Josh Marshall on Musk as Trump's Trump: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-trump
"But none of those points are the critical ones. This is about Elon Musk.
Trump has brought Musk into the central circle of power. He’s not only de facto Vice President. When was the last time you saw JD Vance? He’s practically co-president. Musk is erratic, volatile, impulsive, mercurial. He introduces a huge source of unpredictability and chaos into the presidency that for once Trump doesn’t control. See it clearly: Musk did this. Trump thrives on chaos, but his chaos. Not someone else’s chaos.
Trump is following. He’s trying to pretend otherwise but he’s following. And unlike all of Trump’s other bad hires or hires he gets tired of he can’t just shitcan Musk like all the rest. Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He’s got a bigger megaphone. And he’s got his own brand. I’m pretty sure there will eventually be a really big and really ugly falling out between the two of them. But it will take a while to get there and the costs are potentially quite large for both of them."
The Federal Government does not set housing policy. Perhaps it should but housing/building policy is the power of the State Governments.
Housing is an interesting issue because I think it is an area where you are likely to fracture Democrats, including, and maybe especially in blue states and cities. You have the YIMBY crowd which is starting to organize effectively but is generally homogeneous to me: they tend to be formally educated, middle-income and upper-middle income professionals who are priced out of buying their first home in their desired locations much of the time. In short, they tend to be bougie yuppies.
Then you have NIMBY/PHIMBY. This group is interesting because their strength comes from how diverse they area:
1. You have rich homeowners who don't want their property values to decrease. That is simple enough.
2. You have various minority groups that worried about being displaced because of their crumbly apartments being taken down and their neighborhoods being "gentrified"
3. The really interesting crowd behind NIMBY/PHIMBY is the romantic bohemians. These are people who can remember or wish they were back in the the 1970s and 80s and perhaps early 90s when cities were rough and ready but filled with dynamic exciting spaces for artists, musicians, etc. Instead of restaurants offering 300 dollar tasting menus, you had CBGBs, the Mudd Clubb or Danceteria or the local equivalent. Or had lofts and cheap apartments, sure you had thirty locks on your door but you can work as a bike messenger, afford rent, go to play a gig with your band, and then spend a lazy afternoon at Zeitgeist drinking beers and flirting with the cute, sassy bartender in a mini-skirt and pixie haircut. Plus you had hair!
The thing # 1 does is have resources to file CEQA lawsuit after CEQA lawsuit. What groups #2 and 3 have is passion and the time to go to meeting after meeting and gum up the works of new housing. Group # 2 is also very good and used to political and community organizing from various civil rights struggles.
YIMBYs tend to be people with demanding jobs and/or young families who do what they can when they can but are generally not used to political organizing and community activism.
In SF this year, it was the YIMBYs who generally did better but there were exceptions and that is not always guaranteed.
In today's episode of every accusation is a confession, the GOP is sure as hell looking for a way to send Liz Cheney to jail or at least make her stand for some kind of trial: https://newrepublic.com/post/189484/house-republicans-revenge-liz-cheney
Kevin Drum looks at the Democratic results in CA: https://jabberwocking.com/what-really-happened-in-2024/
"For what it's worth, in final polling before the election Trump gained a couple of points compared to 2020, which turned into a 1% increase in his vote. Harris lost a couple of points, which turned into a 17% drop in her vote. This points in the direction of laziness/strategic voting.
Was this a problem with Harris in particular or with Democrats in general? Here's the House vote over the past couple of decades:
The Democratic share of the vote was down this year, so maybe it really is a D problem. But there's evidence this is mostly strategic. Here's the number of seats Democrats have won:
It was up! Democrats voted where they needed to but skipped out where a seat was uncompetitive. In the end, the Democratic share of the California delegation reached an all-time record aside from the blowout year of 2018.
I don't have a big axe to grind here. I just want to know: Was there a specific problem with Kamala Harris this year or is there a widespread problem with the Democratic brand in general? Honestly, I see evidence both ways. You really can't ignore the fact that every single state (in fact, every single county) shifted red. On the other hand, Harris lost by only 1.5% of the vote nationwide, while House Democrats gained 0.6% of the national vote compared to 2022 and picked up two seats. It's the same dynamic that played out in the deep-blue state of California.
It's just a genuine mystery. Trump really did pick up support compared to 2016, but then again, so did Harris by a little bit. Trump mainly picked up support from the third-party vote, not from Democrats."
Here is the thing, I think voters can make bad decisions and should be held accountable for them.
I don't think any campaign is perfect and every campaign admits mistakes but I don't think Harris made as many mistakes as you put it below. As JVL at the Bulwark noted numerous times during the election, what do voters want? People said they wanted Biden to drop out so the Democrats worked together and got Biden to drop out and the Democrats then nominated the person most likely to be a unifying figure for the party. A boar on the floor/open convention might give reporters and pundits (amateur and professional) sex dreams but it would be a disaster for party unity.
Maybe Biden should have announced he wasn't running for reelection after the midterms but the chances of that happening were slim. People who run for President have tremendous ego and self-regard, even the ones we like.
I think Harris broke from Biden as much as she could and she did acknowledge various splits among Democratic groups.
Two more thoughts:
1. I will go to my grave think Trump and Co. thought they were going to lose the election during the last two weeks. They were not acting like a confident campaign and the knives were already out. You can't say the same for Democrats this time. Harris and Co. ran a tight as ship as tight can be. Trump's campaign did some things correct like encouraging rural ballot mail-in voters in Nevada (he really brought them out of the woodwork) but other parts of his GOTV were omnishambles.
2. I would posit that a big issue with the Democratic coalition is that it is hard to move forward but easy to fracture because of its diverse complexity and this might be a problem going forward. I'm a believer in Devurger's law so I don't think breaking up the Democratic Party is a good idea but I think a lot of the staying home was local ire over issues where it is very hard to square the circle. I think systematic racism against Black people is very real and two areas where you see it the most are policing and education. Reforming the police to you know shoot black people less has been a nearly impossible task. On the other hand, there is a lot of evidence that Asians are targeted by criminals more because they are seen less likely to fight back and also if they are naturalized citizens, they have experience with educational systems where relentless cutthroat competition is the norm and they don't always appreciate concepts of equity and fairness.
2b. You are I are in agreement about NIMBYism being a curse unfortunately it is a curse of many different causes leading to the road to NIMBYism and NIMBYism seems to have the same relentlessness as Ulster Irish during the Troubles. NIMBY will fight and NIMBY will be right. The YIMBY coalition is unfortunately filled with people who have busy lives. Interestingly, there were some issues in SF this year where Asians were NIMBY voters because they were most opposed to shutting down the Great Highway (SF's highway to nowhere) and turning it into a park.
FWIW in my district, the progressive board of supes candidate won reelection over the moderate tough on crime candidate and I think NIMBYism pushed her over the edge.
2c. For Hispanic voters, JB is going to mock this but there is a hell of lot of evidence for them going "The leopards won't eat my face" despite Harris and others telling them "No, the leopards are going to eat your face." LeeEsq posted the Propublica article where the undocumented woman said she is glad her daughters voted for Trump even though Miller is looking at ways to nullify Birthright Citizenship/14th Amendment and the woman requested to be quoted by her first name only as a safety concern. She did say that Trump knows how to separate the good ones from the bad ones, you know, like Santa Claus. She seemed to really resent the newer undocumented immigrants getting the same perks she got as an undocumented immigrant and she blamed Biden and the Democrats for not having a magic wand to push immigration reform through Congress.
She is not the only Hispanic person I have seen interviewed express this view.
It is probably a very unfashionable attitude here in the land of Green Lanternism but the mood I am seeing from a lot of normie Democrats, is "Okay, I guess you do need to F around and find out. Go at it!!!"
Again, there are about 15-45 million people who probably think Trump and Co are as bad as Harris said they are and take what he says seriously and literally. I think the rest of the country, including many Harris voters, see Trump as a TV CHARACTER (again the word character is key here) and do not take him seriously or literally. And they might just need to learn the hard way that this is wrong.
He is Mr. Oppositional Defiance Disorder who cannot answer anything except as a middle school class clown and he gets. very upset when anyone pushes back at him.
I don’t see why he deserves a charitable read. He isn’t a scamp. He is a guy in his 50s. And almost everything he writes is anti-anti Trump at best.
Harris didn’t lose ground with Jews. She won between 71 to 80 percent of the Jewish vote which either compares to Biden or is s number not seen since 2008
The other aspect to this is asymmetrical hack gap stuff:
Republicans love apostates; Democrats don’t.
Republicans love any random or not so random Democrat going on their media to discuss why Democrats suck and as far as I can tell this happens a lot because political operatives are often ambitious and cynical. The head of Harris’ operations in PA is apparently going on Fox News a lot to throw Democrats under the bus again and again.
Democrats don’t get joy out of this as much.
Electorally, I think it worked out this way. Trump benefits from kooks like RFK Jr, Gabbard, and the Tabibi/Greenwald set campaigning for him because they attract voters who might not be reactionary-nationalists but are kooky about one thing or another and in a smash “the system” mood.
Harris probably did not gain or lose anything from having Cheney campaign fir her but I know plenty of Democrats who weren’t fond of it and reluctant to embrace an enemy of my enemy is my friend thing with either Cheney or McCrystal
Harris tried to reach everyone she could in a broad anti-Trump coalition and I am not sure that was a bad call. It might have led to her barely losing instead of losing bigly.
Do you remember the polling that had Biden losing to Haley by like 12-15 points?
Trump’s unique horribleness but also weird appeal to some probably cause Harris to barely lose instead of losing big time. It also contributed to Republicans basically staying static in the House.
There is a fair amount of evidence that Trump’s coattails are short. His only real Senate victory was probably McCormack given that Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia are deep red now. Slotkin, Baldwin, and Gallego had narrower wins but they had them.
There is also the fact that there are somewhere between 15-45 million Americans who see Trump as truly having no irredeemable qualities and the rest of America sees him as a TV character (yes character is intentional) doing a bit that id not to be taken seriously or literally.
My main point here though is to pushback against JB and his hobby horses because he barely hides his views that he thinks Democrats are out of touch elitist killjoys who complain about videogame girls in bikini armor.
Pointing out inflation killed incumbents around the world, left or right, deflates all the sails of professional and amateur pundit’s from engaging in their hobby horses and the pundit’s fallacy and that is a crime that cannot be allowed to pass!!
Inflation is more than people voting for Trump it is also people staying home.
Harris won about 500K more votes in California than HRC did in 2016. She received about 1.9 million votes less than Biden did in 2020. Meanwhile Trump's vote totals in CA in 2020 and 2024 were basically static. His big gain was between 2016 (4.4 million) and 2020 (6 million). Democrats flipped three CA house seats in 2024 despite GOP getting a bit of an increase in its vote share.
A look at how inflation has worked on elections across the globe in 2024: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/12/11/global-elections-in-2024-what-we-learned-in-a-year-of-political-disruption/
"Inflation was an especially important issue in this year’s elections, although economic concerns were prevalent in many countries before the post-pandemic wave of global price increases. The past two decades have seen financial crises, the Great Recession, the COVID-19 economic downturn, inflation and ongoing economic inequality, all of which may have shaped the mood in nations around the globe."
But the problem is all the incentives of American political and media culture, both professionally and among armchair pundits, is to avoid Occam's Razor by all means necessary because how does that get you in the news or with a chance to get on the news. It ends up being a 30 second to 2-minute segment. Writing something about how Democrats have a sports or culture problem allows for endless pontificating and airtime or press.
Meh. Let a thousand think pieces flow because just admitting "it was inflation" just like inflation took down almost every single government in power in 2021 in post-2021 elections means we don't have copy to produce and that means I don't get paid. Or I don't get to stroke my chin pompously.
And by just a coincidence, all these think pieces happen to fit the prejudices of thin-skinned middle aged or approaching middle-aged white guys who have their fee fees hurt when not being the center of the universe.
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024”
Josh Marshall on Musk as Trump's Trump: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-trump
"But none of those points are the critical ones. This is about Elon Musk.
Trump has brought Musk into the central circle of power. He’s not only de facto Vice President. When was the last time you saw JD Vance? He’s practically co-president. Musk is erratic, volatile, impulsive, mercurial. He introduces a huge source of unpredictability and chaos into the presidency that for once Trump doesn’t control. See it clearly: Musk did this. Trump thrives on chaos, but his chaos. Not someone else’s chaos.
Trump is following. He’s trying to pretend otherwise but he’s following. And unlike all of Trump’s other bad hires or hires he gets tired of he can’t just shitcan Musk like all the rest. Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He’s got a bigger megaphone. And he’s got his own brand. I’m pretty sure there will eventually be a really big and really ugly falling out between the two of them. But it will take a while to get there and the costs are potentially quite large for both of them."
On “From Semafor: Kamala Harris’ digital chief on Democrats ‘losing hold of culture’”
The Federal Government does not set housing policy. Perhaps it should but housing/building policy is the power of the State Governments.
Housing is an interesting issue because I think it is an area where you are likely to fracture Democrats, including, and maybe especially in blue states and cities. You have the YIMBY crowd which is starting to organize effectively but is generally homogeneous to me: they tend to be formally educated, middle-income and upper-middle income professionals who are priced out of buying their first home in their desired locations much of the time. In short, they tend to be bougie yuppies.
Then you have NIMBY/PHIMBY. This group is interesting because their strength comes from how diverse they area:
1. You have rich homeowners who don't want their property values to decrease. That is simple enough.
2. You have various minority groups that worried about being displaced because of their crumbly apartments being taken down and their neighborhoods being "gentrified"
3. The really interesting crowd behind NIMBY/PHIMBY is the romantic bohemians. These are people who can remember or wish they were back in the the 1970s and 80s and perhaps early 90s when cities were rough and ready but filled with dynamic exciting spaces for artists, musicians, etc. Instead of restaurants offering 300 dollar tasting menus, you had CBGBs, the Mudd Clubb or Danceteria or the local equivalent. Or had lofts and cheap apartments, sure you had thirty locks on your door but you can work as a bike messenger, afford rent, go to play a gig with your band, and then spend a lazy afternoon at Zeitgeist drinking beers and flirting with the cute, sassy bartender in a mini-skirt and pixie haircut. Plus you had hair!
The thing # 1 does is have resources to file CEQA lawsuit after CEQA lawsuit. What groups #2 and 3 have is passion and the time to go to meeting after meeting and gum up the works of new housing. Group # 2 is also very good and used to political and community organizing from various civil rights struggles.
YIMBYs tend to be people with demanding jobs and/or young families who do what they can when they can but are generally not used to political organizing and community activism.
In SF this year, it was the YIMBYs who generally did better but there were exceptions and that is not always guaranteed.
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024”
He apparently had a temper tantrum about no legislation until he is sworn in. Johnson might be on his way out as speaker because of this.
"
President-elect Musk has apparently killed the CR resolution. Shut down time people.
"
In 2018, the legal sports betting industry in the US had a revenue of 430 million. Last year, it had a revenue of 11.04 billion.
"
In today's episode of every accusation is a confession, the GOP is sure as hell looking for a way to send Liz Cheney to jail or at least make her stand for some kind of trial: https://newrepublic.com/post/189484/house-republicans-revenge-liz-cheney
"
Let’s up they don’t bend the knee like ABC/Disney.
He is so thin-skinned.
"
Kevin Drum looks at the Democratic results in CA: https://jabberwocking.com/what-really-happened-in-2024/
"For what it's worth, in final polling before the election Trump gained a couple of points compared to 2020, which turned into a 1% increase in his vote. Harris lost a couple of points, which turned into a 17% drop in her vote. This points in the direction of laziness/strategic voting.
Was this a problem with Harris in particular or with Democrats in general? Here's the House vote over the past couple of decades:
The Democratic share of the vote was down this year, so maybe it really is a D problem. But there's evidence this is mostly strategic. Here's the number of seats Democrats have won:
It was up! Democrats voted where they needed to but skipped out where a seat was uncompetitive. In the end, the Democratic share of the California delegation reached an all-time record aside from the blowout year of 2018.
I don't have a big axe to grind here. I just want to know: Was there a specific problem with Kamala Harris this year or is there a widespread problem with the Democratic brand in general? Honestly, I see evidence both ways. You really can't ignore the fact that every single state (in fact, every single county) shifted red. On the other hand, Harris lost by only 1.5% of the vote nationwide, while House Democrats gained 0.6% of the national vote compared to 2022 and picked up two seats. It's the same dynamic that played out in the deep-blue state of California.
It's just a genuine mystery. Trump really did pick up support compared to 2016, but then again, so did Harris by a little bit. Trump mainly picked up support from the third-party vote, not from Democrats."
On “From Semafor: Kamala Harris’ digital chief on Democrats ‘losing hold of culture’”
Here is the thing, I think voters can make bad decisions and should be held accountable for them.
I don't think any campaign is perfect and every campaign admits mistakes but I don't think Harris made as many mistakes as you put it below. As JVL at the Bulwark noted numerous times during the election, what do voters want? People said they wanted Biden to drop out so the Democrats worked together and got Biden to drop out and the Democrats then nominated the person most likely to be a unifying figure for the party. A boar on the floor/open convention might give reporters and pundits (amateur and professional) sex dreams but it would be a disaster for party unity.
Maybe Biden should have announced he wasn't running for reelection after the midterms but the chances of that happening were slim. People who run for President have tremendous ego and self-regard, even the ones we like.
I think Harris broke from Biden as much as she could and she did acknowledge various splits among Democratic groups.
Two more thoughts:
1. I will go to my grave think Trump and Co. thought they were going to lose the election during the last two weeks. They were not acting like a confident campaign and the knives were already out. You can't say the same for Democrats this time. Harris and Co. ran a tight as ship as tight can be. Trump's campaign did some things correct like encouraging rural ballot mail-in voters in Nevada (he really brought them out of the woodwork) but other parts of his GOTV were omnishambles.
2. I would posit that a big issue with the Democratic coalition is that it is hard to move forward but easy to fracture because of its diverse complexity and this might be a problem going forward. I'm a believer in Devurger's law so I don't think breaking up the Democratic Party is a good idea but I think a lot of the staying home was local ire over issues where it is very hard to square the circle. I think systematic racism against Black people is very real and two areas where you see it the most are policing and education. Reforming the police to you know shoot black people less has been a nearly impossible task. On the other hand, there is a lot of evidence that Asians are targeted by criminals more because they are seen less likely to fight back and also if they are naturalized citizens, they have experience with educational systems where relentless cutthroat competition is the norm and they don't always appreciate concepts of equity and fairness.
2b. You are I are in agreement about NIMBYism being a curse unfortunately it is a curse of many different causes leading to the road to NIMBYism and NIMBYism seems to have the same relentlessness as Ulster Irish during the Troubles. NIMBY will fight and NIMBY will be right. The YIMBY coalition is unfortunately filled with people who have busy lives. Interestingly, there were some issues in SF this year where Asians were NIMBY voters because they were most opposed to shutting down the Great Highway (SF's highway to nowhere) and turning it into a park.
FWIW in my district, the progressive board of supes candidate won reelection over the moderate tough on crime candidate and I think NIMBYism pushed her over the edge.
2c. For Hispanic voters, JB is going to mock this but there is a hell of lot of evidence for them going "The leopards won't eat my face" despite Harris and others telling them "No, the leopards are going to eat your face." LeeEsq posted the Propublica article where the undocumented woman said she is glad her daughters voted for Trump even though Miller is looking at ways to nullify Birthright Citizenship/14th Amendment and the woman requested to be quoted by her first name only as a safety concern. She did say that Trump knows how to separate the good ones from the bad ones, you know, like Santa Claus. She seemed to really resent the newer undocumented immigrants getting the same perks she got as an undocumented immigrant and she blamed Biden and the Democrats for not having a magic wand to push immigration reform through Congress.
She is not the only Hispanic person I have seen interviewed express this view.
It is probably a very unfashionable attitude here in the land of Green Lanternism but the mood I am seeing from a lot of normie Democrats, is "Okay, I guess you do need to F around and find out. Go at it!!!"
Again, there are about 15-45 million people who probably think Trump and Co are as bad as Harris said they are and take what he says seriously and literally. I think the rest of the country, including many Harris voters, see Trump as a TV CHARACTER (again the word character is key here) and do not take him seriously or literally. And they might just need to learn the hard way that this is wrong.
"
He is Mr. Oppositional Defiance Disorder who cannot answer anything except as a middle school class clown and he gets. very upset when anyone pushes back at him.
I don’t see why he deserves a charitable read. He isn’t a scamp. He is a guy in his 50s. And almost everything he writes is anti-anti Trump at best.
"
Harris didn’t lose ground with Jews. She won between 71 to 80 percent of the Jewish vote which either compares to Biden or is s number not seen since 2008
"
The other aspect to this is asymmetrical hack gap stuff:
Republicans love apostates; Democrats don’t.
Republicans love any random or not so random Democrat going on their media to discuss why Democrats suck and as far as I can tell this happens a lot because political operatives are often ambitious and cynical. The head of Harris’ operations in PA is apparently going on Fox News a lot to throw Democrats under the bus again and again.
Democrats don’t get joy out of this as much.
Electorally, I think it worked out this way. Trump benefits from kooks like RFK Jr, Gabbard, and the Tabibi/Greenwald set campaigning for him because they attract voters who might not be reactionary-nationalists but are kooky about one thing or another and in a smash “the system” mood.
Harris probably did not gain or lose anything from having Cheney campaign fir her but I know plenty of Democrats who weren’t fond of it and reluctant to embrace an enemy of my enemy is my friend thing with either Cheney or McCrystal
"
Harris tried to reach everyone she could in a broad anti-Trump coalition and I am not sure that was a bad call. It might have led to her barely losing instead of losing bigly.
"
Do you remember the polling that had Biden losing to Haley by like 12-15 points?
Trump’s unique horribleness but also weird appeal to some probably cause Harris to barely lose instead of losing big time. It also contributed to Republicans basically staying static in the House.
There is a fair amount of evidence that Trump’s coattails are short. His only real Senate victory was probably McCormack given that Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia are deep red now. Slotkin, Baldwin, and Gallego had narrower wins but they had them.
There is also the fact that there are somewhere between 15-45 million Americans who see Trump as truly having no irredeemable qualities and the rest of America sees him as a TV character (yes character is intentional) doing a bit that id not to be taken seriously or literally.
My main point here though is to pushback against JB and his hobby horses because he barely hides his views that he thinks Democrats are out of touch elitist killjoys who complain about videogame girls in bikini armor.
Pointing out inflation killed incumbents around the world, left or right, deflates all the sails of professional and amateur pundit’s from engaging in their hobby horses and the pundit’s fallacy and that is a crime that cannot be allowed to pass!!
On “Panic! The Kind That Came From New Jersey”
What is a synonym for being an overly-grown middle/school miscreant who likes to dish it out but gets really upset when getting pushback?
"
I think you are missing the joke. What is a synonym for going on and on?
"
I'm tired of everyone going on and on about this.
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/9/2024”
It's time for another round, can you spot what is wrong with the copy?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bb25231eebc97c0bb80e478164458b3eb54165d38665dbf2dbb655aa06297f79.png
"
Andressen apparently not only quoted Curtis "Americans need to get over their dictator phobia" Yarvin but called Yarvin, "my friend"
Are we going to find out you want to call Yarvin your friend? Or are you happy with a parasocial relationship?
https://bsky.app/profile/brendannyhan.bsky.social/post/3ldf57ztdps2b
On “From Semafor: Kamala Harris’ digital chief on Democrats ‘losing hold of culture’”
It is also interesting as an example of American exceptionalism.
1. Here is a chart of incumbent governments losing power across the globe in 2024 and inflation being a key reason;
2. Americans: Wait, that can't be correct for us.
"
And you hate Occam's Razor.
Inflation is more than people voting for Trump it is also people staying home.
Harris won about 500K more votes in California than HRC did in 2016. She received about 1.9 million votes less than Biden did in 2020. Meanwhile Trump's vote totals in CA in 2020 and 2024 were basically static. His big gain was between 2016 (4.4 million) and 2020 (6 million). Democrats flipped three CA house seats in 2024 despite GOP getting a bit of an increase in its vote share.
"
https://www.marketplace.org/2024/11/14/incumbents-are-losing-around-the-world-not-just-the-u-s/
"
A look at how inflation has worked on elections across the globe in 2024: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/12/11/global-elections-in-2024-what-we-learned-in-a-year-of-political-disruption/
"Inflation was an especially important issue in this year’s elections, although economic concerns were prevalent in many countries before the post-pandemic wave of global price increases. The past two decades have seen financial crises, the Great Recession, the COVID-19 economic downturn, inflation and ongoing economic inequality, all of which may have shaped the mood in nations around the globe."
But the problem is all the incentives of American political and media culture, both professionally and among armchair pundits, is to avoid Occam's Razor by all means necessary because how does that get you in the news or with a chance to get on the news. It ends up being a 30 second to 2-minute segment. Writing something about how Democrats have a sports or culture problem allows for endless pontificating and airtime or press.
"
Meh. Let a thousand think pieces flow because just admitting "it was inflation" just like inflation took down almost every single government in power in 2021 in post-2021 elections means we don't have copy to produce and that means I don't get paid. Or I don't get to stroke my chin pompously.
And by just a coincidence, all these think pieces happen to fit the prejudices of thin-skinned middle aged or approaching middle-aged white guys who have their fee fees hurt when not being the center of the universe.
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/9/2024”
Meh. I will say this for Andreesen, at least he is honest with his beliefs. I don't think the same can be said for you.
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-disease-of-affluence/
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.