Now I'm actually reading the links, which are good! Ok:
Bob Kuttner has, I think, the same problem responding to Gary that I had in writing Slouching: that he cannot really believe in his heart that social democracy failed its sustainability test in the late-1970s, wants to go through the motions again in the hope that, this time, the trick will work, and cannot acknowledge the world we have lived in since the 1980s--the world of the stubborn persistence of neoliberalism, one in which "Big Government" is no longer a trusted institution, and one in which we are fighting desperately to try to keep the era of every man for himself from becoming further entrenched.
I understand.
I share the feeling.
But that does not lead to a clear-sighted view of the political-economy roads forward in the 1990s, the 2000s, the 2010s, or today.
What? We can't just double-down on social democracy? But that's what I actually think is best!
And also:
Thus in Robert Kuttner's telling (not in Gary Gerstle's!) it is Ralph Nader's embrace of deregulation, Bill Clinton's opportunism, and Barack Obama's inexperience and caution that are to blame. While I agree that Ralph Nader's influence on the American left and on America has been hugely disastrous in so many ways...
What do we blame Ralph Nader for again?
Like, are we mad at 70s era Ralph Nader, or later-era less influential but nuttier Nader?
(I guess he influenced the 2000 election, but that can't possibly be what this means in context.)
I have a fair amount of sympathy for the dilemma in 1, of wishing to double-down on my preferred policy recommendations. I'm the first recipient of my group's public comments and 'this leads to my preferred policy recommendations' is all anyone ever says. Just like whatever it was that we got public comment for last time. One of the reasons I blog less now is that I am trying not to do the same thing.
That said, I may have actually changed some of my positions (away from frugality, away from process) in the last couple of years and think I have evolved into an Abundance Progressive (which I hope is a thing and gets popular).
https://modernpower.substack.com/p/movement-vs-abundance-progressives
6: I think I'm an abundance progressive too. Like stop telling people not to go to the doctor - just have way more primary care doctors.
I am also a big believer in the need to reduce the time tax.
The Delong newsletter is really great.
We've become a society, in the words of some smart person on the internet, that would gladly pay twice as much as anyone else in the western world for health care, so long as we can make sure we don't give anyone (especially anyone of color) free health care. Were we always that? I'm afraid that the answer to that might be yes, because of the racism absolutely inherent in our creation: both with respect to dispossession/genocide of Indigenous people and slavery.
6/7 I've also been convinced by many of the arguments for "abundance " but, given the Brad DeLong link in the OP, isn't it an attempt at an improved Neoliberalism -- a new version of, "use the power of the market to produce abundance and the power of Democracy to make sure it is widely shared "?
10=social democracy. Neoliberalism relies on market exchanges for redistribution.
A utopia for Covid and related jokes.
9: because the chronology is wrong if you're saying "Nader, Clinton, Obama", and because singling out Nader's 2000 bid and calling it "influence on the American left" seems like a mismatch of words.
10=social democracy. Neoliberalism relies on market exchanges for redistribution.
You could summarize it differently, but I think "abudance progressivism" shares a family relationship with neoliberalism. From Megan's link:
Abundance Progressives are laser-focused on policy outcomes. What policies will result in median home prices being no more than 3x median household income? What policies will drop the cost of clean energy to
While these outcome goals are likely shared by MPs, MPs seem to care in equal measure about how you get to those outcomes, to a degree that the How (process/symbols) often trumps the What (outcomes).
We imagine the basis of this difference in emphasis comes from historical experience -- as discussed below, the MP worldview is grounded in real historical harms by government institutions against marginalized groups (e.g. federally subsidized homeownership, interstate highway system, great society public housing). This leads to an insistence that these marginalized groups have a seat at the table / power in the process as a necessary precondition for change.
To be clear, it's hard to argue against this. But setting the appropriate and just table gets lots of energy, and if inaction is the result, that's ok? To build an egalitarian society, we actually need lots of new action!
While Abundance Progressives value working for "justice at the table," we ultimately think outcomes matter most. And per the recent Ryan Grim article, an overly narrow focus on how you do things can hobble organization and movement effectiveness.
That seems really close to what Brad DeLong, for example, hoped to accomplish.
6 I enjoyed reading the link. What I'm not clear about wrt CEPA is whether the problem really is the statute, or is the problem, like nearly everything else in California, a consequence of decades of post-Prop 13 underfunding the public sector. If agencies were staffed to do the work required to meet the study needs of society, and the judiciary were staffed to meet the adjudicative needs, would it really be that CEPA led to vetocracy? Or would it be what was intended, a hard look to make sure that externalized negative impacts don't overwhelm the benefits?
I used to think that if the US just made some policy changes to be more like other countries then everything would be great, but I'm increasingly skeptical. With maybe the partial exception of Massachusetts, even liberal states in the US basically suck at everything, and every time you fix one thing all the other broken parts of the system just make it all broken again. Certainly having an unworkable constitution is a big part of it, but deep down I'm just slowly being convinced that the problem is Americans. Deep down our culture is just too scammy, too selfish, too adversarial, and too cynical.
6 is interesting and I feel like I need to read it more than once. Also "vetocracy" amused me.
There's no alternative to Neoliberalism as described in 10. While some large efforts with clear goals can be undertaken by governments without considering market outcomes (space telescopes, fusion research), these basically require clear goals that don't change too much as underlying technology improves. Something like AWS or the incremental mountain of technology required to design and make microprocessors, I can't imagine and don't know about non-market equivalents that could produce those. Closest to success (in the sense of a reasonably prolific source of life-changing technological throughput) might be production of biomedical knowledge, but holding that up as a best case, yikes, especially in the US.
Our tepid antimonopoly regulations also our eventual distribution of technology outside the US, Europe, and Japan are also uses of the power of democracy to share-- not that widely and not that quickly, but the knowledge is not literally sealed off in vaults. Korea, Taiwan and Turkey have all benefitted considerably from shared technology. Things would be much much better from this perspective with even a little bit more political sanity, but accurately describing and understanding status quo is a prerequisite to meaningful improvement. Written from a completely peripheral perspective, can't change much from where I sit.
Deep down our culture is just too scammy, too selfish, too adversarial, and too cynical.
Oh man, I hate to say it, but I've been circling around "our culture is the problem" ideas recently. It's really anathemic to problem-solving and sounds SO conservative. But I think about how it is actually true that greed was glamorized in the 80s in a way that was distinct from other post-WWII decades, and how destructive that value is, and skepticism of education and science, and our passion for quick-fixes and how we think quick-learning is a substitute for slower evaluation of content, etc etc etc. But surely rhese are human nature and not American? But it seems so American? This is why I haven't quite accepted a poisoned-culture explanation yet.
There's no alternative to Neoliberalism as described in 10.
I think that's true. Also, part of the point of the OP was that we would hope that a political coalition built around Social Democratic goals would be durable and self-sustaining through changes in the political economy, but I don't think we've figured out how to do that.
The simplest version of how the New Deal transformed into neoliberalism was that you had a three-decade period in which the labor movement was really strong and as it declined (everywhere, not only in the US), white working class voters didn't remain Social Democrats -- because they were part of a coalition, not part of an ideological movement.
As someone who works in the area, the NYS version of environmental review, SEQRA, seems to me to have equally bad results, as does the federal environmental review law that's blocking congestion pricing in NY right now. It's not so much the agency time and effort to do the review as it is the delay and randomness introduced by the inevitable litigation over whether the review was done properly.
I assume this is not a typo since 2010 is repeated three times, but 1870 to 2010 is not 150 years.
Depends on how much time DeLong has spent traveling at a velocity approaching the speed of light relative to Earth.
deep down I'm just slowly being convinced that the problem is Americans
I've been saying this for a while, and it's interesting to see more people coming around to it. I don't think it's an insuperable problem; America has done a lot of great stuff in the past and has the potential to do so in the future. But getting to that point requires grappling with the real problem, and it's a big one.
The underlying cultural attitudes are not uniquely American, but there are some structural features of American society (not just government) that channel and entrench them in ways that make solidarity and egalitarian politics exceptionally difficult here. Like Charley said, a lot of this goes back historically to the legacy of slavery and Native dispossession.
Just to take one example, unions are obviously a good and very important thing, but unions in the US seem to so often be focused on scammy stuff like keeping weird overtime schemes to game pensions, or on protecting clear misbehavior, in a way that just doesn't seem like it's nearly as much of a focus elsewhere.
Personally, I'm starting to think a couple centuries of running a county with slavery doesn't make the population more full of assholes than would be the case otherwise.
2, 9: I think Delong's reference to "Ralph Nader's embrace of deregulation" must be specifically about his embrace of economic deregulation in transportation. Nader was big (and apparently influential) on abolishing the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was a pretty significant episode in the story of neoliberalism.
(or I guess it's Kuttner's reference via Delong?)
I think the answer to this question is that above a relatively low threshold, the relationship between absolute (not relative!) material abundance and quality of life is pretty weak. So perhaps we have 8.8 times the stuff, but that translates to less than two times the utility. And the alienation inherent in our means of production -- the means necessary to produce that 8.8 times as much stuff -- create all sorts of new and interesting sources of unhappiness.
Yes that's why Nader is on the 3 name list, but his impact on the Left is way bigger than that. Because of the strange nature of our presidential elections -- winner take all, but by states -- a small Left faction has the power to block a Democratic presidential candidate from election, but does not have the power, and cannot by that means gain the power, to enact any national legislation.
Part of this latter is because power is diffuse: there's no deal Al Gore could have made, and been sure he could deliver on. As we see, no promise by Joe Biden to enact particular provisions can be relied upon. Not because he's a liar, but because he doesn't have the ability to bring Sen Manchin around. Manchin is doing a lot of good being the 50th vote on judges and other appointments -- and on voting for Schumer rather than McConnell as majority leader -- but there's just no way to get him to defy what he understands are the preferences of his constituents wrt climate/energy issues.
More thoughts on the connection between Abundance Progressives and neoliberals (and, I say again, I agree with a lot of what the Abundance Progressives are saying).
In both cases you have people looking at the existing Democratic party of the time and thinking, "I agree with the goals that you are working towards, and that some element of social democratic redistribution is necessary but . . . " followed by some combination of (1) you have made yourselves unpopular and (2) a combination of ideology and political coalitions have caused you to take positions that are inefficient or actively counter-productive. This is, precisely, that Matt Yglesias position. We need a results-focused, technocratic leadership that downplays ideology and emphasizes economic growth and practical problem solving.
So, why do we see that argument being made at the same time that people are writing obituaries for neoliberalism? In part, it's just a very appealing message*, but in part they are both responding to a very real problem.
My theory in the OP is that a dynamic, fast-growing economy is going to frequently pressure and transform the existing political coalitions. What should you do if you want to build a durable political victory. One way is, like the New Deal, to be so popular that you win huge majorities and have a lot of room for error in implementing an agenda. But, what happens when that coalition starts to falter . . . Neither neoliberalism or Abundance Progressives, see any short- or medium-term chance of a similar popular wave, so they both try to re-cast the politics in a way that is flexible in terms of coalition building -- that is designed to support the process of, "if we lose votes from one place we can pivot to pick up votes somewhere else."
* If one wanted to be unkind, it offers the appeal of, "go ahead, punch those hippies. You're actually helping the left by doing so." On the other hand, if they're correct about their policy advice that's incredibly valuable. For example, I'm skeptical of the pro-nuclear arguments, but if they turn out to be correct that changes in the regulatory environment could enable large amounts of inexpensive nuclear power then they are doing an incredible service by making that argument.
We need a results-focused, technocratic leadership that downplays ideology and emphasizes economic growth and practical problem solving.
President Dukakis thanks you for your support.
Yes, I thought of this Doonesbury cartoon: https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1988/09/22
34: I agree with the results part, but I also agree that technocrats like that aren't the way to go. I'm not even sure how appealing Dukakis would be in MA now.
16: My understanding is that when CEQA was passed, It was understood to apply to bridges, power plants, government projects generally. Several years later, a judge ruled that it was written so broadly it also applied to government approvals of private housing, which no one anticipated.
However, even as a framework for public projects, CEQA was arguably a deeply flawed tool because it applied almost entirely to new activities, while leaving the existing built environment of 1973 unthreatened. (Plus the power of Caltrans made it not an actual hindrance to new highways.) So it hinders wind farms as much as coal plants, and it's only been other policies that have boosted the former. And greenspace in the outer suburbs doesn't have people who use CEQA to go to bat to prevent it from being built over, whereas existing areas that are prime for transit infill normally do.
I get why it made sense at the time, and may have helped in many respects, given the technocrats of the day were in love with megaprojects and might have filled in half the Bay had they not been checked. But it has never been a goad to positive action fwict.
32: I don't think Bernie is wrong to think they might like a dental and hearing benefit in Medicare, but amanchin disagrees with that.
We just need to win some seats and not lose the House for things to be a bit better.
Echo 22 that the administrative burden of infinite nitpicking seems to be the point in CEQA as currently practiced. We just had the city approve a well-wished-for new housing development with ground floor grocery store in a vacated building downtown, near a lot of transit. They were then sued for a range of specious CEQA violations by two different labor astroturf groups, who were quite clear that they would drop them if they got favorable labor agreements. The environmental claims wouldn't have held up under full judicial examination, but they would have delayed the project for years and possibly killed it. A settlement was made first with one of the groups, then with the other, and if either of those settlements included any form of environmental remediation I'll eat my hat.
Kuttner is mad at all of (a) 1970s-era Ralph Nader who pushed deregulation to sock it to (among others) the Teamsters and other powerful unions, (b) the 2000-era Nader who thought it would be more fun to organize against Bush rather than have to lobby Gore, as well as (c) today's Nader, who may well have turned batty in different ways...
As I am saying these days, people back in the Old Days thought that baking a big-enough pie was a much harder problem than slicing a big-enough pie would be, or than tasting--using it to make our lives ones of health, security, safety, and happiness--would be. They were wrong.
They were wrong.
That was my conclusion as well, and I wasn't saying that you endorsed the idea
I just think that part of the drama of the economic history of the 20th Century (and part of what informs us looking at the mountain ahead) is considering the reasons why that belief was false.
I still think of Nader as a blatant fraud for his signature gathering to get on the ballot in Pennsylvania.
I finally read the link in 6. It's quite good.
If you don't need to show likelihood of success to get an injunction in a CEPA case, then maybe an amendment is called for. If you can show likelihood of success, and have that hold up on expedited appeal, well, maybe your objections aren't bullshit after all.
The problem with getting rid of regulation is that if there's not potential for judicial intervention, you get developers making corrupt deals with county officials, and filling in the bay. The principle of restraining capitalism is imo good, it just has to be staffed well enough to be rational, and work quickly enough that it's not effective as weaponization.
Our local Forest Service region keeps losing NEPA cases. They think the judges are insatiable zealots, but the truth is that the judges are sticklers, and want the government to do its fucking job. They just lost a case on the national trail I'm involved with. By statute the FS was supposed to produce a management plan for the trail in 2011. They kind of started in 2015, and then kind of stopped working on it for a while. They got sued, finally, in 2020, and ended up getting ordered to get it done by 2023. They didn't have any excuses and hadn't ever tried to get an extension. All they had was an argument over standing. The judge read them the riot act, as you'd expect.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that the California and New York entities charged with reviewing projects are understaffed and underfunded. And judged are over taxed. But even if you like *this* result of unrestrained capitalism, I can promise you that they'll come up with one you don't like . . .
With stuff like NEPA and CEQA, I think the key point is that vetocracy is what people want, and they'll use any available procedural tool to get as close to it as they can. Some people on some topics are content just to be heard, but on big important things that have significant impacts to their lives most people want actual power to say yes or no. If the system doesn't give them that formal power (sometimes it does!), they'll use whatever procedural tools are available to draw out the process in the hopes that that gives them an effective veto.
I don't know much about CEQA, but NEPA was deliberately designed to not give anyone veto power over any project. It's entirely a set of procedural requirements to ensure that potential environmental impacts are understood and the public is informed. The proposing agency is always able to move forward with a project even if an Environmental Impact Statement shows that it will have significant impacts. So the way project opponents typically react is to sue claiming the agency hasn't properly followed NEPA procedures, which sends the whole thing into the court system probably for years, and can easily derail the project entirely.
For example, I just got a good decision in a completely frivolous SEQRA case -- frivolous enough that the judge is going to issue sanctions, which doesn't happen much. But the project was still delayed by a full year.
LB, did the judge get it wrong at the pi stage, or do you have an automatic stay?
Got it wrong at the TRO stage, and then sat on the PI until he decided the merits of the case. So yes, the judge could have handled it better, but he really did need to decide the merits to determine whether preliminary relief was justified, and he preserved the status quo until he had time and attention to work through the merits.
If litigation could consistently give final determinations in weeks rather than months or years, SEQRA wouldn't be a disaster. But that's not the court system we have, and I don't think it's just a matter of improving funding to get that kind of speed out of it.
This was, to be clear, a small stupid residential project -- my agency was is the case as having granted a permit for the project that petitioner was trying to block. So no great social harm from the delay on this project specifically. But that is how the timing very often works.
45: My reaction to this is that you've got two categories of government employees -- agency bureaucrats and judges. Agency bureaucrats may be captured, sure. Judges, on the other hand, are often pig-ignorant about the practical and technical issues before them. I see no reason to think that judges are going to make systematically better decisions about whether a project should go forward than agency bureaucrats. One thing I am sure of, though, is that giving every rando who wants to block government action standing to bring it before a judge is going to systematically make all agency actions wildly more expensive and slower, and that is not a good thing.
What if we just assumed real estate developers were wise, kind, and completely trustworthy.
Well, we've got bureaucrats, supervised by democratically elected officials, riding herd on them. That is very far from being a perfect system, but I think it's better than dropping everything in the lap of some dude in a polyester robe who went to law school and then built up enough political connections to get elected in an essentially uncontested election.
It was really hard to find something in a natural fabric back when my dad was buying them. That was before the internet, so it was all catalog.
Having one handtailored from the plumage of ravens you've slain on your quest to be granted judicial temperament by Wotan himself is time consuming, but it's the only way to look really sharp on the bench.
You can make you gavel look like Mjölnir too.
"sue claiming the agency hasn't properly followed NEPA procedures"
Is this a thing in other countries? My impression is that generally in other countries agencies follow their rules and don't get sued, but maybe I'm wrong. Is this because we don't have an apolitical bureaucracy? What's going on?
Professor Delong describes his interlocutor's view thusly:
My problem, he said, was that I really could not believe that it had happened, and hence no real policy to propose other than to once again double-down on social democracy.
Well yeah. Why not? Neoliberalism failed in that it didn't provide the benefits its proponents hoped for. (As Gnoled tidily sums up in 41.) At the heart of neoliberalism was an effort to coopt wealth for useful social purposes. The capital, markets and individuals empowered by neoliberalism had other ideas.
Social democracy, on the other hand, failed in the sense that it was defeated. Professor Delong might accurately characterize my argument as being of the same type that he derides here:
Advocates of neoliberalism are reduced to claiming that it has not failed, but rather that it was failed by unworthy standard-bearers. That trick never works.
I will nonetheless attempt a similar trick: Social democracy, to the extent that it was attempted, succeeded. It did not fail; it was failed.
This happened in large measure because democracy failed. But it's not an irretrievable defeat. Democracy doesn't have to lose. Create an equitable political system and you'll go a long way toward figuring out an equitable economic system.
I have no idea why whatever it is lost. The last fifteen years make zero sense to me except as old white people telling everyone else to go fuck themselves. But they clearly wanted to do that very badly and were willing to pay for it.
Standing athwart history shouting nonsense about millennials as if millennials were still kids instead of raising kids.
Old white people may not be the real patriots after all.
57: I think the difference is less that agencies overseas don't fuck up but that randos don't have the right to haul them into court by claiming they fucked up (my knowledge of comparative admin law is very limited. This is an atmospheric belief and I would believe I was wrong if someone with knowledge told me so). My agency didn't do a thing wrong in the case I was talking about, but it still took most of a year for a court to say so.
Obviously, agencies will fuck up here and overseas. Here, everything goes through litigation. There, you trust elected officials to constrain them to generally follow the law.
I will note that I am not saying that judges are systematically against the state -- they're probably more often biased for us than against us. But they're slow and random, and slow is what's the killer.
"There, you trust elected officials to constrain them to generally follow the law."
My guess, and again I don't know, is that instead there's not really elected officials involved because agencies are apolitical below the cabinet level, and instead people generally follow the law because in a lot of countries people just generally follow the law for the hell of it.
If anything elected politicians are the least likely people to follow the law.
65: I bet people could suck like 10% less and be 75% faster.
...and incentivize the non-rich to work harder to avoid penury and buckle down to live more moral lives.
This is the part I would have never expected to work. Everyone hates that.
Our agencies are also apolitical below the top maybe 2 or 3 levels. To the extent there's a difference with other countries it probably has more to do with how the legal system is set up and how the judiciary relates to other parts of the government. The extent of public opposition to government action is surely a factor too.
What's important to keep in mind, though, is that the people suing because "the agency isn't following the law" aren't always wrong but are often operating in bad faith because they disagree with a policy decision but don't have the legal authority to stop it. Sometimes the agencies are also operating in bad faith and going through the motions of the legal requirements to support a predetermined result, but that isn't necessarily illegal. And of course this is all complicated by the way the judiciary itself is increasingly becoming politicized, so the judges too may be operating in bad faith.
Yes. The bad faith aspect of it is central -- that environmental review laws are a way to launder policy disagreements into litigation. The people bringing the litigation might be right or wrong over the fundamental merits of the policy, but they are very rarely primarily concerned with the alleged (and sometimes real) procedural errors that give rise to their right to sue.
64: and then there are legal things which kind of suck. Like the fact that the State Department of Transportation dumped a bunch of abestos (on its own land but near people) in Chelsea which is a poor LatinX community. Legal, but wrong.
It did not fail; it was failed.
No, you had the verb right the first time. It was defeated by elements who thought they would profit by diverting the wealth of society into their own pockets. Abetted by people who weren't going to be better off, but went along for the ride.
74: Yeah. I was trying a little too hard to acknowledge that my defense of democratic socialism looked a lot like excuse-making.
I think of Matty Yglesias as another name associated with Abundance Progressivism (and I think his critiques are often smart), and I find it hilarious that he tried to come up with a list of, "10 ideas Democrats should run on in the mid-terms" and (a) none of them amount to much of an abundance agenda* and (b) the item on the list that everyone is arguing about is porn: https://www.slowboring.com/p/my-top-10-issues-to-run-on-and-why
* because an abundance agenda isn't achievable in congress right now,
We could have an abundance of burning coal any time we wanted it.
I am unimpressed with the Abundance agenda. One obvious issue is its boneheaded antipathy toward public employee unions, or unions that otherwise depend on government work:
For example, union members with the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) are employed by capitalists who own grocery stores, whereas union members with the Building Trades do almost all their work on public sector projects.
This leads to a very different power equation. UFCW members are bargaining against management which represent shareholders. Management and shareholders have aligned interests, which make them the more powerful player in the negotiation. Anything that boosts worker power in this equation leads to a more balanced outcome.
The Building Trades, on the other hand, are negotiating against elected officials who represent citizens. But in practice elected officials are more responsive to narrow interests like the Building Trades than they are to citizens, because the Building Trades pay attention to and participate in day-to-day politics, and citizens don't.
I'm sorry, but once you've already seen neoliberalism fail, there's no excuse for being this stupid. The Abundance folks want to cut a deal: You let us have private-company unions, and we'll help you hobble public employee unions. You let us limit the influence of Lockheed-Martin on government,* and we'll let you reduce workers' influence.
I don't want to be abusive here, but this is just dumb as shit. We have seen this movie and we know how it ends: Corporate power remains intact, and workers get crushed. And the Abundance Neoliberals call it a win, because at least we have solved the problem of excessive worker power. Fuck that.
*One dead giveaway here is that the author isn't even asking for that part of the bargain. It's union influence, and not corporate influence, that represents the problem.
Yeah, that bit about public sector unions is dumb. For one thing, building trades unions aren't really "public sector" unions. That piece says they mostly work on publicly funded projects, which I'm sure is true some places, but at least up here they work on all kinds of projects. Alaska has unusually high union density for complicated reasons, though, so maybe we're just an outlier.
I belong to an actual public sector union, of course, so I'm hardly unbiased here. But the characterization in that piece seems totally wrong.
I'm a former AFSMCE, assuming I remember the acronym correctly.
I am unimpressed with the Abundance agenda.
I've been teasing it in this thread, but the best argument in favor of the Abundance agenda would be that it has many of the same virtues as neoliberalism, but is much less attentive to financial markets and industries and more attentive to the production of things used and consumed by the broad public.
I'm not sure yet if that will work in practice to create new policy wins, but the YIMBY argument for housing, specifically, is really strong.
@76
That is because Matt Yglesias believes that getting power and exercising power are two seperate things. He is also cynical, optimizes over a short time-horizon, and clearly imagines himself to be a Public-Intellectual-Who-Shapes-The-Discourse.
Charitably, he proposes that you get power by promising to deliver on a small set of maximally popular items. These items are not selected because they matter, or because they represent some consistent intellectual framework. They are selected solely because they are popular.
Once in power, you enact your broader agenda directly through executive action, legislation, and judges; and indirectly by ensuring that people who share your ideology are placed in all the decision points of government (b/c people are policy). Ideally, you also deliver on your small-bore promises.
This strategy is also known as (Bill) Clintonism. And it does not have a great track record.
@76
That is because Matt Yglesias believes that getting power and exercising power are two seperate things. He is also cynical, optimizes over a short time-horizon, and clearly imagines himself to be a Public-Intellectual-Who-Shapes-The-Discourse.
Charitably, he proposes that you get power by promising to deliver on a small set of maximally popular items. These items are not selected because they matter, or because they represent some consistent intellectual framework. They are selected solely because they are popular.
Once in power, you enact your broader agenda directly through executive action, legislation, and judges; and indirectly by ensuring that people who share your ideology are placed in all the decision points of government (b/c people are policy). Ideally, you also deliver on your small-bore promises.
This strategy is also known as (Bill) Clintonism. And it does not have a great track record.
82: Right. By order of position in the government onion. Thanks.
@76
Remember the V-chip! I wonder if Yiggs was thinking of that when he proposed his porn ban.
I am skeptical of abundance progressivism. The problem is that we can't get anything like single payer or the green new deal, but that isn't a failure of movement progressivism. We can't get any of the good parts of the abundance agenda either.
83: "NIMBY" is a term of derision, and the use of that term implies a pro-YIMBY stance. I wonder if the YIMBY folks have addressed the obvious downside of having localities empower developers. This again strikes me as being naive in the way that the neoliberals are naive. (But I'll be less derisive here because NIMBY identifies a real problem.)
84-1,2,3: That description seems so scrupulously fair that I wonder if Yglesias would dispute it.
Building more housing would be great, seems reasonably popular with people who aren't actually nimbys.
More buses and trains would also be great, but a mile of subway or a train car built under buy American regulations is much much more expensive than elsewhere in the world-- I think we've talked about this before here, some rough consensus around the local gov't people in the US having much less power to set terms and monitor performance than elsewhere?
Both of these are boring, but cheap solar (certainly compared to a few years ago, but also now compared to fossil fuel for some applications) and cheap credit (that is, 30 year mortgage interest support) are both abundance. I'm not sure about a broad agenda to sign onto, but some kinds of abundance are a byproduct of better technology, relatively easy to nudge into an equitable direction. Having summaries that unite simple useful measures under a single rhetorical handle seems good. Agreed that too much of that leads to soulless technocracy, don't know how to make small steps politically exciting.
Yggles has a kid I think, don't remember how old but I bet that puberty is at least visible on the horizon for his houselhold.
90.1: I think "empower developers" is an unfortunately vague phrasing that makes it sound as if the downsides were obvious when they aren't. You could call simplified zoning that allows building multi-unit dwellings as of right without parking minimums "empowering developers", but it's honestly unclear to me why that would have meaningful bad effects.
That is because Matt Yglesias believes that getting power and exercising power are two seperate things. He is also cynical, optimizes over a short time-horizon, and clearly imagines himself to be a Public-Intellectual-Who-Shapes-The-Discourse.
A defense, of sorts (which may not be necessary per 90.2). I think Matt is smart, and makes an effort to be informed. I also think it's much easier to spot ways in which other people's behavior are sub-optimal than it is to figure out an optimal approach, so it's no surprise that he's more successful at the former than the latter.
I get impatient when some of his followers will say things like, "it would be so much better if you were in charge." I don't think Matt believes that (his discussion of his time at Vox suggests that he recognizes that he is not well suited to being a person-in-charge) but he also encourages the dynamic of, "look at me, I'm really smart." The post linked in 76 is a good reminder than hard problems are in fact hard, and that a smart, well-informed person spending a couple of days to propose a political platform is unlikely to produce anything brilliant.
And he acknowledges that at the end
But all that being said, even though I like my list better, I also liked Perry Bacon's list because I think the main value of the exercise is in doing the exercise.
People's ideas about what is and isn't politically sound vary, and some people have put more thought and research into this than others. But folks' ideas generally have a reasonable amount of alignment. And the lion's share of the political benefits from crafting a list simply come from the editing process. If it's a 10-item list, it can only include so many things. And everyone who's passionate about politics has more than 10 things they think are good ideas. So even though I can -- perhaps with the power of motivated reasoning -- make a case for all more normal YIMBY stuff, I don't really think it's top-10 material. That's just a high bar to cross.
I wonder if the YIMBY folks have addressed the obvious downside of having localities empower developers.
I haven't seen a convincing proposal for how to address that, I've just been convinced that on the margin some additional empowerment of developers is still better than the status quo.
I would like to see good tools for assessing the "quality" of construction (how long will it last, how much noise insulation is provided, how energy efficient is it . . . .) with some incentives to prioritize longer-term value over "looks good when new" but I'm well aware that's a hope not an actual proposal and I don't know how you'd implement it.
I think "empower developers" is an unfortunately vague phrasing that makes it sound as if the downsides were obvious when they aren't.
The best description I've seen of the downsides is this essay (which, ironically, was linked by David Roberts who's generally pro-YIMBY)
This kind of elite's wealth derives not from their salary - this is what separates them from even extremely prosperous members of the professional-managerial class, like doctors and lawyers - but from their ownership of assets. Those assets vary depending on where in the country we're talking about; they could be a bunch of McDonald's franchises in Jackson, Mississippi, a beef-processing plant in Lubbock, Texas, a construction company in Billings, Montana, commercial properties in Portland, Maine, or a car dealership in western North Carolina. Even the less prosperous parts of the United States generate enough surplus to produce a class of wealthy people. Depending on the political culture and institutions of a locality or region, this elite class might wield more or less political power. In some places, they have an effective stranglehold over what gets done; in others, they're important but not all-powerful.
Wherever they live, their wealth and connections make them influential forces within local society. In the aggregate, through their political donations and positions within their localities and regions, they wield a great deal of political influence. They're the local gentry of the United States.
Developers are very much a part of that class, and they often (but not always) have very different politics than I would prefer.
94 cont'd . . .
I don't want to put myself purely in opposition to that class; I think they're an important part of civic life and often in good ways, but I have hesitated before signing onto an agenda that is so aligned with their interests.
Eh, I mean, every agenda is aligned with somebody's interest, and developers already have tons of power and influence with local governments. Scarcity provides opportunity for profit just as much as abundance does, generally more so, in fact.
96: If that's directed towards me, I don't think we're disagreeing.
I thought Yglesias was supposed to be a pragmatist.
Age limits for members of Congress.
Is any Democrat proposing this? Kicking your own speaker of the house out of office?
And then wouldn't somebody ask about age limits for President?
I do think it's a good idea.
@93-2
A problem with the Yglesias approach is that you cannot simultaneously promise small-bore, popular changes to the masses and transformational changes to the politically engaged, for reasons of trust, coordination, and scope & accountability.
Trust: Pre-election, what is the difference between a campaign that only promises small-bore changes but intends to deliver transformation changes, and a campaign that promises and intends to only deliver small-bore changes? How do you signal that you are legitimately the former, and not the latter? What happens when your opponents, or disaffected members of your own political party, accuse you of stringing your own supporters along?
Coordination: Post-election, how do you coordinate your transformational changes when you never talked about them? Or reached an agreement on them? What happens when other political actors don't want to play along? Or have their own desired implementations of those transformational changes? Or think that some effort consistent with your small-bore policies should be pursued, even though it conflicts with your transformational goals? How do you avoid the charge that you are breaking a contract with the voters (e.g., we voted for limited X, not transformational Y)?
Scope & accountability: What are your priorities? What properly falls within your promised transformational change? If you promised card check and provided NAFTA, does that mean you screwed over your voters?
All these things could be remedied with communication. But you cannot communicate the scope and content of your transformational changes, because then your opponent can make these transformational changes the center of the campaign. And you end up looking dishonest or pissing off your core supporters when you are forced to disavow your transformational goals.
Also, Yglesias' twitter photo makes him look like a woodchuck investigating a fisheye lens.
@93-2
A problem with the Yglesias approach is that you cannot simultaneously promise small-bore, popular changes to the masses and transformational changes to the politically engaged, for reasons of trust, coordination, and scope & accountability.
Trust: Pre-election, what is the difference between a campaign that only promises small-bore changes but intends to deliver transformation changes, and a campaign that promises and intends to only deliver small-bore changes? How do you signal that you are legitimately the former, and not the latter? What happens when your opponents, or disaffected members of your own political party, accuse you of stringing your own supporters along?
Coordination: Post-election, how do you coordinate your transformational changes when you never talked about them? Or reached an agreement on them? What happens when other political actors don't want to play along? Or have their own desired implementations of those transformational changes? Or think that some effort consistent with your small-bore policies should be pursued, even though it conflicts with your transformational goals? How do you avoid the charge that you are breaking a contract with the voters (e.g., we voted for limited X, not transformational Y)?
Scope & accountability: What are your priorities? What properly falls within your promised transformational change? If you promised card check and provided NAFTA, does that mean you screwed over your voters?
All these things could be remedied with communication. But you cannot communicate the scope and content of your transformational changes, because then your opponent can make these transformational changes the center of the campaign. And you end up looking dishonest or pissing off your core supporters when you are forced to disavow your transformational goals.
Also, Yglesias' twitter photo makes him look like a woodchuck investigating a fisheye lens.
"Woodchuck" is just a hipster name for a groundhog.
I finally read the Yglesias piece. I get that it's an exercise and that making the list is the main point, but the list itself is an odd mishmash of good and bad ideas that don't really hang together in any sort of obvious conceptual way. I also don't know why he picked ten, which is way too many priorities to focus on in an actual campaign. (In general I think these discussions get pretty off-base fast because people like Yglesias don't have much contact with or understanding of actual real-life political campaigns.)
There's also an endemic issue that pundits and so forth vastly overrate the importance of messaging and communications to political outcomes. Understandably! That's their world and it's what they see. But there are larger forces that campaigns have little to no control over that are way more important. Economic conditions, obviously, and the extremely consistent tendency for the president's party to underperform in the midterms, are examples.
But there's also the general reputations of the parties and how voters perceive them. You can't just have Democrats saying "we'll ban porn" and expect that to work electorally! This is a particularly good example because it would also be impossible to actually follow through with the policy. But no one believes Democrats would even try. Republicans, yes, are more credible with stuff like this, which is why they get away with making lots of crazy promises and never following through.
Like, Yggles wants to thread the needle of getting some socially conservative voters without compromising anyone's rights. Me too! But you can't actually do that for several reasons:
1. Democrats' brand is social liberalism. No amount of strategic positioning will change that within a single election cycle.
2. Socially conservative non-white voters already vote for Dems by huge margins. They've made their peace with the party's brand and still consider it worthwhile to support for other reasons. This advantage is eroding for various reasons, but those won't be turned around by clever issue positioning. That leaves socially conservative white voters.
3. Socially conservative white voters want to compromise people's rights! The cruelty is the point! That's why they don't vote for Democrats.
4. Any policy you do end up embracing to try to attract these voters therefore does end up impinging on someone's rights to something. "Ban porn" very obviously impinges on lots of people's First Amendment rights and would have practical negative impacts on lots of marginalized groups as well.
There's also an endemic issue that pundits and so forth vastly overrate the importance of messaging and communications to political outcomes.
IIRC David Shor compared message and communications to trying to steer a hot air balloon -- you have some control, but not that much.
Ah, here's the idea.
One of my old bosses said that politics is like you're in a hot-air balloon. A lot of the stuff that you deal with day-to-day -- microtargeting models or digital ads or whatever -- that's just throwing sandbags on and off; the thing that really determines where you go is the weather. In politics, the important thing is to do what you can to change the weather, which is very hard. Most of what determines the "weather," the national media environment, are these big structural forces -- the economy, anti-incumbency, cultural forces, whether it's what's in the media or the country getting more educated or secular over time.
That's a good metaphor, although he appears to think it's possible for a balloonist to change the weather, which undermines the point of the comparison. I've also been thinking of an analogy to surfing. That one's apt because people already use the "waves" metaphor in an electoral context. But surfers don't control the waves!
That quote actually says a great deal about Shor and what he's trying to do.
106.2 isn't really true anymore is it? It's still largely true of Black people, but socially conservative Hispanics and Asians are quickly becoming Republicans.
Yes, the "promise 5 trillion dollar climate plans and Medicare+ for all" and deliver nothing is much better.
This is not just "messaging". Democrats have not thrown anyone under the bus, and tried to pass "perfect plans (not that they were well thought out plans, but they were never "50% of what you wanted" type compromises.) We are doing it right now, trying to pass a great abortion rights bill, that can't even get a majority in the Senate. And will likely get no new law, no good issue delineation against Republicans for the next election. But no one compromised on what they believe, what a relief.
110: I think it's still mostly true, but it is definitely changing and I think the electoral upshot is that most of those voters are going to become as unreachable for Dems as their white counterparts. David Roberts had a good thread recently about what drives that sort of change. I'll see if I can track it down.
Here it is. The basic point is that the Dem coalition contains a lot of currently marginalized groups, but many of the people in those groups just want to overcome their own marginalization and get into Wilhoit's in-group. Once they manage that they start voting Republican because they're actually pretty conservative personally. This has happened already to some extent with the gay community, and is starting to with Hispanics and Asians. It's uneven geographically and probably along other lines, but at least under some circumstances enough people feel like they've become part of the in-group that they're comfortable turning on the remaining out-groups.
Just to say, I wonder how much of this conversation we'd be having if we had just one (or two) more D senators. I mean, if it weren't for Manchin, we might be having an incredibly different year and we would be having very different conversations about the nature of Democratic souls.
Yes, except it was so very unlikely we even had fifty.
Yeah, we'd be having a very different conversation if we had either one more or one less Dem Senator.
We'd also be having a very different conversation if COVID had stopped being a concern in 2021.
Not sure how much farther left Ds can go in the aggregate and remain viable, unfortunately--- I wish it was otherwise, but the D's candidate for president barely won. IMO his being an old white guy who loved cars and was gregarious on TV were huge advantages. To win, the Ds don't need better policies, they need brighter smiles and more showbiz-competent candidates. Wiig or Clooney or something.
There isn't a long term solution that doesn't involve a majority of both parties firmly rejecting fascism even if it means losing some policy goals. This is just holding on to see if that happens or not. It might.
the D's candidate for president barely won
Is that actually true? Is it the same phenomenon where three weeks later when all the votes are counted, the win was fairly resounding? But on the day of, it isn't clear or looks close. Because that has been happening a lot in CA.
Looks like it was 51% to 47%, which is not all that "barely".
Yea. Biden won pretty handily. The Senate was the close one, what with the Georgia special elections.
I swore off optimism, but I think Trump would do even worse next time. But he's not going to let anyone be the nominee without a ton of petty-ass sabotage. I really think there's a ton of potential for super ugly Republican infighting and I can't wait.
I mean, this time he's a known loser who doesn't always summon electoral miracles.
Me too. I want him and DeSantis to rip each other apart.
Which I think they will! Nothing means anything, but we are fairly far down the path to that clash. We can at least enjoy it.
He won the popular vote handily, but the tipping point states were very close.
I really think if you're a minor R candidate your best chance is to start (and win, but that's the easy part) and actual physical altercation with Trump. Call him names and fuck up his hair and hope he takes a swing at you and then deck him.
The first candidate bold enough to claim they pushed Ivana down the stairs is the president America deserves.
131 so it's going to be Hillary again
Once they manage that they start voting Republican because they're actually pretty conservative personally. This has happened already to some extent with the gay community, and is starting to with Hispanics and Asians.
I wonder how true is of "Asian" voters in recent years? I use quotes there because I don't know how you're defining "Asian". Probably because my personal connections have generally been among people who came to the US either to flee Communist countries or as emigrants of countries that fought civil wars against Communist countries, I've always been around a fair number of Asian people who vote Republican. The explicit white nationalism in the contemporary Republican party has led some I know to at least not vote for Trump, but I'm pretty sure I have relatives who still believe the leopards won't eat their faces. Mostly men.
I wonder how true is of "Asian" voters in recent years? I use quotes there because I don't know how you're defining "Asian".
Yeah, I included that because Roberts did, and I don't know how true it is in general (or how he's defining "Asian"). There's definitely been a countervailing trend where Asian voters from traditionally Republican ethnicities have been increasingly voting Democratic due to Republican racism. Roberts may have things like the Chesa Boudin recall in mind, though my understanding is that the politics of that were complicated and not easily reducible to a left-right spectrum. Or maybe he's just taking the very real trend among Hispanic voters and extrapolating without much evidence.
Ok, I actually clicked through on the Roberts thread. Later on he has this big caveat:
So as soon as the GOP stops (or just slows) actively shitting on them, they'll jump on board.
The GOP trend is to increase the volume and velocity of the shit on out groups, to the point of taking some briefly in-groups and telling them to fuck off now that they're not needed, or needed only for demonization purposes. One of the uncertainties about the future is whether the GOP will shit too hard to maintain the support they need to take full control of the US, or if bowel movement conservatism will be able to hold it in just long enough to take over for a long time, aided by a decreasing need to have actual majorities. I don't think they'll stop shitting as long as they can keep winning with candidates who only stop defecating on the Constitution long enough to wipe their faces with it.
Yes, that was a pretty shitty comment.
You can't just have Democrats saying "we'll ban porn" and expect that to work electorally!
You can't even have Democrats say "We'll fight deficits," then do it for several decades, and have people believe it.
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Any Maryland residents with thoughts on your gubernatorial primary? Sounds like a Trumper got the arepublican nomination? What's going on with the Dem too-close-to call race? MA primaries aren't until September, but the Republican seem ready to nominate a Trumps guy.
The Georgia Republican candidate looks to be kind of a dud -a black guy with several children from multiple relationships who weren't initially publicly acknowledged- and this is someone who has complained about absentee black Dads. Warnock is a minister. So, maybe we can keep that one. If we could get a couple more seats without losing the House....
133: Does anyone know how that plays out among Indians? Here, most of the Indians I know are doctors or engineers, and they are Democrats, like most people here. When I meet Indian business owners and entrepreneurs from Texas, I really don't know how they vote.
137: Interesting to see Hogan's candidate get repudiated. One supposes that this has to be bad for the prospects of the Republicans.
Looking at the map of the votes yet to be counted, it looks to me as though Oprah's candidate (Wes Moore) has the Dem nomination pretty well locked up, though the race hasn't been called by the pros. Seems like a nice enough fellow.
138: I take it you're not a football fan. (But yeah, he's a dud. Warnock is looking very good in that one.)
I was looking at local politics stuff and discovered that my state house district went 60-plus percent for Biden. Say what you will about the Big Sort and the demise of the prospects for political decency, I like living here.
138: "a black guy with several children from multiple relationships who weren't initially publicly acknowledged"
And probably the most famous athlete in the state of Georgia, the only Georgia player to win the Heisman Trophy since 1942, and the star of Georgia's 1980 national champions. Among Georgians 35 and up, his name recognition is probably close to universal, and most will at least initially have a warm and fuzzy feeling because who doesn't like a footbal national championship?
I'm glad Walker seems to be fizzling as a candidate, but it's far from guaranteed. Just look at Senator Tuberville from next door in Alabama. He was Auburn's head coach, and now he's a Senator.
137. the MD D primary for governor was between three people,
a) Moore (television-affable, vet, no gov't experience, from Baltimore, good policy statements), he's pretty far ahead 37% but mail votes will take a while to count because our current governor is R.
b)Perez (Obama guy, talks like he's in a meeting, great policies, 28%)
c) Franchot (avatar of a rich DC suburb, 20%)
The outgoing governor (term-limited R, beloved in MD suburbs, mostly bad but not crazy and has been OK for the bay, named Hogan) endorsed a few candidates, his choice in the R primary lost , 56:40 . The winner is a Trumpist, bused in people for Jan 6 but didn't go himself. Hogan's endorsements for other statewide and Baltimore positions lost. 350k D primary votes so far, 240k R votes. MD has a strip along a highway that includes Baltimore and the DC burbs, so most of the population, that usually votes for democrats. The eastern shore and empty panhandle are military retirees/ag people and appalachian/central Pennsylvanians, respectively. The crazy R candidates will lose.
to 120, my perspective is basically 127. GA was tied, PA was very close. A winning D candidate has to win in swing states, the popular vote sadly does not help. For D's popular parity means losing, depth of the hole is imprecise but hard to see it being only 3%, profound structural problem that won't improve this decade. I'm not happy to say any of this, but none of this seems to me ambiguous.
In case anyone is interested, a LGM post responding to the same essay by Kuttner: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/07/neoliberalisms-90s-triumph
Haven't read the article twofilio posted yet but 133/139:
I think it's very complicated. Indians for Trump and Hindus for Trump got a lot of press just because they were so over the top and ridiculous, but everytime I looked for data it seemed like they were a pretty loud but small minority and mostly Indian Americans vote Dem. I believe the second generation skews more liberal, and.a lot of.older first generation folks experienced a lot of in person racism, especially xenophobic harassment. The personally liberal/personally conservative thing depends a lot on personal experiences. A socially conservative uncle who experienced Christian xenophobia when trying to open a temple in suburbia could become very Dem, and a socially relaxed aunty who is angry that Kamala Harris the Senator didn't do enough to help out *her* sister get out of India during the pandemic ( ignoring the fact that in California constituent services really are better handled by Congress critters, not Senators, and the reason she didn't have one is because he's a Republican in jail) can fall right down into a deep hole of anti-Black Trumpism.
One thing about how we desis experience racism in America is that some of us experience anti-Blackness at a distance..... literally white and East Asian people ( especially cops) being relieved /nicer when they get close enough to decide we aren't black. Different people process that differently, and I think it leads to a pretty wide and unsummarizable variety in how solidarity vs. tension plays out between desis and local Black political organizations.
Thanks for sharing; it feels like the Asian-American community is complicated and often just gets lumped in with other minority groups without much attention.
Now that Biden has gotten covid, I think I can get it without feeling like I've been careless.
I did a deep dive in 2012 on Asian American voting patterns. Things have possibly changed with Trump but the fundamentals seem to overall have stayed the same. From 1992-2012, East and South Asians moved overwhelmingly into the Democratic party, with white chauvinism and Evangelical Christianity (including restricting reproductive choice) being important push factors away from Republicans. Vietnamese and Filipinos were outliers in remaining majority Republican, but that wasn't an overwhelming majority, maybe 55-45ish or so, IIRC. At least for Vietnamese, it very likely maps onto the Catholic/Buddhist divide. I know for many educated Chinese immigrants coming over in the past 30 years, the Republican turn to Fascism reminds them of the worst authoritarian aspects of the CCP, including heavy censorship in schools and control of reproductive freedom, even if in the opposite direction. This is a case where anti-Communism doesn't translate into natural Republicanism the way it has for other groups.
NYC and SF are pretty complicated right now, and it looks like in NYC heavily (East) Asian districts did vote for the Republican mayoral candidate. NYC has the trifecta of a botched COVID response, a spike in crime inc. anti-Asian crime, and an attempt to redesign the school system that was perceived to be at the expense of lower & middle class Asian students. My guess this is likely a blip but who knows, the current mayor is an absolute clown who everyone hates.
I don't mention this much around Cubans and such, but I've always wondered if many of the anti-communists from Latin American countries aren't better described as "pro-junta".