Reading the Democrats

Takeaway from the Democratic Debate:

1)Warren remains the strongest candidate to beat Trump. She has energy, smarts, a clear message and a strong program. She is a living embodiment of what I think of as the Doug Jones principle. Jones got African-American voters (particularly African-American women) to come out and give him a win in Alabama because his life story gave them confidence that he would serve their interests. He had taken political and personal risks in prosecuting the white supremacist terrorists that had murdered young girls in Birmingham. Past actions are the best predictors of future behavior- voters are always looking in a candidate's life story for some sign that this person will fulfill some of the promises that all candidates make to "stand for voters like you." Workers in the industrial Midwest will look at Warren's record fighting against corporate and financial interests and believe that she is on their side. That is precisely the constituency that will make up the deficit that lost Hillary the election in 2016. Forget about Warren's gender- workers aren't that stupid. At least, the ones who are that stupid are going to vote for Trump whomever the Dems nominate, so it makes sense to nominate someone that will appeal to the workers that are reachable.

2)The strongest ticket is a Warren-Harris or Warren-Klobuchar ticket. Putting two women on the ticket will generate "controversy" that will help the Dems draw some media focus away from the constant circus surrounding Trump. But there are lots of strong combinations in the current field. Klobuchar-Harris, Klobuchar-Buttigieg, Klobuchar-Booker, Booker-Buttigieg, yada yada yada.

3)Any Democrat that runs a strong campaign can beat Trump. That said, the two most vulnerable are Sanders and Biden. Sanders has too much baggage from his past- his public image is much too easy to reshape. Maybe I am overestimating the gullibility of the electorate, but if the swift boating of John Kerry is any gauge, the footage of Sanders hugging Castro, trash-talking Israel, etc. is going to sink him if he ever gets the nomination.

4)Biden is a potential train wreck. I love Joe, I was charmed when he had the "no, you're not Putin" moment with Sanders last night, I liked that he called BS on Gabbard's "regime change war." But in his best days he was a semi-articulate gaffe machine, and his best days are long past. He will allow Trump to run EXACTLY the kind of campaign the Troll-in-Chief likes- full of puerile insults and trash talk about verbal flubs. It will be "I voted for the money before I voted against it" X10. He could still pull it off, but only if a)He recovers something that looks a little better than his old "A game"; b)He has a young, dynamic, female running mate (calling VP Klobuchar, Abrams, or Harris).

5)Tulsi Gabbard is a GOP/Russian mole, or might as well be. Almost every word out of her mouth helped Troll last night. The "regime change war" that she kept repeating was the worst but not the only example. "Regime change war"? Iraq yes, Syria- NO! We did not start the Syrian civil war- it began as an authentic grass-roots movement against the Assad regime, which militarized only AFTER Assad's government responded with deadly force to the protests of its own citizens. Calling it a "regime change war" (i.e. implying that the Syrian people rose up against Assad only because we the USA put them up to it) is to parrot Assad regime/Russian propaganda. Gabbard obviously went into that debate determined to throw the apple of discord among her fellow Democrats and bring the whole show down. Whether she was doing it out of her own conviction or at someone else's behest (hello Donald? Vlad? Mr. Koch?) is anybody's guess.

As Hong Kong Goes, So Goes China...and the World

The news that a protester in Hong Kong was shot today during protests set to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China bodes ill for a positive resolution to the crisis that has roiled the city in recent months. Observers around the world should be concerned. Though the government in Beijing portrays the conflict as a domestic affair with only local ramifications, the stakes in Hong Kong are very high for the people of all of China and, by extension, the entire world.

The most obvious indication that this is true is the extraordinary forbearance that Beijing has exercised in its response to the Hong Kong protesters. One need only look at how the Chinese government has responded to protests in Xinjiang and Tibet to know that its policy in Hong Kong falls far outside of the norm. This is not meant to credit Beijing with special virtue in the current case. Rather, it is a sign that Xi Jinping and his government recognize the need to tread carefully in Hong Kong. The behavior of both sides in this crisis, in fact, is conditioned by the same overarching reality: Hong Kong has been both an asset and a liability to the Chinese Communist Party since the former British colony was repatriated to China in 1997.

Hong Kong has been a key asset to the PRC in economic terms. Since the early 20th century, Hong Kong has been one of the freest and most stable capital markets in the world, making it a key financial center for all of East Asia. Billions of investment dollars flow through Hong Kong each year, and the Hong Kong economy itself is a major generator of commercial and industrial wealth. In 1997, Hong Kong's economy made up 17% of the Gross Domestic Product of the entire People's Republic of China, despite the fact that Hong Kong's 6 million people made up only .5% of the PRC's population. Beyond this, because back then the Chinese Renminbi could not be used in international commerce, Hong Kong's financial markets were a key source of vital "hard currency" for the PRC fisc.

It is for this reason that Beijing initially agreed to the "one country, two systems" principle that it set as the terms for Hong Kong being re-integrated into Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Chinese Communist leaders recognized that any attempt to institute new economic and political controls in Hong Kong would injure the fragile financial ecosystem that made the city such a dynamic center of investment and trade. A desire to refrain from "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs" has restrained Beijing from meddling aggressively in the internal affairs of Hong Kong.

But though this made Hong Kong a vital economic asset, it also made the city a dangerous political liability. Allowing the city to self-regulate meant assenting to its citizens having freedoms of expression, religious participation, and social association that are enjoyed nowhere else in China.  For example, where the Tiananmen Square democracy movement of 1989 is a taboo subject the mention of which is severely punished in mainland China, in Hong Kong the event is still memorialized by candlelight vigils every year on the June 4 anniversary of the massacre that killed thousands of protesters at the orders of Beijing's leaders. As travel and trade between Hong Kong and mainland China become more frequent and as mainland citizens become exposed to more print, broadcast, and digital media coming out of Hong Kong, the freedoms of expression enjoyed in Hong Kong become an increasingly worrisome source of resentment and potential unrest for Chinese Communist leaders in Beijing.

Thus, though for twenty years Beijing has wanted to conserve the material benefits of Hong Kong's unique economy, it has simultaneously desired to bring Hong Kong's unruly political discourse into line with that of the larger PRC. Moreover, as China's economy has grown relative to that of Hong Kong, the economic constraints on Beijing's actions have grown weaker, and correspondingly its perception of the relative urgency of the political liabilities posed by Hong Kong has intensified. Right now the percentage share  of Hong Kong's GDP has shrunk to  1.5 % that of the entire People's Republic of China. This still makes Hong Kong a very wealthy city relative to its population, but it no longer occupies the dominant position it once did in the Chinese economy as a whole.

It is perhaps for this reason more than any other that the Chinese Communist Party has moved, incrementally but persistently in recent years, to exert progressively greater control over Hong Kong society and political culture. The new extradition law that Beijing tried to impose upon Hong Kong in March, which would have given PRC authorities the power to extradite residents to mainland China for a host of activities that had never previously been criminal offenses in Hong Kong, was the latest in a series of measures aimed at extending Beijing's power and curtailing Hong Kong's autonomy. The explosive response to these incursions (some protest have drawn almost one third of Hong Kong's 7.4 million residents into the street) was driven, in part, by a recognition that Hong Kong's economic clout is waning relative to that of the larger PRC. The current moment may be the last in which Beijing will be more motivated to preserve Hong Kong's wealth and productivity (a motive that has been enhanced by the threat of Donald Trump's trade war to China's overall GDP) than it is to clamp down on dangerous political dissent. The protesters have thus taken enormous risks in what they perceive (most likely correctly) as a last, "do-or-die" effort to secure permanent guarantees of Hong Kong's relative freedom and autonomy.

Though the Hong Kong protesters are no doubt chiefly motivated by the interests of their community, their families, and themselves, Beijing is incorrect in representing this as a conflict with merely local consequences. What the protesters are fighting for in Hong Kong is not only better for Hong Kong, but for the people of China in general. Beijing has been trying to make Hong Kong more like the rest of China, but this overlooks the fact that the very prosperity which has emboldened PRC leaders to take a strong hand against Hong Kong has been fostered by making the rest of the PRC more like Hong Kong. In the years since 1980 the People's Republic has seen a miraculous surge in economic growth through the steady removal of restrictions on work, trade, expression, and communication. For that rising tide of prosperity to continue, the expanding trend of economic, cultural, and political liberalization must likewise progress.

If Beijing moves to violently repress the protests in Hong Kong, the effects will be severe and long-term. Much of the financial wealth in Hong Kong itself, which is underwritten by the city's importance as a finance hub, will disappear overnight. Moreover, without the confidence that Hong Kong and its institutions give international investors as an entry point for China's larger capital markets, much of the recent growth that mainland China has enjoyed will slow or reverse. Finally, violent repression in Hong Kong will create a general climate of fear and pessimism that will infect the entire Chinese economy, crippling entrepreneurial initiative and dampening the confidence necessary for future growth.

We are at a crucial inflection point. The protesters in Hong Kong are lighting the way forward. If they can prevail, the foundations for sustained prosperity in China may be laid that could fully restore the central place China once occupied in the global economy. If the protests are put down, the resulting economic injury will reverse years of progress, creating a receding tide that will lower all boats, not merely in China but throughout East Asia and beyond that, the entire world.