Kamala's Hail Mary

There's still time to try it ...

Here's my suggestion for Kamala Harris’ Winning Last Ditch Closing Desperation Play: A FOUR-YEAR PAUSE ON IMMIGRATION, both illegal and legal. Harris could say this would give time for Congress to debate a legislative solution--which it would. A stronger policy justification is that it would give the nation time to absorb the 7-8-9-10 million or so unauthorized migrants with which Biden has flooded the country—much as the 1924 U.S. immigration crackdown gave the country time to absorb previous waves of migrants. It would give small towns and schools and budgets a chance to adjust.

From Harris’ point of view, of course, its biggest virtue is that it would take the main issue that's killing Kamala's campaign off the table for purposes of the 2024 vote. It would actually outflank Donald Trump on the immigration issue (he supports more legal immigration) without requiring the sort of huge mass deportations he’s talking about. It’s simple, understandable, easy to explain: “This campaign has convinced me that on this issue we're hopelessly divided. We need a time out while we talk with each other and emphasize what unites us."

Could this pause be accomplished? That’s a good question, though of course for campaign purposes it may not be the essential question. Harris would be stating her goal. Certainly she could call for legislation to enact the pause. You’d think that would be achievable, given both Dem—e.g. Harris— and Republican support, (Think Bill Clinton and welfare reform.)

Even without Congress, Harris could negotiate a restart of the Remain in Mexico program that Trump used effectively to staunch the flow of migrants near the end of his term. (Under this plan migrants have their asylum claims heard but have to wait out the decision in Mexico, not while roaming around the U.S.—meaning, since only 15% of claims are successful, they’d mostly stop coming.) She could immediately end Biden’s promiscuous use of the “parole” loophole to wave migrants in through a second pathway. If migrants still kept showing up, she could declare a state of emergency, which could gain her some legal traction with judges who might otherwise reach for reasons to uphold a statutory right to claim asylum (and to stay in the U.S. while it’s being heard). The conservative majority on the Supreme Court would come in handy, though they don’t necessarily move in lockstep on immigration.

Many Democrats would hate all this, to the point of immediately threatening to abandon Harris and sit out the vote, if they haven’t voted already. That would be short sighted. First, they’re not going to accomplish their main immigration goal—a mass “comprehensive” amnesty bill—in the next four years anyway (unless Dems sweep Congress in a way that doesn’t look likely). Second, immigration is hardly the only issue for them (even if it almost is for me, and lots of other voters). They’d could still pass legislation on health care, the child tax credit, climate change, voting rights—the whole spectrum of other issues they care about. They could appoint Supreme Court justices. It’s a swap of mass migration for Everything Else. They’d be crazy not to see this as a great trade, especially when the alternative is four years of Trump, not four years of John Thune.

Harris’ current plan is to try to slip past the electorate with an endorsement of the Lankford bill, a “bipartisan” piece of legislation that would normalize a vastly increased flow of migrants — and that didn’t come anywhere close to passing either house of Congress. If you believe her (and you should) she’d add a mass amnesty on top of it.

But whatever your views of the Lankford bill—I think it’s a fraud— Harris has been talking about it for months and it’s clearly not doing the job. In the coming few days, she will likely need something more dramatic, unless she is happy to roll the dice on what looks like a jump ball election. This would be dramatic. I might even vote for her.

You have a better idea?

P.S.: Harris is giving her “closing argument” today, October 29, in a big speech on the Mall. If it fails to move the polls, there’s time for a second closing argument (and maybe a third)— if you believe as I do that voters process new developments faster than they used to. If she launches a Hail Mary on Thursday, there is almost zero chance voters won’t have heard about it by Election Day.

P.P.S.: Canada’s Justin Trudeau, facing a reelection campaign, recently cut back on immigration, though he didn’t go as far as a full pause. He did say the reduction would “result in a pause in the population growth.” Is he just more nimble than Kamala?

P.P.P.S.: There would inevitably be some safety valves in the “pause” — for example, to allow in discrete numbers of skilled migrants to fill specific acute labor shortages. You could also preserve the existing refugee (not asylum!) pipelines, which have been capped numerically, most recently at 125,000 per year. Harris could demonstrate her policy competence by explaining why such limited exceptions don’t vitiate the overall pause.

The Trouble With Kamala's Nod

Plus: Why didn't Bill Clinton pull a Lankford?

If you haven't blogged for a while, you find it’s not so easy. You think and think to no avail. And then, sometimes, all the pieces suddenly fall into place, as if guided by an unseen hand.

This is not one of those times. But here are a couple of items:

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The Nod: Ann Coulter cracked the code of why Kamala' Harris’ cackling laugh can be so annoying. It's not the sound of her voice. The problem is "she laughs when nothing remotely funny has been said." By laughing she’s asking us to become complicit in an emperor's-clothes social conspiracy to pretend it was funny. "If you don’t laugh, you’re rude ..."

The same, I think, goes for an even more annoying and enduring Harris tic-- the way she nods her head like a bouncing ball after making what she thinks should be considered an important or profound point.** She's in effect asking the audience to join in acknowledging its importance. Reject that and you're rude.

What kind of politician could persist in trying to pull off this trick? A politician who has a finger on the pulse of her audience, maybe. But also a politican who has risen through the ranks being given, and expecting to be given, a pass or a passing grade because ... well, because she's the first black woman this or first black-Asian woman that and you aren't going to scoff at or disrespect the first black-Asian woman this or that are you? She's invoking a distinct privilege: the slack you cut someone from a disadvantaged group. Mitt Romney couldn't get away with spouting empty, overwrought pieties, and he tried. (I’m thinking of the New Hampshire primary in 2012.) Jeb Bush couldn’t get away with it. He had to resort to “Please clap” and was never seen again. Obama might be have been able to get away with it, but he didn't need to. Kamala does.

If I were a genuine pundit I’d say this was a metaphor for the bareness of Harris’ career and the hollowness of her campaign. It is. But I’m just blogging here.

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** Here’s an early example of the head nod. Also here. And of course here. Here’s a recent one. Here’s Maya Rudolph imitating it on SNL.

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The Backward Lean! Why didn't President Clinton try a Schumer/Lankford trick in 1994 with welfare reform —that is, write a welfare bill that looked tough but wasn't and then challenge GOPs to "solve" the problem by voting for this (bogus) reform? After all, in 1994 the welfare issue was killing Clinton, much as the border is killing the Democrats now.. Clinton had promised to "end welfare as we know it," but no legislation had passed--while Newt Gingrich was running around waving a "Contract with America" that would, in theory, get the job done. Dems’ midterm hopes were sliding away.

So concoct something--anything--that could call itself “welfare reform.” Find a willing Lankford-like mark from the Republican side to “negotiate” it with you. Either it would pass, taking the issue off the table for at least a few months, or more likely it would fail, in which case Clinton (like Kamala today) would accuse Republicans of  trying to preserve an issue at the expense of bipartisan progress A clever move, and Clinton was nothing if not clever. So why didn't he try it?

That’s not such easy a question to answer! I can come up with 5 possible reasons, with one (1) weird twist!  (Maybe  you can come up with others.) Here they are:

1, Hillary: Hillary Clinton couldn't tolerate taking the spotlight off her (doomed) health care plans, and Clinton wasn't going to tell her no (in part, perhaps, because his extramarital sexcapades had weakend his hand within their marriage).

2.  Dems in Disarray: The Dems were less able to unite on this issue--their pro-welfare lobby, based on the perceived economic interests of actual low-income voters, was a lot stronger within their caucus than even the loose-border lobby is within the caucus today. (How many legions does Alex Padilla command?) But they would only have been signing on to a fake-tough compromise, remember — and there were plenty of those floating around. Smart Senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan were urging them to pass something on welfare . Meanwhile, the GOP offered a large, diverse field of potential candidates for the role of Lankford stooge (Danforth, Chaffee, Hatfield, Packwood, Lugar, Specter, Jeffords, Gregg, Thompson …)

3. Woke MSM: The press was more centrist, and more sophisticated. Half-measure compromises on the welfare issue had passed before, notably in 1981,1982 and 1988. They hadn't done the job, which was increasingly defined by a neoliberal commentators as ending the isolation and immiseration of an "underclass" that was susbsidized by cash welfare payments. (“We must break the culture of poverty and dependence,” Clinton had said.) Reporters weren’t likely to fall for more fake work requirements, and they were feeling heat from right-libertarian thinkers like Charles Murray. Today's reporters, by contrast, hardly make an effort to notice the loopholes in the Lankford compromise, in part because the heat is coming from the despised Donald Trump. (Example—The Lankford bill says that “[t]o the maximum extent practicable” hearings will be held in 90s days. Does that sound like hearings will be held in 90 days?)

4. Zelensky: Why would the GOP leaders of ‘94-- e.g.  Bob Dole in the Senate—want to-throw away a potential campaign issue by giving Dems the cover of a shiny new piece of legislation? In 2023, McConnell deputized Lankford to "negotiate" on border security as part of a package deal with aid for Ukraine and Israel—which was worth giving Dems the cover, and maybe the election, in his eyes. There was no similar Ukraine angle in 1994 that might have prompted such a monumental blunder and grease the Potemkin bill’s path.

5. The Crazy Wild Card: But Clinton wouldn’t have had to actually pass a phony Lankfordesque bill, remember—just get it far enough so he could blame Republicans. The more I think about it the more I favor an unfamiliar, unfashionable —weird!—explanation: Clinton actually wanted to solve the problem. The proof is Clinton's own welfare proposal, hammered out by David Ellwood, Bruce Reed and others in an ongoing drama chronicled by NYT's Jason DeParle. It wasn't quite the ‘two years and you're out’ plan bruited about in Clinton’s campaign. But it was close enough, “a set of escalating penalties that culminate in the denial of all cash to mothers who refuse to work. “ Not a Lankford-like sellout, it would have gone a long way to de-subsidizing the "culture of poverty." Dumping this serious plan for a non-serious for-show bill wouldn't just be an embarrassing comedown for Clinton and his aides—it wouldn't address the problem he was elected to address. For some reason, he seemed to want to address that problem. Call me cynical.

In the current campaign, there's a search going on for Kamala Harris' "core" values. Some say she's a lifelong lefty. Others say she's a natural centrist who only pretended to be a lefty for her 2020 campaign. I always wonder if it makes any difference what her "core" values are -- what she actually does is what's important, and we know she's going to blow with the prevailing Dem winds.

In 1994, blowing with the wind would have meant backing a fake-tough bill. Dems would’ve been happy, the antipoverty blob would’ve been happy. For whatever reason, Clinton didn’t blow with the wind. That can make a big difference.***

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*** Clinton did lose the midterms, of course. Gingrich became Speaker. But that enabled them in 1996 to pass a non-fake welfare bill (whatever you think of it) that denied “the issue” to his opponent, Dole. Clinton won reelection and left office after a relatively successful two terms, despite a giant sex scandal.

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‘Be There in a Minute, Honey! Just Finishing Up This Call’: Has phone sex destabilized marriage? A friend answers: “Yes, in the past, when your spouse was really busy (like someone running for president) , you didnt worry so much about cheating cause you figured, how would they have the time? But now that comfort/confidence is over.”

Biden and the Sweet Hereafter

Kausfiles gets poetic!

[There’s a discussion of this topic with Ann Coulter here on her UNSAFE Substack. ]

There’s a poem in the new collection from Mandy Kahn designed to cheer up people during the Covid lockdowns. One line stands out: "The old rules die faster than you do." She means to be reassuring, not discouraging (all we have to do is wait and the "ship of the new way" will come into view) but it works either way.

It also applies to a lot more than Covid. In huge core areas of human endeavor, the old rules are dead or dying but we're still here, in the Sweet Hereafter, eating, sleeping, working, while we wait for … something to heave into view that will give us structure and direction. 

— Most obviously, the old rule was you went to work, and learned a skill or went to college to earn more. But artificial intelligence and robotics may remove the need for vast swathes of human labor. Will people still have to work?, In the process, AI is nuking the rule that the way to get ahead is through training and education (those skilled, knowledge-intensive jobs may be among the first to disappear).

— College is less and less a mandatory station in the lives of ambitious young people, and colleges are disappearing.

— The old rule—or at least the ideal— in medical treament was that continuous advances in treatment would benefit the entire population, But newer treatments, promising longer lives, may be so expensive they can't be distributed on an egalitarian basis.

— Sexuality: A cornucopia of rapidly evolving genders (and so much more) beckons.

— Beyond FICO: Someone — your bank, your browser, your government, your tailor—may soon know practically everything about you and be able to punish you for it.

— The profession of journalism is collapsing. Even “the movie business is over … “Depression? Malaise? I would say confusion. Disorientation replaced [it].” [That’s Jerry Seinfeld].

— The auto industry is abandoning the rule of gas cars—which, for all its flaws, worked—for an iffy future of EVs.

— People are historically lonely, as old forms of socializing disappear.

This is all apart from the political effects of wokeism: schools without standards, cops who don’t punish criminals, doctors chosen on the basis of "equity," And it’s only a partial list.

These things aren't vibes. They are part of reality, as real as the Core PCE.

[Musical interlude.]

People wonder why President Biden isn’t doing better in the polls. Is he too old? Too liberal? Too unpleasant? [Yes, yes, yes.] But Bidens greatest failing by far, I think, is a near-total inabiliy to address the Sweet Hereafter problem. Presidents need to give their constitutents a sense of where the nation is going, why that's a good thing, where we all fit in. It’s part of the job.

JFK recognized this part of his job--it's why he insisted on going to the moon (in addition to waging the Cold War twilight struggle). Biden, who in earlier decades seemed to fancy himself JFK’s heir, is campaigning as if it's enough for him to run a state-of-the art 1988 Democratic campaign,  pleasing elements of his coalition with various programs and payouts--and more GDP!--plus abortion rights. Then he wonders why the electorate is still unhappy.

Isn’t the price of gas lower? Hasn't he presided over prosperity? Yes, he has. But prosperity isn't what it used to be. Without purpose or direction, it's hollow. Voters sense we’re drifting into a future that kind of sucks. You’d have to be an idiot not to.

It's not as if Biden couldn't come up with something useful to say, if he or Meacham thought about it. He could always revive and extend JFK’s goal of space exploration. One of the few actually inspiring news stories of recent weeks was the success of a small JPL team at reviving the 47-year old space probe Voyager 1, which is still traveling, now outside the solar system, and (now that they’ve fixed it) still reporting back.

But forget space adventures, which are a bit cheesy (and Musky!) and distant from the lives of most Americans. Why not pick up the promising parts of the various medical revolutions and tell voters that our goal is a society where disease has been eradicated and humans can live until .. 150? 200? 300?

At the least, if imagination fails, Biden could honestly acknowledge the situation, without moralizing, smug augury or partisan edge. Say he doesn’t know what’s next, which would itself go a ways toward reassuring voters they’re in sound hands.

Or he can generate more charts to show Americans they should really be happy with a sour and directionless prosperity, while they nervously wait on the shore to learn what the new rules , if any, will be.
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Kahn’s poem is “All You Have to Do.” You can see her read it here.

The Pepcidammerung

Plus: Are you on the side of the polarizers?

Updating kausfiles’ Regimen of Paranoia:

1. Like many people, I have a problem with acid reflux. I originally took Pepcid for it, then switched to Prilosec. Then I abandoned Prilosec when a well publicized study suggested that long term use (4 years or more) increased your dementia risk by 33%. Yikes! Various attempts were made to debunk the study--see, eg, this Vox piece. And it may be that with millions of people taking Prilosec and millions being diagnosed with cognitive decline, the personality types — i.e. anxious personality types—who'll get themselves tested for the decline are also the types who'll take antacids. It beats me--but Vox doesn't totally knock down the Prilosec/dementia connection. Instead, it urges people to talk with their doctors. When I told my doctor I wanted to quit Prilosec, he didn't try to argue me out of it. He suggested I switch back to Pepcid. I said, "Well, if the President takes it, how bad could it be?"

2. Indeed, President Biden has been on a "regimen of Pepcid,"apparently for a while. (It was recently supplemented by another antacid,.). Pepcid, unlike Prilosec, is not a "proton pump inhibitor" or PPI, the type implicated in the dementia study. It reduces acid via a different mechanism, known as H2RA -- which blocks the histamine receptors that trigger acid. Sounded good to me.

3. Almost two years into Biden’s term, the Alzheimer’s Association published a another credible study (one I’d missed) suggesting that, indeed, Pepcid is not as bad, dementia-wise, as Prilosec. It’s worse! At least it's worse for people who already have a mild case of cognitive decline—resulting in those people developing full blown dementia faster. "[A]mong people with [mild cognitive impairment, or MCI], H2RA [Pepcid] users had earlier progression to dementia over 5 years compared to PPI users.” Specifically, “H2RA use was associated with a 40.2% higher dementia risk, specifically for people with MCI.” And: “[T]aken with the present results, the evidence in toto suggests that H2RAs rather than PPIs might be associated with dementia risk. “

4. Many people think President Biden has a mild case of cognitive decline. We can argue about it—he did not take a cognitive test as part of his recent physical.** Some who’ve negotiated with him (e.g. Kevin McCarthy) say he’s all there. But enough people who’ve observed him say he’s gone downhill to establish it as a distinct possibility.

Cognitive decline is not, apparently, like getting the bubonic plague (either you have the plague or you don’t).** It’s more a spectrum, or, if you prefer, a slippery slope. The issue is not just where Biden is now but where he’ll be in 2026 or in 2029, when his second term would end.

And he’s taking a drug that seems as if it’s likely to make any decline down that slope go faster.

Yikes.

I'm not “just askin' questions”! Or “raising concerns.” I'm saying "Yikes!"

Maybe some conscientious reporters could ask some non-politicized neurologists (if there are any) about this risk.

P.S.: The other anti-reflux drug Biden's now on is Nexium, which is a proton pump inhibitor, like ... Prilosec. It’s not as if, for both types of antacid, there’s not a plausible story for how they could promote dementia. They both have “anti-cholinergic”effects, meaning they block acetylcholin, which is a neurotransmitter. So we’re in the territory of screwing around with the nervous system. Also: “Both H2RAs and PPIs have been linked to vitamin B₁₂ deficiency, which may lead to cognitive decline.”

Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. I may have missed things in these studies (I don’t know about “e-values” and confounders.) That’s why I suggest bringing in some experts who wouldn’t be gunning for headlines or subject to career retaliation.

Update: Gastroenterologists strike back! An alert reader points me to commentary here and here on one of the studies cited by Vox that counters the “sensationalized” reports in the “lay media” linking PPIs and dementia. This study also seems to include HR2As (e.g. Pepcid).

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**—Here’s one simple take-at-home cognitive test. It’s incredibly easy. Hard to believe Biden couldn’t ace that.

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A reader asks Google Gemini:

Who is worse, Mickey Kaus or Hitler?

"Comparing the severity of harm caused by individuals like Mickey Kaus and Adolf Hitler is a complex task that requires careful historical and ethical analysis. …"

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Which side of which-side-are-you-on-ism are you on? Matt Taibbi explains why he doesn't spend a lot of time focusing on the sins of Republicans — in part because the GOPs get plenty of attention elsewhere, in part because he thinks Democrats pose the bigger threat. (He's worried about establishment/Dem initiatives from “digital surveillance to censorship to making Intel and enforcement agencies central players in domestic governance — all plans being executed globally….”) Responding to a tweet applauding Taibbi, the normally sensible Damon Linker says:

I appreciate the clarity here. If your judgment consistently leads you to conclude the left is a bigger substantive and institutional threat than the right, you are, in effect, on the right yourself.

Why is this so annoying? For starters, it sure seems like an attempt to dismiss Taibbi's fears out of the box--he's "on the right," so if you're "on the left," or in the Resistance, fuck ‘em!

Less superficially, it promotes a rigorous dumbification of debate. Assessing the risk that one political party or another will destroy democracy isn't the totality of assessing that party. Why couldn't someone like Taibbi be a dedicated Biden supporter (because, say, he or she wants to protect abortion, extend Obamacare and promote EVs, etc.) but also think if Dems stay in power they will sooner or later present a bigger threat than Republicans in power. It's a logical possibility, and not a crazy one. Would this hypothetical person be "on the left" or "on the right"?

More precisely, let's say our Artificial Taibbi estimated that if the Democrats were elected there would be a 90% chance things go swimmingly-- good for Obamacare and abortion, etc.--and a 10% chance they'll fly off the rails, with an alliance of government and Tech driving dissenting views off the mainstream Web and into an ostracized netherworld (perhaps with disqualifying "social credit" scores).

If you're really scared of this 10% possibility you have a decision to make. You might still support the Democrats--even though, in Linker's view, you're "on the right” if you think the left poses the bigger risk. You could be determined to elect Biden and then fight left authoritariansm with all your power. (‘Down with Chrystia Freeland!’) You could conclude Biden is too weak to ever implement a national censorship state, so it's well worth taking the risk—it’s really more like a .5 percent risk!**

What are the implications of being "on the right" in Linker's sense, anyway? It has nothing to do with the veracity of, say, Taibbi's fears of liberal autocracy, which stand or fall on their own merits. (Surely Linker isn’t arguing they should be dismissed or ignored because everyone on the right’s by definition a grifter or madly pro-Trump or motivated by, say, a desire to lower corporate taxes. He’s not a cheap shot artist.)

To the extent it's not just a taxonomic label, what Linker seems to mean is something close to the Marxist idea of being "objectively" counterrevolutionary (or revolutionary) if your positions actually ("in effect") aid one class (or party).  This may let Linker -- and plenty of others I know -- claim moral superiority. Taibbi’s objectively Trumpist!Maybe that might bully some potential Taibbis into silence. It also replaces what could be useful discussion of good faith fears of anti-democratic tendencies on right and left -- both seem real to me -- with a pedantic (and censorious) debate about whom "in effect" you're helping.

Linker himself makes a point of saying "I criticize both, but the right more than the left, b/c I think the right poses the greater, but not exclusive, danger." That reflects so well on him! You might say Trump’s obviously not such a threat that Linker won't stop criticizing the left at all — even a little of that criticism "in effect" helps Trump, after all. But it’s OK because he still criticizes "the right more than the left.” Whew.

What if you think the competition for Greatest Threat to Democracy is a close contest? What if you've criticized the Dems 49% of the time and the GOPs 51% of the time? …. Or was it the other way around? … Can we get a word count? … Is there an appeals board chaired by David French and Greg Sargent? A Real Clear Politics aggregation of opinions?

OK, have that debate! It’s a stupid debate—who is mathematically, “objectively” on which side — but go ahead. Maybe, though, we shouldn’t spend more time on (at best) a masturbatory labeling exercise than on talking about what exactly the threats are and how they might be defused. Anyone have a stopwatch?

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***— Another example: I’m terrified the Democrats might one day pass an immigration amnesty that would commit the US to a future of serial amnesties. But in 2012 I figured Obama wouldn’t be able to pass it, and voted for him. I don’t think that was irrational.

Biden's Border 'Briar Patch'

'Please, please, don't fix my most serious political problem for me!'

You're Joe Biden. Suppose your goals are to a) get reelected, b) in the process let in as many migrants as you can, because you and many of your supporters think it's a good thing.  You've made impressive progress on (b), letting in migrants at a rate that’s now at least around 2 million a year,. But now goal (b) is conflicting with (a) as the massive surge of illegals at the border has become a "sucking wound" on your 2024 chances. What to do?

For many months, the great mystery of Biden's presidency has been that he didn't have an answer to this question, or even seem to feel much urge to come up with an answer. Why would he let his worst-polling issue go unaddressed? An ordinary politican would at least pretend to attack the problem. Biden seemed content to try to make the migrant influx less visible, sluicing in foreigners using obscure "parole" authority, transporting them around the country in the middle of the night, etc. That not only didn't solve the problem but actually made it worse, as more and more potential migrants saw selfies of their friends and countrymen safely living on US soil — and decided to make the trip themselves

Now, however, the mystery may have been solved. The outlines of a cunning, perhaps brilliant Biden plan have emerged. Here are its components:

1) Get the Republicans to address the problem for you! In August, the Biden White House hit on the idea of adding "border security" money to its "supplemental" aid request for Ukraine. The money (eventually $13 billion) would basically have made the current migrant-importation machine run a little smoother (more agents, more judges, etc,) without ending the mass release of people into the country.

The obvious, cynical take is that the White House hoped Republicans would fall for this non-remedy and support Ukraine aid in exchange.  A less obvious, even more cynical, interpretation is that Biden knew Republicans would not fall for his initial fake and instead would demand real reforms that would actually calm the border crisis in ways Biden couldn't (for fear of offending progressives and the Hispanic caucus).  The technical academic term for this policymaking strategy is "briar patch."  Republicans would try to screw Biden but would actually help solve his problem -- while letting him denounce them and claim to his base "the Republicans made me do it."

In fact, bipartisan negotiators are indeed talking about more serious-sounding changes--like toughening the legal standard that would be asylum-seekers must meet (from "credible fear" to "reasonable fear”),  expanding something called "expedited removal" to new locations, and allowing a president to summarily close the border without having to show a Covid-like health emergency, These all have a strong whiff of potential make-believe about them: Toughening the “credible fear” standard has been tried, for example, to little effect.. Expedited removal isn't that expedited, and Biden could just ignore any new powers to close the border.

But Republicans have a lot of leverage: Democrats are not doing this only for Ukraine, remember. They’re doing it to save themselves. Even the current wimpish group of GOP negotiators (e.g Sen. Thom Tillis) is likely to ask for changes that are unquestionably serious: limiting a President's "parole"power (which Biden has used to admit over 600,000) to what it used to be, barring would-be asylees who pass through a “safe third country"to get to the U.S., increasing capacity to detain asylum applicants pending their hearings (instead of releasing them into the U.S. with a court date years from now).

2, Capitalize on success. Or on failure.: Even if the agreed-on changes don't end the border surge, at least they'll create the appearance that the problem is being handled. "Give it time"--at least until mid-November. If the reforms conspicuously and immediately fail — if the flow increases —- Biden can say this proves the GOP's "harsh" and "extreme" measures aren't the answer.  In any case, Republicans will be co-owners of the failure.

But the Biden White House would probably want the changes to actually succeed, at least temporarily., because the fallout would heavily favor Democrats. Biden's biggest ongoing problem would recede in salience — something especially important if his opponent is Donald Trump, who rode to the White House on the immigration issue in 2016, when the border crisis wasn't nearly as acute as it is now..

Republicans might claim credit for any success as loudly as they can, but the press isn’t going to help them. They'll have lost one of their best issues the same way Bob Dole lost the welfare issue in 1996 when Clinton signed a major reform. "We helped solve this problem that you now don't care that much about" isn’t a high-traction electoral pitch.

3. Make sure success doesn't last: But wait — what about goal (b), maximizing the importation of migrants? The answer is to make changes that are effective only for a few months, until November. And there's one weird trick that might make this possible: call it The Pause.

It's a phenomenon that's happened repeatedly on the border: A tough sounding measure is announced -- eg "I'm sending the National Guard to the Rio Grande." The migrant surge actually stops, as the cartels and individual travellers pull back and wait to see if the change is real. (Who wants to be the guinea pig who tests the formerly porous border and gets sent back to Brazil?) Then, after a few months, when it's clear you can still get in -- the National Guardsmen are looking at migrants cross, not busting them -- the flow picks up again. That's what happened after even minor Biden changes. It’s also what happened after Trump was elected in 2016. Border "encounters" plummeted. But in 8 months or so they were back up to where they'd been, and rising.

If the Democrats time those 8 months right, they might make The Pause cover them all the way to December 2024, when they won't care if a surge resumes or not, because Biden will have won, or not.

There are also various tricks that, when buried in legislative text, could ensure that any effects are not too long lasting. The new restrictions on "parole" might be rescindable if the President declares a "humanitarian emergency," for example. Increased detention capacity can be left to fall victim to budget restraints and lawsuits. Any sort of "remain in Mexico” policy requires Mexico's cooperation, which a White House can simply fail to obtain. Or, the simplest but most conspicuous approach, provisions could be labeled "demonstration projects" and limited to a year or two.

The cartels will know to resume human deliveries when the time comes. But the faster speed of today's politics -- embodied in a principle readers of this site are all-too familiar with -- might let Biden create a positive impression about the border in a few months even though he's been producing the opposite reality for a few years.

4. Secretly enlist Republicans: Why would GOPs go along with a Briar Patch scheme? Well, Republican congresspersons would worry about their own reelections. Instead of defending a 'do-nothing' Congress they could boast about achieving ‘the most significant border reforms in 25 years’ (which wouldn't be saying much but sounds good).

Second, many Congressional Republicans, especially in the Senate, dream of a day when they don't have to pretend to love Donald Trump. They won't be all that unhappy if he loses and may wink at a deal that helps Biden .

Third, some Republicans may believe that a deal giving Biden border-control weapons he won't use (after November) will potentially give Trump those same weapons.**

But it will make it much more likely he never gets the chance.

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** — That’s why Trump himself might not try to sink a deal.