Donald Trump wants to win the Nobel peace prize, but WAPO reports today that at least 3 of the 5 members of the prize committee have been publicly critical of Trump. While this is hardly surprising, I think the committee should change its approach. Instead of criticizing Trump, sometimes for issues only tangentially related to […]
From The Hill today: For Harris, there was more flexibility to define her brand of change. She could risk looking hypocritical by making clean breaks with Biden on policies she had supported as vice president, rejecting parts of their record to forge her own agenda. She could identify new issues to run on that avoided the pitfalls […]
This past Sunday the New York Times ran an essay (gift link) adapted from Ezra Klein’s new book with Derek Thompson. The book, which I look forward to reading, is on abundance liberalism. Klein’s essay begins as follows: I keep seeing Democrats say the resistance failed. On these pages, James Carville counseled Democrats to “roll over and […]
According to Kevin Drum, the Senate budget resolution earmarks $170 billion for border security; the House budget proposal ponies up $190 billion. 5 minutes of googling was not sufficient to figure out how this unimaginable pile of money will be spent. Let’s assume half is for deportation. That’s $85 billion, if we go with the […]
Many moderate and liberal Democrats believe the party should sideline progressive advocacy groups. The groups sometimes make extreme and unpopular demands that damage the Democrats’ brand and prevent needed compromise. It appears to me that some critics would be happy kicking the groups to the curb. I largely agree with the diagnosis (see here, for […]
Is there a self-enforcing budget deal with Trump? In yesterday’s column, Yglesias makes a critical observation: “there is genuinely no point in negotiating a bipartisan appropriation bill if the president is going to ignore its terms. . . . the entire premise of a bipartisan spending deal is precisely that money will be spent on […]
Democrats need to win elections, full stop. As I wrote here, this may mean “heightening the contradictions”. Michael Dorf: If there is a path back to sanity, then, it probably must travel through a change of heart by the people who support Trump’s assault on democracy. They will not likely be won over by appeals […]
I recently reread Hayek’s most famous paper, The Use of Knowledge in Society, written in 1945. I hadn’t read it in many years. Page for page, TUKS is perhaps the most insightful economics paper ever written. Every undergraduate economics major should read it. I am not sure how many other papers written before 1960 […]
I haven’t written about Trump, tariffs, and trade wars because there is plenty of smart commentary out there, and because I really had (and have) no idea how the whole thing will play out. It seemed plausible to me that Trump might be dissuaded from launching a destructive full scale trade war, that he might […]
Did Biden think he (or Harris) was certain to win the election? A competent executive knows that high priority initiatives need their constant attention to overcome bureaucratic resistance and infighting. This is true in the private sector and in government. Yet this is what we got from Biden: In the final year of President Joe […]