Pre-thanksgiving mailbag

Everyone still wants to talk about the election...

We’ve got an early mailbag this week so that everyone can enjoy the holiday long weekend — back to a normal schedule next week!

Colin Chaudhuri: Am I wrong in thinking that the recent collapse of the Chinese real estate market is the most underrated political/economic story of the last 5 years? It seems like Xi has finally relented and realized some sort of stimulus plan is needed, but it seems $1.4 trillion over 5 years and raising the debt limit from 3% to 3.8% is likely insufficient to cover the hit to the Chinese economy (and it seems the bailout is only for local governments so as to make up for revenue loss). Combined with serious demographic headwinds China is facing, this seems like one of those stories that will look a lot more consequential in 20 years. Do I have a case here or do you see anything indicating China will brush this off? And if this isn't the most underrated story what is your nominee?

This is not investment advice, but I have been hearing smart people who know the details of China much better than I ever will predicting some kind of economic crisis driven by bad investment and real estate collapse since at least 2008. I assume at some point China really will have a nasty recession, at which point those prognosticators will claim vindication. But I don’t know of anyone who has a really good forecasting track record about the Chinese economy, at least in part because it’s hard to predict the reaction function of a closed authoritarian political system that doesn’t really explain itself or allow journalists to report on it.

Sean O: Much of the public perception of the Democratic Party is based off of what far-left activists, journalists, and academics do, instead of what Democratic politicians do. Is there anything the Democratic Party can do to rectify this?

This is a complicated question that I think you can consider on a number of different levels. Most superficially, Democrats just need more forceful and dynamic leaders. Nobody doubts that Donald Trump is the head of the Republican Party, and nobody doubted that Barack Obama or George W. Bush were the heads of their respective parties during their presidencies. Joe Biden’s low-key presidency had some real virtues in terms of getting legislative deals done, but I think it became clearer as time went on that this wasn’t just a strategic choice, it reflected sharp limits to his overall activity level and his ability to communicate persuasively.

Kamala Harris was a dramatically more skillful public speaker who delighted Democrats with her early rallies, delivered a crackerjack convention speech, and beat Donald Trump in their one debate. But she did very few interviews, and I think notably the best one she did was a very contentious interview with Fox News. Her tendency to come across as defensive and guarded made a lot of sense in the context of a right-wing host on a right-wing network asking her hostile questions. But her friendly interviews weren’t that engaging, and she didn’t have good answers to softballs about what she disagreed with Biden about.

When you have non-present leaders, it’s natural for louder voices to fill the void.

But I also think the real issue here is somewhat deeper than a communications challenge. The main asymmetry in American politics is that self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals or progressives by a large margin, so Democrats need to win large majorities of self-identified moderates. Both parties struggle to differentiate their brands from more politically toxic elements of their base, it just matters more to Democrats that they pull it off. And it’s a challenging high wire act. It’s easy for me to say that the answer is to triangulate more (and that is basically what I think), but it’s also the case that on the one issue where Biden really did triangulate, Democrats managed to bleed both Jewish and Muslim support. This brings us back to the fact that politics is hard.

Both Biden and Harris became presidential nominees because they were previously selected to serve as vice presidential nominees. And neither of them was selected on the basis of being a political superstar who’d make a great future presidential nominee.

J. Willard Gibbs: A disturbingly high number of takes since the election have focused around “elections are thermostatic and the Dems will bounce back in 2026” or “we’re all really fatigued right now and don't feel like fighting, and besides Trump is just going to govern like a normal Republican so we can just chill.” Meanwhile Trump is nominating exactly the sort of extreme figures that he promised he would, and continues to promise to institute a sweeping campaign to remove immigrants (including legal ones). So... what the hell? I get that people are tired, but this really calls for action! What can we actually DO to combat all this, other than shrugging and waiting for the pendulum to swing back?

I think a certain amount of fire-holding and composure is, in fact, the appropriate response.