I realize that the past is a different country, and there are limits to what we can conclude from an era before polling, etc. — but is there a generally accepted explanation for what happened in 1934?
The 73rd Congress was probably the most radical, productive Congress in US history (possibly exceeded by the 74th). The CCC, the NRA, the TVA, the AAA, the FDIC, are still household names. The amount of legislation was torrential. Exactly what Matt says voters hate.
And Democrats picked up seats in 1934! Sure, the economy was slightly better than it had been two years before (21.7% unemployment, versus 23.6% in 1932) but as you recall, a modestly better economy didn’t help Democrats much in 2010. And however you slice it, the economy in 1934 was *bad*.
Is the answer that the Great Depression was simply off the charts, that it was like The Purge of political science — the laws didn’t apply anymore? Or what?
As several articles have pointed out, the EV tax credits will have limited impact due to Made in America, vehicle price and buyer income restrictions. Probably just as well since there are already long waiting lists to buy an EV.
Sure, the bill is going to dramatically reduce carbon emissions, but it's not going to stick it to fossil fuel companies, prioritize stuff based on the priorities of the social justice movement or completely reorder society and the economy so that it functions more to their liking. And it has provisions for carbon capture and storage, which is cheating even if climate scientists agree it's necessary to minimize warming. What gets me is that these types are very overrepresented on twitter and they seem to have had a very outsized effect on climate policy the past 10 years.
Man...I don't know. This level of emotional micro management seems difficult on an individual level much less on a party wide scale. Overall I am with Yglesias and Shor on most of their messaging advice but I do think they continuously undersestimate human nature. It's hard to get people to simply not care about things they care about (or even to dampen their passion). I am all for pragmatism and incremental progress but Democrats are not Vulcans. They are going to express excitement, regret, sorrow, anger, etc. I would really like to see a post describing how this level of messaging discipline can be achieved with the coalition as it is. How do you convince which "groups" priorities aren't a main priority without losing their support. Politics seems hard and we can't just snap our fingers into a technocracy.
I agree that all this hyping is generally bad, but I can see at least one upside: it'll be basically impossible for left-wing members of congress to vote against it. I don't think that would otherwise be a huge hurdle, but I could imagine at least a couple members saying "No Green New Deal? Then no deal." It's nice to have your ducks in a row.
Maybe it's just Democrats scratching the activists' erogenous zones, but I think a big part of the purple language is that legislators want to feel that they're part of great big events and accomplishing great big things. I can't find a link but I recall Bill Clinton expressing a kind of disappointment that he was President in what was basically a time of peace and prosperity and so couldn't accomplish great things (plus screwing up his attempt to accomplish great things).
I logged off Twitter a while ago and have had blissfully few interactions with those people. Or, better yet, when I've encountered them in meat space they've been on better behavior.
I agree with Matt's overall view here, but man, after listening to Extremely Online Progressives dismiss the ACA as a "center-right Heritage Foundation" plan that didn't do much, I kinda like the vibe shift.
I wonder if naming this legislation as the Inflation Reduction Act is a good choice. There is actually very little if anything in the bill that reduces inflation, especially in the near term. If Democrats trumpet passing this and inflation doesn't actually ease, then I suspect it could backfire.
As to whether that will happen, I've read recently that Americans are underestimating the impact of Russian gas cuts on Europe this winter and how it will effect them. I could see natural gas prices spiking dramatically which would lead to a more general increase in energy costs again.
The CHIPS act is important because it represents Republicans moving away from free market absolutism. The old ethos was if Taiwan wants to support TMSC and that means their chips are cheaper, we should just buy our chips from them. Events of the last few years have revealed the flaws in that approach.
Never thought I’d agree with Bernie Sanders on something but this is corporate welfare. Taxpayers should get equity in the semiconductor manufacturers in exchange for these handouts.
Of course it would be too much to ask that policy makers, instead of throwing money at the problem, address the root causes of America’s lack of competitiveness in manufacturing.
The lack of chip competitiveness is due, in large part, because the government of Taiwan lavishly funded and supported TMSC and we didn’t do the same for our industry.
It's true that Democrats should put most of their emphasis on the least controversial parts of the bill, but it's also true that politicians are shapers of public opinion in addition to followers of it. From what I've heard about the IRA's climate provisions (which is not much of substance, but my energy policy wonk relative assures me that this really is historically important, game-changing climate legislation), the IRA points the way to how Democrats can message on climate: talk in frank, concrete terms about the threat of climate change while also emphasizing how combating climate change can and should be a means of job creation. Maybe emphasize the villainy of oil tycoons in the meantime.
AOC et al. tried to do this with the Green New Deal, but AOC is AOC, so she got tarred for it, and the Green New Deal brand got tarred with her. But the basic substance of the argument is good and appealing, and moderates should run with it.
It's not "job creation" normie voters are concerned about. It's the amount of sacrifice and change to daily life. The Green New Deal requires a lot of sacrifice and change, whereas the IRA requires barely any and actually offers a lot of choices.
The whole rhetorical point of the Green New Deal was that there might be quite a lot of change (as there was with FDR's New Deal) but there wouldn't be much sacrifice.
The fact that you see it as requiring lots of sacrifice and change is a sign that it didn't work.
The thing I hated about the Green New Deal is that despite all the life-changing rhetoric, it was entirely about keeping people in single family homes and buying them electric cars and running railroads to nowhere. It didn’t say anything about promoting the development of dense walkable communities and ending sprawl, which seems to me like the obvious technocratic centrist thing that pragmatically matters.
That's because the Green New Deal isn't really about energy and environmental policy. It is about turning the USA into young leftists' fantasy version of Europe, in which the government massively subsidizes recreation and not working. If all you really know about Europe is from backpacking and staying in hostels, then inter-city trains are very useful to you, and therefore you wonder why can't I take a train from my parents' house in the Atlanta suburbs to New York City? But how often are regular Italians really taking the train from Rome to Milan? I agree that the more important rail needs in the US are urban metro systems, not trans-continental bullet trains.
Long-distance high-speed trains are replacements for short-to-middle distance flights. Not trans-continental flights (because, even if you build a high-speed train from coast to coast, it still takes about 18 hours from LA to NY) but shorter domestic flights: NY-Boston, NY-DC, NY-Cleveland, Chicago-St. Louis, Chicago-Minneapolis, Chicago-Cleveland, Chicago-Detroit.
High-speed rail is better than flying when it's done right, and will pull in customers from flying.
But one of the ways that it's "done right" is that the station (in the middle of the city and at the heart of the entire transport network of the city) is much easier to get to than the airport. And that relies on their already being an urban transport system that makes it easy to get to the station in the city.
This is why NY-DC and NY-Boston are such strong choices for a high-speed rail line: those cities are ones where it is genuinely easy to get to Penn Station or Union Station or South Station from pretty much anywhere in or around the city (even if you usually drive, you can catch a train or a metro that day or use a park-and-ride if you're further out than the public transit).
But there's no point doing that for Atlanta: Hartfield-Jackson Airport is easier to get to than Peachtree Station from almost anywhere in metro Atlanta. If you want a high-speed train from Atlanta to DC, then you need to get MARTA working properly and you need to restore passenger rail service across the metro area ("commuter rail", but running all day - minimum of hourly service 6am to 10pm). Now, the high-speed rail takes longer to build, so you could do both at once, which I think was the plan for some of the more expansive versions of the Green New Deal. But HSR will be a complete white elephant if there isn't a good metro service at at least one end, and preferably both (SF-LA will be fine; there is a good system at the SF end and an adequate one at the LA end, assuming they ever connect to the actual cities, of course).
If you did build it, then rail: the combination of HSR, commuter rail and metros, could replace the "spoke" part of the hub-and-spoke air system, leaving just the major hub airports operating (this is what the European rail system is gradually heading towards doing; Frankfurt and Amsterdam and Paris and London airports will be fine, but Birmingham and Lyon and Turin and Bonn won't).
Anyone that thinks they could get a train from NY to LA is someone that demonstrably doesn't know what they are talking about. 18 hours non-stop if you built a high-speed line in a completely straight line regardless of the terrain. 24 hours for a more realistic journey, and the only people who would take that in preference to a flight are travelling by Amtrak already.
Theoretically, hyperloop could connect the hubs and match flying for speed and exceed it for comfort. But no-one involved in hyperloop is thinking that its real advantage is for 1000km+ journeys, so I think it's a dead end.
Make America Boring Again Joe. That's what we voted for.
I realize that the past is a different country, and there are limits to what we can conclude from an era before polling, etc. — but is there a generally accepted explanation for what happened in 1934?
The 73rd Congress was probably the most radical, productive Congress in US history (possibly exceeded by the 74th). The CCC, the NRA, the TVA, the AAA, the FDIC, are still household names. The amount of legislation was torrential. Exactly what Matt says voters hate.
And Democrats picked up seats in 1934! Sure, the economy was slightly better than it had been two years before (21.7% unemployment, versus 23.6% in 1932) but as you recall, a modestly better economy didn’t help Democrats much in 2010. And however you slice it, the economy in 1934 was *bad*.
Is the answer that the Great Depression was simply off the charts, that it was like The Purge of political science — the laws didn’t apply anymore? Or what?
As several articles have pointed out, the EV tax credits will have limited impact due to Made in America, vehicle price and buyer income restrictions. Probably just as well since there are already long waiting lists to buy an EV.
I suspect some of that messaging is to keep activists like this onboard.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/10/victory-whose-expense-climate-activists-grapple-with-political-compromise/
Sure, the bill is going to dramatically reduce carbon emissions, but it's not going to stick it to fossil fuel companies, prioritize stuff based on the priorities of the social justice movement or completely reorder society and the economy so that it functions more to their liking. And it has provisions for carbon capture and storage, which is cheating even if climate scientists agree it's necessary to minimize warming. What gets me is that these types are very overrepresented on twitter and they seem to have had a very outsized effect on climate policy the past 10 years.
Man...I don't know. This level of emotional micro management seems difficult on an individual level much less on a party wide scale. Overall I am with Yglesias and Shor on most of their messaging advice but I do think they continuously undersestimate human nature. It's hard to get people to simply not care about things they care about (or even to dampen their passion). I am all for pragmatism and incremental progress but Democrats are not Vulcans. They are going to express excitement, regret, sorrow, anger, etc. I would really like to see a post describing how this level of messaging discipline can be achieved with the coalition as it is. How do you convince which "groups" priorities aren't a main priority without losing their support. Politics seems hard and we can't just snap our fingers into a technocracy.
To your point, Mark Kelly’s AZ TV ads mention more permits for oil drilling on public lands
I agree that all this hyping is generally bad, but I can see at least one upside: it'll be basically impossible for left-wing members of congress to vote against it. I don't think that would otherwise be a huge hurdle, but I could imagine at least a couple members saying "No Green New Deal? Then no deal." It's nice to have your ducks in a row.
"The problem is that while paid media is good, ultimately earned media is more important in shaping people’s perceptions."
That feels correct to me, but maybe it's just confirmation bias. Is there any research comparing them?
I laughed out loud at neopastoralist. Thanks for a great word to roast my socialist friends, Matt.
Maybe it's just Democrats scratching the activists' erogenous zones, but I think a big part of the purple language is that legislators want to feel that they're part of great big events and accomplishing great big things. I can't find a link but I recall Bill Clinton expressing a kind of disappointment that he was President in what was basically a time of peace and prosperity and so couldn't accomplish great things (plus screwing up his attempt to accomplish great things).
Pollution is White Supremacy Culture along with capitalism. (So I have been told from local DSA and Bernie types).
This should be the Democratic message obviously.
I logged off Twitter a while ago and have had blissfully few interactions with those people. Or, better yet, when I've encountered them in meat space they've been on better behavior.
I agree with Matt's overall view here, but man, after listening to Extremely Online Progressives dismiss the ACA as a "center-right Heritage Foundation" plan that didn't do much, I kinda like the vibe shift.
I wonder if naming this legislation as the Inflation Reduction Act is a good choice. There is actually very little if anything in the bill that reduces inflation, especially in the near term. If Democrats trumpet passing this and inflation doesn't actually ease, then I suspect it could backfire.
As to whether that will happen, I've read recently that Americans are underestimating the impact of Russian gas cuts on Europe this winter and how it will effect them. I could see natural gas prices spiking dramatically which would lead to a more general increase in energy costs again.
Then it'll be time for some problems at the Freeport LNG terminal ;)
If inflation doesn't ease, the IRA name is among the least of dem's worries anyway.
"It’s a really small-bore gun control bill"
Peak Dad Joke performance right there. :)
The CHIPS act is important because it represents Republicans moving away from free market absolutism. The old ethos was if Taiwan wants to support TMSC and that means their chips are cheaper, we should just buy our chips from them. Events of the last few years have revealed the flaws in that approach.
Never thought I’d agree with Bernie Sanders on something but this is corporate welfare. Taxpayers should get equity in the semiconductor manufacturers in exchange for these handouts.
Of course it would be too much to ask that policy makers, instead of throwing money at the problem, address the root causes of America’s lack of competitiveness in manufacturing.
The lack of chip competitiveness is due, in large part, because the government of Taiwan lavishly funded and supported TMSC and we didn’t do the same for our industry.
And we lavishly fund our military to protect Taiwan (and many of our other economic competitors) from the Bad Guys out there. One of the root causes.
As I recall reading, it was a closed-door national security briefing that got the republicans on board again.
It's true that Democrats should put most of their emphasis on the least controversial parts of the bill, but it's also true that politicians are shapers of public opinion in addition to followers of it. From what I've heard about the IRA's climate provisions (which is not much of substance, but my energy policy wonk relative assures me that this really is historically important, game-changing climate legislation), the IRA points the way to how Democrats can message on climate: talk in frank, concrete terms about the threat of climate change while also emphasizing how combating climate change can and should be a means of job creation. Maybe emphasize the villainy of oil tycoons in the meantime.
AOC et al. tried to do this with the Green New Deal, but AOC is AOC, so she got tarred for it, and the Green New Deal brand got tarred with her. But the basic substance of the argument is good and appealing, and moderates should run with it.
It's not "job creation" normie voters are concerned about. It's the amount of sacrifice and change to daily life. The Green New Deal requires a lot of sacrifice and change, whereas the IRA requires barely any and actually offers a lot of choices.
The whole rhetorical point of the Green New Deal was that there might be quite a lot of change (as there was with FDR's New Deal) but there wouldn't be much sacrifice.
The fact that you see it as requiring lots of sacrifice and change is a sign that it didn't work.
The thing I hated about the Green New Deal is that despite all the life-changing rhetoric, it was entirely about keeping people in single family homes and buying them electric cars and running railroads to nowhere. It didn’t say anything about promoting the development of dense walkable communities and ending sprawl, which seems to me like the obvious technocratic centrist thing that pragmatically matters.
That's because the Green New Deal isn't really about energy and environmental policy. It is about turning the USA into young leftists' fantasy version of Europe, in which the government massively subsidizes recreation and not working. If all you really know about Europe is from backpacking and staying in hostels, then inter-city trains are very useful to you, and therefore you wonder why can't I take a train from my parents' house in the Atlanta suburbs to New York City? But how often are regular Italians really taking the train from Rome to Milan? I agree that the more important rail needs in the US are urban metro systems, not trans-continental bullet trains.
Long-distance high-speed trains are replacements for short-to-middle distance flights. Not trans-continental flights (because, even if you build a high-speed train from coast to coast, it still takes about 18 hours from LA to NY) but shorter domestic flights: NY-Boston, NY-DC, NY-Cleveland, Chicago-St. Louis, Chicago-Minneapolis, Chicago-Cleveland, Chicago-Detroit.
High-speed rail is better than flying when it's done right, and will pull in customers from flying.
But one of the ways that it's "done right" is that the station (in the middle of the city and at the heart of the entire transport network of the city) is much easier to get to than the airport. And that relies on their already being an urban transport system that makes it easy to get to the station in the city.
This is why NY-DC and NY-Boston are such strong choices for a high-speed rail line: those cities are ones where it is genuinely easy to get to Penn Station or Union Station or South Station from pretty much anywhere in or around the city (even if you usually drive, you can catch a train or a metro that day or use a park-and-ride if you're further out than the public transit).
But there's no point doing that for Atlanta: Hartfield-Jackson Airport is easier to get to than Peachtree Station from almost anywhere in metro Atlanta. If you want a high-speed train from Atlanta to DC, then you need to get MARTA working properly and you need to restore passenger rail service across the metro area ("commuter rail", but running all day - minimum of hourly service 6am to 10pm). Now, the high-speed rail takes longer to build, so you could do both at once, which I think was the plan for some of the more expansive versions of the Green New Deal. But HSR will be a complete white elephant if there isn't a good metro service at at least one end, and preferably both (SF-LA will be fine; there is a good system at the SF end and an adequate one at the LA end, assuming they ever connect to the actual cities, of course).
If you did build it, then rail: the combination of HSR, commuter rail and metros, could replace the "spoke" part of the hub-and-spoke air system, leaving just the major hub airports operating (this is what the European rail system is gradually heading towards doing; Frankfurt and Amsterdam and Paris and London airports will be fine, but Birmingham and Lyon and Turin and Bonn won't).
Anyone that thinks they could get a train from NY to LA is someone that demonstrably doesn't know what they are talking about. 18 hours non-stop if you built a high-speed line in a completely straight line regardless of the terrain. 24 hours for a more realistic journey, and the only people who would take that in preference to a flight are travelling by Amtrak already.
Theoretically, hyperloop could connect the hubs and match flying for speed and exceed it for comfort. But no-one involved in hyperloop is thinking that its real advantage is for 1000km+ journeys, so I think it's a dead end.