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The key to winning elections is mobilizing the base with left-wing spending programs, according to progressives. No, the objective is to flip swing voters, says the center-left. Who is correct?

Both, and neither; it depends on the type of election. In presidential elections, with their relatively high turnout, swing voters are the key. In midterm elections, with a lower turnout, mobilizing the base is more important.

If you’re a Democrat, cheer up–at least your party is having this debate, and takes both sides seriously. The GOP has put all of its chips on base mobilization. That will help in 2022, but not in 2024.

Complaining about gas prices? Bitching that Biden isn’t doing enough to bring back the good old days of $2 per gallon gas? Well, your ship has come in! With the discovery of the new variant, crude oil prices are already falling! Gas prices shouldn’t be far behind.

There are two morals to this story: there are worse things than inflation; and be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.

The new year came in with a bang.

Some right wing nuts said Pence should hang.

The system held, by just a thread

But at the cost of several dead.

____________

Things got better after that.

The country got up off the mat.

But summer brought the virus back;

The right’s still gearing to attack.

_____________

We’re vaccinated, and ok.

We used the time to get away.

This spring, we went to New Orleans

Where we explored the Land of Dreams.

________________

We traveled through our new home state.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is just great.

From the mountains to the beach,

Lots of beauty within reach.

_________________

If it’s history you seek,

I recommend the Chesapeake.

We also flew to NYC,

But Covid cancelled Germany.

__________________

What comes next, I do not know.

Biden has three years to go.

If you root for the blue team,

Things aren’t as bad as they might seem.

Gas costs more today than it did a few months ago, but it is less expensive than it was in 2008 and from 2011 to 2014. In the broader context, this is far from an emergency. The release of a small amount of oil from the Petroleum Reserve was, therefore, a token effort to prove that the federal government really does care about inflation. Biden feels our pain, in other words. It is his stock in trade.

Consider me unimpressed. This looks like something Trump would do.

As far as I know, we haven’t heard from Tucker yet, but the right appears to be pleased with the verdict in the Arbery murder case. As they see it, the verdict proves America isn’t racist. Are they right?

Well, if racism isn’t a big problem in this country, why is Arbery dead? Does anyone seriously believe the three men would have followed him down the street with guns if he had been white? We can’t know for certain, of course, but experience gives us a clear answer to the question.

A guilty verdict is the best we can do at this point, but it isn’t justice, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

Trump is no longer president: Thankful.

But he’s still around, and a danger to our system: Not.

I’m getting a raise from Social Security: Thankful.

But it’s because of inflation, which–mostly unjustifiably–is damaging Biden politically: Not.

I’m in Florida, and the sun is shining: Thankful.

But I’m supposed to be on vacation in Berlin: Not.

At least I didn’t have to wear a mask for 24 hours straight: Thankful.

But I’m probably going to eat a lot of nonrefundable money: Not.

I don’t have the virus, I don’t have to work anymore, and I don’t have any serious financial worries: Thankful.

That clinches it for thankful. Happy Thanksgiving!

Rittenhouse walked; the Arbery defendants were convicted. What do we make of this? That a teenage defendant who cries on the stand gets more sympathy than older men who don’t? That it was the more violent environment in Wisconsin that made the self-defense argument more credible? That Georgia juries have a different perspective on self-defense than Wisconsin juries?

My guess is that it was all of those things–particularly #2. The good news is that the two cases didn’t collectively send the message that a white man with a gun is automatically entitled to a presumption of self-defense and must, therefore, be obeyed by unarmed members of the public. From a policy perspective, that is what really matters here.

Jamelle Bouie thinks Biden’s position in late 2021 is analogous to Reagan’s around 1982. Is he right?

The analogy is not ridiculous, but no, because the condition of the country is quite different. Reagan’s GOP was crushed in the 1982 elections because we were mired in a deep recession engineered by the Fed in order to put an end to inflation. When the Fed eased up, the economy roared back to life–just in time for the 1984 election. Biden, on the other hand, has already presided over a recovery, spending plenty of public money in the process. There is no “Morning in America” in the offing; in a way, it is already here, but is insufficiently appreciated by the public and the MSM.

That doesn’t mean Biden’s position is hopeless–not by a long shot. Inflation will probably be a distant memory by 2024, and maybe even by November, 2022. The GOP will be campaigning against the extension of popular public benefits. And, of course, there is the Trump factor. Surely moderate opinion will rally against him, as it did in 2020, if he runs again. Even if he doesn’t, all of the GOP contenders will be falling all over themselves to win his approval during the primaries, which is almost the same thing.

As Paul Krugman points out, the three principal components of the Biden bills, taken as a whole, are climate change mitigation, infrastructure, and funding for children. All three components involve investments that should pay off handsomely in terms of social health and economic well-being in the future. None of them, however, is focused primarily on the here and now.

You can certainly make a strong argument that investing money for the future is a welcome change from past practice. The problem with children, however, is that they do not have a vote. Coal miners, on the other hand, do. If you are looking for an explanation as to why the BBB may not pass, you could do a lot worse.

If you pay too much attention to the network news, you will conclude that the country is in decline, and is in desperate trouble. Prices are soaring; the virus still rages; there are no goods on the shelves; and no one is in charge, except the cultural left. Things could hardly be worse.

But seriously? If you’re a businessman, you’re probably generating excellent profits, and the value of your company has gone up in 2021. If you’re a retiree, your Social Security is about to go up by six percent, and your investment income is doing just fine, since the markets are doing perfectly well. If you’re a formerly unemployed worker, you either have a job that pays better, or the luxury of waiting for a new opportunity, courtesy of savings deriving from enhanced unemployment benefits. If you had a job the entire year, your income on its face may not have kept up with inflation, but the stimulus payment left you in an overall better position, even after inflation.

The answer to the question is everyone. The problem is that we have short memories, and the media only focus on today–not the bigger picture. What stimulus payment? What new job? What improvement with the virus? What additional savings? That’s so, well, June.

Biden’s decision was consistent with his bipartisan brand and with pre-Trump tradition. Furthermore, Powell hasn’t taken any actions that have been inconsistent with Biden’s economic plan, and he has the confidence of the markets. The reappointment consequently was the right thing to do.

Following “Empire of Cotton,” about which I posted two years ago, an essay in the 1619 Project apparently views slavery as a manifestation of capitalism, which has obvious implications for our socio-economic system today. Jamelle Bouie similarly argues that systemic racism has its roots in capitalism. Is this line of thinking correct?

No. Southern cotton plantations might have been part of a large, globalized industry, but they were no more “capitalist” than a Roman plantation similarly run with slave labor 2,000 years earlier. Notwithstanding the arguments about the pervasiveness of the cotton business in antebellum America, capitalism survived and thrived after slavery was abolished. Even today, the cultivation of cotton is an extremely labor-intensive business that involves practices which look a bit like slavery in foreign countries. In short, cotton production is an aberration within the capitalist system, not the norm.

The bottom line is that slaves are property, and workers in a capitalist system, regardless of whether the balance of power with capital operates in their favor or not at any given time, are free agents. Slavery is the antithesis of capitalism, not the product of it. As to racism, our money is green; it doesn’t see black and white–hence, the growth of “woke capitalism.”

The Democrats, as expected, lost control of both houses of Congress in 2022, but the result was a mixed bag for the GOP. The voters expected Republicans to behave responsibly in power, but where’s the fun in that? The 2021 welfare state legislation remained in place, and the outrageous, Trumpist antics of the GOP House and Senate gave Biden an easy target for the 2024 election.

In 2024, the GOP didn’t just have to deal with Trump’s baggage; they supported clawing back the benefits in the 2021 legislation, which was hideously unpopular among swing voters. All of the screaming about socialism and debt that resonated in 2022 had a completely different impact when it threatened the pocketbooks of swing voters. The Democrats consequently went into the election as huge favorites.

It was supposed to be Karl Rove’s masterstroke: the GOP would create a prescription drug benefit for seniors; seniors would be permanently grateful; and the GOP would enjoy a permanent majority as a result. It didn’t work. The voters knew the Democrats wanted a plan that was even more generous to seniors, and other, more pressing events intervened. The GOP was crushed in the 2008 elections.

On a similar note, Obamacare was a huge loser for the Democrats in 2010, as the media and the electorate focused on its flaws, not its benefits. But by 2018, the picture had changed. When the GOP presented a clear and present danger to Obamacare, the voters decided the program was well worth keeping, and the results of the midterms reflected their concerns.

What’s the message here? That the voters are initially skeptical of welfare state expansions, but resist any attempt to claw them back once they are in place. That has implications for the 2024 election. I will discuss that in my next post.

Inflation is typically (not always–think of the various oil price shocks created by a cartel) caused by an excess in aggregate demand for goods and services over supply. The Fed generally responds by increasing interest rates. This makes it more difficult to borrow money to purchase goods and services, which reduces demand, which consequently brings prices back into line.

But what about today’s conditions? There is no demonstrated excess in aggregate demand for goods and services–only a diversion of demand from services to goods as the result of the pandemic. And, with trillions of dollars sloshing around in savings, it is unnecessary for most people to borrow in order to buy goods. So, under the present circumstances, how can it help for the Fed to raise rates?

It can’t. We need to see more evidence of overheated aggregate demand and increased borrowing before there is any plausible justification for raising rates.