15 quick election thoughts

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1. This is written at 10pm central, with things looking good for Trump. I want to get ahead of everyone else, so if this is wrong I’ll delete it.

2. When I wrote my blog about Kamala vs. Trump I noted that compared to other take-makers, I was the most centrist on the issue and the least pro-Kamala of the pro-Kamalas.

3. My final predictit bets:

   

4. It would probably be good in some sense if Trump wins the popular vote in addition to winning the electoral college. I do wonder if MAGAs will consider why the Democrats wouldn’t steal this one too given that they are actually in power this time. Introspection is unfortunately a hard thing to ask of people.

5. While I ended up positive in my bets, I did lose $800 betting on Shapiro for VP. This was because I was sure that the race was closer than what everyone was saying in the euphoria after Biden stepped down, and that she would want to pick someone from a swing state.

6. The main issue I have with his administration is that he may use his authority over tariffs and immigration to hurt the economy. Combined with increased deficits and lowered interest rates - this all fuels inflation and makes the average person poorer.

7. The secondary issue I have with his administration are his announced appointments, like RFK in a public-health role.

8. The upshot of a Trump presidency is that he activates internal resisters who slow walk him, I’m currently reading a book on this and will write a review soon.

9. Immigration and inflation were the biggest factors in this campaign, and while inflation is not entirely within the white house’s influence, immigration is. What happens is that the Democratic party bases political priorities on what the groups say. So there are lots of groups of activists and non-profits. You have the climate people, the lgbt people, the industrial policy people, women’s groups, minorities etc., but the immigration people were sidelined until the very end. What happened is this resulted in a large wave of immigration that the white house was late to respond to, so they dumped it on Kamala’s head by naming her the border czar. She didn’t have any actual authority over the border, but she did go out and do talks about it. This is where the “Do not come” meme came from.

10. The issue is precisely that the Biden admin viewed immigration as not a big deal, so they spent years focused on other things. What happens when you don’t prioritize something is that the chance it becomes a big deal increases. Then in his infinite wisdom Biden placed it all on Kamala, and now we are seeing the fallout of this. In theory if you were the admin, you may want to shore up your weaknesses by focusing on immigration first, but that’s not how Biden governed because he would not say no to anyone.

11. Incumbents have been losing worldwide.

12. There’s this idea that “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” This is a very general quote, but what I do think what’s true is that groups need to relearn the same lessons over and over again. The Democratic party has not been defeated on the basis of inflation and immigration, two classic weak points of left politics in many years. Losing is supposed to make groups stronger in the long run, as they learn from their mistakes. On Yglesias’ live stream with Brian Beutler, Yglesias is pounding the table talking about how the Democratic party is ran by lunatics. This might be a sign of things to come.

13. How would Democrats learn from the border? Maybe actually prioritize it earlier in the legislative year, and no, putting up a quick bill during an election year is not prioritizing it in any meaningful way. How would they learn about inflation? I’m not sure. If I understand

    Thomas L. Hutcheson
    ’s point that he always brings up - that the Fed is responsible for inflation, then I take that to mean that Biden should have kicked out Powell and put in someone who would raise rates higher. The alternative is to just not raise them higher faster and lose the election? This, I don’t understand much.¹

14. There’s much to be said about the future of the Republican party, but for now I will talk about the past. The next two book reviews are about Trump’s first administration as well as the history of the Republican party. That won’t be for some time however.

15. All my life I’ve been told that inequality is the driving force in politics, and that this is what motivates people. That a strong coalition about this issue can not only be easily built, but in fact already exists; they are only waiting to be activated by highly partisan messaging.

    But inequality has lessened with rising inflation, and what we see is that full employment pisses people off. Looks like they don’t care about inequality and literally only care about inflation. This explains why the left constantly downplays inflation everywhere it occurs. This gets at something deeply wrong with left politics. There is just something different about leftists that separates them from other people in their perception of inequality, inflation, and unemployment. I hope that by first reading about Republican history, and then Democratic history, I can learn the facets of their personality that repeat over time. I’ll let you know what I find out.

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- Josh

1. Brian Riedl says that the Dems overspent in their stimulus, and that inflation could have been 2/3rds of what is ended up being if they were more restrained. He says they were aware of this risk. Sometimes in life you have to take risks, and I wish they would have taken more risk during the campaign, but when you overshoot intentionally, you have to understand you overshot! Full employment was achieved which is a good thing, but you have to understand what you did also pushes inflation up.