threshold" is a bit ambiguous.  What does it even mean to support a 60-vote threshold?  Does it mean that one thinks a Supreme Court justice should ideally have 60 votes to be confirmed but that one won't do that much to stop the nomination of a justice who doesn't pass that threshold?  Or does it mean that one will not vote for cloture on this nomination and thereby keep that nominee from having an up-or-down vote?

I've reached out to the offices of Senators Shaheen, Hassan, and Klobuchar to ask them whether they will indeed vote against cloture and so far have not heard back from any of them.  This "60-vote threshold" could be mere messaging (in order to obscure the fact that these senators intend to block an up-or-down vote on Gorsuch), or it could be part of an effort to give themselves some maneuvering room.  (Incidentally, I wondered last night if Shaheen and Hassan would move as a pair on Gorsuch, and it seems as though they did.)

It seems as though there are still enough Democrats out there who have not announced their position on Gorsuch that he could still overcome a filibuster.  I draw your attention to this passage from Politico:

The five Democratic senators up for reelection next year in states where President Donald Trump won by single digits have all endorsed a filibuster of Gorsuch, while the five facing voters next year in states Trump won by double digits all remain undecided. Gorsuch would have to carry all five of those fence-sitters to overcome a Democratic filibuster — plus his home-state Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Maine independent Sen. Angus King, and another more surprising senator.

Senators Tester, McCaskill, Heitkamp, and Donnelly have not ruled out supporting cloture.  Delware's Chris Coons seems pretty wary of a nuclear stand-off, and Pat Leahy still seems open to voting for cloture.

Thus, the success of a partisan filibuster against Gorsuch is not yet guaranteed--at least according to public accounts.  (My guess is that some Democrats might hold off on announcing whether or not they will vote for cloture on Gorsuch for a little while.)

Some parting thoughts via Jason Willick:

A successful filibuster of Gorsuch would set a different precedent altogether: Namely, that a President can’t fill a Supreme Court vacancy even with a thoroughly mainstream nominee unless his party controls a 60-seat Senate supermajority. In other words, that new justices can only be seated during truly anomalous periods of one-party dominance that sometimes don’t come around for decades. Needless to say, this scenario is impossible to sanction: the Court would wither and its credibility would crumble.

Unwanted Advice

Tilting at windmills is one of my favorite hobbies, so I just can't keep myself from commenting on Democratic plans to filibuster Neil Gorsuch.  Sustaining a filibuster against Gorsuch would, of course, be tactically futile and strategically counterproductive for Democrats.  While rallying the "progressive" base, it would ultimately not stop Gorsuch's ascension to the Supreme Court; many Republican senators seem to be making the (not unreasonable calculation) that, if Democrats will filibuster the Gorsuch nominee, they'll filibuster any Trump nominee who is not David Souter II.  Moreover, the detonation of the "nuclear option" against this filibuster would destroy the (slight but still perceptible) leverage the minority party in the Senate has over a Supreme Court nominee.  Proponents of stacking the Supreme Court with right-leaning ideologues would not doubt celebrate this futile effort by Democrats, but a sustained Gorsuch filibuster might worry those who think that the Senate should protect the voice of the minority and the prerogatives of individual senators.

It seems as though at least a few Senate Democrats are aware of the fact that indulging in the calls of the "resistance" to sustain a filibuster against Gorsuch would mean actually weakening the powers of Senate Democrats.  There are reasons why Pat Leahy, a staunch leftist, is hesitant about filibustering Gorsuch.  He knows the political costs and the damage this could do to the Senate's culture.  It would further politicize the nomination process and further polarize the chamber.  In this divided time, it would seem important to protect the institutions of compromise and moderation, and the filibuster might be one of those institutions.

But how could Democrats not goad the GOP into nuking the filibuster while also not suffering too much of a backlash from the "resistance"?

Allahpundit has suggested that Leahy's announcement could be part of an effort by Senate Democrats to thread that needle:

A filibuster now would be the purest strategic idiocy and Schumer knows it. Solution, then: Endorse the filibuster in his role as minority leader while nudging Leahy, a Senate institution and Judiciary Committee veteran who almost certainly can’t be defeated in Vermont, to lead the rebellion instead. Now, when Manchin and Bennet and McCaskill et al. need to justify their votes in favor of cloture, they can point to Leahy and say, “Sen. Leahy’s judgment carries such heavy weight with me, especially in terms of getting politics out of judicial nominations, that I feel obliged to join him in this vote.” Leahy then becomes the lightning rod. But so what? He’s immune from this sort of political lightning. He’ll be just fine, and so will all of the red-state Dems who vote for cloture along with him once the left realizes that they’re in no positional electorally to further weaken their chances in 2018 by primarying any of them over their Gorsuch votes.

One could extend this strategy: A coalition of far-left Democrats from safe seats and Democrats who are up for reelection in lean-Republican states could vote for cloture on Gorsuch. The first set could have enough "progressive" credentials to ward off a primary challenge, and the second could be protected by the demands of electability.

According to CNN, two Democrats have already said they will vote for cloture on Gorsuch: Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp (more or less).  That means 6 more will have to vote for cloture to break a Gorsuch filibuster.  Could those 6 votes be found?  Quite possibly.

If Democrats are worried about primary challenges, it would make the most sense to have senators reelected in 2016 vote for cloture on Gorsuch.  They have almost 6 years before they have to face voters.  Senator Leahy was reelected in 2016.  Michael Bennet, from Gorsuch's home state of Colorado, was also reelected in 2016 and has also been noncommittal about whether he will filibuster Gorsuch.  New Hampshire's Maggie Hassan is new to the Senate.  But she has a solid Democratic infrastructure in the Granite State (which could help her with primary challenges), and New Hampshire is a swing state.  Senator Hassan's fellow New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen has sent mixed messages on a Gorsuch filibuster, stating that he kinda sorta deserves an "up-or-down vote."  Perhaps she and Hassan will vote as a block either for or against cloture.  Chris Coons, a solid lefty from Delaware, was reelected in 2014 and has warned about the risks of filibustering Gorsuch. Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar is rumored to be a swing vote on cloture; up for reelection in 2018, she represents a state (Minnesota) that Trump almost won in 2016.

That's 6 votes possible on the left right there.

There are also senators from swing states or lean-Republican states who have not yet expressed a position on cloture for Gorsuch: Angus King (I-Maine), Missouri's Claire McCaskill (who said she opposed the Alito filibuster), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), and Jon Tester (Mont.).

It seems possible that a center-left coalition could vote for cloture on Gorsuch with minimal risk of political backlash.  That outcome would probably be in the best interests of the Senate and of Democrats over the long term.

However, it's also possible that the Democratic caucus could hold hands and take the plunge on sustaining a filibuster against Gorsuch.  In an era when indulging the id has increasingly become a political priority, this outcome would not be at all surprising. But it still would be somewhat dismal.

RIP Linda Bridges

Linda Bridges died on Saturday night.  She was an institution at National Review.  Here are a couple paragraphs from her obituary that give a sketch of her relationship with NR:

While a junior in college, she dared write to National Review to point out and quibble with what she considered to be a grammatical error that had been used repeatedly in the magazine. Her letter intrigued none other than William F. Buckley himself, who responded to her letter, requesting that she send additional samples of her writing. She did, and was offered a position as a summer assistant. He so approved of her style, her extensive vocabulary and inveterate skill at word-smithing, and her content (Linda was a life-long conservative) that he quickly offered her a job at the magazine upon her graduation. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Linda moved to New York City immediately upon graduation from USC, and entered the employ of National Review as a contributing writer/journalist. Over the years, she rose through the ranks to Senior Editor, and finally to Editor-at-Large at the magazine. She also served as a personal editor for her mentor and father-figure, William F. Buckley, from 2004 until his death in 2008, organizing and preparing for publication his many writings and memoirs. Among the books she authored over the years were The Art of Persuasion: A National Review Rhetoric for Writers; Strictly Right: William F. Buckley and the American Conservative Movement; and Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations — A William F. Buckley Jr. Omnibus.

Read the rest to learn even more about the adventure that was her life.

I didn't know Linda very well, but I was lucky enough to have her edit some of my pieces for NRO over the years.  She edited my very first piece for NRO, and some of my favorites, including pieces on enlightened populism, the limitations of Herbert Marcuse, the importance of defending liberty and union, and how to create an opportunity-oriented immigration system.

With an almost Houdini-like ability to get the knots out of prose, Linda had a wonderful ear for language and an amazing empathy as an editor.  She treated your work respectfully, and part of that respect was trying to help you make your points as eloquently as possible.  Her love of words shone through in her work.  I was--and am--grateful for her own efforts to improve my work.

Because Linda was a writer as well as an editor, I thought I'd include a link here to the last piece she wrote for NRO, a substantive reflection on World War I, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Linda's faith was incredibly important to her, and I hope that she knows the comfort of the Lord who watches over us all.

After the End

At National Review, I have some thoughts about the failure of the vote on the American Health Care Act:

The death of the American Health Care Act has been greatly exaggerated — not because it is likely to be revived (at least in its current form) but because it might never have really been alive in the first place.

Many of the provisions of the bill were unlikely to survive contact with the Senate, and there was a very strong chance that the bill that was released from a House–Senate conference would radically differ from the AHCA. Perhaps realizing the limits of the AHCA, some defenders of the AHCA supported the measure principally as a way of getting to conference. However, there is no reason to believe that the tensions that pulled down the AHCA on Friday would not similarly undo the resulting House–Senate conference bill. Some Republicans would still be upset that the conference bill was not a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and moderates (along with some populists) would be pulled into a tug-of-war with budget-cutters over the size of Medicaid cuts.

You can read the rest over there, but I'll make a few general points here.

This is not necessarily a CATACLYSMIC DEFEAT for President Trump or congressional Republicans.  The real political risks of the bill had it passed (such as cuts to health-care subsidies for the working class) in part explain why it failed to pass the House.  The defeat of the bill gives Republicans a chance to start health-care reform over again or to turn to other issues.

That said, the debate over the AHCA did highlight real divides within the Republican coalition.  Some of these divides (such as populists v. budget-cutters) will have to be at least partially overcome if Republicans hope to pass major pieces of legislation.  Two important words will be compromise and imagination.

If there is to be another Republican effort at health-care reform, policymakers might find it wise to prioritize reforms to help drive down the cost of health care through making the medical system more nimble and responsive to consumers.

Some other interesting responses to the fall of the AHCA: Reihan Salam says that we shouldn't blame the Freedom Caucus for the AHCA's failure.  Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry recommends the following course of action for conservatives on health care:"Slash regulations. And then subsidize health care."   Tim Alberta narrates the fall of the AHCA.  Ben Domenech thinks that congressional leaders need to embrace transparency in the crafting of legislation.

Battle over the AHCA

In NRO, I look at the possibility of the American Health Care Act (which is supposed to be voted on Friday) exacerbating tensions between conservatives and populists:

While it achieves many longstanding priorities for Beltway Republicans, [the AHCA] contains some provisions that could alienate members of the working class, such as Medicaid cuts. It is telling that elements of the Right who have been very sympathetic to populist themes — such as Ann Coulter, many Breitbart writers, and Arkansas senator Tom Cotton — have been unsparing in their criticism of the AHCA. The bill itself is currently extremely unpopular, supported by only 17 percent of Americans according to the latest numbers from Quinnipiac.

It might be especially divisive for the Republican coalition. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was premised upon outreach to working-class voters, and an improved performance with this demographic was crucial for breaking the “blue wall” at the presidential level and for the GOP’s successful defense of its Senate majority.

You can read the rest over there.

Things are so fluid with the AHCA that I'll defer making any predictions.  Instead, a few random observations.

If the AHCA does pass tomorrow, President Trump's decision to say that he'll stop negotiating tonight (pass the current bill, or I'll move on) could make him look like he's someone who knows how to work his will on Congress.  So it could foster an image of him being a "strong leader."  Of course, the AHCA passing also means that House Republicans will have signed on to a less-than-popular bill, one with real potential to divide the GOP coalition.  It also means that President Trump will get either the credit or the blame for this bill.  It's also hard to see what happens in the Senate in taking up the AHCA; it's very possible that the things that made this bill pass the House will make it very hard for it to pass the Senate.

If the AHCA fails, the White House and Republicans may be free to move on to other policies, ones that might be more popular.  Michael Brendan Dougherty, for instance, has suggested that the GOP consider some of the policy areas that were at the center of the Trump campaign, such as infrastructure, trade, and immigration.  They might also be able to take on healthcare in a way that circumvents some of the tensions heightened by the AHCA (see my NRO post for more thoughts on that).  The failure of the AHCA might cause a few negative newscycles ("Republicans in disarray!!!1"), but it's unclear whether a defeat tomorrow will have a lasting effect on the GOP agenda.

The GOP runs grave political risks if it does not attempt to promote policies that deliver for the working class. It might be especially politically risky for President Trump to disappoint the core of his populist support.

Reforms to make healthcare cheaper and to expand the insurance market could be a way for the GOP to promote healthcare reform in a less politically risky way; this approach might also do a lot of good to improve access to medical care.

A good bill passed slowly is far better for a governing party than a bad bill passed quickly.

Some Assorted Links

An interesting treatment in The Chronicle of Higher Education of the Claremont Institute, Straussian thinking, and some intellectuals who support Donald Trump.  (It could be seen as a kind of companion piece to this NYT story on the new journal American Affairs.)

Henry Olsen worries that the current iteration of the American Health Care Act may disappoint the working-class voters who were crucial for the GOP victory in 2016.

Ross Douthat reflects on the worries of some who fear that Jane Austen has too many "alt-right" fans.  A particularly striking claim: efforts by the far left to "abolish canons and police certain forms of memory" may in part be motivated by a desire to suppress the diversity of cultural expression in the past.

On Political Winning

In light of the current debate over health-care reform,  few points about "winning":  In the Beltway, there tends to be an assumption that a president "wins" when he gets Congress to pass the legislation he supports.  Than can be a victory, but that "win" can sow the seeds for a greater defeat later.

For instance, President Obama "won" by getting Congress to pass the ACA on a party-line vote.  It was a substantial legislative achievement, and components of it could very well have a long legacy.  But the ACA's passage also crippled the rest of the Obama administration's agenda and contributed to the evisceration of the Democratic party's bench.  Maybe that trade was worth it, but it exacted a high long-term political price, too.

The experience of the Obama administration might prompt the Trump White House to think about what its real policy priorities are and how it can advance those priorities without endangering a critical mass of public support.

Maintaining Judicial Norms

Judge Derrick Watson's ruling on the Trump travel ban has ignited commentary about the role of the judiciary vis-a-vis the presidency and existing constitutional norms.  At Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic raise a potentially quite troubling permutation: the rise of the judiciary as a partisan political actor.  For this model of the judiciary, norms about institutions and constitutional principles would pale before the way judges feel about the holders of certain offices:

Imagine a world in which other actors have no expectation of civic virtue from the President and thus no concept of deference to him. Imagine a world in which the words of the President are not presumed to carry any weight. Imagine a world in which far more judicial review of presidential conduct is de novo, and in which the executive has to find highly coercive means of enforcing message discipline on its staff because it can’t depend on loyalty. That’s a very different presidency than the one we have come to expect.
It’s actually a presidency without the principle that we separate the man from the office. It’s a presidency in which we owe nothing to the office institutionally and make individual decisions about how to interact with it based on how much we trust, like, or hate its occupant.

A world where the judiciary interprets law based not on precedent and institutional principles but instead on its feelings about individuals would be one where judicial philosophy would become much less stable (if we could even call it a "philosophy" at all).  It would likely endanger public faith in the judiciary as a responsible institutional actor and could contribute to greater public distrust about important constitutional stakeholders.

Partisan politics can blind us to the consequences of our actions, but civic (and ethical) responsibility demands that we try to account for these consequences.  That responsibility weighs especially on those in the judicial branch.

(Over at the Corner, I think about the consequences of Judge Watson's ruling for future immigration legislation.)

Leverage

Jim Geraghty raises an interesting point: The GOP is offering the AHCA as "Phase 1" in a three-phrase process.  The second "phase" is President Trump's rewriting of the Obama administration's ACA regulations, and the third would be more market-oriented (and perhaps more popular) legislative reforms, such as selling insurance over state lines.

Geraghty, though, wonders whether there will be enough bipartisan energy to pass "Phase 3":

Assume the American Health Care Act passes the House, at least 50 Republicans in the Senate vote for it and Trump signs it into law.

For "Phase Three," will eight Senate Democrats be eager to vote with Republicans to make further reforms? If you’re a Democrat, after AHCA passes, Republicans "own" the status quo on the health care system. You can blame AHCA for anything any constituent doesn’t like about their insurance, their premiums, their co-pays, their deductibles, or their quality of care. It may or may not be accurate, but let’s face it, accuracy has never mattered much in attack ads.

Perhaps naively, I believe that there could be a chance getting at least 60 Senate votes--including at least 8 Democrats--to support broadly popular reforms that would increase efficiency in the health-care market.

However, there is a possibility that this chance gets slimmer after the passage of "Phase 1."  Currently, Republicans can still blame the many shortcomings of the current health-care system on the legacy of the Affordable Care Act.  They can try to use these shortcomings as a way of putting pressure on Democrats in swing and lean-Republican states: We're trying to fix the broken system left to us by Obamacare, and you're just obstructing.

That dynamic changes, however, if a major piece of health-care legislation (like the AHCA) is passed on a party-line vote.  Then, it gets much harder to blame a "broken system" on the ACA alone.  Passing the AHCA gives vulnerable Senate Democrats an obvious retort: Nuh-uh, you guys broke the system with Trumpcare.

With this political cover, Democrats would have the temptation to obstruct any further changes to the health-care system leading up to the 2018 elections.  The obvious strategy would be to attack (fairly or not) the AHCA for denying care to the poor and vulnerable in order to give tax-cuts to corporations and "the 1%".  Democrats saw how well attacking a major piece of health-care reform passed on a party-line vote worked for Republicans in 2010; they might try to repeat that in 2018.

The recent political cycle has laid to waste many predictions, so any predictions about the future political dynamic should be made in a hypothetical rather than categorical mode.  Nevertheless, it seems as though Republicans could lose some leverage over Senate Democrats if they pass a party-line major health-care reform.  That leverage may be crucial if they hope to pass later reforms to health-care law this Congress; these reforms would require 60 votes in the Senate and so would need some Democratic support.

If Republicans want to enact major changes in health-care regulations (not just government financing), they might have more political leverage before passing a party-line bill than after passing such a bill.

(Two related points: Some folks have raised a possible counterargument to this narrative of leverage: Once the ACA is reformed through a party-line vote on the AHCA, Democrats will have less incentive to defend the ACA in its entirety and will be more willing to compromise on other areas.  At that point, it will no longer be about defending President Obama's "legacy" and more about pragmatically working to improve national health-care.  In a less politically polarized time, this counterargument would have more force, but it could still be plausible.

Also, if something like the AHCA did pass in its current form, one possible bargaining chip to get Democrats to support a later wave of reform would be to offer to increase Medicaid subsidies.)

The Health-Care Bind

One of the more interesting pieces published today was this one by Christopher Ruddy, the head of Newsmax and a friend of President Trump.  Ruddy argues that the president should reject the calls of Republicans who want to limit Medicaid and other subsidies in the American Health Care Act; instead, President Trump should call for an expanded Medicaid program (albeit one that has more power delegated to the states).  Ruddy worries about the political effects of trying to push entitlement reform in replacing the Affordable Care Act:

Today, I am amazed that House Republicans haven't given up on their political death wish.
Interestingly, Ryan Plan II accepts key parts of the Obamacare law that benefit the insurance industry. But it ends the Medicaid expansion program that benefits the poor and keeps costs down.
Instead, Ryan II forces poor individuals back into the private health insurance market with the help of tax credits. I wonder who that benefits?
According to the AARP, Ryan Plan II also cuts Medicare, a program Trump voters clearly want protected.
The CBO is estimating 14 million Americans will lose coverage compared to Obamacare.
This number may be inflated, but limiting Medicaid coverage for the poorest will most certainly leave millions without coverage.
The most significant problem is that Ryan Plan II doesn't fulfill Trump's own vision of universal healthcare while removing the onerous requirements of Obamacare.

When even the CEO of Newsmax calls for an expanded Medicaid program, it's clear that the political dynamic is quickly evolving.  Ruddy's sentiments echo those of others in the Trumposphere who fear that there could be a significant political price to be paid if the Republicans try to push through health-care reform that causes some Americans to feel as though they're losing access to health-care (the CBO numbers from yesterday surely have added fuel to that burning worry).

Whether or not an expanded Medicaid program is the right answer, it seems clear that the GOP is torn between those who fear that the AHCA does not cut subsidies enough (such as the Freedom Caucus) and those who fear that the already existing reduction of subsidies in the AHCA could ignite a political backlash among working-class voters.  It remains unclear whether the GOP can thread the needle and appease enough of both sets of Republicans in order to get 218 votes in the House and 51 votes in the Senate.

The battle over health-care subsidies divides the GOP and risks alienating the blue-collar voters who are a central component of Trump's coalition.  One way around these risks is to defer fighting this battle and instead focus more immediately on market-oriented reforms to the health-care market itself.  Expanding and diversifying health-care markets, reforming licensing laws, pushing for more transparency in medical pricing, and other efforts are far less divisive for GOP voters and could also win some support from Democrats and independents.  As David Frum has noted, the American health-care system stands in need of more market efficiency, and Republicans could be well positioned to champion that cause of efficiency in a way that will ease government budgets and the concerns of health-care consumers (i.e., voters).

If policymakers can lower health-care costs or at least reduce the rate of growth for health-care costs, more room opens up for negotiations over government mechanisms to pay for health-care.  A more market-oriented health-care system might facilitate more market-oriented ways of financing this system.

Of course, these market-oriented reforms can't for the most part be passed via reconciliation.  As a result, right now some in Republican leadership are fighting on the ground of health-care reform where the party might be most vulnerable and leaving more favorable territory for a later day.

Debating Marcuse

In National Review Online over the weekend, I discussed the unrest at Middlebury in the context of Herbert Marcuse's theory of "discriminating tolerance."  A prominent member of the Frankfurt School, Marcuse offered a flawed model of tolerance that, I fear, fosters a breakdown of public debate.

Marcuse must have been in the air last week, because Stephen L. Carter also had an interesting critique of Marcuse over at Bloomberg View.

(And if you're in the mood for more on Marcuse, you might check out George Kateb's extended comments on him from a 1970 issue of Commentary.)

Hidden Costs

Christopher Caldwell's survey of the opioid epidemic, featured in the latest issue of First Things, has understandably been getting a lot of attention.  Caldwell explores the personal and social costs of opioid epidemic rocking many communities in the United States.  The death-rate from opioids currently far exceeds the death-rate from the headline drugs of other crises:

A heroin scourge in America’s housing projects coincided with a wave of heroin-addicted soldiers brought back from Vietnam, with a cost peaking between 1973 and 1975 at 1.5 overdose deaths per 100,000. The Nixon White House panicked. Curtis Mayfield wrote his soul ballad “Freddie’s Dead.” The crack epidemic of the mid- to late 1980s was worse, with a death rate reaching almost two per 100,000. George H. W. Bush declared war on drugs. The present opioid epidemic is killing 10.3 people per 100,000, and that is without the fentanyl-impacted statistics from 2016. In some states it is far worse: over thirty per 100,000 in New Hampshire and over forty in West Virginia.

As Caldwell notes elsewhere in his story, four times as many Americans died from overdoses in 2015 as died from gun homicides that year.

Federal data shows how quickly deaths from heroin and opioids more generally have skyrocketed over the past decade.  Heroin deaths across the nation jumped from around 2,000 in 2006 to about 12,000 by 2015.  The number of deaths from opioid overdoses has over doubled since 2004.  The number of overall drug overdose deaths has over doubled since 2002.

The causes of this increased rate of opioid abuse are complex.  Caldwell suggests that the normalization of increasingly powerful opioids by the medical community played a role, as did an influx of cheap heroin.  The story also frames the opioid crisis in the context of broader socioeconomic forces that have battered many communities.

Of course, we cannot measure the current opioid epidemic only in terms of lives lost.  Drug addiction can be lethal, but its costs can also be measured in other ways--in broken families, frayed communities, daily struggles, grappling with despair, and the haunting of personal disappointment.  All these things suggest that drug abuse remains a serious civil issue.

AHCA Tensions

At National Review, I reflect on some of the political tensions facing the GOP in terms of reforming health-care.

Ross Douthat also considers some of those challenges in the NYT today.  He argues that fractures in the Republican party have put it in a place of policy confusion.  Leadership and imagination can remedy some of that confusion, but they will have to be demonstrated.

On Sessions

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from investigations into foreign involvement in the 2016 election.

Over at National Review, I note that members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have had contact with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Smiling Populism

In tonight's address to a joint session of Congress, President Trump hit many of his familiar populist themes on immigration, trade, infrastructure, and other topics.  However, he presented them in a more conciliatory tone.  While speaking frankly about some of the very real challenges facing the United States, he emphasized the importance of Americans coming together to address those challenges.

For all the moderation of tone, this speech was big in policy ambition.  On immigration, he called for a shift to a more skills-based immigration system (a major change from the current dynastic immigration system).  On trade, he proposes upending the orthodoxy that has ruled in the Beltway for the past quarter of a century (if not longer).  A big-budget infrastructure program could have huge fiscal and economic implications.

If he is successful in this agenda, there could be a realignment of American politics.  But, in part because it could be so transformative, the agenda faces many obstacles in Congress.  Tonight's address aimed beyond the president's base and sent the message to members of Congress that the president could articulate a positive, unifying vision.  Both of those moves may be a sign from the Trump White House that it acknowledges how tough the road ahead could be--and that it is willing to use a variety of tactics to confront those difficulties.

Conservatism and the Nation

Rich Lowry’s and Ramesh Ponnuru’s defense of nationalism has many thoughtful points and offers a helpful corrective to certain myths about nationalism. While Lowry and Ponnuru do sketch some of the connections between nationalism and conservatism, I think it’s worth developing a few more points about the alliance between conservatism and the idea of a nation-state.

Support for the nation-state would seem a natural extension of the conservative belief in nurturing the bonds of society. At least in the West, postnationalism has fostered two seemingly contradictory impulses: radical atomism, in which the individual is free to pursue his interests (commercial and otherwise) with little to no concern for others, and radical tribalism, in which the individual’s independent self is dissolved in the mass of an identity group (such as race, gender, or sexual identity).

Neither of these impulses seems congenial for conservatism. From a conservative perspective, they offer bastardized versions of individualism and social belonging. Radical atomization misses the fact that social commitments, rather than limiting the self, often enrich it. Identity-group tribalism, meanwhile, lacks the richness of a more multifaceted social belonging. National fellowship may not be the only way of avoiding these two traps, but it is a compelling one. It affords a way of organizing our immediate social commitments into a broader narrative. Because the nation-state makes no pretensions to universality (it is explicitly not global), it recognizes the diversity of human circumstances. The existence of diverse nation-states can serve as a way of reconciling the belief in certain universal moral principles with a recognition of the limits of human knowledge and action.

In addition to this conservative tradition, the Republican party has since its founding been the party of the nation. As Lowry and Ponnuru note, post-World War II Republicans often championed the defense of American sovereignty, and, more broadly, appeals to national sovereignty serve as a thread connecting Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan. In fact, one of the strongest connections of Donald Trump to the broader Republican tradition is his unapologetic celebration of American sovereignty. (As the examples of Roosevelt and Reagan demonstrate, though, the defense of sovereignty need not mean radical isolationism. Especially as international commitments may serve U.S. interests, an involvement in international affairs can be an ally to the defense of American interests.)

Moreover, intense anti-nationalism (by which I mean an overwhelming hostility to the idea of the nation-state) seems, in many respects, a dead-end for conservatism as a political force. Conservatives who prioritize a hawkish or assertive foreign policy should recognize the fact that such a foreign policy demands a sense of national cohesion; efforts to dilute the meaning of citizenship will also deplete the ranks of citizen-soldiers and the public appetite for projecting power abroad. Politicians running under the banner of “economic efficiency” will have far less success at the ballot box than will those who specifically advance the claim that their economic policies are good for the nation’s electorate. On many issues (especially free speech), the United States has an expansive view of civil liberties, and efforts to weaken national sovereignty will likely put our enjoyment of those liberties at risk. A conservatism that attempts to eschew national affections will likely fail in the enterprise of winning votes and advancing its policy aims.

Like any passion, national affection can at times be unbalanced or used for unworthy ends. Ethical reasoning and administrative prudence are crucial for conducting politics. Nevertheless, affection for one’s country plays a role, too, and conservatism has long recognized the importance of affections, national and otherwise.

Varieties of Conservative Experience

Matthew Continetti has a revealing piece on the many challenges facing the Trump administration.  One of them is an entrenched bureaucratic class intent on using the tools of the bureaucracy to sabotage and undermine the democratically elected head of the executive branch.  Continetti has some worthwhile thoughts about the political dynamics of this collision.

However, there's one point from his piece that warrants some elaboration (emphasis added):

At issue is the philosophy of nation-state populism that drove his insurgent campaign. It is so at variance with the ideologies of conservatism and liberalism predominant in the capital that Washington is experiencing something like an allergic reaction. Nation-state populism diverges from Beltway conservatism on trade, immigration, entitlements, and infrastructure, and from liberalism on sovereignty, nationalism, identity politics, and political correctness.

 Continetti doesn't explicitly say this, but I think it's worth mentioning that "Beltway conservatism" is not, of course, the only kind of conservatism.  If "Beltway conservatism" means a kind of neo-Kempism, then there certainly would be conflicts between "nation-state populism" and "Beltway conservatism."  The Kempist vision supports expansive trade deals, an increase in immigration flows (and a skepticism about rigorous immigration enforcement), entitlement "reform" (that usually means reducing and/or privatizing federal entitlements), and nurtures a wariness about large infrastructure plans.  Clearly, many of Trump's positions and those of "nation-state populism" more broadly would conflict with a Kempian vision.

However, there are plenty of conservative governing records that the vision of a "nation-state populism" would be in some accord with.  Ronald Reagan didn't privatize entitlements--he increased taxes to pay for them.  While Reagan talked about "free trade," he also imposed import quotas on Japanese automobiles.  And Reagan has been the Republican president most clearly associated with movement conservatism.  Looking back to other Republicans who also implemented conservative policies (even if they weren't ideologues) makes this lineage even richer.  Eisenhower, a man of conservative moderation, built a federal highway system and launched a massive deportation effort.  Many movement conservatives revere Calvin Coolidge, but Coolidge celebrated tariffs and defended a limited, pro-assimiliationist immigration policy.

All these things suggest that there are elements within the broader conservative tradition that could very much be in accord with the aims of "nation-state populism."  However, in order to realize that political harmony, some in the Beltway will have to surrender the belief that a certain narrow brand of conservatism has a monopoly on conservatism or good governance.

Filibuster Follies

At NRO today, I argue why it is not in the Democrats' best interest to sustain a filibuster against Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

From a strategic viewpoint, Senate Democrats have every incentive to let the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees live another day. Mitch McConnell knows that there will be a political cost for going nuclear on the Supreme Court filibuster, and he does not seem very eager to pay it. Nor does there seem to be that great of an appetite for working around the Senate filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Nearly every signal that Republican Senate leadership has sent indicates that the party would very much like to approve Gorsuch — and any other Trump Supreme Court nominee — through the regular order of the Senate. This situation gives Senate Democrats some small measure of power: As long as the filibuster persists, their expectations become a variable that has to be factored into the calculus of any Supreme Court nomination. That variable may or may not have that much weight — but it will have some weight.

You can read the rest here.

Bill Kristol has a piece up in the latest issue of The Weekly Standard that underlines the way that a Democratic refusal to accept any Trump Supreme Court nominee could end up backfiring on the party.  While the Senate GOP may be willing to compromise on some nominees, they will not stand by and allow Democrats to block every Republican nominee to the highest court in the land.

This might be dismissed as concern trolling, but it shouldn’t be: Americans of all stripes have an interest in preserving the minority’s voice in the affairs of the Senate, and the filibuster is one of the key mechanisms for the minority. (And, for what little it’s worth, I have argued for the benefits of the filibuster when both Republicans and Democrats held the majority.) The filibustering of Supreme Court nominees is a relatively new innovation, so removing this filibuster might not be as radical a departure from Senate tradition as ending the legislative filibuster. But this removal could contribute to a long-term erosion of norms for protecting the power of the minority. Ironically, the time when partisan tensions are so high is also the time when compromise-encouraging institutions are so important.

"Core Values"

In his last press conference, Barack Obama said that he would enter political debates only when "our core values may be at stake."  In the aftermath of President Trump's new executive orders, the former president is now wading back into public debates.

However, it should not be surprising to see Barack Obama trying to inject himself in political debates, nor for him is "core values" a particularly limiting principle.  After all, in 2006, he had the following to say about Samuel Alito: "I think Judge Alito, in fact, is somebody who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values, you know." If a mainstream conservative like Justice Alito is "contrary to core American values," you can rest assured that Barack Obama would be declaring almost any Republican president eventually an enemy of "our core values."