Moving Targets

Every time we start looking at "Why did Democrats lose?' stories, we have to account for the fact that their policies are generally more popular and Clinton won a shit-ton more votes. Trump's share of the popular vote is roughly the same as Michael Dukakis's.

The other liability the Democrats labor under - and this is perhaps the biggest issue - is that creating policies is harder than attacking them.  Criticism is so much easier than governing.

And there is no better example of this than Obamacare.  As Jon Chait has cataloged for the past seven years, the GOP has been launching attacks against Obamacare that are factually untrue.  When that criticism is proven to be untrue, they simply repeat a slightly different criticism or create an entirely new one.  They constantly create a series of moving targets that are not contingent on ever being right in prior occasions.

In debating Trump with my father - and he's a NeverTrump guy - he has said, why judge him before he does anything.  But the point of judging him before he does things, is to test your hypotheses against future performance.  I believe a trade war with Mexico and China will create massive inflation in consumer goods, while leading to job losses in the short run.  Supply chains will be ruined; markets will be disrupted.  But I'm willing to test that hypothesis against whatever does happen.

Now, Trump being Trump, maybe he never engages in those trade wars, but it does seem to be the one issue he cares about.  Plus, I can predict that the GOP Congress will punch a massive hole in the debt with extraordinarily regressive tax cuts.  Again, if - for the first time ever - supply side economics really does create enough growth to bridge the gaps created by tax cuts, then I will stand corrected.

What I won't do is engage in the constant moving targets exercise that Republicans do constantly.  If the trade war doesn't create inflation in consumer goods, I won't shift my criticism to being that the trade war empowered China.  To be clear, I think the trade war will empower China, and that is another criticism.  But I will own my mistakes when they occur.

That puts me, and other Democrats, at a structural disadvantage in the political arena.  And given the rank ignorance of the body politic, that's an issue.  Trump will tout numbers that are false or misleading and our stupid media will pass those along, saying "opinions differ on whether these numbers are false."

But being the party of grown-ups and being the party of proper governance comes with a burden.  The question is how we transfer that weakness into a strength working within a system that doesn't care about truth.

Any suggestions?

Tovarisch!

There might not be a better example of how sharp the partisan divide is than watching Republicans basically excuse Russian interference in our elections, because it helped them win.  Also, Glenn Greenwald is a tool.

Listen To What They Say

My father keeps telling me not to judge Trump until he actually does something.  So that when he says he wants to start a nuclear arms race, I should just chill until he actually DOES start a nuclear arms race.  I mean, it would sort of be too late at that point, but he does have a point, in that Trump says a lot of shit, and who knows what any of it means.

Of course, when Presidents speak, the whole world listens.  Trump is so impulsive and so amateurish in his policy vision that the rest of the world will have a hard time figuring out what the hell he really means and what is bullshit.  I think Trump thinks that's the point.  But once Iran has a nuclear weapon or China launches an attack on Taiwan, it's kind of too late.  Again.

So right now, just listen to what the GOP Congress is saying.  They are normal politicians, and they will try and do what they say they want to do.

And what they want to do is chilling as shit.

Today In Federalism Making Things Not Suck

John Kasich (Party of Lincoln-OH) has vetoed a law that would have gutted state regulations that create cleaner energy.  Kasich is not a moderate in any objective meaning of the word.  But he is also not a fabulist, living in an imaginary world where global warming doesn't exist and the future can be averted if we just hold our breath until we turn blue.

I'm telling you, people, 2018 needs to be about winning as many governorships as possible.

Happy Boxing Day

Whatever that is.

Merry Christmas

In dark times, seek the light in each other.

Also, Vox is going to Vox.

Seriously?

Trump wants to build more nuclear weapons? Not improve what we have, but simply build more?

Why the fuck would that make any sense...Oh, right...Trump.

Anyway, here's a good take on why this is stupid.

Good Job Guys!

According to some political scientists, North Carolina is no longer a democracy.

But Hillary had emails on her private server.

We Told You That You Were Being Lied To

When snooty coastal elites pointed out that Trump was lying to the rubes Real Muricans, it was pointed out that we just "didn't get" what Trump was really saying.  "Take him seriously, not literally" is "literally" nonsensical.

Politicians always try to do what they say they will do on the campaign trail, but Trump isn't a politician.  He's a con artist.  So, we have yet another example of Trump's mendacity on display.  He's not going to "drain the swamp" he's going to stock it with water moccasins and pythons.  He's going to take away health care from tens of millions of Americans and throw the insurance markets into turmoil.

And while Trump is not a politician, he has appointed a few to key posts, and they are working to end Medicare as we know it, funnel even more wealth to the 1% and dismantle the regulations that keep our products, workplaces and environment healthy and safe.

Oh, and he is SOOOO starting a trade war with China that will prompt a global recession.

Dumpster Fire

My feeling is that Trump will prompt a global recession, primarily because he believes people like these idiots.

Dubya Bush was profoundly incurious about a lot of things.  That led him to make shoddy decisions.

He's fucking Einstein compared to Trump.

Repeat After Me

The Republicans don't give a shit about deficits.

The Big Lie at the heart of modern "conservatism" is that they give a rat's ass about deficit spending.

They don't want to spend public funds on the bottom 75% of society.  Full stop.  That's it.

They want to give more money to the top 1%, with enough scraps to the top 25% that they can win elections when they combine it with appeals to white nationalism.

The Republicans don't give a shit about deficits.

Today In Counterfactuals

Scott Lemieux examines the argument of whether Sanders could have won.  Since the "Hamilton Electors" gambit went down, pretty much all Democrats have left is to refight the 2016 primary I guess.

I don't think Sanders would have won.  Clinton ran well with POC, but she didn't run well enough.  Sanders would have done worse, I think.  I also think the opposition research on Sanders was full to overflowing.

The argument for Sanders is that Trump won on "economic anxiety" and therefore a social democrat could have neutralized that argument.  I find that very unpersuasive.  Trump won because of status anxiety, not economic anxiety.  Economics is part of it, but the entirety of status anxiety has to do with race and geography as much as it has to do with economics.  Economics aren't unimportant, but given the number of Trump voters who are surprised that Trump and the GOP are about to take away their health insurance, I don't think speaking to the Trumpenproletariat's sense of economic unease would have solved anything.

Lemieux brings in Biden, and that's an interesting case.  Biden has a couple of things going for him that Clinton and Sanders didn't.  Over Clinton, he wouldn't have the "unlikable" label hung on him, he's a fine speaker, he's tied very closely to Obama, which would help with POC.  Over Sanders, he's not quite as wild eyed, he's built bridges to communities across the US and he projects as a fighter and not just an angry old crank.

Given how close it was, I think Biden would have won.  He's appealingly authentic enough to the WWC voters to blunt just enough of Trump's appeal.

Clinton...Sanders...Biden...whoever you feel would have been the best candidate, that's kind of irrelevant, since you can never prove a counterfactual.  The one thing that seems painfully clear from the Democrat's history with the White House is this: Do NOT nominate a technocrat.  Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, Hillary...that won't do it.

Nominate someone who can bring the heat as well as the light.

The Wages Of Wrongness

Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are both engaged in pushing forward an agenda that has proven to be spectacularly wrong.  Trump's elevation of economic crank Larry Kudlow is a great example of this, as Chait catalogs.

This is why, at every opportunity, Democrats have to tie Trump with chains to the GOP.  Their policies are bad.  They will make things bad.  Because they lack the restraints that even Dubya operated under, I expect they will make things bad more quickly than he did.

If that happens, Digby's Law will be invoked: conservatism never fails, it can only be failed.  As soon as Trump drives the economy into the ditch and starts a few unnecessary wars and crisis, it will be pointed out that he was really a Democrat all along.

Democrats can't let that happen.  This is the same crap the right has been shoveling onto us for decades.  It is destroying the economic fabric of our country.

They have to own it.

We Are So Screwed

As long as these people lead the Democrats, opposition to Trumpism will be fractured and muted.

Manchester-By-The-Sea

Last night, I saw one of the best movies I've seen in a year full of great movies: Manchester By The Sea.  As I described it to a friend, a great eulogy makes you laugh and cry in equal measures and the movie was a lovely eulogy for a man who is still alive.

This morning, I rummaged around to read reviews on the film, which was mostly very well received.  However, there were more than a few reviewers who discussed the movie in terms of race, especially the Sad White Person genre (which I didn't know existed).  There were talks about privilege, which I found baffling, because the movie deals with a freaking janitor suffering from depression so deep it touches the earth's core.

I understand that discussions of white privilege are precisely about people like the one's in the film, who don't have to add racial anxiety to the otherwise shitty conditions in their life.  But while I agree that discussions of white privilege are important, blanket accusations of "privilege" make no sense in the context of many WWC.  In fact, all they do is engender the sort of backlash that creates Trump.

This is at the heart of the identity politics/economic populism debate that is currently roiling the Democrats and the Left.  In some ways, this is just another form of weird preferences of the Left for moralism over coalition building.

Anyway, it's a helluva movie.