U.S. Politics, November 2024: GARBAGE DAY!!

So sorry, Alfred.

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I think it's undeniable that the democratic party failed. This is really an argument over whose pre-existing diagnosis was correct.

― Tim F, Thursday, 28 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Not hearing of any consequences for people who ran Harris' campaign, or major figures in the Democratic party.

It was a squeaker because 100 million people didn't vote. Not voting is a meaningful choice, it has consequences.

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 28 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

A lot of people in the UK and US just don't engage at all in the process. In Romania there was only a 50% turnout.

It strikes me as so weird that people don’t vote - I grew up in a first-tier suburb where electoral participation is something like 90 per cent, in a state where 75 per cent participation is a ‘low’ turnout.

Oh I totally get it - I am unlikely to ever vote again myself. There are lots of people where they see nothing changing in any way whatsoever.

So you get politicians and strategists chasing swing voters in marginal regions, with this mass of people just sitting there.

While thats true to a degree, voting was comparatively popular in the US this year, with the second highest percentage turnout of voter age population turnout since 1968. 2020 being the highest voter percentage turnout since 1932

I think voting is probably becoming more popular not less, at the presidential level at least. Local election turnouts tend to be lower I believe, though thats the case in most countries

In the US at least, its something of a different story in parts of Europe. Romania a good example of one where participation is declining not increasing

re: post-mortems, here’s Bernie with a pre-mortem on this election, back in 2003:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGd2o4Uka/

Democrats have lost no time making nice with Trump II: Let's Get Trumpier - Polis and RFK, Khanna and DOGE, Schumer's appellate court deal, all of them giving Rubio a pass, all of the centrists eagerly turning the racism dial. After running a campaign entirely about Trump being a threat to the existence of the United States as we know it, maybe those non-voters were a little right to be cynical about Democrats?

Yep. I get so annoyed with people (including my partner) condescendingly explaining to me "what the democrats should have done", which explanations somehow always seem to magically/coincidentally align with their pre-existing politics

Yes seeing the centrist op eds come pouring in, seemingly totally oblivious to the fact that the campaign that everything they wanted, I did have a moment of thinking "am I like this but with the left?". But when Corbyn lost I didn't go "he should have gone further left to win!", so afaict I'm not there yet.

Abstention has been super high in Portugal as long as I can remember, the idea of getting outraged at ppl not voting is so alien to me. Recently had the lowest rate since 1995 (34%)...which is entirely due to there now being a far right party to vote for.

Also, not voting IS a form of voting, and a structurally important one - we look at turnout for a reason. I think the problem comes with attributing a collective motive to non-voters. But then the same is done with so called moderates or median voters, when moderates are just as disparately wild as non-voters

But this is part of a larger problem in the way things are looked at. If 51% of a group does something its treated as though 100% did

I'm so sorry Alfred. Fuck that asshole driver

Yeah, I don't know what to say beyond I'm so sorry Alfred.

I’m sorry, Alfred.

Thanks, all! If my registered complaint gets this well-reviewed driver removed, well, that's capitalism, buddy.

I celebrated by going to bed at 9 p.m.

hope you slept well, alfred.

all of the centrists eagerly turning the racism dial. After running a campaign entirely about Trump being a threat to the existence of the United States as we know it, maybe those non-voters were a little right to be cynical about Democrats?

calling pelosi it's time to sistah souljah milo

I'm not sure about the role of those ads specifically, but FWIW “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class” polled highest (above inflation or immigration) in this survey among "swing" voters who broke for Trump as their reason for not voting for Harris:

https://blueprint2024.com/polling/why-trump-reasons-11-8/

The above framing is interesting though. It's not the same as "I don't like trans people", it's really more this notion that politicians can care about cultural issues for specific interest groups or they can focus on broad-based economic issues, but they can't do both effectively.

Of course there is the ever-present irony that the party that is really focused on transgender issues is... not the Democrats. But maybe that's the point: that a portion of the electorate are more apt to believe that democrats can be "captured" by special interests and will more readily apply that framework.

This is in the Atlantic, and based on work done by a group called "More in Common" (which appears to mean exactly what you would expect), so take it with however many grains of salt you need, but this piece premised on a large post-election survey suggests the same broad conclusion:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/democrats-defined-progressive-issues/680810/

One way to think about all these issues in a way that squares the circle somewhat is that it's not a choice between "Democrats lost because of trans issues" and "Democrats lost because they didn't run on a Bernie-style economic populist platform" but a more subtle combination of the two: Democrats lost because too many voters concluded that the party was not sufficiently invested in helping them in particular but were captured by the minority special interests (of which trans issues are just one example).

The obvious counter-argument - the Biden administration was the most left-wing economically in living memory - still needs to be addressed.

For my part, I can readily accept a large chunk of Faiz Shakir / Sanders' broad position that to win over the working class you have to campaign on economic populism in a pretty full-throated way, rather than just point to your administration's legislative achievements, while also feel like economic populists' talking points on how they would have persuaded working class swing voters not to worry too much about inflation or immigration can seem a little jejune.

But Shakir might say in response that if we're dealing with voter perceptions then it's all jejune (as the naive faith so many repose in Trump demonstrates) - if you don't get to the point of at least persuading voters that you care about their economic concerns, then whether those concerns are entirely valid and (assuming they are) whether your plan to address them is credible hardly matters.

I'm struggling to articulate this but will give it a go anyway - there's a funny thing I slip into sometimes, a kind of arrogant attempt at divining the Popular Mood after an election - or even before, but especially right after - as if it's somehow divorced from myself, and the way I think about things, like I'm Marco Polo venturing into exotic mindsets, which is ridiculous, because I read a lot and I care about politics but I'm not that different from most people I run into, even my brainwormed father in law. We both think big business and banks have too much power. We both think the government just doesn't deliver for people. We both think elites are full of shit. Flip a coin. I don't mean to imply there aren't specific, historical factors at play, and powerful interests working overtime to shape perceptions in order to further their own agendas and divide us from each other, so that we don't realise our common power.

I guess I'm saying, we understand each other better than we think we do. "Polarization" exists but is also deliberately overstated, like a shadow cast larger onto a wall, for several reasons probably, because competition is largely how we imagine society, but also because it's a useful way to make people feels hopelessly divided. So ironically, the very hopelessness in the system, and the uselessness of what's been on offer nationally, is somethingthat cuts across classes and inherited ideologies. So like uh, we got that goin for us lol

The obvious counter-argument - the Biden administration was the most left-wing economically in living memory - still needs to be addressed.

https://www.crisesnotes.com/one-election-takeaway-voters-hate-temporary-safety-nets/ this is a detailed piece that gets into how and why that was not enough

that's a really interesting piece

Who doesn’t love an elegantly targeted time-limited tax credit

Takeaway from reading a bit of that:

Control the price of bananas, or else..

i liked it, he works very very hard to find and explain how lived realities can overpower restrained benefits.

sexism and racism and greed and pure tribal fantasies do the same it’s weird. also easier.

It’s a good piece too.

https://bsky.app/profile/wutangforchildren.bsky.social/post/3lc3tu7svv22b

lol

Pete Hegseth's mother is no fan of his. I imagine she gave this txt to the NYT?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/hegseth-email-text.html

iirc his mom copied his ex-wife on the email, and it was given to the NYT by a "relative" -- suggesting that the ex probably shared it with other family members. the mom has recanted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/pete-hegseth-mother-email.html

ah I should have looked to see if there was more on the txt. either way, fairly damning, difficult statement to walk back.

That’s probably why Pete’s so frightened of the Enemy Within.

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/sarah-mcbride-wasnt-looking-for-a-fight-on-trans-rights

The obvious counter-argument - the Biden administration was the most left-wing economically in living memory - still needs to be addressed.
https://www.crisesnotes.com/one-election-takeaway-voters-hate-temporary-safety-nets/ this is a detailed piece that gets into how and why that was not enough

― ufo, Thursday, November 28, 2024 9:17 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

this post is misleading and poorly argued imo. the research nathan is citing is about earnings changes and job loss during the pandemic 2020-21, and only uses data going up to 2021. he is trying to use this to argue that the expiry of temporary pandemic programs hurt the democrats in 2024. but democrats did well in 2022, right after most of the programs had just expired. also the most generous programs were the unemployment extensions, which expired earliest:

https://tinypic.host/images/2024/12/01/IMG_0612.jpeg

it remains to be seen how much of an effect expiry of temporary pandemic programs had on the election. an analysis is definitely possible, but nathan is not connecting the dots for the argument he wants to make. to do that he needs data through 2023-24 (when real earnings improved above their pre-pandemic trend for workers in the bottom quartile) linked to voter files. i imagine someone will write that paper sometime in the next year, and then we’ll know a lot more

this is also a silly argument:

Instead, once Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden dropped all mention of safety net programs, and started touting his failure to get Build Back Better passed as a success.

biden renamed build back better the inflation reduction act and passed it in 2022. its true that there weren’t many safety net programs in IRA, due to concessions to manchin, but it did extend the expanded aca subsidies that would’ve expired for three years. and it had the medicare drug negotiation that biden (tried to) talk about incessantly (“we finally beat medicare”), paid for by corporate income tax hikes and taxes on stock buybacks

we get it, you love the Dems and have some money, now will you please stop with the “but actually “ posts that deny the reality of what people feel on the ground? or at least get a job in the DNC because you’d fit right in?

table, come the fuck on. Flopson was a Bernie supporter. You don't have to agree with the presentation of data without -- as usual -- accusing the poster of bad faith or insulting them.

let's forget all our problems by biden pardoning hunter

we get it, you love the Dems and have some money, now will you please stop with the “but actually “ posts that deny the reality of what people feel on the ground? or at least get a job in the DNC because you’d fit right in?

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Sunday, 1 December 2024 7:26 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was responding to the post linked by ufo making a specific argument about whether expiration of pandemic programs was responsible for the dems lost. the title of the blog post was “one election takeaway: voters hate temporary safety nets”. the post wasn’t someone expressing their own experience of what they’re feeling on the ground, it was an analysis by an economics blogger based on some research done by economists working at the IRS. i was making a specific criticism of the argument in that post. trying to be as respectful as possible here, and giving you the benefit of the doubt in assuming your position is not “charts and numbers bad” but you’re not giving me much to work with

also idk where you got the idea i have money from, i’m a postdoc at a university in the midwest and am paid a modest salary

let's forget all our problems by biden pardoning hunter

― z_tbd, Sunday, December 1, 2024 7

Let him appoint five more justices and sentence Trump to death and we're hunky dory.

I think that's an unfair attack.

The article is trying to identify the underlying economic causes of the apparent deterioration in people's sense of their economic well-being in 2022-2023 compared to 2020-2021, premised on statistical data regarding the impacts of various economic levers, of which the expiry temporary safety net programs is just one.

Taking issue with the statistical basis of one aspect of that diagnosis of the underlying causes is not the same thing as to to "deny the reality" of that reported deterioration.

Even that query does not necessarily render this four-point diagnosis incorrect:

1. Income volatility, especially downwards income volatility, greatly increased when the pandemic era programs expired.

2. This was worsened by price increases, especially energy, food and rent increases in 2022 and the rent increases, because of the structure of the rental housing market, continued to impose new economic pain on a growing percentage of renter households even as rents for new tenants stabilized

3. Households treat interest rates as a price, and thus to them price increases were even more dramatic in 2022 than the CPI increases. Additionally, similarly to rent, higher interest rates impose continued economic pain on a growing percentage of households as the interest payments remain high, and grow when borrowers need to refinance or new borrowers enter these markets

4. Households, particularly lower income households, experienced these salient price increases and high prices, the running through of financial assets accumulated in 2020 and 2021 & the loss of the safety net expansions as a worsening economic situation, regardless of what the headline numbers said.

At most, flopson's response queries whether item (1) would have much explanatory power if it didn't get subsumed within (2) and (3).

As the article itself notes immediately afterwards:

Which brings me to the final point of this piece. It is the combination of all these different economic factors which make me very confident in surveys where households report their own economic wellbeing. No, households do not have a very good understanding of aggregate economic indicators, and are wrong to think we are in a recession. On the other hand, as we have seen, the pundits do not have a very good understanding of how aggregate economic indicators relate to individual economic circumstances, so lets call this even. The evidence also seems to suggest that issues like partisanship or media ecosystems mostly impact the perception of what’s happening to others, or in the local or national economy — rather than individuals' perception of their own financial circumstances.

In other words, the "reality" is the individual's experience of hard times. Beyond that, it's a matter of political and economic analysis.

It's tempting to want to find something about the Biden administration that we can point to and say "they were insufficiently left wing", and then say that that was the cause of that deterioration, rather than a preferred right-wing talking point like inflationary policies or at least the failure to control inflation. I'd personally find it comforting. But I'm also keen not to allow my own motivated reasoning (to flip back milo's formulation: the left can never fail, but only be failed) to cause me to abandon (or rather, become indifferent to) analytical rigour. And none of that has much to do with how people feel "on the ground".

xpost that was in response to table

any time the US economy is discussed in a US politics thread it might be worthwhile to preface it with a trigger warning for table. his own personal economic history and present circumstances appear to be traumatic enough that the entire subject is like poking at a never-healing wound.

xp tim: my point is just that nathan is not connecting the dots in his own thesis that expiration of temporary pandemic benefits can explain biden’s election loss. nathan doesn’t give any direct evidence in favor or against that thesis. in the points 1-2-3-4 that you quoted, the pandemic safety net only appears at the end of point 4. putting aside whether or not 1-2-3-4 is a good account of the economy under biden, it’s just not a good argument for his stated claim. i’m not saying that means pandemic safety net expiry *didn’t* matter. just that nathan’s post shouldn’t change your mind one way or the other. i do think it’s an important question, and hope to see a better analysis of it soon. imo a good analysis would be a direct test, looking at vote swing among voters who were most impacted by the pandemic benefit expirations

yeah I agree with that

It's tempting to want to find something about the Biden administration that we can point to and say "they were insufficiently left wing", and then say that that was the cause of that deterioration, rather than a preferred right-wing talking point like inflationary policies or at least the failure to control inflation. I'd personally find it comforting. But I'm also keen not to allow my own motivated reasoning (to flip back milo's formulation: the left can never fail, but only be failed) to cause me to abandon (or rather, become indifferent to) analytical rigour. And none of that has much to do with how people feel "on the ground".

good post. but tbh pandemic program expiry isn’t even really a left vs right wing thing. a temporary program that expires can be more generous than a permanent program for the same total amount of money spent. it’s perfectly consistent for a socialist to prefer more generous payments during a crisis for a shorter period of time than a smaller level of payments stretched out over a longer period of time. socialists want more money spent, but permanent vs temporary is a separate issue. now obviously once the level of spending is set, extending the program does increase the total level of spending. so ex post it becomes left wing to extend. but ex ante, i think dems probably did the right thing when negotiating the CARES act in 2020 to make the benefits more generous and temporary

lol

Don't vote for any Democrat in 2028 who doesn't repudiate the pardon within 48 hours.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 2, 2024

I tend to think of temporary programs as (all else equal) less left wing because it is more difficult for republicans to reverse permanent spending than to let temporary spending expire

Why 48 hours? Make it 90 minutes, like John Badham’s Nick of Time (1995)

I tend to think of temporary programs as (all else equal) less left wing because it is more difficult for republicans to reverse permanent spending than to let temporary spending expire

― Tim F, Sunday, 1 December 2024 9:09 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

other than to get around institutional constraints using tricks like reconciliation, there’s no reason to pass a temporary program during normal times. it’s only really relevant in a crisis. every other country did temporary programs during covid and many expired without fanfare. in canada our big generous temporary universal program ended in september 2020, was replaced by a series of smaller stingier programs, and trudeau won re-election in september 2021 at which point it had been whittled down to barely anything. also CARES act was passed by dem house republican senate under republican president, so permanent was not on the table

What’s the point of being President if you can’t even take care of your crackhead boy?