We do not know how severe the covid-19 epidemic will be or how much economic and social pain it will cause, but it clearly has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans, and the economic consequences could include a deep recession and even a financial crisis that will cause misery […]

Good overview from the CDC.

I want to weigh in briefly on the Biden/Sanders debate that’s been going on here over the past few days. No links, this is a quickie. There are two issues for Democratic primary voters to consider: 1) who will be a better president and 2) who is more electable in a race against Trump. Both […]

The HuffPo has reported on a minor dust-up between Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the politics of Medicare for All (see here, here, here, also Paul Waldman here).  The tl;dr summary is that AOC suggested that it is good politics for Sanders to insist on MFA, because this will give him more leverage in […]

I have suggested (here and here) that idealism is leading progressives astray.  Unfortunately, climate policy offers many examples. Consider the Climate Equity Act of 2019.  The CEA was, I believe, the first concrete piece of legislation proposed as part of the Green New Deal.  Unfortunately, it illustrates several of the problems with progressive idealism.  The […]

I have suggested (here and here) that idealism is leading progressives astray.  Idealism leads progressives to ignore the political opposition that their proposals will encounter, and the need to win over reluctant allies through policy design, messaging, and – yes – compromise. A clear example of the pitfalls of progressive idealism is provided by the […]

In a previous post, I argued that rising incomes and increasingly liberal attitudes may move opinion and policy in a progressive direction in the United States.  However, the Democratic victory in the 2018 election did not signal the start of a progressive “revolution”; it mostly reflected a predictable reaction to the unpopular policies of Trump […]

Via Matt Grossmann, a new paper by Patrick Fisher: Contemporary American politics is marked by an unusually substantial generation gap. This has important implications for the future of American politics as an overwhelmingly white and conservative generation, the Silent Generation, is being replaced in the electorate by much more diverse and liberal generations: the Millennial […]

Via Noah Smith . . . A relative of mine from China just sent me this. Rows of police surrounds her residential block where a positive #coronavirus case was found. It was someone who returned from #wuhan. Now their entire family has been taken away. The whole block is now sealed off until 16th Feb. […]

will it survive anywhere else? Many people (including me) are worried about the failure of democracy here.  But what happens in the rest of the world if democracy fails here, with the leading countries outside Europe authoritarian or leaning authoritarian, and European democracy looking a bit frayed around the edges?  And if authoritarianism is ascendant […]