Like 1980, the economy might decide a pivotal election
Word is that President Joe Biden has tried to meet with the (un)Crowned-Prince and butcher of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salam. Biden wants to ask the prince (and coup engineer) if he would please raise oil production given the worldwide oil shortage until Vladimir Putin's upcoming defeat in Ukraine.
A refresher on this "Crown Prince and Pretender": he's the management-level murderer of American Journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Due to the Pretender's Putinesque style of homicidal-maniac leadership, and penchant for ordering bodies dismembered (before? and) after death, he's also known by his initials, MBS, aka Mr. Bone Saw. Former (and never-again) President Donald Trump just loves him to death, exactly as he loves Master Vlad Putin, Kim Jung-un, and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Note that Trump has a soft place where his heart should be for real-life supervillains. He's even proud of exchanging love letters with Kim.
Trump and Salam have a few things in common: they were both born into wealth. They're both spoiled beyond-rotten and into sociopathy by inherited wealth. Both love power, only Salam has reached the apex of ruthlessness about it. Believe me, Trump takes notes on how to dictator from those at the top of their game, only he then tears the notes up before he reviews them, due to his perfect memory.
MBS, however, isn't so taken with current President Biden, who objected to MBS's bone-saw murder when it happen. So the Not-King of Saudi Arabia has put conditions on even meeting with Biden. Those would start with scrapping any future deal with Iran, and more support for MSB's own incursion into Yemen. (Yes, that's still a thing.)
Bone Saw is just doing his best to get his knife into Biden. It's entirely in MBS's economic interests to keep the choke on the oil suppy. Any concession Biden gets is bound to be meager, even at a high moral price, but he won't get one.
In all fairness, if Trump were a coup recipient now, I can't see MBS cutting him a significant break on oil supply, either. He might send Trump a quart of oil and a few pennies by UPS, but that would be it. Of all people, Trump understands gratuitous economic self-interest, having been known, in his casino heyday, for his solid gold toilet seats. He has no objection to bloated avarice as long as it isn't at his own expense. He would just claim higher oil prices are good for the economy. He'll say something like, "Look at how Texas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota are booming!" He'll then switch the subject to toilet flushes (he was fond of those toilet seats). Higher oil prices benefit only people of Trump's class, and a few workers getting petro-poisoned for their wages. President Biden can't spin that direction. No Democratic president can.
Given that MBS wants Trump back in office, he's well aware of how Americans historically have blamed incumbent presidents for oligopoly-price gouging like OPEC's. A president can't do anything about it. He's sending Biden a screw with the instructions on how to use it.
This bodes very badly both for the US economy and Joe Biden's reelection. People will often note that energy and food prices aren't counted in the "core inflation figures" the press always quotes from the government. Never mind it's only one measure of inflation the government reports. Volatility in those categories is often cited as the reason the government leaves those two categories out.
Yet, there is another important reason: surging prices in those two categories will jack up prices of everything else. Every industry needs to cover its energy costs, and every person working in those industries must be paid enough to afford food. Energy is needed to produce and deliver that food; therefore, of course those two commodities - and more so for energy - are going to pull all other prices up.
I'm thinking that the presidential election in 2024 is going to be watershed decision, even if Trump is taken out of the picture. (The 14th Amendment threatens him, and the fact that he could be indicted and jailed by then. I know, I could only wish.) The shape of this economy reminds me of a pivotal election I witnessed: that of 1980.
We had a choice between the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Carter was a good man, was incredibly intelligent, and foresaw our ecological and energy crises. He has since founded Habitat for Humanity and has worked hands-on to help the poor.
Unfortunately, Carter also had horrendously bad luck. The late decade oil shortages* caused by OPEC flexing its muscle; an economy in "stagflation" with 14% inflation that Federal Reserve Chair - Paul Volcker - was kicking the living shit out of it with 21% interest rates while we felt the pain. Let's not forget Iran Hostage Crisis that dragged on for more than a year. Oh, and the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. War hawks thought Carter should fight the Soviets there. (Can you imagine? American soldiers fighting in the “graveyard of empires”?)
I can write a whole other article about that election and likely will. For now I'll just say three angry backlashes had built-up against Democrats by 1980: the loss of Vietnam, the disgrace of Watergate, and the rebellion against taxation. Republicans were just as or more responsible for all them, yet Democrats were given the bill. All three of those events continue to affect our politics to this day.
As everyone knows, Americans chose Reagan. Without Reagan, there would've been no George H. W. Bush, no George W. Bush, no Trump, presidencies. I contend there also would've been no 9/11, as Bush was treating the presidency like a retirement. The country was given the choice between a president with flexible policies and prescience about our future energy dilemmas, and who had good plans to address them. If we had started then, it would've had an effect on Climate Change now. Reagan was a president whose entire domestic policy revolved cutting taxes on the wealthy and undercutting government agencies. His hawkish, strutting foreign policy brought us to the edge of Nuclear War more than once.
The US threw away its ideals for cynicism and greed. At the time, liberals could see that the Republican Party had set its path toward authoritarianism that Trump embodies so explicitly. I thought if Reagan turned out to be that bad, we could always vote him out in 1984. Little did I know how much he would change the political culture, and how he gave careers and credibility to Right Wing fringies such as Patrick Buchanan, Alexander Haig, and Oliver North, who would in their turn take the GOP further to the right.
We're approaching a crossroads again with the 2024 election. I'm not at all certain that Biden can or will seek reelection. Whoever it is, we better give the candidate due diligence
If we actually end up in World War III, all bets are off. If, however, Russia ends up in a long stalemate with Ukraine, will America redeem the ideals it lost in 1980? I very much hope so, but I'm not optimistic, and haven't been since 2000. (That's when I realized the .com economy was built on fraud.) Let's face it, the millennium so far has sucked. I'm a dinosaur from before that damned asteroid (named George W. Bush) ruined things. I dimly remember when government worked and when the Kennedy assassination and communist infiltrators were the only lamebrained conspiracy theories.
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*We were paying one whole dollar for a gallon of gas for the first time ever, but the gas lines expressed the economic anxiety. It felt like the world was ending.
Also published at Medium 3/9/22