The Spy's Ace Pundit Deeply Reports the 2024 Campaign

Editors' Note: The race for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination is on, and a wide variety of election-denying Putin-lovin' truth-hating white supremacists have announced or seem to be dancing around a Presidential run in their white go-go boots.  High time to call upon the keen insights of the Spy's master political prognosticator, David Bloviator, who has been carrying out his world class deep reporting from his vantage point at the center of all political intelligence, the National Press Club bar.

TMS:    Good afternoon, Mr. Bloviator.  It's such a pleasure to talk with you at the outset of what – your 11th Presidential campaign, and drink deeply of your decades of wisdom.

DB: Speaking of which, why don't you open a tab and get me a double-Chivas rocks, your impudent pup?

TMS: Gladly.  Double Chivas-rocks for Mr. Bloviator.

The great man considers the Republican field.

DB: [inhales his drink].  Ah, now we can get down to the hard work of handicapping the race for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination.

TMS: And how does it look?

DB:  The big question is whether the Republican base is tired of their long-time standard bearer, Donald Trump, and ready to consider fresh new faces to carry on their fight.

TMS: So Republican voters are getting tired of Donald Trump's corruption, lies, and fomenting hate?

DB:  Of course not, you fool.  They still love Trump's views.  They just aren't sure he's the right person to get back to the White House.

TMS: They like the racism?  They like the truckling to Vladimir Putin?  They like the support for subversion and insurrection? 

DB:  Yes.  They are values voters.

TMS: What values?

DB: They are firmly pro-life.

TMS: Is that why they oppose feeding hungry children and expanding Medicaid to save the lives of those who cannot afford to pay for health care? 

DB:  You don't understand.

TMS: What don't I understand?

DB: You don't understand that they resent being shamed by coastal elites.

TMS: You mean for their support of white supremacy and subversion?

DB: They feel that their concerns are being ignored.  Look at the freight derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

TMS: You mean the one caused by Republican deregulation and support of railroad monopolists who are more interested in buying back their own stock than investing in needed safety improvements?

DB: You've got to look at the optics, man.  Speaking of optics, I can see the bottom of my glass.

TMS: Another round for Mr. Bloviator.  What were the optics?

DB:  Republicans criticized Biden for being out of the country after the derailment.

TMS: So Republicans think that Biden should have not visited Kyiv and stayed to cement allied support in a time of war?

DB: My sources are telling me that the Republicans believe that Biden's support for Ukraine can be used against him.

TMS: Which sources?  The anonymous Republican consultants who email you talking points daily? 

DB: Dammit, man, you know nothing about deep reporting.  I keep my finger on the pulse of America's leading political authorities.  It's how I know what's on the minds of average voters.

TMS: Wouldn't it be better to leave Washington and speak to voters across the country?

DB: [Shudders].  What a revolting idea.  Clearly you have no idea how political journalism works.

TMS: Maybe we should talk about the candidates.  Who are the leading contenders?

Florida AP History: students gather to welcome new classmate

DB: Donald Trump is still the favorite.  Did you see his appearance in East Palestine?  

TMS: Where he handed out expired water and surplus merch?  Why was that such a winner?

DB: You don't get it.  He went to McDonald's.

TMS: Did he buy anyone a Big Mac? 

DB: That's not important. The important part was that he showed up and made the derailment part of his culture war.

TMS: You mean his hate campaign?  Wasn't he responsible for repealing railroad safety regulations that might have prevented the accident and refusing to consider new ones?

DB: He's a populist.  But some of his base has begun to look for alternatives.

TMS: You mean corrupt hatemongers who haven't lost three elections in a row?

DB: Now you're talking about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was re-elected in a landslide last year. Liberals could learn a lot from him.

TMS: Like what?  How to censor books and course content?

DB: He understands the concerns of parents who don't want their children to be indoctrinated.

TMS: Doesn't he want to indoctrinate kids with white supremacist myths about America? 

DB: What about the threat of trans groomers using the men's bathroom?  That's very upsetting to lots of parents.  Liberals ignore that at their peril.  If you don't believe me, ask Prunella Pill.

TMS: You mean Pamela Paul?  There is no such threat by the way. 

DB: That's besides the point. 

TMS: What about other contenders? 

DB: Nikki Haley is a fresh face.  She is basing her appeal on the desire for a new generation to hold office in America.

TMS: A new generation with the same racist ideas? 

DB: Look at her.  She's an ethnic something or another.  Anyway she's brown. 

TMS: And yet despite her own minority status, she continues to assert that there's no racism problem in America. 

DB: That's the best way to appeal to the Republican base.  Look at Tim Scott.  He's Black all over and he still stands with Trump. 

The key to political success: optics

TMS: So Republicans will consider a Black man or a South Asian woman as long as they pander to the prejudices of white racists? 

DB: Now you're learning something about politics.  That calls for another double-Chivas. 

TMS: If all candidates agree with Trump about everything, how can they distinguish themselves? 

DB: With energy, optimism, and white go-go boots.  Also they can remind Americans how old Biden is.

TMS: He made a brave trip to a war zone right after crushing the State of the Union Address.  He didn't look too old then. 

DB: You're focusing on the optics. 

TMS: That's what you told me to do. 

DB: Dammit, man, don't you understand that optics always favor Republicans?  You clearly haven't done enough deep reporting on American politics. 

TMS: Maybe we've had enough deep reporting for one afternoon.  Thank you, Mr. Bloviator. 

Questions that contain their answer: Why Doesn't Anyone Want to Work Anymore?

By Labor Correspondent Joe Hill

America's ruling plutocrats and the media leeches who make a handsome living parroting their supposed concerns have a new kvetch: you can't find anyone who wants to work anymore.

The Boston Globe devoted most of its Sunday opinion section to this burning question:

 

Perhaps the best thing you can say about this exercise of editorial judgment is that it is an improvement over the New York Times's obsession with defending rich middle aged women who enjoy tormenting trans and trans-curious children. 

The answers they provided were in part reasonable and in part editorial word salad.  Here comes the old “existential shift” again!

Stories such as theirs reveal that what’s going on is not entirely quantifiable; it runs deeper than what economics or demography can explain. We’re living through an existential shift in how people think about work and where it fits into the other things that give our lives meaning. And though this transition is particularly wrenching in some sectors, there might be a kernel of good news: Labor scarcity could give workers more power, which in turn could help spread prosperity more widely. 

Let's start with considering what work is.  We remember one of our old bosses suggesting that we do something disagreeable (have lunch with lawyers, as we recall).  When we shuddered at the prospect, he replied, “That's why they call it work.”  There a clue there: work is something that we either need someone else to do (because we can't) or want someone else to do (because it's unpleasant).

Of course, not all work is disagreeable.  For example, presiding over The Boston Globe sounds fun and interesting and if you are the trophy wife of its billionaire owner, you, too, might be considered for the job!  Good luck!

Other careers in journalism sound similarly tempting.  If you could earn a steady income publishing crapcan columns in The New York Times being mean about trans kids or Hillary Clinton or pushing your own nutball views on abortion as reasonable and moderate, and then do the same column week after week, why wouldn't you? 

But most work isn't that easy or agreeable.  The Boston Globe reports that any number of employers can't find bodies:

Hotels and restaurants. Railroads. Retail stores. Nonprofits. Hospitals. The MBTA. Police departments. Schools. Construction companies. Delivery services. Day care centers.

Our economy depends on millions of service workers, doing things that don't seem all that appealing, like wiping the asses of old people in nursing homes, plowing buses through rush hour traffic, hammering nails in the freezing cold, or being nice to ass****s in restaurants and hotels.

When these jobs are customarily performed by men, like construction and railways, the tedium is leavened by living wages and sometimes union protection.

When the jobs are thought to be women's work, no such luck: it's minimum wage toil, or in the case of teachers, a slightly better wage but less than those brave men in blue rake in.

The explanations for the lack of willing workers thrown out by the usual suspects vary.  COVID.  Drug addiction.  Variations on laziness, including the canard, disproved by the Globe's own data, that older people are leaving the labor force.  But the data shows the opposite: 55+ labor force participation is near its highs, and far above the rates of the 1970's-1990's:

By the way, ask anyone over 60 about how easy it is to get a decent non-barista professional job.

There are a few more sensible arguments: the Boomers are aging out of the workforce and subsequent generations are smaller.  As unions atrophy and wages stagnate, Economics 10 will tell you that the supply of persons willing to labor for pennies is unlikely to increase.

Here's a thought experiment: would restaurants and nursing homes really have trouble attracting workers at $25 an hour plus benefits?  Why not find out?

They're ready to work as assassins or otherwise.

The reason is because the owners of businesses have become accustomed to floods of workers toiling for declining real wages, allowing the owners to trouser the lion's share of economic growth.  And when you take that pleasing outcome away from them, they naturally doth protest.  Sure some businesses might go under if higher wages were paid, but if your business model is dependent on immiserated labor it's not much of a business now is it?

The one industry where higher wages might bite hard is nursing homes, although since most are owned by depraved private-equity finaglers squeezing every last farthing out of bedridden grandmas, it's hard to be too sympathetic.  

If Medicaid would reimburse nursing homes for higher wages for front-line workers, then the labor market would clear.   That in turn would require political will,  But the older white workers complaining about low wages are the same workers who vote for the same billionaire-owned Republicans whose policies have brought about their current plight.  Why this is is a complex topic for another day.  In other words, racism.

Speaking of white bigotry, there's another answer to the lack of persons willing to toil in s**t jobs like nursing homes or slaughterhouses: immigrants.

Right now there are millions of noncitizens without work authorization in America, and hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees who would happily carve up pigs all day long if they could enter the country.  To the Globe's credit, it mentions the option.

And yet, the same small and great business persons who whine about the lack of workers tend to support a political party devoted to demonizing immigrants and blocking any solution that would allow more to work and live freely in America.  

To put it bluntly, if you voted for the corrupt Russian-owned sex criminal who launched his campaign by telling us that Mexico was sending us its rapists and assassins, we're not going to listen to your complaints about how you can't get enough workers to man your deep-fat fryer.

It turns out that like almost every other problem facing America, the supposed labor crisis is at root caused by greed, bigotry, and Republicans.

But, to avoid misunderstanding, if the guy who owns The Boston Globe wants to replace his trophy wife/publisher, we'd be interested.  

Not in the wife part though.   Too much like work.

Floating the Idea that Republicans are Weak on National Security

By Isidore F. Stone, Washington Correspondent with
Spy Archivist Aula Minerva

The dastardly sneak attack on our homeland perpetrated by a [checks notes] Chines balloon gave rise to the usual Republican drivel about how Joe Biden and the Democrats compromised national security by [checks notes again] shooting down the balloon over water after tracking it and jamming its communications.

And the media churned out the usual stenography, according to Media Matters:

After citing idiotic commentary from Mrs. Alan Greenspan among others, Media Matters offered up this choice morsel of insider conventional wisdom from Das Politico:
 

It's hardly unexpected that Republicans would seize on anything, even a shredded balloon, to reiterate the point that you can't trust Democrats to protect national security.  They've been doing it nonstop since 1969, and the cumulative impact of the charge has been devastating.   Here's data from Gallup:

Notice the only time Democrats held a (narrow) advantage was during the Iraq War meltdown four years after the Bush-Cheney invasion.

It's a cycle of stupidity: Republicans claim that they protect our nation, wave a lot of flags, and shoot off a lot of guns.  Democrats avoid the issue, thus letting the public conclude that only Republicans care about national security.  The media notices the polling and reinforces the perception that Republicans are better at protecting the homeland.

The only problem with this feedback loop: it's a load of bollocks.  The actual Republican record since 1969 on national security has been a disaster.

You young whippersnappers may not remember Tricky Dick Nixon, the Republican who won the 1968 election after the Democrats became mired in the pointless morass of the Vietnam War.

Nixon's task was to end the war without appearing to lose it, at least not immediately.  He called this brilliant scheme “Peace With Honor.”  Although this plan cost hundreds of thousands of lives, it insulated Nixon from blame and allowed him instead to paint Democrats as yellow if not pinko surrender monkeys.

This was Max Frankel's summary in the October 17, 1969 New York Times, two days after massive peaceful nationwide antiwar protests:

By the way, the “extremists” turned out to be absolutely right and Nixon's senseless bloody prolongation of the war did nothing, except created the myth of Republican superiority on national security.

Speaking of extremists, the previous day's Times carried this account of Republican Massachusetts Gov. Francis Sargent's response to pro-war hecklers:

He was the last decent Republican.

Anyone here remember St. Ronald of Bitburg?  He too was a master of pretending to protect national security.  He sacrificed 230 Marines in Beirut for no purpose that was evident then or now, and then covered his tracks by winning a splendid little, very little, war on the tiny island of Grenada. 

Then after honoring Nazi SS war dead at Bitburg, he invented the fantasy that he could build an impenetrable nuclear defense which he called Star Wars.  Those who correctly pointed out that it could never work were branded as Kremlin stooges:

(The New York Times, October 27, 1986.)

In case you've lost interest in this 40-year boondoggle, we've spent trillions on Star Wars but still have no actual defense against nuclear attack.

Moving to this millennium, after the Republicans under Bush and Dead-Eye Dick Cheney ignored the intelligence pointing to the strong likelihood of an al-Qaeda attack on the United States and then invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, those who opposed their splendid Iraq War were once again branded as weak on homeland security:

Vice President Dick Cheney lashed out on Friday at critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, ridiculing their arguments against the war as naïve and dangerous in a speech that was a culmination of a campaign by the White House to regain support for the postwar effort.

Only Democrats can save us!

Mr. Cheney's remarks came at the end of a contentious week that included President Bush's announcement of a reorganization intended to give the White House more control over the Iraq occupation; a public spat between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, over control of the mission; and growing violence on the ground in Iraq.

The vice president's appearance before an invited audience of 200 people at the conservative Heritage Foundation here capped a weeklong White House public-relations offensive aimed at rebutting a new wave of criticism of the war and the postwar effort.

In his 25-minute speech, Mr. Cheney defended the administration's handling of Iraq policy and its larger vision in combating global terrorism. His searing statements came across as direct attacks on critics in Congress and among the Democratic presidential candidates.

Again, it was the Democratic critics who were right about everything, including their contention that the $2 trillion transformation of Iraq into a quasi-failed Iranian puppet regime did grave damage to U.S. national security.  Thanks to Republicans.

The same threadbare nonsense was recycled as recently as last year, when President Biden finally extricated the United States from the 21-year Republican quagmire in Afghanistan.  

As long as we're comparing the respective capabilities of Democrats and Republicans in the fight against terrorism (remember that?), remind us again which party's President tracked down Osama bin Laden and sent him on a one-way dive to the Six Thousand Fathom Undersea Beach Resort.  And which party's President let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora and then tried to cover up the debacle.

So after the debacles of Vietnam, Beirut, Star Wars, Afghanistan, and Iraq, why should anyone cede any ground to Republicans on the issue of national security?  They shouldn't.

But if Democrats refuse to forthrightly state that they are the only party that can be trusted to protect U.S. national security, in contrast to a Republican Party dominated by Russian stooges and insurrectionists, how can you expect our media to state the obvious truth:

You can't trust Republicans to protect our country.

East of Here: Welcome to Londonland!

By Isabel Archer
London Correspondent

LONDON – The former capital of the British Empire looks great.  The streets are filled with smartly-dressed smart-looking people, a few of whom are speaking English.  The West End is lit up with great British shows like Jersey Boys and Wicked.  Entire dreary neighborhoods like Southwark and St. Pancras have been replaced by bustling modern buildings and restaurants serving food that's actually, wait for it,  good.

But the reality of modern post-Brexit Britain is not nearly as brilliant.  It is the only large industrial nation in the world expected to fall into recession this year.  The rising prices of heat and mortgages are reducing millions into a cold, miserable existence.  Workers' real wages have stagnated for 12 years, and unions are no longer willing accept the real income cuts demanded by the unpopular Tory government.

At the same time, economic growth is being strangled by a shrinking labor force and the inability to fill vital positions in health care, public services, and agriculture, among others.

The result is that Britain's standard of living is no higher than Slovenia's, a country that most Brits couldn't find on a map, and by 2030 will be no better than Poland's.

Which brings us to the catastrophe that caused so much of this suffering: the idiotic decision, rammed through by Tory extremists and yahoo media magnates like Rupert Murdoch, to leave the European Union.  Just as Brexit's opponents predicted, the results have been all bad:

Brexit's proponents claimed falsely that the money saved from not paying into the EU budget would be used to fix the chronically underfunded National Health Service.

How'd that work out?

In December, as many as 500 patients per week were dying in Britain because of E.R. waits, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, a figure rivaling (and perhaps surpassing) the death toll from Covid-19. On average, English ambulances were taking an hour and a half to respond to stroke and heart-attack calls, compared with a target time of 18 minutes; nationwide, 10 times as many patients spent more than four hours waiting in emergency rooms as did in 2011. The waiting list for scheduled treatments recently passed seven million — more than 10 percent of the country — prompting nurses to strike. The National Health Service has been in crisis for years, but over the holidays, as wait times spiked, the crisis moved to the very center of a narrative of national decline.

Senior NHS doctors have confirmed the harsh truth of this tale.  The loss of free movement of medical professionals from across the EU has made everything even worse. The supposed new investments in health care are nothing but Tory bloviation.  And there is no relief in sight, as Tory ministers try to plug funding holes in ambulance services by robbing other NHS budget accounts, rather than provide the desperately-needed new funding.

And it's not just the NHS that's suffering from Brexit; Britain's great universities have been hit as well, according to The Guardian:

 

The ruling Tories, who under the British system can cling to power despite the resignations in disgrace of their last two Prime Ministers, have nothing to offer except their usual bracing mix of bluster and condescension.

Fed up with declines in their standard of living, teachers, nurses, and train drivers (OK, engineers) have all gone on strike.  In response the Prime Minister, an insanely rich former investment banker named Rishi Sunak, has told them they have to suffer if inflation is to be beaten.

The Brits need Lara now

The good news for Sunak is that his wife, the billionaire (depending on exchange rates) daughter of the owner of a huge Indian software consulting firm, who avoided UK taxes for years by claiming she was “non-domiciled” in the UK despite being married to a senior Tory politician, will not have to suffer to beat inflation.

And the Conservatives still refuse to close the “non-dom”tax loophole that has enriched their billionaire funders for decades, preferring instead to introduce laws outlawing public-sector strikes.

All of this naked pandering to the plutocratic few has made the ruling party massively unpopular in Britain (too bad the same can't be said on this side of the pond), but until 2025, they will be able to do their worst as the people of Britain suffer.

Even as (or perhaps because) their economy rots and their standard of living declines, Brits have embraced bigotry and meanness with an avidity that can only be described as “Republican.”  In response to a few thousand of desperate refugees crossing the Channel to seek asylum, Sunak through his Nikki Haley-like minion, Suella Braverman, wants to kick them out (or perhaps to Rwanda) without a fair consideration of their claims, in violation of the UK's international legal obligations.

Meanwhile the plutocratic press is full of pro-austerity propaganda, including ridiculous pieces claiming that it's fun to work forever for kindly Uncle Rupert Murdoch, rather than retire at 78 on a livable pension.

Instead of focusing on real suffering, the chattering classes seem to be preoccupied with the supposed threat of trans persons, although what they are threatening remains obscure. Sadly, in UK this drivel is spread not by yobs from Rummidge-in-the-Muck but by well-educated and filthy rich writers and pundits who ought to know better.

If that were not enough, the future of the United Kingdom itself seems increasingly doubtful.  Scotland, removed from the EU against its will, is ready to secede if given the chance to vote now being withheld from them by the colonial authorities in Whitehall.  Northern Ireland, now with a majority-Catholic population and caught on the wrong side of the EU-UK border to avoid another sanguinary division of Ireland, may soon follow.

The Tory loudmouths in London can bellow all they want that England can well do without these appendices, but if they really thought that, why are they fighting so hard against democratic referenda on independence?

The shrinking of the UK to England and Wales is but a synecdoche of Britain's rapidly shrinking role in and relevance to the world, a trend that began after World War II but paused in the era of EU membership.

Over 60 years ago, the great automotive journalist Brock Yates reported on the then-dismal state of the British car industry.  Its inability to compete with German and Japanese manufacturers led Yates to wonder if Britain's industrial base would wither away, leaving the country with no economic activity other than as a sort of global theme park:

Speaking of British car production, it's not going so good since Brexit (which fatally interrupted the complex supply chains that undergird modern manufacturing):

 A 66-year low?

The London theme park of culture, shopping, arts, fashion, dining, and other activities enjoyed by global tourists is more fun and exciting than ever.  Outside the gates, the once-great United Kingdom is slipping into decline and darkness, if not dissolution, and its insufferable governing class doesn't seem to notice, or, more likely, care.