CONTEMPLATING THOSE THREE MAPS.

I concluded my "Tale of Three Maps" with a call for additional research.

Internal migration, and shifting voting patterns, might not be the "red state boom and blue state depression" Red State's Nick Arama hails, let alone the flight from bad governance Town Hall's Guy Benson cheers.  "These shifts are a direct result of bad governance in blue states and cities. Right/leaners and normies aren’t melting down and forming militia style mobs to harass and stalk leftist leaders. They’re just leaving."

There's definitely room for additional research, perhaps conducted, if that is still possible, in a dispassionate way.  Note, for instance, how Mississippi rates among the least free and not losing seats, while Tennessee rates among the most free and not gaining seats.  What is a parsimonious set of explanatory variables to capture internal migration?

None of which stops City Journal's Steven Malanga, in "Blue States’ Demographic Nightmare," from thinking, yet again, of a permanent electoral realignment.  I'm old enough to have seen that sort of triumphalism, from court intellectuals of all political persuasion, come a cropper as complex adaptive systems do what they darn well please.

REALITY CALLS AT TIMES SQUARE.

A long story in New York's Times acknowledges it.  "How the Border Crisis Shattered Biden’s Immigration Hopes."  The opening paragraphs, spin notwithstanding, acknowledge that the current president unilaterally gutted border enforcement.

On President Biden’s first day in office, he paused nearly all deportations. He vowed to end the harsh practices of the Trump administration, show compassion toward those wishing to come to the United States and secure the southern border.

For Mr. Biden, it was a matter of principle. He wanted to show the world that the United States was a humane nation, while also demonstrating to his fellow citizens that government could work again.

He achieved neither of those outcomes.

[T]hose early promises have largely been set aside as chaos engulfs the border and imperils Mr. Biden’s re-election hopes. The number of people crossing into the United States has reached record levels, more than double than in the Trump years. The asylum system is still all but broken.

On Friday, in a dramatic turnaround from those early days, the president implored Congress to grant him the power to shut down the border so he could contain one of the largest surges of uncontrolled immigration in American history.

That power comes bundled with money for optional wars.  Republican populists want no part of the nation building in Ukraine.  Democrat race hustlers want no part of the counterterrorism in Israel.  The China Lobby wants no part of in-kind assistance to Taiwan.

THE POLITICAL BUNDLES ARE TOO DARNED BIG.

What better way to demonstrate that than to bundle two political books from authors with differing perspectives as Book Reviews N^o. 2 and N^o. 3?

There are plenty of books who have argued that one of the major parties is in the position of developing a lasting presidential, and perhaps governing, majority.  There was Kevin Phillips's The Emerging Republican Majority, years ago, and he, after events overtook his analysis, filled the bookstores with volumes explaining why the correlation of forces was not favorable.  Never mind, as late as 2004, there were Republican court intellectuals suggesting that a coalition of compassionate conservatives and security moms could coalesce as a majority.  Oops.

Democratic strategists John Judis and Ruy Teixeira offered a nod to Mr Phillips with their The Emerging Democratic Majority, only when that failed to materialize they had the opportunity to wrote Where Have All the Democrats Gone? (The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes), and that pretty well suggests where their argument will go.  Patrick Ruffini, who argues with but mostly votes for Republicans covered similar ground in Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP.  (Right now, dear reader, Amazon is offering a bundle including these two books, and the authors have filed mutually complimentary reviews!)

The fault lines within the major parties have been visible for a long time, perhaps beginning when the industrialized countries devastated after the War started to recover, while the United States looked strong enough to do anything (Interstate highways!  Voyage to the Moon!  Win in Vietnam!  Abolish poverty!), and it was bye, bye, Ms American Pie, and she took the Victory Dividend with her.

Welcome to the reality check.  "I'm a big fan of separation of powers, in part because I'm not persuaded elections, no matter what rules determine the winners, are useful for revelation of preferences, particularly among large policy bundles being voted on by large electorates."

GETTING IMMIGRATION POLICY RIGHT.

If you build a shining city on a hill, people will see it and attempt to come to it.

My stance has long been that it's unhappy people doing the migrating.  "The movement of people from places that suck to places that don't suck is one way to reduce global suckitude."

Thus, there's a reciprocal obligation on the people in the shining city, and on the people coming in.

I've long been of the view that there are Pareto improvements possible between immigrants and their new country.  "Give new arrivals an America to buy into, and an America that buys into the new arrivals, and we'll be OK."

That post was cautiously optimistic about policy makers moving toward that reciprocal obligation.  Then a troubled young man shot up a grocery store in Buffalo, and pundits of all stripes decided his online testament called attention to a Serious Policy Issue.

A mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store that left 10 people dead has placed a national spotlight on a far-right conspiracy theory espoused by the suspected shooter.

The so-called “great replacement theory” asserts that there is an intentional effort to replace white Americans with people of color by encouraging immigration.

That article cites a number of politicians and pundits who might see something intentional in current immigration policy, such as it is.  The shooting was not an opportunity for cooler heads to take charge.  For instance, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg might have called attention to the mutual obligation of migrant and host country.  "People don’t come to America to escape oppression, or for economic opportunity. No, it’s a plot, a Democratic conspiracy to import pliant voters."  He also noted,

First, some immigrants vote Republican, out of the same blend of fear, bully-worship, callousness, toxic self-regard, and blindered one-issue fixation that cause anyone to vote Republican. Second, if they do vote Democratic, it might be because it’s the party not demonizing them as the cause of the nation’s woes.

Third, Democrats can only dream of being as effective as the fever fantasies of the right. Just as anybody nattering about ruthlessly efficient Jewish global conspiracy never tried to line up volunteers for the synagogue potluck dinner, so anybody imagining that Democrats could entice millions from around the world to come here and vote our way has never recruited anybody to work a phone bank.

In the final analysis, though, deplorable-shaming Republicans wins out over simply considering the source (recall, dear reader, an online testament from a youngster who half a century ago would be marked for the cuckoo's nest) that provoked all the punditry.

SOCIAL AND SPATIAL DISTANCE BOTH STILL MATTER.

John Judis followed up his short reader on populism with another short reader, The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization, which provides Book Review N^o. 10 to close out this month.  (That's right, dear reader, long weekend, no classes to prepare for, no reason to be working on the internet.  See you in September.)  It's not explicitly about a Trump presidency or about Britain getting out of the European Union, although those events influence his thinking.  As does his membership in the Credentialed Establishment.

WHEN ELITE CONSENSUS FAILS.

If, emulating Hayek, we contemplate a Fatal Conceit, then there must be a time for morbidity and mortality to render futile what the Wise Experts aspire to do.  And when the signs of decline set in, suggests John Judis, they might manifest themselves among the people as a populist insurgency.  Thus comes his The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics.  It's a Columbia Global Report, and yet a readable, tightly argued product for Book Review N^o. 3.

NOT QUITE REAGAN DEMOCRATS.

There's a lengthy John Judis essay on what he calls Middle American Radicals.  "If you take ac­count of changes over the years to the edu­ca­tion­al level and oc­cu­pa­tion­al pro­file of the Amer­ic­an work­force, there is a straight line between the MARS who flocked to Wal­lace and those who have backed Perot, Buchanan, and Trump."  Here's his analysis of what touches that populist, aligned with, but not identical to, Tea Party, nerve.

Sev­er­al con­di­tions have, in the past, proved cru­cial. One is a wide­spread sense of na­tion­al de­cline. That was cer­tainly the case in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the United States was mired in Vi­et­nam; in the early 1990s, when the United States faced a pro­trac­ted eco­nom­ic slow­down; and again from 2008 to the present. When the sense of doom has lif­ted, as it did when the Clin­ton boom began in the spring of 1996, the MARS vot­ing bloc has gradu­ally weakened.

The second con­di­tion is pro­nounced dis­trust of the lead­er­ship in Wash­ing­ton. Wal­lace’s MARS were angry about the fed­er­al in­ter­ces­sion in race re­la­tions. In the early 1990s, many con­ser­vat­ive voters felt be­trayed that Bush had broken his prom­ise not to raise taxes, while oth­ers were en­raged by the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s seem­ing in­dif­fer­ence to the re­ces­sion and the grow­ing clout of for­eign lob­by­ists in Wash­ing­ton. That sense of dis­trust com­pletely lif­ted after Septem­ber 11, 2001, when Amer­ic­ans saw the na­tion­al gov­ern­ment as their pro­tect­or. But it has re­turned dur­ing the Obama years: Middle Amer­ic­an Rad­ic­als saw Obama’s re­cov­ery pro­gram and his health care plan as a sop to Wall Street and the poor—which the middle class would have to pay for.

Mr Judis suggests that there are insufficiently many angry voters to get Mr Trump beyond where Patrick Buchanan or Ross Perot got, let alone to Governor Wallace's electoral votes in 1968.  But the contradictions are still there to be heightened.

With the world eco­nomy still in the doldrums, an on­go­ing crisis in the Middle East, and a po­lar­ized and para­lyzed Wash­ing­ton, I doubt it. What’s most likely is that Middle Amer­ic­an Rad­ic­al­ism will keep sim­mer­ing, un­til it finds a new cham­pi­on and boils over once again.

Ultimately, it might be the disaffected voters who haven't been voting that will determine the outcome.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR.

A substantial part of the Republican Party is no longer in thrall to Big Business, to the dismay of John Judis.

The single-issue and evangelical groups have been superseded by right-wing populist groups, which are generally identified with the Tea Party, although there is no single Tea Party organization. These groups can’t easily be co-opted by the party’s Washington leadership. And the business groups in Washington, who funded the party over the last two decades, have grown disillusioned with a party that appears to be increasingly held hostage by its radical base and by outsider groups. The newspapers are now filled with stories about business opposition to the shutdown strategy, and there are even hints of business groups backing challenges to Tea Party candidates. “The business community has got to stand up and say we are not going to back the most self-described conservative candidate. We are going to back the candidates that are the most rational,” says John Feehery, a former aide to DeLay and Hastert who is now president of Quinn Gillespie & Associates, a Washington lobbying firm.

Mr Judis notes elsewhere in his article that these elements of the Republican coalition are not fond of Big Anything, and not funded by the usual suspects on K Street.  In his view, these populist elements are breaking up the Republican Party as he understands it.

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people is sometimes messy.  That's a feature, one that Our President evidently doesn't understand.

GOING FAST ON RAILS. I've been cleaning up the files, and turned up a May 2007 European Tribune diary entry speculating on a high speed rail network in the United States. It's rudimentary. I have been following the wishful thinking for some time (keep scrolling). Now comes John Judis of the Emerging Democratic Majority, a little late for Christmas, but asking for the electric trains all the same.

I am not suggesting that the United States start a world war in order to solve the world's economic problem. But I am suggesting a strategy that could be called the fiscal equivalent of war.

It would consist not merely of updating or repairing the nation's infrastructure, but in undertaking massive new investments that would expand the scope of American industry, and address other urgent problems in the process: global warming, over-reliance on petroleum, and the need to revive America's domestic manufacturing capabilities--not just to provide jobs, but also to provide tradeable goods that can reduce the country's current account deficit.

We'll get to the trains in a moment. Note, though, that Democrats will still be Democrats. Younger voters didn't experience the Carter administration, in which energy "independence" was the "moral equivalent of war." That is, a war that does not take advantage of oil shales or coastal or circumpolar oil sources. But I digress.

One area that is ripe for such investment--and that is not, from what I have seen, a declared priority of the Obama administration--is high-speed rail. Amtrak's Acela trains--the closest thing we have to one--average less than 100 mph between Washington D.C. and Boston, whereas trains in Western Europe and Japan go more than twice as fast. Many of them also run on electricity. They would be the most energy-efficient and quickest means of getting between places like Boston and New York, or Los Angeles and San Francisco. But they would require a massive investment. For instance, installing high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor could cost about $32 billion, while California's high-speed rail system would require up to $40 billion. A system that would address the other areas of the country could easily raise the cost to the hundreds of billions. The House transportation and infrastructure committee has currently proposed $5 billion in stimulus funds for intercity rail--not even a down payment on what it would cost to convert the U.S. to high-speed rail.

Perhaps an infrastructure project designed around 150 mph diesel- and turbine-electric trains running on Midwestern rails, where much of the right of way and signalling is already in place, would have a higher cost-benefit ratio.

And perhaps Mr Judis ought understand the railroad business a bit better.

Investing in high-speed rails would be very expensive, but unlike tax cuts--the benefits of which can be siphoned off in the purchase of imported goods--the money spent would go directly to reviving American industry and improving the country's trade balance. That doesn't just mean jobs creating dedicated tracks or new rail stations: Though the U.S. abandoned train manufacturing decades ago to the French, Germans, Canadians, and Japanese, this kind of production could be undertaken by our ailing auto companies or aircraft companies--if the federal and state governments were to place orders. And building trains that would run on electricity would be a paradigmatic example of the "green jobs" that Obama often touts.

It is true that U.S. rolling stock manufacturers have given up on the passenger business. They are, however, the world's best at freight locomotives and freight cars. Unless these rail projects involve all-new rights of way, the government will be working with the freight railroads on access to stations and on right-of-way improvements. There must exist some policy, for example, under which Union Pacific, owner of some of the best midwestern rail corridors, can be enticed into cooperating with the passenger carriers.

FOURTH TURNING ALERT. Morton Kondracke, via Drudge:

A Bush campaign official said, "It's called the theory of political socialization. Who are the most Democratic people in America? It's the over-65 age group. Why? Because the two presidents they knew best were Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. And who are the most Republican? People in their 40s, who came of age in the last two years of Jimmy Carter and the first two years of Ronald Reagan. If your politics were being formed during the last two years of Bill Clinton and the first two years of George Bush, there's a fairly good chance that we'll have your support."

Process, nuance, failure, good-bye!

Mr Kondracke is on somewhat less solid ground in his continuation:

Kondracke writes, "It seems impossible that a generation reared on free-love television and rap music, a generation far more tolerant of ethnic diversity and homosexuality than its elders, could support the GOP, whose base in anchored in the religious right. In fact, Democratic theorists such as Ruy Teixeira, John Judis and Stan Greenberg look upon the expanded role of minorities, cosmopolitan regions and diversity-minded young people to produce an 'emerging Democratic majority' through the force of demography.

Not quite that simple. It was the hippies and other "cosmopolitans" that engaged in free love and aborted the unintended products of conception. The uncool people, who didn't get the publicity, deferred gratification and cherished the children that came along. Those children are more likely to have grown up comfortable with Republican (possibly of the South Park stripe) ideas. There's a research project waiting to be done here. (Hat tip: Shot in the Dark.)

LIBERTARIAN DEMOCRATS? Not quite, but a lengthy Kenneth S. Baer review of John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira's The Emerging Democratic Majority. Some of my observations do turn up in the review. Consider this: "Professionals have come in contact with and been frustrated by authorities in both the private and public sector, forcing them to cede their own standards of quality to market imperatives. (Think of how much doctors hate HMOs, and one can grasp why professionals may no longer feel fidelity to the party of laissez-faire capitalism.)" By the same token, such professionals aren't going to be too enthusiastic about the public sector authorities not identified in the quote as objects of hate.

And this: "Beginning in the mid-1980s with the rise of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and the New Democrats, the Democratic Party began to shed its baggage as a party that could not be trusted to spend taxpayer dollars responsibly (which is important to fiscally conservative professionals) or to stand up for mainstream cultural values (which is important to the white working class). During the Clinton years, the Democratic Party--in Judis and Teixeira's approving words--offered a "moderate accommodation" to the "radical movements" of both the left and right." And apart from that business with Monica and Eleanor Mondale, the strategy was pretty successful. Why Vice President Gore chose to run as George McGovern with personality eludes me to this day.

As Baer's subtext here might be: "The Clinton record on reducing crime, reforming welfare, eliminating the deficit, expanding educational opportunity, and growing the economy speaks for itself--but it also spoke to voters, helping re-elect the first Democrat to a second full term in the White House since 1936. Another reason is that, just as a surging surplus began to stir the Old Democratic passion for big government programs--and the GOP's for massive tax cuts--Bill Clinton dedicated it to "save Social Security first." By placing fiscal discipline in defense of a valued entitlement, he solidified liberal support for his fiscal conservatism."

Here's Baer's conclusion (I don't know whether I've just read a book review, or the minutes of a Democratic caucus, but anyway): "Despite the continued dominance of the institutional party by Old Democrats far to the left of the general electorate and a noticeable resurgence of old perceptions of the party (weak on defense, soft on crime, untrustworthy on taxes), the party is at parity with the GOP." The review was penned before the election. Why the House Democrats, given the choice of a New Democrat with African ancestors, or a San Francisco Democrat with Silent Generation baggage, are choosing the latter also escapes me.