Biden Should Pardon Trump
Armed with great power, he MAINLY wants applause, no jail & his money. Help him and we can keep our democracy. And the good policies he could care less about. (1/18/25 revision)
[Updated 1/18/2025 - revised Appendix 2 and various edits to reflect that Biden did not pardon Trump so the Democrats’ influence is weakened but not gone.]
[Updated 12/28/24 - added Pushback #4]
Argues that doing something counterintuitive about Trump could give us a chance. Not just to survive Trump but also open a small chance to navigate past the huge rocks and falls we are heading towards.
Table of Contents
Context (1 min)
Understanding the Root of the Problem (1.5 min)
Unlocking the Trap with Vouchers (1 min)
What Trump Really Wants (2 min)
Appeal to Readers (0.5 min)
A Counterintuitive Way to Survive Trump
WHAT IF the best way to prevent Trump from destroying our democracy (and, with it, humanity's slim chances to survive its current drift to climate and ecological collapse) is to offer him a path that preserves, paradoxically, both his fragile facade of exaggerated competence AND repairs the broken good parts of our badly frayed institutions? I'm proposing a strategy so counterintuitive that it will likely make you instinctively recoil – but please suspend judgment long enough to trace its logic. Having watched the ongoing struggle to check Trump, I think this approach demands serious intellectual engagement: a strategy that turns Trump's fundamental psychological needs into a potential barrier to disaster.
I claim that there IS a way to survive Trump, perhaps with minimal damage. It is not pretty. It uses Trump's combination of personal weakness and now-anointed status along with the demonstrated weaknesses of the two "traditional" parties.
The approach? Make Trump feel safe and happy and persuade him to, essentially, CHANGE SIDES while keeping most of his MAGA support. But convince him to toss aside the fat cats and openly support policies that are favored by Democrats and the 80% that have been largely ignored for most of the last 30-40 years.
The approach depends, (crucially, in my opinion) on strategic use of something called "campaign finance vouchers".
Note: I have tried to imagine and address objections to this thesis. Appendix 1, Pushbacks, has a discussion. I’m hoping readers will probe hard and post objections I may have missed so I can try to respond. <TOC>
Context
The Democrats are currently girding themselves to fight a losing battle. A battle without effective weapons and on a field carefully prepared, by themselves and Republicans, to hand themselves a permanent loss. And hand the rest of us a faster route to ecological disaster.
David Brooks' post-election column had the title: "Voters to Elites: Do you see me now?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/opinion/trump-elites-working-class.html
The answer, of course, is not only did they (the politically involved elite) NOT SEE the voters THEN, but their Democratic party leaders still seem to be struggling to dust themselves off. They were flying in foggy mountains wearing self-administered blinders. As they have for about 30 years. And, given what I see in my inbox (yes, I donated money to the Democrats and, silly me, still do), they still seem to cling to those blinders. The Republican leaders and donors are celebrating, seemingly unaware of the danger associated with continuing to fly blind.
The blinders? Both parties have assumed that "Success" (such as it was) came via investments of campaign finance money from the elites and special interests. It cut them off from voters. It blinded them. A very dangerous assumption.
The Democrats heard the 2016 wake-up call to remove the blinders but just could not do it. <TOC>
Understanding the Root of the Problem
The way out requires serious reflection on why we got Trump in the first place. While many have drawn the connection between 2008 and Trump, the distress that Trump draws on starts much earlier. We must recognize the source of the problem, or we will not be able to solve it. Peter Wehner, in an 11/13 Atlantic column says, "The Trump era will eventually end."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/america-trump-different-now/680637/
I suppose the people of Argentina who opposed Peron said similar things. Yet, there they are, almost 80 years later, still living out the echoes of Peron's electrifying presence. Peron's opponents brought on the conditions that gave Peron a platform. As did our two parties bring on Trump. They started at least in the 1990s (though some could certainly point to earlier origins, such as Reagan’s distain for government).
It is easy to not see the source of our situation. For instance, James Hunter on the Trinity Forum website (https://www.ttf.org/video/ ) describes the spread of cultural divisions but gives no satisfactory explanation as to why it metastasized so rapidly between the 1980s and the early 2000s. I would argue that Hunter, like many, is missing proper consideration of the big payoff to campaign finance that the Republican party got from its cultural war when the costs of campaigning (especially for primaries) were starting their sharp rise. Bill Clinton responded by defensively throwing AFDC welfare under the bus and unleashing the banks to bring on chaos in 2008.
Once fully blessed by Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton, by the early 2000s the House of Representatives had turned into a fund-raising machine, abandoning its role as voice of the people. The Senate was close behind. The result of this ramped up focus on fund-raising was a series of disastrous policy shifts and omissions all of which resulted in a huge transfer of wealth and income to the upper 20% of the population. Jesus, outraged at an equivalent theft by Rome from the people of the Galilee and Judea, would have openly protested the result.
Many, and the public in general, point to the influence of Big Money from rich donors and corporations. That ignores the influence of the many who are not exactly "rich" but nevertheless have enough education, wealth, income or passion (i.e., passions about abortion, guns and environment) that they make modest (but cumulatively significant) campaign contributions. And are, therefore, somewhat worth listening to as sources of funds. More importantly, critics who focus on just the Big Donors ignore the importance of the shift in time and attention of office holders AWAY from any group that cannot donate. Away from the 80% who have a ballot vote but no dollar vote.
In Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" Marley, the ghost of Scrooges' partner, says his behavior forged his heavy chains "link by link and yard by yard"". In the same way our broken political process has created the popular despair that Donald Trump now sits astride. Below, in Appendix 2: Commissions & Omissions are some examples of bad things committed, good things omitted and the connection in each case to our politicians’ chase after donors, large and not-so-large. <TOC>
Trump Saw Unhappy People. Elites Did Not.
Donald Trump, a con man always alert to opportunity, jumped in and held up the words many people, unhappy people, people ready to blame "others", were primed to hear.
Biden tried, with some significant success, to redirect the policy wagon. But he and Harris, like the rest of the Party educated in the 1990s, could not imagine a campaign process that actually focused on non-elite, non-donor voters. And were shocked when the people they wanted desperately to help were unimpressed. It is easy to find hand-wringing essays wondering how the Democrats got it so wrong, especially with respect to the "non-elites" (usually referring to people without college degrees, though many college-educated are also struggling). For instance, Wehner asked Democrats to "find ways to better connect to non-elites." But how can they “connect” while remaining trapped in the belief that dialing-for-dollars from elites is the only viable use of their time?
And the pundits can't see a way out either. Reading a recent Washington Post column, Dana Milbank clearly described the dismal state of "the working class." He quotes Connecticut's Senator Murphy’s call to support workers: "...that’s only possible if we have the courage to pick fights with powerful corporations and billionaires and fight against the status quo."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/29/democrats-working-people/
But neither pointed to a workable tool to conduct such a fight nor offered an explanation as to why it takes presumably impossible levels of "courage" to "pick fights". <TOC>
Unlocking the Trap with Vouchers
My Substack writing has focused on campaign finance vouchers. Vouchers provide a way for ALL voters, of any income level, to vote for candidates with both ballots AND MONEY.
My first essay discusses the voucher concept and its reasoning. The most important point: we are essentially giving away control of our government to elite campaign finance donors for a relative pittance. The donors are spending $20 billion per election cycle (an average of $10 billion a year). But the federal government is collecting almost $5 trillion to spend $6.7 trillion (with $1.7 trillion financed by issuing dollars that they hope the public and the world will still want).
That spending includes $900 billion for Defense.
What “independence” and “democracy” are we defending when we gave all control to our vision-challenged elites for 1/90th of what we spent on "defense"?
https://michaelfoxworth.substack.com/p/achilles-heel-of-control-by-big-campaign
The second essay added detail about how such a program should be configured. Same idea as where it has been tried but confronting the myths of campaign finance.
https://michaelfoxworth.substack.com/p/national-democracy-dollars-details
In May, I added a shorter essay defending the idea that, given our progressive income tax system, the cost of such a program would be essentially unnoticeable to our citizens. For those with moderate income: the price of a cup of coffee.
https://michaelfoxworth.substack.com/p/federal-democracy-dollars-who-would
Voucher's first test, in Seattle, has been a remarkable success. As a concept to attract popular support it "sold" well among the 2022 Congressional Democrats and in Oakland and South Dakota. It has been defeated in some localities when strongly attacked by business interests.
A "demo" of campaign finance vouchers was included by those House Democrats in the filibustered 2022 HR1 For the People Act.
But the politician backers’ heart has not been in it. They never talked about the voucher feature, only discussing the 2022 Act's changes to other aspects of voting law. Likewise, three Senators in the 2020 primaries included vouchers in their platforms but never pushed them.
Vouchers' political supporters at the national level have been like Frodo, unable to throw the ring of power into Mt. Doom. <TOC>
If We Cannot Beat Him, What CAN We Do?
So, if the Democrats can't beat Trump, can they nevertheless use vouchers as a key tool to achieve much of their policy goals? In a sense, entice him away from the "dark side?"
Technically, Trump has won it all. He has overwhelming power. With a severely divided population holding (justifiably) a very low opinion of their government, an out-of-office-party's normal tool of governmental resistance (i.e., "wait for the next election") is now of deeply questionable value. The danger is immediate.
Having given ourselves Trump, I argue that there is ONLY one way to survive. Are the Democrats and the public wise enough to take it?
Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandella have shown us the way.
The King/Gandi/Mandella way was NOT "fight, fight, fight!"
The Arab populations around Israel have demonstrated the futility and self-destruction of "fight, fight, fight" when facing overwhelming opposition.
Instead, those paragons of wisdom have shown us the power of patiently working with our remaining strengths and using the weaknesses of the forces who threaten us. And do so in the spirit of win-win.
And live to rebuild the society we have so foolishly squandered.
After 3 decades being almost exclusively focused on the elites who can contribute campaign finance money, the Democrats have utterly failed the 80%. With a weak non-majoritarian Constitution, they (along with Traditional Republicans) have effectively escorted the barbarian to within our defensive walls. Trump now has the power to do anything he wants. Including the power to stop legitimate elections from ever happening again. <TOC>
What Trump Really Wants
Most commentators on Trump look mainly at the horrible things he has done. Few fully consider the implications of Mary Trump's psychological profile of him. Looking through that filter, we can see something different.
A horribly abused child, utterly lacking in internal self-confidence, Trump is always desperate for approval and outward signs of respect. He surrounds himself with sycophants and flies into a rage when praise is not forthcoming.
He trusts no one and always feels utterly unsafe. After wasting his father's wealth at one unsuccessful business attempt after another, his only protection has been skill with unscrupulous smooth talk to con his way into deals. And out of self-inflicted disasters. The financial world is on to him now; his transfixed followers are his last remaining willing victims. He is a trapped rat, now armed with an amazing bite. His “allies” have no choice but to hope they emerge intact from the chaos that seems inevitable. The Democrats can offer him a safe path forward.
Drilled into him by his father was an all-consuming fixation on money. Money bolsters his fragile sense of worth. Any outcome that will seem satisfactory to him must preserve a significant amount of his personal wealth.
As his mental abilities fade, his ability to bluster and con his way out of trouble seems to be slipping. It is hard to be sure, but given his lack of inner self-confidence, he probably knows it. However, it is possible that he is unsure what to believe about his abilities.
He is not interested in policy, per se. He is not conservative or liberal. Any policy that looks like it will lead to approval will appeal to him. He just wants applause.
He went "Republican" because he found that talking "tax and regulation cuts" encouraged some of the big donors to become a ready source of campaign money. He did/does not need tax cuts for himself since he is such a bad businessman that he hardly ever pays any taxes. The money probably continues to roll in from his endless schemes (bibles, shoes, hotels, etc.).
He relies heavily on the audible feedback he gets from his rallies and the impressions he gets from TV. Any policy that the Dems want Trump to adopt needs to be something that can be turned into a sound bite that will fly at a rally. The rallies could change over time, but for now they are dominated by the MAGA faithful.
He is loyal to no one. Not loyal to the rich plutocrats that funded his campaign. Not loyal to the GOP or MAGA followers or his family. They are all just "marks" to con. Everything in his life is transactional. Loyalty, like soldiers dying in combat, is for suckers.
Trump's big donors are still hoping for a payoff based on his ability to control a crowd and his many public comments designed to assure them that he will enrich them more. Presumably they are somewhat concerned that he will drive the bus into a 2008-style ditch, but they all came out just fine after that last one. They may have no idea of the risks associated with betting on Trump. It seems unlikely that they would anticipate a dramatic shift by him.
Now elected, he is unable to LEGALLY run again. Yet, with ownership of both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court he arguably has the power (like Putin and Orban) to use some pretext to stop future legitimate elections. Either way, he no longer needs campaign finance money. Meaning he no longer NECESSARILY needs the rich who have funded him. While he has the option of stopping democratic elections, doing so would limit his potential for genuine "approval" AND put him back tied to the rich that he envies and hates. He (and the Democrats, if they are wise and patient) have other, better options.
All he REALLY needs is a guarantee that he will not go to jail AND keep all the money he has stolen AND a convincing path to keep or, better, EXPAND his popularity. The Democrats can help him do all of that (while holding their noses). And live to rise again. <TOC>
Steps the Democrats Should Follow
In the original version of this essay, I urged Biden to immediately pardon Trump for all his federal crimes. Including all his past income tax cheating. And work to persuade Georgia and New York to squash their cases. It is always dangerous to attack a king and fail. We attacked and we failed. This dangerous rat needs a safe escape.
Now stripped of their pardon took, nevertheless the Democrats should go hat-in-hand to Trump and make a case for policies that would keep his MAGA followers reasonably mollified while widening his support among the 80% and rural areas that have been so harmed by the last 30 years. And promise a genuine redirection of endless criticism AWAY from Trump and ONTO the "fat cats" and "monopolists" who have used their donation power to hurt everyone. This is what Trump really wants - to be an admired hero. Note: Biden did a lot of good things for the 80%. But, not grasping the full context of a dissatisfied electorate, did not make his case. Why did the Biden/Harris team not grasp the context? Again, their focus was on raising campaign money from elites. One cannot listen to the non-elites if one can never spare the time to talk to them.
The Democrats should work closely with Vance and the few other populist GOP members and Senators to encourage a break from the old patterns. ESPECIALLY, the Democrats should sell the use of campaign finance vouchers as a way to free ALL members from the hated dialing-for-dollars life they currently live. The rich and special interests have fought the voucher concept fiercely (and would continue to do so), but the public would respond and so would most of Trump's followers if he loudly endorsed it. Again, Trump hates and envies the always-successful fat cats who he knows look down on him. He can "read" them as well. He, like his MAGA followers, would revel in the idea of "sticking it to them".
Dem leadership should encourage Trump to take great joy in loudly attacking the elite-focused, campaign-finance-focused patterns of BOTH parties in the past 30 years. Especially:
Pointing to the results. Such as laws full of tax favors for the rich, the failure to regulate the "banks" and other financial institutions (leading to 2008 bailouts), the hollowing out of rural areas, and the vast number of hungry children and stressed-out families we have in the richest nation on earth.
Pointing to how campaign finance vouchers would put REAL power back into the hands of the voters. Power the voters will need when making difficult decisions about how to get past a $36 trillion debt with a shrinking and aging population. Not to mention the "normal" blows of worsening climate change, Japan and China verging on economic crisis, international adventures and emerging diseases.
Surely, you say, Trump would not do that! Bite the hand that fed him? I argue that he would if he thought it would work to make him more popular. Remember, he has no loyalty nor any interest in policy. Trump loves to point the finger and brag about his affinity for the common man. Here would be a bit of truth for a change (at least about policy).
There is a very long list of policy priorities that would be popular. With $36 trillion in federal debt the road ahead is going to be tough. Even a competent government would be challenged. But many tax incentives that built that debt would have little popular support when compared to the basics of government programs. Political blood will be in the water if a true budget debate resumes (after a 30-year absence). Especially one that concurrently considers both cash and tax expenditures. Such a debate is only possible if campaign finance vouchers in 2026 frees legislators from the elite-donor headlock they currently find themselves in. Intellectually lazy, Trump would be able to stand back (after 2026) and watch a real legislature slowly learn how to govern again.
The educated elites, those who led both Democrats and "traditional" Republicans, put in the place the conditions, the neglect of the non-elite, that Trump took advantage of. Those elites, by innocently participating in the political money chase (seemingly the only game in town) have lost the respect they think they should have from the 80%.
Now, with absolutely no time to spare, the Democratic elites have the option to work with Trump (and/or Vance) and leave open the path to a cooler future for our children. Or, like Hamas and Hezbollah, fight a losing fight that will kill off democracy and wisdom and guarantee a climate catastrophe. <TOC>
Appeal to Readers
My voice is nothing. You, the readers, have real voices. Please consider what I am saying and make use of those voices. House members Ro Khanna and Maryland's retiring John Sarbanes are on board with vouchers and might be willing to talk to you. There may be many others.
I’m not naturally humble (my wife got me a hat with the caption “it’s Hard to be Humble” from the famous Mac Davis song). Humility flourishes best in an environment of intellectual disagreement. Your comments are earnestly desired. If you see significant holes, please push back.
If you find this "if you can't beat him, join him" concept valuable, please consider writing about it and encouraging others to advocate for its implementation. <TOC>
Appendix 1: Pushbacks Against My Thesis
1. Is the US population as disgusted with their government as I claim? Surveys say yes. Columnist Dana Milbank cites our "ping-pong" election results where no administration can go more than 2 years without suffering a major electoral loss in either Presidency, House or Senate. People are unhappy and want change. Appendix 2 (below) lists many of the policy failures associated with the last 30 years. But most convincing to me: Trump won. Not by much, but about half the voters voted for someone they did not actually like. And about 40% were eligible to vote but refused to.
2. If the Democrats ignore this and approach Trump as "just another candidate", could Trump actually prevent the country from having another valid election? Could he rig things to stay in power with the "appearance" of elections like Orban or Maduro? Would our history of democracy be strong enough to prevent that? Harris relied on the "threat to democracy" line and lost the election. Perhaps in calm times Trump would fail to stop elections. But are we sure that the next 2 years will have no crisis that could serve as a stepladder to dictatorship? There are lots of possible dangers.
3. Would Trump accept an offer from the Democrats to do good for the 80%? Logically, yes. But is he so far gone mentally that he would fail to take "Yes" for an answer? Maybe, but do we have any other viable options?
4. Is “Pardon” the wrong word? Might Trump balk at accepting any deal that implied that he ever did anything wrong? Perhaps. But there may be other ways to make these issues “go away” so he will be guaranteed to stay out of jail for past deeds.
5. Would Trump limit his greed? Trump has always sought the easy path to money, cheating everyone. With vast effective power, would he be content with lining his and his family's pockets with the few millions or billions he/they could easily rake in using the semi-legal ploys available to all powerful office holders? Or would greed overtop his desire for approval and drive him to seek unassailable dictatorship? I have no way of knowing, but, again, what are our other options?
6. Is there any Democratic leader in position to keep the Democrats in line for a very tricky effort that will make many gag? Maybe. Biden has slowed but still seems to be in charge. Much of the party is in shock and grasping for straws. The sooner a viable option is sponsored, the better.
7. Would vouchers actually work in time to yield a working House in 2026? The 2022 HR1 draft incorporated a number of features that might provoke lawsuits and a Supreme Court pushback. My proposed version, as laid out in my second essay, was designed to avoid that. Time is short, and any initial rollout would be messy (remembering the rollout of the ACA). But the country is very short of hope, and vouchers would stir hope. People of all sides would finally have something positive in common even if they "voted" their voucher dollars differently.
8. Would people use vouchers? Analysts that looked at Seattle noted that lots of people ignored the vouchers at first. Usage picked up with subsequent elections, but usage in Seattle remained much heavier among higher income groups. A federal program would probably see some of the same. But the critique that many poor people would not use them misses the larger point. It ignores the effect on legislative effectiveness of freeing legislators from the oppressive threat of "being primaried" by big donors. Vouchers would reduce the time spent fund-raising and free up time to meet with voters. Who knows, maybe having some "donation spending money" would minimize any tendency by the poor to feel "What's the use?". And federal elections usually stir more voter participation than a local election like Seattle.
9. Could a revised Trump program run fatally aground on Maga voters' aversion to programs that help the poor? It is clear that many routinely engage in zero-sum thinking. "A job opportunity for another (especially if the other person is from a different culture, country or race), takes a job opportunity from me." "Enough for you means not enough for me." Trump's popular lines, such as his calls for limits on immigration and tariffs, reflect the genuine appeal of this kind of thinking. I suspect that this could be finessed if the program focused less on direct government aid and more on removing the barriers that monopoly power and poor policy has put in the way. But this kind of needle-threading will be a challenge.
10. Are there some GOP members that are actually "populist"? Preferring to help people instead of just donors? If given the chance to become released from the elites, would they "do the right thing"? There are strong hints in the language of some. I think most of them got into politics because of a basic desire to help people. But they cannot act on those feelings as long as they must rely on the usual donors. Trump's willingness to support vouchers, thus burning his ties to the fat-cats, would be crucial.
11. Are there enough "populist" Republican legislators (especially Senators) to allow Democratic priorities (especially vouchers) to pass? I guess that depends on Democratic leaders' ability to convince them that such measures are truly a win-win path out of the moral dilemma they have experienced by supporting Trump's past actions.
12. Is there enough time to pull this off? January 20th is upon us. If Trump pulls the trigger on most of his promises, the US economy may start to crash (with or without some other disaster, such as economic collapse in Japan or China). With recession and a $36 trillion debt load, our ability to keep Trump popular will shrink and he may lash out. The Dollar Printing Tool we used to recover from 2008 and Covid may not work. Speed is of the essence.
13. The Democrats apparently will not use their Pardon Power in time. Can this “appeasement-like” approach still work once Trump take office? I think so. The big players are still in place: Trump, Democratic leaders (or they will emerge from their funk), a pliable Congress and a disgusted public. The levers of power can be used to make the legal troubles “go away“ and assure Trump’s path to personal safety. I am not a lawyer, so I have no idea what steps would be found. But without an effective Congress, there must be some way to survive.
14. Is my description of Trump, especially his desire for wider popular approval, correct enough to make this approach work? Or is he actually evil incarnate with some deep desire to lash out and ruin everyone and everything? I prefer to reserve hope. It takes a lot to ruin a child. He was blessed with significant intelligence (though his cruel father robbed him of the opportunity to learn wisdom). The Mayo Clinic's definition: "narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism." (emphasis added) I argue that this need for admiration and praise is something only his fiercest critics among the Democrats can come close to satisfying (by getting him to “do the right thing”). Yes, his past actions were objectively evil. But they were not satisfying enough to provide him with genuine peace. His inner voice of self-criticism is too deep to ever be completely silenced, and ANY government policy will provoke criticism (wrong, too much, too little). But the Democrats, by leading him to popular steps based on "doing good", could maximize the inflow of approval sounds. The response on social media to the murder of an insurance executive is a vivid example of the depth of frustration that is waiting to be tapped. <TOC>
Appendix 2: Commissions & Omissions
The effect of Congress's focus on campaign contributions seems quite clear. Our political process committed some bad things and omitted many good things.
1. Commission: Clinton replaced cash welfare (AFDC), a program that actually helped poor people eat and live, with TANIF.
TANIF is a state-managed block-grant. Since it started, TANIF has been ignored. Its funding has not been increased. 30 years of inflation has eroded its ability to provide real income. Much less in many Republican-dominated states, as they tend to use TANIF as a slush fund to reallocate the funds from helping poor residents to other state programs that did not directly help the poor.
Its emphasis on “finding work” ignores the reality that most poor people work, even forced to leave their babies to the care of others. Often, TANIF has become an onerous, admirative-cost-heavy exercise in shaming the poor (and wasting their time) because of their supposed unwillingness to work.
Experiments with “basic income” (including the 2021 version of the child tax credit) have shown that poor people make wise use of the funds provided, with little decrease in work effort and dramatic decreases in child poverty.
Why: The cost of political campaigns, especially for primaries, began steadily rising in the 1990s. This seems to have been accelerated by Gingrich's decision to abandon polite talk in pursuit of the Republican's new orthodoxy of tax cuts as a cure for every ill. The transition from AFDC to TANIF was drenched in claims that the poor were unwilling to work. Perhaps that fiction made some sense to upper income Democratic donors, far removed from the realities of poverty. In any case, with few advocates bearing campaign finance funds, and the poor merely non-donating voters (at best), Congress essentially stopped paying attention to cash welfare for the poor. Nevertheless, the poor lay in wait to vote for a con-man who sang a resonating tune: "the system is rigged".
2. Omission: As demand for unskilled or less skilled labor declined within our manufacturing and agriculture sectors because of productivity gains and competition from global trade, especially in rural areas and small towns, the economic and cultural damage provoked little response from the federal government.
Our people were hurting and resentful. But their cries were mostly ignored. There was some fruitless "training" for jobs that did not exist and heartless insistence that their homes and elderly family be abandoned.
Those with enough income and good jobs, especially in urban areas, approved of these changes. They got their food and manufactured goods at lower prices. Their stock portfolios steadily increased in value.
But all boats did not rise; major parts of the nation just saw decline or stagnation. This was not necessary.
All boats could have risen a little if tax incentives and focus had been applied to ensure that the real benefits of technical progress and trade had flowed to the entire population instead of just the elites. Smug assurances that "market forces" would solve all ignores the role governments play (via taxes, subsidies and incentives) in "binding the wounds" from injury.
Artificial Intelligence is now threatening job and income downgrades for millions. Yet there is no sign of any change of perspective from the federal government.
WHY: "Traditional" Republican donors tend to favor the idea that "the market" will smoothly handle all job transitions. Upper income Democratic donors may find some of that appealing. In any case it lessens a sense of responsibility for our "neighbors". Both Republican and Democratic donors tend to be located in wealthy urban centers where manufacturing employment is a much smaller part of the local economy. To someone seeking donors to run for Congress, few concerned about rural stability are likely to be sought out for funds. Will this change when AI impacts more urban employees? That is hardly obvious.
Those in the these newly leaky boats had much less income to use for donations.
3. Commission: After 50 years of relative banking stability (from mid 1930s to the mid-1990s) we removed the essential prop that makes EFFECTIVE regulation of financial institutions possible: political support from politicians.
The 2008 recession was an inevitable by-product. Currently, our banks are on the ropes, with the regulators allowing them to "extend" non-performing commercial real estate loans and "pretend" that they are doing fine. This was exactly the kind of poor regulation that led to the 1980s Savings and Loan crisis.
Similarly, coastal housing (especially in Florida, California and Texas) is threatened by climate change. Legitimate insurance companies are withdrawing as state regulators are not allowing rate increases. To be replaced by poorly resourced "subprime" firms that will be unable to cover the inevitable losses. The collateralized-mortgage bonds are held by government-sponsored secondary mortgage market institutions (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). A perfect setup for another big bailout. But it can get worse: a repeat of the "repo finance" commercial credit meltdown (repo makes extensive use of mortgage bonds as collateral). That event collapsed the economy in 2008 when there was a sudden recognition of just how exposed institutions might be to such lousy bonds.
But it is much more dangerous now. In 1980 (or 2008) we did not have a completely unmanageable (and rapidly growing) $36 Trillion in Federal debt (much larger than the entire GDP) and a population so unhappy and with such little faith in the competence of its government that it held its nose and elected Donald Trump.
WHY: Bank and insurance company lobbyists bearing funds (or threats to withhold funds) are familiar visitors to politicians desperate for money. The 80% in line to be crushed by the next fiscal foolishness are not donors. Regulators know that effective regulation will NOT be supported by Congressional friends of the donors from banks and insurance companies.
4. Omission: Congress has made no attempt to address the huge number of people who are poorly served by our current retirement system.
Better approaches have been implemented in many countries but never given a hearing in the US. Most involve automatically creating some form of mandatory retirement account that is invested in real assets. Our social security system is principally a poverty program instead of a retirement system (its deposits are never invested in real assets, only in government IOUs).
More than that, we could implement a simple policy of making small government deposits into a stock/bond fund while children are in school. This would guarantee, via compound interest over a working lifetime, that every worker would have a substantial retirement account even if the worker never made any more contributions. At a cost only marginally higher (~$7k now) than what we are already investing in each child's education ($100K to $300K depending on state).
Instead, our current system has pensions for a few and expensive subsidies under 401(k)/Roth for the lucky and well paid. Roughly 80% of the population have no prospect of retiring with a life-style close to what they had when working.
WHY: The elites who become donors are not worried about their own retirement - they found the 401(k) system quite satisfactory. The 80% are not donors. "Well, they have Social Security" sounds very much like Scrooge's "What, are there no workhouses?"
5. Omission: The US has no universal health insurance.
And the insurance programs we do have rely primarily on large profit-making corporations that have a strong incentive to arbitrarily deny care.
WHY: Primarily because of opposition to universal coverage from upper-income donors who see our current system as a way to reduce their taxes. In this case, they are probably right, since we have a progressive income tax system. But their short sightedness has heavily contributed to the widespread dissatisfaction with our government and acceptance of Trump's words.
6. Commission: We only enforce our immigration laws on migrants and refugees, not on the employers whose open offers of illegal employment provide the incentive for many to come.
Many people want to come to the US. They come for many reasons, including the desire for employment. They need to work when they arrive. There is a law that makes it illegal for employers to offer such employment when the migrant has no authorization to work. The law is almost never enforced, even with fines (and the law does not allow jail for the employers, as it does for the immigrant.)
Clearly, this disparity leaves the door wide open for migrants to come and play catch-me-if-you-can with ICE. But far more damaging to our population's faith in its government, this disparity allows employers who specialize in such practices to hold knowledge of an employee's migration status as an effective blackmail threat. A threat the employer can use to exact lower wages and poorer working conditions on employee. And not just undocumented migrants, but also on local workers who must now compete for jobs on an unfair field. Thus, harming all the workers in an area.
Why: A 2005 report by the Migration Policy Institute makes it clear why we maintain this ineffective disparity in the way we enforce our immigration laws: "...individual members of Congress have interceded on behalf of their constituents in the business community when worksite enforcement disrupted business." Of course, businesses are reliable donors to both parties.
7. OMISSION: With the dramatic fall off in birth rates, every child should become precious. Yet they have not.
A toxic combination of racial bias and a cultural worship of “sturdy independence” has supported Republican opposition to help for the working poor. A recent Census report, using the more relevant Supplemental Poverty Measure, showed that childhood poverty rose 1.3 points to nearly 14% in 2023 (about 10 million children), up dramatically from the rate in 2021 when the child tax credit was increased and temporarily made fully refundable.
Now that credit is back to its original design: a welfare program for middle and high-income families, that provides a tiny help to only 3% of low-income families.
Poverty, especially child poverty is, of course, a breeding ground for marriage destruction, trauma and crime. All of which is arguably far more expensive to taxpayers than would be effective programs to support families.
Japan, China and Italy are grappling with the economic and social effects of severe depopulation. The Japanese government is quite alarmed. Japan's prime minister says his country is on the brink of not being able to function as a society because of its falling birth rate. That and other issues have contributed to stagnant real wages that haven't grown in 30 years.
The US is on that same depopulation path but has minimized the effects because of its relatively high immigration rate (including undocumented migrants). Immigrants are invited to fill many of the roles needed to care for the steadily growing percentage of elderly because native born workers are unavailable. That beneficial immigration has, of course, been demonized by Trump because it sells well amongst the Maga.
Yet our policies seem biased to protect the elderly. Much of the desire to have abortions stems from the perception of financial and career impacts of pregnancy in a country that basically tells young parents “You’re on your own!”
WHY: As a group, the big donors are heavily tax adverse. And older citizens are, as a group, wealthier and more likely to donate and vote. The young and pregnant are not donors.
8. COMMISSION: Congress has become an utterly ineffective "show" with inadequate real power.
Our constitution drew its acceptance from the House. Trashing the House undermines the whole thing.
A recent George Will column was printed with the headline "The GOP has Congress. So What?". Our constitution only made sense as a "representative democracy" because it had a strong House. Despite all the calls by the Democrats in the 2024 election for defending our democracy, democracy began slipping away from the public and into the hands of the upper 20% and special interests in the 1990s. It is already very nearly gone. Power, such as it is, has been passed almost completely into the hands of the presidency. But power ultimately comes from a supportive population and that is now gone.
The process began with the many omissions and commissions listed above (and below). After the public was sufficiently damaged (especially with the now nearly complete disappearance of competitive House districts), Republican members became terrified by threats of "being primaried" into lock-step obedience to first their leaders and now, Trump.
In any case, members do not have any time away from dialing-for-dollars to actually pay attention to legislative issues. Made worse by the vast increase in committee assignments made to improve the advertising value of their constant fund-raising appeals.
As a result, nearly all legislation and "positions" are drafted by the President, leadership or their staff or independent groups and presented as take-it-or-leave-it to members. Members have very little power.
WHY: Issues are important to donors and the cost of campaigning is high, so Congress members' time is considered most precious when it is spent raising money. Even if the member's seat is judged "safe," the member must raise money to help build funds for other members. If money is needed, members cannot count on money from mere voters so must obey fund-raising directives from their party.
This is made much worse because state laws that ban "fusion-voting" (implemented by the two parties in the early 1900s in all but two states) effectively prevent the development of viable third parties. That was their intent. With no way to be elected without party support, party leaders' directives to "keep dialing" and "vote with the leadership" carry great weight. Rebels, those dissatisfied with the positions of both parties, are effectively stymied from affecting policy. We see this now in the inability of "never-Trumpers" or "progressives" to gain traction.
9. COMMISSION: Without a powerful House, our government cannot be wise.
In a democracy, leadership has a powerful incentive to listen and seek information. Wise leadership listens to the public and seeks information about risks and opportunities yet to come.
Classic economics, the kind I was taught, is essentially static. It assumes "perfect markets" that use price signals to instantly adjust production and consumption to reflect changes in productive capacity and consumer preferences. It carefully notes variances from these assumptions (such as monopoly, monopsony, imperfect information and externalities that are not captured by prices). Economists evaluate possible government actions that might move production and consumption to something closer to what the public would want to compensate for these many variances.
Starting in the 1970s some economists began looking systematically at how our leadership systems may be inadequate at protecting us from future problems because they do not look at delays in information flows. Those delays can cause leaders to fail to pick up on threats and fail to promptly advocate for needed changes. Especially if they rely too heavily on current market prices to convey warnings. This subfield of economics (now rapidly becoming primary) is called System Dynamics. It was pioneered in the early 1970s, when computers made it possible to evaluate its models. Its most famous product has been the best-selling (and then highly controversial) book "Limits of Growth". (Updated versions are still being reprinted and the 2004 version is available as a free e-book from https://vdoc.pub/download/limits-to-growth-the-30-year-update-2g37a8vthojg) Its predictions have tracked quite closely to actual outcomes in the 53 years since publication. Absent course correction, this seems to imply truly unfortunate results for our society before the end of the 21st century. Climate change disaster is only one of those.
Imagine trying to keep your house comfortable in the winter with a bad thermostat. Going away on vacation while relying on that thermostat could result in not just discomfort but frozen pipes and flooding.
The two US political parties have been operating using signals from their donors to set policy. They have been cut off from the bulk of the public. They have been using donor responses as their "thermostat" to guide their responses to current events and to looming challenges. Not just climate change but all the other sources of public dissatisfaction I have listed above and below.
The surprise results in 2016 and 2024 are clear reflections of the imposed perception delays.
WHY: Our leaders have, up until this past November, operated as if they had no viable option other than continuing to use all their time dialing for dollars. Campaign Finance Vouchers ARE a viable option (as my Substack essays explain), but none of our leaders (including some who have supported vouchers) have ever really pushed them hard or tried to loudly explain to the public how they would answer the public's concerns. I am not politically savvy, but I guess the true story is just too embarrassing to any incumbent politician. Perhaps the already extant shame of November 2024 will create an opening. 2016 didn't.
10. There are many other examples. Digging almost always finds the heavy hand of elite & special interest donors.
- Tax breaks are hidden in a "budget" that lists cash spending but not the cost of those breaks. Donors love keeping their largess hidden.
- Most Republican states refused to accept Medicaid expansion (though it would save them money). Big donors are not necessarily wise.
- Our tax system (income and estate) was made significantly more regressive with its extensive use of non-refundable credits and breaks. The upper 20% donors are not likely to object too much.
- Real budgeting has stopped, relying on "continuing resolutions." When Congress is spending all its time dialing, who has time to work on the funding bills?
- Guns and abortion fervor reflect reliable donation patterns from advocates. This is an exception to the usual rule: not so much the influence of donations from businesses or the wealthy. Instead, the mania reflects passionate giving by a minority of the public and the importance the Republican party put on that reliability. In 2022 and 2024 the dog caught the car. Fix campaign finance and guns would fade too.
- The regulated "capture" the regulators of monopolies, financial institutions and food and drugs. Special interest donors are phobic about aggressive regulation, while the offending behavior is safe from pushback from the 80% who bear the damage but never donate.
- Politicians refuse to think long-term. The many dangers of short-term thinking are ignored, such as those associated with CO2, plastics, pesticides and most ecological threats. The demographic effects of our decrease in birth rates rarely show up in legislation. Such as funding Social Security and maintaining vital services. (Notice how much harder it is getting to find a doctor? Help wanted posters are everywhere. Colleges are in enrollment trouble and army recruiting is difficult.) Wisdom seems to have been squeezed out.
Ignoring science seems to be more of a problem for Republicans, trapped in their dependence on special interest donors fighting regulations. Business donors are typically evaluated on the basis of short-term (such as quarterly) profit instead of long-term results. So short-term thinking shapes their donation patterns. But both parties are hesitant to bite the donor hands that feed them.
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Thanks for sharing your insight and knowledge.