Monday, August 5, 2024

Part I

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Who is the Future of the Democratic Party? Identity Politics, a Harder Push Left, and Who Kamala Harris Could Choose as Her Running Mate This Week

We know we’re headed into a very news intensive week. At the top of the list of what we expect is that the Democratic Presidential and Vice Presidential ticket is, we are told, going to be filled out. Spokespersons for the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, running, of course, for the Office of President in 2024, have indicated two things over the weekend. Number one, that she has all of the delegates that she needs in order to gain the 2024 Democratic nomination and then secondly that she’s going to begin campaigning on Tuesday with her 2024 running mate. Now, those two developments are not unrelated, of course, in timing, but it all comes down to the unprecedented development that Joe Biden, the incumbent President of the United States, was basically toppled by his own party from what was, the party came to conclude, a doomed effort to gain reelection to the nation’s highest office.

If you go back just a matter of a couple of weeks, it becomes very clear that the Democrats had come to the conclusion that Joe Biden was going to lose and Donald Trump was going to win. Therefore, something had to be done. That therefore turned out to be a big surprise, not so much in the end that it happened, but how it happened. And in particular, if you were to rewind history a matter of months, not only would no one have seen this coming, but it would’ve appeared unlikely in the extreme that Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States, would within a matter of hours or mere days, shift to becoming the Democratic standard-bearer in the 2024 Presidential election. Now, that does tell us that something must’ve been going on in the background because this kind of development just doesn’t come along and happen this way.

On the other hand, we do understand there’s enormous time pressure on the Democratic Party. So even the Vice Presidential process has been now fast-forwarded a great deal because the Democratic National Convention is going to meet in Chicago August the 19th through the 22nd. So you can do the math. We’re talking about just a matter of days. But before we look further at what’s going to happen on the Democratic side, let’s understand that there are big developments on the Republican side as well, and the biggest development is that the Republican Presidential nominee, we would have to say at this point, the official nominee of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, he thought he was facing one kind of election, one kind of race. It’s very clear he is facing a very different race.

Now, as you look at this, you recognize that the Republicans and in particular the Trump campaign had a very tight, very successful it would appear campaign strategy against Joe Biden. But when it comes to Kamala Harris, you’re talking about a very different political equation. So even if we go back to Milwaukee a matter of just days ago and we look at the Republican National Convention, well, we’re looking at a race that’s been fundamentally reshaped. Indeed, as President Trump, the former President of the United States has said very clearly, it’s a different race, and it is. But there are big questions right now about how prepared the Trump campaign is for this race.

A very disappointing development has come in that the President has been leaning into his own version of identity politics on the race and identity politics from the right, and that is not only something that isn’t catching when it comes to say traction in the polls, it’s also something that turns out to be very divisive and not very conservative. And so, even as there’s a struggle on the democratic side to define what will be the Kamala Harris campaign, right now, there’s also a huge struggle on the Republican side.

The other big concern on the part of Republicans, and this includes many supporters of the former President, is the fact that he’s been leaning into the politics of personal grievance in a way that keeps bringing back issues from 2020 rather than dealing with the issues of the day. So looking at this, we recognize that, as Trump is now on the stump, the more he deals with issues of his own version of identity politics, even if it is a very different version of identity politics, it turns out to be toxic. And not only that, when he deals with the politics of personal animosity, quite frankly, leveling scores and being elected President of the United States are just not compatible strategies, and so he’s going to have to decide on one or the other.

The other thing to recognize is that the strength of a Trump candidacy, the strength of a Republican campaign, would be the issues, and if anything, the shift from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris makes that a greater opportunity, because Kamala Harris is to the left of Joe Biden in terms of the political spectrum. So it turns out to be an opportunity. The Trump campaign, the Republican side, undoubtedly caught completely by surprise, not only at the development, they probably at least knew this was possible, but the way it happened, the speed with which Kamala Harris was simply more or less put to the forefront on the Democratic side, the fact that there was such a quick coalescence politically on the Democratic side, and the fact that, that means such great gains for the Democratic left.

Well, this just shows that Republicans, if Republicans are going to win, are going to have to lean into the issues and the issues should be to the conservative advantage, particularly the more Republicans can forefront the actual positions that were, for example, taken by Kamala Harris when she was running for the Democratic nomination in 2019 for the 2020 campaign. Trust me, there’s plenty of material there. That’s exactly where the Republicans should be going. Furthermore, even as the media is doing its best frankly to run a public relations campaign for the Democratic ticket, the fact is that all of that sound material is out there, all that video is out there, those arguments are out there, and Republicans need to be very, very clear in getting those arguments out before the American people, and confronting voters, especially in key battleground and swing states, with the real options, the real choice when it comes down to positions on the issues.

This is also where I’m going to make the argument, and I’m going to make it as strongly as I can, it would be not only to the Republican’s political advantage, it would be to the moral gain of the Republican ticket if the Republicans, and that means Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, would be far more clear on the issue of abortion, and the totality of the life issues. That’s a clear distinction with the Democratic Party. It’s the kind of distinction that I think not only should be made in political terms, but in moral terms. And so I think there’s an opportunity here. There’s certainly an opportunity to be very clear, and this would include LGBTQ issues, religious liberty issues, abortion, sanctity of human life issues, family protection, parental respect issues.

For example, who’s putting a microphone in front of the Vice President and saying, “Would you support legislation such as your friend, Governor Gavin Newsom, signed in California saying that parents don’t even have the right to know what gender identity their own children are presenting during the school day in the public schools? Would you support that kind of legislation?” Frankly, it’s hard to imagine how honestly she could say she would not. She needs to be forced to answer those questions, and that just underlines the fact that, by the way, the former President and the current Vice President, really need to face off in a debate, if not a series of debates. This would be to the advantage of a conservative candidate on these issues because the American people need to be exposed to exactly how radical many people on the left are, many in the leadership class of the Democratic Party are, and in particular where Kamala Harris is.

But of course, the big speculation right now is about the Vice Presidential choice, and here’s where things get interesting. The Harris campaign has basically acknowledged a limited set of individuals you could call finalists for the Vice Presidential choice. And the point is all of them are white men. Most of them are more politically moderate. I’m not going to use the word conservative. I’ll simply say on the spectrum, they are less further left, some of them on some issues, than the Vice President. But even as the media have been putting on the front page, when you look at the ones who were considered most likely, all three of them are either Governors or a sitting United States Senator. All three are white males, all are in key states, and all of them are considered to the right of Kamala Harris on so many issues.

But there are others on the list who are also known for being a bit more progressive, and again, I think the right word here is liberal on the political spectrum. So let’s put some meat to the bones and actually look at the individuals we’re talking about. Among the finalists, the three mentioned now most commonly would be Josh Shapiro, the Governor of Pennsylvania, Tim Walz, the Governor of Minnesota, Mark Kelly, U.S. Senator from Arizona, and also on the list J.D. Pritzker, the Governor of Illinois, Andy Beshear, the Governor of Kentucky, and Pete Buttigieg, the current Secretary of Transportation.

Of course, Buttigieg is also interesting because he is very well known as a man, who at least according to the current law, claims to be married to another man, and they’ve adopted two children, so openly gay. It’s really hard to imagine by the way that the Harris ticket could be a Harris-Buttigieg ticket. But nonetheless, there is evidently a real friendship between them, and there’s no doubt that this would play very well with at least some on the Democratic left. On the other hand, Pete Buttigieg has very little executive experience. We’re talking about someone whose only major responsibility other than being Secretary of Transportation was being the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana. That’s not traditionally the way to get to the second or first position on a national ticket. But as we’re talking about the others, Josh Shapiro, interestingly enough, is coming under fire because, as a Jewish Governor, he’s also very well known for his support of Israel. And frankly, the Democratic left includes many who are, to put it mildly, not supportive of Israel. They’re far more supportive of the Palestinian cause and in many cases they see Israel as an illegitimate genocidal nation.

Let’s just face the facts and naming Josh Shapiro to the ticket would be something that would relieve some voters, but it would really aggravate the left. And by the way, one of the things that Democrats live in fear of right now is that they will get to Chicago and experience once again, 1968, where you had the unrest, the riots, as a matter of fact, that came from the campuses right onto the streets of Chicago to the absolute humiliation of the Democratic Party. And just think of all of the demonstrations taking place on so many liberal campuses on behalf of the Palestinian cause, and just imagine that turning out outside, not to mention inside, where the Democratic National Convention is trying to meet. There are also personal issues here. It’s been very interesting to see how some long knives, politically speaking, have come out among prominent Democrats, including some in Pennsylvania against the Governor.

So, just a reminder that if you’re going to conduct this kind of search in public, and in one sense there’s very little way around that, then all the pluses and minuses are going to be a part of the national conversation. But Josh Shapiro is a very talented person. He’s also under fire, by the way, from labor unions, including the UAW, the United Auto Workers, opposed to him because he has at least at times spoken in favor of something like school choice, which is anathema to the teacher’s unions and don’t ever underestimate the power of the teacher’s unions when it comes to the Democratic Party. At one Democratic National Convention, it was estimated that one out of three of the persons there were either a member of one of the teacher’s unions or married to someone who was. So we’re talking about a very, very contentious issue among Democrats.

Something else to watch in the midst of all this is that you have the Governors, including J.D. Pritzker, who is one of the wealthiest persons ever to serve in American politics, he’s also one of the most radical on abortion. And even on the issue of abortion, as the Governor of Illinois, which is such a pro-abortion state, he has basically said openly he wants to move the Democratic Party and the nation far further left on the issue of abortion. So we are warned. We know where Kamala Harris is, she’s going to have to define herself a bit further, by the way, in the 2024 race, and we know where the Democratic Party is, but when it comes to J.B. Pritzker, you’re talking about the far left.

Similarly, when it comes to Andy Beshear, the Governor of the state of Kentucky, right here, I’m speaking to you from Kentucky, the Governor here is a Democrat in a sea of Republicans. This is a very red state, and you have Andy Beshear, the son of another Governor, former Governor, who is one of the most pro-abortion figures in American politics, certainly in context, and it’s been very interesting to see. He could be someone to whom Kamala Harris turns precisely because not a great deal is known about him in national politics. On the other hand, he doesn’t bring much in terms of electoral count, and it’s beyond imagination, frankly, that he could help Kamala Harris to carry the state of Kentucky.

The Democratic ticket in the state of Kentucky is probably going nowhere, even if Andy Beshear is on it. The other interesting angle on Beshear is that he has come out so assiduously not only for Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket, that was pretty much expected, but even more vociferously on abortion in such a way that it’s hard to imagine he has much of a political future in the state of Kentucky. So if he’s not running as Vice President, he’s probably in some sense running for a cabinet appointment in what would be a Kamala Harris administration, he hopes. This is something else that Christians need to understand as we’re looking at the political process, because it is often presented as if what you see is what you get. But in politics, as in so many other arenas of life, it’s not exactly what you see is what you get.

So a lot of the things that are said, a lot of the decisions that are made are not always said. The decisions are not always made the way we were told they were or for the reasons we were told they were. But as you’re looking at so many of these things, you recognize that the choice of a Vice Presidential candidate is right now extremely important for the Harris ticket, but she’s hoping it’s not important for long. Tim Walz, very liberal, more Midwest liberal character when it comes to the Governor of Minnesota. He clearly wants the job. That’s another thing that’s interesting. It is unlikely he would be at the top of the ticket. It looks like he might be open to something of a promotion from Governor of Minnesota to being Vice President of the United States. It is also just interesting to see he and Shapiro and, frankly, Beshear, those three at least are quite open in the fact they really want this Vice Presidential slot.

In worldview terms, something else I would like us to think about is the fact that, if indeed Kamala Harris chooses someone like say a Josh Shapiro, who’s presented as something of a moderate in the Democratic Party, or a Mark Kelly, U.S. Senator from Arizona, who’s also presented as something of a moderate in terms of the context of the Democratic Party, is going to be presented as a balancing of the ticket in the way that it will be said that Joe Biden, who was more moderate than Kamala Harris, at least the way the Democrats would count it again on issues like abortion and in actual legislation, Joe Biden just caved to the left, but it was anticipated at the time in the 2020 context, that he needed someone more liberal than himself on the ticket.

But the thing to remember is that the Vice President has very little influence in terms of an administration, usually. There have been exceptions, but the exceptions are historically rare. And so anyone who thinks that Kamala Harris is likely to have an administration, if elected, more conservative because of the Vice President, frankly, that is something that’s not only not sustained by history, it is something that’s politically almost irrational, not going to happen. We also might notice the way this is playing out in both the media and in social media in such a way that even right now there are people who are trying to influence Kamala Harris in terms of her choice. That explains the appearance of something like an article that appeared yesterday in the New York Times and then was updated even later, updated as recently as 10 o’clock last night. The headline was “Harris Faces Party Divisions As She Chooses A Running Mate.”

Now, this is, on the one hand, an example of pretty up-to-date political reporting. On the other hand, it is actually a way of trying to influence the process itself, and it’s also one of the ways that politicians, in the context of making a decision like this or trying to influence a decision like this, speak to each other. That is to say they don’t pick up the phone and talk to each other. That’s not so common. Instead, they tell it to the New York Times, knowing that the other person’s going to read it.

Part II

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The Prisoner Swap was Not an Equivalent Moral Transaction: The Massive Issues Behind the Hostage Game Being Played by the Biden Administration

But all right, in worldview analysis, I just have to talk about the so-called “prisoner exchange” that took place between an alliance of several nations led by the United States on the one hand and Russia on the other hand, and I want to tell you that I think this is an extremely dangerous development, and that’s a consistent argument I will make over time.

I said that last year when the Biden administration made a deal with Iran, and they said it wasn’t a deal, but, of course, it was a deal. It meant unfreezing more than $1 billion of Iranian assets in order to free some particular captives. But when in the case of Russia, and this exchange comes on just a matter of days ago, you have the Biden administration saying, “Look, we came out ahead. We got 16 people, and they got only eight,” yes, but it is morally nowhere near equivalent. We need to understand that what has happened here is that the Biden administration, and by the way, this isn’t the first administration to be involved in this kind of deal, just remember, Iran-Contra, Ronald Reagan, even Donald Trump to some extent, but this is a particular pattern in the Biden administration, and it has appeared to concern some of the people even in the President’s own party, and in the National Security Service.

We are really looking at a very dangerous development. What is the danger? The Biden administration and others who follow this kind of policy have created what in economics is called a perverse incentive. In other words, you have now made it profitable for other nations to illegitimately take us citizens or persons of U.S. interests, and hold them hostage because they want something out of it. For the Iranians, it was more than $1 billion of reserves that the U.S. had bought. When it comes to Vladimir Putin in Russia, what he wanted was people, and he got eight people. And the thing to note is that one of them, Vadim Krasikov, was being held by Germany precisely because he was found guilty of carrying out a Russian intelligence ordered assassination of a Chechen figure on German soil. And so we’re talking about someone who was basically a hit man for the Russian intelligence services, and Vladimir Putin wanted him back.

Now, never forget that Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent, even at the very time that the Soviet Union was falling apart, when the Berlin Wall came down. He was a KGB operative in Dresden, Germany. And when it comes to the SVR, that’s the current representation of what used to be the KGB, Vladimir Putin is very assertive, very protective, very territorial. And let’s face it, they took hostages in order to hold those hostages until they could get persons they wanted released, freed. And part of that is because there’s huge political pressure in the West, no doubt, political pressure in the United States, and in particular political pressure because of Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, who was taken about 15 months ago and clearly was innocent of any crime. There was not even the pretense of believing that he was really guilty of any crime. He was nonetheless convicted in a sham trial.

And so I want to be clear, the Wall Street Journal, American diplomats, Evan Gershkovich’s family, they had every reason to contend for his release and, frankly, to put political pressure on the American government to bring about that release, if at all possible. But if at all possible doesn’t mean by any means necessary, particularly since what we now have is a precedent set by the Biden administration as a matter of policy, and frankly right out in the open that puts in danger Americans in many places in the world who could now be taken to be used as pawns in the perverse incentive of this hostage game. And so even as you’re looking at the Biden administration celebrating the release of these figures, and by the way, again, 16 of the persons released from Russia and eight went back to Russia, but it is not the same thing.

We are talking about hardened criminals. Not only a paid assassin who was an agent of the Russian government carrying out a murder in Germany, but also in the eight that went back to Russia were two so-called illegals. This is a couple who were married and have been living double lives. It’s very much like The Americans, the series that was quite popular in the United States. Illegals are intelligence agents who were dropped into a foreign country and they’re there illegally, not under the pretense of some kind of diplomatic posting. Instead, they go incognito. Again, going back to The Americans, it was based upon actual arrests made in 2010 when American authorities disclosed a ring of sleeper agents across the United States, also known as illegals because they’re here illegally. And nonetheless, they were exposed, and this led to the very popular TV series.

But truth is stranger than fiction. We’re talking here about a Russian couple in Slovenia, both of them with entirely recreated false identities, including one of them coming from South America turns out using the birth certificate of a baby who had died. And so this is something that certainly over the years has been a Russian pattern. It was a Soviet pattern before that. But Vladimir Putin wanted those two back. They had been caught, and like so many of the spies who were embedded in this way, they were nonetheless caught precisely because their story became less and less plausible. Fewer of them were caught in, say, being in a surprise way, caught red-handed in espionage. More of them were caught because their story fell apart, and eventually observation was able to come up with enough incriminating evidence for U.S. authorities to take action against them.

In the case of the couple known as Anna Doltseva and Artem Doltsev, it was Slovenian authorities who ended up taking the action and U.S. pressure was put on them to release this couple convicted of being, again, a sleeper cell there in Slovenia serving on behalf of Russian spy agencies. They were released and they went back. Now, just in the human dimension of this, it’s just so hard to even detach for a moment from the great moral worldview questions that swirl around this. For one thing, just the very idea of living a double life, of being involved in espionage, as someone who was working for the Russian Intelligence service, it’s just a massive issue with moral dimensionality everywhere you look.

You had the neighbors who believed they were one thing, but then became suspicious. But then you also had the fact that the woman was supposedly running an art gallery, but it claimed a business loss, and the man was supposedly running a tech startup, but it reported income of just a few thousand dollars. Meanwhile, their two children were attending a British prep school there in Slovenia, where the cost of tuition was $10,000 per child per year. Or to put it another way, you give their lifestyle, where they were living, where the children are going to school, it all didn’t add up.

Part III

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Spycraft, Espionage, and Russia: The KGB Didn’t Go Away, It Just Changed Its Initials

But before leaving this, we have to look at the human dimension because here we’re talking about an intelligence service assassin. Vladimir Putin is claiming a morality of loyalty to the man to bring him back.

Now, again, everybody’s claiming some kind of moral cause. The question is, what kind of morality is it? Is it any kind of morality based in authentic moral standards, or is it just based in, say, the code of crime and the loyalty of criminals to one another? And then you also look at the human dimension of the fact that this Russian couple serving as embedded spies in Slovenia had two children, the two children who went to the expensive school. It turns out that they had no idea whatsoever that their parents were actually Russian, much less that they were Russian spies. Intense reporting from the Wall Street Journal, weeks ago, by the way, and the New York Times over the weekend, indicated that the children were told at some point that their parents might be snatched, and they had some plan for how they were to respond, but were also told they knew nothing of the Russian background of their mother and father.

That’s plausible, by the way, because if the children had been interrogated, it would be to the advantage of the parents and the intelligence agency that they not know anything. But the fact is that to great fan fare, even as you had some of the released hostages who arrived at Andrews Air Force Base and were greeted by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, you had Russian President Vladimir Putin do something he’s virtually never done before, and that is go to the airport outside of Moscow to welcome some of those who were freed, including the assassin and the two embedded spies, the sleeper cell unit. At the human level, it was very interesting to see just on the available video clips the two children, who we are told, not only did not know that their parents were Russian, but also know nothing of the Russian language. So it’s going to be very, very interesting.

By the way, just as thinking about the loyalty of criminals together, it was very interesting that Vladimir Putin said that they would all, and this speaks inclusive of the released assassin and the sleeper cell spies, they would all be receiving state awards. That’s just the way it works. Oh, one final thought about all of this. It has been a matter of speculation among western diplomatic intelligence agencies, also national defense agencies, it has been an open question as to how effective these sleeper cell units have been, even as a part of Soviet and now Russian strategy. Just how effective are they? And at least many in the government establishments have come out in recent days to say, frankly, we still don’t know how effective they were or how damaging they were to Western interests.

But I would just say that as you look at this and you even look at developments just over the last week or so, it should be clear that this is a very intensive process. It means taking young people at very early ages and teaching them how to accomplish the skills necessary to be one of these sleeper cells. You also have a young man and a young woman in most of these cases who marry one another simply because of a part of their vocation that requires it, and you look at the deep cover and all the rest, having the children, and then you have to ask the question, if this were not serving a national interest, why in the world would the Soviets in the past and the Russians now be doing this? If it were not to their advantage, they wouldn’t be doing it.

One last thought. When it comes to spy craft, espionage, the Soviet Union, now Russia, and all the rest, evidently the KGB, as many in the Western predicted, didn’t go away. It changed its initials, but little else. That’s also a lesson about how a fallen world works.