I'll note that points 4 (murder rate) and 6 (budget deficit) are clearly comparing numbers heavily spiked by the pandemic to current non-pandemic rates, and that intelligent relatives will notice you're doing that and call you out on it.
Okay, maybe so. Or maybe it was a phenomenon confined to just America, and Trump had nothing to do with it. I mean, we'll see in the Great Pandemic of 2029, but until then we can just speculate.
But we can say that 2020 represents an outlier year for murders for the Trump administration, and that Biden's 2023 murder rate is clearly on track to have more murders than Trump's 2019.
If we're writing 2020 murder rates off for Trump because of Covid then it seems unfair to hold Biden fully accountable for 2023 murder rates, which are also affected by Covid.
For the purpose of analysis of almost everything, we should jump straight from 2019 to 2022. Same way you'd skip a strike-shortened NBA season when analyzing stats.
Covid didn't cause murders. The aftershocks of the murder of George Floyd by the police did. More violent activity, fewer prosecutions (and rhetoric that promised fewer prosecutions), general pull-back by police. Not Covid.
I mean, sure? I'm not like, "Biden is the murder President." I generally think pretty positively of Biden. But I don't think that 2023-2020 murder rate comparisons make a lot of sense no matter who the President is, and I think it's notable that while the spike in murders has come down somewhat, we remain elevated compared to pre-pandemic.
>But I don't think that 2023-2020 murder rate comparisons make a lot of sense no matter who the President is<
But since Republicans are going to blame Biden for "high murder rates" it seems reasonable to point out that, under Biden, the murder rate has in fact decreased relative to when Trump left office.
Why do we hold presidents accountable for murder rates, though? Murder isn't even a federal crime, unless you do your murder in a federal building, post office, military base, or national park. It's not like Trump OR Biden casually strolled down 5th Avenue murdering people. If you're angry about the murder rate in any given jurisdiction in any given year, I'd encourage you to take it up with your mayor (or county board), chief of police (or sheriff), and local prosecutor.
There's probably levers the president could pull to effect the murder rate, but I'd expect someone making that claim to say which levers they think were pulled.
The steelman version of it is that crime is (allegedly) caused by people in society holding liberal beliefs and attitudes, so to eliminate those attitudes it's necessary to reject liberal politicians across the board to signal to society that those kinds of beliefs are verboten.
I didn't say it was a very good argument, but steelman arguments are relative.
And if police morale is poor because cops know that if they ever use deadly force in a confrontation with a black suspect no one will have their backs ...
And if experienced cops are consequently retiring early and it's impossible to keep the force up to strength with well-qualified recruits ...
Well we shouldn't but voters tend to follow the idea of "blind retrospection" ie people blame things that go bad on the president regardless if they are actually responsible, see Woodrow Wilson being blamed for shark attacks. Matt's talking points are good rebuttals for your conservative uncle that things are actually getting a lot better and were worse under Trump.
Because a lot of the local policies follow the trends set by justice departments and LE priorities of US attorneys, FBI etc.
If national Dems send the signal (and they have since Obama) that "systemic racism" in local law enforcement, school discipline etc is a much bigger concern than public order and safety then state and local officials will take the hint.
I don’t know why you (leftoid) people like to talk about the fact that he cried out for his mother as he died, insofar that it’s even true (I doubt it). It’s horribly unbecoming for a ~50 year old man to die crying out for mom. Considering that George Floyd’s terrible end has already been made a national spectacle, the least one can do is portray it as an honorable death in the face of one’s enemies.
Why is that relevant? Doesn't common sense suggest that the uptick in crime had more to do with the policies exemplified by the slogans "defund the police" and "decarceration" and "black lives matter" (i.e., if you're a white cop and use deadly force in a confrontation with a black suspect don't count on getting the benefit of the doubt from your superiors, prosecutors, judges, or juries) -- which were not promoted or implemented by Trump or other Republican officeholders but by progressive activists and pundits and compliant officials in deep-blue cities and states --than with anything said or done by Trump or anyone in his administration?
Because the rest of the developed world doesn't have progressive DA's, mayors, school principals who think laws are basically just a veneer for white supremacy and systems of oppression.
Also to point 17, I don’t know if extending 2017 tax cuts would be fairly perceived as “new tax cuts” by most Americans. Those cuts mostly accrued to the wealthy and businesses but at the same time my middle income standard deduction really did double. My child tax credit really did double and I believe my marginal rate was lowered. So it’s gonna be a tough sell opposing extending most of those cuts, IMO.
Regarding point 6, even if that may be true, the general idea that Republicans care very little for the budget deficit when they're in power remains true (it's risen under every Republican president going back to at least Reagan).
Perhaps true. But if the goal here is to genuinely convince familymembers, and not score points on the internet with people who already agree with you, I don't think this particular way of making that point is the right way.
Well, I think that it's obviously the case that a 2020 to 2023 comparison juices the numbers and makes you sound like you don't actually have a good point, you're trying to obfuscate the truth.
I also think that in general, Republicans who care about the deficit perceive themselves as genuine, and saying that they actually don't care seems clearly untrue to them. Instead of a general "Republicans actually increase the deficit" point, I'd probably go with "specifically Trump actually increases the deficit."
I can see how my original message could be misconstrued as applying to all conservatives - for the record, I do realize rank-and-file conservatives generally care about the deficit, it's just that the people they end up electing only seem to care when it's politically convenient (e.g. when a Democrat is president). In fact, the last time we ran a budget surplus was under Clinton, a Democratic president.
Presidents don't actually determine whether we're in deficit or not. Clinton ran a surplus and Reagan ran a deficit, but it is notable that Clinton ran a surplus only when Republicans controlled Congress, and Regan had a Democratic House for his entire term (though a Republican Senate for most of it). In general, all Presidents run deficits, Clinton is a weird exception -- the only President to run a surplus since 1969. I think it's reasonable to not believe that Democrats are actually better than Republicans here.
I think that Republicans might also -- perhaps rationalizing -- say that W had a war, and that excuses his deficit.
Trump, on the other hand, seems like it's a potentially winnable argument. He doesn't have a W-like excuse for his deficit, and instead of getting mired in now-20+-year-old details about how much ex-Presidents should be regarded as complicit in their deficits, we can pretty straightforwardly say that Trump is not presenting a plan to have a lowered deficit.
Fine let them. Maybe those relatives will be forced to articulate how the pandemic affected many things, some good (lower energy usage and prices), some bad (people dying; more violent crime) and maybe begin to internalize that sometimes things happen and spend less time assuming that everything bad that happens is Biden’s fault.
Exactly right - nothing to be embarrassed at in noticing that someone is improving things from a bad baseline, even if there is still more work to be done.
While I appreciate the attention here to who can be persuaded, I think this list doesn't take enough account of how people can be persuaded over an interaction like the Thanksgiving weekend.
The point about Biden administration issuing record numbers of deportation orders is great. It's simple, challenges the narrative that might be driving a vote and is something they can easily remember and check when they go back home.
Unfortunately, many of the economic points are exactly the opposite. Unless your relatives are taking notes all they'll go home with is: my relative said 'nah, Biden is doing great on the economy' and you might as well just say that. The people who are going to check right wing media will just get whatever stats make Biden look bad and those who are going to check left or accurate nuetral sources will get that info but either way it doesn't really help persuade them to have a bunch of economic stats to cite. Indeed, it probably hurts because it will make them feel dominated and resentful.
More broadly, I suspect that the most effective way of being persuasive in our current climate is merely to convey the sense that people who support, or better yet are in, the Biden admin care about people with values and concerns like the ones they have. And often the best way to do that is mostly by listening and showing that you are a person who sympathizes with their concerns (even if you don't agree with the policies they support) even though you are a strong Biden supporter. Tho, ofc, every situation is different.
"...the most effective way of being persuasive in our current climate is merely to convey the sense that people who support, or better yet are in, the Biden admin care...."
Yeah, I think it helps to show that your side cares.
But showing that your side is buoyantly optimistic and proud of its accomplishments can do a lot, too.
When the MAGA relatives talk smack about how bad everything is, they expect you to cringe and apologize. If you forcefully make the case that things are better under Biden, then they will forget the numbers, but they will remember your optimism and confidence.
One really good thing is the labor market. I had friends who were able to easily get jobs at Dunkins paying >$18/hour summer after high school. Everyone's seen those hiring signs with fat hourly rates on them.
Individual anecdotes of "are you better off now than you were four years ago" are absolutely worthless, and have nothing to do with who the president is, or what their policies are.
As a simple example, my personal financial situation did, in fact, improve dramatically between fall 2016 and fall 2020. But, the reasons for the change had nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with the fact that in fall 2016, I switched to another job that paid better.
Pundits like to imagine that everybody on election day asks themselves if they are better off or worse off than 4 years ago and votes for or against the incumbent accordingly. In reality, that like of thinking is just B.S.
You've provided rebuttals to every possible talking point Republicans / Conservatives / MAGA folks you can imagine...except the ones they will actually use. I wonder if Matt has ever met these people in real life. I have, and to be fair, all of what follows does have rebuttals, but they aren't obvious and they aren't pithy and they aren't 100% dispositive:
- Biden's old -- Jeez, did you see him fall at the Air Force ceremony? He's got dementia and that's why he won't do press conferences.
- Inflation is out of control. I mean, my grocery bill is 40% higher than before he got in office.
- Have you seen the weirdo guys dressing up as girls and gyranting in front of kids? That's messed up.
- Biden gets in office, we turn over Afghanistan to the f'ing Taliban, Russia invades Ukraine and Hamas starts killing Jews again. That didn't happen with Trump
- The border is out of control. God knows who is crossing the Rio Grande these days. And Biden just wants to give them a summons and say come back to court in 6 months? They will never show up!
- Trump says a lot of bad things, but he kept us out of new wars and business was good...at least until the Democrats and Fauci shut down the country because of the flu. I'll take the bad tweets to get back to those days.
They won't engage in the obvious authoritarian tendencies and promises for retribution. They won't lament the erosion of the rule of law, the coarsening of our society, the lies, the corruption, the utter ineffectiveness. But they will come back to the list of points over and over.
The most persuasive work I do with my family is at the gun range or while helping them cook, clean or do something else around the house/yard. Almost nothing will happen at Thanksgiving because that’s comfort zone time. Folks just want to eat good food and reinforce their priors. I just change the subject or even join in with making fun of Biden if it’s a point I agree with.
Be of service while you try to change someone’s mind, it automatically puts them in a more receptive mood if you are helping them out.
That’s what’s always worked out best for me at any rate.
These all sound like talking points from deeply partisan Republicans and thus there's no way to talk them out of their position. If you were canvassing you'd just mark them as a 5 and move on as there's no point of having them in the "universe" of voters you'd contact on the campaign. Instead focus more on the softer Trumpers who admit that Trump is also old and says crazy things and claims that gas is now 8 dollars a gallon just aren't true.
Don't you know any normies? I've heard variations on most of John's hypothetical points from people that voted for Obama, then Trump, and then Biden (in succession).
I've been living and traveling exclusively in the Northeast for the last few years where immigration is less salient, so i haven't heard point 5 in a while, but I have no problem believing it's true in e.g., Florida.
If you don't know many people like that irl but have access to the NYT, take a look at their articles interviewing twelve random people, and you should get a sense of it. I think you'll be shocked by their seeming ideological inconsistency.
The specific wording on some of John's examples were partisan ("Democrats and Fauci" would probably only come from a Republican partisan, or maybe a heavily-Red-leaning independent), but I've heard many independent (even blue-leaning) voters express every one of those points.
The foreign policy point doesn't make any sense to me either, but I hear variations on it often enough.
The thesis is that because he was seen as unpredictable and a little crazy, despots didn’t want to take the chance. It isn’t unreasonable since it happens in real life. If you see an unhinged person in the street ranting about the world, people avoid a confrontation.
It isn’t the ringing endorsement they think it is.
Other countries that did not respond with stimulus had worse inflation. And we would have had inflation as a result of huge tax cuts for the wealthy had republicans been in power.
I work in education. Father in law was asking me this morning what’s going to happen to schools when they’re not majority white. I don’t exactly know what he means by “what’s going to happen.” So I told him that US public schools haven’t been majority white in 9 years. He replied “what’s this country coming to.” I guess educating non-white children is bad? Anyway, not picking that fight.
Really looking forward to Christmas when we’re seeing my family. They’re on the full “rule by the strong” train and pretty much want everyone they see as weak removed from power because Americans aren’t strong anymore. I get a lot of memes in the family chat about how effeminate our “trans military” is or how we don’t make things in America anymore because all the strong men are gone and can’t work in factories anymore.
So if MY has a list for those conversations, I’d love some assistance.
-The United States military can put boots on the ground anywhere in the world in 24 hours. Nobody else in the world has anything close to this (the Russians struggle to get food and clothing to their troops in a neighboring country)
-The US Navy has 11 nuclear powered carrier strike groups, our closest competitor would be our allies the UK which has one non-nuclear strike group that lacks catapults like the US and the French with the Charles de Gaulle their own single nuclear carrier. The manly Russians have one carrier launched in 1985 that is still not operational.
-As for "losing the white majority" point out to him the last time the US had a WASP majority was the Census of 1920, and those are the "real Americans", preferably do this after a few drinks and start a fist fight.
"Rule by the strong" is how dictators come to power and is why they're also called strongmen. Putin, Mao, pretty much any dictator that came from Africa or South America (Trujillo, Pinochet, etc.) .... all "ruled by the strong."
Fair point, but even if the dictator is on their side, it's still broadly bad for the country in terms of economic development, policy choices, corruption, etc. But that may be asking too much for someone to think about.
Knowing my family, yeah, it’s more than they’ll think about. They want people they don’t like out of government, out of positions of social influence, and out of the country. They increasingly do not care how that is accomplished and feel that “something” has to be done to rid this country of weakness. There’s been this whole thing where they are convinced that nobody who cannot physically overpower them (well, really the men) cannot tell them what to do and it’s a principle they believe should be applied throughout every aspect of society.
Matthew should be embarrassed about his assessment of murder rates. Murder rates under Trump were very low or decreasing, and spiked in 2020. This is pure partisanship which makes the center right not trust Democrats when they say stuff that is so easily proven false. And I think the unrest of 2020 was as much a Democrat fanning of the George Floyd flames and that pesky virus. So it is going to be a tough sell to any right minded person that Biden has done well on murder rates. Especially since 2021 was higher than 2020. 2021 was the year of defunding the police, remember?
And the bottom line is that the president probably doesn't have any control over murder rates anyway. So this one is a big reach in an otherwise pretty good article.
Right: it's important to combat the doomer fables of national decay. When they say "it's worse," you say, truly, "it's better." That's more important than getting into the causal weeds.
In this here comment section we have “D cities are wastelands” type comments. If you (like me) live in a D city, it can be useful to rebut this nonsense
Isn't the point to change moderate Republicans' minds, not to poison the well? Technically true statements chosen to make people believe untrue things will just convince relatives not to trust you.
Don't say the "technically true statement chosen to make people believe untrue things". Say the full true thing - there *was* a major spike during the pandemic and unrest of 2020, but in the Biden administration, this has been getting back under control and decreasing. We haven't yet got things back to where they were before, but under this calmer and more boring president, they are going in the right direction - do you want to upset that?
The talking point that "Biden is causing crime to get out of control and cities are literally dying!" is a pretty common one in lots of right wing circles. There's a new documentary made by conservatives in Minnesota called "The Fall of Minneapolis" that argues just this (and indeed Chauvin did nothing wrong) and it's gotten over a million views online.
Matt's points are good data points about why this narrative is wrong.
OK I don't think that Dems literally wanted more larceny, auto traffic deaths and murders.
But who can deny their policies on law enforcement and school discipline have grown much more lenient and much more concerned about the "oppression" law enforcement has on marginalized groups--especially blacks--than about public order and safety?
Matt has actually written quite a bit on this also. Plenty of local Dems don't message this way but enough decision makers at local level do to poison the party's brand--which BTW is EXACTLY what happened from 1965-95
If the policies you're talking about are ones that have been in place for the last two years, or have been being put in place during that period, then pointing out that crime has been falling during that period is relevant.
Both/and....In Obama II with several high profile cases like the Michael Brown shooting and Freddie Gray etc, there was a definite trend toward local governments reining in local law enforcement on concerns of police violence.
Something analogous took place as Obama II pressured school districts to lighten up on suspensions which were overwhelmingly falling on black kids.
THese trends accelerated under Trump as liberal decision makers became more radicalized and during COVID all hell broke loose.
Post George Floyd, the word was sent out in no uncertain terms to stop hassling black motorists and petty criminals because we were in a "racial reckoning".
Now it will be really hard to put the genie back in the bottle again without going back to what we know works: mass incarceration!
Just like ill advised conservative "small govt." policies generally lead to bigger government over time, liberal policlies of leniency and forebearance to keep kids out of life changing trouble with law will lead to far more trouble with law later once society gets sick of the problem..which it already is starting to.
So since crime exploded under Trump, are presidents unable to affect crime rates, or was Trump just too weak and afraid to stand up to these city level politicians?
Murder rates decreased every year under Trump, until 2020. Trump suddenly did something different? Again, I stop believing everything else my more progressive friends might say once they start saying something that clearly has an alternative explanation.
The only people who believe murder rates went up because of Trump are pure partisans that aren't worth the mind effort it takes to explain that there might have been something else going on in 2020.
With murder rate there's been a small regression to mean post COVID.
Doesn't change the fact that liberal policies on crime of forbearance, indulgence etc. out of white racial guilt have made crime of all kinds permanently more common..
If the president doesn't have any control over murder rates, then that proves that the Republican Party's crime-based attacks on Biden, which are believed by people like the hypothetical uncle described in this piece, are wrong.
"Professional Republicans generally believe that legal abortion is a form of socially sanctioned mass murder and/or that low taxes on the rich, while unpopular, are of such enormous long-term benefit to humanity as to be worth fighting for under almost any circumstances ... but it’s striking how little of conservative media or Republican Party messaging is dedicated to those points."
I think this is an incredibly important problem, and a lot of the worst aspects of American politics and culture war are downstream of it. People who follow politics closely all basically know that a potential 2025 GOP trifecta would ban abortion, slash taxes for the rich, and (at least try to) cut important social programs. I oppose this agenda, but whatever one thinks of it on the merits, it would represent sweeping changes to American society.
If the core goals of a political party become deeply unpopular, the way most political parties in most democracies solve this problem is by moderating those goals. Hence why center-right parties around the world have made peace with the basic idea of social insurance systems and personal liberties. But our Republican Party, because it is structurally overrepresented, culturally appealing, and very good at hiding the ball with disciplined messaging, has been able to hang onto an ambitious hard-right agenda that even many of its voters don't support.
And there is something fundamentally dishonest about this! It's worth saying that this is basically unique to Republicans. Obama's policy changes were controversial in their time (and have only become less so after taking root) - but expanding health coverage, reforming financial regulations, funding clean energy, and stimulating the economy were all things he explicitly ran on! That's the way democracies are supposed to work, where parties seeking to make big policy changes are up front with the public about the issues they will focus on and the direction of change. The Republican exception to this is pretty vexing - they might well win in 2024 running against crime and immigration (issues they have either done nothing about or actively made worse) then take power, ban abortion, and slash Social Security. That would be really bad, and as Matt says here we would do well to remind voters of the balls Republicans want to hide.
The GOP would need a stronger trifecta than Obama’s 2009 majority to enact a federal abortion ban. I’m not sure that’s possible based on the current map.
The professional Republicans in my family are currently debating if the car crash in upstate New York was just that, a car crash or a terrorist attempt as reported via Fox News. The most current text is one noting Vivek just might be right about the Canadian border. 😩
I only saw the NYTimes headline alert, which called it an "explosion" rather than a "car crash". If it's really a crash rather than an explosion, then that changes things.
The tax cuts thing is a little disingenuous. Serious Republicans (are there any left?) have argued that taxes need to be lower across the board because this will lead to higher growth rates, and that over 50-100 years a 1% higher growth rate gives you a massively higher standard of living. And when they have cut taxes they have cut them across the board
As far as the TCJA cuts though, the design was good politics, not good policy. It was remarkably good at lowering red state taxes while in many cases raising blue state taxes thanks to the SALT reduction and the lack of a cut in the second to highest bracket.
This would be a good argument for not having a gigantic welfare state for the elderly that costs trillions of dollars a year. As cutting that seems politically impossible, we thus have to raise taxes so as to not collapse the US government, which would obviously not be good for growth. When your country takes in $3 trillion a year in revenue and spends $6 trillion, higher taxes are on the table, unfortunately. I'd love to not have gigantic expensive entitlements, but I really really don't think anyone's going to win elections based on cutting them- so, I'm willing to put my big boy pants on and pay higher taxes
The problem is the party that wants to raise taxes also doesn't want to keep spending flat so taxes can make up the difference. They want spending to keep increasing.
Is there a good source I can read as to how Singapore does it, exactly? It's mandatory retirement and healthcare premiums paid by individual citizens that goes to an SOE provider, is that it?
Matt is talking about dialogue, not debating. If you owned your aunt and embarrassed her and now she is even more dug into her crazy beliefs, you have lost. If you give them pause and make them think it’s less crazy to support Biden than they had thought, that’s a good thing.
It also depends on the family of course. My family loves to debate and hash out disagreements. But if politics talk means yelling and divisiveness, by all means stick to more unifying topics.
I think if even 1% of one’s focus on Thanksgiving dinner is to increase support for Biden, I think one needs to expand their life experiences. More important shit in life
If you think that some family member there is going to bring up politics and make things unpleasant, a natural focus is to figure out how to keep it positive, and how to figure out how to turn this to possible benefit.
Obviously better to stay away from things that will cause arguments, but if you are confident they're going to happen, you might as well prepare to make them more productive.
How about giving some focus to not having your family members have a distorted view of the state of the country? Or maybe it will turn out you have a distorted view of the world and you can learn from them. Again, depends on your family dynamics: it's not a one-size-fits-all proposition.
I don’t look at different people as having “distorted views”. Just different perspectives. I always prioritize learning from others’ perspectives. Our TG dinner conversation was great, 0% politics. because most of what makes life worth living is NOT politics.
While this is well-intentioned, I'm not sure this is how these things tend to go. The last time I discussed politics with a conservative relative at Thanksgiving - as it happens, about ten years ago - it was started with me pretty calmly trying to explain some bit of factual information about the Affordable Care Act and wound up turning into a shouting match after said relative decided to start condescendingly lecturing me about how I was too young to understand how the world works (of note, I was about 30 at the time, so relatively young but hardly a kid). His response to me was not only condescending and aggressive, it literally made no sense and was totally irrelevant to the point I was trying to make.
I suspect this is how these sorts of things normally go.
12 and 14 are "The stuff Democrats said was horrific when Trump did it". So maybe don't bring that up unless you have a good argument for why it's actually ok.
If you personally are one of the moderates who agrees with points 12 and 14, then they're great points to bring up, to show that Biden does too, and he's not on the side of the people that you and your relative think are crazies.
Trump voter here (very reluctant the 2nd time) and I agree with most of the things on the list. In a few ways Biden has done things that Trump should have done.
But I can't agree with it all.
Some exceptions
The immigration point misses the mark completely. Absolutely no reason for Biden to have changed the "remain in Mexico" policy. Vast majority of these "asylum" claims are BS. The wall Biden wants to build is a political ploy. And Mayorkas has been a disaster.
Inflation claims largely miss the point. Rent has gone up MUCH faster than inflation in many markets and this has been massaged out of inflation stats. And high interest rates have a chilling effect even for those not current paying them. Many banks with lots of exposure to commercial paper coming due for refinance are worried as are those buildings and businesses who are paying these rates. We're looking at lots of commercial real estate foreclosures and office buildings are in especially bad shape.
The point about murder misses the cumulative effects of Democrats decision to stop prosecuting shoplifting which is hurting businesses and individuals and contributing to a general sense of malaise and disorder. I'm very upset about this one because it threatens to reverse decades of urban revival and Democrats continue to gaslight on it. Any political party that elevates the concerns of criminals or the welfare of "urban youth" and "school to prison pipeline" above public order and safety doesn't deserve the govern even if it's technically right on other issues.
I know you aren’t trying to write a treatise defending your views here, but some of what you are saying makes no sense to me.
For example
> The wall Biden wants to build is a political ploy
Biden doesn’t want to build any more wall. He lost a legal case about it and now has to. He is taking no public credit for it, so how could it be a “political ploy”?
> Rent has gone up MUCH faster than inflation in many markets and this has been massaged out of inflation stats
Massaged out of the stats? What does that even mean?
> Democrats decision to stop prosecuting shoplifting
Has shoplifting ever really been prosecuted? I doubt that very much. It seems more like what has happened is that social media has made word get around that shoplifting is never prosecuted so more people are doing it now.
Let's do the crime and immigration first because they are more straightfoward.
Yes, social media (and regular media) has broadcast to the whole world hither and yon that the new "compassionate" approach to law and border enforcement is to give far greater weight to the disparate impact enforcement would have on black and brown people...and of course, black and brown people respond to the new incentives.
The word gets out that they won't punish you (esp if you're young and African American) for theft, larceny, car jacking, even reckless driving---and you can probably literally get away with murder if you're lucky. The message is strong and consistent up from progressive DAs, liberal mayors, school principals, police chiefs on up to liberal justice departments that we need to be much more lenient and forgiving of black youth--...it's been an abject disaster. Liberals are openly advertising they don't have to guts anymore to enforce laws or maintain public order.
Similarly the border...yeah tell everyone and their mother in Latin, South America or wherever else all they need to do is make the trip and show up at the border with kids and a sob story and they not only won't be sent back they'll even get fed clothed and housed--free medical care too. Of course you're going to get a surge of phony asylum claimants willing to take take take what liberals are giving.
If Biden doesn't want to build the wall why is Matt telling people to use the phony Biden wall as a reassurance to your crazy right wing uncle that he really doesn't want an uncontrolled immigration surge?
I get the same vibes on a lot of these points, but I'm not sure how much they are true? I think the point about lack of enforcement is fair, but I don't know about the border. Can you point to specific examples where the administration is broadcasting a more compassionate approach to the whole world? (I do feel that Biden doesn't do enough to signal in what ways they are cracking down, like they are embarrassed or something.)
Ok check this out..this is a scholarly paper that documented the effects of Obama era justice department policies...and their obsession with racial disparities...have hamstrung local le.
Granted this is Obama and not Biden but every reason to think Biden justice department has accelerated those policies...same people in charge
Ah, I see you were referring to both law enforcement and border enforcement in the same statement. That's an interesting idea (that recommendations at the federal level influenced local tactics), although I would assume local policies matter much more.
Local policies do matter but there's been a bunch of soft on crime lefties who have taken over DA offices in many major cities. This is a basic problem for liberals: over time they are too weak to police their own left wing. This is exactly the same dynamic that happened to the party in the 70's and 80's and I see it well on its way for a reprise now.
How much is specifically Biden's fault in a sense doesn;t matter. The dopey old man has lost the energy in the party to lefties and clearly can't control them. I mean even Kamala is scared to talk about her background as a DA because she's cowed by progressives.
You literally didn't answer any of my questions, but you sure do have strong opinions about black youths and people from south america!
> If Biden doesn't want to build the wall why is Matt telling people to use the phony Biden wall as a reassurance to your crazy right wing uncle that he really doesn't want an uncontrolled immigration surge?
honest question: are you an idiot? that is the only possible conclusion I can reach from this statement
Isn't rent the piece of inflation that can least be blamed on the president (since it's a long-term issue and fairly obviously caused by state and local policies)?
Yes but the party in power is going to be blamed for bad macro effects.
But Biden doesn't get a pass there.
Does Biden have anything to do with the fact interest rates have roughly doubled since he took office--an abrupt shift after a 40 year clear downward trend?
I do blame Biden for making inflation worse with the Orwellian-named "Inflation Reduction Act", but your comment calls out rent specifically as the worst part, and I think rent is actually the part that's most clearly not his fault.
Sort of...does Biden have anything to do with massive reversal in interest rate trends to roughly doubling after more than 40 years of downward decline? Yes!
Do rent hikes have to do with interest rates when these apartment buildings are now expecting to have to refinance at much higher rates in near future?
The big difference I see is the people I know in real
life hold a lot of desperate views. My SIL, for example, is a conservative small business owning hippie. Totally into organic when we go up in the summer hanging out at her house is the town’s only Black family and the lesbians next door and their kids. My mom leans conservative but is very strongly pro-choice.
Only online and the few Very Online folks I know in real life have “talking points”/stereotypical left wing or right wing views.
All the strong Bernie voters I know are gun toting carpenters.
The guy I used to work for had been running the construction company in Maine for 30 years, after being a fireman and an tour in the Army. He hated Trump more than anyone I've ever met. He liked Hillary because she was a hawk lol. He liked Obama too. Very pro drone war. He got bin Ladin. Etc.
The Trump supporter who worked on my crew with would tell you up front that he thought Trump was an ass, didn't agree with his politics, but thought that "the government and the Democrats need to see that we're pissed". He read the Times and would hate watch CNN but he didn't like Fox because 'they aren't serious'.
On the one hand, I see the same truck every day that's plastered with literal QAnon stickers. On the other, it's the only one I see.
I think Matt's post was good strategy for a campaign ad, and bad for talking to real people over Thanksgiving.
Perhaps it would be worth asking an open question to all Slow Borers as to what the political cleavages among the relatives that we might spend a Thanksgiving or other holiday gathering with actually are. That way, we could further gauge how useful Matt's 17 points could be.
For my family, on the big ticket issues we're remarkably aligned on most of them, and thus there's rarely much drama that comes about, and we'd have to pull out some really arcane issues (like the HOA one I mentioned downthread) to really get any serious debate going.
My family is all relatively aligned (ranging from Bernie-curious but not full on socialist Democrats, to Democrats who would rather have a president mildly more moderate than Biden, plus in-betweens), except my aunt will be visiting from Jerusalem this year, and is the token Republican in the family. But I imagine discussions of the Israel-Hamas conflict will take up most of the oxygen, plus nobody in my family likes Trump.
My family is absolutely incredible at having political debates where we disagree, and then just moving on after it ends. Others who have observed my family interacting have commented on how rare it is (something I never realized) but I guess it's a strength of ours.
I'm to the right of my siblings and the left of my parents who are best summed up as professional Republicans. I can have perfectly sane policy discussions with them but none of us are low information and hard to persuade on big issues.
My parents were hardcore Ayn Rand libertarians when I was growing up (I'm fairly sure they voted for Harry Browne in 1996, the first election year they were US citizens), but George W Bush turned them into mainstream MSNBC Democrats.
I'll note that points 4 (murder rate) and 6 (budget deficit) are clearly comparing numbers heavily spiked by the pandemic to current non-pandemic rates, and that intelligent relatives will notice you're doing that and call you out on it.
Murders didn't really spike in the rest of the developed world though. It was a phenomena confined to Trump's America.
Okay, maybe so. Or maybe it was a phenomenon confined to just America, and Trump had nothing to do with it. I mean, we'll see in the Great Pandemic of 2029, but until then we can just speculate.
But we can say that 2020 represents an outlier year for murders for the Trump administration, and that Biden's 2023 murder rate is clearly on track to have more murders than Trump's 2019.
If we're writing 2020 murder rates off for Trump because of Covid then it seems unfair to hold Biden fully accountable for 2023 murder rates, which are also affected by Covid.
The whole idea that we can tie murder rates to a President is just dumb IMO.
As is tying just about anything to 2020.
For the purpose of analysis of almost everything, we should jump straight from 2019 to 2022. Same way you'd skip a strike-shortened NBA season when analyzing stats.
There were cultural and political decisions made in '20-'23 that people need to be held accountable for. The analysis must include that.
Covid didn't cause murders. The aftershocks of the murder of George Floyd by the police did. More violent activity, fewer prosecutions (and rhetoric that promised fewer prosecutions), general pull-back by police. Not Covid.
Aftershocks which occured under whose presidency?
Trump. Which I didn't dispute nor take issue with. Only the "Covid caused the murder spike" statement is incorrect.
I mean, sure? I'm not like, "Biden is the murder President." I generally think pretty positively of Biden. But I don't think that 2023-2020 murder rate comparisons make a lot of sense no matter who the President is, and I think it's notable that while the spike in murders has come down somewhat, we remain elevated compared to pre-pandemic.
>But I don't think that 2023-2020 murder rate comparisons make a lot of sense no matter who the President is<
But since Republicans are going to blame Biden for "high murder rates" it seems reasonable to point out that, under Biden, the murder rate has in fact decreased relative to when Trump left office.
The murder rates weren't from COVID they were because police pulled back because of the defund the police nonsense
Why do we hold presidents accountable for murder rates, though? Murder isn't even a federal crime, unless you do your murder in a federal building, post office, military base, or national park. It's not like Trump OR Biden casually strolled down 5th Avenue murdering people. If you're angry about the murder rate in any given jurisdiction in any given year, I'd encourage you to take it up with your mayor (or county board), chief of police (or sheriff), and local prosecutor.
>Why do we hold presidents accountable for murder rates, though?<
Not sure. Ask Republicans.
There's probably levers the president could pull to effect the murder rate, but I'd expect someone making that claim to say which levers they think were pulled.
The steelman version of it is that crime is (allegedly) caused by people in society holding liberal beliefs and attitudes, so to eliminate those attitudes it's necessary to reject liberal politicians across the board to signal to society that those kinds of beliefs are verboten.
I didn't say it was a very good argument, but steelman arguments are relative.
crime is caused by criminals but, yeah, if the signal is sent that police won't arrest people and DA won't prosecute you will get far more crime
And if police morale is poor because cops know that if they ever use deadly force in a confrontation with a black suspect no one will have their backs ...
And if experienced cops are consequently retiring early and it's impossible to keep the force up to strength with well-qualified recruits ...
Well we shouldn't but voters tend to follow the idea of "blind retrospection" ie people blame things that go bad on the president regardless if they are actually responsible, see Woodrow Wilson being blamed for shark attacks. Matt's talking points are good rebuttals for your conservative uncle that things are actually getting a lot better and were worse under Trump.
Because a lot of the local policies follow the trends set by justice departments and LE priorities of US attorneys, FBI etc.
If national Dems send the signal (and they have since Obama) that "systemic racism" in local law enforcement, school discipline etc is a much bigger concern than public order and safety then state and local officials will take the hint.
It's not the president as a person, it's The President as the leader and personification of their faction, who is held accountable for these things.
It was a phenomenon of the left going batsh** insane about policing and crime circa June 2020.
Technically we went batshit over 4 cops kneeling on a neck of a man who was crying out for his mother until he suffocated and died
I don’t know why you (leftoid) people like to talk about the fact that he cried out for his mother as he died, insofar that it’s even true (I doubt it). It’s horribly unbecoming for a ~50 year old man to die crying out for mom. Considering that George Floyd’s terrible end has already been made a national spectacle, the least one can do is portray it as an honorable death in the face of one’s enemies.
Who was president in June 2020?
Why is that relevant? Doesn't common sense suggest that the uptick in crime had more to do with the policies exemplified by the slogans "defund the police" and "decarceration" and "black lives matter" (i.e., if you're a white cop and use deadly force in a confrontation with a black suspect don't count on getting the benefit of the doubt from your superiors, prosecutors, judges, or juries) -- which were not promoted or implemented by Trump or other Republican officeholders but by progressive activists and pundits and compliant officials in deep-blue cities and states --than with anything said or done by Trump or anyone in his administration?
The mayor of San Francisco, right?
If so, then why did murders and crime also go up in red areas?
Because the rest of the developed world doesn't have progressive DA's, mayors, school principals who think laws are basically just a veneer for white supremacy and systems of oppression.
Also to point 17, I don’t know if extending 2017 tax cuts would be fairly perceived as “new tax cuts” by most Americans. Those cuts mostly accrued to the wealthy and businesses but at the same time my middle income standard deduction really did double. My child tax credit really did double and I believe my marginal rate was lowered. So it’s gonna be a tough sell opposing extending most of those cuts, IMO.
Regarding point 6, even if that may be true, the general idea that Republicans care very little for the budget deficit when they're in power remains true (it's risen under every Republican president going back to at least Reagan).
Perhaps true. But if the goal here is to genuinely convince familymembers, and not score points on the internet with people who already agree with you, I don't think this particular way of making that point is the right way.
I'm genuinely curious as to why you don't think it's the right way. What would be a better approach?
Well, I think that it's obviously the case that a 2020 to 2023 comparison juices the numbers and makes you sound like you don't actually have a good point, you're trying to obfuscate the truth.
I also think that in general, Republicans who care about the deficit perceive themselves as genuine, and saying that they actually don't care seems clearly untrue to them. Instead of a general "Republicans actually increase the deficit" point, I'd probably go with "specifically Trump actually increases the deficit."
Hmm gotcha! Would something like "Republican politicians increase the deficit while they're in power" be more convincing? https://www.thebalancemoney.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306
I can see how my original message could be misconstrued as applying to all conservatives - for the record, I do realize rank-and-file conservatives generally care about the deficit, it's just that the people they end up electing only seem to care when it's politically convenient (e.g. when a Democrat is president). In fact, the last time we ran a budget surplus was under Clinton, a Democratic president.
So:
Presidents don't actually determine whether we're in deficit or not. Clinton ran a surplus and Reagan ran a deficit, but it is notable that Clinton ran a surplus only when Republicans controlled Congress, and Regan had a Democratic House for his entire term (though a Republican Senate for most of it). In general, all Presidents run deficits, Clinton is a weird exception -- the only President to run a surplus since 1969. I think it's reasonable to not believe that Democrats are actually better than Republicans here.
I think that Republicans might also -- perhaps rationalizing -- say that W had a war, and that excuses his deficit.
Trump, on the other hand, seems like it's a potentially winnable argument. He doesn't have a W-like excuse for his deficit, and instead of getting mired in now-20+-year-old details about how much ex-Presidents should be regarded as complicit in their deficits, we can pretty straightforwardly say that Trump is not presenting a plan to have a lowered deficit.
It wasn’t the pandemic.
Fine let them. Maybe those relatives will be forced to articulate how the pandemic affected many things, some good (lower energy usage and prices), some bad (people dying; more violent crime) and maybe begin to internalize that sometimes things happen and spend less time assuming that everything bad that happens is Biden’s fault.
And your point is...?
Exactly right - nothing to be embarrassed at in noticing that someone is improving things from a bad baseline, even if there is still more work to be done.
While I appreciate the attention here to who can be persuaded, I think this list doesn't take enough account of how people can be persuaded over an interaction like the Thanksgiving weekend.
The point about Biden administration issuing record numbers of deportation orders is great. It's simple, challenges the narrative that might be driving a vote and is something they can easily remember and check when they go back home.
Unfortunately, many of the economic points are exactly the opposite. Unless your relatives are taking notes all they'll go home with is: my relative said 'nah, Biden is doing great on the economy' and you might as well just say that. The people who are going to check right wing media will just get whatever stats make Biden look bad and those who are going to check left or accurate nuetral sources will get that info but either way it doesn't really help persuade them to have a bunch of economic stats to cite. Indeed, it probably hurts because it will make them feel dominated and resentful.
More broadly, I suspect that the most effective way of being persuasive in our current climate is merely to convey the sense that people who support, or better yet are in, the Biden admin care about people with values and concerns like the ones they have. And often the best way to do that is mostly by listening and showing that you are a person who sympathizes with their concerns (even if you don't agree with the policies they support) even though you are a strong Biden supporter. Tho, ofc, every situation is different.
"...the most effective way of being persuasive in our current climate is merely to convey the sense that people who support, or better yet are in, the Biden admin care...."
Yeah, I think it helps to show that your side cares.
But showing that your side is buoyantly optimistic and proud of its accomplishments can do a lot, too.
When the MAGA relatives talk smack about how bad everything is, they expect you to cringe and apologize. If you forcefully make the case that things are better under Biden, then they will forget the numbers, but they will remember your optimism and confidence.
One really good thing is the labor market. I had friends who were able to easily get jobs at Dunkins paying >$18/hour summer after high school. Everyone's seen those hiring signs with fat hourly rates on them.
Individual anecdotes of "are you better off now than you were four years ago" are absolutely worthless, and have nothing to do with who the president is, or what their policies are.
As a simple example, my personal financial situation did, in fact, improve dramatically between fall 2016 and fall 2020. But, the reasons for the change had nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with the fact that in fall 2016, I switched to another job that paid better.
Pundits like to imagine that everybody on election day asks themselves if they are better off or worse off than 4 years ago and votes for or against the incumbent accordingly. In reality, that like of thinking is just B.S.
Better if you can point to some mutual acquaintance who had been unemployed or working minimum wage, but is now up to $15 an hour or whatever.
I think it depends on the family. You can make specific reference to your own family's situation and specifics might help then.
You've provided rebuttals to every possible talking point Republicans / Conservatives / MAGA folks you can imagine...except the ones they will actually use. I wonder if Matt has ever met these people in real life. I have, and to be fair, all of what follows does have rebuttals, but they aren't obvious and they aren't pithy and they aren't 100% dispositive:
- Biden's old -- Jeez, did you see him fall at the Air Force ceremony? He's got dementia and that's why he won't do press conferences.
- Inflation is out of control. I mean, my grocery bill is 40% higher than before he got in office.
- Have you seen the weirdo guys dressing up as girls and gyranting in front of kids? That's messed up.
- Biden gets in office, we turn over Afghanistan to the f'ing Taliban, Russia invades Ukraine and Hamas starts killing Jews again. That didn't happen with Trump
- The border is out of control. God knows who is crossing the Rio Grande these days. And Biden just wants to give them a summons and say come back to court in 6 months? They will never show up!
- Trump says a lot of bad things, but he kept us out of new wars and business was good...at least until the Democrats and Fauci shut down the country because of the flu. I'll take the bad tweets to get back to those days.
They won't engage in the obvious authoritarian tendencies and promises for retribution. They won't lament the erosion of the rule of law, the coarsening of our society, the lies, the corruption, the utter ineffectiveness. But they will come back to the list of points over and over.
The most persuasive work I do with my family is at the gun range or while helping them cook, clean or do something else around the house/yard. Almost nothing will happen at Thanksgiving because that’s comfort zone time. Folks just want to eat good food and reinforce their priors. I just change the subject or even join in with making fun of Biden if it’s a point I agree with.
Be of service while you try to change someone’s mind, it automatically puts them in a more receptive mood if you are helping them out.
That’s what’s always worked out best for me at any rate.
These all sound like talking points from deeply partisan Republicans and thus there's no way to talk them out of their position. If you were canvassing you'd just mark them as a 5 and move on as there's no point of having them in the "universe" of voters you'd contact on the campaign. Instead focus more on the softer Trumpers who admit that Trump is also old and says crazy things and claims that gas is now 8 dollars a gallon just aren't true.
Welcome to my golfing buddies!
Don't you know any normies? I've heard variations on most of John's hypothetical points from people that voted for Obama, then Trump, and then Biden (in succession).
I've been living and traveling exclusively in the Northeast for the last few years where immigration is less salient, so i haven't heard point 5 in a while, but I have no problem believing it's true in e.g., Florida.
If you don't know many people like that irl but have access to the NYT, take a look at their articles interviewing twelve random people, and you should get a sense of it. I think you'll be shocked by their seeming ideological inconsistency.
The specific wording on some of John's examples were partisan ("Democrats and Fauci" would probably only come from a Republican partisan, or maybe a heavily-Red-leaning independent), but I've heard many independent (even blue-leaning) voters express every one of those points.
The foreign policy point doesn't make any sense to me either, but I hear variations on it often enough.
The thesis is that because he was seen as unpredictable and a little crazy, despots didn’t want to take the chance. It isn’t unreasonable since it happens in real life. If you see an unhinged person in the street ranting about the world, people avoid a confrontation.
It isn’t the ringing endorsement they think it is.
Other countries that did not respond with stimulus had worse inflation. And we would have had inflation as a result of huge tax cuts for the wealthy had republicans been in power.
I work in education. Father in law was asking me this morning what’s going to happen to schools when they’re not majority white. I don’t exactly know what he means by “what’s going to happen.” So I told him that US public schools haven’t been majority white in 9 years. He replied “what’s this country coming to.” I guess educating non-white children is bad? Anyway, not picking that fight.
Really looking forward to Christmas when we’re seeing my family. They’re on the full “rule by the strong” train and pretty much want everyone they see as weak removed from power because Americans aren’t strong anymore. I get a lot of memes in the family chat about how effeminate our “trans military” is or how we don’t make things in America anymore because all the strong men are gone and can’t work in factories anymore.
So if MY has a list for those conversations, I’d love some assistance.
Re: Trans military:
-The United States military can put boots on the ground anywhere in the world in 24 hours. Nobody else in the world has anything close to this (the Russians struggle to get food and clothing to their troops in a neighboring country)
-The US Navy has 11 nuclear powered carrier strike groups, our closest competitor would be our allies the UK which has one non-nuclear strike group that lacks catapults like the US and the French with the Charles de Gaulle their own single nuclear carrier. The manly Russians have one carrier launched in 1985 that is still not operational.
-As for "losing the white majority" point out to him the last time the US had a WASP majority was the Census of 1920, and those are the "real Americans", preferably do this after a few drinks and start a fist fight.
"Rule by the strong" is how dictators come to power and is why they're also called strongmen. Putin, Mao, pretty much any dictator that came from Africa or South America (Trujillo, Pinochet, etc.) .... all "ruled by the strong."
Fair point, but even if the dictator is on their side, it's still broadly bad for the country in terms of economic development, policy choices, corruption, etc. But that may be asking too much for someone to think about.
Knowing my family, yeah, it’s more than they’ll think about. They want people they don’t like out of government, out of positions of social influence, and out of the country. They increasingly do not care how that is accomplished and feel that “something” has to be done to rid this country of weakness. There’s been this whole thing where they are convinced that nobody who cannot physically overpower them (well, really the men) cannot tell them what to do and it’s a principle they believe should be applied throughout every aspect of society.
The vibes are bad.
Do they vet their doctors by challenging them to an arm wrestle?
You OK? This sounds awful.
Good luck with this holiday season…
There is an incredible amount of sanewashing of the views of the rightmost 10% of the country.
Matthew should be embarrassed about his assessment of murder rates. Murder rates under Trump were very low or decreasing, and spiked in 2020. This is pure partisanship which makes the center right not trust Democrats when they say stuff that is so easily proven false. And I think the unrest of 2020 was as much a Democrat fanning of the George Floyd flames and that pesky virus. So it is going to be a tough sell to any right minded person that Biden has done well on murder rates. Especially since 2021 was higher than 2020. 2021 was the year of defunding the police, remember?
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate
And the bottom line is that the president probably doesn't have any control over murder rates anyway. So this one is a big reach in an otherwise pretty good article.
Sure it might be a reach, but what about it was false? Murder rates were higher in 2020 than they are today.
Right: it's important to combat the doomer fables of national decay. When they say "it's worse," you say, truly, "it's better." That's more important than getting into the causal weeds.
In this here comment section we have “D cities are wastelands” type comments. If you (like me) live in a D city, it can be useful to rebut this nonsense
Isn't the point to change moderate Republicans' minds, not to poison the well? Technically true statements chosen to make people believe untrue things will just convince relatives not to trust you.
Don't say the "technically true statement chosen to make people believe untrue things". Say the full true thing - there *was* a major spike during the pandemic and unrest of 2020, but in the Biden administration, this has been getting back under control and decreasing. We haven't yet got things back to where they were before, but under this calmer and more boring president, they are going in the right direction - do you want to upset that?
The talking point that "Biden is causing crime to get out of control and cities are literally dying!" is a pretty common one in lots of right wing circles. There's a new documentary made by conservatives in Minnesota called "The Fall of Minneapolis" that argues just this (and indeed Chauvin did nothing wrong) and it's gotten over a million views online.
Matt's points are good data points about why this narrative is wrong.
OK I don't think that Dems literally wanted more larceny, auto traffic deaths and murders.
But who can deny their policies on law enforcement and school discipline have grown much more lenient and much more concerned about the "oppression" law enforcement has on marginalized groups--especially blacks--than about public order and safety?
Matt has actually written quite a bit on this also. Plenty of local Dems don't message this way but enough decision makers at local level do to poison the party's brand--which BTW is EXACTLY what happened from 1965-95
If the policies you're talking about are ones that have been in place for the last two years, or have been being put in place during that period, then pointing out that crime has been falling during that period is relevant.
Both/and....In Obama II with several high profile cases like the Michael Brown shooting and Freddie Gray etc, there was a definite trend toward local governments reining in local law enforcement on concerns of police violence.
Something analogous took place as Obama II pressured school districts to lighten up on suspensions which were overwhelmingly falling on black kids.
THese trends accelerated under Trump as liberal decision makers became more radicalized and during COVID all hell broke loose.
Post George Floyd, the word was sent out in no uncertain terms to stop hassling black motorists and petty criminals because we were in a "racial reckoning".
Now it will be really hard to put the genie back in the bottle again without going back to what we know works: mass incarceration!
Just like ill advised conservative "small govt." policies generally lead to bigger government over time, liberal policlies of leniency and forebearance to keep kids out of life changing trouble with law will lead to far more trouble with law later once society gets sick of the problem..which it already is starting to.
So since crime exploded under Trump, are presidents unable to affect crime rates, or was Trump just too weak and afraid to stand up to these city level politicians?
Oh Trump was utterly ineffectual..all he did was tweet in all caps LAW AND ORDER
And I think a very big chunk of Trump's base were happy to let liberals suffer under the crime policies they wanted.
Murder rates decreased every year under Trump, until 2020. Trump suddenly did something different? Again, I stop believing everything else my more progressive friends might say once they start saying something that clearly has an alternative explanation.
The only people who believe murder rates went up because of Trump are pure partisans that aren't worth the mind effort it takes to explain that there might have been something else going on in 2020.
With murder rate there's been a small regression to mean post COVID.
Doesn't change the fact that liberal policies on crime of forbearance, indulgence etc. out of white racial guilt have made crime of all kinds permanently more common..
And this is disqualifying
You know what you can’t convince me of via this doublespeak? That I would be treated fairly if I had to defend myself on the subway.
And I don’t carry even a knife usually, let alone a gun.
If the president doesn't have any control over murder rates, then that proves that the Republican Party's crime-based attacks on Biden, which are believed by people like the hypothetical uncle described in this piece, are wrong.
Yes, and that is a much better place to start a discussion than an indefensible parody of the uncle's position!
"Professional Republicans generally believe that legal abortion is a form of socially sanctioned mass murder and/or that low taxes on the rich, while unpopular, are of such enormous long-term benefit to humanity as to be worth fighting for under almost any circumstances ... but it’s striking how little of conservative media or Republican Party messaging is dedicated to those points."
I think this is an incredibly important problem, and a lot of the worst aspects of American politics and culture war are downstream of it. People who follow politics closely all basically know that a potential 2025 GOP trifecta would ban abortion, slash taxes for the rich, and (at least try to) cut important social programs. I oppose this agenda, but whatever one thinks of it on the merits, it would represent sweeping changes to American society.
If the core goals of a political party become deeply unpopular, the way most political parties in most democracies solve this problem is by moderating those goals. Hence why center-right parties around the world have made peace with the basic idea of social insurance systems and personal liberties. But our Republican Party, because it is structurally overrepresented, culturally appealing, and very good at hiding the ball with disciplined messaging, has been able to hang onto an ambitious hard-right agenda that even many of its voters don't support.
And there is something fundamentally dishonest about this! It's worth saying that this is basically unique to Republicans. Obama's policy changes were controversial in their time (and have only become less so after taking root) - but expanding health coverage, reforming financial regulations, funding clean energy, and stimulating the economy were all things he explicitly ran on! That's the way democracies are supposed to work, where parties seeking to make big policy changes are up front with the public about the issues they will focus on and the direction of change. The Republican exception to this is pretty vexing - they might well win in 2024 running against crime and immigration (issues they have either done nothing about or actively made worse) then take power, ban abortion, and slash Social Security. That would be really bad, and as Matt says here we would do well to remind voters of the balls Republicans want to hide.
The GOP would need a stronger trifecta than Obama’s 2009 majority to enact a federal abortion ban. I’m not sure that’s possible based on the current map.
If Rs get a majority that isn’t reliant on Collins and Murkowski, there’s a least the possibility they repeal the filibuster if Trump demands it.
Stricter but less insanely restrictive than what the religious right sees to want in this country.
I'm still watching for a pro-life protester carrying a sign that says: blastocyst rights are human rights.
The professional Republicans in my family are currently debating if the car crash in upstate New York was just that, a car crash or a terrorist attempt as reported via Fox News. The most current text is one noting Vivek just might be right about the Canadian border. 😩
Happy Thanksgiving all!
I only saw the NYTimes headline alert, which called it an "explosion" rather than a "car crash". If it's really a crash rather than an explosion, then that changes things.
The tax cuts thing is a little disingenuous. Serious Republicans (are there any left?) have argued that taxes need to be lower across the board because this will lead to higher growth rates, and that over 50-100 years a 1% higher growth rate gives you a massively higher standard of living. And when they have cut taxes they have cut them across the board
It’s true that tax cuts benefit the rich the most, but that’s because we have a progressive tax scheme and wealthier people already pay most of the taxes anyway. To hear their argument made fairly clearly, consider: https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commentary/1-chart-how-much-the-rich-pay-taxes
As far as the TCJA cuts though, the design was good politics, not good policy. It was remarkably good at lowering red state taxes while in many cases raising blue state taxes thanks to the SALT reduction and the lack of a cut in the second to highest bracket.
This would be a good argument for not having a gigantic welfare state for the elderly that costs trillions of dollars a year. As cutting that seems politically impossible, we thus have to raise taxes so as to not collapse the US government, which would obviously not be good for growth. When your country takes in $3 trillion a year in revenue and spends $6 trillion, higher taxes are on the table, unfortunately. I'd love to not have gigantic expensive entitlements, but I really really don't think anyone's going to win elections based on cutting them- so, I'm willing to put my big boy pants on and pay higher taxes
The problem is the party that wants to raise taxes also doesn't want to keep spending flat so taxes can make up the difference. They want spending to keep increasing.
Is there a good source I can read as to how Singapore does it, exactly? It's mandatory retirement and healthcare premiums paid by individual citizens that goes to an SOE provider, is that it?
You forgot Saloth Sâr.
This is deranged. We shouldn’t be coaching people how to win Thanksgiving meal debates.
Just have a nice meal with family and friends for fucksake.
Because soon you’ll be dead. No one will care that you “owned” Aunt Mildred on fiscal policy after you’re dead.
Jesus🤦♂️
Matt is talking about dialogue, not debating. If you owned your aunt and embarrassed her and now she is even more dug into her crazy beliefs, you have lost. If you give them pause and make them think it’s less crazy to support Biden than they had thought, that’s a good thing.
It also depends on the family of course. My family loves to debate and hash out disagreements. But if politics talk means yelling and divisiveness, by all means stick to more unifying topics.
I think if even 1% of one’s focus on Thanksgiving dinner is to increase support for Biden, I think one needs to expand their life experiences. More important shit in life
If you think that some family member there is going to bring up politics and make things unpleasant, a natural focus is to figure out how to keep it positive, and how to figure out how to turn this to possible benefit.
Obviously better to stay away from things that will cause arguments, but if you are confident they're going to happen, you might as well prepare to make them more productive.
How about giving some focus to not having your family members have a distorted view of the state of the country? Or maybe it will turn out you have a distorted view of the world and you can learn from them. Again, depends on your family dynamics: it's not a one-size-fits-all proposition.
I don’t look at different people as having “distorted views”. Just different perspectives. I always prioritize learning from others’ perspectives. Our TG dinner conversation was great, 0% politics. because most of what makes life worth living is NOT politics.
While this is well-intentioned, I'm not sure this is how these things tend to go. The last time I discussed politics with a conservative relative at Thanksgiving - as it happens, about ten years ago - it was started with me pretty calmly trying to explain some bit of factual information about the Affordable Care Act and wound up turning into a shouting match after said relative decided to start condescendingly lecturing me about how I was too young to understand how the world works (of note, I was about 30 at the time, so relatively young but hardly a kid). His response to me was not only condescending and aggressive, it literally made no sense and was totally irrelevant to the point I was trying to make.
I suspect this is how these sorts of things normally go.
12 and 14 are "The stuff Democrats said was horrific when Trump did it". So maybe don't bring that up unless you have a good argument for why it's actually ok.
Well the whole point is that Biden is more moderate than people percieve the Democratic Party as being
Biden might be more moderate, but the Dem party is not, and he's the avatar for the Party.
I don't get it. He's the avatar of the party so he's less moderate than he seems? That doesn't seem like what an avatar is.
He's associated with the sins of the Democrats, and his moderate politics will not prevent people from conflating the two.
But that's the reason to point out Biden's moderation!
Not particularly helpful when the whole point drowns in its own hypocrisy.
If you personally are one of the moderates who agrees with points 12 and 14, then they're great points to bring up, to show that Biden does too, and he's not on the side of the people that you and your relative think are crazies.
Trump voter here (very reluctant the 2nd time) and I agree with most of the things on the list. In a few ways Biden has done things that Trump should have done.
But I can't agree with it all.
Some exceptions
The immigration point misses the mark completely. Absolutely no reason for Biden to have changed the "remain in Mexico" policy. Vast majority of these "asylum" claims are BS. The wall Biden wants to build is a political ploy. And Mayorkas has been a disaster.
Inflation claims largely miss the point. Rent has gone up MUCH faster than inflation in many markets and this has been massaged out of inflation stats. And high interest rates have a chilling effect even for those not current paying them. Many banks with lots of exposure to commercial paper coming due for refinance are worried as are those buildings and businesses who are paying these rates. We're looking at lots of commercial real estate foreclosures and office buildings are in especially bad shape.
The point about murder misses the cumulative effects of Democrats decision to stop prosecuting shoplifting which is hurting businesses and individuals and contributing to a general sense of malaise and disorder. I'm very upset about this one because it threatens to reverse decades of urban revival and Democrats continue to gaslight on it. Any political party that elevates the concerns of criminals or the welfare of "urban youth" and "school to prison pipeline" above public order and safety doesn't deserve the govern even if it's technically right on other issues.
I know you aren’t trying to write a treatise defending your views here, but some of what you are saying makes no sense to me.
For example
> The wall Biden wants to build is a political ploy
Biden doesn’t want to build any more wall. He lost a legal case about it and now has to. He is taking no public credit for it, so how could it be a “political ploy”?
> Rent has gone up MUCH faster than inflation in many markets and this has been massaged out of inflation stats
Massaged out of the stats? What does that even mean?
> Democrats decision to stop prosecuting shoplifting
Has shoplifting ever really been prosecuted? I doubt that very much. It seems more like what has happened is that social media has made word get around that shoplifting is never prosecuted so more people are doing it now.
Let's do the crime and immigration first because they are more straightfoward.
Yes, social media (and regular media) has broadcast to the whole world hither and yon that the new "compassionate" approach to law and border enforcement is to give far greater weight to the disparate impact enforcement would have on black and brown people...and of course, black and brown people respond to the new incentives.
The word gets out that they won't punish you (esp if you're young and African American) for theft, larceny, car jacking, even reckless driving---and you can probably literally get away with murder if you're lucky. The message is strong and consistent up from progressive DAs, liberal mayors, school principals, police chiefs on up to liberal justice departments that we need to be much more lenient and forgiving of black youth--...it's been an abject disaster. Liberals are openly advertising they don't have to guts anymore to enforce laws or maintain public order.
Similarly the border...yeah tell everyone and their mother in Latin, South America or wherever else all they need to do is make the trip and show up at the border with kids and a sob story and they not only won't be sent back they'll even get fed clothed and housed--free medical care too. Of course you're going to get a surge of phony asylum claimants willing to take take take what liberals are giving.
If Biden doesn't want to build the wall why is Matt telling people to use the phony Biden wall as a reassurance to your crazy right wing uncle that he really doesn't want an uncontrolled immigration surge?
I get the same vibes on a lot of these points, but I'm not sure how much they are true? I think the point about lack of enforcement is fair, but I don't know about the border. Can you point to specific examples where the administration is broadcasting a more compassionate approach to the whole world? (I do feel that Biden doesn't do enough to signal in what ways they are cracking down, like they are embarrassed or something.)
Ok check this out..this is a scholarly paper that documented the effects of Obama era justice department policies...and their obsession with racial disparities...have hamstrung local le.
Granted this is Obama and not Biden but every reason to think Biden justice department has accelerated those policies...same people in charge
https://reason.com/volokh/2020/06/11/policing-the-police-the-impact-of-pattern-or-practice-investigations-on-crime/
Ah, I see you were referring to both law enforcement and border enforcement in the same statement. That's an interesting idea (that recommendations at the federal level influenced local tactics), although I would assume local policies matter much more.
Local policies do matter but there's been a bunch of soft on crime lefties who have taken over DA offices in many major cities. This is a basic problem for liberals: over time they are too weak to police their own left wing. This is exactly the same dynamic that happened to the party in the 70's and 80's and I see it well on its way for a reprise now.
How much is specifically Biden's fault in a sense doesn;t matter. The dopey old man has lost the energy in the party to lefties and clearly can't control them. I mean even Kamala is scared to talk about her background as a DA because she's cowed by progressives.
You literally didn't answer any of my questions, but you sure do have strong opinions about black youths and people from south america!
> If Biden doesn't want to build the wall why is Matt telling people to use the phony Biden wall as a reassurance to your crazy right wing uncle that he really doesn't want an uncontrolled immigration surge?
honest question: are you an idiot? that is the only possible conclusion I can reach from this statement
Dude. Not appropriate for this comment section. Save the low-blow ad hominems for X.
Nah
Do you seriously think Matt's point about Biden and the border wall acquits Biden's whole approach to immigration?
Isn't rent the piece of inflation that can least be blamed on the president (since it's a long-term issue and fairly obviously caused by state and local policies)?
Yes but the party in power is going to be blamed for bad macro effects.
But Biden doesn't get a pass there.
Does Biden have anything to do with the fact interest rates have roughly doubled since he took office--an abrupt shift after a 40 year clear downward trend?
Yes he does.
I do blame Biden for making inflation worse with the Orwellian-named "Inflation Reduction Act", but your comment calls out rent specifically as the worst part, and I think rent is actually the part that's most clearly not his fault.
Sort of...does Biden have anything to do with massive reversal in interest rate trends to roughly doubling after more than 40 years of downward decline? Yes!
Do rent hikes have to do with interest rates when these apartment buildings are now expecting to have to refinance at much higher rates in near future?
Yes!
> Rent has gone up MUCH faster than inflation in many markets and this has been massaged out of inflation stats.
In a few markets maybe, but I don't think it was widespread? And in many places it's now flat or even declining: https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data/
These numbers seem roughly in line with inflation, maybe a tiny bit higher: https://www.statista.com/statistics/273418/unadjusted-monthly-inflation-rate-in-the-us/
The big difference I see is the people I know in real
life hold a lot of desperate views. My SIL, for example, is a conservative small business owning hippie. Totally into organic when we go up in the summer hanging out at her house is the town’s only Black family and the lesbians next door and their kids. My mom leans conservative but is very strongly pro-choice.
Only online and the few Very Online folks I know in real life have “talking points”/stereotypical left wing or right wing views.
All the strong Bernie voters I know are gun toting carpenters.
The guy I used to work for had been running the construction company in Maine for 30 years, after being a fireman and an tour in the Army. He hated Trump more than anyone I've ever met. He liked Hillary because she was a hawk lol. He liked Obama too. Very pro drone war. He got bin Ladin. Etc.
The Trump supporter who worked on my crew with would tell you up front that he thought Trump was an ass, didn't agree with his politics, but thought that "the government and the Democrats need to see that we're pissed". He read the Times and would hate watch CNN but he didn't like Fox because 'they aren't serious'.
On the one hand, I see the same truck every day that's plastered with literal QAnon stickers. On the other, it's the only one I see.
I think Matt's post was good strategy for a campaign ad, and bad for talking to real people over Thanksgiving.
Perhaps it would be worth asking an open question to all Slow Borers as to what the political cleavages among the relatives that we might spend a Thanksgiving or other holiday gathering with actually are. That way, we could further gauge how useful Matt's 17 points could be.
For my family, on the big ticket issues we're remarkably aligned on most of them, and thus there's rarely much drama that comes about, and we'd have to pull out some really arcane issues (like the HOA one I mentioned downthread) to really get any serious debate going.
What say you?
My family is all relatively aligned (ranging from Bernie-curious but not full on socialist Democrats, to Democrats who would rather have a president mildly more moderate than Biden, plus in-betweens), except my aunt will be visiting from Jerusalem this year, and is the token Republican in the family. But I imagine discussions of the Israel-Hamas conflict will take up most of the oxygen, plus nobody in my family likes Trump.
My family is absolutely incredible at having political debates where we disagree, and then just moving on after it ends. Others who have observed my family interacting have commented on how rare it is (something I never realized) but I guess it's a strength of ours.
I'm to the right of my siblings and the left of my parents who are best summed up as professional Republicans. I can have perfectly sane policy discussions with them but none of us are low information and hard to persuade on big issues.
Either direction.
My parents were hardcore Ayn Rand libertarians when I was growing up (I'm fairly sure they voted for Harry Browne in 1996, the first election year they were US citizens), but George W Bush turned them into mainstream MSNBC Democrats.
Was this a subset of unions in general, public sector unions in particular, or (most likely?) woke indoctrination?
Oh man, this was more selfish than I thought.
The only way to persuade someone or something is to show that the thing/position/policy/whatever lines up with their pre-existing values
Why would you call the killing it person "center right?" _I'm_ Center Right. :)
Absolutely, that T-shirt isn't "center right," it's "Biden derangement syndrome."