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Not so close. And I am not even counting the Jan 6 Coup attempt.

Republicans historically were better on economics/growth, but have been moving away and now on the two biggest economic issues deficits and immigration are much worse. Probably that is true on trade, although Democrats have moved very much anti-trade, too.

One would like to believe that Republicans would come in with ideas for making the bureaucracy actually behave according to cost-benefit principles, but have never (Reagan, Bush, Bush, Trump) actually done so. Their "deregulation" seems to have been just aimed at regulations with high financial costs to key constituencies.

"Drill baby drill" is OK, but in fact they did no better than Biden. And Biden's approach to climate change is too high cost per unit of CO2 avoided, but it is and approach. Denial of the problem cannot be reformed.

Even idle talk about politicizing the Fed is disqualifying.

https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/an-unfair-evaluation-of-bidens-economic

https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/fairness-for-harris

Ukraine.

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Oct 6·edited Oct 6Author

I agree with all of these points, but I would say that these are either verifiable (Trump can and likely would politicize the fed) or quantifiable (deficits/immigration numbers). I think that since Dems are the party of bureaucracy, that the negative effects of their appointments, laws, and rulings are much less quantifiable (no one will do the work to quantify it).

Take the Federal code for example. Say Kamala adds 20,000 pages to the code of regulations. Say more abstract still, they are more strongly-worded pages. Also judicial appointments, as no one will do the complex work of adjudicating the economic effects of rulings. My argument is that this is impossible to quantify. What we can say is that if we look at Democratic states, we see movement away from those states and towards Republican states, and we can perhaps attribute this to regulatory barriers or labor/business/tax law.

There have been some attempts at quantifying this, but for the most part we are left with a mysterious effect of poor Democratic governance. I am assuming Kamala mostly agrees with policies you would find in these states, which is an assumption but not a big one.

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On the one hand, yours is the most reasonable “reasonable liberal” take I’ve heard on why someone who is pro-abundance (pro-free-enterprise) might vote for border czar Kamala.

I won’t try to take on your other arguments. I only take on the claim that “competence” is your deciding factor.

IMO you should be heeding William F Buckley Jr.’s claim that he’d rather be ruled by the first 400 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard (and note this was at least 50 years ago’s Harvard faculty!)

Trump is basically one of the 400 names (a particularly odd, highly highly imperfect one, to be sure).

Kamala IS the faculty of Harvard.

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I take the label of reasonable liberal as a very high complement.

I would say that I'm more like 80/20 on this issue and could be swayed to some degree. I don't take it as a given that Kamala is clearly better, just that I think she's regularly better. I do think Buckley's argument from the 60s was good, but I am less sure now given polarization. I wouldn't want to be ruled by Harvard, but I think the best people in politics right now are the Neoliberals, who I assume go to Ivies.

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“I take the label of reasonable liberal as a very high complement.”

You’re welcome 😉

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“I wouldn't want to be ruled by Harvard, but I think the best people in politics right now are the Neoliberals, who I assume go to Ivies.”

Idk where neoliberals go, nor for the purposes of elections do I really care. I assume neoliberals are mostly on the right, so I confess I don’t grok the relevance at all. But even if you say this suggesting they are on the left, you are completely missing the Buckley point that the right policies however implemented are FAR better than the wrong policies competently implemented.

It is more clear now than ever that when you vote for a candidate for president or Congress, you are primarily voting for a party.

Despite your quoted sentence, a vote for Kamala IS a vote for being ruled by the Harvard faculty, so in the end that is what you are doing.

The policies of the border czar Kamala Harris-Biden administration are so far from being pro-market that it’s not funny. Her policies will either be a) equally as bad, b) slightly worse, or c) materially worse. I confess that I honestly don’t know which of those choices it will be. But “much better” is NOT one of the options.

If you are happy with the policies of the last 4 years, and not concerned about the possibility that they will not only continue but will get worse, than I agree you should vote for Kamala. But all the other distraction about Trump the person notwithstanding, that is the ONLY legit reason to vote for Kamala. Re: competence, he has a demonstrated track record; she does not, so suggesting that competence is a reason to vote for her is prima facie absurd.

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