Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[y66]

From Abigail Spanberger (D-VA)'s weekly wrap-up of what she's working on which she emails to her constituents. Spanberger is one of the 4 moderate Virginia Dems who flipped districts in the 2018 election.

 

Good morning friends,

 

We had a packed week in the House, passing four major pieces of legislation on defense and national security, prescription drugs, voting rights, and the agricultural workforce. I was pleased to be able to make tangible progress on these important issues and to send more legislation to the Senate for a vote. Please keep scrolling for a brief update on this week's work and thank you, as always, for sharing in the work I'm doing for Central Virginia.

 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON

 

This week, the United States, Mexico, and Canada reached a final agreement on the USMCA trade deal. I'm very pleased that this agreement, which will bring much-needed trade stability to Virginia farms, manufacturers, and businesses, is now in its final stages. Last Friday, I met with Vice President Pence at the White House to discuss the negotiations and maintain an open, bipartisan dialogue. The House just received implementing legislation from the administration, and I'll continue pushing for a fast floor vote.

 

The House passed a major, bipartisan defense spending bill this week. This legislative package included three of my provisions, including my border security bill with Texas Republic Rep. Will Hurd, and is expected to be signed into law by President Trump. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) also includes the largest pay raise for our troops in a decade.

 

I also voted to pass the Lower Drug Costs Now Act, a landmark bill that would empower Medicare to negotiate drug prices and put a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries. There is absolutely no reason why Virginia seniors and families should pay two, three, or even ten times the price for the same medications as citizens in other nations. I'm proud that we were able to pass a bill with practical measures that work to lower the astronomical costs facing our neighbors.

 

Earlier in the week, the I joined a bipartisan majority of the House to pass the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. This bill, supported by Republicans, Democrats, and hundreds of agricultural organizations from across the country, would help give farms, greenhouses, and agribusinesses access to the reliable workers they need, while also establishing a program for agricultural workers to earn legal status through continued agricultural employment.

 

Within the last week, I also helped pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act, introduced a bipartisan education and workforce training bill with Congressman Rob Wittman (R-VA-01), and introduced a measure that would help more Central Virginian students who are interested in STEM fields.

[awm]

From Abigail Spanberger (D-VA)'s weekly wrap-up of what she's working on which she emails to her constituents. Spanberger is one of the 4 moderate Virginia Dems who flipped districts in the 2018 election.

 

Sadly, these are probably dead on arrival in the Senate, despite some of them being bipartisan bills that are quite popular with the electorate. After all, Mitch McConnell has judges to confirm (and an impeachment trial to rig).

[jjbrr]

I, for one, will NOT be voting for Hunter Biden in the 2020 election. I encourage you all to do the same.

[johnu]

Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to my fellow posters and a heart full of love for the BBO WC, today I am asking our mods to ban chas_p and hrothgar from this thread until they apologize for personally attacking each other which is ungentlemanly and a clear violation of Article 1 of the WC policy:

I place a lot of the blame on barmar and diana_eva for enabling a troll who also also represents BBO. I don't think they did this intentionally, but the troll has warped their inaction as tacit approval of his postings.

[Chas_P]

Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to my fellow posters and a heart full of love for the BBO WC, today I am asking our mods to ban chas_p and hrothgar from this thread until they apologize for personally attacking each other which is ungentlemanly and a clear violation of Article 1 of the WC policy:

 

I had the following private discussion with Barry beginning on November 18:

hrothgar has complained that you're harassing him in private messages since you decided to leave the Trump thread in Water Cooler. This is not acceptable, and if it continues we will suspend your account.

To which I replied

 

LOL. It's impossible to "harass" anyone with a hide as thick as his. And I assume it's acceptable for him to call me "asswipe" on the message board. Anyway, don't worry. I've said all I intend to say to him.

Then I asked

 

I do have a follow-up question and I’m not looking for a fight…just enlightenment. Does Richard have a financial interest in BBO? He has openly ridiculed you as an ineffective board administrator, yet when he feels he’s been “harassed” he comes whining to you and you jump to his defense. He can post any vulgarity he likes….”asswipe”, “***** for brains”, etc. and he’s never admonished nor the vulgar posts deleted. I know you’re on BBO’s payroll; is Richard your boss? It doesn’t really affect my life one way or the other; I’m just curious. Please respond. Thanks.

 

To which he replied

 

Richard and I know each other casually (we're both in the Boston area, and we've played bridge together in the past), and we've even worked for the same companies, but we have no business relationship (we've occasionally worked for the same companies, unrelated to BBO, and with no overlap in duties).

 

In the Water Cooler we are very liberal about language. He didn't complain to me until you said you were leaving the thread and then took your attacks to private conversation.

 

I showed him how to block PMs from specific users.

To which I replied

 

Just for the record, I didn't consider my message to him an attack. I simply told him privately what I think of him and I assure you it was much more civil than "asswipe". I also told him he wouldn't be getting any Georgia pecans for Christmas (I sent him some last year). :) Anyway, thank you for your response.

To which he replied

The word he actually used was "harassment", a bit milder than "attack".

 

He apparently considers any direct communication from you to be harassment. Considering his posting style, he should probably should have a thicker skin and maybe he's being a bit hypocritical.

 

To which I replied

 

Here's the thing I don't get Barry. From Rain's post, "Water Cooler Rules" on February 13, 2003:

 

 

"This is meant to be a place to engage in dialogue, share your views and perspectives on global events, anything that can't fit into the other forums. However, we'll still follow some basic rules:

 

1) No personal attacks. Insults are a No-No.

 

3) No obscenities.

 

 

Posters who engage in hateful, vulgar, threatening, knowingly illegal and inaccurate posts may be suspended not just from forums, but also our related websites.

If you aren't comfortable emailing a post to your grandmother/mother/colleague, then it probably shouldn't be posted here."

 

Yet Richard gets away with stuff like "eat ***** and die", "go ***** yourself", etc. while you scold (and threaten) me for telling him that multiple college degrees don't immunize him from abject stupidity. I readily acknowledge that "fair" is a very subjective term; you are the board administrator, therefore holding the hammer and determining what is "fair". I understand that you and Richard are personal friends and that if you want to cut him the slack to which he seems to feel entitled that is your prerogative. As previously stated, it doesn't really affect my life one way or the other. I'm sitting down here in the sunny South eating pecans, drinking fine whiskey, and completely happy. But at times I do question your judgment.

 

I am now ashamed for lowering myself to Richard's level. As Mark Twain said, "Never argue with a fool; the spectators can't tell the difference." I apologize to you, y66, and to you all; I have deleted the post.

[hrothgar]

As usual Chas, you miss the basic point: You participate in these forums in order to be annoying.

You've openly stated as much and your pattern of behaviour shows this to be true.

 

Case in point: Are you honestly going to claim that there was any reason to send me private messages other than to play the gadfly.

 

If you want to play these stupid little games, fine...

 

Just don't start whining when people treat you with the respect that you deserve

[kenberg]

Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to my fellow posters and a heart full of love for the BBO WC, today I am asking our mods to ban chas_p and hrothgar from this thread until they apologize for personally attacking each other which is ungentlemanly and a clear violation of Article 1 of the WC policy:

 

 

 

 

It will probably not surprise you to hear that I disagree. This is not in support of anyone, just a wish that no one is banned.I would like posters to not put Barry and others with moderator responsibilities into difficult positions.

 

 

But then I could start most any post that I make with "It will probably not surprise you to hear that " I think I pretty much can anticipate what will be said on any topic by seeing who sent it.

 

 

In post 1440 you quote a column by Krugman. I agree with a fair amount of it, but there is something missing. He offers no suggestions. Well, he thinks the GOP should be replaced by a new party. Surely he understands that the GOP will not first read this column and then decide to disband. So he offers no suggestions with practical content.

 

 

Forget Krugman. The problem is how to move in a better direction. Much of what is said is that there are many people who are evil, stupid, or both evil and stupid. In order to have any hope at all, we must assume or at least hope that this is not the case. And then, if we are willing to work on that basis, we must see what can be done. We have very severe problems. Assuming the population is too evil/stupid to respond is to give up on democracy, assuming that everyone is a wonderful person just hoping to be of service to humanity.is naive.

 

 

I'm in no rush to ban anyone. Mostly that's on general principles, but I also don't think it is effective.

[y66]

In post 1440 you quote a column by Krugman. I agree with a fair amount of it, but there is something missing. He offers no suggestions. Well, he thinks the GOP should be replaced by a new party. Surely he understands that the GOP will not first read this column and then decide to disband. So he offers no suggestions with practical content.

 

Forget Krugman. The problem is how to move in a better direction. Much of what is said is that there are many people who are evil, stupid, or both evil and stupid. In order to have any hope at all, we must assume or at least hope that this is not the case. And then, if we are willing to work on that basis, we must see what can be done. We have very severe problems. Assuming the population is too evil/stupid to respond is to give up on democracy, assuming that everyone is a wonderful person just hoping to be of service to humanity is naive.

re: what can be done? Krugman and more than 2600 other economists offered this suggestion in 1997:

 

The most efficient approach to slowing climate change is through market-based policies. In order for the world to achieve its climatic objectives at minimum cost, a cooperative approach among nations is required – such as an international emissions trading agreement. The United States and other nations can most efficiently implement their climate policies through market mechanisms, such as carbon taxes or the auction of emissions permits. The revenues generated from such policies can effectively be used to reduce the deficit or to lower existing taxes.

No doubt, Krugman has repeated this suggestion a few times since then although not in his December 12th rant as you noted. You may know that one of your two senators, Chris Van Hollen, and my congressman, Don Beyer, have worked on several pieces of legislation since 2015 that attempt to slow carbon emissions using a market-based approach including, most recently, the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act which they introduced earlier this year and which, I believe, is similar to the Carbon Dividends Plan proposed by the Climate Leadership Council which has bipartisan support. If you talk to Van Hollen and Beyer, they will tell you that there is a fair amount of support for this approach among some of their Republican colleagues who are not stupid or naive or in denial. They will also tell you that bills like theirs are DOA under current White House and Senate leadership and, I suspect, agree completely with Krugman that passing their legislation or similar will require dismantling the Republican Party as it now exists and replacing it with something better or, at a minimum, something with considerably less influence on policy.

 

I suspect they would agree that while Krugman often gets it right when it comes to policy, he frequently does more to hurt his causes than help which happens to the best of us here in the water cooler.

[y66]

From the NYT Editorial Board:

 

IN THE END, the story told by the two articles of impeachment approved on Friday morning by the House Judiciary Committee is short, simple and damning: President Donald Trump abused the power of his office by strong-arming Ukraine, a vulnerable ally, holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid until it agreed to help him influence the 2020 election by digging up dirt on a political rival.

 

When caught in the act, he rejected the very idea that a president could be required by Congress to explain and justify his actions, showing “unprecedented, categorical and indiscriminate defiance” in the face of multiple subpoenas. He made it impossible for Congress to carry out fully its constitutionally mandated oversight role, and, in doing so, he violated the separation of powers, a safeguard of the American republic.

 

To quote from the articles, “President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.”

 

The case now moves to the full House of Representatives, which on Wednesday will decide, for just the third time in the nation’s history, whether to impeach a president.

 

To resist the pull of partisanship, Republicans and Democrats alike ought to ask themselves the same question: Would they put up with a Democratic president using the power of the White House this way? Then they should consider the facts, the architecture and aspirations of the Constitution and the call of history. In that light, there can be only one responsible judgment: to cast a vote to impeach, to send a message not only to this president but to future ones.

 

By stonewalling as no previous president has, Donald Trump has left Congress with no choice but to press ahead to a Senate trial. The president insists he is innocent of any wrongdoing, yet he refuses to release any administration documents or allow any administration officials to testify — though, if his assertions are in fact true, those officials would presumably exonerate him. He refused to present any defense before the House whatsoever, asserting a form of monarchical immunity that Congress cannot let stand.

 

It’s regrettable that the House moved as fast as it did, without working further through the courts and through other means to hear from numerous crucial witnesses. But Democratic leaders have a point when they say they can’t afford to wait, given the looming electoral deadline and Mr. Trump’s pattern of soliciting foreign assistance for his campaigns. Even after his effort to extract help from Ukraine was revealed, the president publicly called on China to investigate his rival. Asked as recently as October what he hoped the Ukrainians would do in response to his infamous July 25 call with their president, Mr. Trump declared: “Well, I would think that, if they were honest about it, they’d start a major investigation into the Bidens. It’s a very simple answer.”

 

BARRING THE PERSUASIVE DEFENSE that Mr. Trump has so far declined even to attempt, that simple answer sounds like a textbook example of an impeachable offense, as the nation’s framers envisioned it.

 

A president “might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression,” James Madison said of the need for an impeachment clause. “He might betray his trust to foreign powers.”

 

Madison and his fellow framers understood that elections — which, under normal circumstances, are the essence of democratic self-government — could not serve their purpose if a president was determined to cheat to win.

 

As the constitutional scholar Noah Feldman testified before the Judiciary Committee last week, “Without impeachment, the president would have been an elected monarch. With impeachment, the president was bound to the rule of law.”

 

At the same time, the framers were well aware of the dangers inherent in impeachment. That’s why they made it a two-step process: First is the House’s vote on impeachment, which is akin to an indictment and requires only a majority to pass. Second is a trial in the Senate, which decides the president’s ultimate fate, and thus has a much higher bar to clear — two-thirds of senators must vote to convict and remove the president from office.

 

So far, Republicans legislators have shown little sign of treating this constitutional process with the seriousness it demands.

 

Instead, they have been working overtime to abet the president’s wrongdoing. They have spread toxic misinformation and conspiracy theories to try to justify his actions and raged about the unfairness of the inquiry, complaining that Democrats have been trying to impeach Mr. Trump since he took office.

 

No doubt some Democrats were too eager to resort to impeachment before it became unavoidable. Mr. Trump has been committing arguably impeachable offenses since the moment he entered the Oval Office, including his acceptance of foreign money at his many businesses; his violations of campaign-finance law in paying hush money to a woman who claimed to have had a sexual affair with him; and, of course, his obstructions of justice in the Russia investigation, which were documented extensively by the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

 

Democrats could have pursued impeachment in any or all of these cases, but for various reasons decided not to. That changed in September, when a whistle-blower’s complaint, initially suppressed by the Justice Department, revealed the outline of Mr. Trump’s Ukraine scheme. That made it impossible to ignore the president’s lawlessness because it sounded an alarm that he was seeking to subvert the next election, depriving the voters of their right to check his behavior.

 

The Republicans’ most common defenses of Mr. Trump’s behavior fall flat in the face of the evidence.

 

There is, above all, the summary of the July 25 phone call between Mr. Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president. Mr. Trump still insists that summary exonerates him. It doesn’t — which is why White House officials promptly locked it in a special computer system.

 

Then there is the sworn testimony of multiple government officials, including several appointed by Mr. Trump himself, all of whom confirmed the essential story line: For all the recent claims about his piety regarding Ukrainian corruption, Mr. Trump did not “give a ***** about Ukraine.” He only wanted the “deliverable” — the announcement of an investigation into the Bidens, and also into a debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.

 

The argument that Mr. Trump cared about anything other than hurting Joe Biden and helping himself is undercut by several facts. Even though calling on the Ukrainians to fight corruption was part of his prepared talking points, he never mentioned the subject in his calls with Mr. Zelensky; he also didn’t hold up the military aid in 2017 or 2018, even though everyone knew about Hunter Biden’s Ukraine connection at the time. (What changed this year? Joe Biden emerged as his leading Democratic opponent.) By the time Mr. Trump intervened to block the money for Ukraine, the Defense Department had already certified that Ukraine had made enough progress fighting corruption to qualify for this year’s funds.

 

Without any substantive defense of Mr. Trump’s behavior, several Republicans have taken to arguing that he committed no actual crime, and so can’t be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Putting aside a strong case that Mr. Trump has, in fact, broken at least one law, this isn’t how impeachment works. “High crimes” refers to severe violations of the public trust by a high-ranking official, not literal crimes. A president can commit a technical crime that doesn’t violate the public trust (say, jaywalking), and he can commit an impeachable offense that is found nowhere in the federal criminal code (like abuse of power).

 

Republicans’ sole remaining argument is: “So what? It wasn’t that big a deal.” Or, as acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney said in October, “Get over it.” This stance at least has the virtue of acknowledging the president’s vice, but that doesn’t make it O.K.

 

ASSUMING MR. TRUMP IS IMPEACHED, the case will go to the Senate, where he will have the chance — on far more friendly territory — to mount the defense he refused to make to the House. Rather than withholding key witnesses, he should be demanding sworn appearances by people like Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, and John Bolton, the former national security adviser.

 

As recently as a few weeks ago, some Republicans seemed to want to get to the bottom of things. Even Trump’s footman, Senator Lindsey Graham, said, “If you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.”

 

The time for such expressions of public spirit has, apparently, passed. “I’ve written the whole process off,” Mr. Graham said during the impeachment hearings. “I think this is a bunch of B.S.”

 

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, says there will be “no difference between the president’s position and our position in how to handle this,” as he told Sean Hannity of Fox last Thursday. Before the House had cast a single vote on impeachment, Mr. McConnell said there was “no chance” the Senate would vote to convict.

 

For now, that leaves the defense of the Constitution, and the Republic, to the House of Representatives.

[kenberg]

re: what can be done? Krugman and more than 2600 other economists offered this suggestion in 1997:

 

 

No doubt, Krugman has repeated this suggestion a few times since then although not in his December 12th rant as you noted. You may know that one of your two senators, Chris Van Hollen, and my congressman, Don Beyer, have worked on several pieces of legislation since 2015 that attempt to slow carbon emissions using a market-based approach including, most recently, the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act which they introduced earlier this year and which, I believe, is similar to the Carbon Dividends Plan proposed by the Climate Leadership Council which has bipartisan support. If you talk to Van Hollen and Beyer, they will tell you that there is a fair amount of support for this approach among some of their Republican colleagues who are not stupid or naive or in denial. They will also tell you that bills like theirs are DOA under current White House and Senate leadership and, I suspect, agree completely with Krugman that passing their legislation or similar will require dismantling the Republican Party as it now exists and replacing it with something better or, at a minimum, something with considerably less influence on policy.

 

I suspect they would agree that while Krugman often gets it right when it comes to policy, he frequently does more to hurt his causes than help which happens to the best of us here in the water cooler.

 

Perhaps we should look at two classes of "What can be done?"

 

There are policy issues and for this we need experts. We can try to evaluate expert opinion as best we can, looking at what they have said in the past and how that worked out, trying to look at the technical arguments, keeping an open mind, and so on. But he, in his article, was looking at a different issue. How do we get better people in Congress? Or: Why on Earth would anyone support the Senators who kowtow to him? As we move toward elections I think the Dems need to take this latter question very seriously, and if the best answer they can come up with is that people are evil and/or stupid, I think the election might not go very well.

[y66]

From Alex Thompson and Elena Schneider at Politico:

 

Ganesh Sitaraman is one of Elizabeth Warren’s closest advisors. He’s also one of Pete Buttigieg’s best friends.

 

How’s that for awkward?

 

The 37-year-old Vanderbilt Law School professor, who’s been with Warren since before the start of her political career, has been a key architect of the sweeping policy agenda that powered her surge to the top of the Democratic field.

 

But in his new book, The Great Democracy, the first person Sitaraman acknowledges isn’t Warren. It’s the man she’s been battling fiercely for bragging rights in Iowa.

 

“Conversations with Pete Buttigieg were invaluable, and this book wouldn’t exist without them or without his characteristically thoughtful advice, encouragement, and friendship,” Sitaraman writes of the South Bend mayor.

 

Sitaraman ties together two increasingly hostile adversaries who are carving wider ideological and stylistic differences as the presidential primary approaches the voting stage. Sitaraman met both Buttigieg and Warren at Harvard University — Buttigieg was his close friend as an undergraduate, Warren his law school mentor. In 2012, Sitaraman was policy director for Warren first run for Senate. Six years later, he was a groomsman at Buttigieg’s wedding.

 

And now he is in an uneasy position between two brawling rivals. His book publicist responded enthusiastically to a pitch to interview him for this story. But Sitaraman then asked POLITICO to go through the Warren campaign. The campaign sent a reporter back to Sitaraman.

 

Ultimately, he declined an on-the-record interview.

 

Sitaraman’s prolific writings about policy — this is his second book this year — have influenced both campaign’s platforms, formally and informally, to varying degrees.

 

While not technically on the Warren campaign’s payroll, Sitaraman is an instrumental figure in the senator’s policy braintrust. He has reached out to policy experts and progressive groups on her behalf, recruited talent to her campaign, and has occasionally been dispatched by the campaign to walk reporters through her plans off the record.

 

After the July debate in Detroit, three Warren aides remained in the spin room until the end: chief strategist Joe Rospars, campaign chief of staff Dan Geldon, and Sitaraman, who like Geldon is a former student of Warren’s at Harvard Law.

 

“Ganesh Sitaraman is the great thinker of the team, the one who sees context and direction,” Warren wrote in her 2014 book A Fighting Chance, on her 2012 campaign and helping her oversee the bank bailouts in 2008 and 2009. “Like Dan, Ganesh was a close-up partner for most of these battles. Without Dan and Ganesh, the adventures would have been fewer and the successes fewer still.”

 

She also dubbed the Eagle Scout from Minnesota and son of Indian immigrants “an American success story.”

 

His influential scholarship also is emblematic of an new generation of progressive thinkers who are increasingly critical of Democratic governance in the era they grew up in and radical in their solutions.

 

“There should be a political history of Ganesh’s role at the center of the current political moment,” said Kenneth Townsend, who overlapped with Buttigeig as a Rhodes Scholar and Sitaraman as a Truman Scholar following college. “He’s perceptive of talent, political talent, and he’s less interested in the public-facing aspects of being a candidate, so this role for him fits.”

 

That lofty political thinking started in college. He and Buttigieg, who then went by “Peter,” became close friends. They were members of “ The Order of the Kong,” a joking reference to a Cambridge Chinese restaurant where the pair — along with four other Harvard students — would hang out.

 

After college and during the prestigious scholarships in England, their intellectual growth formalized. The two were part of a reading and discussion group called the Democratic Renaissance Project, meeting in dorm rooms and in pubs to “read [the] liberal giants of the 20th century and discuss what we can take from those writers and scholars” to “[rethink] the Democratic Party,” after John Kerry’s presidential loss in 2004, said Shadi Hamid, a member of the group.

 

“We did share this sense that the Democratic Party had lost its way and that there needed to be a bold progressive vision,” added Hamid, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “One can debate what that means in practice, but that was the starting premise.”

 

But Buttigieg and Sitaraman took different routes in that effort. Buttigieg joined McKinsey, a corporate consulting firm he’s come under fire for working for in recent days, then ran for Indiana state treasurer in 2010, just a few years after he returned from England. Sitaraman went back to Harvard Law School, and later helped Warren with her oversight of the bank bailouts during the financial crisis and worked on her Senate run.

 

“If there was going to be a run for office, Peter was more of the sort who would be the candidate and Ganesh would be the mastermind, the strategist,” Townsend said. “That fit their personalities, and that reality is playing out now.”

 

Buttigieg told POLITICO that “Ganesh is a brilliant person” and remains a “good friend, but we keep the politics out of it.” The mayor also plugged Sitaraman’s earlier 2019 book, Public Option, which the law professor co-authored. “If you talk about public options, usually it's a health care thing, right?” Buttigieg said. But Sitaraman and his co-author have “produced a general theory of public options that I think is really smart.”

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Warren and Buttigieg both back Medicare public options to begin tackling health care, though in Warren's case she arrived there after months of conflicting answers. Warren has pledged to introduce a full Medicare for All bill by the third year of her first term.

 

Sitaraman is also the co-author of a 2019 Yale Law Journal article and a preceding 2018 op-ed on Vox arguing to restructure and potentially add six justices to the Supreme Court. Buttigieg was the first presidential candidate to express openness to the idea in February, and in June, he rolled out his own 15-justice court-packing plan that he credited Sitaraman for inspiring.

 

But as Buttigieg cut a more center-left path through the primary this fall, his proposal to reshape the Supreme Court dropped out of his stump speech (he still mentions it in questions about democratic reforms). Warren has also said she’s open to adding seats to the high court.

 

“I’m very grateful to the mayor for having promoted the article,” said Daniel Epps, the co-author of the piece and an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis who said Sitarman long ago told him that Buttigieg was a rising star. “He doesn’t just float the ideas but also gives credit.”

 

As for Sitaraman’s work with Warren instead of his friend Buttigieg during the campaign, Epps said, “You dance with the one who brung you.”

 

Sitaraman’s new book speaks to some of the broader themes both Warren and Buttigieg have hit on the campaign trail. Its main argument is that the United States and large parts of the world are in the midst of an “epochal transition,” the next swing of the slow-moving pendulum of history.

 

This matches Warren’s oft-stated belief that Donald Trump’s victory was a symptom of decades of accumulating bipartisan rot. “A country that elects Donald Trump is a country that is in serious trouble,” she has said on the stump. “And we need to pay attention to what’s been broken, not just in the past two-and-a-half years but what’s been broken for decades.”

 

“I think her general philosophy and worldview has influenced him a lot,” said Professor Morgan Ricks, Sitaraman’s colleague at Vanderbilt.

 

Buttigieg has dabbled with similar rhetoric about Trump and the need to “win the era.”

 

A neoliberal era of free market capitalism and economic deregulation began in the 1980s, Sitaraman argues, and it captured Democrats and Republicans alike. The philosophical frame “came with an aggressive emphasis on expanding democracy and human rights, even by military force. Expanding trade and commerce came with little regard for who the winners and losers were — or what the political fallout might be.”

 

Sitaraman declares in his introduction, however, that “[w]ith the election of Donald Trump, the neoliberal era has reached its end.” He charts several possible paths forward.

 

Such grand pronouncements and denunciations of “neoliberalism” often draw praise from parts of the left and elicit eyerolls from senior Democratic officials who have been fighting in the trenches the last several decades.

 

But Buttiegieg said something similar this fall. “I’d say neoliberalism is the political-economic consensus that has governed the last forty years of policy in the US and UK,” he wrote in September in response to a question from a Twitter user. “Its failure helped to produce the Trump moment. Now we have to replace it with something better.”

 

While Sitaraman’s prognosis may divide people on the left, he does have allies among some Trumpian voices on the right. Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon was a passionate evangelist for the book The Fourth Turning, which similarly argued that a new historical era is coming.

 

“Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, one commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II,” the amateur historians wrote in the 1997 book. “History is seasonal, and winter is coming.”

 

More evidence of the overlapping relationships can be found in Buttigieg’s memoir, too. In Shortest Way Home, published last February, Buttigieg noted Sitaraman’s influence in his own book’s acknowledgements, thanking him for his “expert guidance, unvarnished advice, and steady encouragement.”

 

Sitaraman’s name came ahead of his own future presidential campaign manager, senior advisor and other friends.

It's fun to say stuff like "the neoliberal era of free market capitalism and economic deregulation that began in the 1980s has reached its end" and that we are about to pass through the next great gate in history. But as has been pointed out more than a few times on this thread, voters may not be ready for this yet, in the US anyway.

[jjbrr]

for the record, diana and barmar arent mods in any legitimate sense. barmar cant be bothered to read any posts, and diana, to my knowledge, doesnt even really understand how internet forums work.

[Chas_P]

Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible,

low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday

practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion

of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others

who choose to practice their own religion as well as those who choose

not to practice a religion at all; plus, A fiscally successful, personally

fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally

accepted calendar year 2020, but not without due respect for the

calendars of choice of the other cultures whose contributions have

helped make our society great, without regards to the race, creed,

color, religious, or sexual preferences of the wishees.

 

(disclaimer: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It

implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the

wishes for him/herself or others and no responsibility for any

unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not

caught up in the holiday spirit.)

[kenberg]

From Alex Thompson and Elena Schneider at Politico:

 

 

It's fun to say stuff like "the neoliberal era of free market capitalism and economic deregulation that began in the 1980s has reached its end" and that we are about to pass through the next great gate in history. But as has been pointed out more than a few times on this thread, voters may not be ready for this yet, in the US anyway.

 

The problem might be more basic. The neo what of what?

 

At lunch the other day, there were six of us, the conversation somehow turned to cartoon shows from our childhood. One of the lunchers could not remember The Roadrunner. and she was pretty sure she never before had heard of him. The rest of us thought it was impossible to grow up in the USA w/o knowing who The Roadrunner was. There would have been much less surprise if someone could not give a thought out opinion of economic policies and the neoliberal era.

 

 

There are many more voters who do not know about the economics of the neoliberal era than there are people who do not know who The Roadrunner was. Votes are where you find them.

 

BeepBeep.

[barmar]

Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to my fellow posters and a heart full of love for the BBO WC, today I am asking our mods to ban chas_p and hrothgar from this thread until they apologize for personally attacking each other which is ungentlemanly and a clear violation of Article 1 of the WC policy:

Unfortunately, the forum software doesn't provide a way to band someone from a specific thread. We could ban him from the WC entirely, that's the granularity available.

[barmar]

for the record, diana and barmar arent mods in any legitimate sense. barmar cant be bothered to read any posts, and diana, to my knowledge, doesnt even really understand how internet forums work.

I plead guilty.

 

I'm a programmer, not a baby sitter, and my interpersonal skills are typical for a software geek. But when I joined BBO I had 30 years of experience participating in online forums (mostly Usenet), and technical expertise about how they work, so I became the de facto moderator.

 

I'm happy to deal with mundane stuff like moving threads to more appropriate forums and deleting spam. I'm not really sure how best to deal with the crap that goes on in threads like this. The line between free speech and trolling is fuzzy, and I prefer to err on the side of allowing the free-for-all.

 

I wish the rest of you would just act like adults in your interactions with Chas. Don't let him bait you (yes, I know I'm also guilty of it). And be the better person: don't sink to the level of name-calling.

 

While we might not like what Chas is saying, I don't think the tenor of his posts actually violates forum guidelines, while using foul language in response to him does.

[y66]

From David Leonhardt at NYT:

 

The Commerce Department will announce the latest G.D.P. numbers on Friday, and they’ll probably be solid. The economy seems to be growing at an annual rate of about 2 percent, which isn’t bad for the 11th year of an expansion.

 

After the numbers come out, something else will probably happen: Pundits will once again express bafflement about the apparent disconnect between the healthy American economy and the sour national mood.

 

But there is really no disconnect. The fault — with apologies to Shakespeare — is in our stats, not ourselves.

 

Americans are dissatisfied, and have been for years, largely because the economy as most people experience it has not been booming. G.D.P. — or gross domestic product, the economy’s total output — keeps on rising, but it no longer tracks the well-being of most Americans. Instead, an outsize share of economic growth flows to the wealthy. And yet G.D.P. is treated as a totemic measure of the country’s prosperity.

 

Consider the true picture: Middle-class income growth has been sluggish for decades. The typical household is still poorer than it was before the financial crisis began in 2007. Most alarming, average life expectancy has recently been declining. No wonder polls show that a majority of Americans has been dissatisfied with the country’s direction for the past 15 years in a row, a period that encompasses the entirety of the current G.D.P. expansion, the longest on record.

 

So it’s time to stop wondering why Americans are unhappy — and instead create a version of G.D.P. that reflects reality. Which may finally be on the verge of happening.

 

A team of Commerce Department economists has been working on a new version of G.D.P., one that will show how much of the economy’s bounty is flowing to different income groups. The headline number would still exist, but the new data, known as “distributional accounts,” would make clear who was and wasn’t benefiting. The department expects to publish a prototype statistic next year.

 

Several members of Congress, meanwhile, have introduced a bill that would require the department to release this distributional data alongside the normal G.D.P. numbers every quarter. That’s important, because it would change the national discussion that occurs whenever G.D.P. is released.

 

“The government is still using a black-and-white television,” Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, told me. “We gotta catch up, so we get a more accurate picture.” Schumer plans to reintroduce the bill in the coming days, and he said he was hoping that a Republican would co-sponsor it. The expanded version of G.D.P. would include estimates for every decile of the income distribution — 10th percentile, 20th and so on — as well as for the top 1 percent.

 

If it happens, Heather Boushey, the author of a recent history of the American economy, “Unbound,” says it could be the most significant improvement in economic statistics in decades.

 

It would also be part of a broader shift. The Federal Reserve created its own distributional accounts recently, to offer more detailed data on wealth. And Australia and the Netherlands have both begun releasing distributional G.D.P. numbers.

 

The economist who oversaw the first version of G.D.P. in the United States — Simon Kuznets, a future Nobel Prize winner — probably would have been in favor of these developments. Kuznets cautioned that people should not confuse the economy’s total output with economic well-being. “Economic welfare,” he wrote in 1934, “cannot be adequately measured unless the personal distribution of income is known.”

 

The failure of G.D.P. to include distribution didn’t matter much in the decades after World War II, because economic growth was remarkably inclusive. If anything, the middle class and poor received raises that outpaced economic growth (as you can see in the chart above).

 

In the mid-1970s, and especially the 1980s, however, the situation changed. The income flowing to everyone but the affluent began to trail economic growth — by a lot.

 

Why? Labor unions shrank, giving workers less bargaining power. Business executives and investors decided to maximize corporate profits, regardless of the societal effects. The government became more passive about regulating big business. Government also scrimped on investments that create good-paying jobs, like education. And taxes fell much more for the rich than they did for everyone else.

 

Some academic economists and government agencies publish statistics that describe these trends, of course. But they don’t have the same authority — and don’t always have the same rigor — as G.D.P. That’s why fixing our broken G.D.P. numbers would be a step toward creating an economy that works for most Americans.

[jjbrr]

I plead guilty.

 

I'm a programmer, not a baby sitter, and my interpersonal skills are typical for a software geek. But when I joined BBO I had 30 years of experience participating in online forums (mostly Usenet), and technical expertise about how they work, so I became the de facto moderator.

 

I'm happy to deal with mundane stuff like moving threads to more appropriate forums and deleting spam. I'm not really sure how best to deal with the crap that goes on in threads like this. The line between free speech and trolling is fuzzy, and I prefer to err on the side of allowing the free-for-all.

 

I wish the rest of you would just act like adults in your interactions with Chas. Don't let him bait you (yes, I know I'm also guilty of it). And be the better person: don't sink to the level of name-calling.

 

While we might not like what Chas is saying, I don't think the tenor of his posts actually violates forum guidelines, while using foul language in response to him does.

 

i apologize for being critical. i appreciate the free speech approach, but i happen to think it's gone too far for too long in some cases. I think everyone here lived through, for example, the lurpoa BS, and I think a heavier hand would have saved a lot of stress.

 

i dont think there's any question about how much you've contributed to these forums and others. i also regret that we've never met up at an nabc and had a beer together, in the midnights or otherwise. i plan to come out of retirement in Columbus for a day or two, so maybe I can change that.

[jjbrr]

so thank you, barmar, is what I'm trying to say. you deserve a pat on the back from all of us.

[Winstonm]

From David Leonhardt at NYT:

 

In the mid-1970s, and especially the 1980s, however, the situation changed. The income flowing to everyone but the affluent began to trail economic growth — by a lot.

 

Why? Labor unions shrank, giving workers less bargaining power. Business executives and investors decided to maximize corporate profits, regardless of the societal effects. The government became more passive about regulating big business. Government also scrimped on investments that create good-paying jobs, like education. And taxes fell much more for the rich than they did for everyone else.

 

Shorter version: Reagan was elected.

[y66]

Shorter version: Reagan was elected.

launching the era of free-market-ism aka neoliberalism for which the "bold progressive vision" of Ganesh Sitaraman, Warren's closest adviser and Buttigieg's groomsman, is viewed by some as a necessary antidote and by many others as something voters aren't ready for yet which is why Dems will likely go with Joe Biden.

[barmar]

so thank you, barmar, is what I'm trying to say. you deserve a pat on the back from all of us.

No fair! This is supposed to be a thankless job. :)

[barmar]

i also regret that we've never met up at an nabc and had a beer together, in the midnights or otherwise. i plan to come out of retirement in Columbus for a day or two, so maybe I can change that.

I finally met Phil Clayton at the bridge table in SF. We helped him win the Mini Blue Ribbon (gave him a top and 60% on day 2).

[kenberg]

I finally met Phil Clayton at the bridge table in SF. We helped him win the Mini Blue Ribbon (gave him a top and 60% on day 2).

 

Ask not what your opponents can do for you, ask what you can do for your opponents. .Many are grateful to me for similar reasons.

[y66]

It’d better be both, @ezraklein, or it’ll mean we’re totally f#cked.

 

I don't think it's Trump's abuses of power that will shock future generations. It's his obvious unfitness for office, displayed in letters like this one, and the way the Republican Party rationalized it as authenticity and plain-spokenness.

https://documentcloud.org/documents/6581905-Letter-From-President-Trump-Final.html

Until we figure out the antidote for polarization, I suspect future generations will be too busy being shocked by the politics of their day to spend much time being shocked by these events. But yeah, it's pretty ugly.