1. A fascinating interview with Democratic pollster David Schor, which you may have already seen. Hard to excerpt, but here is one:
some of the factors that traditionally have been theorized to make people more conservative as they age — having kids, getting married, etc. — are complicated. Fertility rates are substantially lower than they were 10 or 15 years ago, to the point where it is statistically important. And at the same time, the median age at first marriage is like a decade higher than it was 15 years ago. That means that Democrats have more time and can own a longer part of voters’ life cycles.
He does see the Democratic Party these days as the party of HEEs
2. Another hard-to-excerpt essay comes from James R. Rogers.
Conservative market-skeptics engage in wishful thinking that Republicans can win without traditional commitment to a relative emphasis on markets in a mixed economy and on tax cuts.
. . .Trumpists do not currently own the Republican Party. The American Party/Know Nothing faction continues to represent about a third of the party. It’s been that way for decades. It is a sizeable fraction. But it is not a majority. Because there is nowhere else to go, it is, largely, a dependable component of the Republican coalition, and will continue to be so.
I look at the Republican Party somewhat differently. To me, the anti-establishment vote looms as more significant than it seems to appear to Rogers.
In 2024, the Republicans will face a challenge. If they don’t praise Mr. Trump, they risk de-motivating his supporters. If they do praise Mr. Trump, they risk motivating those who hate him. The Democrats face a similar problem with their far-left supporters, but I think it will be easier for them to get away with ambiguity, as Mr. Biden had done.
Arnold, the two references provide additional evidence of the nonsense of the median voter theorem. Remember that it’s based on the assumption of one-dimension in preferences and that’s why their supporters need “to summarize” multiple-dimensions into just one that doesn’t make any sense.
“I look at the Republican Party somewhat differently. To me, the anti-establishment vote looms as more significant than it seems to appear to Rogers.”—ASK
This may be true. Seems so to me.
So nearly 80 million people voted for Biden, who was spouting a kalidescope of left-wing programs, and 74 million voted for the populist Trump.
The conservative, pro-market free-trade open-borders establishment? Zero votes?
Yet Biden’s Cabinet looks suspiciously corporate.
The voting public knows living standards and quality of life are going down, not up, in America, for most people.
Markets work, but do global markets and open borders work for the employee class of developed nations? Who really believes that?
Who knows, maybe the HEE’s and other economic elites can keep voters in line, through PR gimmicks. BLM etc.
But things may snap. If anyone can figure out how to marry the R-populists with elements of the D-Party, they would win handily. Trump came close (well, sort of close), but his personality got in the way, and bad luck with C19.
The US can save itself, but the national policy goals must be tight job markets and loose property markets.
Now that would be making direct war on the HEEs!
“Markets work, but do global markets and open borders work for the employee class of developed nations? Who really believes that?”
I do, and history would seem to be on the side of those who agree.
>—-““Markets work, but do global markets and open borders work for the employee class of developed nations? Who really believes that?”
Global markets “work for” them in the sense of improving their material standard of living but they work against them as far as lowering their relative status within those developed nations even as their material standard of living rises in an absolute sense. Human psychology being what it is, people care most about changes in their status relative to one another.
No working class American wants to go back to the cars and phones and medical care and consumer goods they had when they think America was “great.” What they want is to stop feeling like they are losing ground relative to the rest of the population. They want to stop feeling like they are on the wrong side of a growing economic inequality and the inequality in social status that inevitably goes with that.
Living standards have not risen along the West Coast and much of the Northeast, due to the restrictions on property development.
Yes, there have been wonderful technological improvements and I salute them and the free market system in generating those improvements.
But the rentier class has been capturing all income gains through economic rents on property in those regions where new supply is restricted.
I grew up in Los Angeles. Two generations ago almost anybody could buy a house, a car and raise a family. Virtually forgotten today, back then Los Angeles was an industrial powerhouse.
Today almost nobody can raise a family in Los Angeles. That is not a higher standard of living.
The residents don’t want high density housing or any additional housing, period. It’s already built-out enough in L.A. and it’s got nothing to do with land rents. What’s in it for them? More traffic, infrastructure costs and the possibility of section 8 housing vs. zero benefits. I would never support this if I lived there and no rational person would either.
And there’s the problem. Everybody wants to “buy a house, a car, and raise a family” but nobody wants any new housing to be built. So housing prices go up and up and people feel they “don’t have a higher standard of living”.
“Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.”
New building doesn’t necessarily do anything. Because what everyone wants is a safe neighborhood and a good school district. Absent mechanisms to provide those, discrimination based on price becomes the only way to create them.
As far as the effect of “open borders” on the working class, that would be bad for them which is why it has been a non-starter as far as a realistic political option.
It’s worth remembering that too little immigration can also be bad for the working class. There are few surer routes to economic decline than demographic decline. Many of our most dynamic entrepreneurs and job creators have been immigrants.
As alway, you can drive off the road on either side.
We don’t seem to be in much danger of driving off the road on the side of too little immigration. Worrying about the US excessively restricting immigration in 202o is kind of like worrying that a morbidly obese person, who has been that way for decades, will suddenly start starving himself.
BTW, how many of our “most dynamic entrepreneurs and job creators” have been immigrants from the countries from which we have received the most immigration in recent years – e.g., Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, D.R.?
This kinda sounds like a Final Jeopardy! question. I’m stumped and I’m thinking that Ken Jennings would be too.
The correct response is, “What is none?”
“Zero” was going to be my guess. But, I’m 100% certain that I would have forgotten to pose it in the form of a question. Fail! I’m gonna stick with Wheel of Fortune instead.
One of the largest shifts in the electorate was the Hispanics on the Texas/Mexico border shifting massively towards “Build A Wall” Trump. Immigration may tie into the SWPL “I Have A Dream” civil rights script and set of their religious circuits, but actual Hispanics 0n the actual border have to deal with the actual problems surrounding illegal immigration. I would hope this election puts to rest the idea that the GOP needs to be pro open borders to win the Hispanic vote. Open borders has zero electoral benefit and only exists in Bryan Caplan’s fever dreams.
Coincidentally enough, Caplan did a recent drive-by in various parts of Texas. I’m sure he was spewing forth his open borders nonsense to whatever university audience was willing to listen to it.
My favorite part: he does a drive-by and then claims to be an expert on all things related to the area. Typical naive arrogant HEE.
Hint: It’s a big freaking state. You aren’t going to be able to knowledgeably talk about it by looking out your window.
Really? Would you rather raise a family in Tokyo or inside Detroit?
A few items I’ve been thinking about…
1) when I voted for Trump, I knew EXACTLY what I was voting AGAINST. But, I was much less sure what I was voting for.
So, I was basically playing defense. Is this sustainable? What do the Republicans have on tap for us at the national level?
2) last question from the first link: what does Trumpism look like after Trump? This is what I call Trumpism 2.0.
Are we stuck with a Grover Cleveland scenario for 2024 or is there someone that can step in that the strange orange man will support? Ted Cruz, Elon Musk…I got nothing.
In 2016, among college-educated whites, only 39 percent of men and 51 percent of women voted for Clinton. In 2020 Biden was able to do substantially better. One suspects that his performance in office may have something to do with whether or not he is able to hold on to these voters.
Contrary to popular belief, ticket splitters have not gone extinct: https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Split-ticket_states_in_the_2020_presidential_and_gubernatorial_elections
Trump’s support among non-college educated whites declined in 2020 by 3 points. The virus disproportionately affected this bloc so it might be risky to forecast a return to the Democratic Party fold with them in 2020. The best way for Republicans to guarantee a return to the Democratic fold in this bloc would be to nominate a Liz Cheney or Ben Sasse type. Unctuous neocon snobbery needs to be buried once and for all.
College educated whites are most anxious about their status. Biden’s plans for vast increases in federal patronage jobs for minorities may undermine that support. If the stock market falls on his watch and equity in housing gets destroyed by his federal housing schemes, they will become even more neurotic. Playing to their insecurities will be the 2024 challenge on both sides.
Recognizing that the USA is a mixed economy and nothing is going to undo that will be essential for the next Republican candidate. Trump understood that.
The annual Credit Suisse global wealth report, although unfortunately truncated by the virus this year, offers a global selection of policy examples that offer wealth enhancing opportunities. The Republicans could start by looking at the countries that have a greater portion of the population in the net wealth zone of US$ 100,000 to $1,000,000 and then adopt the policies that allowed that to happen. For the most recent report the USA is at 35.1 percent in that zone. The UK is at 49.3 percent, Switzerland at 40.5, and Germany at 36.7. In the previous year, non-truncated report, there are additional countries.
Explaining why the USA is outperformed in this net wealth category will have to wait for another day. Whether Biden’s policies will improve USA performance remains to be seen but the figure was 31.3 percent for 2016 and rose to 35 percent in 2019 before the virus choked off meaningful growth in 2020 which, again, produced a 35.1 percent figure.
I don’t understand what those numbers are. US per-capita income is much higher than UK, so how can UK have such a higher percentage of population with high income?
The figures are for “wealth per adult” not income. Wealth provides a more comprehensive view of well being. They add real (non-financial)assets to financial assets and subtract debt. Here is a link to the most recent report: https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-report-2020-en.pdf
The Trump Administration was traditional conservative policy, mostly free market economics with a populist media savvy front man.
Trump was doing an excellent job with the economy and the stock market until the China virus hit in early 2020.
Trump pushed deregulation, price transparency in health care, school choice in K-12, pro-energy, pro-market. Economist Casey Mulligan wrote favorably about the Trump Administration and said he was a better free market leader than Reagan was: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/i-am-a-tariff-man-comparing-presidents-reagan-and-trump/
Kling is particularly uncharitable in this sense.
Populism is widely defined as the ordinary folk rebelling against the “elites”. If we agree that the Democratic Party is the party of the elites, then the opposition to that is inherently populist by definition.
Kling’s views of many issues would reasonably be defined as “populist” and opposed to the dominant HEE viewpoint. For example, putting K-12 school choice into the hands of ordinary parents as opposed to federal experts, is absolutely a populist policy. Kling is basically an “elite”, and so am I, but the dominant HEE viewpoint wants less charter schools and more money and authority to the K-12 officials and unions, and ultimately less choice in the hands of ordinary parents.
Today I got notice that my kids daycare is going to force all of the children to wear masks all day. Technically the new state mandate only applies to 5+, but they are a 3-4 daycare with a couple of five year olds and don’t want to have to explain to the kids that some have to and some don’t. They had resisted masks up till now but don’t want the liability.
There is practically zero risk of transmission amongst such children and it if did transmit so what. It’s just the flu for the not old and not sick, and for the old an sick we all got to die sometime. I sent my kid primarily to socialize but how much socialization can you do with a face burkha on all day.
This follows on my anniversary plans being canceled because the giant outdoor multi acre botanical garden that could accommodate thousands with social distancing will indeed have more the 25 people, so I can’t bring my wife there. Sad considering it has specific sentimental value to us.
I would vote for anyone that proposed to stop this. I would KILL for anyone that could credibly propose to end this. I’m so fucking tired of this shit.
Pro tip: don’t wear a face mask in a gun shop. I made this mistake recently here in North Texas and felt like a complete idiot. I’m having trouble navigating all of these sacred norms in the new normal. Face mask here…absolutely. Face mask there…absolutely not.
However, you should feel pretty good about your daycare. I agree that the face mask rules are complete nonsense based on what we know for the pre-k crowd. But, it could be much much worse…just ask anyone from NYC…that is evil to completely shutdown the schools!
“Fertility rates are substantially lower than they were 10 or 15 years ago, to the point where it is statistically important. And at the same time, the median age at first marriage is like a decade higher than it was 15 years ago. That means that Democrats have more time and can own a longer part of voters’ life cycles.”
Trump did nothing about this even when he has the electoral majorities necessary.
The GOP either becomes the “massive incentive to get married and have kids young” party or it dies.
Trump didn’t change the major global fertility trends on Earth, but that’s really a high and unreasonable expectation.
I do think Trump was an amazing cheerleader for American people and American families, and that probably helped somewhat, but no, it didn’t reverse major trends.
At some level, the political coalitions of today are guaranteed to die and be replaced by different coalitions in the future. The GOP coalition of 2000 is quite different than that of 2016. The Democratic coalition of 2020 seems unrecognizably different than the Democratic coalition of 1992. Today’s coalitions will be inevitably transformed into something different in the future.
>—“Trump was an amazing cheerleader for American people and American families”
Amazing yes. But not in the good way.
If a black “grab em by the pussy” President had ever introduced his 5 children by 3 different women to the national party convention while paying hush money to porn stars, commenters here would be calling it the end of civilization as we know it not great cheerleading for American family values.
If you’re asking whether those on the red side can acknowledge that Trump is not a decent human being, then I can unequivocally acknowledge that I don’t believe that he is a good person. Actually, the event that put me over the edge was his dealings with “Trump University,” which amounted to nothing more than swindling lower/middle income folks out of their hard earned savings in exchange for the promise of real estate nirvana.
If you’re asking me if I would have voted for a darker toned version of Trump, but with the same policies, then the answer is also unequivocally yes.
And, that gets to the crux of the issue. How is it possible that I voted for a not good person? The blue side continues to be extremely confused by this.
Lastly, you don’t seem to understand the critique of non-marital births. None of that is relevant to Trump.
I’m not questioning your views any of that Hans. Nor am I confused by them. I wasn’t commenting on those points at all. I was commenting on one very specific and very absurd claim made by Niko.
I’m as nonplussed by Trumps serial marriages as anyone, but it’s still hard to be that angry about it. It seems like these bimbos know what they are getting into with him, and they seem to get what they came for. They get children with a future and financial security, it kind of seems like that was the bargain and Trump followed through. Would future would you have preferred for these bimbos. They were never going to cure cancer.
Beats single moms on welfare or childless Dem urban professionals. The TFR difference between the Rep and Dem primaries is all you need to know about both parties.
The most that can be said is that his inability to stick with a woman is indicative of his inability to stick with anything.
asdf,
>—-“It seems like these bimbos know what they are getting into with him, and they seem to get what they came for.”
The problem isn’t the effect on “these bimbos” if you mean whatever percentage of them do consent to having their pussies grabbed. The problem is the effect on the children of the broken homes that result.
They are traumatized by these breakups which then play a huge role in shaping their own expectations for marriage. And so Donald Trump Jr. has already completed his first divorce leaving time for several more. Meanwhile his five children are wondering where daddy went and lowering their own expectations for marriage.
And speaking of Trump’s role as an amazing cheerleader for American families, in Niko’s fawning description, it’s worth remembering that our cheerleader for family values spent many years successfully trying to get the NYC tabloids to publicize and glorify his sexual promiscuity even when he was married.
But, of course, Don Jr is a big success from your viewpoint of obsessing over total fertility because he already has produced five more kids of fine Aryan stock to reduce your fears of racial replacement. Thank God he didn’t choose to become a childless urban professional. That would
have been horrific.
If Trump had done nothing in his life before 2016, he’d not had been president. Obama has done nothing in his life –before 2008 and after 2008. It’s no coincidence that the three post-LBJ D-presidents (Carter, Clinton, Obama) were not part of the Party’s Old Guard at the time they were selected.
Obama was selected by the D-Party because the Clintons were rotten and corrupt and the Party needed to send signals to the people they have been failing for a long time and had been reluctant to get out to vote. Obama got the big money he wanted to perform as the Party’s lackey. The funny thing is that today the Party’s Old Guard still needs the lackey because the radical leftists are threatening to get control of the Party (right now they are attempting to consolidate their veto power within the Party, the step before the final attack).
The biggest problem the GOP has is that most people smart enough to come up with a viable and effective program are too smart to want to run for office.
The last thing that the GOP needs is a wonky out-of-touch candidate. Leave the wonky stuff for the back-of-office tasks.
Say what you will about Trump (and there is a lot to dislike), but he was able to build a passionate connection with people that felt left out.
Contrast Clinton, the down-to-earth fast food eater vs. the other Clinton, the wonky elitist. Were the results even close?
A down-to-earth fast food eater candidate without a lot of people smart enough to come up with a viable and effective program is worth jack shit. Compare Trump.
Key sentence from the interview: “Politics is fundamentally about splitting the country in half.” Really? Not the art of compromise? Not about governance? Not about exercising the will of the people? If this view is widely shared by the political class and its media acolytes, and I suspect it is, it explains the intractable polarization that engulfs us. Not a bug, but a design feature of contemporary politics. And any talk of unity is a lie.
Good factional descriptions: (1) For Trump, (2) against Biden, (3) GOP partisans; I’d say habitually. I was (1) this year, (2) NeverHillary in 2016.
On the Christian faction (part of the partisans),
“Because there is nowhere else to go, it is, largely, a dependable component of the Republican coalition, and will continue to be so.”
Also true of most factions in the Dem coalition, as also the other Rep factions.
Who should pro-life Christian socialists vote for? Dem socialists who hate all Christians? Market capitalist materialists who measure everything in dollars but know the value of little else?
Rep HEEs are not happy to have anti-abortion Jesus proselytizers at their sophisticated parties.
“Trump has permanently moved the Republican Party from its more globalist post-WWII policy emphases back to more nationalist policies “
Saw a headline that Mattis wants Biden to reject Trump’s “America First” diplomacy. The GOPe is not a much talked about faction, but they get headlines and donor money and attention (or is it lapdog love?) from ruling Dems.
Rogers, or any, who label this faction “American Party/Know Nothing”, show such HEE condescension that it won’t make normal Patriots think anything but less of such a snob.
One thing the Left does well is to label various conservative movements or people with negative labels. One reason Trump is hated by Left is that he’s pretty good at labeling them in the same vein.