Leszek Kołakowski:

"... We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are...."

What Thiel's actions

Josh Marshall:

"... What Thiel's actions and The American Interest article both point to this: One of the great trends of our time is not simply to give greater and greater rein for the extremely wealthy to use their wealth in the public square but the claim that they need additional protections from those accorded everyone else or that they need to be allowed to do so in secret. Otherwise, they risk being "villified" or "demonized." In other words, the sheer magnitude of their power and the paucity of their numbers require special rights to protect them against the reputational consequences of their actions...."

For months I'd thought

Josh Marshall acknowledging error and updating beliefs:

"For months I'd thought and written that Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver was the key driver of toxicity in the the Democratic primary race. Weaver has been highly visible on television, far more than campaign managers tend to be. He's also been the one constantly upping the tension, pressing the acrimony and unrealism of the campaign as Sanders actual chances of winning dwindled.

But now I realize I had that wrong....

Sanders speech tonight was right in line with his statement out this afternoon. He identified the Democratic party as an essentially corrupt, moribund institution which is now on notice that it must let 'the people' in. What about the coalitions Barack Obama built in 2008 and 2012, the biggest and most diverse presidential coalitions ever constructed?

Sanders narrative today has essentially been that he is political legitimacy. The Democratic party needs to realize that. This, as I said earlier, is the problem with lying to your supporters. Sanders is telling his supporters that he can still win, which he can't. He's suggesting that the win is being stolen by a corrupt establishment, an impression which will be validated when his phony prediction turns out not to be true. Lying like this sets you up for stuff like happened over the weekend in Nevada.

As I said, it all comes from the very top."

Okay I think I can stop blogging about the Sanders campaign after this... Maybe a reader (who am I kidding haha) would get the impression I never felt even a tinge of the Bern.

It's just that while I like the policy concepts, I think assessments of policy proposals should be based in reality and empirics. If you're arguing against inequality or for more government action on healthcare you don't need to mislead supporters because the facts are on your side anyway. Before that, I was concerned about Sanders' views of racism in the US, which even after his pivot last year still seem to me to elevate economic factors above and over the major social elements of racism and its pervasive effect on American institutions. I admire the Sanders' ambitious goals, but making public less extreme, by American standards, alternatives that one could potentially support as it is clear one's preferred policies will be impossible to legislate is not necessarily kowtowing to elites. Above all, I disagree with any efforts to cultivate a group think that rejects contrary evidence and demonizes valid criticism and opposition.

Simon Wren-Lewis forcefully argues

Simon Wren-Lewis forcefully argues that austerity is a product of political opportunism on the right.

" ... Austerity is nearly always unnecessary,...

[Which] makes the question of why policy makers made the mistake all the more pertinent....

The set of arguments that I think have more force, and which make up the general theory of the title, reflect political opportunism on the political right which is dominated by a ‘small state’ ideology. It is opportunism because it chose to ignore the (long understood) macroeconomics, and instead appeal to arguments based on equating governments to households, at a time when many households were in the process of reducing debt or saving more. But this explanation raises another question in turn: how was the economics known since Keynes lost to simplistic household analogies.

This question can be put another way. Why was this opportunism so evident in this recession, but not in earlier economic downturns? There are a number of reasons for this, which I also discuss here, but one that I think is important in Europe is the spread of central bank independence, coupled with a phobia that European central bank governors have about fiscal dominance. In the UK, for example, the Bank of England played a key role in 2010 in convincing policymakers and the media that we needed immediate and aggressive fiscal consolidation. Keynesian demand management has been entrusted to institutions whose leaders (but not those who work for them) threw away the manual. But as Ben Bernanke showed, it does not have to be this way.

If my analysis is right, it means that we cannot be complacent that when the next liquidity trap recession hits the austerity mistake will not be made again. Indeed it may be even more likely to happen, as austerity has in many cases been successful in reducing the size of the state. My paper does not explore how to avoid future austerity, but it hopefully lays the groundwork for that discussion."

The working paper is here. I blogged about why austerity, indirectly, here.

I also liked the Obama quote he opens with:

“If we cannot puncture some of the mythology around austerity … then we are doomed to keep on making more and more mistakes.”

The plot thickens

The plot thickens with regards to the Sanders campaign's plan to clinch the Democratic nomination. Last month I posted some of a Josh Marshall post which noted that the campaign's plan to reach the required majority relied not on getting a majority of pledged delegates, or even raw votes (where Sanders' lags even further behind), but on denying Clinton a majority and then convincing superdelegates to support Sanders at the convention. This would be an appeal to one of the most blatantly undemocratic and establishment elements of the Democratic primary.

Since then, Sanders has made no significant progress to close the delegate gap but Trump has become the presumptive Republican nominee. This strengthens Sanders' claim to the nomination on the grounds of electability, since in some polls he fares better than Clinton against Trump and obviously denying Trump the presidency is crucial for Democrats. 

Although, Trump's victory becoming explicit doesn't really change anything fundamental. Yet, it seems the Sanders' campaign has become more aggressive in pushing this strategy, with Sanders' himself now making it explicit.

Michelle Goldberg:

"... It is more than a little ironic, then, that Sanders is now urging those same insiders to ignore the intention of the primary electorate—which has given Clinton an edge in both pledged delegates and raw votes—and bequeath the nomination to him instead. In a Washington press conference on Sunday, Sanders, who has no discernible path to a delegate majority, outlined a plan to force a contested convention, where he apparently believes some superdelegates will flip to his side on the basis of electability. “The evidence is extremely clear that I would be the stronger candidate to defeat Trump or any other Republican,” he said. Sanders reiterated this on Monday at a rally in Evansville, Indiana, saying, “We appeal to virtually all the Democrats, but we do a lot better with independents than Secretary Clinton. And I hope the Democrats at the national convention understand that while independents may not be able to vote in certain Democratic primaries, they do vote in the general election.”..."

The dubiously principled superdelegate strategizing speaks for itself, but one also has to ask how clear the evidence on Sander's superior electability really is. Turns out, "extremely clear" is perhaps not the best phrase. Again from the piece above:

"... It is true, as Sanders pointed out, that polls show him doing better than Clinton against Republicans in November. But it is also true that Clinton has not hit Sanders with a single negative ad. Not one. Initially, her campaign didn’t take him seriously. Later, it couldn’t figure out a way to go after him where he’s weakest—on the flakier parts of his far-left past—without alienating his supporters....

The right, meanwhile, had no incentive to rough up Sanders, a candidate who, by all accounts, Republicans would love to run against in the fall. And the mainstream media often failed to treat Sanders as a plausible contender, which would have entailed a much greater degree of scrutiny than he received. As a result, issues that, fairly or not, would be obsessively scrutinized in a general election have gone almost entirely unexamined...."

Beyond that, the polls themselves, potentially inflated by the lack of negatives as they are, don't conclusively show superiority for a Sanders ticket as is so often put forth. Recently, some swing state polls generated a lot of press, and Facebook posts, because they showed Clinton in a dead heat with, or losing to, Trump. However, these were just one set of pools, with one sample, taken six months before the election, in a few states, with over 10% of those polled undecided.

Harry Enten wrote about how we should contextualize and view the new polling results:

"... From the first presidential debate last year in early October to Election Day, there were 126 polls taken in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania combined. According to HuffPost Pollster, only 96 national general-election polls were taken over the same period. In all of 2016 so far, we’ve had only 21 polls in these three states combined. That’s equal to the number of Clinton vs. Trump polls that have been conducted nationally in the last month.

The lack of state polling also potentially means individual polls receive more attention at a time when it’s hard to tell which surveys are outliers and which are real. You could get all worked up about the recent Quinnipiac poll that showed Trump within 1 percentage point of Clinton in Pennsylvania. But you’d be ignoring a recent Marist poll that had Clinton up 15 percentage points. With limited statewide polling data, we don’t know which is closer to the truth or whether whatever the truth is means anything for the national race at large...."

Basically, we don't really know who has better electability. As a final note on this, political scientists give Clinton better odds in the general election. She closer to the median and average voter and at a simple psychological level people feel they are harmed more by losses than by equal gains, a problem for candidates running to expand state benefits on the basis of increased taxation.

Given all of the above, I was interested to read that some Sanders' supporters inside the campaign had published a draft detailing what they thought Sanders should do after conceding defeat now that he is all but certain to lose the primary. They think he should build an independent organization aimed at defeating Donald Trump, which is good. He absolutely should work to help defeat Trump. I was also excited to here this realism from his supporters. Except then I read about the details and became disheartened.

Yamiche Alcindor:

"... The draft says Mr. Sanders can help bring together “young, newly political Sanders supporters” who see “rejection of Hillary and the Democratic Party establishment as core to their identity.” They suggest that his supporters should work to influence the party’s platform at the Democratic National Convention this July in Philadelphia, and that Mr. Sanders should host his own “convention” on transforming American politics, separate from the party’s gathering...."

This sounds like a Tea Party movement for the Democratic Party. Parallel organizations and institutions aimed at exerting external pressure on a major party. 

But these "newly political" young people may not even members, or at least active members, of the Democratic party. They exert little influence at the local or state level where major party shifts are usually built from. Why not push them to join and be active within the party, diluting its moderate (should I say establishment?) base with their left leaning views, so that the next Sanders' can win the primary? 

And by catering to an identity that sees "rejection of Hillary ... as core" they are going to strengthen that identity. This will undermine their efforts to oppose Trump in the the general election. Why is it not 'the Democratic Party establishment and Clinton' (they use Sanders' last name after all)? Why is it not 'the Democratic Party establishment, and the Clinton campaign, ... ?' Why is it not 'the Democratic Party establishment?'

In a way, I'm happy the Sanders' campaigns immediately rejected the draft and its ideas despite my initial excitement (they stuck to their guns on claiming a path to the nomination exists). I also think people should recognize the energy Sanders has generated is not all that different from what Obama drove in 2008. Finally, I think the left needs coalitions not activist conflict.

On that, Astra Taylor wrote a really good Salvo for The Baffler earlier this year. The Baffler is an awesome publication. I've never read it in print but I'm sure its something I'll want lying on my future coffee table. Anyway, it's relevant to questions about the direction of the movement Sanders has actualized and I really liked the conclusion:

"... So there we have it. A century ago, the idea of activism was born of a philosopher—Eucken—who preferred the mystical to the material, and that preference still lingers on today, for many still believe that action, even when disconnected from any coherent strategy, can magically lead to a kind of societal awakening. Social justice warfare, in turn, emerged from some of the Internet’s more unsavory recesses as an insult concocted to belittle those who take issue with bigotry. But vitriol aside, the term betrays a faith that unites social justice warriors and their critics (a faith, to be clear, that is all too common today): that arguing with and attacking strangers online is a form of political engagement as significant as planning a picket or a boycott once was.

Fortunately, at least for now, social justice warriors have not totally eclipsed activists, and activists have not completely eradicated organizers. There are still plenty of arenas in which real organizing—what Rudd described in his talk as “education, base-building, and coalition,” and what I would describe as creating collective identity and shared economic power—is being done, but these slow-moving efforts are often overshadowed by the latest spectacle or viral outrage.

Almost a decade after I sat listening to Mark Rudd speak in a dingy room, tens of thousands of people are flocking to auditoriums across America to hear Bernie Sanders condemn the “billionaire class.” With polls showing that a growing number of young people and the majority of Democratic primary voters have a positive view of socialism, we need good, smart organizing to back up this astonishing uptick in leftist sentiment and to productively channel people’s enthusiasm and energy beyond the limited frame of the presidential race and electoral politics. Semantics alone will not determine history’s course, for it matters less what we call ourselves and more what we do, but often the language we use doesn’t help the cause. It has always been easy for elites to dismiss those who challenge them as losers and malcontents, but it takes even less effort to ignore a meme. Successful organizers, by contrast, are more difficult to shrug off, because they have built a base that acts strategically. The goal of any would-be world-changer should be to be part of something so organized, so formidable, and so shrewd that the powerful don’t scoff: they quake."

China's Demography

Howard French:

"... The frightening scope of this decline is best expressed in numbers. China today boasts roughly five workers for every retiree. By 2040, this highly desirable ratio will have collapsed to about 1.6 to 1. From the start of this century to its midway point, the median age in China will go from under 30 to about 46, making China one of the older societies in the world. At the same time, the number of Chinese older than 65 is expected to rise from roughly 100 million in 2005 to more than 329 million in 2050—more than the combined populations of Germany, Japan, France, and Britain. ..."

Another report on Bernie Sanders' economic agenda

Robert Reich:

"The Tax Policy-Brookings Center has just come out with another report on Bernie Sanders's economic agenda (see below), claiming it will increase the federal deficit by $18 trillion, mostly due to Bernie’s single-payer healthcare plan. This assumes a single-payer plan will deliver health care at the same cost as our current private for-profit system, and Americans therefore will be no healthier because of it. In fact, as the experience of almost every other advanced nation shows, a single-payer plan is far cheaper and promotes better health. America pays more for health care (almost 18 percent of our entire GDP) than any other modern economy yet continues to lag almost every other advanced nation in health outcomes.

The fact that so-called “left of center” establishment think tanks continue to put out this misleading analysis suggests either (1) their analysts don’t know the effects of single-payer plans in other nations, (2) their major financial backers don’t want a single-payer plan in the U.S., or (3) they want to continue to discredit Bernie.

I don’t believe it’s (1). What do you think?"

The healthcare industry is second to Wall Street in lobbying, so I don't want to completely discount (2) and (3),  but (1) is just plain misleading. It implies that Sanders' plan will quickly give the full benefits that other countries reap from having a single payer plan. If it was structured to begin with prices comparable to those single-payer countries pay, American healthcare expenditures would shrink from 16% of GDP to 8% or so. To say that would be disruptive is an understatement, aside from the fact it would never ever fly. I don't think its an exaggeration to say that the short run costs of this disruption would outweigh the medium run cost savings, with the long run cost savings being similar whether prices were negotiated down over time or immediately lowered.

A good comparison for how American healthcare costs might change is Switzerland's experience, even though the country doesn't have a single-payer system. Paul Pierson:

"... In 1980, Switzerland and the United States had comparable per-capita spending, but Switzerland then moved more aggressively to control costs (as well as expand coverage to all citizens). Thirty years later, the Swiss are spending about a third less per person than we are. That may not seem impressive; Switzerland spends substantially more than other European nations. Yet had the United States followed the same trajectory since 1980, Americans would have collectively saved a whopping $15 trillion—enough to finance a four-year college degree for more than 175 million Americans, or have eliminated all federal deficits over the same period, with room to spare ..."

I'm not trying to argue for gradualism, but I do want to point out that policy changes can have dramatic effects without containing aggressive actions that attempt to force quick results. Moreover, I disagree with Reich's approach to issues like these.

Now, the Tax Policy-Brookings Center analysis isn't perfect, and I think Reich is justified in his criticism that they don't sufficiently include cost savings. The authors themselves recognize their 0.5% reduction in cost growth might be too low. However, I don't understand why Reich didn't write a post disagreeing with their conclusion based on a criticism of their methodology - and the disagreement could be passionate and the criticism vehement - instead of implicitly questioning their morals and motives and grossly over promising the short run rewards of a switch to a single payer system. He could have written a very convincing argument, perhaps quoting them on how their cost saving estimate could be low, chastising them for such conservative estimates. Instead, he portrayed them as corrupt.

The same afternoon Reich posted a short status bemoaning the hostility between Sanders' and Clinton's supporters in the comments of his posts. He said they can disagree but should be united against Trump. This magnanimity towards Clinton and her supporters, embodiments to many of the "left of center", is at odds with his rhetoric. This is reflective of the Sanders' group think, in which one can portray the liberal institutions and individuals around and of the Democratic Party as corrupt while simultaneously and falsely claiming the moral high ground of factual honesty and leftist unity.

Corey Robin:

"... While liberalism has often loathed the right, it hasn’t always been sufficiently attuned to the shape-shifting power of the right. Its attentions have too often been focused in the other direction, so fraught has been its relationship to the left. Till it was too late.

The left has not been entirely blameless in this. It, too, has been engaged in a two-front war: against liberalism and the right. On the ground, and in the streets, the left has understood the power of the right, but up in the chambers of political theory, intellectual debate, and elite party argument, the left has sometimes, and catastrophically, construed liberalism (or its positional surrogate on the ideological spectrum) to be its greatest and only enemy. Even at a moment like the present in the United States—when liberalism, at least as it has been historically understood in the United States, has been in abeyance, or at best, has played second fiddle—the left has tended to focus on the power and betrayals of liberalism ..."

We need better leftists.

Over the weekend

Mathew Yglesias:

"Over the weekend, Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin in the New York Times published a 2,000-word account of how Donald Trump managed to execute "a hostile takeover of one of America’s two major political parties." Remarkably, the idea of racism never appears in the article ...

One reason Trump is an unlikely spokesman for the grievances of the financially struggling is that he isn't a spokesman for the grievances of the financially struggling. Some of his supporters are poor, of course, but they mostly aren't. And most economically struggling Americans aren't supporting him. To understand the patterns of support and opposition to Trump, you have to talk about race ...

Trump leaped out to a big delegate lead by winning a series of mostly poor Southern states on Super Tuesday. This led to an early equation of Trump with economically struggling regions ...

But we do know that the unusual geographic pattern of Trumpism — stronger in the South and Northeast than in the Midwest or West — corresponds to the geography of white racial resentment in the United States. We also know that Trump rose to political prominence based on the allegation that America's first black president wasn't a real American at all, and launched his 2016 campaign with the allegation that Mexican immigrants to the United States are largely rapists and murders.

We know that this kind of rhetoric does not resonate with nonwhite Americans but has appealed to white voters in the kinds of places — some poor, others affluent — where the level of racism among the white population is unusually high ...

It's polite to both Trump and his supporters to sweep this all under the rug with hazy talk of "anti-establishment" feeling. But to do so completely misses a huge part of what the conflict between pro- and anti-Trump forces is actually about — is the Republican Party going to be an ideological party or an ethnic one?"