It is popular & often fashionable to drag Democrats over messaging. But messaging for Dems is different than messaging for Republicans. You can serve Republicans shit & their base would be like "mmm mmm best shit I ever had." You could serve Dems the best filet mignon & half https://t.co/Ttk5s0wiRa
— John V. Moore (@johnvmoore) December 9, 2023
the base would be like “but we are vegan.” The demands & expectations of our base are different. Often times on any issue we serve constituencies with competing interests/goals/beliefs/objectives. We have a broad, informed coalition, that scrutinizes everything.
If you understand the diversity of our party. The need to message to environmentalists, labor, Black folks, Black church going folks, Latinos, immigrants, the LGTBQ community, young folks, women, etc. creates challenges that you cannot ignore. In Chicago we are dealing with
an influx of migrants bussed here by Greg Abbott, Black folks, working class whites & even immigrants of all stripes who have been here for a while see the extraordinary resources thrown their way and are outraged. Republicans just come out and go anti-immigrants. Dems can’t
do that, we have to be more nuanced. Don’t even get me started on the challenges that the current crisis on the Gaza Strip presents. It is easy to criticize Dem messaging but to do so you must acknowledge that our mission is different and more challenging.
Here is a perfect example of good dem messaging which will get ignored https://t.co/FEZ5kIkMEV
— Candidly Tiff (@tify330) December 9, 2023
This is good messaging but too many are focused on feelings not facts. https://t.co/WPhqJ5H4rX
— Candidly Tiff (@tify330) December 9, 2023
Exactly, the challenge is that even when it's good there are very few messages that will make all parts of our base, the media and independents happy. Most effective Republican messaging is not necessarily good & there is not an expectation placed on them that it should be good.
— John V. Moore (@johnvmoore) December 9, 2023
Sometimes I feel a little envious of how easy it must be for Republicans to motivate their base — if this year’s Great Leader announced that toenails were no longer acceptable, the glass in GOP windows would shatter as they attacked their own feet with pliers…
Albatrossity
Yes, it is a lot easier to send messages when facts don’t matter at all, and emotions are the only things that do matter.
Scout211
And not surprising, but horrifying none the less, Musk has reinstated Alex Jones’ X account. By an X unofficial poll, of course. So countering his toxic message (which stirs up the base) will be another challenge for the Democrats. Sigh. Feelings vs facts is quite a challenge.
Scout211
Do we have any jackals in Tennessee in the area of the devastating tornados? Should we have a check-in here?
Kay
What’s discouraging to me is this isn’t, actually, a bad economy and I have no idea what happens when we get one – because we will.
I feel like the bar has been set so high for what constitutes a “good economy” that it now means full employment in every single sector, zero interest rates, plentiful and affordable housing, plus cheap goods and all of this has to be environmentally responsible that we can never have a “good economy” again because all of these things are never going to happen at the same time.
People on social media joke that it will become a good economy again once a GOP President is elected or conservatives are in charge and I fear that’s true.
Kay
I just don’t think one can insist on full employment and then complain that they can’t find workers.
That’s what full employment means – you can’t find workers as easily as one does when there’s a 7,8,9% unemployment rate. Some of these requirements for a “good economy” are in direct conflict and WILL NOT HAPPEN at the same time. You don’t get plentiful cheap labor and full employment. That’s not how it works. Unless you wann bring workers in and then – oh no- it’s the immigration crisis!
“Independents” and “swing voters” have always been fucking dopes but I swear they are getting worse. Now they demand econ9omic condititons that contradict. Who can please these fucking people? No one.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: People like to complain. If everything is OK they will invent something to complain about.
Geminid
Politico has a good interview with Rep. Andy Kim up this morning. Kim talks about border security, the Gaza war, and his Senate campaign.
Kay
@Scout211:
I think people may not know just how horrible Alex Jones really is. I read this:
Sandy Hook and the Battle for Truth by Elizabeth Williamson
It’s meticulously reported so detailed and long but, boy, it really opens your eyes to how much misinformation he pumps into the world and how corrosive and damaging it is. I think if people just have a general bad feeling aboiut him they don’t know the extent of it. It’s genuinely evil. He and his followers tortured those parents.
Raoul Paste
@Albatrossity: Exactly this. it is emotions, and Fox knows it
Kay
We did a conference call with Sherrod Brown last week – he wanted to thank the people who volunteered for Ohio’s Issue 1.
On the call Brown said that if we have someone who is on the fence to run in an uncontested race of any kind – statehouse, US House, school board, whatever- if we contact Brown’s campaign staff (separate from Senate staff) Brown will call the potential candidate and talk about what it’s like to run.
I think this is a great idea.
Scout211
Politico reports a new filing yesterday from Jack Smith’s team.
Geminid
@Kay: Sherrod Brown knows a thing or two about politics.
Another Scott
As I mentioned downstairs, electoral-vote.com has the doomsters out in force in their Sunday mailbag.
We have motivating emotional things on our side, also too.
1) Climate change.
1) Dobbs
3) Competent leadership that is doing good things and running government so that we don’t have to be glued to the news all the time wondering, “what stupid, spiteful, illegal thing has he done now??”
The other guys have a playbook – it’s the same one they’ve used the last 43+ years. We have one, also too, and it’s a good one.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Marmot
@OzarkHillbilly: It is known.
Kay
I saw Musk said he “disagrees” with Jones. Moron. What does that mean, he disagrees? He “disagrees” that the Sandy Hook parents staged their own children’s slaughter? So there’s no objective truth? It’s a matter of what he “agrees” with? He’s a fucking idiot. He just babbles in this kind of manosphere tech bro speak. None of it is reasoned or thought out.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Every time he hits a new low, I wonder how low can he go? The answer is always, “Lower.” There is no bottom to his depravity.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: There’s nothing lower than using the slaughter of children to improve your ratings. Any decent person should recoil from Jones. He should be shunned.
Geminid
@Kay: Musk has a lot of problems, and one of them I think is that he smokes too much weed.
Anyway
@Kay:
Have never understood how Alex Jones was able to get away with that — there was plenty of evidence about the Sandy Hook shootings. He made money contradicting that for years. It took the parents so long to get any semblance of justice and the man still has a voice. Its madness.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: What Jones does is genuinely evil. I read a piece somewhere about a deranged Jones follower who was convicted of harassing the Sandy Hook parents. Jones himself doesn’t suffer criminal consequences, but sometimes his followers do.
Anyway, the convicted harasser was a middle-aged woman who lost everything because she acted on Jones’ nutty false flag conspiracy. Her husband divorced her, she lost her house, and her grown kids want nothing to do with her. I think she was living in a shed after being released from jail.
I have zero sympathy for her — she’s a malignant moron who deserved everything she got and more, IMO. But while Jones has been held civilly liable, I bet he’s still living in a mansion and rolling in money that he’s hidden all over the place. It’s revolting. He should have to live in the garden shed with the nutball follower.
Another Scott
@Kay: Fudzilla.com calls Melon “Elon [look at me] Musk”.
That’s mainly what this is about.
Yes, it’s horrible because he’s [each of them are] a horrible person.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Kay:
I think it has to do more with inequality and mobility and the ability to build a better situation over the course of one’s life. Late capitalism means most of us are just surviving, not getting ahead. It’s not a good situation if everyone is working and still struggling. We’re not building something better for our kids. That’s not good, and it’s not unreasonable for people to think that’s shitty.
Of course, the solution is at least in part to tax the fuck out of rich people.
waspuppet
@Kay: I think it was Digby who said the next time someone starts complaining about “the economy,” ask them how “the terrible economy” has affected them. What have they had to go without? What have they had to postpone? Were they set to retire but now they can’t?
Unless they’re under about 30 (which, true, is a significant number of people), they don’t have an answer. Not an honest one anyway.
And another way to describe “the diversity of our coalition” is to say Republicans are white Jesus freaks who openly prefer several countries to this one, and Democrats are everyone else. That’s a lot of people!
OzarkHillbilly
A daughter reflects on her mother’s death.
Diana Rigg campaigned for assisted dying for years, a shame it was denied to her.
A bit of a long read but well worth the time.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, on the other side, … TheHill.com:
Who was the GQPer who asked on the floor (roughly) – “I’d like to know a concrete accomplishment I can sell to my people at home. Can anyone help me out, ’cause I’m not seeing it…”??
I like our chances in November, 2024.
Hang in there, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Scout211:
There’s absolutely nothing contradictory about it. If I pay a hit man to kill someone, both of us are fully responsible under the law for that murder. Can’t see that this would be the least bit different: sending the 1/6 foot soldiers to prison doesn’t reduce the legal liability of the man who used them in his attempt to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election.
Kay
@Suzanne:
I think you and I disagree about whether people can get ahead. I think they can. I think their extremely pessimistic view of their future is not an accurate read of the opportunities available to them, and it makes me sad because a big part of building financial security is timing – in terms of over a lifetime. They have to move when they have a good economy and telling them over and over they can’t will harm them long term. My first piece of property had a mortgage at 13% interest and backed up on a railroad track. “First” doesn’t mean “last” – they have to take steps in order over decades.
waspuppet
@Another Scott: That was Chip Roy. The problem there, of course, is that he hates America more than half of ISIS does, so the only “accomplishments” he’s looking to sell back home are shutting down the government or putting Joe Biden in jail.
OzarkHillbilly
An FYI for the dog lovers here:
Time will tell.
Kay
@Suzanne:
And there’s risk! I told you my daughter bought at the peak but got a good interest rate. Too risky for me- I told her not to do it. But she knew she had to MOVE, go forward, and she was right. So she got a higher price but a better interest rate. She’d still be renting if she had waited for ideal conditions, or “1980s” conditions, or “1990s” conditions. It’ll never be ideal. It wasn’t ideal in 1950 either.
Nelle
@Another Scott: Thank you.
Robin Goodfellow
@Another Scott: I think that was Chip Roy. Sucks to be him.
RedDirtGirl
@Scout211: I was wondering about that too.
Suzanne
@Kay: I think that it’s possible to advance, but much iffier now than in the past. The stats are pretty clear that the percentage of people who achieve the same prosperity as their parents — the core of the American Dream for a lot of people — is falling over time. I don’t think that’s bad vibes. I don’t think that’s overinflated expectations. I don’t think that’s media-concocted pessimism. I think those are structural failures of the economy. I think those are consequences of specific choices (like electing Ronald Reagan) made by people who have a much different sense of responsibility and community than in the past. I think that’s MotUs wanting to privatize the gains and socialize the losses.
Kay
@Suzanne:
The housing costs issue is real and wil only be fixed with building more middle and lower end but for things like inflation and gas prices, the goal posts keep moving. Inflation stops growing and then it can’t be a good economy because gas is high. Eggs are down but meat is up. Can’t be good with meat up! They’re never going to get all these factors to line up at the same time. People liked zero interest rates a lot but do zero interest rates make sense for a resilient economy that doesn’t boom and bust? Do we want short term comfort or longer term real gains?
Berto
We need more messaging about how Democrats and Liberals want to take away the peoples right to ingest Drano.
Geminid
@Robin Goodfellow: I just found out that Chip Roy was born in Bethesda, Maryland. He sure doesn’t talk like it.
Mai Naem mobile
@Geminid: i do hope Kim ends up being NJ’s senator. He comes across as the real deal. Also, Corey Booker deserves a better colleague than Menendez.
@Kay: I know it’s silly to put it this way, but Elon Musk deserves a special place in hell for what he’s done to Twitter. Twitter wasn’t perfect before Musk took over but I’m pretty sure they weren’t turning over info to autocratic foreign governments to catch democracy activists.
Kay
@Suzanne:
But they’re going to have to wait for some of this structural repair work to take effect. They need to distinguish between their short term situation and where they might be 30 years out because those two things are different and have to be approached differently. Labor power and wage gains don’t happen over 4 years, just like building financial security doesn’t happen over 4 years. The dec ades of cheap money are over. The people who are going to thrive in a more resilient economy are people with a thriftier, longer arc thinking and planning. They can get gains from interest rates now! That means STOP SPENDING and save your money.
I think some young people are picking this up, so we see all this shopping at thrift stores and bartering and such among Zoomers. That kind of frugal thinbking will be rewarded again. My youngest is planning on sharing a car this year at school. They’re sharing the cost/use of a beater used car. That’s the kind of thinking that pays off in a more resilient growth economy and isn’t encouraged in a cheap flimsy boom and bust economy. They need to think differently than people did in the 80s and 90s.
Anyway
@Another Scott:
Stefanik got the scalp of Liz Magill, that’ll show those woke universities who’s boss.
Another Scott
@Kay: My J hated zero interest rates! “What nonsense is this? Why can’t I get over 2% interest on a CD??!!1”
;-)
As you say, there are always things to gripe about. I think about the best thing we can do is say, “Yeah, that’s a problem. Things are getting better, though. Remember how bad it was. BTW, did you see that (good thing) is happening??”
It’s a balance. One has to listen to people’s griping and not minimize it, not both-sides or what-about it in a knee-jerk way, but not be trapped by the other guy’s framing. We have a great story to tell.
Do any of the greybeard pundits want to talk about how horrible the economy was when St. Ronald’s “Morning in America” ad came out?? (Unemployment was 7.1% at the end of 1984…)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Mai Naem mobile:
I don’t care that much about US Twitter users – I enjoyed it but it was (IMO) mostly media people selling their own shit, boo hoo – but I do think it’s s shame that he ruined it for people in other countries who were using it to keep in touch in horrible situations (Ukraine, etc)
It just pisses me off because he’s a dope. I’m tired of over rated people.
Matt McIrvin
I do really think the biggest problem with perceptions of the economy is the Hack Gap. It’s absolutely true that there are long-term structural things going on that immiserate people even under Democratic administrations. But somehow, they only get public attention under Democratic administrations. Republicans just get a pass for them and “the economy is awesome” even though these problems are just as bad. It’s a double standard in how much and about whom politicians are supposed to care
The ultimate example of this is that the effect of Trump coming in was treated as a Morning In America fix to the economy even though essentially nothing happened at that moment. What changed was what people were allowed to perceive.
Timill
@Scout211: We’re OK in Oak Ridge – plenty of rain, and Marcia thought we had possible tornado conditions around midnight, but no actual problems.
zhena gogolia
Republicans openly and shamelessly side with Russia against Ukraine, yet on this blog we blame Biden relentlessly.
Kay
@Another Scott:
I think Democrats generally do a good job with honoring all the parts of the coalition. I joke about Democrats saying “I know people are hurting” as a predicate to any positive news – true- but I also see WHY they do that and agree.
Honestly the biggest problem with our “coalition” is not Democratic pols, it’s various parts of the coalition insisting they are the most important and most crucial and most “real” and that’s why everyone else has to give way to their needs. It’s a coalition. By definition all parts are important. We don’t have top tier them and asign some a lesser status.
Geminid
@Mai Naem mobile: It will be an interesting primary. Rep. Kim got in early, and then Tammy Murphy more or less bigfooted the other prospective candidates. Murphy is the Governor’s wife, and many powerful county chairmen are backing her. This is an outsider vs. Insider contest that should get a lot of attention.
The gilty Menendez is apparenty considered a non-factor in the primary.
There go two miscreants
@Another Scott: I’m just astonished that there’s an issue where Hawley has some empathy for others.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
It;’s really true. Local Republicans said it – they said “the Trump effect” every time there was local hiring or growth.
Of course later the “Trump effect” came to be known at the courthouse as people being at each others throats and no one ever reaching agreement without going to trial, so then it became a negative. The Trump Effect came to be “why are people such belligerent assholes now?” even among our judges, who are all Republicans.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: There was a short-term stock rally that seemed to start when Trump won the 2016 election–not when he entered office, but when he won the election. I’m pretty sure that was just investors being happy for a while because their boy won. But there’s also a sector of the country for whom “short-term stock rally” means “economy fixed”.
Scout211
Good to know. Thanks for the check-in.
New Deal democrat
@Kay: Comparing the present with some historical data is really helpful.
Gallup has been asking people since before 2000 whether they think the economy is “getting better” or “getting worse.” It’s the third graph in this article:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/511868/americans-weak-economic-ratings-slip-further-september
For the vast majority of the past 25 years, a majority of respondents have said that the economy is “getting worse,” including all of Obama’s 8 years in office except for 2015.
Now, by any objective measure the economy was “getting better” by early 2010, and continued to do so for another 10 years. But that’s not how people answered – although the majority of pessimists got smaller as time went on.
That helps put the present in context. Generally speaking, a majority will say the economy is “getting worse” until it is at least as good as it was at the peak of the last expansion. And because housing and car costs most emphatically are not as good as they were in 2019, you are going to get the result you have now.
if gas prices continue to fall a little, and the Fed eases up on interest rates, sentiment will improve.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: I agree.
Omnes Omnibus
@Geminid: Was “gilty” on purpose? Because it’s good.
Scout211
Immortalized on last night’s SNL cold open
JML
@Another Scott: My bank is offering 5% on an 11-month CD right now. Even with a little job insecurity I think I’m going to take advantage of it.
brantl
@Geminid: I’ve never known a person that wasn’t a creep, that became a creep by smoking any amount of weed.
frosty
@Kay: Wow, now I’m feeling fortunate. My first house mortgage wasn’t as high as 13%… it was 12.75%!
We refinanced it at least once and got a 15-year mortgage with lower monthly payments.
brantl
@Suzanne: “Tax the rich, feed the poor, ’til there are no rich no more.”
frosty
@Suzanne: My kids will probably be the third generation in our family to do worse than their parents. We’ve all done well enough, though.
StringOnAStick
@Another Scott: I’ve been unconsciously selling the good stuff idea, especially with younger people when I can. I know a young, down to earth nursing student, and yesterday I was talking about my research into getting hearing aids, and how prices are so much lower than they were when I last did this dance in 2008, and for better technology. I made it a point to explain that the Biden administration put in place a law that people with mild to moderate hearing loss can buy them directly instead of the huge markup radiologists were charging, and how studies show that untreated hearing loss leads to much faster decline in health and mental acuity. She agreed about the importance of treating hearing loss, but didn’t know about this change.
I pushed further, about how the conservaDem who used to represent this district is the guy who torpedoed letting Medicare negotiate all drug prices, and that he’d inherited $6 million in pharmaceutical stocks so he had a vested interest in killing the bill; and that is why he lost the primary. I pointed out that this meant Biden is having to do it one group of drugs at a time and more slowly than would have happened if Kurt Schraeder (D-pharma) hadn’t killed that bill. She agreed that it’s horrible that poor patients have to choose between meds and rent, and that treatment deferred is just more expensive treatment when the underinsured get into Medicare or Medicaid. Unfortunately the D who won that primary in 2022 did not win; we are one of the very few districts that Biden won but sent an R to the house. This is a race I will be working on; 3 good choices running right now.
Kay
@frosty:
I couldn’t sell mine because no one wants a house in a rundown neighborhood in Mishawaka in so I auctioned it at a loss.
but I had gotten a mortgage and made payments so my next house was nicer.
The people looking at my house now are in their thirties – I couldn’t afford this house in my thirties – I had a smaller, cheaper house in a nieghbirhood that had iffy septic so they assessed us 15k each for a sewer
Kay
@New Deal democrat:
People aren’t behaving as if they think the economy is bad though.
Theyre spending like crazy and small business starts are way up. I’m glad. I think they should continue to ignore the gloom and doom and go on vacation and start small businesses – which they’re doing.
OzarkHillbilly
@There go two miscreants: It plays well with the home crowd. (we have a lot of nuclear pollution here and they are having a hard time getting a handle on it) plus he gets to bash the feckless federal govt.
Kay
@New Deal democrat:
If any lawyers tell you they’ve done poorly the last 4 years they’re either lying or very bad lawyers – in our local bar this is the best run of our lives.
BlueGuitarist
@lowtechcyclist:
Agreed.
Also, the constitutional pardon power explicitly does not apply to “cases of impeachment” so TFG shouldn’t be able to pardon people convicted of a crime for which he was impeached, just as if a president hired an assassin to kill a rival (on federal land) and got impeached for it, the president wouldn’t have the constitutional to pardon the assassin. But would probably get away with it.
There’s a lot we can do to up and down the ballot to make things better.
oldgold
Is Democratic messaging poor? Hell, it is hard to qualitatively measure something that for all practical purposes does not exist.
brantl
@Another Scott: I can’t believe the chickenshit Rethuglicans keep getting away with this shit. No relief for the people that unknowingly suffered radiation exposure at the hands of this country? What shit.
OzarkHillbilly
@brantl: A buddy of mine was kind of like that. Every time he smoked some he became paranoid as fuck. Finally just gave it up for good.
gene108
@Kay:
There is a certain percentage of the population who have decided the economy under a Democratic president is always terrible and the economy under a Republican president is always good.
I remember how the consumer sentiment on the economy flipped after Trump was sworn in, in 2017, within a few weeks.
Anyway
@Scout211:
Felt a little sympathy for overpaid administrators of elite universities — doesn’t happen often. They were poorly prepared for rabid House Rethugs.
Omnes Omnibus
@oldgold: Right. Okay. Sure thing. FFS.
Subsole
@Kay:
Hey. Man gotta sell more survival rations and testostobrain pills. Them Rolexes don’t come cheap, Kay.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: So sick of this.
StringOnAStick
@brantl: Agreeded. Melon isn’t a jerk because of weed (and constant abuse of ketamine, a much bigger issue), he’s a jerk who happens to smoke a lot of weed/do lots of drugs not recommended for daily consumption, and he’s rich enough and narcissistic enough to want everyone to watch and celebrate his extreme dis-inhibition.
I want to add that ketamine is being used in therapeutic settings for help with certain psychological issues (PTSD being a prominent one); dis-inhibition as caused by this drug is part of the therapeutic benefit with a licensed therapist. What Melon is doing is keeping himself in a low level of this state; the results are certainly less than optimal since we’re all getting a front row seat to his raging and dis-inhibited Id. As usual, he’s poised to fuck up something that is doing some good for some people by stomping through a delicate situation like Godzilla.
Brachiator
@Kay:
The economy is still bad for many people. Many jackals here just don’t get it or want to solely blame the media for not telling people the “truth.” But people don’t care about GDP or how high the Dow might be. They care about how much money they have in their own pockets.
Inflation is low, but prices are still high. Some of this is because of lingering effects of the pandemic. Some of this is a result of corporate greed. Lower income people are getting kicked in the butt, and are doing worse because they lost the expanded tax credits they had last year. Wages are stagnant for many and there is an ongoing housing crisis.
But I agree with you on a crucial point. The Democrats have done a great job in shaping the recovery, but don’t get credit for it.
This is frustrating. Polls indicate that in both the US and the UK, people tend to believe that the conservative parties are better stewards of the economy, despite their blatant failures.
And one intractable problem is that things are getting better and will continue to do so in the future under the Democrats. Unfortunately, some people want everything to be better immediately.
Subsole
@Geminid:
Oh no. This ain’t weed, homie. This is straight up special-k. And probably a number of other designer drugs.
If weed is involved, it is purely to take the edge off the other shit he’s on.
taumaturgo
CaseyL
Upward mobility in the US ceased due to multiple factors, over multiple decades.
I still think the biggest one was the US no long being the only industrialized nation still standing after WWII. The world really was our oyster for the next 25 years, simply because we had little competition.
And the biggest factor after that was “Supply Side” economics, which was a lie from start to finish, but people bought it – because we were still coasting on the prosperity of those post-war decades. Supply Side rhetoric invited the comfortable middle class to abandon concern about everyone below them on the socio-economic scale, because there was so much plenty on all sides, surely the only reason anyone was still immured in poverty was because they were losers anyway.
By the 1990s the coattails of postwar prosperity were completely gone. Remember when it seemed Japan’s economy was taking over the world? Corporations hiring consultants to learn how to mimic Japanese business etiquette, down to how low to bow to whom. There was a lot of anger and resentment that America wasn’t the only economic superpower anymore.
Those trends were, are, real. Their effects ripple out over decades.,
Kathleen
@Geminid: While I’m working at home or driving I listen to a Black owned radio station in Cincinnati and I heard an ad from Greg Landsman “advertising” his services as a congressional rep and citing how many people his office has helped and dollars recouped. The ad is sponsored by the DCC so I’m assuming similar ads are running in other Dem congressional districts. I think it’s a brilliant messaging strategy.
Jackie
@Geminid:
I liked his response when asked about Tammy Murphy’s campaign:
It was a good interview overall.
Brachiator
@CaseyL:
Great points. It is also ironic to note that Japan’s economy has been stagnant for decades.
OzarkHillbilly
@CaseyL: I think the increased cost of a college education was a big factor.
Sure Lurkalot
@Suzanne:
Seriously, true of most times and for many since the Reagan Revolution, which is when I entered the workaday world. One bubble caused recession to another, layoffs, truly shitty “gotta take it” jobs, the factors may vary but Americans’ working lives have been precarious forever. The safety net has been whittled down in the furtherance of
“personal responsibility”tax cuts and it is harder and harder to recover from a downturn or mistake.Subsole
@StringOnAStick:
This. The problem is Elon is a shitbird. The drugs merely amplify the underlying issue.
barbequebob
@OzarkHillbilly: I’d be miserable if there was nothing to complain about
taumaturgo
https://www.infinitescroll.us/p/the-age-of-doom
The facts and numbers about the economy. Economy better in 2023 than 2019 pre-pandemic,
RaflW
@Scout211: I’ve put it off, but today is the day.
Somehow I don’t think they’re sorry. (I’m @raflw.bsky.social if anyone wants to find me at the not-fascist-owned place)
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh, man. That’s going to be a hard read.
Feeling glad I live in Colorado, where right-to-die is a thing that exists. And since I’m as sure as I can possibly be that my end is going to involve cancer of some form or other, my fondest wish is to be able to go on morphine, have a hemlock party to say good-bye to my nearest and dearest, and shuffle off this mortal coil in my own time and at my own pace.
Probably won’t happen that way, but a girl can dream.
ETA: btw, has anyone heard anything from JR in WV lately? Wasn’t he dealing with some sort of cancer treatment? :(
CaseyL
@Brachiator:
Japan is subject to its own historical and social trends, which I don’t know enough about to even begin opining on. They’re in a demographic trap right now, which is surely a factor, but the roots of why that happened are terra incognita to me.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes, and that is due to Reaganomics. His tax policies and his ending of federal revenue sharing with cities put all cities in a horrible position of either precipitously raising state and local taxes or cutting most state-level support for all social programs, emphatically including higher education. Guess which choice they made? (Corporate sponsorship of things like sports stadiums came out of that era as well.)
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … BlueVirginia.US:
Dominion is a huge political donor in the state and has outsized power as a result. And they have been fighting every renewable solar and wind projects and net metering as much as they can for decades.
We really, really need expansion of public utilities all across the country, for lots of reasons, including speeding the renewable transition.
Grr…,
Scott.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Rachael Stirling was really good in the Detectorists.
zhena gogolia
@raven: I love her. I don’t think I can read the article, though. So sad.
NotMax
As a weekend pick-me-up, a sprightly Clementi Sonatina interlude.
oldgold
@Omnes Omnibus: What could I possibly be thinking in disparaging Democratic messaging?
Well, this:
Despite having an economy that has emerged from the pandemic as the strongest in the world, a malignant, incompetent narcissist, whose presidency was a 4 year shit show that grew more foul each year and ended in a violent failed coup attempt, who was recently found by a jury to have committed rape and is currently awaiting trial on 91 felony counts, has a lead in the polls that appears to be growing.
Our messaging must be fine. NOT!
Ruckus
It is easy to criticize Dem messaging but to do so you must acknowledge that our mission is different and more challenging.
The desired results are completely opposite.
Rethuglicans only ask one question. “What’s in it for me and why are you giving any money, time, effort to THOSE PEOPLE?’
Democrats ask many questions, the first being, “How can we make this a better world for everyone?”
There is just a slight difference in who, what, when, where and how. Name me any 2 republican presidents who gave two shits about anyone but themselves and their party. They might go along somewhat if they had no choice. But not for any other reason. Name me any democratic president who didn’t look at the picture and see far more, want and try to do more. Now any individual democratic president may not have been as good at it, or had as realistic a congress to make it work but that was at least the side they were on. And it’s been this way for anyone alive today.
Selfish or betterment. That’s the difference. And no, it may not have been this way since the founding, it has been my nearly 3/4 of a century. Conservative – to conserve all that can be for their betterment, democratic – to apply the resources for all.
RaflW
@Another Scott:
“Morally, this is obscene,” [Josh “Insurrectionist Runner” Hawley] added.
I agree that depriving radiation survivors of benefits is obscene. But I scoff at the notion that Hawley understands morality.
Gretchen
@Mai Naem mobile: I agree with you about Twitter. It was an invaluable resource at the beginning of covid. All the virologists, epidemiologists, public health people were on there giving day to day updates of the latest information. Now all but Peter Hotetz have been driving off by the antivax trolls and their harassment and death threats.
RaflW
@Kay: re: the economy and people’s agency, “they have to take steps, in order, over decades” is absolutely right.
And. This country sucks at teaching people how to be financially and economically literate. I think it’s intentional, because the moneyed interests want people to be disempowered and easily taken advantage of. That’s central to the GOP effort to hobble government, too.
@Suzanne: It’s a lot about tax policy as well. The rank inequality, probably worse now than the past 100 years, flows from ridiculously low taxes on the rich. Which also starves government. We need redistributive income taxes. How we get there? I’m pessimistic.
Brachiator
@oldgold:
The Democrats have been doing okay. But they still don’t use social media as well as they could.
The official White House gov site is excellent. But the stuff there takes too long to read. The layout could be snazzier. Shorter presentations. Animation. Graphics.
And younger people are on TikTok and Instagram, not the NY Times or Washington Post or MSNBC. Not even Facebook.
And for economic news, media bias is clear. Opponents of Biden administration programs get far more air time than Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen or other administration officials.
ETA. There are similar, but more accurate complaints about the UK Labour Party. They have a social media presence, but don’t post to it regularly. There are YouTube channels like A Different Bias and Max Robespierre that do a much better job of promoting Labour and attacking the Tories than any official Labour Party sources.
Omnes Omnibus
@oldgold: Yep. I am sure you are right. Dems have been doing really poorly in actual elections over the past few years.* The only polls that really matter.
*Not intended to be a factual statement.
lowtechcyclist
@zhena gogolia:
I see Adam was doing that last night, in one of my rare ventures into his nightly thread. He didn’t say what the Administration’s or the Congressional Dems’ strategy should be, only that the strategy they’ve been pursuing has failed.
I was starting to post a comment asking him what his brilliant idea was, but by tomorrow morning it’ll have slipped my mind, and I won’t read the answer in his thread that I almost never read.
I get tired of people assuming there’s got to be One Weird Trick that Biden’s not using that would fix things, without explaining what that trick is, and how it would work.
Miss Bianca
@oldgold: Or, you know, maybe shit is a bit more complicated than your brain can apparently process. To say that “messaging” is somehow the magic bullet that’s going to immediately, automatically, and terminally pierce the armor that reactionary Republicanism has built around itself – namely, the media environment they have painstakingly built over the past 40-50 years – is risible.
Could Dem “messaging” be better? Sure. Is “messaging” to a coalition of literally everyone in the country who isn’t a rabid right-wing white supremacist going to be easy or simple? Nah.
In other words, bite me.
columbusqueen
@OzarkHillbilly: Rachel Stirling is quite as brave as her mother. It breaks my heart, because my mother asked me the same thing years ago. She had diabetes-induced kidney failure & was terrified of amputation. Didn’t have to help her in the end, but I still cry sometimes when I remember her asking me.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: So it’s much like the way crime is nearly always “getting worse”, no matter what the objective situation is.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: Adam’s factual reporting and analysis of the war is invaluable. He has true expertise. His political opinions and analysis are different matter. They deserve no more deference than those of any well-informed jackal (front pager or commenter). It is important to be able to draw a line between the two.
Ruckus
@oldgold:
It is the way the messages are transmitted to the population, to the remarks and “discussions” that come after. That the concepts are polar opposites. And that the loudest voices are owned by conservatives or conservative leaning, more interested in what’s in it for them or what it will cost them than what’s good for everyone in the long run.
We cannot build a better country if we do not fix or at least attempt to create the first premise of this country – betterment for all, rather than only for the wealthy and privileged. Remember what the world was when this country was founded. A world of royalty, of privilege, of money. Look at the overall direction this country has gone in the last 100 yrs and the difference in the two political parties. One wants to conserve their wealth and position, even as they might be no better off than those they dislike/hate. The other wants betterment for all and while it may not be totally unselfish it is far less selfish than the other side. And we rarely see totally unselfish humans because so many only see the reflection in a mirror, not the bigger picture. Conservatives seem to believe that there is only so much in the world and they want all they can get. Democrats understand that all of us, if we participate and aren’t selfish pricks, can and have make a world that is better and better for all of us.
Geminid
@brantl: I’m not saying the weed made Musk a creep. I’m saying he sounds like he’s been smoking too much weed. The high-test stuff. That’s on top of being a creep.
satby
@Brachiator: FYI the White House on TikTok
Soprano2
@Kay: This is the same argument I make. You can’t wait forever for the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood with a 3% interest loan, or for the perfect job. People made it in times much worse than these.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Everybody asks “What’s in it for me.” It’s human nature, and there’s nothing wrong with this.
Republicans lie. They promise ordinary workers one thing, but deliver mainly for their plutocrat masters.
Whatever the message, you have to be able to break it down into how it is going to help someone or make their life better.
ETA. And obviously, and sadly, the GOP also sells the message of how hurting other people is somehow good for America.
Brachiator
@satby:
Very cool!
oldgold
@Miss Bianca:
“Or, you know, maybe shit is a bit more complicated than your brain can apparently process.”
Hell, Miss Bianca, your ad hominem attack is almost certainly so.
satby
@satby: also @whitehouse on Instagram
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: I think Adam’s basic thesis is that Biden should have prosecuted the wider universe of J6 conspirators far more aggressively, and that the current situation wrt Ukraine is a consequence of his not doing so–that a lot of the Congresspersons currently blocking this stuff should be in prison for sedition.
CaseyL
@lowtechcyclist: Don’t disagree with Adam or challenge any of his pronouncements. I did, once, and he immediately denigrated me as an idiot. His extremely thin skin and assumption of overwhelming intellectual superiority does make me question his analytic ability.
oldgold
@CaseyL: !
trollhattan
@Geminid:
Give weed to a jerk and you might, might make him less aggressive but a jerk he will remain.
And then it wears off.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: Maybe HinTN? Guessing that the TN could be Tennessee?
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: If that is his premise, he either misunderstands or rejects a major part of Biden’s governing strategy. Biden, IMO, has made a concerted effort to run the government the way it traditionally has run, not as Trump tried to run it. He appointed an Attorney General and then stayed out of the AG’s business. And so on. He prioritized reestablishing proper function of government. I think it was necessary and correct.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@trollhattan:
cain
@OzarkHillbilly: Oregon had assisted suicide – the first in the nation – and boy the feds were angry about that.
Forcing people to live beyond their time is not life. We should be allowed to die with dignity, at the time of our choosing. Oddly, the govt seems to want to be an integral part of our dying.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: There are days when my view of our political and geopolitical situation is apocalyptic, but I think that this is Adam’s main thesis — that we are fighting WWIII right now, that democracy has already fallen by the way side because the J6 crowd is still free to create havoc, and so on.
I don’t agree with this view, and even if I did, I am not sure that Biden should have done anything differently. I am sure that I like many others would love to see someone I respect and admire and agree with wave a magic wand and change the course of things I hate about the world — that apparently is what has Peter Thiel, by all rights one of the luckiest men in the world, wringing his hands and mourning about the future. That neither he nor any of his bought and paid for politicians have been able to bring about his vision for the future.
Trying to convince others of an apocalypse all around you is one of the most tried and true tactics of would-be authoritarians.
Eyeroller
@Matt McIrvin: My understanding of his argument is that Biden and his advisors have dribbled out support (which seems to be true) and more specifically, that they should have passed a much larger and longer-lasting aid package when Democrats controlled Congress. As to the latter point, it’s probably correct that this would have been for the best, but it’s not obvious that they could have gotten it through even under those circumstances, given all the competing interests and the difficulties we had with e.g. Manchinema. And I suppose there’s still some lingering notion that enough Rs want to do the right thing here, that it may not have seemed as urgent as some domestic priorities.
RaflW
@Brachiator: I believe that Democrats, at our best, ask “What’s in it for me and mine” while working to continually expand what the and mine signifies.
We don’t hit the mark as often as we want. And that leads to a lot of disappointment.
The GOP base also feels disappointed, but they get a combo of “who else ya gonna go with?” and gross scapegoating that, alas, works better than it ought to.
Geminid
@trollhattan: I think if you give enough weed to somebody long enough they start talking like Musk. Like their personality is fragmenting.
cain
@Kay: But also keeping hedge funds out of real estate. They use these bust/boom cycles to buy real estate when its down and then jack up the rents.
That you would create some kind of index out of people’s homes is obscene.
sab
@Kay: He (Sherrod Brown) is so old-fashioned. I volunteered canvassing on his last campaign, and we were set up to deliver everyone’s campaign literature, not just his, like in the olden days (1970s), but most of the locals candidates didn’t have anything available until about a week before the election, when it was way too late. Frustrating.
Ruckus
@Kay:
None of it is reasoned or thought out.
How could it be? He’s the guy who spends billions to keep his name in print, to suggest that everything he does or touches is, well, magic.
I look at Tesla and see a concept of a product that we need. It isn’t a horrible or bad product (OK, not all of it….) but he’s not the person that came up with the concept of electric vehicles, he’s the guy that bought a company and rushed it to market, to get his investment back. If you look at Tesla honestly the product isn’t bad. To me the cars look unfinished in some ways, it’s like a kid cleaning up their room by stuffing most of the mess under the bed. It looks better but it really isn’t. But it seems like he really doesn’t understand the ins and outs, the physical concepts of cars, especially making them better and as safe as possible. He does understand selling them and the size of his bank account.
Progress isn’t made by spending huge amounts of money, that’s betterment. And betterment is not always what it’s cracked up to be, especially in the long run. Progress is understanding what is, and what isn’t, and finding a solution that works well for the most people. Not necessarily for the guy with the biggest bank account. In the automotive world that person was Henry Ford. His product, after a century of advancement, is better. And it was better in many ways a century ago. But the reality is that it was pretty much crap. It was better crap than what existed and that is a very important point. Progress is made by seeing possibilities and seeing ways to make that work. That is exactly what Henry did. And look how long it took to make what we have today. It took laws, it took time, it took learning – by mistakes and by successes. As much and as good as current vehicles work, ask the question, can they be improved. And the answer is yes, the entire transportation industry can. It might even be replaceable with many better options. It might not look anything like what we now use. It has in other countries. What, how and why are questions that always need to be asked, rather than “We’ve come as far as we need to.”
cain
In the 80s, I remember how angry and whiny workers were about the Japanese companies coming in and competing. Remember the movie, “Gung Ho”? But when that competition came in labor’s influence started to flounder especially when Reagan took over.
cain
@Jackie: this attitude does not surprise me. Kim was the guy who ran around and helped clean up the Capitol after the riots. He’s empathetic and community forward – so I can easily see that he wants to work through consensus and find out what people need and work in that direction.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay:
Standing ovation!!! Thank you. Drives me nuts. Especially when combined with threats to not vote.
Sister Golden Bear
@waspuppet: In general that’s true, but selected pockets of the economy — specifically the tech field* here in Silicon Valley — are hurting. I’m not sure if this is going to be a permanent restructuring of the industry, but things are pretty grim. I saw one job that had been posted the previous day and already had 260+ applicants. A friend of mine who’s at a senior management level has been out of work for more than two years now.
What means for me is that I’m living 3-month contract to 3-month contract, and had to really scale back my spending due to the constant uncertainty about whether I’ll have a job in a few months.
Plus given how ageist my industry is, I’ve got real fears that I might be forced into retirement in my late 50s. It’s at the point where I’m trying to think what else I could do, but unfortunately my skills are pretty specialized and not really transferable to other fields.
*And “tech” doesn’t mean just tech start-ups, or Facebook, Google, etc. it includes people in the field who work for “traditional” companies. The start of my job insecurity was after getting laid off from an extremely well-known financial services company, which just did another large-scale round of layoffs people who do what I do.
trollhattan
@Geminid:
Could be, if he’s a daily user. The pharmacokinetics of THC are stupid-complicated.
Threadjack!
Nelle
@cain: My friend looked up the Switzerland option – said it would be about $10,000 to go in a room with a view.
cain
@Brachiator: my impression of the entire political class in the UK seems to be mostly people above the age of 55. Probably because every time they cover an MP it’s some old dude.
JWR
@trollhattan:
Reminds me of an old Bill Cosby schtick:
Q. Why do you do Cocaine?
A. Because it brings out my true personality.
Q. But what if you’re an asshole?
Or something to that effect.
UncleEbeneezer
All the GOP has to sell is White Supremacist (and Patriarchy). That’s it. Plain and simple. Everything they believe in and push comes down to some variation of those. Democrats have a much more difficult task on messaging due to the complexity of our policies and the diversity of our coalition. In short: it’s much harder being an adult than a bratty toddler.
cain
Yes we could do all these things but the senate was plagued with Manchin and Sinema as you stated. We did not have a united caucus in the Senate. We’ve been very unlucky politically this way because when we do get control we have a bunch of drama queens on our side that suddenly decide to be conservatives. Ultimately, we should disagree and commit – or add things. But those two, especially Sinema was just terrible.
As history has noted many times before – trying to be conservative in the Democratic caucus is loser idea. Every other blue dog asshole during Obama’s reign was kicked out.
Sure Lurkalot
@Geminid: Just watch Reefer Madness? FFS, Musk has an unlimited budget and foot soldiers to procure lots of drugs far more mind altering than pot, however more “powerful” it is now. I know oodles of peeps who have used pot for decades and their personalities haven’t fragmented, and yes, some who should not have taken up the habit because it makes them paranoid or zapped their drive. Frankly, my friends who have taken Ambien to sleep for decades are more worrisome. They can’t get off it and they don’t focus well in the morning. IMHO, alcohol is far more deleterious than pot yet there are functioning alcoholics.
Humans have been altering their perception since time began. Like Trump, Elon is high on his own supply occasioned by inherited wealth, bad parents and societal entitlement. And one does substances, the other does not.
cain
@Nelle: That ain’t bad – I mean a funeral costs that much right?
But will your family be charged with murder when you come back to the U.S.? I mean, I can see the GOP trying to put laws like that in place.
JWR
We know what TFG’s messaging is gonna be about, now with added Hoax! (From CNN):
trollhattan
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
“Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.”
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
Honestly, I got just as high-quality coverage and analysis from Josh Marshall’s Ukraine list when I was still on Twitter. But when Elon’s anti-Semitism got to the level it did, I had to ditch that. I’m a bit disappointed that Josh is still there, but we all have to make our own choices.
And while I can draw a line between one and the other in Adam’s threads, the fact is I still have to read them both to get the one. And that’s long since gotten tiresome for me, which is why I hardly ever venture into his threads anymore.
trollhattan
@JWR:
Mah jerb is a hoax. They make me go to a bad place, do boring stuff, for money. Believe you me, I’m-a fix this hoax soon as I’m elected!
RaflW
@cain: The flip side of that lack of competition was that by the late 70s & early 80s, a lot of American cars were shite. Dad bought a Ford Fairmont, and damn was it lousy. My best friend’s family Dodge Aspen, also pretty bad. Then there were the execrable Chevy Citation, etc.
Some of the job losses and falling union clout in Detroit (and connected cities/industries) was a reaction to poor quality + the opening of better international brands. It’s great to see the UAW regaining muscle, and seeing that even non-union shops are now having to raise wages.
Geminid
@Sure Lurkalot: I’m not saying that smoking weed is that bad, on its own or in comparison to other drugs. I’m just saying someone can use too much, especially if they’re trying to run three big companies and also represent themselves as a worldly philosopher in hours-long interviews.
I expect Musk is using pharmaceuticals, and this is all on top of a manic personality. And for all I know, Musk might be only an occasional cannabis user. But he sure sounds stoned.
Brachiator
@cain:
Former UK prime minister Liz Truss is 48. Current PM Rishi Sunak is 43.
One potential Tory PM challenger Kemi Badenoch is 43, and a woman of African descent. Even the Queen of Evil, Suella Braverman, who seems to be working to take Sunak down, is 43.
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is 61, but Deputy party leader Angela Rayner is 43.
Yeah, there are a lot of old dudes, but a lot of the people in leadership or clawing for power are relatively young.
John S.
@Brachiator: Being young isn’t a magic ticket to evolved or better thinking. Most of the folks you named are just as bad or worse than their over-55 peers, and the same can be said of US politicians.
I mean look at all the young luminaries in the GOP. They are far more insane than the majority of their over-55 peers.
Soprano2
@Another Scott: I am so glad we have public utilities here.
cain
@RaflW: I agree. The last American car I ever drove was my dad’s car – a Plymouth Valiant. That thing was a tank. I haven’t had an American car since because for me it always meant low quality and always need to go for repair.
I have a Subaru Outback and I’ve had now for 10 years and I’ve never had one problem with it. In fact, it’s been my only problem free car I’ve ever owned. I just keep making sure it has it’s maintenance.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: It’s funny ’cause it’s true.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
cain
@Brachiator: Thanks for digging into that! I hope that Labour and others make a comeback.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: The Democrats were supposed to overcome the filibuster and Manchin and Sinema’s reluctance to do long-term funding for Ukraine in 2022 when they had unified control of the government so the supplies could flow unimpeded forever, because subsequent Congresses would be helpless to change it.
Soprano2
@Miss Bianca: I hope you don’t get dementia, because then none of this is possible.
lowtechcyclist
@Barbara:
I’m not going to bother asking in Adam’s threads, because I just don’t go there and would never see the response. But ISTM that if we’re fighting a world war now, then it would be WWIV, because what’s going on now isn’t any worse than the Cold War was, when we were fighting proxy wars on three continents.
Hell, the battle lines were worse during the Cold War: the fighting that’s now going on is taking place within the bounds of what used to be the USSR – not even the Warsaw Pact nations, but the USSR proper. Ukraine, Georgia, these were Soviet Socialist Republics, and part of the Union of. Shoot, they’re right there in the lyrics to the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR.”
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything we can to help Ukraine stay free and regain its Russian-occupied territory; we absolutely should. But that means we shouldn’t despair if things aren’t going the way we’d hoped at a given moment. And we should save our anger for the Rethugs who would sacrifice Ukraine on the altar of…damned if I can grok what that altar is of. At this point, I think they’re against defending Ukraine because we libs are for it. For Trump personally, I’m sure it’s that Putin somehow has him by the testicles. But for his followers, who knows anymore.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
Ah yes, thanks. Without a scorecard, it’s hard to keep track anymore of who wanted Biden to wield which magic wand.
BellyCat
Disagreed. Anybody with variable rate loans or credit card debt (both of which soared during COVID) is demonstrably not better off due to interest rates more than doubling in the past fifteen months.
I am soon to be 58 and have a sizable variable rate Home Equity Line of Credit balance ($180K, don’t ask) and the monthly interest charges have increased more than $650 in this timeframe. This kind of unexpected expense is crippling for many.
One would need to gross at least $10k more per year to not feel this, and even more to be “getting ahead”. And this assumes $0 credit card debt. The Capitalistic Undertow is FAR more real than many think.
Ruckus
@Sister Golden Bear:
Yes. Everything is far more “technical” than it was over the 60+ years ago that I started working in the field. I once went to look at a machine that I needed to upgrade my shop and at the machine store, next to the current generation was a brand new machine. Dramatically more possibilities than the last generation. It took me five minutes looking/asking questions to say “I’ll take it.” It cost $255,000, approximately $55,000 more than the previous generation but it did so much more and so much better that the extra cost could be easily returned in less than 2 yrs. I was the first company to have one in this country. My company was written up in business magazines. The technology and the concepts of that machine took decades to get to but it was a significantly more capable and better machine. My point is that little is done/improved in one step. It takes effort, development on several levels, experience and money. Desktop computers today are far more powerful, better, faster, smaller, cheaper than mainframes of 50 yrs ago. Hell your new portable phone is smarter, faster than a mainframe of 50 yrs ago. What you can buy, using your cellphone to pay for it, in a retail store, is far better than mainframe computers of 50 yrs ago. I have a picture of my grandfather, in his Packard work coat, standing in front of the Packard open wheel car he worked on at the Packard factory to learn repair Packard automobiles. You may never have heard of Packard automobiles but they were a big brand back 75-120 yrs ago.
Soprano2
@Nelle: Amy Bloom wrote a book about helping her husband go there because he had early onset Alzheimer’s, which precludes any kind of assisted suicide in the U.S. I listened to a “This American Life” program about it, and have heard a couple of interviews with her. Gutting. I don’t know how she did it.
wjca
Like most developed countries, their total fretility rate (lifetime children per woman) dropped. The US isn’t impacted much by this, due to immigration. Even Europe accepts enough immigration to blunt the impact. Just Japan is extremely closed to immigration, which locks them in to an aging population. And, as life expectancies grow more slowly, a dropping population.
The Japanese government is at least aware of the problem. And that the only options** are A) more immigration, or B) women deciding they want more children. But the culture is seriously hostile to option A. And nobody has a handle on how B might be accomplished.
** Well, unless someone someone invents a working uterine replicator. And sets up a way to foster the resulting children. No sign that this is on the horizon.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: My view is that the GQP grabs every hostage they think that Democrats care about to try to force us to accept policy changes that they know the country disagrees with. Almost everything needs to be viewed through that lens, IMHO.
Florida washed off the map by giant hurricane in February?? Can’t send any aid to people there unless we agree to cut Medicare back to 1967 levels and pave over ANWAR.
It’s all cynical oneupsmanship.
Grr…,
Scott.
Geminid
@cain: Andy Kim’s Sanate candicacy seems to have been well received by New Jersey Democrats. On November 15, the New Jersey Globe and other news outlets reported on a poll released by Public Policy Polling, and it showed Kim leading Tammy Murphy among Democrats 40-21%, with 34% undecided. The poll was taken right before Murphy formally announced. Kim entered the race in late September.
Senator Menendez polled at 5%. The poll also showed Menendez’s approve/disapprove numbers among Democrats were 10% approve, 65% disapprove. Kim’s numbers were 45% approve and 5% disapprove, while Murphy’s were 50% and 9%.
wjca
More like 25 years ago. The rate of development in computer chips has been simply mindblowing. (30 years ago, i.e. mid-90s, I could point out to people that the digital watch on their wrist had more processing power than the biggest computer in the world had 25 years before. Poorer interface for programming, admittedly, but more power.)
Another Scott
@wjca: Another option, Dean Baker reminds us, is greater productivity through automation, working smarter, etc. Tokyo isn’t going to turn into a wasteland if it is less crowded and relatively more housing is available.
We need to rethink the idea that we’re doomed if we’re not growing. I think that he makes a good case.
Cheers,
Scott.
Timill
@WaterGirl: HinTN is somewhere Chattanooga way IIRC. eclare is in Memphis. There are others, but I don’t recall the nyms right now.
Sister Golden Bear
@Ruckus: The tech job market sucking doesn’t really have anything to do with advancing technology — and yes I know Packard — rather it’s bit of a perfect storm of the investors cutting back on “stupid money” investments on the start-up and of things; giants genuinely over-staffing a few years ago in anticipation of everlasting growth, boot camps flooding the industry with entry-level candidates, the desire to punish employees who got “uppity” when the job market was tight, and companies deciding to follow Elon’s example of running with skeleton staffs, and/or minimally experienced staff.
And because the job market is glutted with applicants they can get away with it. Sure it’ll cause long-term problems for them, just as it’s done in previous cycles, but hey gotta make those numbers look good for the next quarterly report/round of investments.
glory b
@oldgold: As I’ve said on here before, our messaging isn’t bad. People know what Dems have done, want to do and what we stand for.
They just don’t want to vote for the party with the black people in it.
This is why so many think the economy under Obama was so bad. A black man was in charge and everyone knows he didn’t know what he was doing /sarcasm/
lowtechcyclist
@wjca:
Indeed! Think of the computer aboard Apollo 11, and a run-of-the-mill cell phone these days has some astronomical multiple of the Apollo 11 computer’s memory and processing power. Mindboggling.
CaseyL
@Another Scott:
Yes indeedy. Here’s a very pertinent quote on that subject:
So…another big economic change that in retrospect may have been a bad idea is people being able to buy into companies via shares of stock. It seemed a good idea at the time: the companies got money above and beyond regular revenue to invest in improvements to their business, and members of the public got a stake and a say in large corporations.
It used to also be a great way for middle class people to become rich, too. Who doesn’t wish they had bought Apple or MicroSoft when those companies first went public?
But then investment companies got involved, and stocks became just another way to game the system to favor the already-rich. Which means manipulating the company, the market, and the financial sector to enhance revenue projections and results so the folks at the top get their bonuses.
Mindless growth, outpacing the capacity to understand what that growth means or is, and with no regard whatsoever for anything beyond the next quarterly phone call with investors.
And, just like that, everything is enshittified.
Martin
If you have kids, it is impossible to reconcile your feelings with these facts. And this is true on the right as well. I have been watching expressions from focus groups, and these people are a combination of pissed and scared, and a lot of it is either young people, parents of young people, or people who missed the window of opportunity and are now in the same boat as young people.
They see people making 6 figures and can’t buy a house, and may *never* be able to buy a house. And they might be in a good spot (boat sales are at an all time high right now, btw) but they recognize that the economy is busted, just not in the ways that the standard economic measures can capture. Congress is considering a bill that would ban private equity firms and hedge funds from buying single family homes, which is at least an acknowledgement of the problem. (Why not apartments? Or apartment units below a certain size? Why not other corporations? etc.) Even if you’re doing okay (I’m doing great) it’s not great for even your local economy when your median household income is $125K and that’s barely enough to live on. My son makes about than that and realistically can’t afford a car. I mean, he can, but he’d have no savings left after that because of rents in his area. He could switch to a roommate situation and balance it that way, but again he’d be making no progress toward getting out of that situation.
If the rent situation in the US wasn’t so completely fucked due to YieldStar and landlords having free reign to hike up rents due to a lack of housing supply, ‘being able to buy a house’ wouldn’t be seen as the minimum entry to the middle class. But those two problems do exist, so anyone not on a trajectory to be able to buy a house, even if they make solid 6 figures, is poor – or at least insecure.
If you do not fix housing, the foundation on which Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs sits on, your economy is garbage.
I don’t know why people don’t understand this. Yes, this is something of a perfect storm, but tough shit – this is the problem. And what do Democrats have to show for fixing this? Yes, Biden did college debt forgiveness which does directly help this problem for young people (and maybe this is why some older voters are bitter – it didn’t help their housing challenges). But higher interest rates make this problem worse. JP Morgan nails the cycle:
A law that ties maximum rent increases to housing liquidity would be a good policy – if supply is constrained, rent control automatically turns on. A regulation of zoning as CA has done with cities would help. But these take years to play out. A tax on vacant units would help, and would work quickly. Immediate relief for renters would also help – much as the child tax credit worked during covid. That’s also fast.
Constantly banging on the unemployment rate while ignoring the housing market is going to be what costs Biden this election if Democrats keep doing this, because there’s a fundamental inequality problem in this economy that Democrats keep pointing to the rich side, to people who bought homes prior to 2008 on 3% mortgages (who are now buying boats at record rates), and neglecting the entire space of people who didn’t buy homes there, who got nuked in 2008, or were in 3rd grade in 2008, or just didn’t have the foresight 15 years ago to hold land when they were going through a life change.
And there’s another argument around setting of expectations that I raised yesterday, that’ll I’ll hold off on here.
Martin
@glory b: What have Democrats done to address housing unaffordabilty?
NotMax
@Ruckus
Entertaining quick look at the fate of Packard.
Geminid
@Martin: Created more good paying jobs?
Martin
That’s not a useful measure of anything. Another problem that needs to be dealt with because it affects normal people on a large scale is the arms race around job applying.
You have this feedback loop where we make it easier to apply for jobs (job boards, electronic resume submissions, etc.) so employers get more and more applications. To handle this surge of applications, employers implement software to (poorly) screen applicants. This software systematically rejects certain kinds of applicants forcing them to apply to more and more jobs, and you get more automation on the applicant side to compensate.
So one applicant screening software was found to be highly biased towards applicants that mentioned ‘lacrosse’ in the resume. If you spoke the digital shibboleth you had a better chance of passing the screening, and if you didn’t you were more likely rejected. And we’ve always had biases in screening, but those biases were at least somewhat localized. But there aren’t many of these tools, so you get the lacrosse bias across 20% of employers, and the employers have no fucking idea it’s happening. Meanwhile, applicants are routinely ghosted by employers, because of the volume. So when you have 260 applications for 1 job, if you assume you are equally qualified to the other 260, you need to apply to 260 jobs to statistically get one of them. That’s the arms race.
And it’s an arms race that favors nobody. Applicants are worse off, employers are worse off, and society is worse off. Someone needs to intervene to restore order. But it also means that 260 applications tells you nothing.
RevRick
@gene108: A big part of the problem is that the general public consistently thinks that Republicans are better for the economy than Democrats. And I suspect that the reason why is that all the local country club types who run successful businesses are Republicans. So they make a false transitive property conclusion that since they’re good at business, they must be good at managing the economy. But it turns out that the things that may benefit a business often proves deleterious to the whole. So while cheap labor, weak regulations and non-existent taxes may be advantageous to the local car dealer, it is a formula for poverty and decay for society as a whole. One look no further than the South to see this cycle at work.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
In short: it’s much harder being an adult than a bratty toddler.
That needed to be repeated.
Although, all one has to do to be an adult is grow older.
Now being a good, decent adult is a completely different game.
Martin
@Geminid: Does a job cause God to drop a house from the heavens that I could live in? Because the issue of affordability isn’t the lack of a job. It’s the lack of a house.
A friend of mine had one of his employees over for a get-together that I attended a few months ago. A newlywed couple, both in good jobs (one an engineer at Apple, one doing marketing – both making 6 figures – almost $300K gross). They were trying to get an apartment. They had been on waiting lists for 4 months – almost 100 waiting lists. They can afford the apartment. They can’t get permission to move into one. (This suffers from the same application arms race as the job one I describe above).
There is a shortage of 6.5 million housing units in the US – mostly low-cost apartments usually referred to as ‘missing middle’. Row houses historically are how that housing was addressed. Airbnb is a contributing factor to this problem. But this is a classic inelastic market which means that prices are largely unbounded. Here in CA rent increases this year hit the max allowed by the state in almost every market. If your rent goes up $1000/mo (which does happen here!) and you didn’t get a corresponding raise at work, you might need to move to a cheaper place even if you’re making 6 figures. But if you have to wait months for one how do you handle your lease? Do you risk going month to month? So the market gets jammed because there’s no mechanism to match renters, and the market can’t distinguished between someone downsizing and freeing up a new unit where prioritizing that move frees up a unit, and someone entering the market.
You know what job creation does? It creates more demand for a market that is already completely slammed. It actually makes the problem worse for everyone.
RevRick
@Martin: The Great Recession has absolutely destroyed the single-family home market, greatly assisted by stupid zoning regulations. From 1986-2005 an average of 1.2 million single family homes were built. Since 2008, we have only touched that average once, and have a cumulative shortfall of somewhere between 3-4 million homes. Given the number of homes that have to be built each year to replace those lost to fire, disaster or neglect, we have a huge deficit in relation to natural demand. So, where do all those people go? They enter the older home and rentals markets, creating tremendous upward pressure on rents and prices.
The solution is to build more of every kind of housing, which means junking a lot of the regulations regarding parking minimums, setbacks, lot sizes, and the like.
Geminid
@Martin: I am not sure why you would be disparaging the value of good jobs. I did not say that having a good paying job is sufficient condition to be able to buy a house, but it damn sure is a neccesary one.
Geminid
@Martin: Job creation might seem like a bad thing to someone living in an affluent , crowded place like Orange County, California. It looks different to working class people in New Albany Ohio, where Intel is building a $20 billion chip plant that will employ 3,000 people full time with pay over $125,000 or Bryant County, Georgia where Hyundai is building a $5.5 EV plant. Those paychecks and the money spent will help a lot of people afford to buy houses.
Another Scott
@Martin: You know the answer to the question you’ve posed.
Changes to local zoning for more affordable housing.
Apple’s Campus 2 Spaceship sits on 176 acres. A lot of housing could have gone on that site that was “dominated by asphalt and parking”.
Housing policy is mostly a local zoning issue. You know this. (Yes, NIMBY is real and it’s a tough problem, but asking what “Democrats” are doing is disingenuous IMHO.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Geminid: I’m not disparaging the value of good jobs. But if you earn $100K and live in a van, or with your parents, do you feel like you’re getting ahead?
You have to solve the rest of the problem. The job is not the goal. The stability of housing and food and so on is the point of the job. If you deny those things, there’s little point to having the job.
Martin
@RevRick: There’s a huge over focus on single family that needs to end. Townhomes are cheap to buy, affordable to own, usually have high enough density that you can live car free, or have decent transit. This is how every major city in the US was built pre-war – SF, NY, Chicago, Philly, Boston, you name it.
That also helped with entrepreneurship when you could build with a business on the ground floor and live above it (like Bob’s Burgers). You cover your ground rent/taxes from the business, and you live, more or less for free. This is mainly a zoning problem in the US, but it’s also a problem of that being less profitable for developers to build compared to single family, and cities need to deny the single family option, so cities need to not be captured by developers.
Martin
@Geminid: I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m saying its a good thing that ALSO makes the housing problem worse, and if you don’t address the fact that a strong job market will induce demand on housing – a notoriously inelastic market, it’s your own fucking fault when voters are unhappy that they don’t have a place to live.
The relationship between the job market and the housing market is not unknown to the government.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Scout211: Here in Nashville the worst seems to have been on the north side, around the Rivergate shopping area and Hendersonville, and up into Sumner & Robertson County. I’m not sure how things are to the west and northwest of Nashville; the outbreak started in late afternoon so they were trying to do damage estimates in the dark.
Martin
@Another Scott: It’s easy to point to that campus, but the bigger problem is that San Jose has historically had among the worst zoning policies in the US. It’s almost 100% single family. They’re finally changing that, but not yet in an organic manner. Per the state you can’t prohibit multifamily units on single family lots, but you can constrain them to such a degree that’s is all but impossible to build them.
So the state did a good thing, and the city (every city) is still policing the rules in a way that effectively invalidates the policy.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Martin: We’ve been seeing a lot of that here in Nashville—older houses, especially small ones, many from the 1930s—1950s, on big lots, are being taken down and townhouses, in some configuration or another, are built there. You regularly see signs warning of an upcoming zoning hearing on property. I don’t know that it’s keeping housing costs down, but it is at least increasing the available supply, so maybe it’s keeping the cost increases from being even worse.
We’re also seeing some business-on-ground-floor units in places where there’s already mixed use zoning, or where they can make a convincing case for that. Those won’t work everywhere but are great when they can fit in.
People can have a lot of issues with mixed-use, depending on what’s involved—which includes their own perceptions about what they want to live near.
Geminid
@Martin: Elasticity of housing prices varies. They are more elasitic in areas thst have been depressed for decades than those like where you live where there has been steady growth since 1945. There is a lot of buildable land around the two plants I mentioned and the scores of others that are being built or are in the works.
That’s one reason companies are choosing these locations. Another is that there are plenty of people there who want better jobs. They can see the value very clearly.
schrodingers_cat
Since when did the measure of a good economy become, being able to get the house you want at the price you want and with the mortgage terms you want?
Martin
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): Yeah, I think a lot of smaller cities, particularly ones that have gone through economic boom/bust cycles generally have better policies for housing, but struggle with opportunities for them. These are places that need the injection of money.
Cities like mine have the money, but the policies are too focused on appeasing the McMansion owners and simply have bad policy.
Chris T.
@Geminid:
It’s more likely his (over)use of “special K” (ketamine). A recent study shows that ketamine messes with the dopamine reward system in mouse brains. There is of course a long distance between mouse studies and human ones, but, well, I’ll leave the dots unconnected here.
brantl
@OzarkHillbilly: I think that the languishing of unions and their trade schools has a lot to do with it, too.
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: I mean, it’s always been that. But that’s not what I’m describing.
There are 6.5 MILLION too few housing units in this country. Sometimes the result of this is people in housing they can’t afford because they can’t find a cheaper place. They have a house, but it’s driving them to poverty because unlike booze, you can’t just walk out of the store with less of it to save money.
One of the main dynamics here in CA in 2007 was rising gas price ate up all the discretionary income for workers that had traded long commutes for cheap housing, such that they couldn’t both get to work and pay the mortgage. They had no way out of the trap because their house was underwater. That played out all up and down the state and in Florida and a few other places.
The inverse can happen – you get trapped in a place, because there’s nothing cheaper, or you can’t get access to something cheaper, which you can’t afford and it slowly bleeds you dry. And this is also a problem of home buying – single family is expensive because it’s entirely based on land value. Townhomes are much cheaper, but you need to allow them to be built. You have markets all up and down California and many other areas where the cheapest property to buy is $700K. And if you want to have kids – you can’t realistically do that in a 420sq ft studio condo.
People *do* deserve to have kids and have access to housing.
And if people don’t think 6.5 million underhoused people is a problem – go check the margins of victory in the last half dozen elections.
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin: OK, here’s another data point: that you might deem informative: I routinely see jobs that have gotten hundreds of applicants — one recently had 1,700+ applicants.
Sure, some of that is driven by the arms race you’d described, hell I’ve been shotgunning resumes myself.
But really, you’re missing the forest for the trees… The reason I see such extreme numbers is that there’s a huge imbalance between the number of applicants and the number of jobs currently available. Remember, many tens of thousands of people with tech-related jobs last year.
Martin
@brantl: It does. There are a lot of problems in this space, and there aren’t a lot of great solutions. I mean, there are some great ones – but they’re out of reach.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: I took my daughter to Rochester to visit RIT and when I was there, I rented a Chevy Bolt. I really liked that little electric subcompact; it reminded me of my old Fit.
Turns out they’ve already discontinued the model. The proposed “replacement” is apparently some kind of small electric crossover SUV. I guess nobody wants the Bolt? Or maybe GM just doesn’t think they do?
brantl
@RaflW: I suspect Hawley is related to someone who has radiation exposure, that’s the only way Rethuglicans wind up wanting benefits for people, is if they are actually related to someone who has the problem in question.
schrodingers_cat
@Martin: I asked a different question than the one you are answering.
Sister Golden Bear
@Matt McIrvin: Probably Chevy executives decided they can’t make as much profile as they’d
deservelike on the Bolt — and crossovers are typically “trucks” that have higher margins.But one reason I ended up with a Tesla 3 was because at the time I bought mine, Chevy had announced they were discontinuing the Bolt without a replacement in sight (yeah they ended up selling it longer) and I was leery of how well they’d support a discontinued car. That, and the fact there weren’t many alternatives (the Leaf had battery longevity problems), let alone ones I could afford.
Geminid
@Chris T.: There’s no telling what Musk is on. I remember reading about chemists developing designer drugs intended to enhance mental powers. That sounds right up Musk’s alley. But cannabis goes along with a lot of other stimulants and psychoactive drugs and the use of one does not exclude the use of another, at least in my experience.
Chris T.
@Brachiator:
That’s all true, and a bit of a problem. However:
That’s the much bigger problem, and it’s not entirely true. There is a housing crisis, and some wages aren’t rising, while others are. This requires mobility: people must switch jobs. That may involve moving, and moving is especially difficult in the face of the housing crisis.
So there’s a problem with parts that are, as the phrase goes, “deeply intertwingled”. There are solutions but they’re full of risk and not everyone can take the risk; that’s what we need to improve.
Worth noting is that the ACA solves—well, attacks, anyway—one of the biggest risks by allowing individuals to quit jobs they’re holding just for the insurance. This allows those individuals to move and/or start businesses of their own.
Chris T.
@CaseyL:
Funny thing about that: after Japan’s defeat in WW2, they looked to the US for education on how to run companies well. We told them what they should do, e.g., in their automobile and electronics industries, and they followed what we said rather than what we did. They “won” that particular race because our academics had it right at the time, and we “lost” because our CEOs wouldn’t listen to the pointy-headed academics…
Martin
@Sister Golden Bear: Yeah, I’m not disputing that. The investor led ‘just lay off 6% of the workforce at every tech company’ was complete bullshit. Musk nuking Twitters workforce also didn’t help.
But the fundamentals around tech are still sound, so this will in time settle out. This also sort of illustrates the problem of people making $150K+ being unable (in some cases unwilling) to accrue enough savings to weather an industry shakeup like this. And whenever this sort of thing happens, it’s the older non-executives that get hit the worst. Tech is not kind to over 50 workers.
Another Scott
@Martin:
I missed this comment from you earlier:
I think you’re generalizing too far from the peculiar circumstances in your parts of California.
I’ve mentioned before that my MIL came to DC from small-town Minnesota in 1941 before the war. She lived in a boarding house on P Street with a bunch of her friends for a few years. (The building is still there, but obviously is no longer a boarding house.) She and her roommates did very well in the following decades. Quite often people starting out have to grin and bear it, put up with a bunch of painful crap, and work to move up, or find a way to go somewhere else.
Localities have to make it possible for the mix of housing to change as the economy in the area changes.
The federal government isn’t going to fix local zoning.
Yes, child credits and housing credits and the like can help a lot and Democrats should push for them. You know as well as I do that that’s not going to happen any time soon given the way the GQP is now. And it’s not going to quickly change the supply of housing.
But, fundamentally, localities have to start the process to fix zoning.
It sucks to have to compromise in a household making $125k a year. I get it. But…
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Another Scott: But the housing shortage isn’t limited to California. NY metro, Chicago, Seattle, Kansas City, Portland all have similarly dire housing problems. Most states have some regions or high to severe housing, mostly as fallout from 2008, which was a national issue.
Yes, there are local zoning issues, but there is also the broader shift of hedge funds buying into the housing markets combined with software that can analyze how far you can push rents until you have vacancy issues. And if you have a shortage of housing, that means pushing tenants into homelessness to maximize profit. That’s a public policy issue that can be addressed at the federal level.
I’m not sold on this bill doing all of the things promised as single family rentals aren’t a major problem, but multifamily rentals are where the real pain is being felt and this does nothing to address that, but it should still help somewhat. So there are things that can be done at the federal level. Democratic governors can do more as Newsom has, though those efforts have yet to pay off. And Newsom could be doing more.
But the feds have intervened in housing policy countless times over the years. They can do so here if they choose.
Another Scott
@Martin: Agreed with you, RevRick, Suzanne, and many others who point out that there’s been a shortage of new construction for a long time (which the pandemic made worse – I didn’t find the fancy video about problems with converting R3 to R12 housing very compelling because they were citing numbers from when the pandemic was in full-bloom, but that’s another discussion). When things are constrained, economics tell us that small changes in demand can cause huge increases in prices, so speculator should indeed be reined/rained/reigned in.
Banksters are really good about finding ways of gaming federal policies (they help write them, after all). So, while I want there to be greater support for people in the bottom half of the distribution (especially in the bottom 10%), creating more supply via zoning has to do a lot of the heavy lifting, IMHO. But, yes, deep pocketed entities (of whatever kind) should not be able to buy up lots of existing housing with the intent of driving up rents and prices. Lots can be done with the tax code to address that, if done smartly (but see above).
Cheers,
Scott.
JAFD
@Geminid: Best piece on the primary that I’ve seen, IMHO
https://www.insidernj.com/michael-corleone-hyman-roth-tammy-murphy-and-andy-kim/