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Really, can you think of any reason why Democratic primary voters would prefer Bloomberg to Biden? Is he better qualified? Does he have more relevant experience? Is he a fresh young face? Is the party crying out for a billionaire nominee? Are his positions closer to the Democratic mainstream? Can he better appeal to white workers? Can he mobilize millennials and minority voters better? Is he, on the whole, more electable?

No.

The only reason to prefer Bloomberg to Biden is that he may be able to make a better case for realos than Biden does, particularly during the debates. That may peel a few voters away from Biden, but in reality, Bloomberg’s appeal is to NeverTrumper types who can’t or won’t vote in a Democratic primary, because they are Republicans or not affiliated.

The assumption is going to be that a Bloomberg candidacy will help Warren by splitting the realo vote. There will be a bit of that, but mostly, I think heated battles between Bloomberg and Warren will alleviate some of the pressure from Biden and put him in the middle, which is generally a good place to be. In short, this is not the disaster you might think at first glance.

Barack Obama isn’t a fan of cancel culture; he has made it clear that he thinks ostracizing heretics on Twitter is a poor substitute for actually organizing and getting things done. The NYT ran the predictable response from an obscure millennial a few days ago. The writer essentially said that Obama was just a typical Boomer sellout who didn’t understand social media, and that he and his friends would continue to fearlessly use their thumbs to expunge heterodox ideas from cyberspace, because they, unlike their elders, actually cared about social justice.

OK, millennial! Ironically, his stupid moral certitude reminds me of nothing more than . . . that timeless piece of Boomer self-righteousness, “The Graduate.” Can’t you just imagine Obama as the old guy who says “Plastics?”

For better and for worse–and there has been plenty of both–Boomers will always be associated with the quest for freedom from traditional norms. Gen Z appears to be going a completely different direction. Its calling card is the enforcement of orthodoxy at the expense of free thought and speech.

As the title to this post suggests, the Puritans have always been among us. Their record in power is not particularly encouraging. Let’s try to put it off as long as possible.

Donald Trump is often compared to a mob boss. Is the analogy accurate?

No. Trump demands complete, unconditional loyalty from his subordinates, while offering none in return. A mob boss who operated that way wouldn’t last ten minutes.

The better analogy is actually to a cult leader. Can you imagine Lindsey Graham drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid at Trump’s command? Of course you can.

DO IT AGAIN

So you called upon the Russians

To assist in beating Clinton.

They produced a bunch of e-mails.

In the end, you wound up winning.

But the deep state didn’t like it

Did their best to try and beat you

But they found a bunch of nothing

And they failed to unseat you.

_________________

You go back, Jack

Do it again.

Wheels turning round and round.

You go back, Jack

Do it again.

_______________

You sent Rudy Giuliani

Overseas to find the bad guys.

Put the screws to the Ukraine now.

Made no effort to disguise it.

And the Democrats went bonkers

They’re all trying to impeach you.

But the GOP stands strong, now

And you’re sure they’ll never reach you.

________________

You go back, Jack

Do it again.

Wheels turning round and round.

Go back, Jack

Do it again.

Parody of “Do it Again” by Steely Dan.

Given his Marxist mentality and his affection for “socialism,” you might think that Bernie Sanders is running behind the slightly more moderate Elizabeth Warren in the swing states. According to a recent NYT poll, you would be wrong, even though both trail Biden by fairly significant margins.

Why? Because, even though Bernie eschews identity politics, he is a stronger candidate from that perspective than Warren. That is how most Americans vote. Whether you approve of it or not, it is a fact of life, and one that the elderly, sharp-tongued female Harvard professor will struggle mightily to overcome, no matter how much love she gets from left-leaning wonks for her plans.

The final big complaint of millennials is that they suffered disproportionately from the Great Recession, and are inheriting an economy marked by slow growth and excessive inequality. They blame Boomers for this. Are they right?

This story is extremely complicated. As to slow growth, that is attributable to a wide range of factors, including demographic change, the end of the Cold War and the rise of China, international trade policy, a mysterious slowdown in innovation, and new technology, particularly in transportation and communications. These phenomena can be found throughout the world, and cannot be pinned on a single generation, much less a single cohort of Americans.

Inequality is a bit of a different story. It is fair to blame some of the GOP’s affection for regressive tax cuts and deregulation on Boomer libertarianism. On the other hand, Reagan and Thatcher were not Boomers, and my generation was hardly united behind the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts. I certainly didn’t support them, and I don’t think I should be blamed for them.

My verdict is mixed, but mostly not guilty. If Gen Z wants to improve our growth figures, they need to invent something more useful than social media.

Joe Biden wasn’t the first candidate to call Elizabeth Warren a dogmatic, out of touch elitist; that was Klobuchar and Mayor Pete. In addition, if Warren is the nominee, Trump is going to make the elitist argument one of the centerpieces of his campaign, so she needs to find an effective way to deal with it. It might as well be sooner than later.

That said, the dynamics of making the argument at this stage are very different than they are in the general election. Biden is running the risk of offending a substantial part of the blue base by making what, in this case, truly is a potential GOP talking point.

It makes me uneasy. He needs to calibrate this line of attack very carefully, or it could backfire in a big way, because Warren isn’t the only one who needs to expand her constituency in order to win in 2020.

Millennials are also much given to complaining about soaring housing costs. Is this problem attributable to Boomers?

Not really. If the idea is that Boomers drive up housing costs by selfishly suppressing supply through zoning regulations, I can assure you, based on decades of personal experience, that NIMBYism is not a peculiarly Boomer trait. To the extent that this is a generational issue, it is probably more due to Gen Z demands for housing with far more amenities than we enjoyed when we entered the market; however, I don’t really think it is a generational issue at all.

DEMOCRATS: The political system is rigged in favor of the wealthy. We need to limit their campaign contributions in order to maintain a reasonably fair and equal system.

SUPREME COURT: Political contributions are free speech under most circumstances. The more, the better. You can’t limit them in the manner you want.

DEMOCRATS: OK, if we can’t limit their contributions, we can reduce their spending indirectly by imposing a wealth tax. How ’bout them apples! If at first you don’t succeed, try something more extreme!

SUPREME COURT: That’s not constitutional, either. Tough luck, guys.

A number of right-wing commentators are calling on the Democrats to abandon impeachment and to settle for a censure resolution. Should they agree?

No, for two reasons:

1. It would send the message to Trump, and the rest of the world, that attempting to compel Ukraine to intervene in the 2020 election on his behalf was not a serious violation of our political norms. He would consequently continue to do it. We can’t have that.
2. From a purely partisan political perspective, it lets Collins, Romney, and Murkowski off the hook, which is why the right supports it. Why would the Democrats do that?

The issue is going to come up in any event during the trial. You can expect Collins and the rest to push Mitch McConnell for a censure motion in an effort to protect their image of independence if they vote to acquit. Trump, of course, will be completely opposed, since he maintains he did nothing wrong. Which way will Mitch go? We’ll see.

Millennials love to complain about their student debts, the levels of which, it must be admitted, can be pretty appalling. How serious is this problem, and are Boomers to blame?

This is a multi-layered issue, as follows:

1. At the highest level, student debts represent investments made willingly by millennials. If the investments didn’t turn out as expected, why should they be bailed out? The government didn’t pay my mortgage, after all.
2. Boomer parents frequently wind up shouldering large portions of the debt in one way or another.
3. Soaring levels of tuition are, to a large extent, a function of the shift to a knowledge-based economy. Colleges are charging more because they perceive a degree is much more valuable than it used to be. It is hard to blame Boomers for following the laws of economics.
4. Tuition is also soaring because many colleges have changed their business model. The new plan is to provide high levels of aid for unusually worthy students, and to pay for it by attracting more affluent students with amenities the likes of which did not exist when I was in school. The model would not work if millennial students put more emphasis on low tuition than the quality of school amenities. Boomer administrators can be blamed for some of this, but millennial consumers are also at fault.

My verdict on this issue? Mostly not guilty.

Some left-wing pundits who see holes in the Warren plan nonetheless support it, because it will inspire the base and move the national conversation in the right direction. It isn’t going to become law in the foreseeable future, anyway. What harm can it do?

A lot, actually:

1. If completely revamping approximately 17 percent of our GDP is the Democrats’ position in 2020, that is what the election will be about, not Trump’s innumerable failures and weaknesses. The Warren plan will thus make it much more likely that Trump will prevail in an election we cannot afford to lose.
2. Making promises on which you cannot deliver will inevitably result in further division, cynicism, anger, and frustration within the Democratic Party and throughout the country. We already have one Freedom Caucus; we don’t need a left-wing version.
3. Every minute President Warren spends chasing an impossible dream is a minute she could be using doing something that will actually help the American people.

In short, we may at some level admire Don Quixote, but he is a fictional character, not our head of state. Electing him would be a mistake.

Millennials frequently accuse Boomers of selfishly trashing the planet. Are they right?

Unfortunately, yes. The basic science behind climate change has been known for decades. As I understand it, the government was on the verge of taking significant action to combat it nearly thirty years ago, but ideology and unenlightened self-interest intruded, and nothing was done. The results are already apparent, and will get worse over time.

Getting any electorate to support changing lifestyles when the benefit would inure mostly to future generations was always going to be a difficult task. You have to think, however, that the Boomers’ disdain for traditional values and emphasis on their own personal freedom made things worse.

The best argument that you can make for the Boomers is that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions during their lifetime is far more due to the largely unanticipated rise of China than anything they did on their own. That is true, but it feels inadequate. And so, the verdict must be, guilty as charged.

Sure, Archie was a reactionary. But, in his heart of hearts, everyone knew that he was a decent guy. He may have had issues with his family, but no one doubted that he cared about them. Most of all, he wasn’t angry or scared, and it never would have occurred to him to call himself a victim. He was an average American, and that was fine with him.

You couldn’t remake “All in the Family” the same way now. Today’s equivalent of Archie is a whining proto-fascist who would gladly sell out his country for some protection for his conservative social values. It’s hard to find anything lovable about him. That’s a big change, and not for the better.

I read two interesting things over the weekend:

1. The latest issue of The Economist has a page with a series of graphs which indicate that America is moving left on cultural issues, due almost entirely to demographic change. In other words, reactionaries are mostly old people who are dying off over time.
2. Only a tiny proportion of Biden’s support in Iowa comes from people under 45.

What does it mean for the general election? The truly elderly are generally reactionary Trump voters who cannot be reached by the left; Gen Z will vote for the Democrats regardless who the nominee is, but would be much more enthusiastic about Warren or Sanders; and the generational swing voters are people my age who despise Trump, but also dislike anything smacking of “the revolution.” We’re the Biden voters–the real conservatives in this country.