2020 Presidential Election

[charley]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

As i mentioned ion a previous post, the US suicide rate has increased 30% since 2000:

Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.

The increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.

Yesterday i was on the Galveston Daily News website and i was reading the comments under a story on projected sea level rise, and 90% of commenters (most of whom can see the Gulf of Mexico from their houses) were calling climate change a liberal hoax perpetuated by money-hungry academics.

The reason US evangelicals are so rabid about Israel is because they need for the geopolitics of the situation to go a certain way so the apocalypse and rapture can hurry up and get here.

What i am saying is that the "dark cancer" is a death wish that has taken over about half of the population.

Our species as a whole is suicidal.

We've always had a suicide switch hiding inside of us-- you can see this in the apocalypse prophecies that feature in so many religions. Those are there because we know there has to be an ending to our story, because we also know, instinctively and subconsciously, that our existence is unsustainable-- just the mathematical fact of exponential population growth within a finite environment has a bad ending coded in from the beginning.

I think the suicide switch in our evolutionary makeup was triggered in 1945 when we dropped the first nuclear bomb. Our ending began that day-- as soon as it became possible for man to destroy life on earth, it also became inevitable on a long enough timeline. We know that, deep down, and we've been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since.

What's happening now is that more and more people are tired of the suspense and just want to get it over with.

That is why we have Trump/Brexit/Marine le Pen, Bolsnaro, etc. If enough countries slide off the rails and into nationalism, the cooperation we need to save ourselves becomes impossible.

Deep down, a lot of people want that. We can't save ourselves without some discomfort and a big slice of the population would rather we all die instead of cutting consumption of anything at all.

Its not Rs vs Ds, or progressives vs liberals-- it's Team Apocalypse vs Team Carry On-- except all of the infighting and purity testing we have in certain corners of Team Carry On makes me think the suicide bug has bit a lot of us, too. Like, let's take a decade-long time-out right here, with one minute to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, and throw a couple of elections so we can break the back of the two-party system.

My jaw dropped when reading everything you wrote. OMG, where does one start?

The suicide stuff, omg, women, how tragic. I have read about suicide genes in simple organisms... Personally, have never felt suicidal, but am very aware of how things have changed from the time and in the way the Americans ended WWII - I would call it a a wrong turn - yes, indeed. It is the epitome of self-destruction.

As one see it (extensional awareness) this wrong turn has its own momentum, and events are moving in a way that cannot be reversed. Nothing one (or others who see it) could do or say will reverse this trend. There is a possibility of a new movement (one would call it a new seed) only in 200-300 years.

Personally, life protects me. One doesn't have to do a thing. Because of one side-effect of meditation, one observes with dispassionate indifference that the horrific tragedies that are impending with the resulting loss of millions of lives are inevitable.

One's one extensional awareness is such that one is wary to move, goodness in Canadians having dropped dramatically and exponentially. The movement away from the land to urban areas has greatly affected this drop.

There is also the fact that people do not realize that there is only one human brain, and like birds flying in a flock, they are moving in one direction. Even the more sentient fish, dolphins and whales, are beaching themselves - not to mention how so many animals are moving towards extinction.

Personally, one skips from rock to rock, along the stream of sorrow, which has become way to much to bear. Every time one rests (makes any kind of connection with someone involved in this dark trend) - even for a second, one senses the impending doom.

Such people have made everything involved in life an entertainment, an endless repetitive pleasure. (One would add that one has nothing against pleasure per se.)

One shudders in horror at the thought of even having someone like that come into close physical contact...

Not being into power, one is powerless, and can only observe. Enough said...

[Martina]

I actually heard a journalist use the phrase "late Capitalism" on the radio the other day. My mouth fell open. The leftist critique of Capitalism is going mainstream. I think because it's hard to deny anymore. The end result of Capitalism is that it consumes itself, destroying everything for short term gain.

I don't think Capitalism is an expression of some inherent human impulse although elements of it are. Early humans wiped out large mammals when we moved into new environments, and we wiped ourselves out in some places due to deforestation. But cooperation is also in our DNA. Think of bonobos. Even chimpanzee troops over time have as many cooperative peacemaker alphas as they do warrior Kings. Evolution makes sure there's always both to choose from. That doesn't mean we won't go extinct. We surely will at some point.

I honestly don't know if we'll survive on this planet. I don't care that much. I do know that the planet will survive anything we do to it. Some life will remain, and there will be a reboot. We'd have to completely burn the atmosphere off and boil the oceans to destroy 99 point whatever percent of life, and while we're fucking with them, we're not yet capable of that. (I googled, and even if all the nuclear weapons were detonated creating a long long nuclear Winter, scientists say only 75% of life on the planet would die. It's gonna take an asteroid to kill the planet until we invent something worse than nuclear weapons.) I think we'll kill ourselves long before we destroy the planet. I am not saying we won't cause a mass extinction. We already are. But life will go on.

I'm wandering. What I think we're seeing is the late stage of Capitalism. But something different will emerge. Even if inequality gets much worse, and the super rich arm themselves, etc., I think that something different and more egalitarian will emerge. There is too much information, there are too many smart people, for the one tenth of one percent to continue in power once our very lives are at risk (water rationing, for example).

But who knows? The Nazis were very successful where they ruled. Eighty percent of Germans supported them. Because the Nazis wiped out entire towns when there was resistance, resistance really was futile. The French resistance was meaningless. All resistance movements were except Tito's in what became Yugoslavia. A really determined Fascist regime, or group of regimes, could create some kind of temporary dystopia.

I agree it's not Republicans versus Democrats because liberals have been destroying our economies and the planet at a furious pace. It's the one tenth of one percent versus the rest of us. People who continue to support mainstream Dems, along with Republicans, remain blind to this and are part of the problem. The lesser of two evils will not save us from a nasty resolution to these global economic and evironmental changes.

[kittygrrl]

I think we should split the country down the Mississippi River-eastern half-conservatives
western half-progressives..it's kinda happening already. I think they should be separate countries. The North & South tried it once but i think people may be more interested in it considering the political divide that exists now. I have heard California would like to be it's own country..I like the idea but they have one huge problem. Water.

[C0LLETTE]

Originally Posted by kittygrrl

I think we should split the country down the Mississippi River-eastern half-conservatives
western half-progressives..it's kinda happening already. I think they should be separate countries. The North & South tried it once but i think people may be more interested in it considering the political divide that exists now. I have heard California would like to be it's own country..I like the idea but they have one huge problem. Water.

If California wants to join up with Canada, we'll give them all the water they want.

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by Martina

What I think we're seeing is the late stage of Capitalism. But something different will emerge. Even if inequality gets much worse, and the super rich arm themselves, etc., I think that something different and more egalitarian will emerge. There is too much information, there are too many smart people, for the one tenth of one percent to continue in power once our very lives are at risk (water rationing, for example).

i really feel like the concepts we have of freedom and liberty, by now several centuries old, become less feasible as the population grows. There are just too many of us now for freedom to mean anything except the right to choices in consumption (capitalism) and the right to harm oneself/others/the planet without government interference (libertarianism.)

The planet is getting too full for everyone to just do what they want. It is too full for every nation to just do what they want. As we get more crowded, we have less freedom, and it gets harder to exercise the freedoms that remain without impacting everyone around you.

We have to redefine freedom as security, despite what Ben Franklin said ("Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.")

The first time i ever understood the difference between joy and happiness was when i read a negative definition of joy-- describing joy as the sense of well-being that arises from the removal of worry.

That is what freedom will mean in the 22nd century, for the 20% of humanity that remains. "Freedom" will mean "food, health, and housing security with sufficient opportunities for creating meaning."

[kittygrrl]

your post reminded me of what happened after the plague...those that remained did enjoy more opportunity and more food...the upside of calamity...hm, food for thought

[cathexis]

With all the environmental destruction, we'll be left with scarce resources. All the wild areas that have been opened for unconscientious hunting practices and exploitation of minerals and coal/oil, the turning back of fairly good environmental regulations, ice cap melting, and plastics in the ocean, etc. are signs of Capitalism decay.

One day we will have a Great Depression (1929) or Great Recession (2008) that cannot be resolved, a perfect opportunity for a Global Fascist takeover.

Individual countries need to be ready with an acceptable alternate form of government lest Fascism move in to fill the void. The most negative force will always invade and prevail like an untended lawn going to weed.

[Martina]

Well, Beto has declared. I like this Buttigieg guy. That meme of his reaction to the idea of Pence as President was a riot. And so real. It sounds like Biden's going to announce soon.

Tulsi Gabbard's apology/explanation for her homophobia did not strike me as heart felt. Who knows?

[dark_crystal]

Dear Beto:



signed, someone who voted for you for Senate

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by Martina

Well, Beto has declared. I like this Buttigieg guy. That meme of his reaction to the idea of Pence as President was a riot. And so real. It sounds like Biden's going to announce soon.

Tulsi Gabbard's apology/explanation for her homophobia did not strike me as heart felt. Who knows?

I really like Mayor Pete! The CNN Town Hall he did on Sunday was amazing-- so intelligent, thoughtful, and authentic.

He said he has 85% of the donors he needs for the debate stage.

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by Martina

I actually heard a journalist use the phrase "late Capitalism" on the radio the other day. My mouth fell open. The leftist critique of Capitalism is going mainstream. I think because it's hard to deny anymore. The end result of Capitalism is that it consumes itself, destroying everything for short term gain.

I don't think Capitalism is an expression of some inherent human impulse although elements of it are. Early humans wiped out large mammals when we moved into new environments, and we wiped ourselves out in some places due to deforestation. But cooperation is also in our DNA. Think of bonobos. Even chimpanzee troops over time have as many cooperative peacemaker alphas as they do warrior Kings. Evolution makes sure there's always both to choose from. That doesn't mean we won't go extinct. We surely will at some point.

I honestly don't know if we'll survive on this planet. I don't care that much. I do know that the planet will survive anything we do to it. Some life will remain, and there will be a reboot. We'd have to completely burn the atmosphere off and boil the oceans to destroy 99 point whatever percent of life, and while we're fucking with them, we're not yet capable of that. (I googled, and even if all the nuclear weapons were detonated creating a long long nuclear Winter, scientists say only 75% of life on the planet would die. It's gonna take an asteroid to kill the planet until we invent something worse than nuclear weapons.) I think we'll kill ourselves long before we destroy the planet. I am not saying we won't cause a mass extinction. We already are. But life will go on.

I'm wandering. What I think we're seeing is the late stage of Capitalism. But something different will emerge. Even if inequality gets much worse, and the super rich arm themselves, etc., I think that something different and more egalitarian will emerge. There is too much information, there are too many smart people, for the one tenth of one percent to continue in power once our very lives are at risk (water rationing, for example).

But who knows? The Nazis were very successful where they ruled. Eighty percent of Germans supported them. Because the Nazis wiped out entire towns when there was resistance, resistance really was futile. The French resistance was meaningless. All resistance movements were except Tito's in what became Yugoslavia. A really determined Fascist regime, or group of regimes, could create some kind of temporary dystopia.

I agree it's not Republicans versus Democrats because liberals have been destroying our economies and the planet at a furious pace. It's the one tenth of one percent versus the rest of us. People who continue to support mainstream Dems, along with Republicans, remain blind to this and are part of the problem. The lesser of two evils will not save us from a nasty resolution to these global economic and evironmental changes.

As i have mentioned (i always say that lately because i've been on here a loooong time and everything i say is a rerun, i feel) I read A LOT of science fiction.

One of my favorite authors, Cory Doctorow has written about "post-scarcity economies" and half-jokingly about "fully automated luxury space communism." He has also written about reputation economies.

Basically the principle is that increasing automation means scarcity will eventually be able to disappear, and won't continue to rule the economy unless we artificially maintain it (likely)

This is in line with AOC's comments the other day about how odd it is that we should have to fear automation.

As far as capitalism goes, i was pretty influenced by Max Weber, who said that the roots of capitalism lie in Judeo-Christian monotheism, and that it's spread was enabled by the Protestant Reformation and Calvinism (i know for a fact i ranted about this in the 2016 thread, as a lot of how Trump won has its roots in Calvinist ideas of wealth.) Definitely not an inherent human impulse.

Unfortunately, the lesser of two evils is the best we can hope for. Humanity has a "long tail." There will always be a broad spectrum of thought and only the middling ground is likely to achieve the critical mass that changes thought into action. We need extreme action, but the mainstream has the numbers.

If we dismiss everyone to the right of Bernie, we die.

We can't reject "the lesser of two evils." We have to colonize it.

This is why figures like Bernie and AOC are so important-- they are mainstreaming what was once an extreme, and making the lesser of two evils marginally less evil.

This is also why the condescension and aggression that leftists have sometimes expressed is so damaging. Every time we sneer at the centrists we shoot ourselves in the foot.

The right wing calls all non-right-wingers baby killers, says we are delusional and that our views are evidence of a mental disorder, and we feel like that makes it ok to police everybody's wokeness and gatekeep "woke" status against anyone of insufficient ideological purity.

AOC was widely quoted by the right-wing press for her comments at SXSW where she said:

“Stop trying to win people over, stop trying to enter a conversation thinking that you’re going to, like, ‘aha’ them into changing their minds. And so, I think, that, you know, we’ve kind of lost the art of conversation. So when I enter a conversation with someone I actually try to learn more about where they’re coming from, like I try — I actually use it as an experience to — like, let’s say, I’m talking to someone who’s saying something really racist and they don’t even realize that they’re saying something really racist, I — I asked some questions because I’m interested, I’m fascinated by that. How does that work, you know?”

“we have to learn to, like, really disarm ourselves in these conversations first of all, because we approach them with so much hostility and, like, they get mad and we get mad and all of these things and — and we have — so, part of it is, like, emotional work. And — and the second part of it is intention, like, what are you trying to get out of this conversation?”

"What are you trying to get out of this conversation?"

Indeed.

We need to remember that we are fighting to survive and the right wing is not. We can't afford the self-indulgence that they can.

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

If we dismiss everyone to the right of Bernie, we die.

We can't reject "the lesser of two evils." We have to colonize it.

This is why figures like Bernie and AOC are so important-- they are mainstreaming what was once an extreme, and making the lesser of two evils marginally less evil.

This is also why the condescension and aggression that leftists have sometimes expressed is so damaging. Every time we sneer at the centrists we shoot ourselves in the foot.

The right wing calls all non-right-wingers baby killers, says we are delusional and that our views are evidence of a mental disorder, and we feel like that makes it ok to police everybody's wokeness and gatekeep "woke" status against anyone of insufficient ideological purity.

AOC was widely quoted by the right-wing press for her comments at SXSW where she said:

“Stop trying to win people over, stop trying to enter a conversation thinking that you’re going to, like, ‘aha’ them into changing their minds. And so, I think, that, you know, we’ve kind of lost the art of conversation. So when I enter a conversation with someone I actually try to learn more about where they’re coming from, like I try — I actually use it as an experience to — like, let’s say, I’m talking to someone who’s saying something really racist and they don’t even realize that they’re saying something really racist, I — I asked some questions because I’m interested, I’m fascinated by that. How does that work, you know?”

“we have to learn to, like, really disarm ourselves in these conversations first of all, because we approach them with so much hostility and, like, they get mad and we get mad and all of these things and — and we have — so, part of it is, like, emotional work. And — and the second part of it is intention, like, what are you trying to get out of this conversation?”

"What are you trying to get out of this conversation?"

Indeed.

We need to remember that we are fighting to survive and the right wing is not. We can't afford the self-indulgence that they can.

For clarity, i am not calling out individuals here, but questioning decisions like the one to bar pro-life feminists from the Women's March.

Pro-life feminists are the lesser of two evils compared to Operation Rescue, and they do not have a pro-life legislative or judicial agenda. They are not a threat to us, but we decided we did not need their support.

[Martina]

I can't delude myself that mainstream Dems, liberals, are not as implicated in the systems that keep us hurling toward the precipice as Conservatives are.

I absolutely despise the neo-liberal politics of Clinton and Obama. The college admissions scandal is causing people everywhere to laugh at the meritocracy bullshit they've been hearing for so long.

Not only did liberals undermine unions, they allowed corporations to destroy industry. Jobs were not just exported when factories relocated, Dems, along with Republicans, applauded while the Bain Capitols of this world tore apart viable businesses and sold them for parts for short term profit.

Cannibalizing industry left them awash in cash which they invested in the financial instruments that collapsed our economy in 08.

Worker retraining programs were completely half assed and ineffective while Democrats endlessly endlessly blamed working people for not adjusting to the new global economy. Dems have been the kings of the meritocracy bullshit.

Then the unregulated and unethical financial industry took off because of the bound to fail mortgage backed securities. Corporations and the very rich had an even more difficult time finding places to put their wealth. So they tempted countries like Greece and Spain to take huge investments which could never be repaid. Everyone knew this, but it was the fucking establishment, like the neo-liberal World Bank, enabling it all.

After the crash, they forced austerity onto a number of countries. Literally tens of thousands of Greek children are now brain damaged from poor nutrition because of the worst years of austerity.

Every bullshit thing that was supposed to help working people in the US survive the depredations of the unregulated economy that Reagan and Clinton let loose on us was a lie. Almost no one was helped by Obama's programs to help people during the mortgage crisis. They didn't even spend the money initially allocated. Almost no one has been helped by the student debt forgiveness programs. And as I said, the retraining programs of the previous generation didn't make the tiniest dent.

And now they have come after public pensions and social security. The effort to destroy public employee unions and pilfer our pensions has been backed by Clintonite meritocracy liberals like Bill Gates.

On the issues that have led us to this place, where populism is appealing to people around the world, liberals are as guilty as conservatives. And voters know it. They know they've been lied to. The only thing that can combat fascist populism is the truth that comes from left-leaning populists like Bernie.

[C0LLETTE]

I believe that the liberal centre should and must hold. Without it we collapse into a chaotic gaping vacuum and the apocalyptic end that the extremes on both the Left and the Right seem so gleefully and confidently to predict becomes our fate.

The Centre IS Populst. That is where most of us are... in the middle, not wanting to be thrown into the flames of other people's extreme political and religious philosophies...the" Far This " and the " Far That ". The centre is a relative place, not fixed and it does move ( albeit slowly )to reasonable, agreeable positions.

I believe that the "liberal centre" is the well-spring of human and humane sanity.

[Martina]

A Clinton-era centrist Democrat explains why it’s time to give democratic socialists a chance

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ft-brad-delong

The rise of the Democratic left, personified by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), has raised a serious question: Should Democrats lean away from market-friendly stances and get comfortable with big government again? Should they embrace an ambitious 2020 candidate like Sanders and policies like the Green New Deal, or stick with incrementalists like former Vice President Joe Biden and more market-oriented ideas like Obamacare?

One of the most interesting takes I’ve seen on this debate came from Brad DeLong, an economist at the University of California-Berkeley. DeLong, who served as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy in the Clinton administration, who is one of the market-friendly, “neoliberal” Democrats who have dominated the party for the last 20 years. The term he uses for himself is “Rubin Democrat” — referring to followers of finance industry-friendly Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

Yet DeLong believes that the time of people like him running the Democratic Party has passed. “The baton rightly passes to our colleagues on our left,” DeLong wrote. “We are still here, but it is not our time to lead.”

It’s not often that someone in this policy debate — or, frankly, any policy debate — suggests that their side should lose. So I reached out to DeLong to dig into the reasons for his position: Why does he believe that neoliberals’ time in the sun has come to an end?

The core reason, DeLong argues, is political. The policies he supports depend on a responsible center-right partner to succeed. They’re premised on the understanding that at least a faction of the Republican Party would be willing to support market-friendly ideas like Obamacare or a cap-and-trade system for climate change. This is no longer the case, if it ever were.

“Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney’s health care policy, with John McCain’s climate policy, with Bill Clinton’s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy,” DeLong notes. “And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years? No, they fucking did not.”

The result, he argues, is the nature of the Democratic Party needs to shift. Rather than being a center-left coalition dominated by market-friendly ideas designed to attract conservative support, the energy of the coalition should come from the left and its broad, sweeping ideas. Market-friendly neoliberals, rather than pushing their own ideology, should work to improve ideas on the left. This, he believes, is the most effective and sustainable basis for Democratic politics and policy for the foreseeable future.

What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Zack Beauchamp
I want to start with your notion of “Rubin Democrats.” What does that mean, exactly? What was the movement you identify with?

Brad DeLong
I would say it’s largely neoliberal, market-oriented, and market-regulation and tuning aimed at social democratic ends. It also involves taking a step in the direction of appeasing conservative priorities. The belief is that if you have a broad coalition behind such policy, it will be much more strongly entrenched in America and much better implemented than if it were implemented by a narrow, largely partisan majority.

And Rubin Democrats believe that you should prioritize economic growth. Once you have economic growth, electorates want to become a lot less Grinch-y and less likely to feel that redistribution to the poor is coming out of its hide, making them positively worse-off. Economic growth first, redistribution and beefing up the safety net second.

Zack Beauchamp
What you’re describing is a broad theory of political economy, in which a vision for what economic policies are best is intertwined with a particular view of what makes policies popular and sustainable. You say something about this is wrong — do you think it’s the political part, the economic part, or both?

Brad DeLong
We were certainly wrong, 100 percent, on the politics.

Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney’s health care policy, with John McCain’s climate policy, with Bill Clinton’s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy. He’s all these things not because the technocrats in his administration think they’re the best possible policies, but because [White House adviser] David Axelrod and company say they poll well.

And [Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel and company say we’ve got to build bridges to the Republicans. We’ve got to let Republicans amend cap and trade up the wazoo, we’ve got to let Republicans amend the [Affordable Care Act] up the wazoo before it comes up to a final vote, we’ve got to tread very lightly with finance on Dodd-Frank, we have to do a very premature pivot away from recession recovery to “entitlement reform.”

All of these with the idea that you would then collect a broad political coalition behind what is, indeed, Mitt Romney’s health care policy and John McCain’s climate policy and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy.

And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years?

No, they fucking did not. No allegiance to truth on anything other than the belief that John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell are the leaders of the Republican Party, and since they’ve decided on scorched earth, we’re to back them to the hilt. So the politics were completely wrong, and we saw this starting back in the Clinton administration.

Today, there’s literally nobody on the right between those frantically accommodating Donald Trump, on the one hand, and us on the other. Except for our brave friends in exile from the Cato Institute now trying to build something in the ruins at the [centrist] Niskanen Center. There’s simply no political place for neoliberals to lead with good policies that make a concession to right-wing concerns.

Zack Beauchamp
Let’s talk a little bit about the intra-Democratic fight. When you say “pass the baton to the left,” does that mean give up on substantive policies where you — meaning Rubin Democrats — disagree with the left?

Brad De Long
No. It means argue with them, to the extent that their policies are going to be wrong and destructive, but also accept that there is no political path to a coalition built from the Rubin-center out. Instead, we accommodate ourselves to those on our left. To the extent that they will not respond to our concerns, what they’re proposing is a helluva better than the poke-in-the-eye with a sharp stick. That’s either Trumpist proposals or the current status.

Zack Beauchamp
So the position is not that neoliberals should abandon their policy beliefs. It’s that you need to reorient your understanding of who your coalition is.

Brad DeLong
Yes, but that’s also relevant to policy beliefs, right?
A belief in cap and trade — rather than the carbon tax plus huge, honking public research — was both a belief that the market really ought to rule here, plus a belief that stakeholders who are producing carbon energy can be bought off with cap-and-trade: that the Koch brothers would rather be selling their carbon allowances than having to actually burn coal to produce things. Plus, a belief there were Republicans who would actually think that global warming is a menace, and be willing to argue strenuously within the Republican coalition that something needs to be done about this.

A bunch of policies that depended on there being a political-economic consensus to support them, as part of a broad agreement about America’s direction, are a lot worse as policies if that political-economic underpinning is not there. There also are a bunch of lessons about how policies that we thought are going to be very effective are rather less effective.

Zack Beauchamp
The response you hear from conservative and Democratic centrists, those Blue Dogs that remain, is that they are the partners that you need to appease, not the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez left. The Democratic coalition depends on winning in red states.

Brad DeLong
The first lesson is the Gingrich lesson: If you’re in a swing state, you lose your seat if the president of your party is perceived to be a failure. The highest priority for Blue Dogs in red and purple states — in 1994 and in 2010 — ought to have been making it clear the president of their party was a great success.

If there is a good state of the world in 2021 — the Lord willing and the creek don’t rise — everyone and all Blue Dogs in office needs to recognize that and act on that.

That’s the political level and on the policy level. We tried to do health reform the Republicans’ way ,and what’s now clear with a Republican Supreme Court and with a lot of Republican governors, any attempt to do it the Republicans’ way is going to get shredded. We tried to do climate policy the Republicans’ way, and got nowhere.

Until something non-rubble-ish is built in the Republican center, what might be good incremental policies just cannot be successfully implemented in an America as we know it today. We need Medicare-for-all, funded by a carbon tax, with a whole bunch of UBI rebates for the poor and public investment in green technologies.

That’s the best policy given the political-economic context. If the political-economic context were different — well, I’m fundamentally a neoliberal shill. It is very nice to use market means to social democratic ends when they are more effective, and they often are.

If you can properly tweak market prices, you then don’t just have one smart guy trying to design a policy that advances an objective — you have 30 million people all over the country, all incentivized to design a policy. That’s a wonderful thing to have.

Zack Beauchamp
But despite that substantive view, you think that instead of freaking out about the leftists at the gates, it’s smarter to side with them — to treat them as political coalition partners.

Brad De Long
Our current bunch of leftists are wonderful people, as far as leftists in the past are concerned. They’re social democrats, they’re very strong believers in democracy. They’re very strong believers in fair distribution of wealth. They could use a little more education about what is likely to work and what is not. But they’re people who we’re very, very lucky to have on our side.


That’s especially opposed to the people on the other side, who are very, very strange indeed. You listen to [Never Trump conservatives] like Tom Nichols or Bruce Bartlett or Bill Kristol or David Frum talk about all the people they had been with in meetings, biting their tongues over the past 25 years, and your reaction can only be, “Why didn’t you run away screaming into the night long ago?”

Zack Beauchamp
I don’t know if what you’re describing is a long-running reconfiguration of American politics, an emergency alliance with the left to stop an out-of-control right, or both. How would you describe the conditions that have pushed you toward a more-left oriented position than you had before?

Brad DeLong
I’d say we learned more about the world.

I could be confident in 2005 that [recession] stabilization should be the responsibility of the Federal Reserve. That you look at something like laser-eye surgery or rapid technological progress in hearing aids, you can kind of think that keeping a market in the most innovative parts of health care would be a good thing. So something like an insurance-plus-exchange system would be a good thing to have in America as a whole.

It’s much harder to believe in those things now. That’s one part of it. The world appears to be more like what lefties thought it was than what I thought it was for the last 10 or 15 years.

The other part is that while I would like to be part of a political coalition in the cat seat, able to call for bids from the left and the right about who wants to be part of the governing coalition to actually get things done, that’s simply not possible as of now.

We shouldn’t pretend that it is, or that it’s going to be. We need to find ways to improve left-wing initiatives, rather than demand that they start from our basic position and do minor tweaks to make them more acceptable to their underlying position.

[Martina]

From a Washington Post editorial commenting on the above interview:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.60fd189140fd

There’s a lot of chatter about an interview that center-left Democratic economist Brad DeLong just gave to Vox, in which DeLong argues that it’s time for centrists like him to make peace with the left. The core insight that DeLong offers is that the animating idea driving many centrist Democrats for years has proved to be a failure, and as a result, it’s time for them to rethink their approach to both politics and policy in accordance with this new reality.

As DeLong puts it, on one issue after another — from health care to climate change — centrist-minded Democrats have modulated the party’s priorities in hopes of striking a political deal with the center-right. But that deal has never been forthcoming, because there is no functional center-right in U.S. politics.

DeLong notes that centrist Democrats like himself have been driven by a genuine belief in the superiority of market-oriented or (as they’re sometimes called) “neoliberal” policies, but also a theory of political change. That theory held that striking broad bipartisan deals on policy might be worth doing, even if the result is somewhat less progressive, because it would result in them being “more strongly entrenched in America and much better implemented than if it were implemented by a narrow, largely partisan majority.”

But as DeLong points out, this hasn’t paid off . . . .

The reward for adopting Mitt Romney’s health-care plan in hopes of getting bipartisan support for it was unremitting scorched-earth opposition to Obamacare, including a failed effort to repeal it entirely, which Republicans undertook while pretending they were maintaining people’s protections.

The reward for Obama and Democrats reaching deals to cut spending and treading lightly in response to the worst economic crisis in 70 years, and keeping full-blown economic populism at bay, was President Trump’s massive deficit-exploding corporate tax cut that showered enormous benefits on top earners, which Republicans passed while pretending their plan was pro-worker.

The reward for Obama and Democrats embracing market-oriented “cap and trade” climate policy was that Republicans blocked it with a wall of intransigence and fossil-fuel-industry-funded climate change denialism. Now Republicans are all-in with Trump’s even more explicit climate denialism and a full-scale effort to roll back everything Obama did to combat global warming, including Trump pulling us out of a painstakingly negotiated international deal in a manner that is enraging our allies.

I would add one more to this list: immigration. As I’ve noted, on immigration, the Democratic Party for many years embraced the idea that supporting maximal enforcement would lure Republicans into supporting legalizing undocumented immigrants. But GOP intransigence has revealed this as a fantasy. After Democrats passed comprehensive immigration reform embodying that bargain through the Senate in 2013 by a broad bipartisan majority, the GOP-controlled House simply refused to vote on it. Now Republicans have gone all-in with an even more virulent form of xenophobic anti-immigrant nationalism, as well as with imaginary solutions like mass deportations and Trump’s wall.

So now we’re seeing an increasingly emboldened left making the case for much more progressive taxation and much more aggressive efforts to rewrite the rules of the market, for dramatically ambitious health care and climate policies in the form of various iterations of Medicare for all and the Green New Deal, and for a move away from an enforcement-for-legalization paradigm on immigration, and toward a much more pro-immigration stance as a matter of basic values. And the party as a whole is much more open to these aggressive postures.

It’s important to stress that the party has been pushed toward these positions by grass-roots movements and by the changing nature of the Democratic base, which is more diverse, younger and better educated than it was the last time Democrats held a House majority. But another thing driving these changes is that in many of these areas — from soaring economic inequality to climate change to the need for reforms to our immigration system that don’t retreat on our humanitarian commitments — there’s an increased recognition that the Republican Party is basically going to sit out the process of addressing these major challenges of our time, as most Democrats understand them.

This, combined with the fact that some of these challenges are simultaneously growing more urgent, is pushing Democrats toward more ambitious solutions and away from a futile, accommodationist effort to chase the mirage of consensus with the center-right.