This cements my belief that the Dems are the only semi-normal party in America. Trump keeps losing elections and the GOP doesn’t care. Biden looks like he’ll lose and he gets punted out. That’s how a normal party is supposed to work.
So, now that Biden is out: is there going to be a refresh of the artwork to replace the aviators with a coconut (or something emblematic of whoever the nominee is - a comb for eating salad, a train set, a private email server, etc.)
I am going to reiterate my critique of Matt Yglesias, whom I adore: he always, always, always overestimates the degree to which voters are aware of public policy. When I ask leftists what Biden has accomplished, they always say, "Nothing." When I ask the politically uninterested -- i.e., swing voters, the least informed voters there are -- they always answer, "Nothing." The only people who are aware of Biden's legislative accomplishments are avid Democrats (and to a much lesser extent, conservatives).
I think (like you here) underestimate the significance of policy because you’re expecting people to *like* policy changes so you’re asking “what has X accomplished” and it turns out they don’t know.
This is totally true. What people are aware of is policy changes they don’t like! I know people who are annoyed by Biden’s crypto regulations, people annoyed by his Waters of the United States rule, etc etc etc — any change you make has some discrete set of stakeholders who get mad about it.
I think you make a fair point. (Also, side note: I'm a huge fan of your work!)
But I just annoyingly try to engage a wide-range of people in these kinds of discussions, and in my experience, it's all vibes, all the time. As a person who is definitely not looped into official policy circles, I haven't interacted with many people who were even aware of policies that they didn't like. (Other than the big stuff, of course, like abortion.)
My read is that people are sincere in their claims that they want big changes, but they don't know enough about public policy to articulate what those changes should look like, and as soon as any debate starts swirling around them that would require that they take a careful look at the issues, most of them simply freeze in place: it is that paralysis that is responsible for status quo bias, not an actual desire to maintain the status quo.
But who knows? Like your third-grade son, my takes are terrible, and you are the professional 😜
Regarding Matt’s enthusiasm about getting buy-in on the Democratic ticket from business people it needs to be asked what kind of business people? Someone in the mold of Mitt Romney (private equity vulture capitalist) or George Romney (who actually made stuff).
I would look for the latter. Someone who understood that rules that constrain the rapacious elements of capitalism are good for society and ultimately good for business.
I think Matt and Brian wildly underrate the negative impact of just crowning Kamala without any sort of democratic process. Being the pro democracy party sans the democracy is just poor strategy.
Keep seeing this meme, which is really bizarre and frankly unserious. Nobody on the planet has ever said that a primary process is essential to democracy. That happens basically nowhere on earth or history besides the last couple decades in the US. It's a laughably stupid thing to say.
A convention is still a Democratic process. It's representative democracy instead of direct democracy, but practically speaking, so are the primaries. It's weird to hold up primaries as a shining example of democracy when functionally the first 2-3 states have all the power to narrow the field and Super Tuesday basically wraps up which of the top 2 is the nominee. Especially in years when basically one person is unopposed.
Personally, I don't actually think Kamala has it in the bag yet. She has to prove before the convention that she's up for the fight. If she had a serious mis-step before the convention, I can imagine a floor nomination of someone like Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro catching steam. I don't think it would be illegitimate if that happens. I also don't think Democrats at large care about having more voice in the nominee as long as the party picks someone who can beat Trump.
Trajectory is...well, it's impossible to know. You are talking about something like political momentum, but in politics momentum can change. It happens ALL THE DAMN TIME.
You can look at past trajectory, but you should be incredibly careful about extrapolating out of sample. But that's what Brian seems to want to do.
In virtually all cases, we want to figure out where things are going, and projection depends on accurate historical and current data (i.e., good snapshots). But projection requires a good model. It does not have to be as detailed and quantified as Nate Silver's models, but you should try to make your unconscious model more explicit—the way that Paul Krugman does his little models and though experiments. (He's actually really good at doing this, without falling into over-confident quantitive models based on insufficient data).
Do you think that the things that might get the Dem ticket up to 43% from 40% are the same things as will get them from 45% to 48%? Would the things that get them from 48% to 49.5% the same? If not, the momentum/simple trajectory projection doesn't actually match your own understanding of how elections work. Rather, it's just pure hopium.
Has Kamala secured the base? How do you think she will perform with men of color? Like Obama? Like Hillary? Like Biden? Are they even part of the base anymore? Can she do better with them than Biden did? Will she do as well with white men as Biden did?
The electorate is not just one undifferentiated mass. Simple trajector/momentum kinda assumes that it is—or that it only differs in one dimension. But it varies is MANY ways, with MANY intersectionalities. You can model a simplified form of electorate to make your own projections, but you shouldn't treat it has unidimensional or undifferentiated.
Matt's reluctance (by which I mean considering non-Kamala tickets) to get on board the Kamala train seems misguided - Matt likes to say it feels good when Dem wins Kansas Governor race, even if you don't know who they are - doesn't it feel good to see Dems consolidate so fast?
I must have missed @matthewyglesias and @brianbeutler saying they were blue-skying Harris' VP pick, because suggesting Mark Cuban would make for her best running mate was wild. While they (and every other pundit) discuss the swing-state Democratic governors as the leading candidates, I think Harris' real best running mate is Marty Walsh. Walsh matches the blue-collar, older White guy demographic that she needs to appeal to in swing states. Yet, he was also the Mayor of Boston, a thriving, future-forward, highly educated city, which may simultaneously appeal to the professional, affluent side of the Democratic base. Walsh, as THE union man, also pairs with Harris' emerging emphasis on protecting the middle class from Trump and his plutocratic agenda. Remember, Walsh left the Biden Admin's US Secretary of Labor job to run the NHL Players Assoc. If you're a campaign looking to win over White working-class men in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, don't you want on the ticket the hockey guy who can rub elbows with these voters? But most importantly, Kamala and Marty reportedly have a very close, trusting relationship (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/11/kamala-harris-marty-walsh/). You can't beat that.
When the Two State Solution Sought is Michigan and Minnesota, and not Israel and Palestine, You Can Expect Another Cackle from Vice President Kamala Harris. https://shorturl.at/JUYXq
This cements my belief that the Dems are the only semi-normal party in America. Trump keeps losing elections and the GOP doesn’t care. Biden looks like he’ll lose and he gets punted out. That’s how a normal party is supposed to work.
The part about Matt's kid was hilarious "That was a terrible take, this is why I'm a professional and he's in third grade"
Honestly he was just being plain ignorant
I heard the same take multiple times today, and from people much older than him.
I'm glad we are finally having a discussion about Brian's pronunciation of Kamala's name! (Sorry, Brian!)
I'd like to thank the liberal elites for calling on Biden to drop out while praising his excellent presidency.
Josh Shapiro is 6 feet tall. Why are we calling him a "short king"?
So, now that Biden is out: is there going to be a refresh of the artwork to replace the aviators with a coconut (or something emblematic of whoever the nominee is - a comb for eating salad, a train set, a private email server, etc.)
It’s time for Brian to start pronouncing Kamala’s name right!
I am going to reiterate my critique of Matt Yglesias, whom I adore: he always, always, always overestimates the degree to which voters are aware of public policy. When I ask leftists what Biden has accomplished, they always say, "Nothing." When I ask the politically uninterested -- i.e., swing voters, the least informed voters there are -- they always answer, "Nothing." The only people who are aware of Biden's legislative accomplishments are avid Democrats (and to a much lesser extent, conservatives).
I think (like you here) underestimate the significance of policy because you’re expecting people to *like* policy changes so you’re asking “what has X accomplished” and it turns out they don’t know.
This is totally true. What people are aware of is policy changes they don’t like! I know people who are annoyed by Biden’s crypto regulations, people annoyed by his Waters of the United States rule, etc etc etc — any change you make has some discrete set of stakeholders who get mad about it.
I think you make a fair point. (Also, side note: I'm a huge fan of your work!)
But I just annoyingly try to engage a wide-range of people in these kinds of discussions, and in my experience, it's all vibes, all the time. As a person who is definitely not looped into official policy circles, I haven't interacted with many people who were even aware of policies that they didn't like. (Other than the big stuff, of course, like abortion.)
My read is that people are sincere in their claims that they want big changes, but they don't know enough about public policy to articulate what those changes should look like, and as soon as any debate starts swirling around them that would require that they take a careful look at the issues, most of them simply freeze in place: it is that paralysis that is responsible for status quo bias, not an actual desire to maintain the status quo.
But who knows? Like your third-grade son, my takes are terrible, and you are the professional 😜
Thanks for doing the emergency pod. Worth the subscription just for this
Regarding Matt’s enthusiasm about getting buy-in on the Democratic ticket from business people it needs to be asked what kind of business people? Someone in the mold of Mitt Romney (private equity vulture capitalist) or George Romney (who actually made stuff).
I would look for the latter. Someone who understood that rules that constrain the rapacious elements of capitalism are good for society and ultimately good for business.
I think Matt and Brian wildly underrate the negative impact of just crowning Kamala without any sort of democratic process. Being the pro democracy party sans the democracy is just poor strategy.
Keep seeing this meme, which is really bizarre and frankly unserious. Nobody on the planet has ever said that a primary process is essential to democracy. That happens basically nowhere on earth or history besides the last couple decades in the US. It's a laughably stupid thing to say.
Did King George send you from the 1700s?
A convention is still a Democratic process. It's representative democracy instead of direct democracy, but practically speaking, so are the primaries. It's weird to hold up primaries as a shining example of democracy when functionally the first 2-3 states have all the power to narrow the field and Super Tuesday basically wraps up which of the top 2 is the nominee. Especially in years when basically one person is unopposed.
Personally, I don't actually think Kamala has it in the bag yet. She has to prove before the convention that she's up for the fight. If she had a serious mis-step before the convention, I can imagine a floor nomination of someone like Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro catching steam. I don't think it would be illegitimate if that happens. I also don't think Democrats at large care about having more voice in the nominee as long as the party picks someone who can beat Trump.
This was a distressful roller coaster but I'm glad it worked out 🥲
Snapshot vs. trajectory: Be very careful here.
Trajectory is...well, it's impossible to know. You are talking about something like political momentum, but in politics momentum can change. It happens ALL THE DAMN TIME.
You can look at past trajectory, but you should be incredibly careful about extrapolating out of sample. But that's what Brian seems to want to do.
In virtually all cases, we want to figure out where things are going, and projection depends on accurate historical and current data (i.e., good snapshots). But projection requires a good model. It does not have to be as detailed and quantified as Nate Silver's models, but you should try to make your unconscious model more explicit—the way that Paul Krugman does his little models and though experiments. (He's actually really good at doing this, without falling into over-confident quantitive models based on insufficient data).
Do you think that the things that might get the Dem ticket up to 43% from 40% are the same things as will get them from 45% to 48%? Would the things that get them from 48% to 49.5% the same? If not, the momentum/simple trajectory projection doesn't actually match your own understanding of how elections work. Rather, it's just pure hopium.
Has Kamala secured the base? How do you think she will perform with men of color? Like Obama? Like Hillary? Like Biden? Are they even part of the base anymore? Can she do better with them than Biden did? Will she do as well with white men as Biden did?
The electorate is not just one undifferentiated mass. Simple trajector/momentum kinda assumes that it is—or that it only differs in one dimension. But it varies is MANY ways, with MANY intersectionalities. You can model a simplified form of electorate to make your own projections, but you shouldn't treat it has unidimensional or undifferentiated.
Matt's reluctance (by which I mean considering non-Kamala tickets) to get on board the Kamala train seems misguided - Matt likes to say it feels good when Dem wins Kansas Governor race, even if you don't know who they are - doesn't it feel good to see Dems consolidate so fast?
I must have missed @matthewyglesias and @brianbeutler saying they were blue-skying Harris' VP pick, because suggesting Mark Cuban would make for her best running mate was wild. While they (and every other pundit) discuss the swing-state Democratic governors as the leading candidates, I think Harris' real best running mate is Marty Walsh. Walsh matches the blue-collar, older White guy demographic that she needs to appeal to in swing states. Yet, he was also the Mayor of Boston, a thriving, future-forward, highly educated city, which may simultaneously appeal to the professional, affluent side of the Democratic base. Walsh, as THE union man, also pairs with Harris' emerging emphasis on protecting the middle class from Trump and his plutocratic agenda. Remember, Walsh left the Biden Admin's US Secretary of Labor job to run the NHL Players Assoc. If you're a campaign looking to win over White working-class men in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, don't you want on the ticket the hockey guy who can rub elbows with these voters? But most importantly, Kamala and Marty reportedly have a very close, trusting relationship (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/11/kamala-harris-marty-walsh/). You can't beat that.
When North Korea Comes to America, Can You Say Coup? https://shorturl.at/VlVDL
And a flashback:
When the Two State Solution Sought is Michigan and Minnesota, and not Israel and Palestine, You Can Expect Another Cackle from Vice President Kamala Harris. https://shorturl.at/JUYXq