Category: Politics
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Manzi (and Me) on Equality and Prosperity
Jim Manzi was nice enough to drop me a note in response to one of my comments, and he pointed me to his National Review piece, “A more equal capitalism: preserving the free-market consensus.” I ended up writing some lengthy responses, and not being one to waste perfectly good copy, I decided to post them…
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White Married Christians: The Decline and Fall of the GOP
The most compelling demographic analysis I've seen lately: Alan Abramowitz's "The Incredible Shrinking Republican Base" on Real Clear Politics. Short story: White Married Christians–the combined demographic–is and has been the base of Republicans' victories. Ignore income. Ignore gender. Ignore age. If you're white, married, and Christian, the odds are six or seven in ten that…
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Pubs and Dems: Brands and Beliefs
There's a pretty stunning new NPR poll out (PDF) (conducted by one Republican and one Democrat) showing that Pubs actually prefer Democratic policies by wide margins. This is Very Good News. But what's amazing is how brainwashed Pubs are by party affiliation, compared to Dems. If their beliefs aren't validated by Herr Comrade Party Leader,…
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McCain on a Roll? Not.
Since emerging as the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain's primary results have been tepid by any measure. 5/27-ID 70%5/20-OR 855/20-KY 725/13-WV 765/6-IN 785/6-NC 744/22-PA 734/11-MS 79 Compare George Bush's primary results after sealing the nomination–consistently in the high 90s. McCain has broken 80% exactly once, and his latest–70% in Idaho–is his lowest number yet. If…
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Choosing a VP For All the Right Reason
Speaking of who Obama should choose as a running mate, David Brooks thinks "He should be thinking about who can help him govern successfully so he can get re-elected." This reminds me of a scene from The West Wing. Jed Bartlett is trying to decide whether to run again with John Hoynes, with whom he…
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David Brooks on McCain: Who’s Talking, Who’s Doing?
In his NYT Op-Ed today, David Brooks makes a very good point: McCain has infinitely better grounds than Obama to run as a do-what-it-takes reformer. He has a long record of taking on not only the other party, but his own. Case in point: McCain voted against the farm bill, a bill that’s uniformly vilified…
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Sullivan’s Surprised??
Link: The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan. But I have come to believe that large swathes of today’s conservative movement truly are hateful. He calls it a "revelation" for him. He’s surprised. I’m stunned. Assignment: compare and contrast: Rush Limbaugh. Sean Hannity. Anne Coulter. Jon Stewart. Stephen Colbert. Al Franken. Related posts: Extreme…
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Andrew Sullivan on Obama
Here. This is a candidate who does not merely speak as a Christian. He acts like a Christian. Related posts: Best Line of the Week Why nominating Clinton would be a Very Bad Thing Wall Street Journal Endorses Obama Hillary: It’s Over. Obama: It’s McCain, Stupid. Ignore Hillary. Will the Right Kill the Republicans? Ask…
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Pelosi: “It’s Over.”
Well, she didn’t quite say it. But what she said said it. I’ve been banging my spoon on the highchair about this for weeks, and I’m happy to say that Nancy Pelosi finally came out and agreed with me. "If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what’s happened in the elections, it would be harmful…
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The Real Delegate Count: Ignoring the Super(fluous) Delegates
It may seem amazing with all the analysis out there, but I had to assemble these basic facts on non-super delegates myself. Assumptions/sources: Pledged delegates will decide it. Superdelegates won’t override because it would cause a nuclear meltdown. (Nightmare scenario: Clinton wins some even-vaguely-construable semblance of the popular vote, somehow assembled from some combination of…
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McCain’s Economic Advisor: More Taxes?
A CNN Money article on the candidates’ advisors quotes McCain’s economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin saying (as I read it) that we’re really going to have to raise taxes: The country’s "current fiscal policy is unsustainable, as even draconian restraint in the annual spending on defense and nondefense programs are insufficient to guarantee that the current…
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Does Inequality Result in Prosperity?
Lane Kenworthy lays out yet again the stunning rise in inequality in America since 1950, and especially during the period since the early eighties when supply-side economic thinking took effect. Meanwhile Greg Mankiw is presenting more don’t-worry-be-happy data. Supply-siders will tell you that we need to embrace or least tolerate this inequality, because it’s necessary…
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Hillary: The “one-woman solution to the Republican’s problemsâ€
The Economist says it plain and simple, yet again, in their article on McCain: If Democrats were to deprive Mr McCain of the chance of running against Hillary Clinton, that would be the cruellest blow. Mrs Clinton would be a one-woman solution to the Republicans’ problems, a guarantee that money will flow into the party’s…
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How can you tell if a politician is lying?
Megan McArdle: Answer: his lips are moving. And what’s the difference between a politician and a policy advisor? The policy advisor knows when he’s lying. Related posts: Paying More Taxes (again…) Nature: Good? The Reality-Based Community: Why I want to pay higher taxes The Long Decline in Equities Weimar, Zimbabwe, Here We Come
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Guantanamo Chief Prosecutor on Guantanamo
In case anyone missed the NYT Op-Ed ten days ago by Col. Morris Davis, formerly chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, the opening paragraph speaks more volumes, more movingly, than I could ever hope to achieve: Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible EvidenceTWENTY-SEVEN years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom…
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Consumption Inequality Revisited: Uh…Hello??
Coming back to the Cox and Alm Cox article in the NYT, whose basic argument was that poor people spend 50% as much as rich people in America. Everyone’s good. Don’t worry. Be happy. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this, and I’m utterly at a loss as to why…
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Wacky Objections to an Obama Senate Bill
Greg Mankiw links, apparently approvingly, to a VoxEU post by Willem Buiter and Anne Sibert savaging an Obama-sponsored bill in the Senate. (Cloyingly titled the Patriot Employer Act.) Felix Salmon has replied quite effectively, pointing out that the bill would not have the kind of disastrous effects the authors suggest, and that their objections are…
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Blind Trusts for Campaign Donations
Robert Reich has been talking up this idea recently, conceived by Bruce Ackerman (Yale law school), Ian Ayres, and some of their cohorts. They’ve been talking about it themselves for quite a while, notably in their 2004 book, Voting with Dollars and in assorted articles. Simple idea: donations to political campaigns go to blind trusts set up…
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Small Government Spurs Growth? Economists Say No.
Small-government conservatives’ most powerful economic argument–which progressives have failed to counter effectively in the minds of Americans–is that making government smaller results in faster economic growth. So, by this theory, small government makes all boats rise–rich and poor alike. It follows that progressives who argue for higher taxes and government spending are either foolish or…