I think Democrats were probably right to refuse to bail out McCarthy. The main reason is that this will likely prolong the current shitshow being staged by the House Republicans, which will help Democrats in 2024 by reminding voters just how crazy and exhausting the Republicans are. The Republicans can’t do this often enough. The […]
Does AI pose a meaningful existential threat to humanity? If an existential threat is one that can lead to mass death or human extinction, and a risk of extinction is meaningful if it is (say) at least 10% as large as the risk of a nuclear holocaust, my answer is that I have no idea. […]
I’m still trying to get my head around what happened with the debt ceiling. Is the proposed deal a win for Biden and the Democrats? The conventional wisdom is that it was. Catherine Rampell argues that the Republicans achieved little in the way of policy that they could not have gotten through the regular […]
The deal is much better than I expected for Democrats, and much worse for Republicans (preliminary summaries by Dayen and Stein). Of course, the whole thing was destructive and pointless and the deal is bad in the way one would expect – it includes work requirements for some food stamp and TANF recipients. On the […]
What should President Biden do if Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling? What should he say he will do, in advance, to avoid a catastrophe and gain leverage in negotiations? The answer to these questions is far from clear. Krugman and Klein on unorthodox legal strategies Paul Krugman argues that the administration should do […]
As of today, Trump seems well-positioned to win the Republican nomination. The basic dynamic is familiar from 2016 – Trump has a strong base of committed supporters, the opposition will likely be divided, and many Republican primaries are winner-take-all or winner-take-most. Couple this with the bump in support Trump got after his indictment in NY, […]
During last night’s CNN “town hall” fiasco Trump had this to say about the debt ceiling: Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday urged Republican lawmakers to let the United States default on its debt if Democrats don’t agree to spending cuts. “I say to the Republicans out there — congressmen, senators — if they don’t […]
The Biden administration and congressional Democrats have so far refused to negotiate with House Republicans over spending cuts to resolve the looming debt ceiling crisis. This tactic has successfully pressured Republicans into passing a bill with unpopular spending cuts that Democrats will quite rightly use to their advantage in the upcoming election. But now that […]
. . . called The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, and he was interviewed by Rob Johnson on the Economics & Beyond podcast. Here’s a quote from 50:20 in the pod (my transcription, done before I saw the official transcript at the link): Now a core thesis of my book . . . is that If […]
President Biden has so far insisted he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling. This makes sense on one level. The Republicans are threatening to blow up the economy to get the Democrats to agree to – and share the blame for – unpopular budget cuts. It is easy to see why Democrats want to […]