Behind the paywall, because this is not yet ready for prime time. Daron Acemoglu thinks that is not what we are, & that we are instead the party of "digital disruption, globalization, large...
I think there is more truth to Acemoglu than Brad cares to admit. Now mostly it is mis or dis-information. When bosses wish to negotiate lower wages, they will cite external factors, such as regulations, globalization, automation and such. These are mostly gross exaggerations, but it is what workers constantly hear. It lets the greedy employer off the hook. Perception beats reality every day, and twice on Sunday. The Democrats problem is that they have been ineffective in countering the extensive mis-information.
This also plays on the sorts of fears Trump exploits, economy, inflation, crime, rate of illegal border infiltration. Its mostly mis-information, combined with if-it-bleeds, it leads style journalism. Only the near elite intellectuals actually look at the data, and it seems to be almost impossible to educate the median voter.
I have no use for comments such as those by Acemoglu. Congrats on a Nobel Prize but he should just stick to doing econ work. Even our lauded St. Barack of Obama lost the thread on more than one occasion. Why were no banks penalized following the financial meltdown? Why was Facebook allowed to buy Instagram? Why was Google allowed to buy YouTube? Numerous other examples could be cited here.
Professor DeLong asks about large scale immigration of the "unskilled" (whatever that means) I can only note from my area of Bethesda, MD that virtually all lawn and garden care workers are Latino. Probably 80% of all construction workers are Latino (and we have multiple high-rise buildings under construction now and for the foreseeable future. Many small businesses in the Mid-West employ "unskilled" immigrants in all sorts of jobs (pity the poor Haitians of Springfield who are probably on the top of the list to be deported). These are NOT jobs that are going to be replaced by AI or the latest invention from the Musk laboratories. Plumbers, HVAC techs, appliance installers, handymen who paint and do drywall repairs (in this case we always had Latino workers when we still lived in our house), electricians, etc. are all jobs that will continue to be with us. Some of these jobs pay well and others not so much. However, they all have an interest in a robust economy with low inflation.
The college elite Dems (and yes I'm one of them) for the most part don't get why this large group of workers moved to the Rep column. It's as simple as Occam's Razor: inflation hurts them far more than it does the brie and Chablis group (though neither of these appeal to me). They are worried about making it from paycheck to paycheck and maybe have a good bit of credit card debt at a usurious interest rate (just look at your monthly statement to see how high this might be!!). Has Trump addressed their concerns? Not one bit, and they will be filled with disappointment and buyer's remorse as they see another large tax cut to the rich and nothing in a Trump economy that has a positive impact on them.
This is what economists should be focusing on and figuring out why the tangible benefits of the last four years did not "trickle down" (yikes, what an awful term!!!). We could debate whether there was a level of misogyny Tuesday (that's what Nate Silver alluded to on his podcast, "Dems should have run a male candidate against Trump"). However, that's a minor point. The Great Carvile's key, that still resonates, "it's the economy stupid" remains the best explanation. It did not impact me but it certainly did impact all of those who shifted over to the Old Orange Head team.
Alan asked: Why were no banks penalized following the meltdown? Why was Facebook allowed to buy Instagram or Google allowed to buy Youtube...
The answer is simply that we, the American people, continue to elect representatives who create and defend laws and regulations which allow these things to occur. It is important to remember that Reagan was wrong when he said: "The problem is the government." In fact, Lincoln was right when he said that we have "government of, by, and for the people." We, the people, *are* the government. If the government is doing things we don't like, it is *our* fault and we should correct it.
Post-election reckonings are essential, but of those I'm reading many are full of sloppy-hasty collective agency claims that infuriate more than illuminate. So Brad takes exception when Daron writes "Dems ceased to..." And fair enough. The Democratic Party isn't a monolithic "agent" and millions of people could take exception to almost any completion of Acemoglu's (or Brooks' or Yglesias' or ___) sentence.
As a better way, I point to Betsey Stevenson incredibly gracious admission on X ( https://x.com/BetseyStevenson/status/1854879503102685396 ) that she blew the call on inflation vs increased unemployment. In truth, it wasn't even her call -- but she knows she represents the kind of advice in-Administration economists were giving in 2022. And she speaks for me as well: 35 years ago I was once living from paycheck to paycheck, with credit card debt and an adjustable rate rate mortgage. Inflation and interest rate pops hit me then with a double whammy. I could recall those days, but could I feel my way back into them enough to get the anger of workers who don't have the prospects today that I had then? Nope.
Where Brad really deserves credit is not so much for this piece but for his tremendously helpful observation several weeks ago that the poll-fogged election we were experiencing as a deadlock was probably, one way or another, not that close. Well, now we know. Biden's unpopularity was deep and real, Harris was all-too-easy to pin to Biden and to her own graspings for progressive cred in 2020. Ballgame.
Going to respectively disagree. Regardless of Acemoglu's comments, the general perception out there in the population is that the Dems aren't pro-worker. Sure, there are lots of other factors - but in general, the message that people here is that the Dems are tight with Wall Street (starting with Clinton IMO) and that they aren't fighting for workers.
Look, yes, the Republicans caused the 2008 crisis, BUT look at the Obama response - save the banks, screw the homeowners. I can guarantee that got noticed.
That opens the door for the Republicans (who really don't give a damn about the working class) to aim the anger at "others", etc. Yes, that is BS, but it works because of the DNC and generally the Dems messaging to the country. IF most folks thought the Dems were on their side against things that screw them, the opening wouldn't be there for Republican BS.
Yes, Biden actually did quite a bit for the working class, but that is after years of ignoring them generally. And with very poor messaging from Biden, etc. Other than a bit about price gouging, Harris never really talked much about any of the very good pro-worker activities. Again, elections are made from Narrative, not necessarily reality.
There is a reason why Sanders did so well in 2016 and why he is still respected and liked by a lot of working class folks who voted for Trump. When the Democrats embrace antitrust, corporate cheating, pro-union positions, then the perception will change - but not until then. (and yes, note that "workers" includes college educated and professionals - most of whom still work for someone. And aren't protected either as the tech folks just found out this year.
This election had little or nothing to do with policy. For policy differences to be a determining factor, it is necessary that the policy alternatives be understood by voters and that there be agreement on the facts to which the policies are responses. The 2024 election did not provide the conditions necessary for a policy-driven election. In fact, an exceptionally high portion of the statements made by Trump and his supporters were either distortions of the truth or simple lies. On the other hand, the Democrats, even though they more frequently presented truth, were unable to do so convincingly. The harsh reality is that if Trump had been telling the truth, we should be disappointed that he didn't do much better. If what he said was true, then we all should have voted for him. But, he lied often. Unfortunately, over 50% of the voters were unable to recognize that they were being lied to.
The key issue to be addressed in future elections is how to hold a democratic election in an environment where neither the ruling party (Republicans) nor substantial portions of the press (i.e. Fox, etc.) feel compelled to speak honestly to the people and where the primary opposition party (the Democrats) seems incapable of speaking effectively and convincingly. Only after those issues are addressed will it make sense to consider how policy might influence future elections.
When folk are conned, should we blame the con artist or should we blame the victims?
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
It's a bit too early for a post mortem because the fine grained data on why voters voted won't be analyzed for another 3-4 months. From a wide sampling of my reading it looks like two different reasons together: 1) general anti-incumbency sentiment especially because prices didn't climb down after inflation was reduced, and 2) a large segment of Trump voters get their news and views, never from mainstream news or even Fox, but from a bubbling social media stew of stupid nutty podcasters and insanely paranoid conspiracy websites, perhaps some of it KGB-style disinformation operations.
On the policy level, the Ds are mostly okay, given what's politically possible. But there's been a lot of recent conversion from some pretty bad stuff. Brad forgets the Atari Democrats of yore, and their unstinting support for our current IP regime. (Plus today's crypto-Ds, like Kristin Gillebrand.) Ds treated unions like dog-poop until very recently: something unpleasant that had to be managed on a regular basis. And before Lina Khan, Democrats were the "yes, but" party on antitrust.
On the branding level? D's invented the Oppression Olympics, although the Rs have perfected it. Unfortunately, the Rs have the patent, and the Ds are stuck with the trademark. Ds also have the trademark on HR corporate bafflegab: e.g., "Latinx." The Rs are careful to avoid such nauseating Nurse Ratched language, except for their anti-abortion wing, which invents things like "preborn babies." Ds own the brand on obnoxiously righteous college kids. (Yale Law--at least when I attended--was world HQ for political Heathers-ism.)
Worse yet for their brand, most D's don't understand Carl Schmitt's truth: politics requires an enemy and a narrative. (Bernie is an exception.) The Rs have a simple and compelling narrative which contains two enemies: "The Jews are trying to take your stuff and give it to the duskies." In other words, MAGA. The Dems? "We're not crazy" is about their best narrative. Oy.
The "enemy" part works well when people are pissed for some reason. A combination of getting screwed by 2008 response, housing issues, inflation, etc. That opens the door to "requiring an enemy" in a big way. But 100% agree about Narrative. The Dems don't really have a clear Narrative or ideology any more - but lots of interest groups. In reality, Trump doesn't have any ideology except transactional what helps Trump personally - But he does have a Narrative.
I'm going to be blunt, hopefully not harsh. As for "lifts all boats", the term was used, by Clinton, Sperling, and others in the Clinton administration, to refer to the economic successes of his administration generally, which obviously included globalization (alas, the promised worker retraining never came about-pie yesterday, pie tomorrow, but never pie today). It is pettifoggery to assert that the multiple uses somehow excluded globalization.
Results of the House races look pretty close for an incumbent Presidential election, if that turns out to be the case, then maybe there wasn't a general shift to the right, but a shift on the Presidency. And even in elections where there are huge swings, it often swings back again. The risk is that future elections are shams.
If we asked 100 people to summarize Harris' platform, I bet that 70+ of them would say: vote for me because of abortion, I'm a women, and I'm black. Harris didn't repeat simple policy bullet points. But everyone knows Trumps ad nauseam slogans and rants: mass deportation, tariffs, Dem's caused inflation, and I'm a genius who will protect you.
Can we blame the media? To some degree. But are Dem's educating the media, much less the voters? I believe that few journalists know how tariffs work, or their results. Perhaps Dem's should have had seminars (with great food and drinks) to educate journalists so that they knew enough to ask good questions,.
The other problem, as SR Waldman recently pointed out, is that swing voters are a vital electoral minority who are dominated by people who aren't informed or driven by issues. They go by feelings and their perception of the candidate. Trump appeared strong and decisive (he's a reality TV actor). Harris seemed tentative and shallow (perception, not reality).
Harris was another Hillary: a senator from a deep blue state who didn't have a competitive primary and isn't a charismatic extrovert. Dem primaries need to feature swing state governors then let the voters decide. I expect that swing state governors will have a better grasp of the current swing issues than you, me, or a Nobel prize winning economist.
The Federal Job(JG) is not a redistribution policy but a policy for the unemployed/underemployed, the right to engage, to all those that want to work, in the dignity of work with a living wage. Society benefits by stopping the wastage of human potential. Will GINI index change, probably over time but not necessarily. No taxes will not be needed to ‘find the money’ to pay for JG, ever since Nixon closed the gold exchange window. The DSGE belief in Modigliani’s 1975 development of NARUI, blinded Jimmy Carter and all Democrats since, most importantly by Obama/Summers in 2012, that paved the way for Trump in 2016. Trump has taken advantage of this opening again in 2024 in the Blue Wall states, unknowingly most likely but effectively nonetheless, by creating a multiracial working class vote for change.
Biden’s supply side Chips Act could be not designed effectively for a four-year Presidential election cycle. What was also needed was a Bacon Act through the creation of a JG to create effective demand for the most precarious. The Federal Reserve, was created in 1913 to be the ‘lender of the last resort’ for the supply side of the National Accounting. A century later we need an ‘employer of the last resort’ for the demand side of National Accounting.
Will NARIU be finally relegated to the dustbin of history and be replaced ? Only if we stop being the slave to some defunct intellectual ideas.
I think the Democrats have more of a messaging problem than a policy problem. What voters need to hear is "I am on your side" rather than, "I know what's good for you". (Even if the latter is true.)
These days, driving that message home requires dramatic instincts, hyperbole, showmanship. Because the media landscape is so fragmented and broken.
Brad, I know much more about psychology than I do about economics . You asked for criticism because you yourself didn’t think your write-up was ready for prime time. I tend to agree with you on that point, and also tend to agree with Acemoglu’s comment “now it is the highly educated, not manual workers that vote for Democrats, and if the center-left does not become more pro-worker, it and democracy will suffer.” I also tend to agree with most of his 2023 article, including the implication that many of the Democratic elites continue to be soft on finance (and neoliberalism) because they like the gains they get when the stock market grows, even when it hurts those in lower quintiles. IMO, you quoted some of that article out of context (e.g. you didn’t include certain qualifying words: “There are many reasons for this labor-market transformation, and several are rooted…” From a psychological viewpoint, I feel you took Acemoglu’s comments too personally and are reacting too strongly. Please don’t write about the worst of those who voted for Trump (e.g. the people who tell rapist jokes…). To me, that reads like a rant against a rant.
I posted a comment to you before about evolutionary development stages of individuals and society. The 1960s and 70s produced a major increase in college-educated people and that has continued in large part. IMO, many of us reached Maslow’s “self-actualizing” stage—a stage in which we believe we know best (we think we're god-like). This developmental stage brought on libertarianism / neoliberalism in those of us who were obsessed with “self-love” and power, and an environmentalism / “wokeness” backlash from those of us who were obsessed with love of “other.” Both sides tend to consider people at earlier stages of development as less than our college-educated selves. Many libertarians (e.g. the leader of the Republican Party) consider such people as “chumps”. Many on the “woke” left (e.g. many in the Democratic party) decided they know best how to easily voice their “concern” about those “lesser” people .
Others just went along with "the prevailing political currents" even though they felt something better should be done. It sounds from your writing that you (and I) fit that last description. Now is the time to start changing that. It’s time we as individuals and as Democratic Party, move on to the next developmental stage, in which we respect and try to understand people at all developmental stages and truly work together with them. Perhaps, with that in mind, you could be softer on Acemoglu than what you wrote in your draft. His heart is in the right place, IMHO.
- one is whether DEI is a ‘tracking tool’, which I believe is a way of making the entire DEI enterprise look like an inoffensive collection of statistics and not a way of ‘forcing’ the desired outcomes (eg in hiring and promotion overriding if necessary indicators of competence and performance). There are legitimate differences of views on this and I guess I tend to be more sceptical than you are. But the disagreement that emerges from your reply is not relevant for the second and more decisive point for the discussion at hand, namely:
- most Trump’s voters, including those who for class reasons (in the Marxian sense of the term) should naturally oppose Trump’s policies, are liable to be mightily put off by DEI and for quite a few of them this may be the reason for voting for Trump. The woke ideology ended up serving Trump’s ends (I guess Marx would not be entirely surprised).
To recall, your starting question was ‘where was the ‘woke’ in Harris’ program?’ The fact that Harris may have ‘cancelled’ or reversed some ‘woke’ points from her program in the literal (electoral) sense of the term (eg taxpayer funded gender affirmative care for prison inmates or her sudden enthusiastic for guns) is possibly more of an aggravating than mitigating factors. It shows that the Democratic Party has not learned a lesson from the first victory of Trump, namely, voters take the candidates seriously, not literally.
What are these “woke” ideas that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz endorsed that drove away “workers”?
Harris has been an enthusiastic supporter of DEI, explicitly stressing that ‘equity’ should not be equated with ‘equality of opportunity’ but should strive for equality of outcomes across racial and gender groups. While one might imagine that most Trump voters did not pore over presidential executive orders on DEI, containing such gems as ‘persons giving birth’ (previously known as ‘women’ or ‘mothers’), it does not require an advanced degree in social sciences (some will say the opposite) to arrive at the conclusion that most such voters would be mightily put off by the whole DEI enterprise. Ironically, this includes swathes of its supposed beneficiaries, especially the Latinos, possibly starting with the DEI idea of calling them ‘Latinx’.
It find it sad and worrying to see Democratic intelligentsia still wedded to the DEA enterprise, thereby becoming an ‘objective’ enablers (as a certain left would have said in the past) of Trump’s regressive and self-defeating economic policies.
DEA—Drug Enforcement Administration? Seems to me that you say a lot of things that are not so. Kamala Harris—like everybody else sane—takes large disparities across racial and gender groups as indicators that we need to look to see whether and what discriminatory forces might be at work here. Thus it is insane to say that equality of opportunity is in any sense opposed to DEI tracking of outcomes; rather, DEI tracking of outcomes is an essential tool to figure out how to move towards equality of opportunity.
The interesting statistic to look at is the split ticket vote.
If Democrats were perceived to abandoned the working class, how do you explain a person who votes for Trump, and then VOTES for Democrats down the line. Are we missing mysogeny, racism, ?
What I think might be an issue is identity politics...Does a Latino watching Rev. Al Sharpton believe that he is representing him? Blacks represent 12.9% of the population; Latinos 19%. We need politicians, and even identity groups, to recognize their members share common interests, and start working towards stating their programs not in terms of black interests, but lower class interests. Besides, Latinos often see themselves as White, so playing racial or sexual identity politics only lets you get so far unless you represent everyone and involve everyone in a common group.
I think there is more truth to Acemoglu than Brad cares to admit. Now mostly it is mis or dis-information. When bosses wish to negotiate lower wages, they will cite external factors, such as regulations, globalization, automation and such. These are mostly gross exaggerations, but it is what workers constantly hear. It lets the greedy employer off the hook. Perception beats reality every day, and twice on Sunday. The Democrats problem is that they have been ineffective in countering the extensive mis-information.
This also plays on the sorts of fears Trump exploits, economy, inflation, crime, rate of illegal border infiltration. Its mostly mis-information, combined with if-it-bleeds, it leads style journalism. Only the near elite intellectuals actually look at the data, and it seems to be almost impossible to educate the median voter.
I have no use for comments such as those by Acemoglu. Congrats on a Nobel Prize but he should just stick to doing econ work. Even our lauded St. Barack of Obama lost the thread on more than one occasion. Why were no banks penalized following the financial meltdown? Why was Facebook allowed to buy Instagram? Why was Google allowed to buy YouTube? Numerous other examples could be cited here.
Professor DeLong asks about large scale immigration of the "unskilled" (whatever that means) I can only note from my area of Bethesda, MD that virtually all lawn and garden care workers are Latino. Probably 80% of all construction workers are Latino (and we have multiple high-rise buildings under construction now and for the foreseeable future. Many small businesses in the Mid-West employ "unskilled" immigrants in all sorts of jobs (pity the poor Haitians of Springfield who are probably on the top of the list to be deported). These are NOT jobs that are going to be replaced by AI or the latest invention from the Musk laboratories. Plumbers, HVAC techs, appliance installers, handymen who paint and do drywall repairs (in this case we always had Latino workers when we still lived in our house), electricians, etc. are all jobs that will continue to be with us. Some of these jobs pay well and others not so much. However, they all have an interest in a robust economy with low inflation.
The college elite Dems (and yes I'm one of them) for the most part don't get why this large group of workers moved to the Rep column. It's as simple as Occam's Razor: inflation hurts them far more than it does the brie and Chablis group (though neither of these appeal to me). They are worried about making it from paycheck to paycheck and maybe have a good bit of credit card debt at a usurious interest rate (just look at your monthly statement to see how high this might be!!). Has Trump addressed their concerns? Not one bit, and they will be filled with disappointment and buyer's remorse as they see another large tax cut to the rich and nothing in a Trump economy that has a positive impact on them.
This is what economists should be focusing on and figuring out why the tangible benefits of the last four years did not "trickle down" (yikes, what an awful term!!!). We could debate whether there was a level of misogyny Tuesday (that's what Nate Silver alluded to on his podcast, "Dems should have run a male candidate against Trump"). However, that's a minor point. The Great Carvile's key, that still resonates, "it's the economy stupid" remains the best explanation. It did not impact me but it certainly did impact all of those who shifted over to the Old Orange Head team.
Alan asked: Why were no banks penalized following the meltdown? Why was Facebook allowed to buy Instagram or Google allowed to buy Youtube...
The answer is simply that we, the American people, continue to elect representatives who create and defend laws and regulations which allow these things to occur. It is important to remember that Reagan was wrong when he said: "The problem is the government." In fact, Lincoln was right when he said that we have "government of, by, and for the people." We, the people, *are* the government. If the government is doing things we don't like, it is *our* fault and we should correct it.
How many of the Latino workers you're describing are citizens who can vote?
Post-election reckonings are essential, but of those I'm reading many are full of sloppy-hasty collective agency claims that infuriate more than illuminate. So Brad takes exception when Daron writes "Dems ceased to..." And fair enough. The Democratic Party isn't a monolithic "agent" and millions of people could take exception to almost any completion of Acemoglu's (or Brooks' or Yglesias' or ___) sentence.
As a better way, I point to Betsey Stevenson incredibly gracious admission on X ( https://x.com/BetseyStevenson/status/1854879503102685396 ) that she blew the call on inflation vs increased unemployment. In truth, it wasn't even her call -- but she knows she represents the kind of advice in-Administration economists were giving in 2022. And she speaks for me as well: 35 years ago I was once living from paycheck to paycheck, with credit card debt and an adjustable rate rate mortgage. Inflation and interest rate pops hit me then with a double whammy. I could recall those days, but could I feel my way back into them enough to get the anger of workers who don't have the prospects today that I had then? Nope.
Where Brad really deserves credit is not so much for this piece but for his tremendously helpful observation several weeks ago that the poll-fogged election we were experiencing as a deadlock was probably, one way or another, not that close. Well, now we know. Biden's unpopularity was deep and real, Harris was all-too-easy to pin to Biden and to her own graspings for progressive cred in 2020. Ballgame.
Going to respectively disagree. Regardless of Acemoglu's comments, the general perception out there in the population is that the Dems aren't pro-worker. Sure, there are lots of other factors - but in general, the message that people here is that the Dems are tight with Wall Street (starting with Clinton IMO) and that they aren't fighting for workers.
Look, yes, the Republicans caused the 2008 crisis, BUT look at the Obama response - save the banks, screw the homeowners. I can guarantee that got noticed.
That opens the door for the Republicans (who really don't give a damn about the working class) to aim the anger at "others", etc. Yes, that is BS, but it works because of the DNC and generally the Dems messaging to the country. IF most folks thought the Dems were on their side against things that screw them, the opening wouldn't be there for Republican BS.
Yes, Biden actually did quite a bit for the working class, but that is after years of ignoring them generally. And with very poor messaging from Biden, etc. Other than a bit about price gouging, Harris never really talked much about any of the very good pro-worker activities. Again, elections are made from Narrative, not necessarily reality.
There is a reason why Sanders did so well in 2016 and why he is still respected and liked by a lot of working class folks who voted for Trump. When the Democrats embrace antitrust, corporate cheating, pro-union positions, then the perception will change - but not until then. (and yes, note that "workers" includes college educated and professionals - most of whom still work for someone. And aren't protected either as the tech folks just found out this year.
This election had little or nothing to do with policy. For policy differences to be a determining factor, it is necessary that the policy alternatives be understood by voters and that there be agreement on the facts to which the policies are responses. The 2024 election did not provide the conditions necessary for a policy-driven election. In fact, an exceptionally high portion of the statements made by Trump and his supporters were either distortions of the truth or simple lies. On the other hand, the Democrats, even though they more frequently presented truth, were unable to do so convincingly. The harsh reality is that if Trump had been telling the truth, we should be disappointed that he didn't do much better. If what he said was true, then we all should have voted for him. But, he lied often. Unfortunately, over 50% of the voters were unable to recognize that they were being lied to.
The key issue to be addressed in future elections is how to hold a democratic election in an environment where neither the ruling party (Republicans) nor substantial portions of the press (i.e. Fox, etc.) feel compelled to speak honestly to the people and where the primary opposition party (the Democrats) seems incapable of speaking effectively and convincingly. Only after those issues are addressed will it make sense to consider how policy might influence future elections.
When folk are conned, should we blame the con artist or should we blame the victims?
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
It's a bit too early for a post mortem because the fine grained data on why voters voted won't be analyzed for another 3-4 months. From a wide sampling of my reading it looks like two different reasons together: 1) general anti-incumbency sentiment especially because prices didn't climb down after inflation was reduced, and 2) a large segment of Trump voters get their news and views, never from mainstream news or even Fox, but from a bubbling social media stew of stupid nutty podcasters and insanely paranoid conspiracy websites, perhaps some of it KGB-style disinformation operations.
On the policy level, the Ds are mostly okay, given what's politically possible. But there's been a lot of recent conversion from some pretty bad stuff. Brad forgets the Atari Democrats of yore, and their unstinting support for our current IP regime. (Plus today's crypto-Ds, like Kristin Gillebrand.) Ds treated unions like dog-poop until very recently: something unpleasant that had to be managed on a regular basis. And before Lina Khan, Democrats were the "yes, but" party on antitrust.
On the branding level? D's invented the Oppression Olympics, although the Rs have perfected it. Unfortunately, the Rs have the patent, and the Ds are stuck with the trademark. Ds also have the trademark on HR corporate bafflegab: e.g., "Latinx." The Rs are careful to avoid such nauseating Nurse Ratched language, except for their anti-abortion wing, which invents things like "preborn babies." Ds own the brand on obnoxiously righteous college kids. (Yale Law--at least when I attended--was world HQ for political Heathers-ism.)
Worse yet for their brand, most D's don't understand Carl Schmitt's truth: politics requires an enemy and a narrative. (Bernie is an exception.) The Rs have a simple and compelling narrative which contains two enemies: "The Jews are trying to take your stuff and give it to the duskies." In other words, MAGA. The Dems? "We're not crazy" is about their best narrative. Oy.
The "enemy" part works well when people are pissed for some reason. A combination of getting screwed by 2008 response, housing issues, inflation, etc. That opens the door to "requiring an enemy" in a big way. But 100% agree about Narrative. The Dems don't really have a clear Narrative or ideology any more - but lots of interest groups. In reality, Trump doesn't have any ideology except transactional what helps Trump personally - But he does have a Narrative.
I'm going to be blunt, hopefully not harsh. As for "lifts all boats", the term was used, by Clinton, Sperling, and others in the Clinton administration, to refer to the economic successes of his administration generally, which obviously included globalization (alas, the promised worker retraining never came about-pie yesterday, pie tomorrow, but never pie today). It is pettifoggery to assert that the multiple uses somehow excluded globalization.
Results of the House races look pretty close for an incumbent Presidential election, if that turns out to be the case, then maybe there wasn't a general shift to the right, but a shift on the Presidency. And even in elections where there are huge swings, it often swings back again. The risk is that future elections are shams.
If we asked 100 people to summarize Harris' platform, I bet that 70+ of them would say: vote for me because of abortion, I'm a women, and I'm black. Harris didn't repeat simple policy bullet points. But everyone knows Trumps ad nauseam slogans and rants: mass deportation, tariffs, Dem's caused inflation, and I'm a genius who will protect you.
Can we blame the media? To some degree. But are Dem's educating the media, much less the voters? I believe that few journalists know how tariffs work, or their results. Perhaps Dem's should have had seminars (with great food and drinks) to educate journalists so that they knew enough to ask good questions,.
The other problem, as SR Waldman recently pointed out, is that swing voters are a vital electoral minority who are dominated by people who aren't informed or driven by issues. They go by feelings and their perception of the candidate. Trump appeared strong and decisive (he's a reality TV actor). Harris seemed tentative and shallow (perception, not reality).
Harris was another Hillary: a senator from a deep blue state who didn't have a competitive primary and isn't a charismatic extrovert. Dem primaries need to feature swing state governors then let the voters decide. I expect that swing state governors will have a better grasp of the current swing issues than you, me, or a Nobel prize winning economist.
The Federal Job(JG) is not a redistribution policy but a policy for the unemployed/underemployed, the right to engage, to all those that want to work, in the dignity of work with a living wage. Society benefits by stopping the wastage of human potential. Will GINI index change, probably over time but not necessarily. No taxes will not be needed to ‘find the money’ to pay for JG, ever since Nixon closed the gold exchange window. The DSGE belief in Modigliani’s 1975 development of NARUI, blinded Jimmy Carter and all Democrats since, most importantly by Obama/Summers in 2012, that paved the way for Trump in 2016. Trump has taken advantage of this opening again in 2024 in the Blue Wall states, unknowingly most likely but effectively nonetheless, by creating a multiracial working class vote for change.
Biden’s supply side Chips Act could be not designed effectively for a four-year Presidential election cycle. What was also needed was a Bacon Act through the creation of a JG to create effective demand for the most precarious. The Federal Reserve, was created in 1913 to be the ‘lender of the last resort’ for the supply side of the National Accounting. A century later we need an ‘employer of the last resort’ for the demand side of National Accounting.
Will NARIU be finally relegated to the dustbin of history and be replaced ? Only if we stop being the slave to some defunct intellectual ideas.
I think the Democrats have more of a messaging problem than a policy problem. What voters need to hear is "I am on your side" rather than, "I know what's good for you". (Even if the latter is true.)
These days, driving that message home requires dramatic instincts, hyperbole, showmanship. Because the media landscape is so fragmented and broken.
Brad, I know much more about psychology than I do about economics . You asked for criticism because you yourself didn’t think your write-up was ready for prime time. I tend to agree with you on that point, and also tend to agree with Acemoglu’s comment “now it is the highly educated, not manual workers that vote for Democrats, and if the center-left does not become more pro-worker, it and democracy will suffer.” I also tend to agree with most of his 2023 article, including the implication that many of the Democratic elites continue to be soft on finance (and neoliberalism) because they like the gains they get when the stock market grows, even when it hurts those in lower quintiles. IMO, you quoted some of that article out of context (e.g. you didn’t include certain qualifying words: “There are many reasons for this labor-market transformation, and several are rooted…” From a psychological viewpoint, I feel you took Acemoglu’s comments too personally and are reacting too strongly. Please don’t write about the worst of those who voted for Trump (e.g. the people who tell rapist jokes…). To me, that reads like a rant against a rant.
I posted a comment to you before about evolutionary development stages of individuals and society. The 1960s and 70s produced a major increase in college-educated people and that has continued in large part. IMO, many of us reached Maslow’s “self-actualizing” stage—a stage in which we believe we know best (we think we're god-like). This developmental stage brought on libertarianism / neoliberalism in those of us who were obsessed with “self-love” and power, and an environmentalism / “wokeness” backlash from those of us who were obsessed with love of “other.” Both sides tend to consider people at earlier stages of development as less than our college-educated selves. Many libertarians (e.g. the leader of the Republican Party) consider such people as “chumps”. Many on the “woke” left (e.g. many in the Democratic party) decided they know best how to easily voice their “concern” about those “lesser” people .
Others just went along with "the prevailing political currents" even though they felt something better should be done. It sounds from your writing that you (and I) fit that last description. Now is the time to start changing that. It’s time we as individuals and as Democratic Party, move on to the next developmental stage, in which we respect and try to understand people at all developmental stages and truly work together with them. Perhaps, with that in mind, you could be softer on Acemoglu than what you wrote in your draft. His heart is in the right place, IMHO.
There are two different points:
- one is whether DEI is a ‘tracking tool’, which I believe is a way of making the entire DEI enterprise look like an inoffensive collection of statistics and not a way of ‘forcing’ the desired outcomes (eg in hiring and promotion overriding if necessary indicators of competence and performance). There are legitimate differences of views on this and I guess I tend to be more sceptical than you are. But the disagreement that emerges from your reply is not relevant for the second and more decisive point for the discussion at hand, namely:
- most Trump’s voters, including those who for class reasons (in the Marxian sense of the term) should naturally oppose Trump’s policies, are liable to be mightily put off by DEI and for quite a few of them this may be the reason for voting for Trump. The woke ideology ended up serving Trump’s ends (I guess Marx would not be entirely surprised).
To recall, your starting question was ‘where was the ‘woke’ in Harris’ program?’ The fact that Harris may have ‘cancelled’ or reversed some ‘woke’ points from her program in the literal (electoral) sense of the term (eg taxpayer funded gender affirmative care for prison inmates or her sudden enthusiastic for guns) is possibly more of an aggravating than mitigating factors. It shows that the Democratic Party has not learned a lesson from the first victory of Trump, namely, voters take the candidates seriously, not literally.
What are these “woke” ideas that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz endorsed that drove away “workers”?
Harris has been an enthusiastic supporter of DEI, explicitly stressing that ‘equity’ should not be equated with ‘equality of opportunity’ but should strive for equality of outcomes across racial and gender groups. While one might imagine that most Trump voters did not pore over presidential executive orders on DEI, containing such gems as ‘persons giving birth’ (previously known as ‘women’ or ‘mothers’), it does not require an advanced degree in social sciences (some will say the opposite) to arrive at the conclusion that most such voters would be mightily put off by the whole DEI enterprise. Ironically, this includes swathes of its supposed beneficiaries, especially the Latinos, possibly starting with the DEI idea of calling them ‘Latinx’.
It find it sad and worrying to see Democratic intelligentsia still wedded to the DEA enterprise, thereby becoming an ‘objective’ enablers (as a certain left would have said in the past) of Trump’s regressive and self-defeating economic policies.
DEA—Drug Enforcement Administration? Seems to me that you say a lot of things that are not so. Kamala Harris—like everybody else sane—takes large disparities across racial and gender groups as indicators that we need to look to see whether and what discriminatory forces might be at work here. Thus it is insane to say that equality of opportunity is in any sense opposed to DEI tracking of outcomes; rather, DEI tracking of outcomes is an essential tool to figure out how to move towards equality of opportunity.
What the Democratic Party 'must'* not be is anywhere near as corrupt, potentially violent, and crank-ridden as the Republican Party.
*Amoral universe, so it _could_ be, but I mean 'I would greatly rather'.
The interesting statistic to look at is the split ticket vote.
If Democrats were perceived to abandoned the working class, how do you explain a person who votes for Trump, and then VOTES for Democrats down the line. Are we missing mysogeny, racism, ?
The other part of the story is that repetition of a Fox News meme does not make something true re working class representation. You only have to look at what Trump did during his last term against worker interests. https://aflcio.org/press/releases/donald-trumps-catastrophic-and-devastating-anti-labor-track-record
What I think might be an issue is identity politics...Does a Latino watching Rev. Al Sharpton believe that he is representing him? Blacks represent 12.9% of the population; Latinos 19%. We need politicians, and even identity groups, to recognize their members share common interests, and start working towards stating their programs not in terms of black interests, but lower class interests. Besides, Latinos often see themselves as White, so playing racial or sexual identity politics only lets you get so far unless you represent everyone and involve everyone in a common group.