The Reversal and the Prediction

As you presumably are aware the United States Supreme Court has reversed the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court barring Donald Trump from that state’s Republican primary. Frequent commenter PD Shaw’s prediction of that outcome was materially correct. The decision was reversed and it was reversed on the grounds that the provision of the 14th Amendment is not self-enforcing.

The decision also satisfied my aspiration in that the justices agreed unanimously in the reversal (although there were differences of opinion in other respects). The big news is that it was 9-0. Although it should I doubt that will deter those who disagree with this decision from condemning it.

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Joe Biden and Swing Voters

I want to call attention to Nate Silver’s most recent comments about Joe Biden’s polling data:

Democrats usually assume that they win elections though turnout rather than persuasion. It’s not a crazy proportion, by any means. But it looks like a losing approach for 2024.

Read the whole thing. You may find it interesting.

IMO Joe Biden’s problem is not only that the media has become more partisan but that Americans, generally, are becoming increasingly disenchanted with both political parties. Maybe securing an ever-higher percentage of a decreasing percentage of the population is a winning formula but I doubt it.

And maybe that’s one of the risks of both of our political parties becoming gerontocracies (rule by the old). Their reflexes are off. They may have worked 30 years ago but maybe not so well today.

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What Should We Think About the Dropping of Aid in Gaza?

I’m of sharply mixed mind about our air-dropping aid to Gaza. On the one hand I think our motives are good. However, I’m concerned that it’s a kneejerk response that hasn’t been thought out very well.

There are many factors behind that reaction. For one thing I think that either the Israelis have erred in their tactics in Gaza or it is their intention to remove or exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza, neither of which is morally defensible. What they’ve done was not the only approach to accomplishing their stated goals that was available to them.

For another thing I can see no moral justification for entering into Israel’s war against Hamas on Hamas’s side and there is danger of our doing that. A state that provides medical and/or material support for a belligerent “indiscriminantly”, to use the phrase being applied to Israel’s bombing of Gaza, is in a sort of gray area of the laws of war. Again, I think we’re well-intentioned but not particularly thoughtful.

One of the things that concerns me about the aid we’re providing to the Gazans it that I’m afraid that President Biden is trying to make a course correction. He was too supportive of Israel at the outset of the war and he may be too supportive of the Gazans now. As is not uncommon it’s harder to correct mistakes after they’ve been made than not to make them in the first place.

So, what should we think?

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One Day

Last week there was one day in which no one was shot in Chicago: February 28. It’s the first such day I can recall.

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A Two-State Solution for Israel Won’t Be Liberating

I really, truly try to avoid sticking my nose into other countries’ political squabbles but sometimes I just can’t resist. So here it is. I won’t talk about it a lot.

I think what’s referred to as a “two-state solution” for Israel and Palestine is nonsense. IMO there is no solution to the problem between the Israelis and the Palestinians. A “one-state solution” in which Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are all incorporated into Israel is neither just nor sustainable. Why? Simple—the number of Muslim Arabs would be greater than the number of Jewish Israelis. If the Muslim Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank get the vote, Israel would quickly cease being a Jewish homeland, liberal, or democratic. If Muslim Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank do not get the vote, Israel would cease being liberal and democratic by definition.

To understand why the “two-state solution” is nonsense just consider the situation of Gaza over the last couple of decades. There has been a de facto two-state solution in place over that period. Have the people of Gaza flourished economically, politically, or socially? No. Gaza has been an incubator for Islamist extremism. Why would a de jure two-state solution be any different? I don’t see it.

I think the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is what’s called a “wicked problem” but it’s not our wicked problem. We need to be a little less full-throated in our support for Israel than we have been.

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Pick One

I wanted to make one point about the development of which James Joyner took note the other day: the change in guidelines on COVID by the Centers for Disease Control, e.g. “treating it like the flu”.

Here’s my comment. The CDC can either be professional and technocratic or political not both. The latter inevitably undermines the credibility of the former.

That’s one of my objections to technocracy. Everybody has preferences even experts. Stepping beyond one’s expertise into one’s preferences is inevitable. My other objection to technocracy is that in practice it means rule of everything and everybody by one group of experts which isn’t technocracy at all. It’s plain old oligarchy and, if the oligarchs pass their status on to their kids, aristocracy.

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Are There Too Many Chicago Police Officers?

I don’t usually butt my nose into other cities’ and states’ problems but I found this editorial from the Pittsburg Post-Gazette thought-provoking. It’s notionally a lament about the paucity of police officers in Pittsburg:

Last March, the Post-Gazette Editorial Board revealed that “the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police faces a staffing crisis unprecedented in its modern history.” Nearly a year later, that crisis has only deepened — at an even faster pace than predicted.

On the night of Monday, Feb. 26, the Editorial Board has learned, only 14 officers patrolled this city of 300,000 people.

How does that compare with other cities?

At 743 officers for about 302,000 people, there’s one cop for each 408 Pittsburghers. Compare that to benchmarks Baltimore (271 people per officer), Cleveland (308), St. Louis (322) or Cincinnati (344). The idea the Pittsburgh Police are overstaffed — peddled by last year’s controversial Matrix Consulting Group staffing study — is absurd.

Chicago has one police officer for every 227 Chicagoans. But that brings us to the actual subject of the editorial. It’s actually a complaint about the consultant’s report:

When the Matrix study was released, both Mr. Scirotto and Mr. Gainey praised the document while distancing themselves from its most eye-popping recommendation: taking one-third of patrol officers off the streets. But they’ve done just that, and more. In fact, many of the changes to the bureau announced last week come directly from the study.

The Post-Gazette Editorial Board reported exclusively that members of the Gainey administration had lied as part of securing a no-bid contract for Matrix. Further, the consultants only visited Pittsburgh once in compiling the study, whose recommendations are nearly identical to other studies completed by the firm. It’s a cookie-cutter, slapdash document.

But it’s quietly determining the future of policing in Pittsburgh, even though those in charge won’t admit it.

and the city officials embracing it.

I have no idea how many police officers Pittsburg should have. Or Chicago for that matter. I do know that at 11,900 police officers Chicago was unable to dispatch police officers to more than half of the 911 calls deemed to require police intervention. And that arrests were only made in a fraction of those.

Although I’m sure there is some number of police officers, population of the jurisdiction, and geographical size of the jurisdiction below which there is a direct relationship among number of police officers, crime, and civil order but I’m skeptical there is any general relationship. There is definitely no straight line relationship among those things.

At least in Chicago I don’t believe that compensation has much to do with staffing problems for the CPD. As I’ve said before I think that the cops on the beat, the CPD, City Hall, the Cook County District Attorney, and the members of the judiciary need to be aligned better in their commitment to law enforcement. What impedes hiring police officers is widespread discontent. When police officers aren’t respected by City Hall, the Cook County DA, or the judiciary and when arrests are made they rarely come to trial and even when they do come to trial they rarely result in convictions, what’s the use?

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Why Are European Leaders Behaving the Way They Are?

After recounting what European leaders have been doing, Thomas Fazi gives his answer to the title’s question at UnHerd:

I see three options, all equally alarming.

The first is that European leaders have started to believe their own propaganda and are truly convinced Russia is bent on attacking Europe. If this is the case, it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy: Putin would view an increase in defence spending as a sign of a growing threat. The second explanation is that Europe’s leaders know that Russia is unlikely to invade, but are raising this phantom threat to justify the continuation of the proxy war in Ukraine, as part of a wider strategy aimed at containing the Russo-Chinese challenge to the US-centric system. The third possibility is that the continent’s leaders have simply gone bonkers and are deliberately trying to precipitate a war with Russia, for reasons unfathomable to sane-minded people.

I think it’s a combination of his first and second explanations but it’s the first that should concern us. I don’t believe that Russia is preparing to invade Poland but I do think it could be pushed to doing so. The typical “look what you made me do” explanation is disheartening.

I don’t believe that Russia has no agency but do believe that we have agency, too.

I think the sole moral reason to support Ukraine is for the Ukrainian people. Consistent with that I think that if the U. S. objective was to hurt Russia and the Russian economy, that was immoral because it was treating people (the Ukrainians) as means rather than as ends. Note also that objective has flopped. The other possible objective, to sunder the growing ties between Russia and Germany, has been a resounding success. Whether it will stick or not as the costs to Germans increase as they will I can’t tell you.

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The Story of the Day

The story of the day, of course, is Mitch McConnell’s announcement that he’d be leaving his Republican leadership position including resigning as Senate Minority leader.

I try to avoid getting involved in party politics or partisan squabbles. I’m more interested in policy. McConnell has played a relatively weak hand pretty well in the Senate but I think his record on policy is mixed and that’s because the establishment Republican record on policy is mixed. As I’ve said before at this point the only thing I’m sure Republicans can agree on is that marginal tax rates should be cut. And that Democrats are bad, of course.

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The “Strategic Moment”

George Friedman writes about “Europe’s strategic moment”. This is the passage that caught my eye:

The wars on Russia prosecuted by Napoleon and Hitler were foiled by the great distances the invaders had to travel to reach Moscow – and by no small amount of Russian blood. That distance exhausted the attackers, breaking them by the time they reached the Russian heartland. The events of 2022 to me were no different: The war was intended to put more miles between Moscow and the West, especially NATO. Russia’s suspicion owes to the Maidan uprising in Ukraine in 2014, which toppled a pro-Russian leader and installed a pro-Western government and for which Moscow believes Washington was responsible.

In my opinion, America’s intentions were not to launch an eventual invasion of Russia, though it did have a small interest in limiting Russian influence. Russian intelligence is competent, and it is unlikely that the Kremlin received reports of American invasion plans ahead of the war in Ukraine. But in statecraft, intention is simply the quacking of ducks. Intentions can change in minutes. What Russia paid more heed to was capabilities. Whatever their intentions, the U.S. and NATO were in no position to invade Russia. Yet Russia feared that their intentions could change, as could their capabilities. A war should begin when the enemy has no intention to fight and has limited capability.

This calculation led Russia to invade Ukraine and thus acquire a vast buffer against American incursion if the U.S. changed its stance.

I think that’s a mixture of the actual thinking and imagination or, more accurately, lack of imagination. I agree that Russia seeks a buffer between itself and its neighbors. That’s rooted in Russia’s historical experience going all the way back to the 13th century. Russia has few natural boundaries other than “great distances”. What I think is being neglected is the interests of Russia’s neighbors. All of Russia’s neighbors have border disputes with Russia. Poland’s pre-1772 borders have been a political issue for the Poles for 250 years, cf. the Polish-Soviet War. It might well be the case that the U. S. has no plans to invade Russia but our NATO allies would very much like to whittle away at Russia to reduce its power and influence. Could we be drawn into such a conflict? Note that I’m not justifying Russia’s attack on Ukraine. I’m just pointing out that it’s not entirely baseless.

I don’t think that any consideration of “Europe’s strategic moment” is complete without considering the recent statements by the presidents of France and Slovakia about the need for NATO troops to enter the war in Ukraine. Here are France’s military expenditures as a percentage of GDP since 1960:

Do you see a ramping up of France’s military spending in reaction to the war in Ukraine? If there is any it has been slight. That pushes me to the conclusion that France and Slovakia are playing a very dangerous game, namely “Let’s You and Him Fight”. Do they actually have any intention of sending their own troops to fight in Ukraine? What’s holding them back? Or do they want the United States to be an active belligerent in the war between Russia and Ukraine?

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