GOP/Trump strategy heading into the 2018 mid-terms.
We are seeing the outlines of the GOP/Trump strategy in the run up to the 2018 mid-terms.
While the detailed discussion of who exactly is "the Boss" - Trump or the GOP - remains unresolved at this time, the broad set of ideas about how they will defeat the Democratic Party's "Blue Wave" are out in the open.
From a Democratic perspective - the overall strategy of playing it quiet appears to have paid off - The GOP/Trump folks have shown their hand. It remains to be seen if Democratic Party can leverage this in their favor in the upcoming elections.
The 2018 elections were always stacked against the Democrats due to three main factors*
- The districts are massively gerrymandered to ensure that GOP gets a large number of seats even if it only gets a small number of votes. In order to swing these low population density seats - the Democratic party will have to run a massive and costly outreach program and ensure every last vote turns out.
- The Trumper base knows they chose badly when they voted for Trump. They would rather face death at the hands of Trump than choose political humiliation by their liberal enemies. This is understandable, to the Trumpers, the prospect of death by Trump** is a distant future whereas facing their liberal opponents on dinner tables, in coffee shops, supermarkets etc.... and dealing with their looks of disapproval is a daily affair. This perceptual disparity will ensure that the base turns out to vote for Trump. Trump can literally murder their children on their White House lawns and it will not move support for him by even one point.
- Trump has done nothing to actually secure the election machinery. The RIS + Bibi interference machinery*** is still active. By making subtle edits to voter registrations, in "Red" states, the GOP can asymmetrically suppress voter turnout - i.e. run a hacking based anti-GOTV operation (cf. CrossCheck).
Overcoming these factors is extremely challenging. As the Democratic Party base is liberals - consolidating liberals has always been like herding cats. It is very hard to educate liberals on the idea of political consolidation and unity. This message is much easier to single issue voters that usually fill the conservative vote banks. This lack of unification - is the systemic weakness of the Democratic Party.
We are seeing the result of even the slightest misalignment in CA48 and CA49 where there are simply too many people still running on the Democratic party side. Without a major consolidation, the Democratic Party will not be able to take the seats held by Darrell Issa and Dana Rohrabacher.
We are seeing a major upswing in theatrical absurdity by the Trump/GOP machine in the last three weeks. This is preparation for a multi-pronged attack on the Democratic Party's weakest point.
NB:
* I leave out the possibility of deliberately inserting distraction candidates into the ballot (example Jill Stein, Libertarian etc...) as a means of polarizing the anti-GOP vote as I feel it is a second order effect compared to the others.
** Death by Trump - a situation where you support Trump at great cost to your own life but he doesn't support you when you need it to survive. (c.f. the "estate tax" or the "China" issue)
*** RIS+Bibi Machinery - the money comes from Israel (via dark money and Adelson), the hacking and "boots on the internet" come from RIS.
posted by maverick @ 5:38 AM
4 Comments:
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the china trade war is back......unless it is a bargaining tactic prior to the us trade talks with china. who knows? the chinese have bribed all the top us politicians through their spouses or children......so very strange the chinese are having difficulties with us trade ....they must be really confused. was marx right in that capitalism will eventually devolve into cronyism?
......and the norks still want a meeting with trump.....who woulda thunk it?
There isn't going to be a trade war in direct terms. It is simply too expensive to call it that as it scares the markets visibly.
The cheaper option is to gradually start cancelling orders to various US Ag suppliers and induce them to exert internal pressure on the GOP political machine. Every order China cancels is a surplus that drives local prices of produce down. Each time round the price of a soft-commodity drops, the quality of Ag debt drops.
This is now a systemic risk to all debt on the market. As Trump attempts to raise the pressure on China to get his baksheesh, China will punish US Ag sector - the result will be a precipitous decline in the quality of Ag debt. We will be way past the 1980s farm crisis levels in under a year even without this non-Trade-War Trade war. With it - I expect a massive decline in the quality of the debt within six months or less.
Much as I feel bad for the farmers in the US, I can't help but think they bought it on themselves. In their desperation to escape the obligations of the estate tax they wandered into a trade war in which they will be the first victims. The stupidity of this is boundless.
China never practiced Marxism, they had their own version called Maoism. It has been consistently reinterpreted to mean the survival of the PLA general caste at the cost of the rest of China.
FWIW the CP-Burma tried to complain about how the PRC leadership had departed from its principled stand in the late 80s. The PRC responded by slaughtering them by the busload. PRC does not like to lose and they are willing to fight extremely dirty. Right now - they gave Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump brand royalty - but they can easily take it back.
I think I am going to put up a post on this Ag debt issue separately.
People don't seem to be talking about how the trade war and the estate tax issue link up to the failing Ag sector debt issue.
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