End of Start-Stop

The Trump administration announced Thursday noon-ish a complete end to automatic start-stop in our cars. This is a mistake IMO, and it’s a sad example of a nominally conservative administration turning toward nanny-state-ism.

It’s certainly true that many of us American drivers don’t like the technology and wish it gone. It’s also certainly true, though, that many of us American drivers do very much like the technology. Count me in the latter group.

With my 2023 model Ford Escape, I get much improved mileage in city driving when my car’s engine shuts off while sitting at a red light waiting for it to go back to green. My car does this utterly reliably and with no discernable wear and tear on the car’s starter or on the car’s engine-start battery—even in the Texas summer heat or the (surprisingly ugly) Texas winter cold. Only my battery’s aging OEM status interferes with the function: my car complains of not enough charge to support start-stop. Which is to be expected for a car that’s parked on the street in the Texas sun.

There is an easy solution to this one-size-fits-all disconnect among us Americans over start-stop. Taking my Escape as an example, I have a button on the panel just in front of my center console that turns off the start-stop function, but that only lasts until I arrive at my destination and shut everything down. When next I start my Escape, which involves much more than just turning the engine on, the car’s automatic start-stop function is itself restarted.

It would be a simple, one-line coding effort to turn that start-stop button into a toggle: push it once, and the function is turned off, and stays off even after a complete shutdown and restart of the car. After starting the car anew, pushing the button again would toggle the start-stop function back on, to remain on through successive car shut downs and restarts until the button is toggled again. Let the car come from the dealer with the function defaulted to Off; those of us who like the function are fully capable of turning it on with that button push and then leaving it on.

Another option, albeit much more expensive, would be to make start-stop an option for car buyers to purchase as an add-on when they buy their car.

Either of these would let those of us who do not want the start-stop function to not have it working, and those of us who do to have it; even if one of them would more expensive for car buyers to buy and more expensive for car makers to make.

In either case, though, both groups of us American drivers would do fine without the nanny state dictating our choices.

Pending Republican Failure

And it’s from the same old story of Republican failure. The backdrop is this:

Job growth trounced expectations. The unemployment rate fell. Wages grew.

And inflation is down, those rising wages are catching up with inflated prices, our border is secure, eleven of twelve budget allocations passed, with only a Progressive-Democrat Party-blocked DHS bill remaining as Party pushes for another (partial, this time) of their government shutdowns.

President Donald Trump (R) is rightly touting all of these successes and more (even though he’d benefit from bragging less and focusing on those successes for our national weal more). Congressional Republicans and candidates for Congress, though, are failing miserably in their own communication responsibilities.

Some of the more nationally known Congressmen are on the national and cable talk show hustings, but it isn’t enough just for those few to give interview to network and cable news outlets.

There’s more to this than that, too. It’s an utter lack of understanding, swaddled as they are in their cloisters, of each of the Congressmen’s and candidates’ need especially to talk to—and with—their constituents in their districts, not just the few to the nation at large. In the case of Senators, whose constituents are State-wide, and it includes the need to talk to voters in Progressive-Democrat enclaves as well as to their own.

It’s also the need to be specific—no glittering generalities, no obfuscating or question-dodging speechifying. Republicans need to discuss the specifics of their policies and policy goals, and they need to explain to their constituents in concrete terms how their policies will help them in particular. No generalizing about national-level benefits. How their policies and goals would help their constituents with their grocery bills, fueling up their cars, reducing their utility bills in real terms. And then tie those real terms to the nominal costs that are what comes out of their constituents’ pocketbooks.

That, though, takes courage. Being specific would bring on a host of Leftist and Party criticism, as we’re already seeing with the objections to the newly House-passed SAVE Act, which would go a long way toward ensuring only American citizens could vote in American national elections. It would be easy enough to demonstrate the foolishness of those policy specifics criticisms, just as it would be easy enough to demonstrate not only the foolishness, but the outright racist nature, of Party’s objections to SAVE—if Republicans only had the necessary courage and the willingness to do the work.

The needed work: Republican Congressmen and candidates need to stop wasting time on national television and get out into their districts and into Progressive-Democratic Party candidates’ base areas and hold town halls and meet in diners and recreation centers directly with their constituents. They need to write op-eds in their districts’ local news outlets, give interviews on local television and radio stations.

Each of these Congressmen have Congressional staffs, and they have offices scattered around their districts; these staffers can assist them with getting the interviews, drafting their op-eds, etc. Candidates have fewer staff outlets, but they have some, and these could help. It isn’t enough to just throw up a policy statement or a news release on their respective Web sites and call it a day. Those are necessary, but stopping there is just lazy when it isn’t cowardice.

In the end, too, those moves will make it much easier for their staffers and volunteers as they mount their get-out-the-vote efforts, which is especially critical regarding low propensity voters and unenthusiastic Republican voters.

[W]inning candidates motivate base supporters to turn out in off-year elections. That’s no easy task for a GOP coalition that relies on infrequent voters and unreliable partisans.

If Republicans fail at these specifics, they’ll deserve to lose their elections. And our nation will lose badly.