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November 2020: First- and Second-Order Effects
Actions have consequences. Sometimes the consequences are immediate, the direct result of a primary cause. Those are the easiest consequences to anticipate. Sometimes the consequences occur much later, part of a rippling wave of alternating effects and causes that grows ever more tenuous as it recedes from the initiating event. Occasionally it works the other way around: a seemingly minor action initiates a chain of events that grows inexorably toward a dramatic conclusion, a product of positive feedback. These are relatively rare, almost always unanticipated, and occasionally catastrophic.
In November we will either re-elect the Republican candidate or we will elect the Democratic candidate and, perhaps more importantly, his running mate. It’s plausible to assume that, following the election, the Senate will be in the hands of whichever party wins the White House. The House of Representatives, currently under Democratic control, is likely to remain under Democratic control barring some unforeseen groundswell of Republican turnout.
Because we’ve had four years with this President in the White House, we can make a prediction about the immediate effects of his re-election based on his past performance. Let’s consider what those immediate effects are, and are not, likely to be.
First-Order Effects of a Republican Win
It is likely that the President will continue to pursue his most distinctive and consistent policy objectives. These include a strong deregulatory push within the federal agencies, the appointment of hundreds of Constitutionally strong judges, an avoidance of military action abroad combined with support for American military strength, and a generally pro-business, pro-energy domestic agenda. We can also expect him to remain verbally combative with China, to renew his push for increased US manufacturing, and to continue to reduce the push for cultural transformation (e.g., “guidance” documents regarding gender and identity issues) by our federal agencies.
If past performance is an indicator, the business community will respond well to the President’s policies, and employment and wages will both benefit.
A Republican victory will almost certainly have an immediate effect on the radical, activist left, and be met with widespread public protests, rioting, and generally extreme and bad behavior. Most normal people, Republican and Democrat, are likely to find that off-putting, particularly coming as it will on the heels of months of BLM and Antifa violence and disruption.
Those are the likely immediate, first-order results of a Republican win. Suppose the Democrats win the White House and in the process secure control of most or all of the legislative branch?
First-Order Effects of a Democratic Win
The Democratic party is currently being driven by its loudest and most extreme elements. Within the Congress, Ocasio-Cortez and like-minded hard-left radicals have cowed even time-tested Speaker Pelosi, and her crackpot socialist scheme – the Green New Deal – has been endorsed by essentially every elected official in their party. Radical environmentalism, identity politics, calls for reparations for ancient injustice, calls to eliminate normal law enforcement, such madness is now the stock in trade for Congressional Democrats. Proposals to pack the Supreme Court, cancel the electoral college, institute nation-wide mail-in voting, and convert D.C. into a de facto 51st Democrat state are routine. From “hate speech” regulation to nationalized industry to the destruction of national landmarks to the near-term elimination of fossil fuels, there is essentially nothing that isn’t too absurd to earn the endorsement of prominent Democratic leaders.
It’s impossible to know how much of their lunacy the left will be able to implement in four or, more likely, eight years. We can assume the immediate revocation of the legislative filibuster, giving the Congress fast-track legislative power with no hope of a Republican veto. It’s likely that efforts to root out corruption in the Department of Justice will immediately end, and in fact reverse. We can expect a newly weaponized federal government, as we experienced the last time Biden was in office. We can expect an end to any effort to rein in tech giant bias. It’s entirely plausible that they will achieve sufficient structural changes to extend Democrat governance indefinitely.
The immediate, short-term effects on the Republicans of a Democratic win aren’t too hard to guess. Conservatives don’t generally riot and are more likely to hunker down and buy ammunition: gun sales will increase, until new regulatory burdens put an end to that. Businesses will do what they did during the Obama years, when regulatory uncertainty stalled expansion and left them sitting on piles of money as the labor market slowly stagnated. Various factions in the Republican party will argue about what went wrong. There will be an enormous amount of resentment directed at Republicans who opposed their party’s candidate; the inevitable told-you-so response from the anti-Trump Republicans will do nothing to heal a growing schism.
Second-Order Effects
What will the second-order, long-term effects be on either party if the other party wins? We don’t know. For the Republican party, it could be a thoughtful self-examination in which rabidly opposed pro- and anti-Trump elements come together for peaceful reconciliation and a united rediscovery of core conservative virtues. But I kid: human nature suggests that isn’t going to happen. Far more likely will be a divisive period of resentment and recrimination, of Trump enthusiasts walking away from a party that they suspect betrayed them, and of more mainstream Republicans trying to figure out how to regain popular support while simultaneously rejecting the Trumpian populism which cobbled together the winning coalition in 2016 – a coalition that dies when traditional Republicans reassert themselves.
During that interval of internecine Republican squabbling, the Democrats will accelerate their march through the ultimate institution, the federal government itself.
For the Democrats, a Republican win seems unlikely to have much of an effect. The Democrats doubled down on progressive madness following the 2016 loss, and seems blind to the possibility that current radicalism works against the left’s interests in that it alienates many Americans. The party seems to be firmly in the grip of its most radical young activists, and four more years of Trump as nemesis seems unlikely to temper that. The Democrats seem inexorably bound to progressive extremism, and it’s hard to see how either victory or defeat will reintroduce sanity into a party so cowed by identity politics and progressive madness.
And finally, will a Republican victory somehow spell the end of the Republican party? Will a second Trump term so shift the Republican and conservative understanding of itself that it comes out unrecognizable? That seems unlikely. Trump is a sport, a mutation or one-off unlike anything before or, likely, since. Most of us know that. He isn’t an intellectual or ideological force that is likely to leave a deep impression on his party. He’s the man of the moment, not the model of the future.
Conclusion
A Democratic win in November is likely to be catastrophic in the short term, and plausibly runs the risk of bringing about structural changes that effective preclude the possibility of Republican wins in the foreseeable future. It’s hard to overstate the very real danger of a Democratic win in November, given the prominence of the most radical factions within the Democratic party today and the fecklessness of more conventional Democrats whom we might hope would create a moderating effect.
There is no compelling reason to believe that there is a long-term advantage to a Republican loss. The thought of a Republican party rising phoenix-like from the ashes of a horribly divisive defeat and growing sufficiently strong to combat a hyper-radical progressive juggernaut bent on transforming every remaining institution and the very nature of the electoral process itself seems unrealistic.
So let’s not be stupid.
Trump2020
Published in Elections
That’s it. Not more/less complicated than that. All of it.
If Trump wins, he becomes a lame-duck the day after the election. At that time the 2024 hopefuls will start raising their profiles. The candidates that emerge will be a counter-reaction to the Leftist reaction to the Trump win. Assuming the Left is violent and destructive, Cotton and Hawley will rise up. If the Left is agreeable and cooperative, then a Nikki Halley will rise up. However, I don’t think the Left will be less radical for a long time.
In you first order effects of a Dem win, you left out that the new President’s policy lead for 2A issues and firearms policy will be Beta O’Rourke. Bad Juju.
Good roll up.
Nice effort. But.
Second Order effect of a Dem Win: nationalization of our critical industries, implosion of the economy, imposition of a worthless national guaranteed income and then a full scale dissolution of our liberties by a High Tech Police State, combined with massive corruption, massive pervasive persecution of we the undesirable Kulaks and the elevation of a new Deep State/High Aristocracy. Third Order Effect: Civil War? Or perhaps a War with China out to destroy a crippled America? Or more crippling Wuhan BioWeapons unleashed to finish us off?
I think those are actually likely first-order effects. But I figured the post was already long enough.
@henryracette
There is no question in my mind that the first and second order effects of the November 2020 election will closely resemble what is described in your post here.
Biden will select judicial nominees who believe in a “living constitution,” which really means making the constitution the ventriloquist’s dummy for the Leftist agenda. Trump will, as he has already, select judicial nominees pre-screened by the Federalist Society.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the second order economic effects of the shutdown did weaken one of Trump’s arguments for re-election: that his economic policies, including tax cuts and de-regulation, resulted in a prosperous economy.
“Peace and prosperity” was likely to be the Trump campaign slogan for 2020. Instead Trump finds himself cast as a “war” president.” Instead of waging war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan,, Trump is engaged in a war against Covid-19 and the economic impact of the pandemic. Also, the post-George Floyd environment has created opportunity and challenges for Trump’s campaign.
In my opinion, the more interesting question is whether the Trump campaign, for the past 6 months, has conducted itself in such a way as to position itself for victory.
My sense is that Biden has so far been able to fool the voters into thinking that electing him would result in a “return to normalcy,” a variant of George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, in the aftermath of the Clinton-Lewinsky episode, which promised to bring “honor and dignity to the White House.”
If the American voters, especially the swing voters who actually decide elections, really do want a President who does not get into arguments with NASCAR drivers, does not defend the Confederate flag and does not get into disputes over whether MSNBC host Joe Scarborough killed one of his aides in the 1990s, then Trump is unlikely to be re-elected. Biden is hiding his Leftism in plain sight. And given the swing voters’ antipathy to Trump, swing voters might be willing to gamble with Leftism in order give Trump the boot.
As I see it, the key to victory for Trump is to be on good behavior for the remainder of the campaign. This isn’t “decorum conservatism” for its own sake. This would a campaign strategy to win back the suburban women who bailed on the GOP in 2018.
I’ll do a Dem win (Trump victory is unlikely).
First-order effects:
The riots stop immediately post-election.
Covid goes away. Sure it will still spread and people will still die, but it will vanish from the news. The most draconian restrictions will be lifted and normality will mostly resume. This will also happen immediately post-election.
The Dems, upon taking office, will unleash a fire hose of cash onto their constituencies. That’s the first thing they did in 2009 with their stimulus package. It will be sold as Covid relief. I think the cities, reeling from Covid and riots, will be bailed out in a big way. The Dems depend very much on those urban political machines for power.
The Dems will pass a massive immigration amnesty. 10 to 20 million people with a rapid track to citizenship along with massively increased legal immigration. This, more than anything else, will cement their majority party status for at least a generation.
The Dems will pass immigration reform and their Covid relief package with plenty of Republican support. Further legislation will face the filibuster. I think we don’t see full filibuster repeal, but rather some sort of “filibuster reform.” Dem leadership will want plausible deniability to avoid meeting the more destructive demands of their base.
Health care reform is coming, probably Obamacare 2. I think there will be a public option and a big Medicaid expansion. There will be lots of cost controls imposed on hospitals and providers.
I predict a $15 minimum wage.
Student loan relief along with future tuition subsidies. This pays off the universities, which are a major propaganda arm for the left, but also appeases the restive young underemployed lumpen-intelligentsia causing so much trouble right now.
I don’t know about taxes. Tax bills take time and the wealthy and the professional upper middle class are now largely Dem constituencies. They’ll definitely lift the SALT cap. Maybe a VAT tax? The question is how to raise cash without hammering their donors.
I could go on but I’m out of space.
I suspect you don’t fully understand who and what the rioters are.
Enlighten me.
I wouldn’t be to sure about that. I think it will be like the riots in Paris when France won the World Cup. Maybe there’ll be fewer individuals showing up but the hardcore anarchist doesn’t care who’s in the White House. If anything it will embolden them.
The riots in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland happened while Obama was President. So, I agree. The riots won’t necessarily end if Biden wins.
I don’t think we know, yet, upon what the 2020 election will turn. It could be, as suggested above, based on the desire for normalcy that Biden seems to provide — if electing an always foolish and now senile, yet strangely affable, old crook is in any sense “normal.” But if the riots and chaos are identified with the left (as they should be), and if the economy rebounds in the next couple of months (as it might), then I can easily imagine support for Trump climbing.
I remain cautiously optimistic.