It's the economy, stupid. But fixing things is expensive.

 Bill Clinton sailed into office in 1992 on a well-timed wave of hope that his administration would pull us out of the Reagan-Bush recession. It was the first Baby Boomer presidency, and we were the generation that could have whatever it wanted. Our parents had told us so, and the economy of the 1960s and much of the 1970s had revolved around indulging us.

Clinton's campaign promised us, among other things, universal healthcare. Still waiting on that, Billy. And I know it isn't Bill's fault per se, but the Clinton administration's party bus ran into a serious roadblock with the corporate elements that had bought into his campaign based on...I'm not sure what. Maybe they just sensed that the electorate was ready to kick the old fogies out, so they rolled with the change, confident that they could tighten the screws financially the way they always had. And they were right.

Meanwhile, I've long had my own theories about why the economy improved when it did, none of which hinge on the Clinton administration's vast economic acumen. I think it was going to happen anyway: Consumers like to consume, and they'd finally freed up their credit enough after the 1980s bunge to start doing it again. So Bill: right place, right time, right message, happy accident. It was the economy. And it was stupid. But it was fun for a while.

If Al Gore had prevailed in 2000, he would probably have presided over the economic belly flop, because that was a product of consumer exuberance and technological hubris uncontrollable by the Fed or any business regulation. Also, the Republican Congress under Gingrich was energetically undermining stability and social cohesion.

Social cohesion is important for a sustainable economy and environment, but it is not profitable in the short term. Certain ideologies object to it as well, because of principles of philosophical purity. They can't let us all get along, because not all of us deserve to get what they claim for themselves.

We will never address the fundamental problems facing humanity if we keep going from election to election looking just at grocery, fuel, childcare, and rent/mortgage prices. But you can't neglect those if you want to get elected. Sure, the Republicans in particular have exploited fear issues, mostly related to race mixing and crime by furriners. But we're seeing now how the economic stuff is getting ready to gnaw on their posteriors, even as they're thrilling their xenophobic base with immigrant roundups, concentration camps, and deportations.

The big trick after getting elected is staying elected. Any administration that tries to start working on essential issues like climate change and environmental protection in general will take heat from the right wing media, and some on the left as well. A subset of people are not driven by simple economics, but the majority feel better when things seem to be improving. Nearly everyone succumbs to normalcy bias when things are going outright well. So there's an ideal level of diminishing discomfort that promotes a willingness to embrace change. Unfortunately, the benefits of some of what needs to be done will not fit neatly into a two-year election cycle.

The House of Representatives and the President are more closely linked than the Senate is to either one. Because there will be a midterm election in each presidential term as well as the ones in which the presidency is up for grabs itself, it destabilizes the power of the executive. And a shaky president can loosen the grip of representatives who get bounced by disgruntled voters who want to whack somebody for how they're feeling.

Try enacting higher taxes on the wealthy, or pushing through real health care reform that sidelines the insurance companies and centers patient care and doctors' integrity within less than a two-year window, because the campaigning starts within months after the last election. You not only have to get it in place, it needs to show clear benefits, while corporate media and right wing influencers are telling everyone that it won't work and will destroy their entire way of life.

After trying to breathe in the deluge of conflicting information dumped on them, voters wind up settling for the promise of cheaper gas and groceries. Life may be long or short, but it's always one day at a time. But we're running out of days for the thornier issues.

The problem of political prisoners

 The crimes of the first Trump administration involved not only the occupant of the Oval Office himself, but many others inside the Executive Branch and scattered through Congress and across the country.

Before Trump even lost the 2020 election and began to lie about it, he was impeached for misdeeds in his first campaign and while in office. Some of the offenses in the Mueller Report could have led to criminal prosecution. Certainly his retention and mishandling of classified information would have led to charges. And let's not forget his 34 felony convictions for fraud, and the judgment against him for improperly reporting expenditures related to paying off Stormy Daniels.

Then there's the unresolved matter of the Epstein files. Who knows what's under that scab.

Some small fry were tried and convicted as a result of his crimes, including more than 1,500 people who had taken part in the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Only a handful remain in custody after the mob boss in chief issued blanket pardons to the rioters and individual pardons to favored minions he could spring from federal charges.

A majority of Americans seemed to be okay with the convictions of the January 6th rioters. The criminal behavior was plain to see on national television and all over the Internet. However, the acceptance that MAGA operatives had attacked the mechanisms of government at the strong suggestion of their leader was not enough to discourage voters from putting the criminal back into office in 2024.

As Americans we reject political prosecutions. The current criminal regime has taken advantage of this by generating doubt -- not reasonable doubt, just doubt -- among enough Americans to provide the buffer that the real bad elements have needed to take power and remain viable.

The Constitution describes how to get a bad official out of office, but the framers never imagined that Congress would be controlled by a corrupt president's allies, who would prevent any action to remove him. And one person's corruption is another person's ruthless politics. The First Amendment gives wide latitude to political opinion blending with religious freedom. Yes, there are election laws and supposedly guardrails around the proper roles and functions of government, but the infractions can be hard to explain to ordinary citizens. With a powerful propaganda machine pumping right wing messaging into every media channel like a toxic gas, the intellectual atmosphere is foggy and mind-numbing.

Voting out the Republicans at every level is only step one of the national detox from authoritarianism. The second, vital component is prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment of individuals who have been trying to replace representatives with rulers.

Prosecution of the people who have broken government will elicit howls from the people who relished the authoritarian crackdown on the elements of society that they hate. Many of them used to squawk at length about heavy handed government stepping on the little guy, when what they really hated was not being able to kick down themselves. Once the jackboots were aimed the right way, those brave rebels grew docile and smug.

While we are finding out what it was like to live in Germany during the 1930s, we are also finding out why Reconstruction failed after the Civil War. There were no extensive  trials of Confederates. The South did rise again. They bitched and grumbled about having to extend any measure of respect to their former slaves, but they got things mostly their way. It will be even worse this time, because we have the examples of repressive regimes from the early 20th Century onward demonstrating political retribution. Fascist and Communist/Socialist governments as well as independent dictators have shown over and over the dangers of political prosecution. 

In a country where government is "of the people, by the people," a politician has to be very obviously extremely criminally corrupt to avoid the accusation of political prosecution. We've had such figures. Right now we have a bunch of them. But the case has to be carefully made. That was one reason that the current occupant of the Oval Office is where he is instead of in prison: the case was being carefully and thoroughly made, and his lawyers threw enough speed bumps in to get him to the 2024 election. A rush to judgment would have failed. The careful walk failed anyway. And then the voters failed massively.

We don't know if we'll get out of the present mess in any kind of shape to seek legal action against the officials who have dragged us here. We don't know what form the MAGA movement will take after the inevitable demise of its god-king. Recovery, if it happens at all, will come in stages and could fail at any time, like recovery from addiction. For that matter, life is full of addictions. The challenge is to get hooked on beneficial things instead of destructive ones. I don't know if we can even control our predilections enough to choose which path we take. Psychology and physics both offer bleak prospects there. But there is dissent in both disciplines. I'm holding out for the things I like. I have slowly learned to be less of a dick to people, so it's apparently possible, but I guarantee that I have relapses, so maybe it's just chrome on a turd. I hope not. For any of you out there trying, keep at it. For any of you blessed to be be perfect by nature, congrats.

Gavin Newsom's advantage

 California governor Gavin Newsom has delighted the anti-Trump forces in this country by brilliantly mocking the dictator on social media and leading his state in counterattacking GOP efforts to rig the electoral maps in Texas and other Republican-controlled states. He is hailed as the champion we need: not perfect by any stretch, but the guy to face down the bully in the Oval Office and lead Democratic efforts to skew their own electoral maps wherever they can.

Let's ignore the concept that to beat a cheater you need to cheat better yourself. It's fun in the movies when it's a high stakes card game, but when it's an entire country and millions of people's livelihoods it's no longer a game and entertainment. If slithering through loopholes and cherry picking voters becomes the accepted norm, we have won nothing. Newsom is winning another game that does help us all in the moment.

By trolling the dictator on social media, Newsom undermines the image of power and control craved by the weak and failing figurehead of the once-proud Republican Party. He might even be swaying some of the fickle and elusive swing voters, but I wouldn't count on it. He has spotlighted the absurdity of Trump's self image and the image Trump's followers want to project. 

Public image is everything in American politics. It's crucial in all politics, but vastly more so when there is a democratic component. You can be tough, scrappy, knowledgeable, and still lose elections if enough people don't take to you.

Many people have been trolling Trump and MAGA for years without generating the buzz that Newsom has. What gives him the advantage? It's not Newsom as a person. It's Newsom as governor of the third largest state in the country, with the fourth largest economy in the world. Just Newsom himself as a movie-star-lookin' egotist would go nowhere.

Newsom works now against the bloated vulgarian desecrating the White House and devaluing every aspect of American intellectual life, history, and culture. But Trump could die tomorrow, and the forces that welcomed him as a champion in 2016 and have been pushing forward behind him ever since will still be there. Newsom has no such magic power against them. They will take him apart on all of the seams and fissures in his own public image. He may help with 2026. Don't count on anything for 2028 unless Trump is miraculously alive and able to pursue that third term he keeps talking about. And at that point the Constitution would just be a scuffed up throw rug, so the election itself would probably be about as meaningful as it would be in Russia.

Corporations gonna corporate

 Corporations are people. More than that, corporations are completely amoral people with no loyalty except to themselves.

Upper management forms the brains of the beast, but they are programmed to maximize corporate income in the reality of the moment. If they try to exert influence on the future, it will invariably seek to improve the stock price of the company. This may be by increasing income and profits, or through stock buybacks, and always through favorable laws and regulations. It will never be to improve environmental quality or the well-being of the population in general, unless they can see a clear financial benefit from it. If major shareholders are happy, CEO keeps his cushy job. If they expel him (it's almost always a him), he will have arranged for a severance package that would finance most small towns in America for a year or more.

Tim Cook's golden tribute to the current occupant of the Oval Office fits this model of corporations looking out for their own interests while the country at large suffers greatly. Altruistic bullshit like liberty and justice for all makes nifty patriotic commercials to keep the rabble from storming your offices and burning your mansions, but corporations can thrive in totalitarian regimes. Just ask Audi, Bayer, BMW, IBM, Volkswagen, Standard Oil, and many others that either existed in Nazi Germany or did business with the Nazis for some portion of the runup or even the duration of World War II. Look at the American corporations that operate their production facilities in China and other countries vilified by the right wing, but patronized heavily by their top donors.

The bottom line is all that matters to them. Your interests are buried far below that.

For a few decades, the rich played along with the idea that paying the help better turned them from serfs into customers. Henry Ford famously staved off unionization in his plants by paying the help enough to be able to afford one of his cars. He also priced the Model T so that ordinary working folks could enjoy the blessings of motorized transportation, increasing not only his own corporate income, but that of his pals in the oil companies, rubber companies, and a host of other ancillary industries. The surge in middle class lifestyle masked the downsides of increased petroleum consumption, tailpipe emissions, and sprawl development. A privileged lifestyle became the norm. National euphoria after World War II supercharged it for about 30 years

By the late 1990s, the top one percent had figured out that they did not need a thriving middle class. They've been chopping away at the ladder ever since.

What happens next could play out in either of two ways. And actually the second way kind of grows out of the first one.  Corporations that have decided to stop funding the American middle class because it's increasingly expensive to feed will shift to more grateful consumers among the rising economies financed by the jobs exported from here. Lifestyles will improve in the countries that have received the jobs, as they deteriorate in the country laid off en masse by Corporate America.

 Because people keep making more people, the population will continue to rise here, creating a conveniently desperate labor pool willing to work itself to death for the mirage of a better life for their kids. This would create a de facto standard of affordable labor pricing for corporations worldwide. Big money will still occupy the top spot, as always. Income inequality will become a global norm. The range will probably stabilize with little to no upward mobility. A few scions of the wealthy will always tumble from the nest to crash on the rocks below. But a well managed corporation lives forever.

Even people who live outside of the corporate consumerist economy as much as they can are herded by it. Only its complete collapse would allow society to reinvent itself. This is not only unlikely, but what follows might not be any more humane than anything was before. "Peak humane" probably hit somewhere between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. After September 11, 2001, tolerance for diversity in the United States started diving steeply. Legislation advanced rights and freedoms, but the backlash in general society grew exponentially stronger. Corporations see this as neither good nor bad, only as something to exploit for profit or manage to reduce loss. Profit is defended by kissing up and kicking down.

Duelling gerrymanders

 The recent move by Texas Republicans to draw up new election districts for Congress and Democratic proposals to counterattack in states where they have the power to do so shines yet another bright light on the damage done by the "team spirit" mentality in our politics.

The paradox of the House of Representatives is that the members are supposed to advocate for their fellow citizens in their districts, but their partisan affiliation gives national advantage and international influence to one party over the other. Personal political ambition and perceived usefulness to the national party can turn a measly little district representative into a national celebrity and party darling overnight. Party needs advance to the detriment of the people the House is supposed to represent.

One party may "win" the gerrymandering war, but ordinary people will lose.

Democratically elected government exists to meet the needs and wants of citizens. Congressional districts were supposed to represent a manageable number of citizens living in similar enough circumstances to be able to select an individual to go to the national government to reconcile localized wishes with national needs. The representatives would get together to compose legislation and make appropriations that a majority of them would support. The senate was meant to be the more deliberative body considering matters on a statewide basis merged with the priorities of the nation as a whole.

Congressional representation is based on population, but the total size of the House of Representatives was capped at 435 members in 1929. The more people there are in the country, the less personal the representation can be. But increasing House membership would lead to an unmanageably large legislative body.

As news media increased their reach from the late 19th Century onwards, they have had a stronger and stronger influence on local politics. National media today, mostly broadcast, can reinforce prejudices, creating division between factions by bolstering loyalty within them. Party loyalists tend to be insanely loyal, making them attractive to political campaigns. Partisan districting allows politicians to choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives. Districts become echo chambers, leading to more and more radicalization.

Because right wing values are so much more militant and simple-minded, right wing districting is easier to accomplish. The elusive swing voter may have an open and intellectual mind, wanting to weigh issues on their merits, but a bunch of them just seem to be paranoid and suspicious, both traits that skew to the right. Paranoid and suspicious tends to favor being armed and dangerous, both poses embraced by the right. Don't tread on me, God, Guns and (insert third item here), and so forth.

 Lots of things make people paranoid and suspicious, not the least of which is the popular mythology about our outlaw past. It's funny how we honor both the smugglers and rebels defying authority and the fast-shooting sheriffs and hanging judges of summary frontier justice. The only difference between a lynching and a lawful execution is who happens to be holding the rope. Too often it was the same people at different times of day.

Out of all of this and more -- slavery, genocide of the natives, civil war, robber barons, labor organizers, et al -- has come a system of bizarre and meandering electoral maps, shifting with every census. It's front and center now. Could this be the final affront to get voters to insist on non-partisan redistricting in every state?

The Constitution screws us a bit here by leaving the conduct of elections up to the individual states. A law passed by Congress might not make it past the Supreme Court, leaving us either to pursue a constitutional amendment or campaign for laws in every state, perhaps amending their constitutions. It's a cumbersome process in any case, requiring great unity among disparate voters. When will we start to recognize common interests again in this country?

I have heard people wonder how we got to the current state of polarized distaste slopping over into hatred. It's simple, really. The tensions created by the emerging acceptance of one marginalized group after another have exhausted the patience of hard core opponents who waited at first for the inevitable failure and reset that never came. The limits of people's tolerance vary from person to person, but most people do have limits. Once they reach them, they seek allegiance with anyone who will help them put the brakes on what they perceive as excesses. If that means throwing in with authoritarian goons, so be it. It's hard to come back from that, but people dragged beyond their comfort zone tell themselves that they can sort out the differences later.

Campaign finance reform and neutral election districts will do a lot to lower the heat. Make the candidates explain their policies fully rather than relying on in-group signals.

Really effective government is very boring and detailed. It's hard to turn that into catchy election slogan. It's so much easier to manipulate emotions, with fear very near the surface in all of us. A social media post glibly stated that you should not vote for a party that wants you to live in fear, but choose one that calls for you to proceed with courage. But there is no courage without fear. Courage is the strong person's response to a frightening challenge. Courage without fear is just being foolhardy.

The future will always be scary if you think about it that way. We could get slammed today by an asteroid that NASA overlooked. Any one of us could have a stroke in the next few seconds. Your body could be growing cancer undetected until it's too late. You could get hit by a truck. A terrorist could sneak a nuke or a bioweapon into your city. Has your area had an earthquake lately? Is it overdue? Could a senile, self-centered old man order a nuclear strike on Russia and have loyalists in the Navy carry out the doomsday command? Could people who are overly serious about their weird religion warp your country so that you no longer recognize it? Oh wait, that one's happening.

We the people have a number of common interests that have been buried under the propaganda generated by the wealthiest to strengthen their hold on the nation's resources. Demanding and getting nonpartisan congressional -- and state legislature -- districts can go a long way toward making government more responsive to people as people, not party pawns.