That’s a very defensive framing. If you have to put it like that you have problem. Imagine Republicans saying ”We really like Black Americans as much as Democrats do!”
What is best in life? To get the upper hand over your somewhat more extreme fellow partisans, see them nudged gently out of the spotlight, and to hear the half-hearted complaints of their partners!
You say that like it's a bad thing - after 9/11, Dot-Com crash, GFC, Marathon bombing, a pointless war in Iraq, and 4 years of Trump I suspect that's what a lot of people would like.
There is a venerable synonym, good old fashioned “populism.” Neologisms that insert needless syllables are rarely popular. Saying “popularism” is sounds like an officious effort to reappropriate the term “populism” from Trump or Le Pen or William Jennings Bryan or whoever.
Why must liberals crucify plain, elegant English upon a cross of scold?
Because they’re two different but related concepts? Popularism is about saying popular things to win elections and distancing yourself from unpopular stuff. Populism is a particular political style than sees everything through a people vs elites lens. There is substantial overlap but it’s not total. For example, on abortion popularism says be pro-choice, whereas populism could lead you in either direction (plenty of populists are anti-abortion).
I think Harris gave a great speech and "populist" is a perfectly accurate description of her arguing she represents the American people while her opponent represents a small club of wealthy billionaires. If that isn't populism, nothing really counts as it!
IMO populism is a mode of rhetoric, while popularism is a style, strategy, and heuristic by which to formulate rhetoric that is not necessarily populist.
Bernie on health care is a good example of left wing populism. Why are there problems in the system, is it because of limited resources, competing interests, conflicting priorities, status quo bias, and path determinism from choices made during and after the Second World War? No! It's because a handful of greedy companies are just plain evil. Once we the people smash those greedy bastards with single payer all those pesky trade offs and competing interests will vanish like a fog in the morning sunshine. Oh and if you don't agree well I have to ask, who funds you?
If there’s a real difference in meaning, fine. Wouldn’t the “popularist” position on abortion involve some restrictions on elective, later term abortions? That is what the polling supports.
I don’t think so. Thermostatic public opinion is powerful and since Dobbs opinion has become much more pro-choice. See the pro-choice side winning every single abortion referendum since 2022.
Simple messaging (“restore Roe”) is better than getting into the weeds, and since this is a winning issue I don’t see any reason to complicate things or divide our side when we have the GOP on their back foot.
“Restore Roe” is rhetorically cleaner, but it insults the listener’s intelligence. Roe could only be “restored” through aggressive court packing. Any codification of Roe could be reversed if Republicans won an election. And if Democrats packed the court to restore Roe, Republicans might later pack the court to overturn it again.
The court-packing tit-for-tat notion is overblown.
That’s not to say that Republicans wouldn’t retaliate; it’s just to say that politics is absolutely NOT some perfectly Newtonian cycle of perfectly balanced action and reaction. It IS possible for either side to gain the upper hand and stop the retaliation, just as it’s possible for either side to choose a different *method* of retaliation.
The popularist position is to say *nothing* about late term abortions and to hammer home that your fanatical opponents are trying to outlaw all abortions and undermine reproductive freedom.
Probably not. Dobbs has cast a spotlight on what these moderate restrictions actually mean. We're not getting a West European-style that's de jure up the middle but de facto let's women and/or doctors make the decision. The well has been poisoned by GOP restrictions that have caused a lot of suffering for women suffering complications and tied doctors' hands in ways that most voters (and probably legislators) didn't forsee. The polling and electoral evidence have shifted. Even state parties that have remained disciplined, like Virginia's GOP have failed to capitalize.
Bill Clinton's formulation back in the 90's of "safe legal and rare" could be describe as "popularist" in my book, but opinion has changed quite a bit post-Dobbs so the popular formulation is probably now closer to bumper sticker slogan of "keep your laws off my body"
At some point, though, that has to get translated into an actual set of laws, people will vote on them or the politicians who pass them, and it’ll probably settle into a Europe-like compromise position.
I would say "popularism" is emphasizing the popular parts of your agenda, but doesn't necessarily change your positions. (You might dial back on something, but you won't go the opposite direction).
I understand "Populism" as more about _switching_ to positions which are supported by more of the populace in order to win, with less concern about whether you actually agree with any of them.
That's... semantics but that's what we're discussing
That's just Roe, and Democrats certainly fucked up by not at least trying to codify it in federal law before it was overturned. Hopefully they've learned their lesson.
Let me synthesize those two for you: Ds should say popular stuff and avoid adopting unpopular far-left issue positions so they win more and can do more left-wing policy than Republicans ever would.
Yes, in practice popularism discourse peaked in 2021-2022 as a way to dismiss the more progressive wing of the party without getting into details. It arguably worked, but of course that means price controls and all sorts of other high polling ideas are on the table. So in reality, the discourse was a tacit acknowledgement that liberals are along for the ride in a more left-populist party. Which is what's happening in policy terms.
In the European political context one can talk of both right wing and left wing populism. The latter is for example when saying ”raise taxes on the rich and you can pay for everything and more”.
I don't think that "hearing the lamentations of their women" is actually meant as a threat of violence, it always struck me as implicitly relishing the wails of the families of the enemies crushed and driven before you, the wailers being saddened by the fact that their husbands have been thus crushed and driven.
It means an effort to go after voters like the proverbial non-college, gun-owning, politically moderate warehouse shift supervisor in Winston-Salem who earns $49,000 a year, has voted for Trump before, but is open to change.
Your vote isn't gettable, Freddie, but his might well be.
If you’re genuinely curious, I encourage you to read the column you’re commenting under, wherein a fellow named Matt Yglesias, of whom you may have heard, explains what it means at some length.
Basically, that Dem elected officials and their campaign staff are getting ruthless about poll-testing and A/B testing both policy ideas and messaging, and also about using most of their paid and earned media money to talk about high salience stuff that polls well. It’s worth noting that although the approach recommends moderation on some issues for Democrats (immigration, criminal justice), you’re correct to note that it really doesn’t imply full reversion to 1990s DLC politics (a lot of mainstream liberal positions on stuff like abortion and protecting the welfare state are super popular, and so are some quite left-wing things like banning price gouging and using Medicare’s bargaining power to ruthlessly negotiate down prescription drug prices.)
When your getting into public fights with a college student who doesn't even work here anymore, you have to ask yourself what you're doing with your life. What even is your end goal? This really does seem to everyone else outside of your head like a public breakdown. It's concerning.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic if I held your views. Sooner or later, the higher ed money, Medicare, and Silicon Valley donors will have peaked. Interest rates are an accelerant of all three of these. Then the gentry Democrats will face in their ranks a raging populism against the economic order of society. You'll feel right at home!
Even Matt's rebuttal to the party's left is entirely circumstancial on the business cycle. Which means he doesn't have a principle to hold them back on, only the status quo. Wait for a recession, and he'll probably come back home to his friend Bernie Sanders.
Relax Matt. We're real Democrats and we're really like this. I'm a recovered Republican. My parents are immigrants. I'm the oldest of four boys, first two are naturalized, younger two born in the US. Like many immigrant families, my parents were religious and raised us strictly Catholic and very conservative. Nuns used to smack me around. After college and grad school, I finally got a clue about the actual effects of Republican policies and their prominent dominance of the hypocrisy sphere of the domestic political world. I'm now a middle-aged US Army combat veteran. I've always been patriotic and I've put my butt out there in the steel rain for our country. I think Republicans lost the ownership of the patriotism slogan when we figured out that Bush Jr fabricated the pretext for the Gulf War II. The GOP totally undermined their patriotism claim and "strong on defense" creds when they went all in on Trump. What I see today is a hollow, rotting GOP that has tripled down on the cult of a very damaged, selfish, grotesquely incompetent, hence dangerous individual and I see the Democrats have grown to become the only party of responsible adults in the national room. Policy quibbles? Yes I have a few. But not with women's rights, especially reproductive rights (wish you'd focus more on that - guys are missing the boat.) I have three daughters and I'm appalled and offended that my immigrant mom had more rights than they do. I look forward to American women venting righteous fury at the ballot box.
Anyway here I am; born and raised a conservative Catholic, now a patriotic, tax-paying, hard working and damn proud Democrat.
I’m much less into electoral politics than most people here, and I didn’t watch any of the convention. I’m not following the polls or anything else closely; I scan SB comments when I have a few minutes of downtime and that’s about it.
And yet I so, so deeply feel and appreciate the vibe shift. I had been dreading in the back of my mind, all the time, a return to the 2016 - 2020 era. In my experience it wasn’t just the Bad Man in the White House, it was the stew of anger, panic, and distrust I felt everywhere - on the subway, in the grocery store, talking with usually-sane friends and family. I think the world will survive another Bad Man presidency if it comes to that—I fervently hope it doesn’t—but if at least some of the vibe shift endures, and we start to see a way out of this, that would be huge.
I think the vibe shift will matter, should she keep it up.
Honestly, Dems should lose this election in a landslide. The economy is pretty rocky (blah blah blah with everyone's "full employment" numbers, if you actually tried to get a job in the last 6-9 months, you know the labor market is very much NOT "tight"). The democrats have held the presidency 12 of the last 16 years (usually a bad sign, the middle doesn't like to see one party dominate too long), inflation was really unpopular, etc.
I think these things, rather than policy positions, explain why the race is tight. But normies just really, desperately, achingly want things to go back to normal. Where politicians on both sides drape themselves in flags and political corruption and scandal is mild (think "insider trading" or "extramarital affair", not "sexual assault" or "march on the capital"). And just... enough with all the angry shouting, Americans are *exhausted* by it. So I think despite all the fundamentals, if Harris continues on the Reaganesque of projecting "Can we all just go back to normal, guys? And get rid of these wierdos?" vibes, I think she has a real shot.
And this would be good for most of us SB commentators, because it would probably make Republicans finally take a look in the mirror and say "Wtf are we doing?" and go back to normal. This would be bad for Democrats in 2026/28 but good for the country.
One metric as to whether we are "back to normal" is if The Bulwark is backing a different candidate in 4 years time than I am.
I just want to touch on your inflation point, because one thing the last 4 years taught me is that even somewhat elevated inflation is way more unpopular that I would have guessed. I should have realized that presidential approval moving in conjunction with "gas prices" should be applicable to all aspects of society. This still one of the better political cartoons ever made; just replace gas prices with just prices. https://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoon?searchID=EC308075
It's why I think a likely Fed rate cut in September could be more impactful than we think. Besides the fact that certain costs like borrowing money to get a car will literally go down, the psychological impact could be even greater.
“But normies just really, desperately, achingly want things to go back to normal.”
This is why I don’t understand Biden’s low approval rating. He really did get things back to normal after Trump! And all the vibes you ascribe to Harris around getting rid of weirdos were basically Biden’s vibes.
The question we should be asking is: why haven’t normies recognized the actions of the Democratic Party on this front already?
This was definitely the way I felt. For the most part I've enjoyed the Biden presidency. A couple of policy quibbles, but nothing big.
My guess is a lot is thermostatic politics. People feel like the stuff Democrats want is now covered, time to work on the things Republicans want. Add inflation to that, with Republicans really leaning into it but also higher prices that everyone notices.
If Biden were 60, I think he'd have the same (or better) polls as Harris vs. Trump. The age issue was just a *really* big deal.
Compare the way Biden campaigned in 08 to 20. He was a bit snarky and had the dynamism to pull off the kind of vibes based campaign Harris is running. He just does not have that now. If he tried to run on a "wow, they are weird" vibe, he would just sound like your out-of-touch Grandpa.
I usually avoid listening to political speeches becasue I can't get out of Economist Mode and do little CBA's of what I hear. As Matt says, Harris stayed at a level of generality that avoided any cringes EXCEPT <sorry> the part about a tax cut for the middle class.
However high we push marginal rates and switch from deductions to stingy partial tax credits (except for savings that we ought to increase), we cannot close the deficit without raising income taxes on people who consider themselves "middle class." And this timidity about tax increases will make a Child Allowance (hopefully NOT as tax credit) that much more difficult.
Still garden variety fiscal irresponsibility driven by median voter not being a fiscal policy nerd is OK for now. There are no neoliberals in foxholes.
I think the idea of a tax cut for the middle class is vague enough that the details could end up fine. For example, we could define down the middle class from the $200k number politicians are always saying down to $100k, which is much closer to median household income. We could lower the nominal rate while ending a lot of exemptions. Basically, there are ways to deliver on the promise that could still be responsible.
Do that and watch California go red again. $100k ain’t middle class in the metro areas of this state, and Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks are more culturally conservative than white liberals.
You say that, but I literally live in one of the metro areas of this state and have a $200k household income. I'm sorry, it's very obvious to me that I am rich. Even in the Bay Area, median household income is like $130k. I don't know why this happens so often in high COL areas, but so many rich people delude themselves into thinking they're "middle class" just by looking at what they have compared to what they think "rich people" should have, and since they don't have giant mansions on an acre and really fancy cars, they must not be rich. Meanwhile, the actual middle class in the Bay Area just can't buy houses at all because they're too expensive. Merely being a homeowner in a non-sketchy neighborhood of the inner Bay Area makes you rich.
Also, as long as the Republicans are so stupid on women's and gay rights, I can't see California going red on a national level. I can see us electing another Arnold type for governor, but I'm not even sure he's still Republican. The national Republican party's values are so utterly distant from metro Californians values that I can't imagine them voting for the GOP anytime soon.
Unless you’ve got a seven-figure net worth, you’re not rich. Income =\= wealth. If it weren’t for the COVID run-up in stocks and house prices, my family wouldn’t have more than $200k in home equity and 401ks. Income can disappear overnight, especially in the white collar job market that is weaker than the blue collar one.
Of course I compare myself to other homeowners in CA - until 2020 happened, my home equity would have left me with enough to buy a shitty 1950s house in a poor state with cash, but with no ability to get a job that paid even half what I make now. That’s why I left to come to CA to start with. My home’s value was going up less than 5% a year before COVID.
My original point is that you should not be comparing yourself to other homeowners in CA if you actually are looking for the middle class unless you moved far enough from your work to actually get a reasonably priced house (usually 2 hours away from a city center during rush hour is the correct distance- think Tracy to SF). Otherwise, what's affordable for the actual middle class is perpetual renting or extremely tiny condos.
if the Trump corporate tax cuts expire, this will be a defacto tax increase on the middle class, for lots of reasons around tax incidence. That's fine but not something I would advise Harris to actually point out.
An allowance you keep even if you are not a net federal tax payer (like 40 percent or so of households, given how incredibly progressive our tax code is). A credit just reduces your burden if you actually pay taxes (you know, like the dastardly rich do).
Fully refundable gets you part of the way there, but on the administrative side, I think people who talk about allowances are thinking of just sending out a monthly check to everybody, like Social Security, while even fully refundable tax credits usually require you to file taxes and then the payment maybe only comes as a once a year lump.
Between those alternatives the allowance seems administratively simpler and it'll include non-filers.
(As far as practical politics, obviously we should just call it whatever polls better and then administer it in a sensible way. Even if you say "tax credit" you can still send out monthly checks and I don't see why you can't even send it out to non-filers using administrative data on the grounds that they would qualify if they did file.)
My family got the ARP CTC because my little brother was 16 in 2021 and it came as monthly checks. But point taken on getting benefits to people who don’t file taxes.
The 2024 DNC was an almost unimaginably triumphant affair. Few things reach perfection in this world. But Chicago came pretty close. Now, I'm admittedly a highly partisan Democrat. But I assure you—I swear it's true!—I'm much more of the "sky is falling" variety than the rose-colored glasses kind of Dem when it comes to my party's prospects. If there were legitimate cause to be worried about a single element of this convention, I'd see it (no, I'd obsess over it). And I didn't see a single damn thing that went even a little bit wrong.
Mind you, I have no illusions that this is going to be anything but a very hard-fought campaign that might well end in a victory for Donald Trump. It could happen.
But if "successful, mistake-free" convention is one likely ingredient to a Kamala Harris victory this fall, the Democrats couldn't have done any better. Seriously.
(Kudos to Governor J.B. Pritzker, by the way; I suspect he deserves a fair amount of the credit here.)
My most heartfelt thanks go to all those pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel activists who decided to stay home rather than come to Chicago and drive a ton of news stories.
Some serious thanks too for the CPD and Mayor Johnson. They broke up most of the protest quickly and when one that started to escalate on Wed. they just started arresting everyone. It was great work.
I really thought that the FP movement, such as it was, was unappeasable. But it was. They like Harris's message more. And possibly even passing over Shapiro helped.
It's hard to describe it as a "movement" because nobody really leads it, and that's why I was so skeptical rejecting Shapiro would move the needle. There was no official stakeholder to say, "we will leave you alone now."
But it seems that 90% of the people who cared enough to hit the streets and make scenes no longer feel the need to do so. There's a handful of people who are still trying to make it a thing, but it's clear they have no juice.
I was fully expecting chaos in Chicago and I was wrong, so maybe my prediction on this is wrong too. But I don't expect encampments to be a thing either as students return. The Omnicause has moved on.
I think a lot of y’all tend to extrapolate from the most online or most living-in-a-tent-for-weeks pro-Palestinians and it leaves you with a pretty inaccurate view of the median pro-Palestinian advocate, who is indeed voting for Kamala and also passionate about many other issues.
Nah, I know a lot of folks who have been to multiple pro-Palestinian protests who are indeed holding back because they recognize the need to focus on beating Trump.
I don’t know if everything was successful— some of the content struck me as either kind of cringe or over-pandering to safe constituencies— but the really high-salience stuff like Walz and Harris’s speeches were really good.
"It’s actually a staggering achievement to make liberals run as the party of patriotism and the authentic American spirit"
This is accurate, but it shouldn't be. The party that believes most in the ideals and purpose of the American experiment *should* be the most patriotic, because it can't achieve its goals any other way than through those ideals.
Liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness, creating a more perfect Union with each generation. If that's what Democrats are fighting for at the highest level, they're fighting for the core ideals of the United States.
And it would be foolish to mince words, send mixed messages, or be confused about that.
>By the time we got to Roy Cooper (?) introducing Harris with an uninspired recounting of their work together on mortgage fraud litigation,<
What am I missing? Why the question mark? Don't you advocate a mad dash to the center? Roy Cooper is a decidedly centrist Democrat. A bonafide white, southern, Protestant male with moderate politics who has won statewide office multiple times. And unlike Andy Beshear (who I'm a huge fan of), Roy Cooper's North Carolina is a state Harris-Walz stands a solid chance at winning.
I thought it was more that the speaker should be someone up-and-coming in the party? Cooper is in his mid-60s and I think it's pretty clear that Dems are going to think a lot more about age for the next few cycles
I think criticism is that while the convention was overwhelmingly a success there were some odd scheduling choices (Panetta in prime time, all hail Hochul, Cooper etc)
Agreed it wasn't perfect. But given that a couple weeks ago the convention was being planned around renominating Joe Biden, that was a miraculous redesigning of a huge event in a blink of the eye.
It would be wise for the party to really minimize Hochul’s visibility for the near future, or until some miracle happens and she becomes significantly more popular.
"What happened since Harris took over is precisely that she regained ground Biden had lost with young and nonwhite voters based on her better vibes, while doing none of the leftist messaging stuff."
Anti-price-gouging and large subsidies for first-time home buyers are the only two big substantive policy proposals that Harris has made so far this cycle (that I can think of off-hand). How are these not examples of leftist messaging stuff?
I think the general claim would be that if the salience of the issue is much greater on the minority side of the yes/no divide than the majority, something can survive as a partisan issue.
Like it's just obviously suicidal for a party to stake out a claim on an 80/20 question as the 20 side if the 80 side is engaged. But if it's 80% no-but-not-salient and 20% yes-and-very-salient then you can use the energy of the 20% side and not pay a big price for it being unpopular.
"Calling for gun control is fine (it's popular!) Just don't think you'll actually get anything done."
Fair points about its popularity and likelihood of enactment. But the question on the table was whether it "gets ideologically coded." And I was suggesting that it still does get ideologically coded, despite being supported by well over 50% of the population.
Gun control is perhaps the one issue more than any other where the rural bias in state legislatures and in Congress (especially and most importantly the Senate) skews the politics of a particular issue. I know it depends on the particular issue, but in general small bore gun control measures are quite popular*. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
My wife and I were talking last night during the part where they had gun violence victims (or more accurately family members of gun violence victims speak) that it's very possible to us that gun control is a lot like abortion. What we mean is, two reasons GOP had an advantage on abortion for so many years is a) the rural skew I talked about and b) their position was genuinely more popular 20 years ago than it is now**. I think Gun Control might be the same issue. Look at that chart I posted. Support for Gun Control measures has been rising for a good 15 years now. Are we sure mild gun control measures are actually hurting Democrats at the ballot box anymore? I feel pretty confident in saying the voters who are passionate about owning guns are way more sorted into being down the line GOP voters than they were 20 years ago.
* Any theories as to why gun control measures had such high support in the 80s, dropped precipitously until 2010 and then jumped back up again? A few guesses. High Crime and specifically high gun crime made people more pro gun control as a "war on crime" measure. Crime drop in the 90s made this position seem way less necessary. Another guess is the Brady Bill helped push GOP to being more pro gun due to negative partisanship. The 1994 Gingrich revolution brought way more ideologues into Congress and meant way more of pro gun message was pushed going forward. As to why support started increasing in 2010? That I'm not sure of at all. Guesses?
You left out the concept of taxing unrealized capital gains. But to the extent there are any details provided, all of these are pretty modest proposals focused on economics. One can question their likely effectiveness, but they are most definitely not what energizes the left wing of the Party.
The Democratic Party is going to emphasize areas that may well be to the left of this comment section's policies -- generally, this space is further left than the country but right of the Democratic Party center -- but the proposals so far shouldn't cause much concern.
That was a Biden WH proposal. “ What she has said, as the Harris campaign told me, is that she “supports the revenue raisers in the FY25 Biden-Harris [administration] budget. Nothing beyond that.”
It could include an unrealized capital gains tax on a small portion of the population or just eliminating the step-up loophole that wipes out capital gains taxes upon death. I don’t see Harris supporting a Danish style unrealized capital gains tax. It short her stance is opaque so certain claims about her stance have wobbly support.
Taxing unrealized capital gains is red meat amongst my business minded Florida friends who begrudgingly vote for Trump because of policies like this. The polling on these type of left wing economic policies (rent control included) must be great because in my purplish world of south Florida it plays terribly.
I thought that the unrealized capital gains tax was not an explicit proposal but just a consequence of her vaguely saying she was buying into Biden's tax proposal.
But my point was about messaging (which was MY's point), not substance.
Neither of them are great policies IMO and given the Senate will likely go Red as Matt said, it's likely neither will happen. They have been effective in signalling that she's concerned about excessive market power by corporations and the housing shortage, which are both serious problems.
I think a better comparator for how large a proposed expenditure is, is the deficit (the expenditure would add about 1.5% to the deficit) or the budget, not the GDP. Or compare it to other programs. Or just decide whether giving $25k to people is a lot or not.
In any event, I was talking about messaging, not substance.
I actually like the down payment subsidy on the merits. Obviously most Slow Boring commenters live in places where zoning/permitting etc. create a highly supply constrained housing market, but I don't think that's true of most Americans. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with subsidizing demand if you don't have constrained supply.
Age-adjusted homeownership rates have fallen significantly over the past 20 years, credit standards have tightened up and it is legit harder for younger people to do family formation in their own place nowadays. And there's a correlation between homeownership and fertility rates that strikes me as plausibly partly causal.
In non-supply constrained markets, it should act as a transfer from older families to younger families and I expect it will be pro-natal in effect. All this with no work disincentive or similar moral hazard issues.
> Age-adjusted homeownership rates have fallen significantly over the past 20 years
Sorry to nitpick, but I don't know if I would say significantly. Regardless I'm not sure comparing to the early 2000s peak is a good idea given what came after!
I'm Kevin Erdmann-pilled on the 2007 crisis, I don't think there actually was anything unsustainable about the homebuilding and homeownership rates before the crisis.
We've got more young adults living with parents now than we used to, I think that's a bad thing (primarily for fertility reasons), and I think we should be trying to push the trend in the opposite direction. I mean, we are getting richer, we should live like it.
What about the estate tax step up basis and stuff like that... It feels like when I saw a Mormon history professor say a vote for Joe Biden would not be a vote for abortion because of the courts and stuff, So Trump is a threat to democracy so good Christian right-wingers who care about the future of America should vote with Democrats this time... So now are we supposed to say a vote for Kamala it's okay even though in her "wicked liberal thirsty for loot progressive heart (or whatever you want to call it)". She wants to do all those scary things that conservatives fear to them financially. That they should vote with Democrats because Republican Senate? That doesn't sound very appealing either even if it is true. Why not just say if we're just going to ignore policy positions that we don't want to really talk about. Just say the next 4 years is all about securing democracy and shoring up the holes. Maybe a bare minimum on foreign policy. Promises like I will never store secret documents in my bathroom or take them home with me after I leave my job as president. Seem more appealing than her incoherent anti gouging national rent control garbage that just sounds God awful. Some of this can feel like the turtle and the scorpion. After I got on your back for a ride across the river to freedom and democracy why did you sting me with all these leftist policies that I hate. Well because it's in my nature.
Those policies are really popular among all voters. Asked what policies people support to lower inflation, laws on price gouging gets 81% approval. 57% think housing/renting prices are so high bcs of greedy landlords.
And it's not about greedy landlords either Jesus. Market rent is market rent.
Imagine that if it wasn't for those greedy wage earners we could pay less.. oh they want market price maybe they should take less salary then.. The incoherence of fiscal policy and stuff on the left is ridiculous.
The same people that say listen to experts listen to fauci which I totally agree with have no expertise when they formulate what they want The government to do or steal from other people
Anti-far-left, big difference. And that's because that group has been actively unhelpful to their own causes by trying to tear down the Democratic Party, which at this late date can only help Republicans, who are, *obviously*, worse on every issue important to the entire left. You have to convince people of your positions first, then politicians, or else you'll just lose elections to the real enemy of the left, which again is the Republicans.
What kind of response are you looking for from this post? Are you trying to communicate to people reading the post that we should give Matt less credibility and read what he writes with a more skeptical eye? Or are you making an appeal to Matt himself, asking him to change his ways?
I guess when you make posts like this... what do you want to happen? What, in an ideal world, do would you like someone like me reading "Matt is relentlessly anti-left and it dominates everything he writes" to do with this observation or information? Or is it not me, but unnamed people with actual political power who might be reading these posts and looking at the comment section and you're asking them not to trust what Matt is writing?
Freddie, 90% of your writing is anti-left too, just a different slice of the “left” pie. MY and Jon Chait complain about the left for exactly the same reason you do it – because it’s frustrating as hell when a few loud people who are ostensibly on your side won’t stop promoting fringe idiocy that are counter-productive to the policies and practices you care about.
FFS. Freddie, I and other SB commenters tried and tried and tried to explain to you why Matt writes what he does, and you keep doubling down on refusing to get it.
Where does this obsession with Matt come from? What has he done to you - come to your house and spit in your breakfast cereal, kicked your cat, had sex with your ex-girlfriend? Whatever it is, can you let it go? Both you and SB commenters will be happier!
Yes it’s because the left is wrong not quite 100% of the time but pretty close, and chasing after its delusions for the past 12 years was a dead end that brought us Trump.
Hope you enjoyed 2020 because that was the multigenerational peak, not to be seen again for at least 30 years.
Freddie has his share of good ideas, and is also very disagreeable, especially with people who do somewhere-left-of-the-median-American "wrong". This shows up as harsh, snarky criticism of the woke and of ineffective Democratic policy, but also harsh, snarky criticism of people who criticize the same things Freddy criticizes. Also some detailed advocacy of his own heterodox ideas, e.g. about education. But look at the comments on his blog -- what people come for are the dunks on woke leftists, as you said.
THIS "What I actually found most impressive about the speech, though, was what it didn’t do, namely recount the laundry list of Democratic Party policy demands."
is perfect and also made me think of THIS
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Sherlock Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
I genuinely don’t see how we can pencil in a Harris WH with her campaign desperately trying to avoid letting her give any unprepared remarks. I am going to breathe the biggest sigh of relief if she gives a town hall with crisp, on message answers. Otherwise I think the bottom falls out of the vibes.
My other concern, which I guess doesn’t matter if you only care about the Trump Threat to Democracy, is that they do manage to ride the teleprompter to the White House, only to leave her exposed as… 2018-July 2024 Kamala Harris. I just don’t know what happens if you manage to essentially trick people two cycles in a row (or at least that’s the perception) but I imagine it’s bad for Democrats broadly.
There will a debate in a couple of weeks, which her campaign pushed for. IIRC they're pushing for a second debate. So that will be an opportunity to see her give unprepared remarks.
According to the NYT's poll round up, she's not currently winning in the electoral college even setting aside the margin of error. The range would be determined by Pennsylvania which they have down as a dead heat. So all of the football spiking going on out there in liberal media seems very 2016 to me.
Banning fracking, across-the-board one-time student loan forgiveness, and generous subsidies to interstate rail outside the Northeast Corridor, of course. Even if that's a miscalculation which costs the election because of idiot rubes outside Philadelphia who have been deceived by the dastardly plutocrats, it's a moral victory and a way to spite the Democratic establishment - and that's what really counts, more than any concession to reality that would result in the more progressive party having power.
New York to Dallas in 14 hours! Chicago to LA in 12! What a world of high-speed travel could be unlocked by passing a plan to lay thousands of miles of rail across the wide-open Great Plains over the next 30 to 40 years, provided that the requisite environmental studies show minimal impacts... Americans will thrill to the possibilities unleashed by the idea of traveling across this country in only half a day! *Plus* bringing rail service to underserved communities in Cheyenne, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, and Columbus could win back the heartland for a generation! And all this without jet fuel or gasoline - car-free travelers can disembark and get right on the robust local transit networks that small American cities are known for!
I agree that there has been a lot of premature celebration over turning the election back to (optimistically) a coin flip. But what do you think they should be doing?
Based on your own writing I assume it isn't listing out or lecturing on increasingly abstract identity based grievances the Democrats plan to somehow correct. But I'm also not sure proposing, I don't know, massive across the board tax increases to fund progressive Americans' fantasies about Scandinavian welfare states or nationalizing industries are big vote winners either.
State polling is intrinsically more volatile and less reliable than national polling. The Electoral College is obviously a state-by-state affair, but we need to exercise caution with state level polling.
I wouldn't be shocked if Harris lost if the election were held today. Nor would I be shocked if she won. Also, in 2016, Hillary Clinton led the polling for the entire general election. But this cycle the Democratic nominee has gone from being behind by at least several points to a lead of similar size. That doesn't feel like 2016 at all.
Or . . . we're happy because our party was saved from a near-death (or actual-death) experience, we're unified, energized and have a great candidate and we're fired up and ready to fight over the next 2+ months to win this thing?
You should check their roundup again. She's currently ahead in MI and WI, tied in AZ and PA, and within margin of error in GA which is the only other seing state they show. Also they show a history of the polling and at no point is she beyond 7% below Trump which is where "beyond MoE" would start. Nate Silvers model shows much the same. I don't think anyone would tell you that Kamala has it in the bag right now. But there are a lot of pieces like this that talk about how she is putting on about as strong of a showing as you could expect.
They finally relaunched it today; it gives Harris a 58% chance of winning vs. Trump's 41%. I don't have a subscription to Silver's blog so I'm not sure where his forecast currently stands.
Just following up to report that Harris is now winning the RCP average of state polls. Pennsylvania has flipped and that puts Harris at exactly 270, enough to win. This is on their “no toss ups” map, which credits the state to whomever is winning, whatever the amount.
I did think it was pretty impressive that she got a huge cheer for her comment about Palestinian self-determination, which substantively is not a bold new stance. But her style is different I guess
America has talked a good game while doing nothing of any substance in support of Palestinian self-determination for decades. If Harris is signalling an intent to change that it will be very meaningful.
"nothing of any substance in support of Palestinian self-determination for decades"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't multiple American presidents try to broker a peace deal/two-state solution between Israel and Palestine? True, none of those efforts succeeded, but is that America's fault? Israelis and Palestinians have to decide they want peace. We (Americans) can't want it more than they do.
I wrote an article that addresses this, link below. TL;DR, America's massive support reduces Israel's incentive to compromise, especially when that support continues while Israel openly works to prevent a two-state solution. So if anything, when I wrote America has done nothing that was generous and America's actions, as opposed to its stated policies, have in fact been an impediment to Palestinian self-determination.
What about Palestinian willing to compromise? When have they seriously indicated they'd settle for anything less than full ethnic cleansing of the Jews? Israel was willing to accept a two-state solution so so many times before, and it all failed do to Palestinians attitudes and actions. It's high time we stop ignoring the fact that it takes two to tango.
I think in effect calling for a two state solution isn't signaling anything new. Putting some passion and emotion in your voice while you're restating standard American policy may count for something though, I guess.
I think I would state it differently. Everyone has failed on Palestinian self-determination and the two or three state solution. Part of the reason is that many of the stakeholders in the region actually oppose it (Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Likud, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, the US Republican Party, etc.) Labor, Fatah, and the US Democratic Party haven’t been able to get there.
1 -- Man, do Democrats want to win/beat Trump. That trumps everything. Demand a conservative, Republican-favoring border bill? Bring it on!
2 -- She refused to "balance" the American parents of the hostage by caving in to the demand to also feature a Palestinian speaker. Maybe that shows lack of moral balance, but it sure shows that she and her folks know how to read the polls.
3 -- Gretchen Whitmer was fine -- at most. (Actually, I thought "meh" about her speech.) Not only did the Democrats pick (luck into?) the absolutely right nominee, but it shows how ludicrous the Ezra Klein-type open convention would have been. It's not democracy -- it's a four day infomercial, people! And it's putting together a massive national campaign under incredible time pressure. The Harris team pulled it off (mostly by emerging, Alien-like, from the body of the Biden campaign). The idea that the open-convention winner would start *right now* to put together a national structure and campaign is so stupid that it pretty much disqualifies anyone who advocated for that.
I think we can all be satisfied that it was clearly the right decision to make Biden step aside, and it was also clearly right to have a coronation, not a second primary.
Let's the the W, everyone! Democrats solved a massive collective action problem. The GOP wanted to dump Trump multiple times in 2016, but they lacked the wherewithal to do so. The Democratic Party is a real party. It acts as its own entity, not simply a shell for its most fanatical elements.
1. I think being a good speech-giver is a overrated aspect of being a good candidate. Most of the campaign is spent doing things other than giving speeches.
2. I think Harris' speech last night was very good, but it's not the first big political speech she's ever given, and her performances in the past have been fine but not memorable. It's important to remember that she and Walz weren't just in a room somewhere writing these speeches on their own and unveiling them on live TV -- these aren't school assignments. Because they are the nominees, they have an army of Democratic speechwriters and message-makers editing their drafts, suggesting improvements, and helping them with their deliveries. You don't need to do all that for the "regular" speakers like Whitmer, you just need a quick vetting.
Speech quality is surprisingly low amongst politicians. Like Obama is fine…for a professional public speaker. Like fine. Not great. But politicians in general suck at giving speeches. I’m better than all of them and there are plenty of people better than me. But our public speaking pays our bills ultimately. It really doesn’t for politicians. Clinton in his prime had his moments. Reagan was very good. JFK was quite good.
Clinton is interesting because he had both incredible highs and incredible lows. Like I thought his speech at the 2012 convention was the best of the year, but his 1988 debut was one of the most famous bombs in convention history. I guess it's sort of consistent with his overall character. Guy with off-the-charts talent who doesn't prepare but goes out and wings it is going to have results all over the map.
She does it so rarely that I forget just how good Michelle Obama is. What is so amazing about her is that she apparently really doesn't like this line of business. Great orators are in part great because they are extroverts and get pumped up on adrenaline in response to the crowd's reactions. But I don't get the feeling she responds much to that at all; she simply goes out there and gives an awesome speech just because she's a unicorn.
Like he said, she's better at it than her husband.
I always thought it was notable how much more fired up Obama was in his famous 2004 convention speech, than in his later speeches. He sounded much more like MLK Jr. in 2004 and then dialed it way down later on
I mean, those people were clearly right. Whitmer has won two statewide races by solid margins in a key swing state. Harris has only ever run in one contested statewide race vs. a Republican, and she barely squeaked by in a very blue state. In a vacuum, Whitmer would clearly be the stronger candidate. Of course, given the circumstances of having to make a switch from a reelection-eligible incumbent, the choice was *not* being made in a vacuum and Harris was the right choice.
I think had Biden dropped out in, say, January 2023, it would have been really interesting to see Whitmer and Harris fight for the nomination. In July 2024 -- uh uh.
It definitely would have been awful in July 2024, but if anything I think it would have been even worse in January 2023! The last thing we ever need to see is a head-to-head presidential primary between a black woman and a white woman, especially without the disciplining pressure of an imminent general election vs. Trump. The social media takes would have been utterly deranged.
Yeah Whitmer kind of flopped tbh. Shapiro also was not that great imo. Maybe if they had more time and there hadn't been 4 days with so many speakers it would have been better but I think a sense of fatigue sets in with the non-headliners at a certain point.
I think President Harris with a Republican Senate may do slightly more progressive legislating than you expect, because
1) Secret Congress,
2) countering China — which is really popular — practically speaking involves preventing them from dumping our manufacturing sector into oblivion. Subsidies, industrial policy, all that, including for climate-related sectors like batteries and electric cars.
Is it the whole Warren agenda? Absolutely not. But it’s probably more than nothing.
That may be true. Although, a Republican Senate also means that Harris gets no Supreme Court appointments, likely no lower court appointments, and possibly, gets denied the right to even have a cabinet.
It also gives the Republicans a veto point on raising the debt ceiling, which is going to mean more grandstanding and brinksmanship.
Also, if sunny patriotism that everyone gets really excited about ends up losing the election, I expect there'll be a big backlash led by left-wing ideological entrepreneurs. Maybe not the full 2020, but in that vein
Between the Olympics and the DNC I’ve done a lot of chanting USA! USA! in my living room and it feels good. America is fucking awesome.
One of the loudest roars I heard in the arena was when Kinzinger said he knows democrats love this country just as much as republicans
That’s a very defensive framing. If you have to put it like that you have problem. Imagine Republicans saying ”We really like Black Americans as much as Democrats do!”
I mean, Adam Kinzinger is a Republican.
It was a Republican putting it like that…makes all the difference
I was there too. My sense was that, for VP Harris's speech, Gaza had the biggest cheer (aside from entrance/exit). Did you have that same sense?
Complete popularism cultural victory
What is best in life? To get the upper hand over your somewhat more extreme fellow partisans, see them nudged gently out of the spotlight, and to hear the half-hearted complaints of their partners!
Ok, but may I yearn for a little lamentation now and then.
And hear the lamentations of their women on Twitter!
Doesn’t work when most of the ARE women
I am so proud of the Slow Boring commentariate to recognize the reference here.
The normie ideological capture of dem elites is total. Let the grilling begin!
You say that like it's a bad thing - after 9/11, Dot-Com crash, GFC, Marathon bombing, a pointless war in Iraq, and 4 years of Trump I suspect that's what a lot of people would like.
opularism” is an ironic word.
There is a venerable synonym, good old fashioned “populism.” Neologisms that insert needless syllables are rarely popular. Saying “popularism” is sounds like an officious effort to reappropriate the term “populism” from Trump or Le Pen or William Jennings Bryan or whoever.
Why must liberals crucify plain, elegant English upon a cross of scold?
Because they’re two different but related concepts? Popularism is about saying popular things to win elections and distancing yourself from unpopular stuff. Populism is a particular political style than sees everything through a people vs elites lens. There is substantial overlap but it’s not total. For example, on abortion popularism says be pro-choice, whereas populism could lead you in either direction (plenty of populists are anti-abortion).
I've never seen anyone associated with popularism advocate adopting policies they thought were stupid and dangerous ... until a couple weeks ago.
It was more like this - "as a political candidate you should minimize or emphasize any given policy according to this handy cheat sheet":
- Popular and you support it? EMPHASIZE.
- Unpopular and your opponents support it? EMPHASIZE.
- Unpopular and you support it? MINIMIZE.
- Popular but you disagree with it? MINIMIZE.
You've edited the last point, which is now:
- Popular but you disagree with it? MILK IT! We're playing to win, baby!
A degree of pandering is inevitable, but "say anything to win" is different - it's what you do when you only care about power.
Agreed, that last section is specifically (to me) the difference between popularism and populism.
I think Harris gave a great speech and "populist" is a perfectly accurate description of her arguing she represents the American people while her opponent represents a small club of wealthy billionaires. If that isn't populism, nothing really counts as it!
I agree that that part sounds populist more than popularist. Other parts of the speech can be popularist.
IMO populism is a mode of rhetoric, while popularism is a style, strategy, and heuristic by which to formulate rhetoric that is not necessarily populist.
Agree.
Bernie on health care is a good example of left wing populism. Why are there problems in the system, is it because of limited resources, competing interests, conflicting priorities, status quo bias, and path determinism from choices made during and after the Second World War? No! It's because a handful of greedy companies are just plain evil. Once we the people smash those greedy bastards with single payer all those pesky trade offs and competing interests will vanish like a fog in the morning sunshine. Oh and if you don't agree well I have to ask, who funds you?
If there’s a real difference in meaning, fine. Wouldn’t the “popularist” position on abortion involve some restrictions on elective, later term abortions? That is what the polling supports.
I don’t think so. Thermostatic public opinion is powerful and since Dobbs opinion has become much more pro-choice. See the pro-choice side winning every single abortion referendum since 2022.
Simple messaging (“restore Roe”) is better than getting into the weeds, and since this is a winning issue I don’t see any reason to complicate things or divide our side when we have the GOP on their back foot.
“Restore Roe” is rhetorically cleaner, but it insults the listener’s intelligence. Roe could only be “restored” through aggressive court packing. Any codification of Roe could be reversed if Republicans won an election. And if Democrats packed the court to restore Roe, Republicans might later pack the court to overturn it again.
You’re reading too much into things. Republicans tried to repeal the ACA and failed because by then it was popular.
The court-packing tit-for-tat notion is overblown.
That’s not to say that Republicans wouldn’t retaliate; it’s just to say that politics is absolutely NOT some perfectly Newtonian cycle of perfectly balanced action and reaction. It IS possible for either side to gain the upper hand and stop the retaliation, just as it’s possible for either side to choose a different *method* of retaliation.
The popularist position is to say *nothing* about late term abortions and to hammer home that your fanatical opponents are trying to outlaw all abortions and undermine reproductive freedom.
Probably not. Dobbs has cast a spotlight on what these moderate restrictions actually mean. We're not getting a West European-style that's de jure up the middle but de facto let's women and/or doctors make the decision. The well has been poisoned by GOP restrictions that have caused a lot of suffering for women suffering complications and tied doctors' hands in ways that most voters (and probably legislators) didn't forsee. The polling and electoral evidence have shifted. Even state parties that have remained disciplined, like Virginia's GOP have failed to capitalize.
Bill Clinton's formulation back in the 90's of "safe legal and rare" could be describe as "popularist" in my book, but opinion has changed quite a bit post-Dobbs so the popular formulation is probably now closer to bumper sticker slogan of "keep your laws off my body"
At some point, though, that has to get translated into an actual set of laws, people will vote on them or the politicians who pass them, and it’ll probably settle into a Europe-like compromise position.
To me:
I would say "popularism" is emphasizing the popular parts of your agenda, but doesn't necessarily change your positions. (You might dial back on something, but you won't go the opposite direction).
I understand "Populism" as more about _switching_ to positions which are supported by more of the populace in order to win, with less concern about whether you actually agree with any of them.
That's... semantics but that's what we're discussing
That's just Roe, and Democrats certainly fucked up by not at least trying to codify it in federal law before it was overturned. Hopefully they've learned their lesson.
That would never have passed the senate, it would have been a messaging exercise.
Better than nothing, which is what we got.
Supreme Court would have struck that down as a violation of the 10th Amendment.
Exactly - this is one place where I think Hillary Clinton got the messaging right: abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare.”
True Popularism: Ds should say popular stuff so they win more and can do more good left-wing policy
SB Comments Popularism: Ds should adopt right wing issue positions on immigration because it's popular
Let me synthesize those two for you: Ds should say popular stuff and avoid adopting unpopular far-left issue positions so they win more and can do more left-wing policy than Republicans ever would.
Yes, in practice popularism discourse peaked in 2021-2022 as a way to dismiss the more progressive wing of the party without getting into details. It arguably worked, but of course that means price controls and all sorts of other high polling ideas are on the table. So in reality, the discourse was a tacit acknowledgement that liberals are along for the ride in a more left-populist party. Which is what's happening in policy terms.
In the European political context one can talk of both right wing and left wing populism. The latter is for example when saying ”raise taxes on the rich and you can pay for everything and more”.
Different, yes, but I'd say unrelated.
While I disagree with your comment (Milan’s below explains why) and while I hate puns, I gotta give credit to “cross of scold”.
We shall drive the tankies before us and hear the lamentations of their women!
(Not really. We will not do A Violence to women. But we shall vanquish the tankies!)
I don't think that "hearing the lamentations of their women" is actually meant as a threat of violence, it always struck me as implicitly relishing the wails of the families of the enemies crushed and driven before you, the wailers being saddened by the fact that their husbands have been thus crushed and driven.
But not with literal tanks.
For make benefit the glorious nation of the US and A
It’s only a victory if she wins. If Kamala loses, the entire approach will be questioned and potentially jettisoned in favor of true populism
What does that even fucking mean
You should smile more Freddie. Would do you a lot more good than the constant whining and nastiness.
Freddie be hatin.
lol
It means you, personally, were wrong for the past 4 years and now you’re being as conclusively discredited as it’s possible to be.
>>What does that even fucking mean<<
It means an effort to go after voters like the proverbial non-college, gun-owning, politically moderate warehouse shift supervisor in Winston-Salem who earns $49,000 a year, has voted for Trump before, but is open to change.
Your vote isn't gettable, Freddie, but his might well be.
I have considerable doubt that FDB gets his finger all icky by voting with a pen a boring neoliberal capitalist might use.
Easier to shitpost.
If you’re genuinely curious, I encourage you to read the column you’re commenting under, wherein a fellow named Matt Yglesias, of whom you may have heard, explains what it means at some length.
Basically, that Dem elected officials and their campaign staff are getting ruthless about poll-testing and A/B testing both policy ideas and messaging, and also about using most of their paid and earned media money to talk about high salience stuff that polls well. It’s worth noting that although the approach recommends moderation on some issues for Democrats (immigration, criminal justice), you’re correct to note that it really doesn’t imply full reversion to 1990s DLC politics (a lot of mainstream liberal positions on stuff like abortion and protecting the welfare state are super popular, and so are some quite left-wing things like banning price gouging and using Medicare’s bargaining power to ruthlessly negotiate down prescription drug prices.)
When your getting into public fights with a college student who doesn't even work here anymore, you have to ask yourself what you're doing with your life. What even is your end goal? This really does seem to everyone else outside of your head like a public breakdown. It's concerning.
Stop being weird.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic if I held your views. Sooner or later, the higher ed money, Medicare, and Silicon Valley donors will have peaked. Interest rates are an accelerant of all three of these. Then the gentry Democrats will face in their ranks a raging populism against the economic order of society. You'll feel right at home!
Even Matt's rebuttal to the party's left is entirely circumstancial on the business cycle. Which means he doesn't have a principle to hold them back on, only the status quo. Wait for a recession, and he'll probably come back home to his friend Bernie Sanders.
Relax Matt. We're real Democrats and we're really like this. I'm a recovered Republican. My parents are immigrants. I'm the oldest of four boys, first two are naturalized, younger two born in the US. Like many immigrant families, my parents were religious and raised us strictly Catholic and very conservative. Nuns used to smack me around. After college and grad school, I finally got a clue about the actual effects of Republican policies and their prominent dominance of the hypocrisy sphere of the domestic political world. I'm now a middle-aged US Army combat veteran. I've always been patriotic and I've put my butt out there in the steel rain for our country. I think Republicans lost the ownership of the patriotism slogan when we figured out that Bush Jr fabricated the pretext for the Gulf War II. The GOP totally undermined their patriotism claim and "strong on defense" creds when they went all in on Trump. What I see today is a hollow, rotting GOP that has tripled down on the cult of a very damaged, selfish, grotesquely incompetent, hence dangerous individual and I see the Democrats have grown to become the only party of responsible adults in the national room. Policy quibbles? Yes I have a few. But not with women's rights, especially reproductive rights (wish you'd focus more on that - guys are missing the boat.) I have three daughters and I'm appalled and offended that my immigrant mom had more rights than they do. I look forward to American women venting righteous fury at the ballot box.
Anyway here I am; born and raised a conservative Catholic, now a patriotic, tax-paying, hard working and damn proud Democrat.
That's awesome. Thank you, sincerely, for your service.
I’m much less into electoral politics than most people here, and I didn’t watch any of the convention. I’m not following the polls or anything else closely; I scan SB comments when I have a few minutes of downtime and that’s about it.
And yet I so, so deeply feel and appreciate the vibe shift. I had been dreading in the back of my mind, all the time, a return to the 2016 - 2020 era. In my experience it wasn’t just the Bad Man in the White House, it was the stew of anger, panic, and distrust I felt everywhere - on the subway, in the grocery store, talking with usually-sane friends and family. I think the world will survive another Bad Man presidency if it comes to that—I fervently hope it doesn’t—but if at least some of the vibe shift endures, and we start to see a way out of this, that would be huge.
I think the vibe shift will matter, should she keep it up.
Honestly, Dems should lose this election in a landslide. The economy is pretty rocky (blah blah blah with everyone's "full employment" numbers, if you actually tried to get a job in the last 6-9 months, you know the labor market is very much NOT "tight"). The democrats have held the presidency 12 of the last 16 years (usually a bad sign, the middle doesn't like to see one party dominate too long), inflation was really unpopular, etc.
I think these things, rather than policy positions, explain why the race is tight. But normies just really, desperately, achingly want things to go back to normal. Where politicians on both sides drape themselves in flags and political corruption and scandal is mild (think "insider trading" or "extramarital affair", not "sexual assault" or "march on the capital"). And just... enough with all the angry shouting, Americans are *exhausted* by it. So I think despite all the fundamentals, if Harris continues on the Reaganesque of projecting "Can we all just go back to normal, guys? And get rid of these wierdos?" vibes, I think she has a real shot.
And this would be good for most of us SB commentators, because it would probably make Republicans finally take a look in the mirror and say "Wtf are we doing?" and go back to normal. This would be bad for Democrats in 2026/28 but good for the country.
One metric as to whether we are "back to normal" is if The Bulwark is backing a different candidate in 4 years time than I am.
I just want to touch on your inflation point, because one thing the last 4 years taught me is that even somewhat elevated inflation is way more unpopular that I would have guessed. I should have realized that presidential approval moving in conjunction with "gas prices" should be applicable to all aspects of society. This still one of the better political cartoons ever made; just replace gas prices with just prices. https://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoon?searchID=EC308075
It's why I think a likely Fed rate cut in September could be more impactful than we think. Besides the fact that certain costs like borrowing money to get a car will literally go down, the psychological impact could be even greater.
“One metric as to whether we are "back to normal" is if The Bulwark is backing a different candidate in 4 years time than I am. “
Excellent heuristic
“But normies just really, desperately, achingly want things to go back to normal.”
This is why I don’t understand Biden’s low approval rating. He really did get things back to normal after Trump! And all the vibes you ascribe to Harris around getting rid of weirdos were basically Biden’s vibes.
The question we should be asking is: why haven’t normies recognized the actions of the Democratic Party on this front already?
This was definitely the way I felt. For the most part I've enjoyed the Biden presidency. A couple of policy quibbles, but nothing big.
My guess is a lot is thermostatic politics. People feel like the stuff Democrats want is now covered, time to work on the things Republicans want. Add inflation to that, with Republicans really leaning into it but also higher prices that everyone notices.
If Biden were 60, I think he'd have the same (or better) polls as Harris vs. Trump. The age issue was just a *really* big deal.
Compare the way Biden campaigned in 08 to 20. He was a bit snarky and had the dynamism to pull off the kind of vibes based campaign Harris is running. He just does not have that now. If he tried to run on a "wow, they are weird" vibe, he would just sound like your out-of-touch Grandpa.
I usually avoid listening to political speeches becasue I can't get out of Economist Mode and do little CBA's of what I hear. As Matt says, Harris stayed at a level of generality that avoided any cringes EXCEPT <sorry> the part about a tax cut for the middle class.
However high we push marginal rates and switch from deductions to stingy partial tax credits (except for savings that we ought to increase), we cannot close the deficit without raising income taxes on people who consider themselves "middle class." And this timidity about tax increases will make a Child Allowance (hopefully NOT as tax credit) that much more difficult.
Still garden variety fiscal irresponsibility driven by median voter not being a fiscal policy nerd is OK for now. There are no neoliberals in foxholes.
I think the idea of a tax cut for the middle class is vague enough that the details could end up fine. For example, we could define down the middle class from the $200k number politicians are always saying down to $100k, which is much closer to median household income. We could lower the nominal rate while ending a lot of exemptions. Basically, there are ways to deliver on the promise that could still be responsible.
Do that and watch California go red again. $100k ain’t middle class in the metro areas of this state, and Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks are more culturally conservative than white liberals.
You say that, but I literally live in one of the metro areas of this state and have a $200k household income. I'm sorry, it's very obvious to me that I am rich. Even in the Bay Area, median household income is like $130k. I don't know why this happens so often in high COL areas, but so many rich people delude themselves into thinking they're "middle class" just by looking at what they have compared to what they think "rich people" should have, and since they don't have giant mansions on an acre and really fancy cars, they must not be rich. Meanwhile, the actual middle class in the Bay Area just can't buy houses at all because they're too expensive. Merely being a homeowner in a non-sketchy neighborhood of the inner Bay Area makes you rich.
Also, as long as the Republicans are so stupid on women's and gay rights, I can't see California going red on a national level. I can see us electing another Arnold type for governor, but I'm not even sure he's still Republican. The national Republican party's values are so utterly distant from metro Californians values that I can't imagine them voting for the GOP anytime soon.
Well, at least not until Trump loses and the Republicans do a major overhaul of the party.
Unless you’ve got a seven-figure net worth, you’re not rich. Income =\= wealth. If it weren’t for the COVID run-up in stocks and house prices, my family wouldn’t have more than $200k in home equity and 401ks. Income can disappear overnight, especially in the white collar job market that is weaker than the blue collar one.
Of course I compare myself to other homeowners in CA - until 2020 happened, my home equity would have left me with enough to buy a shitty 1950s house in a poor state with cash, but with no ability to get a job that paid even half what I make now. That’s why I left to come to CA to start with. My home’s value was going up less than 5% a year before COVID.
My original point is that you should not be comparing yourself to other homeowners in CA if you actually are looking for the middle class unless you moved far enough from your work to actually get a reasonably priced house (usually 2 hours away from a city center during rush hour is the correct distance- think Tracy to SF). Otherwise, what's affordable for the actual middle class is perpetual renting or extremely tiny condos.
if the Trump corporate tax cuts expire, this will be a defacto tax increase on the middle class, for lots of reasons around tax incidence. That's fine but not something I would advise Harris to actually point out.
Why is an allowance better than a tax credit?
An allowance you keep even if you are not a net federal tax payer (like 40 percent or so of households, given how incredibly progressive our tax code is). A credit just reduces your burden if you actually pay taxes (you know, like the dastardly rich do).
Isn’t “allowance” the same thing as “fully refundable CTC” then?
Fully refundable gets you part of the way there, but on the administrative side, I think people who talk about allowances are thinking of just sending out a monthly check to everybody, like Social Security, while even fully refundable tax credits usually require you to file taxes and then the payment maybe only comes as a once a year lump.
Between those alternatives the allowance seems administratively simpler and it'll include non-filers.
(As far as practical politics, obviously we should just call it whatever polls better and then administer it in a sensible way. Even if you say "tax credit" you can still send out monthly checks and I don't see why you can't even send it out to non-filers using administrative data on the grounds that they would qualify if they did file.)
My family got the ARP CTC because my little brother was 16 in 2021 and it came as monthly checks. But point taken on getting benefits to people who don’t file taxes.
Thanks, that answered my question!
The 2024 DNC was an almost unimaginably triumphant affair. Few things reach perfection in this world. But Chicago came pretty close. Now, I'm admittedly a highly partisan Democrat. But I assure you—I swear it's true!—I'm much more of the "sky is falling" variety than the rose-colored glasses kind of Dem when it comes to my party's prospects. If there were legitimate cause to be worried about a single element of this convention, I'd see it (no, I'd obsess over it). And I didn't see a single damn thing that went even a little bit wrong.
Mind you, I have no illusions that this is going to be anything but a very hard-fought campaign that might well end in a victory for Donald Trump. It could happen.
But if "successful, mistake-free" convention is one likely ingredient to a Kamala Harris victory this fall, the Democrats couldn't have done any better. Seriously.
(Kudos to Governor J.B. Pritzker, by the way; I suspect he deserves a fair amount of the credit here.)
My most heartfelt thanks go to all those pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel activists who decided to stay home rather than come to Chicago and drive a ton of news stories.
Some serious thanks too for the CPD and Mayor Johnson. They broke up most of the protest quickly and when one that started to escalate on Wed. they just started arresting everyone. It was great work.
https://wgntv.com/news/democratic-national-convention-chicago-2024/dozens-arrested-after-protestors-clash-with-chicago-police-near-israel-consulate/
Yeah. There were serious fears there might be some disruptions. But they barely made a ripple in terms of media coverage.
I really thought that the FP movement, such as it was, was unappeasable. But it was. They like Harris's message more. And possibly even passing over Shapiro helped.
It's hard to describe it as a "movement" because nobody really leads it, and that's why I was so skeptical rejecting Shapiro would move the needle. There was no official stakeholder to say, "we will leave you alone now."
But it seems that 90% of the people who cared enough to hit the streets and make scenes no longer feel the need to do so. There's a handful of people who are still trying to make it a thing, but it's clear they have no juice.
I was fully expecting chaos in Chicago and I was wrong, so maybe my prediction on this is wrong too. But I don't expect encampments to be a thing either as students return. The Omnicause has moved on.
I don't think they did stay home. I think the few dozens hacks who showed up were, in fact, the entire population of them.
I think a lot of y’all tend to extrapolate from the most online or most living-in-a-tent-for-weeks pro-Palestinians and it leaves you with a pretty inaccurate view of the median pro-Palestinian advocate, who is indeed voting for Kamala and also passionate about many other issues.
Nah, I know a lot of folks who have been to multiple pro-Palestinian protests who are indeed holding back because they recognize the need to focus on beating Trump.
I think that was the joke
I don’t know if everything was successful— some of the content struck me as either kind of cringe or over-pandering to safe constituencies— but the really high-salience stuff like Walz and Harris’s speeches were really good.
Kudos to the Democratic Party apparatus, writ large… I prefer to avoid giving kudos to Pritzker if I can help it.
"It’s actually a staggering achievement to make liberals run as the party of patriotism and the authentic American spirit"
This is accurate, but it shouldn't be. The party that believes most in the ideals and purpose of the American experiment *should* be the most patriotic, because it can't achieve its goals any other way than through those ideals.
Liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness, creating a more perfect Union with each generation. If that's what Democrats are fighting for at the highest level, they're fighting for the core ideals of the United States.
And it would be foolish to mince words, send mixed messages, or be confused about that.
>By the time we got to Roy Cooper (?) introducing Harris with an uninspired recounting of their work together on mortgage fraud litigation,<
What am I missing? Why the question mark? Don't you advocate a mad dash to the center? Roy Cooper is a decidedly centrist Democrat. A bonafide white, southern, Protestant male with moderate politics who has won statewide office multiple times. And unlike Andy Beshear (who I'm a huge fan of), Roy Cooper's North Carolina is a state Harris-Walz stands a solid chance at winning.
I was also confused by this, why is it weird for white-guy-governor-of-a-light-red-state Roy Cooper to introduce her?
I assume (didn’t watch the DNC) he just thinks Cooper didn’t give a great speech delivery-wise.
If you're the nominee, I don't think you want a barnburner speech just before you take the stage.
Just as you probably don't want the next day's headline to be "Surprise guest Beyonce electrifies the crowd!"
Where the hell did that weird rumor come from?
I only caught the tail end of Cooper's speech, but it seemed like he was getting a great reaction from the crowd. [shrugs]
I thought it was more that the speaker should be someone up-and-coming in the party? Cooper is in his mid-60s and I think it's pretty clear that Dems are going to think a lot more about age for the next few cycles
I think criticism is that while the convention was overwhelmingly a success there were some odd scheduling choices (Panetta in prime time, all hail Hochul, Cooper etc)
Agreed it wasn't perfect. But given that a couple weeks ago the convention was being planned around renominating Joe Biden, that was a miraculous redesigning of a huge event in a blink of the eye.
It would be wise for the party to really minimize Hochul’s visibility for the near future, or until some miracle happens and she becomes significantly more popular.
"What happened since Harris took over is precisely that she regained ground Biden had lost with young and nonwhite voters based on her better vibes, while doing none of the leftist messaging stuff."
Anti-price-gouging and large subsidies for first-time home buyers are the only two big substantive policy proposals that Harris has made so far this cycle (that I can think of off-hand). How are these not examples of leftist messaging stuff?
Stuff supported by 80% of the population doesn’t get ideologically coded the way stuff closer to 50/50 does.
"Stuff supported by 80% of the population doesn’t get ideologically coded the way stuff closer to 50/50 does."
Sounds plausible as a general claim. Maybe gun control is a counterexample?
I think the general claim would be that if the salience of the issue is much greater on the minority side of the yes/no divide than the majority, something can survive as a partisan issue.
Like it's just obviously suicidal for a party to stake out a claim on an 80/20 question as the 20 side if the 80 side is engaged. But if it's 80% no-but-not-salient and 20% yes-and-very-salient then you can use the energy of the 20% side and not pay a big price for it being unpopular.
Calling for gun control is fine (it's popular!) Just don't think you'll actually get anything done.
I don't think Harris lost any support because of the pro-gun control speeches at the DNC. Just don't get people's hopes up.
"Calling for gun control is fine (it's popular!) Just don't think you'll actually get anything done."
Fair points about its popularity and likelihood of enactment. But the question on the table was whether it "gets ideologically coded." And I was suggesting that it still does get ideologically coded, despite being supported by well over 50% of the population.
it is ideologically coded in the sense that all Rs will hate it.
But it isn't an issue that the middle thinks of as very left wing
Gun control is perhaps the one issue more than any other where the rural bias in state legislatures and in Congress (especially and most importantly the Senate) skews the politics of a particular issue. I know it depends on the particular issue, but in general small bore gun control measures are quite popular*. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
My wife and I were talking last night during the part where they had gun violence victims (or more accurately family members of gun violence victims speak) that it's very possible to us that gun control is a lot like abortion. What we mean is, two reasons GOP had an advantage on abortion for so many years is a) the rural skew I talked about and b) their position was genuinely more popular 20 years ago than it is now**. I think Gun Control might be the same issue. Look at that chart I posted. Support for Gun Control measures has been rising for a good 15 years now. Are we sure mild gun control measures are actually hurting Democrats at the ballot box anymore? I feel pretty confident in saying the voters who are passionate about owning guns are way more sorted into being down the line GOP voters than they were 20 years ago.
* Any theories as to why gun control measures had such high support in the 80s, dropped precipitously until 2010 and then jumped back up again? A few guesses. High Crime and specifically high gun crime made people more pro gun control as a "war on crime" measure. Crime drop in the 90s made this position seem way less necessary. Another guess is the Brady Bill helped push GOP to being more pro gun due to negative partisanship. The 1994 Gingrich revolution brought way more ideologues into Congress and meant way more of pro gun message was pushed going forward. As to why support started increasing in 2010? That I'm not sure of at all. Guesses?
** Will keep posting this until the cows come home but this is probably the most important social trend of the last 20 years and the next 20 years. https://news.gallup.com/poll/642548/church-attendance-declined-religious-groups.aspx
The gun control popularity you mention seems like it tracks reasonably well with the slope of crime rates.
That's an interesting statement I will have to think about 🤔
You left out the concept of taxing unrealized capital gains. But to the extent there are any details provided, all of these are pretty modest proposals focused on economics. One can question their likely effectiveness, but they are most definitely not what energizes the left wing of the Party.
The Democratic Party is going to emphasize areas that may well be to the left of this comment section's policies -- generally, this space is further left than the country but right of the Democratic Party center -- but the proposals so far shouldn't cause much concern.
That was a Biden WH proposal. “ What she has said, as the Harris campaign told me, is that she “supports the revenue raisers in the FY25 Biden-Harris [administration] budget. Nothing beyond that.”
It could include an unrealized capital gains tax on a small portion of the population or just eliminating the step-up loophole that wipes out capital gains taxes upon death. I don’t see Harris supporting a Danish style unrealized capital gains tax. It short her stance is opaque so certain claims about her stance have wobbly support.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-08-22/harris-isnt-planning-to-tax-your-unrealized-capital-gains-but-a-wealth-tax-is-still-a-good-idea
Taxing unrealized capital gains is red meat amongst my business minded Florida friends who begrudgingly vote for Trump because of policies like this. The polling on these type of left wing economic policies (rent control included) must be great because in my purplish world of south Florida it plays terribly.
I thought that the unrealized capital gains tax was not an explicit proposal but just a consequence of her vaguely saying she was buying into Biden's tax proposal.
But my point was about messaging (which was MY's point), not substance.
It looks like it is. Its an over-reading a vague statement.
The housing subsidy is not large IMO. It's ~$20b/year, less than 0.1% of GDP
https://www.boundless.com/blog/harris-promises-25000-down-payment-aid-for-first-generation-homebuyers/
Price gouging is already illegal in many places.
Neither of them are great policies IMO and given the Senate will likely go Red as Matt said, it's likely neither will happen. They have been effective in signalling that she's concerned about excessive market power by corporations and the housing shortage, which are both serious problems.
I think a better comparator for how large a proposed expenditure is, is the deficit (the expenditure would add about 1.5% to the deficit) or the budget, not the GDP. Or compare it to other programs. Or just decide whether giving $25k to people is a lot or not.
In any event, I was talking about messaging, not substance.
Agreed, but also: 1/1000 of US GDP actually seems like a huge amount?
I actually like the down payment subsidy on the merits. Obviously most Slow Boring commenters live in places where zoning/permitting etc. create a highly supply constrained housing market, but I don't think that's true of most Americans. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with subsidizing demand if you don't have constrained supply.
Age-adjusted homeownership rates have fallen significantly over the past 20 years, credit standards have tightened up and it is legit harder for younger people to do family formation in their own place nowadays. And there's a correlation between homeownership and fertility rates that strikes me as plausibly partly causal.
In non-supply constrained markets, it should act as a transfer from older families to younger families and I expect it will be pro-natal in effect. All this with no work disincentive or similar moral hazard issues.
> Age-adjusted homeownership rates have fallen significantly over the past 20 years
Sorry to nitpick, but I don't know if I would say significantly. Regardless I'm not sure comparing to the early 2000s peak is a good idea given what came after!
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf
https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/1649492485968891904
I'm Kevin Erdmann-pilled on the 2007 crisis, I don't think there actually was anything unsustainable about the homebuilding and homeownership rates before the crisis.
We've got more young adults living with parents now than we used to, I think that's a bad thing (primarily for fertility reasons), and I think we should be trying to push the trend in the opposite direction. I mean, we are getting richer, we should live like it.
What about the estate tax step up basis and stuff like that... It feels like when I saw a Mormon history professor say a vote for Joe Biden would not be a vote for abortion because of the courts and stuff, So Trump is a threat to democracy so good Christian right-wingers who care about the future of America should vote with Democrats this time... So now are we supposed to say a vote for Kamala it's okay even though in her "wicked liberal thirsty for loot progressive heart (or whatever you want to call it)". She wants to do all those scary things that conservatives fear to them financially. That they should vote with Democrats because Republican Senate? That doesn't sound very appealing either even if it is true. Why not just say if we're just going to ignore policy positions that we don't want to really talk about. Just say the next 4 years is all about securing democracy and shoring up the holes. Maybe a bare minimum on foreign policy. Promises like I will never store secret documents in my bathroom or take them home with me after I leave my job as president. Seem more appealing than her incoherent anti gouging national rent control garbage that just sounds God awful. Some of this can feel like the turtle and the scorpion. After I got on your back for a ride across the river to freedom and democracy why did you sting me with all these leftist policies that I hate. Well because it's in my nature.
Those policies are really popular among all voters. Asked what policies people support to lower inflation, laws on price gouging gets 81% approval. 57% think housing/renting prices are so high bcs of greedy landlords.
But they're literally isn't price gouging..
So is the plan to just like feed the electorate lies that are popular and then tell them you have false solutions to the things you made up?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/kamala-harris-food-prices/679593/
And it's not about greedy landlords either Jesus. Market rent is market rent.
Imagine that if it wasn't for those greedy wage earners we could pay less.. oh they want market price maybe they should take less salary then.. The incoherence of fiscal policy and stuff on the left is ridiculous.
The same people that say listen to experts listen to fauci which I totally agree with have no expertise when they formulate what they want The government to do or steal from other people
They are; Matt has joined people like Jon Chait in just being relentlessly, obsessively anti-left. It dominates everything he writes now.
Losing sucks
Anti-far-left, big difference. And that's because that group has been actively unhelpful to their own causes by trying to tear down the Democratic Party, which at this late date can only help Republicans, who are, *obviously*, worse on every issue important to the entire left. You have to convince people of your positions first, then politicians, or else you'll just lose elections to the real enemy of the left, which again is the Republicans.
What kind of response are you looking for from this post? Are you trying to communicate to people reading the post that we should give Matt less credibility and read what he writes with a more skeptical eye? Or are you making an appeal to Matt himself, asking him to change his ways?
I guess when you make posts like this... what do you want to happen? What, in an ideal world, do would you like someone like me reading "Matt is relentlessly anti-left and it dominates everything he writes" to do with this observation or information? Or is it not me, but unnamed people with actual political power who might be reading these posts and looking at the comment section and you're asking them not to trust what Matt is writing?
Freddie, 90% of your writing is anti-left too, just a different slice of the “left” pie. MY and Jon Chait complain about the left for exactly the same reason you do it – because it’s frustrating as hell when a few loud people who are ostensibly on your side won’t stop promoting fringe idiocy that are counter-productive to the policies and practices you care about.
FFS. Freddie, I and other SB commenters tried and tried and tried to explain to you why Matt writes what he does, and you keep doubling down on refusing to get it.
Where does this obsession with Matt come from? What has he done to you - come to your house and spit in your breakfast cereal, kicked your cat, had sex with your ex-girlfriend? Whatever it is, can you let it go? Both you and SB commenters will be happier!
Yes it’s because the left is wrong not quite 100% of the time but pretty close, and chasing after its delusions for the past 12 years was a dead end that brought us Trump.
Hope you enjoyed 2020 because that was the multigenerational peak, not to be seen again for at least 30 years.
He hated 2020! Thats why 3/4 of his commenters read him, for his anti woke stuff.
Freddie has his share of good ideas, and is also very disagreeable, especially with people who do somewhere-left-of-the-median-American "wrong". This shows up as harsh, snarky criticism of the woke and of ineffective Democratic policy, but also harsh, snarky criticism of people who criticize the same things Freddy criticizes. Also some detailed advocacy of his own heterodox ideas, e.g. about education. But look at the comments on his blog -- what people come for are the dunks on woke leftists, as you said.
Yesterday's post was about his take on "AI optimists" vs "AI doomers".....
Ok 50 Cent
Not for nothing but the polling has kinda leveled out since she said those things.
I wouldn’t attribute too much cause and effect there. The honeymoon was bound to slow down at some point (if that’s not a mixed metaphor).
Totally agree.
Getting patriotism and freedom in the national divorce has been awesome
Don't forget pro sports.
I assume you meant discourse, not divorce?
No it’s an online meme about what things libs are getting custody of: freedom, football player kissing pretty blond girl, etc.
OK thanks, I didn't know that meme, I thought it was a weird autocorrect 😊
Sounds like you are much more sane than me to not be as online as I clearly am 😂
THIS "What I actually found most impressive about the speech, though, was what it didn’t do, namely recount the laundry list of Democratic Party policy demands."
is perfect and also made me think of THIS
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Sherlock Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Sherlock Holmes: That was the curious incident.
I genuinely don’t see how we can pencil in a Harris WH with her campaign desperately trying to avoid letting her give any unprepared remarks. I am going to breathe the biggest sigh of relief if she gives a town hall with crisp, on message answers. Otherwise I think the bottom falls out of the vibes.
My other concern, which I guess doesn’t matter if you only care about the Trump Threat to Democracy, is that they do manage to ride the teleprompter to the White House, only to leave her exposed as… 2018-July 2024 Kamala Harris. I just don’t know what happens if you manage to essentially trick people two cycles in a row (or at least that’s the perception) but I imagine it’s bad for Democrats broadly.
There will a debate in a couple of weeks, which her campaign pushed for. IIRC they're pushing for a second debate. So that will be an opportunity to see her give unprepared remarks.
I mean, candidates do prep for debates ;)
Well other than Obama in 2012....
According to the NYT's poll round up, she's not currently winning in the electoral college even setting aside the margin of error. The range would be determined by Pennsylvania which they have down as a dead heat. So all of the football spiking going on out there in liberal media seems very 2016 to me.
Which set of progressive policy proposals would put her way ahead in this race?
Banning fracking, across-the-board one-time student loan forgiveness, and generous subsidies to interstate rail outside the Northeast Corridor, of course. Even if that's a miscalculation which costs the election because of idiot rubes outside Philadelphia who have been deceived by the dastardly plutocrats, it's a moral victory and a way to spite the Democratic establishment - and that's what really counts, more than any concession to reality that would result in the more progressive party having power.
We also need to talk about banning gas stoves and abolishing Uber.
How did you forget Medicare for All? Of course we’ll have to discuss whether to make it a $5 trillion or $12 trillion plan in a contentious primary.
I can't tell if this is real or sarcasm.
It's not my job to educate you.
Praytell who are the rail voters staying home unless Amtrak increases service frequency?
It's not just frequency, it's also reach! Have you seen the maps? https://www.fastcompany.com/1681342/a-beautiful-vision-of-an-american-high-speed-rail-map
New York to Dallas in 14 hours! Chicago to LA in 12! What a world of high-speed travel could be unlocked by passing a plan to lay thousands of miles of rail across the wide-open Great Plains over the next 30 to 40 years, provided that the requisite environmental studies show minimal impacts... Americans will thrill to the possibilities unleashed by the idea of traveling across this country in only half a day! *Plus* bringing rail service to underserved communities in Cheyenne, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, and Columbus could win back the heartland for a generation! And all this without jet fuel or gasoline - car-free travelers can disembark and get right on the robust local transit networks that small American cities are known for!
Wow. You’ve been saving this up. Well done.
Banning fracking! Or Medicare for All! Or how about a national childcare bailout!
Wait, I seem to recall an election where Kamala didn’t even get past the primary by running on these issues… who did she lose to again?
I agree that there has been a lot of premature celebration over turning the election back to (optimistically) a coin flip. But what do you think they should be doing?
Based on your own writing I assume it isn't listing out or lecturing on increasingly abstract identity based grievances the Democrats plan to somehow correct. But I'm also not sure proposing, I don't know, massive across the board tax increases to fund progressive Americans' fantasies about Scandinavian welfare states or nationalizing industries are big vote winners either.
State polling is intrinsically more volatile and less reliable than national polling. The Electoral College is obviously a state-by-state affair, but we need to exercise caution with state level polling.
I wouldn't be shocked if Harris lost if the election were held today. Nor would I be shocked if she won. Also, in 2016, Hillary Clinton led the polling for the entire general election. But this cycle the Democratic nominee has gone from being behind by at least several points to a lead of similar size. That doesn't feel like 2016 at all.
I didn't know the election was today. Damn it.
Or . . . we're happy because our party was saved from a near-death (or actual-death) experience, we're unified, energized and have a great candidate and we're fired up and ready to fight over the next 2+ months to win this thing?
You should check their roundup again. She's currently ahead in MI and WI, tied in AZ and PA, and within margin of error in GA which is the only other seing state they show. Also they show a history of the polling and at no point is she beyond 7% below Trump which is where "beyond MoE" would start. Nate Silvers model shows much the same. I don't think anyone would tell you that Kamala has it in the bag right now. But there are a lot of pieces like this that talk about how she is putting on about as strong of a showing as you could expect.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/elections/polls-president.html
I would trust Nate Silver over NYT. The guy who took over for Silver isn't very good at his job.
The guy who took over for silver is so bad at his job he doesn't even have a model up so we don't even know what 538 thinks.
They finally relaunched it today; it gives Harris a 58% chance of winning vs. Trump's 41%. I don't have a subscription to Silver's blog so I'm not sure where his forecast currently stands.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/
Ah thanks for letting me know. You can see silver's top line number without a subscription there's a chart before the paywall
It's just the polls, not the forecast of who will win (unless I'm missing something).
ah you're right sorry. nate gives harris a 52.8% chance today (don't tell him I told you)
She is losing the electoral college according to the RCP average of state polls. It is very close and could flip any day, but she is losing.
Just following up to report that Harris is now winning the RCP average of state polls. Pennsylvania has flipped and that puts Harris at exactly 270, enough to win. This is on their “no toss ups” map, which credits the state to whomever is winning, whatever the amount.
I did think it was pretty impressive that she got a huge cheer for her comment about Palestinian self-determination, which substantively is not a bold new stance. But her style is different I guess
America has talked a good game while doing nothing of any substance in support of Palestinian self-determination for decades. If Harris is signalling an intent to change that it will be very meaningful.
"nothing of any substance in support of Palestinian self-determination for decades"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't multiple American presidents try to broker a peace deal/two-state solution between Israel and Palestine? True, none of those efforts succeeded, but is that America's fault? Israelis and Palestinians have to decide they want peace. We (Americans) can't want it more than they do.
I wrote an article that addresses this, link below. TL;DR, America's massive support reduces Israel's incentive to compromise, especially when that support continues while Israel openly works to prevent a two-state solution. So if anything, when I wrote America has done nothing that was generous and America's actions, as opposed to its stated policies, have in fact been an impediment to Palestinian self-determination.
https://positivepublicpolicy.substack.com/p/the-us-near-unconditional-support?r=bhpwm
What about Palestinian willing to compromise? When have they seriously indicated they'd settle for anything less than full ethnic cleansing of the Jews? Israel was willing to accept a two-state solution so so many times before, and it all failed do to Palestinians attitudes and actions. It's high time we stop ignoring the fact that it takes two to tango.
That shifts the equilibrium but not the conclusion. Palestinians may not like the options in front of them but it's still a choice.
I think in effect calling for a two state solution isn't signaling anything new. Putting some passion and emotion in your voice while you're restating standard American policy may count for something though, I guess.
Has it been a feature of nomination acceptance speeches in the past? I genuinely don’t know but I doubt it.
I think I would state it differently. Everyone has failed on Palestinian self-determination and the two or three state solution. Part of the reason is that many of the stakeholders in the region actually oppose it (Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Likud, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, the US Republican Party, etc.) Labor, Fatah, and the US Democratic Party haven’t been able to get there.
3 observations:
1 -- Man, do Democrats want to win/beat Trump. That trumps everything. Demand a conservative, Republican-favoring border bill? Bring it on!
2 -- She refused to "balance" the American parents of the hostage by caving in to the demand to also feature a Palestinian speaker. Maybe that shows lack of moral balance, but it sure shows that she and her folks know how to read the polls.
3 -- Gretchen Whitmer was fine -- at most. (Actually, I thought "meh" about her speech.) Not only did the Democrats pick (luck into?) the absolutely right nominee, but it shows how ludicrous the Ezra Klein-type open convention would have been. It's not democracy -- it's a four day infomercial, people! And it's putting together a massive national campaign under incredible time pressure. The Harris team pulled it off (mostly by emerging, Alien-like, from the body of the Biden campaign). The idea that the open-convention winner would start *right now* to put together a national structure and campaign is so stupid that it pretty much disqualifies anyone who advocated for that.
My wife and I both liked Big Gretch’s speech.
But Kamala absolutely killed it. My wife was in tears, I was pumping my fist, it was joyous.
I think we can all be satisfied that it was clearly the right decision to make Biden step aside, and it was also clearly right to have a coronation, not a second primary.
Let's the the W, everyone! Democrats solved a massive collective action problem. The GOP wanted to dump Trump multiple times in 2016, but they lacked the wherewithal to do so. The Democratic Party is a real party. It acts as its own entity, not simply a shell for its most fanatical elements.
1. I think being a good speech-giver is a overrated aspect of being a good candidate. Most of the campaign is spent doing things other than giving speeches.
2. I think Harris' speech last night was very good, but it's not the first big political speech she's ever given, and her performances in the past have been fine but not memorable. It's important to remember that she and Walz weren't just in a room somewhere writing these speeches on their own and unveiling them on live TV -- these aren't school assignments. Because they are the nominees, they have an army of Democratic speechwriters and message-makers editing their drafts, suggesting improvements, and helping them with their deliveries. You don't need to do all that for the "regular" speakers like Whitmer, you just need a quick vetting.
Speech quality is surprisingly low amongst politicians. Like Obama is fine…for a professional public speaker. Like fine. Not great. But politicians in general suck at giving speeches. I’m better than all of them and there are plenty of people better than me. But our public speaking pays our bills ultimately. It really doesn’t for politicians. Clinton in his prime had his moments. Reagan was very good. JFK was quite good.
Clinton is interesting because he had both incredible highs and incredible lows. Like I thought his speech at the 2012 convention was the best of the year, but his 1988 debut was one of the most famous bombs in convention history. I guess it's sort of consistent with his overall character. Guy with off-the-charts talent who doesn't prepare but goes out and wings it is going to have results all over the map.
Saying Obama is just fine with his universally regarded as an incredible orator is pretty funny. Even maga Republicans respect the speaking skills.
Then again there might be a whole different world, professional speechmaking that I’m just not aware of that might put it into perspective
She does it so rarely that I forget just how good Michelle Obama is. What is so amazing about her is that she apparently really doesn't like this line of business. Great orators are in part great because they are extroverts and get pumped up on adrenaline in response to the crowd's reactions. But I don't get the feeling she responds much to that at all; she simply goes out there and gives an awesome speech just because she's a unicorn.
Like he said, she's better at it than her husband.
I always thought it was notable how much more fired up Obama was in his famous 2004 convention speech, than in his later speeches. He sounded much more like MLK Jr. in 2004 and then dialed it way down later on
1. is definitely true, it's just funny how people were hyping Whitmer over Kamala
I mean, those people were clearly right. Whitmer has won two statewide races by solid margins in a key swing state. Harris has only ever run in one contested statewide race vs. a Republican, and she barely squeaked by in a very blue state. In a vacuum, Whitmer would clearly be the stronger candidate. Of course, given the circumstances of having to make a switch from a reelection-eligible incumbent, the choice was *not* being made in a vacuum and Harris was the right choice.
I think had Biden dropped out in, say, January 2023, it would have been really interesting to see Whitmer and Harris fight for the nomination. In July 2024 -- uh uh.
It definitely would have been awful in July 2024, but if anything I think it would have been even worse in January 2023! The last thing we ever need to see is a head-to-head presidential primary between a black woman and a white woman, especially without the disciplining pressure of an imminent general election vs. Trump. The social media takes would have been utterly deranged.
Yeah Whitmer kind of flopped tbh. Shapiro also was not that great imo. Maybe if they had more time and there hadn't been 4 days with so many speakers it would have been better but I think a sense of fatigue sets in with the non-headliners at a certain point.
I think President Harris with a Republican Senate may do slightly more progressive legislating than you expect, because
1) Secret Congress,
2) countering China — which is really popular — practically speaking involves preventing them from dumping our manufacturing sector into oblivion. Subsidies, industrial policy, all that, including for climate-related sectors like batteries and electric cars.
Is it the whole Warren agenda? Absolutely not. But it’s probably more than nothing.
That may be true. Although, a Republican Senate also means that Harris gets no Supreme Court appointments, likely no lower court appointments, and possibly, gets denied the right to even have a cabinet.
It also gives the Republicans a veto point on raising the debt ceiling, which is going to mean more grandstanding and brinksmanship.
Because they are stymied in this way, the Democrats will double down on the cultural stuff.
Also, if sunny patriotism that everyone gets really excited about ends up losing the election, I expect there'll be a big backlash led by left-wing ideological entrepreneurs. Maybe not the full 2020, but in that vein
I guess they can take it up with President Cotton. I don’t think he will be as indulgent about it as they are used to.
This thread is freaking me out