The GOP after Trump

Remember the convulsions of the 2012 Republican primary when kooky and absurd people like Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich surged before Mitt Romney bagged it? In retrospect, that wasn't just primaries frivolity, but a strong wish by the GOP base to go insane.

They reluctantly settled with staid and reliable Romney, but their hearts and bodies wanted to let their freak flags fly. Of course, Trump is a Voltron of Gingrich's adultery and creepiness, Cain's ignorance and Bachmann's fervour (if non-religious), so he naturally won in 2016. And now Republican voters have been, umm, "satisfied" every day for four years, they will most likely never return to a new Romney's dutiful attentions. Those are just not appealing anymore if you can also have authoritarian populism. Why get vanilla if you can have cocoa and razorblades?

So neither a 2012-like analysis of the GOP's electoral shortcomings nor anything else may stem that populist urge, perhaps absent reforms to the primary system giving party elites more say. But Trumpists hate a Mitch McConnell only slightly less than a Nancy Pelosi - all swamp creatures! So this genie is out of the bottle, but the good news for the GOP is that authoritarian populism is not necessarily overtly racist, and younger men regardless of skin colour are already getting more sympathetic to the GOP message as it is. So a Tucker Carlson or someone similar could be very competitive in 2024 with a simple anti-establishment and anti-political correctness message of economic populism, protectionism, and barriers to immigration.

"The elites only give you pronouns and handouts. But I give you work and dignity!"

Watch out!

Republicans, Democrats, and men

The Democrats should not take Joe Biden's lead for granted long-term.

This analysis shows how Trump has gained with younger people, men and college graduates compared to 2016, regardless of race. For example, a young black man is not an automatic Democratic voter! Biden is leading Trump because he has gained more with older people (who vote more reliably), women, and non-college graduates. But as Hillary Clinton's performance showed, those groups are not automatic Democratic voters either. If you strip away Trump's tweeting, his grotesque appearance, corruption, incompetence, laziness, ignorance and evilness, the deliberate stoking of animus, the catastrophic bungling of the pandemic response etc., he has been a fairly "normal", populist Republican President. And particularly younger men like that, whatever their skin colour.

So if the Republicans can avoid a California GOP-like death spiral of increasingly open racism and QAnon kookery, their obvious route for 2024 and beyond is to field a competent, populist, outwardly less racist person. That person, say a Josh Hawley, would then decry the rapacious, neoliberal, identity-obsessed (Democratic) establishment which seemingly offers poor black or Hispanic people only, say, "pronouns and welfare", but not good jobs. He would make it seem attractive to shake things up. So if the Republican message in 2024 was "Stop bad trade deals, low-wage immigration, bad infrastructure" etc., what would a good Democratic response be to sway, for example, a 25-year-old Hispanic man in Florida? "What he said, but with open borders"? Obviously no.

This means that the Democrats need a strong platform after Biden!

If the Trump years were a D&D-style RPG

- "Since John ragequit, no one has been taking care of the Venezuela situation. It's brewing and could lead to great instability. What do you do, Don?"
- "Send the military?"
- "Not enough gold, would make things worse."
- "Use diplomacy?"
- "After what you called their leader?"
- "Oh. Hmm ... didn't we meet these mercenaries in that bar during the Bowling Green game?"
- "T- they were joke NPCs. You know, to fail hilariously so you could ride in at the last moment to stop the massacre?"
- "I want to use them."
- "For- for a coup? In Venezuela? They have abysmal stats, no equipment ..."
- "I want to use them."
- *sigh* "Throw"
- "1! Oops"

- "I really don't like the way this group is going since Don threw his couple of 20s and became President. I've built my character for years, made connections, acted carefully, even learned Spanish for real. I mean I made a whole family tree with elaborate backstories. I referenced earlier characters we had and CIA secrets we discovered, and now all we talk about is porn stars, 'hamberders' and Lysol!"
- "Shut up Jeb"
- "Actually, I agree with Jeb. Do you know what I had t-"
- "SHUT UP HILLARY"

- "While we're waiting for the others, can I talk to you for a second about Roger? I know he's an old friend of yours since the Nixon release, but his style is really old-fashioned, he insults everyone constantly and is just totally reckless. Wikileaks? The Russian mob?? Don doesn't care, he relies on his enchanted dice, but we others want to continue our characters after the 'Trump' era and not get whacked. It wasn't easy to become Secretary of State as a Kansas bumpkin!"
- "Ok ok, he's going to prison Mike. Happy?"
- "Great, that'll be the end of him!"

- "Hey guys, heard you're doing a presidential campaign again. I want to take part!"
- "Joe? Oh ok, but Liz, Bernie and Kamala have been pretty involved already. Liz has 19 INT and Bernie 18 CHA. Pete has 20 DEX and moves like water."
- "No problem. Still using the 1976 rules?"
- "Umm no. What policies do you want to champion? Bernie even made real charts and all for his 'Medicare for All' policy."
- "A little bit of this, a little bit of that."
- "Oh ok. Any stats you want to focus on?"
- "No, I'll just reuse my old character sheet."
- "But the conversion factors will disadvantage you."
- "It's good. But can I put a line in my bio that I was a sidekick to Barack's character?"
- "Sure why not, always for more flavour, heh, what's the harm?"
...
- "I'm sorry guys, them's the rules. Double-count the primary results if you want, but the African-American factor just crushed for Joe in South Carolina, and everything snowballed from there."
- "You screwed me in Iowa!"
- "Calm down Pete."
- "I VISITED EVERY FUCKING BARN IN THAT SHITHOLE! Joe didn't even show up and if he did, he threw a 1 on his stump speech! HIS STUMP SPEECH!!"
- "Pete ..."
- "I WON IOWA!! When Barack did it, it was the golden ticket, but when I do it, suddenly there are 'technical difficulties'!"

Some alternative history to take your mind off Covid-19

1995: White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta is choosing summer interns. He decides on one Gary Generic Whiteman from Iowa.

1998: Ken Starr's Whitewater investigation into Bill Clinton fizzles out, having found nothing.

2000: Al Gore wins Florida and thus the US Presidency in a close, but clear call on the strength of the untainted Clinton legacy. He manages the dotcom downturn and takes the "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US" August 6, 2001 briefing seriously, preventing 9/11. Strong climate leadership.

2008: Mitt Romney becomes President amid the recession and governs in the center, continuing many of Al Gore's popular policies.

2011: Saddam Hussein crushes Arab Spring protests in Iraq. No ISIS means Bashar Assad keeps control of Syria more easily, ending the war in 2014.

2015: Much fewer Middle East refugees allow the EU to find a fair and humane solution for them. Right-wing parties keep searching for a cause.

2016: Don't need "Hope and Change" if most things are pretty ok. Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic primary against one Barack Obama. It's close, but Clinton also wins the Presidency against Jeb!, vowing to incrementally improve healthcare, student loans, rents and many other issues. She strengthens the CDC and US pandemic response.

2020: A novel disease is fully contained in China with US help. US citizens sometimes wish for more exciting politics, but 20 years of anodyne technocrats have improved millions of lives. Greenhouse gas emissions are on track for net zero in 2035, and Romneycare is the law of the land. Ted Cruz has his work cut out for him in November.

2025: Donald Trump dies of neurosyphilis in a New York hospice. A palliative care volunteer comforts him as he passes away. Monica Lewinsky lets go of his hand, at peace. She thinks about life and what could have happened if she had got that internship 30 years ago. Well, no matter.

After Trump

Let's say the best case comes true: IMPOTUS Trump is removed from office, he and his family go to prison, and the 2020 elections result in a landslide for a progressive Democratic President and Congress.

Then what?

FauxNews and the Republican propaganda machine aren't going away. GOP congresspeople only beholden to billionaires and absolute power aren't going away. And the Republican base (see above) isn't going away either and is only one, eventually inevitable, recession or climate-change-induced disaster away from becoming even more radical. They may eat crow and accept a moderate Nikki Haley as their nominee in 2024 (who could be very competitive), but as in 2012, they will in truth be itching for a Michele Bachmann or a Herman Cain. At the latest in 2028, they will gladly vote for at least a Benito Mussolini once he presents himself. The race will then be very close because of propaganda, gerrymandering and the electoral college, and as in 2016, the new Mussolini may only be less than .05% of votes away from the Presidency. And he will certainly not be as amateurish as Trump, whose greatest ambition was only ever to be rich, eat "hamberders" and fuck models (and Ivanka), but not to, for example, exterminate all Mexicans.

As bad as this is: we may still only be getting started.

UK Election 2019

Brexit was at first only a Tory internal obsession and a Mad Max capitalists' wet dream. Most Britons didn't much care or know about the EU except as a newspaper spectre "taking our freedoms". But then "ham C-3PO" David Cameron put it to a popular referendum. Cunning populist operators like toff blond mop Boris Johnson discovered, to their own surprise, that it could be much more: a cipher and vehicle for discontent about the modern globalised world, frustration about being left behind, anxiety about immigration, and much else. So Brexit won and has been the elephant in Westminster ever since.

Nine months before the referendum, but connected to the issues that drove its result, Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader on a "classic" left-wing platform. Of course the right-wing media demonised him as they had mild-mannered Ed Miliband, but he made it easy for them and hard for his supporters by never finding a terrorist group he didn't like, exacerbating Labour's antisemitism crisis and not having the most winning personality or leader's profile for today's politics. Whatever you think about Johnson, he at least seems affable enough so you wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with him (briefly). It's an act, but who said politicians don't need to be actors nowadays? Good actors give us satisfaction, joy and a feeling of peace, no small feats.

But there is also considerable value in the analysis that a great realignment is happening in electorates around the world, away from traditional left-right views on economics towards a more complex model including views on openness ("Citizens of Nowhere", pro globalisation and immigration, better educated, woke etc.) and closedness ("Somewheres", anti globalisation and immigration, less educated, anti PC etc.) With this new axis, you could then sort UK voters into four quadrants:

1. "National socialists" - "Benefits for us first", distrustful of elites, live in small towns etc.; Leave
2. "International socialists" - Young people disillusioned with capitalism by precarious jobs, sky-high rents and tuition fees, climate change activists etc.; Remain
3. "International liberals" - Londoners, people who worked e.g. in Dubai, highly educated, employ a nanny etc.; Remain
4. "National liberals" - A bit contradictory, but "classic" small-c conservatives, "Buy British", pensioners in Surrey, "No one handed me anything"; lean Leave.

The Tories used to have a lock on 4 and many 3 voters, but had no chance with 1 and most 2 people; Labour would be guaranteed most 1, many 2 and some 3 votes. But now, and at least for the past two elections, many 1 voters are moving to the Conservatives. The Tories are repositioning themselves as their advocates, consciously so since Johnson became Prime Minister. In effect, the Conservatives seem to be moving away from the traditional model of European continental christian democratic parties towards a more populist mould similar to France's Rassemblement National or Poland's Law and Justice parties. Labour, however, is shrinking to group 2 and gaining 3 voters, but not nearly enough to counter the loss of group 1. Many social democratic parties globally are having the same existential problem. They are desperately searching for solutions allowing them to square the circle of being both for and against globalisation, immigration, political correctness, Brexit and other salient issues. Apparently, a return to 70s-style nationalisation and campaign tactics isn't one.

This realignment analysis can help explain why the smaller the town, the fewer Labour votes this time; the more Leave votes, the more Tory votes; the higher the education level, the more Labour votes; the more deprivation, the more Tory votes(!); and the younger, the more Labour. Otherwise, it would be baffling how the Tories could gain any majority, particularly in deprived constituencies, after a decade of crippling austerity under their watch. But not least the American Republicans who are now not only fully populist like the Rassemblement National, but heavily flirting with fascism like the Italian Lega or the German Alternative für Deutschland, have shown that you can make people vote against their economic interests literally for decades if you only get and exploit their cultural, social and political fears and worries. And the more desperate communities become due to right-wing economic policies Republicans and Tories actually execute once in power, the more receptive they become to populist messaging about foreign scapegoats and scary reds who want to distribute your meager belongings to THEM. Left-wing parties who say they care about "the many" therefore need to find answers to all these conundrums soon, or else we will face dark times once ever more people get left behind, climate change ramps up even more and economic crises, automation and globalisation lead to mass layoffs.

For after all, closed national populism was already once perfected in the country that likes to perfect things, Germany, by a party. And that party made very clear in its name which quadrant it pretended to work for.

Ave atque vale

All good things must come to an end. After ten years, it is time for me to leave Debattierclub Stuttgart. The memories and experiences, the successes and challenges, and most of all the friends will stay with me forever. Thank you for everything!

Fake interpreter, real hustle

You gotta feel for this dude. With unemployment that high in South Africa, he immediately jumped at the chance when his buddy said that there might be a position and asked him whether he knew sign language. Sure he did, or at least he would know it until he had to sign for the first time at an ANC event some time ago. He bought some books. But boy, this was hard. Time was running out and there was still so much to learn, practically everything to be honest. Who knew sign language was so complex? So he got on stage at that first event with a heavy heart and signed away the best he could, which wasn't much, but at least he put in some effort. As he gestured, he expected to be called out, to be exposed as a fraud on the spot, or at least later on, behind the stage. Perhaps he would even be jailed.

But no one called him out. No one exposed him, and no one put him in jail. In fact, people seemed to like his work, his visible effort for inclusion. He was booked again, for a conference a few months later. Wiping the sweat off his brow, he vowed to really learn sign language until then. But what with having a job now, buying things, living his life, somehow he didn't find the time. And when he signed at that conference (in between sudden bouts of panic), again no one said anything against him, and this time even more people seemed to like what he did. Some even seemed impressed, a few young ladies among them. The bookings started to roll in now.

This dude lived the high life. Working for South Africa's ruling party, fighting for inclusion, standing next to important people. Sometimes, he skimmed some YouTube videos about signing, to assuage a tiny nagging doubt in his mind, but mostly, he didn't bother and just moved his hands and arms as he thought appropriate. Wasn't this a form of signing too, perhaps a more efficient, more elegant one? He felt that he was working hard. That he was earning his salary.

Then the day after Madiba died, the fateful call came. Someone at the ANC had recommended him for the big memorial, and was he free on that day? To sign the speeches of Jacob Zuma, some world leaders he did not know, and even the President of the United States? There was this tiny fear again which never seemed to go away, however much he tried to drown it in luxuries. But mostly, there was immense joy, pride, giddy elation. He called his parents in their humble hometown. Their boy, next to Obama! He had finally made it. Right away, he went to buy a new suit. He had to look his best. This would be his great day. Beamed onto millions of screens worldwide, his face in every home. He would do his thing, and he would be set for life. The Mandela Memorial Interpreter, at your service for a little fee. Perhaps he would even think of marrying now. What could stop him? What could go wrong??

The Avant-garde

Perhaps one of my most favourite cartoons ever.

Busy like a hummingbird

In the last ten days, I finished campaigning for Germany's national election in a hotly contested district, was subjected to a battery of medical tests and grilled by six people at a job interview in Luxembourg, helped my sister and her boyfriend move house, and debated for 48.25 hours straight to break the world record. I believe I've earned this.

The Economist 2

Opinion 1 here.

The Economist is like that one friend you have who always tells you instructive things about countries and technologies you didn't even know existed and whom you value for his smarts and quiet humour. But despite his intelligence and perspicacity, sometimes he holds opinions - and sticks to them despite all evidence to the contrary which he must, must be aware of - that you can only describe as incongruous, bizarre, completely bananas. You let it slide because you really value the friendship, but sometimes you wonder whether there isn't something fundamentally wrong with your friend, and perhaps you should try to check his facts a bit more the next time he tells you something about Botswana or the coming revolution in 3-D printing.

Georges Bizet

This is a photo of Georges Bizet's grave I took when visiting Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris in April 2012. The grave is much smaller and simpler than the ones surrounding it and was apparently donated by Bizet's family and friends. He died at the age of 36, shortly after the premiere of "Carmen". If one listens to that opera or even just to early arias of his like "Au fond du temple saint", one can't help but wonder what music he would have composed if only he had lived longer. And yes, this is a post about Miley Cyrus.

The Lannisters send their regards

Flying from Manchester to Stuttgart via Copenhagen: No big deal.
Only 35 minutes of layover time: A bit tricky.
Meeting Jaime Lannister in the passport queue: Priceless.

Sorry for the crappy potatocam picture though ...

House Lazar

"I will not allow you to tarnish the name of our proud house, born in console wars in which your ancestors bravely mashed buttons. Tomorrow morning, you will take the black, never to touch a joypad again. Otherwise, we will play Battle Mode in Super Mario Kart, and you get one balloon."

EU-Auswahlverfahren bestanden!

"Dear Mr Lazar, On behalf of the Selection Board and EPSO, I would like to offer you our congratulations. You have successfully passed the selection procedure for EPSO/AD/230/12 (AD5) - EPSO/AD/231/12 (AD7)." Squeeeeeeeeeeee!!

How Seven of Nine saved Barack Obama's Presidency

My all-time favourite bit of Obama trivia is still this: In the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate race, Obama was pitted against the wealthy and popular Jack Ryan. But then his divorce papers were unsealed wherein his ex-wife, one Jeri Ryan, alleged that he had dragged her to sex clubs. Embarrassed, Jack Ryan dropped out and was replaced by crazy Alan Keyes, and the rest is history. There's nothing Seven of Nine can't do.

Obama's Way

A long, but well-written and very interesting profile of Barack Obama, the U.S. Presidency and the coalition intervention in Libya. What an insane job this is. I am glad that we have Obama doing it, and likely will have for four more years.

Fashion It So

Guess what, Wesley: you never look good. Just do the best you can with that weird, possibly foam-rubber jumpsuit.

Quite possibly the most awesomely hilarious blog I've ever found. Oh internets, you never cease to amaze.

Bill Clinton

One can only hope to achieve half this level of mastery in a lifetime. An impossibly accomplished person sounding authentically down-home, breaking it down without dumbing it down or making the audience feel dumb, speaking to millions as if to his best friend over a beer, twisting a shiv into his opponents with an affable smile, and delivering passion, information and guidance in copious amounts as if that was the easiest thing in the world. Easily one of the best communicators in the world.

Europe Day

It seems fitting to me that Europe Day is celebrated on the day after Victory in Europe Day, and on the same date as Victory Day. For all its many and very real problems, I think the European Union has almost done miracles for peace and cooperation in this formerly most war-torn of places, slowly freeing us from the scourge of nationalism. If it still seems wondrous that we can now cross borders almost like we would a street, that's because it is. So here's to Europe.