When the subject of global warming came up at last week’s Republican presidential debate, the responses were slightly different than I had expected. Apparently, no Republican wants to be seen as a global warming denier. They are more than willing to admit that something is happening. They didn’t get into it (because the CNN moderators sucked), but they would probably even agree that humans are having some effect. But now it is just a matter that doing anything would destroy our economy. We also heard that we can’t do anything on our own, even though we emit a fifth of the carbon pollution, and other countries are doing things their their own. What ever happened to American leadership?

Of course, this is nonsense anyway. Do you know when would have been a great time to tackle the problem of climate change? Ever since the bursting of the housing bubble and the crashing of the economy. Ever since then, there has been an enormous amount of slack in the economy and the government has been able to borrow for basically nothing. We could have done massive infrastructure projects that would have made our country more green. We could have invested even more in green technologies. We could have trained all those coal miners to do something less damaging (and dangerous).

But we couldn’t do that because, as they always do when a Democrat is in the White House, the Republicans discovered “fiscal responsibility.” So we couldn’t spend any money on anything. Meanwhile, even apart from global warming, our infrastructure is crumbling and lives are wasted due to unnecessary unemployment. And it is all so that they can make a point: they ought to be in power and they are going to do everything they can to destroy the economy until they are.

But on Friday, Mark Thoma wrote a very interesting article at CBS Money Water about another side of this issue, Candidates Shouldn’t Wait to Address Climate Change. The Republicans were specifically asked if it mightn’t be a good idea to hedge our bets — to do something about global warming just in case. But they really didn’t engage with the question. Instead, their answers all implied that if there was some cost to it, it would be minor. There was no reason to do anything that might hurt our economy in any way at all right now.

Thomas quoted the Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change (pdf). I wasn’t aware of it, but it was a study commissioned by the UK government to determine the economic effect of climate change. And it concluded “if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever.” Thoma sums up the state of knowledge this way, “My reading of the evidence — and the totality of the work on this question comprises far more than just this report — is that the consequences will be large, and the longer we wait to begin serious abatement, the larger the impacts will be.”

He contrasts this with the most optimistic analysis by Richard Tol, who still thinks the costs will be large, but will fall mostly on developing countries. Thoma noted that we in the developed world would still have to help them out. But I think it is far worse than a moral obligation. If the effects are dire on developed regions, there is going to be a great increase in war. And I think it is outrageous to think that we are not going to be touched by that in a big way.

Regardless, the Republicans have shown themselves to be the polar opposite of what is traditionally considered “conservative.” They behave like teenagers who don’t have a care in the world. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” That’s no way to run a family, much less a country, much less a global empire. But of course I would think that way. As I’ve noted many times, I am a deeply conservative person when it comes to personal conduct. That’s one of the reasons I vote for the Democrats.

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but have you noticed how many people who call themselves social democrats or democratic socialists seem to be terrified at the prospect of Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic presidential nomination? It reminds me of a line from the musical 1776, “Maryland would welcome independence if it were given, but is highly skeptical that it can be taken. Maryland says nay.” It is as if they are only dedicated to this ideal as long as it doesn’t risk anything — as long as it doesn’t require a fight. And I’m afraid that it does require risk and a fight.

I understand the counterargument: if the Republicans get in, it will be a catastrophe. But this is how we find ourselves far, far to the right after 40 years of this kind of thinking. The Democratic Party establishment decided that it lost the 1972 election because George McGovern was too liberal. That’s such a vague claim as to be meaningless. There were a lot of reasons he lost, of course. A big one was that the south turned against the Democratic Party because of the civil rights laws passed under Johnson. Another was that McGovern was painted as weak on crime and “those people.” None of that should have caused the Democratic Party running to go running to the right on economic issues.

But in 1976, they ran a very conservative man for his time, Jimmy Carter. He barely won. Then in 1980, he lost by a lot. This was followed by Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. All of those elections were classic economics-trumps-all elections. They were the Republicans’ elections to lose. Similarly, Bill Clinton didn’t win in 1992 because he was conservative but because the economy had tanked. All these moves to the right, have only pushed the Republicans further to the right. So the whole idea that the Democratic Party must move to the right only means that when Republicans do get into power they are even worse than they were before.

Matt Bruenig asked a really good question recently, What is the Left Supposed to Do Electorally? He considered Jeremy Corbyn in the UK primarily, but also Bernie Sanders. Here, all good Democrats know that Ralph Nader cost the Democrats the election in 2000. (I don’t know; that may be a myth; but it is what all good Democrats know.) So Sanders is not running a third party candidacy, and has been very clear that he will support whichever candidates the Democrats nominate. But running inside the party is apparently only acceptable if the leftist loses, as we are seeing with Corbyn. “Similarly, if Sanders manages to win the Democratic primary in the US, you can be sure the same centrist Democrats screaming at Nader to run in the primary will immediately sour on the idea of left-wing primary challenges.”

I truly do not know where I stand in this election. I support Sanders because he is the closest fit to my major issues, which are economic. But if I think he has little chance of winning the general election, I will not vote for him. I am a pragmatist. But I haven’t seen any information to indicate that this is the case. If I think that Hillary Clinton has a 55% chance of winning the general election and Bernie Sanders has a 45% chance, then there is no question: I’ll go with Bernie. If Bernie has a 10% chance, I’ll go with Hillary. But it is worth some risk to get the extra gain that is Bernie Sanders.

Recently, when The Wall Street Journal wrote a big article about how Bernie Sanders’ proposals would cost $18 trillion, I was mostly pleased. It indicated two things that are good. First, it showed that he is succeeding enough to cause people to notice. Second, it shows that conservatives are at least a little concerned about him. Republicans can just dismiss him as a socialist if they want. But that’s just for public consumption. They know that in a general election, that isn’t going to mean much. Unless they can tie that word to Sanders’ actual (hugely popular) policies, it won’t mean a thing.

The big “$18 trillion” article is an attempt to do just that. But as Dean Baker has already shown, $15 trillion of that is universal Medicare. And if everyone had Medicare, they wouldn’t have to have private insurance (although they still could). And the one thing we know about Medicare is that it is far more efficient than private insurance. And the bottom line is that the $15 trillion would save the private sector more than $15 trillion. James Kwak laid it out:

So how much would Sander’s $15 trillion Medicare for All system save? That’s open to debate. But one of the economists that The Wall Street Journal article quoted, Gerald Friedman, did some calculations. And he found that over the ten year window that we are talking about here, Sanders’ plan would save the US $5 trillion. So if you add in the $3 trillion of other programs, Bernie Sanders would be saving us $2 trillion — or $200 billion per year. Oh! My! God!

Of course, this isn’t going to make The Wall Street Journal sing the praises of Bernie Sanders. They aren’t interested in saving money. They are interested in serving the interests of the power elite — even if those interests are very short sighted. And even if they liked the Medicare for All program, they know that Sanders is going to push all kinds of other policies that will challenge the rich.

Robert Reich wrote a short article about this issue, 4 Reasons Why The Wall Street Journal’s Attack on Bernie is Bogus. Mostly, it covers ground that I’ve been talking about here. But I thought his fourth point was important:

This is typical. Bernie Sanders has some great ideas for improving the nation. But the conservative response is not to consider them seriously. It is just to start shouting large numbers that are meaningless.

When Carly Fiorina ran for Senate from California back 2010, her campaign was so hapless, that I didn’t even much pay attention to it. She ran against Barbara Boxer — always a bit of a climb for the idiots down in the southern part of the state — in a great year for Republicans, and she still managed to lose by 10 percentage points. The main thing I knew about her was that she had had a terrible career in business. But apparently, in the business world, there is no such thing as failure, so she ran around acting like she was some great hero.

But Friday morning, I was reading Paul Krugman, Fantasies and Fictions at GOP Debate. It’s a good article, but I was shocked by something he wrote in passing, “Oh, and if her life is a story of going from ‘secretary to CEO,’ mine is one of going from mailman to columnist and economist. Sorry, working menial jobs while you’re in school doesn’t make your life a Horatio Alger story.” It shocked me because I had taken that whole story at face value. It’s one of her big selling points: meritocracy and all that — she started at the bottom!

So I turned to Wikipedia. She wasn’t some lower middle class girl who went on to make it big. She wasn’t even an ordinary middle (or upper-middle or upper) class girl who went on to make it big. Her father was Joseph Tyree Sneed III. He was dean of the Duke University School of Law before becoming a justice on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was at least a law professor from the time that Carly was three years old. These are all indicative of the kind of childhood that creates successful people. Freedom from want and exposure to the best that our society offers are what we should strive to provide for all children — but don’t.

Now, I’m not putting down Fiorina for this. It’s great that she had this kind of life growing up. But she’s lying about her career — in a big and calculated way. In 1976, she got her Bachelor’s degree from Stanford — a school her father taught at from 1962 to 1971 — I wonder if that helped her get admitted?! She then got a Master’s degree in business (What else?!) from University of Maryland. From there, she went straight into a management trainee program at AT&T.

So where does all this business about “secretary to CEO” come from? Well, after she got her undergraduate degree, she headed down to UCLA to study law. I guess she was gonna be like her old man. But after one semester, she decided it wasn’t for her. So she got a job as a secretary for a real estate brokerage. She had it for six months — I assume until she could start another academic year. So basically: it was a summer job. I’m sure there are lots of people born rich who could similarly claim that they went from “waiter to CEO.”

What’s so terrible about this is that there have been people who have worked their way up in this way — although I know of none in such a spectacular way as Fiorina implies. And that makes it that much worse. She was never one of those people who started at the bottom. She started on the management track and did what was expected of her.

She really is a vile human being. A great social conservative who lies with aplomb.

Update (21 September 2015 8:46 am)

According to Melinda Henneberger, “She worked only briefly in that real estate office before heading off to Italy for a year with her first husband, Todd Bartlem.” So she didn’t go straight off to the University of Maryland. Instead, like poor Americans everywhere, she took a year off to live in Europe.

I have a bone to pick with Brian Beutler. He wrote, Trump Is Far from the Only Republican to Let Supporters Spout Crazy. It’s in reference to a Trump event last Thursday where an audience member said, “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims.” He went on to say that the president was one and that there were “training camps” where “they” want to kill us. Trump didn’t counter him, and instead talked in general terms. Beutler is right that this is a general problem with politics — most especially with Republicans.

The problem I had was that he contrasted it with McCain’s famous moment in the 2008 campaign when he too was confronted with a crazy person saying that then Senator Obama was an Arab. McCain countered her, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign’s all about.” Beutler noted, “The only reason anyone remembers the altercation is because we expect Republican politicians to behave the way Trump did.” That’s true. But if the same interaction had taken place on 17 September 2007, McCain would not have answered that way.

That townhall was from 10 October 2008 — less than one month before the election. By that time, it was clear that McCain was going to lose the election. The issue at that point was not winning — it was saving his reputation. He ran a terrible campaign. He was a demagogue. He brought us Sarah Palin. I know that McCain was looking for just such an opportunity. And I’ve long figured that it was largely orchestrated by the campaign. People don’t just happen to find themselves in front of the mic at that point in the general election.

Of course, Beutler is not alone in this. CNN is using the same example. So is ABC News. Even CBC is reporting it that way, Donald Trump, Unlike McCain, Doesn’t Reject Statement From Obama Birther. And I suppose, as a way to blast Trump, this is a good thing. But the two things are totally different. Trump is horrible. He just isn’t much different from John McCain.

What really bugs me is that pretty much every reporter who is willing to lay praise on McCain for that successful bit of political theater is also deeply cynical about politics in a general sense. And so you have to wonder: what is that constant cynicism from the media good for? It clearly doesn’t stop them from totally falling for the most cynical political theater of the 2008 presidential campaign. All that cynicism does is poison the nation into its own dangerous casual cynicism.

But Beutler did make a comparison that is particularly good. When Trump was talking nonsense about vaccines at the Republican debate, neither of the medical doctors on stage were willing to correct him. In fact, the meek and mild PolitiFact rated Carson’s apologia for Trump pants on fire. But this is a point that no one made at CNN or ABC News or even CBC. So as usual, Brian Beutler is an insightful commentator, even if he is wrong to give John McCain any credit for his cynical ploy.