Some Thoughts On Elon vs Trump

Here are a few thoughts about the Big Story:

This whole epic falling out was nothing if not predictable. There's just no way those two egomaniacs could work together for the next four years and both seem to have wanted different things out of the relationship. Trump seems to have viewed Elon as a bit of a stalking horse tasked with doing unpopular things, largely getting revenge on all the groups/people/institutions Trump hates. While Elon seems to have fallen into the old Franz von Papen trap where you think Trump is a someone you can control while you get to be the power behind the throne. 

But as other's who tried this with Trump have found out it doesn't work and in the end Trump discards those aspiring Grey Eminences Thomas Cromwell style (too many metaphors I know) when it suits him.  

This seems like a heck of a lot bigger than a president replacing a chief of staff (which is always a big deal but still pretty common historically speaking) for a number of reasons.

Elon had a far greater role in running than any other white house chief of staff in history (there's a reason I referenced Wolf Hall above!) and Elon remains a giant larger than life person (the world's richest man! Who owns a website super popular with media people! etc etc) who will likely remain a major force in politics and business for the foreseeable future. 

Just compare Elon's position to that of Don Regan* who was Reagan's chief of staff in 1985 and 1986. There's a big epic story here but the TLDR version is Regan was terrible at the job and sailed the ship into the iceberg with Iran-Contra and alienating Congress. Regan also made many enemies inside Dutch's inner circle and eventually Reagan's people were finally able to talk him into dumping ole Don and by all accounts wasn't a very amicable divorce.

So Don, took his brutal revenge. He wrote a book making fun of Reagan as being old and out of touch with what was going on (YMMV on if this was true) and made a lot of funny claims about Nancy involving astrologists (YMMV on that as well).

Then Regan went back to his big house in Virginia and spent the rest of his life painting landscape painting.

Elon probably won't be going away like that. And back then the whole Regan/Reagan thing was seen as a big deal that everyone in DC talked about for six months or so.

*Reagan's chief of staff was named Regan? What can I say, the 80's were a confusing time.

American Political Ideology Explained (New York City Grocery Store Edition)

So I saw people fighting about this on Twitter (sorry I refuse to call it X) and I thought it was, in it’s own strange way, a good way to illustrate differences between ideologies in contemporary American politics.

My main objection to this plan isn’t that it’s “communism” (it isn’t, just look at any number of municipal booze stores in Minnesota) but rather it wouldn’t work as any such store actually owned and run by the City of New York would inevitably be bogged down by an absurd number of rules and requirements ($28 an hour starting wage, union transported and locally sourced food, how do we know these casavas were ethically sources? etc.) so it's easy to see these stores operating in the red (while probably not have a great array of products or service). 

There are of course grocery stores like this in America, and they tend to get shut down (such is the logic of a market economy) but I guess they could be run indefinitely if the city decided to keep hemorrhaging money to keep them running?

Anyway I do think the question of “how should the next Mayor of New York City address the issue of food insecurity in our communities?” is helpful to differentiate ideologies. Here’s roughly how I see most important political ideologies in America these days answering:

• Left Ideology (think Zohran Mamdani himself): Capitalism simply can’t work, read Marx, it will inevitably fail. So the solution is to build a system of grocery stores run by the City of New York that will operate at a loss to provide food to those who need it.
• Current Liberal Ideology (think Joe Biden or Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey): The city should give grants to NGOs and community based organizations to distribute food, this should be monitored through a rigorous process of grant reporting and such.
• New Liberal/Neoliberal ideology (think this book): Just give people who need food a debit card to buy it, we could call it SNAP
• Old Conservative ideology (Think Scott Walker): They can get a SNAP card but it needs to be worth less and we need strict rules on what can be bought…no sharp cheddar!
• MAGA ideology (Think Elon): The “food insecure” will be sent to one of our new Kennedy Wellness Centers, where a program of rigorous vegetable/fruit harvesting and group therapy sessions will make them whole and cure them of the woke mind virus. (Note failure to report to your Wellness Center may result in deportation to El Salvador or being turned into biodiesel)

This doesn't cover everything in American political ideology of course, but in terms of "how should the welfare state be structured" I think it does help illuminate stuff.

The Correct Analogy for the 2024 Election

Well that just happened. I have a number of thoughts on this but until I get time to put them down in detail here's a summery of what I think.

However one thing I did want to point out is that people are missing the correct analogy when it comes to what happened this cycle. Nate Silver recently made a typically error by using a Homer Simpson analogy which is obviously totally off. Harris and Biden are pretty different people and switching the candidate out was clearly the correct move, even if the Democrats still didn't win.

It bears repeating, but no matter how many times media people claim otherwise one can run a good campaign, even a perfect one, and still lose an election.

As I see if Democrats had kept Biden they probably would have ended with something like a 1980 style blow out in the Electoral College and with the GOP winning say 7-10 Senate seats and a 20+ majority in the House. Instead the candidate switch and Harris's pretty good campaign resulted in a close election with much smaller loses in Congress and state governments. That's a really big difference!

The fact is there are important difference between a comfortably large House majority and one where deaths and retirements might put the chamber in play between now and 2026. Likewise any single Senator can have real influence and the smaller the GOP majority the harder it is to confirm awful people like Matt Gaetz.

The correct 2024 analogy we are all looking for was from Oliver Stone's crazy but great football movie Any Given Sunday. The film features over-the-hill coach Tony D'Mato (Al Pacino) trying to guide the once great Miami Sharks back to glory. His plans all fall apart at the beginning of the film when his star but aging QB Jack "Cap" Rooney (that's Biden) is injured and has to be replaced by the young questionable talent Willie Beaman (that's Harris).

It's a pretty standard sports drama from then onward. Willie turns out to be better than anyone expected, he just needed someone to show him how to believe in himself you see, or at least not to act like a jackass all the time and the Sharks look like they might be able to win the Superbowl, sorry Pantheon Cup. I'd add that because of it's great ensemble cast, well written subplots, and interesting things to say about the myth and business of sports is actually a pretty good film, even if Oliver Stone made some odd choices (if you know you know).

But this isn't a standard Hollywood movie, it's an Oliver Stone film, so it ends with the "big game" being the league championship with Harris, sorry, Willie being able to squeak out a win in the final seconds.

The Super Bowl occurs off screen and in the final scene as the credits run we learn the Sharks lost. It was not to be.

To me that's basically what happened. Harris improbably became the nominee and then came agonizingly close to winning but alas didn't. The norm media people are socialized into is to always portray the losing presidential campaign is incompetent and run by idiots. But in this case it's not true, it was a pretty good campaign! Just not good enough to overcome the same headwinds that have sunken every other democratic government with an election this year other than Luxembourg.

Had Coach D'Mato cut Captain Jack earlier could they have won? Maybe, but like in sports it's just hard to know for sure. Maybe Willie would have done worse, maybe the real problem was choices made long ago as D'Mato points out to the owner that "Maybe if I had gotten the linemen I wanted maybe our quarterback would still be walking!" We'll just never know, but the idea Harris was "bad at politics" is clearly wrong.

One can run a good campaign, even a perfect one, and still lose an election.

What People Get Wrong About Harris in 2020

Here's a quick post about something I think a lot of people get wrong about Vice President Kamala Harris's 2020 campaign for the Democratic nomination.

Folks like Nate Silver look at how she dropped out fairly early during the 2020 cycle and sight that as iron clad proof that "she's bad at politics", but a presidential nomination isn't like being on Survivor where the longer you last the better you've done at all. 

Instead it's more like a poker game at a tournament where there are some high risk/high reward strategies that maximize your chance to win but mean you could go bust quickly, and some strategies (like how I play poker, you just never bet) that maximize the time you stay in but make it really, really unlikely you'll win the table/tournament. 

To review, after Harris's big break out debate moment where she knocked Biden she got a ton of free media coverage and her fundraising surged. Hoping to maximize her advantages of this major break she went with a high risk/high reward strategy of staffing up nationally in order to maximize her chances of winning if she caught fire and she pulled an upset in an early state and/or had to hang in for a long drawn out battle. Unfortunately for her the debate moment turned out to be a one off moment, not a major breakthrough with the public or donors and so the money ran out fairly quickly (a national campaign staff leads to quite the "burn rate" for a campaign) and so she had to drop out. 

Meanwhile a candidate like Amy Klobuchar went with the low risk strategy of conserving her money for the long run and so she was able to stay in much longer. Under the "Survivor Model" this means she ran a better campaign, but in reality Klobuchar had little campaign infrastructure (even in her own state) to be able to take advantage of a break through if she got lucky and one occurred.

In other words her strategy kept her in race for a while, but she was never a major threat to Biden once the field narrowed, hence why she quickly dropped out and endorsed him. Meanwhile Harris going "all in on" that early great hand didn't work out, but it was still a smart move if she wanted to actually win the big enchilada and not just stick around in the game for as long as possible

You can see other good examples of how the "Survivor Model" doesn't hold up in past races as well. Under this theory in 1988 Jesse Jackson ran a great campaign and thus he was a very skilled politician, after all he took it all the way to the convention, the last Tribal Council! Likewise Jerry Brown in 1992 held out the longest against Bill Clinton, and thus ran a great campaign as well. But in reality The Duke's real threats in 1988 were people who dropped out early due to scandals like Gary Hart and Joe Biden not a factional candidate like Jackson, who never appealed much to the party other that his coalition of some white liberals and black voters. Likewise the candidates who had a chance to actually beat Bill Clinton in 1992 were probably guys like Mario Cuomo (who dropped out before New Hampshire), Tom Harkin, and Bob Kerrey not a candidate like Brown who appealed largely to just his own personality based faction and people who hated The Big Dog, or Paul Tsongas who was pretty out of step with the mainstream of his party on a number of issues.

First GOP Debate Review

Hello, is this thing on? 

I haven't been blogging much anymore for various reasons but the fact that I actually took the time to watch the GOP's first presidential debate makes me feel obligated to write something up about it. So here goes:

Well that was awful. One thing that struck me as an overall theme of this Trump-lacking debate was how very much it is now Trump's party (with some notable dissents). 

To keep things quick, and because I've decided to write this without looking at other people's reaction online let's just do bullet points.

• The narrative divide: There's a pretty giant divide in the GOP these days between old schoolers like Mike Pence who talks about a sort of Reagan's idea of "Morning in America" moment they want to bring about (the former VP seems to have mentioned Dutch more than five times) and folks like Vivek Ramaswamy arguing for a Trump style "American Carnage" master narrative. To put it simply this is a major change for the optimism of presidents like Reagan and the Bushes of my younger days. 
• Vivek Ramaswamy seems to have "won" the debate: That is he probably got the most camera time and really raised his profile. I'd expect a "bump" in the polling, but I doubt that will last. Why have this know-nothing internet celebrity figure when you can have Trump, the platonic archetype?
• DeSantis did fine, which probably means he "lost" the debate: Sure he did a decent job of delivering his lines, but I didn't see much to change the current dynamics with Trump as front runner and him as a distant second. It's not the end of the world, RDS can still win, but this is yet another blown opportunity for him.
• The crazy doesn't stop: It's kind of wild that "bomb/invade Mexico" has become a mainstream position of various GOP candidates for president. That seems like a really poorly though out idea. It's also sad, Mexico isn't a failed state, it's a country with problems but nice stuff too.
• Less of the "woke" stuff: Nobody really used that term, and there was just one question about trans people, I don't know what this means but I expected more.
• Everyone else: Well Christie was fun yelling at Ramaswamy, but a lot of meh other than that. 

In conclusion? It's still Trump's party and you can cry if you want to.

Feel The Bidenmentum!

One thing I've noticed recently is that there's been a number of liberals, often in the media, pushing the idea that it's time for Biden to hang up his spikes and let someone new run in 2024. Michelle Goldberg wrote a typical example of this recently, citing Biden's age as a major campaign liability due to media optics:

...chances are good that Biden’s competitor will be someone much younger, like Ron DeSantis, who will be 46 in 2024. Barring some radical shift in the national mood, the candidates will be vying for leadership of a deeply dissatisfied country desperate for change. For Democrats, the visual contrast alone could be devastating.

I understand her point, people oftentimes use the term "cringe" about Biden for real reasons. But here's where I think the Biden haters are wrong, there's just no good reason to assume that voters actually care about this stuff.

Afterall, Biden was the so called "cringe" candidate of the 2020 nomination cycle who ended up winning pretty easily despite what could be best called a "minimalist" campaign (Minnesota is a good example: his entire enterprise seems to have consisted of 30 people in a bowling alley for their election night party, while Bernie Sanders supposedly had hundreds of dedicated activists all over the state. And Biden won.)

Moreover these sorts of analysis suffer from a version of what Matt Yglesias calls "The Pundit's Fallacy", that is the idea that the key to winning elections is to do whatever the author of a given piece of punditry wants that politician to do. In Goldberg's case not replacing Biden with someone, "...like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia."

Meanwhile, unlikely speculation about television optics, the advantage of incumbency is a very real thing. There's a reason why only three incumbent presidents lost reelection since the Second World War. Given a choice of "more of the same" or "time for a change" the American electorate, for whatever reasons, tends to favor not rocking the boat baring something like a bad economy or a devastating pandemic. In fact, while the historical comparisons are less helpful, this seems to be a theme throughout American history going back to the 1790s.

To be fair Goldberg, and other's, argument is that voters will desperately want major changes in 2024, but I really don't see that. The 2022 midterms were hardly a change election with incumbents doing pretty well. As far as I can tell the degree people express dissatisfaction in polling seems to be more of a COVID hangover than people calling for a whole rethinking of the welfare state.

Finally, I think Goldberg is a bit presumptuous to assume that her preferred candidates would end up replacing Biden. Instead of Warnock the Democrats might very well end up with Bernie Sanders, an even older white guy! Or Kamala Harris who, for better or for worse, is deeply tied to the Biden Administration already. Or even some dark horse type candidate like JB Pritzker. The one thing you could count on is it would be a crazy free for all with everyone and their mom running that could easily turn into a progressive policy auction just like the 2020 cycle where the new nominee is stuck with a bunch of deeply unpopular positions.

I'll stick with the advantages of incumbency thank you very much.

Anything of course can happen. For all we know Biden might have a heart attack tomorrow. But the reality is that Biden is the Democrats best shot at holding on to the White House. People who claim that democracy hangs in the balance in the election of 2024 should act like they really believe this and get onboard the Biden Train. 

Minneapolis' Recent Election Explained

Well that just happened.

There of course is a lot to unpack in what can only describe as Minneapolis's most important election in decades. And having lived through those days of "fire and fury" I have a lot of opinions. But in the sprit of Julia Azari's excellent recap of what happened in Virginia, I'll go with four big points:

Jacob Frey Is The Come Back Kid

If you had asked me is early July of 2020 what mayor Jacob Frey's political future was I would have told you that it was quite likely he wouldn't seek reelection, if only because there's no way he could win. Indeed I thought there was a decent chance he would resign as he seemed at times to have taken things on a personal level.

But what a difference a year and a half can make! 

We seemed to have witnessed one of the biggest political comebacks, since, I dunno, Richard Nixon? To be fair a lot of things broke in Frey's favor. For reasons that remain unclear he never attracted a big competitor and thus his main opponents where a community activist who had never held elected office and a former state legislator who used to represent a suburb of St. Paul.

Likewise his opponents focused on what I saw as a bizarre strategy of not coordinating around a specific alternative candidate, and instead just urging people to vote for anyone but Frey. At first glance it might seem to make sense as Minneapolis has a nonpartisan "top three" ranked choice voting system...but in reality refusing to coordinate around a specific alternative to a incumbent is a pretty poor strategy. As Rick Flair would say "to be the man, you have to beat the man." That is to say you can't just Tweet #dontrankFrey and hope for the best. Or rather you can do that, but I wouldn't expect it work.

Urban Politics Often Isn't About Ideology

It's popular in commentary about Minneapolis politics to discuss conflicts in terms of ideology. So Frey is described as a "centrist" or "on the right" when in reality in the broader context of American politics he's a ridiculously flaming liberal. Likewise Axios Twin Cities tried to make some sense of this with a helpful map about the five incumbents that lost reelection on the city council, and it sort of works. But not really. Is Jason Chavez really more "to the left" than Alondra Cano was? Than Gary Schiff was? At a certain point it's arguing about how many angles can dance on the head of a pin.

I'd argue that the real dividing line in Minneapolis politics was over Frey and the Question Two amendment. To over simplify: after George Floyd was murdered and the riots happened Minneapolis politics became polarized around the idea that Jacob Frey was the problem and had to go, and those who opposed getting rid of him for whatever reason. It also polarized around the idea that the MPD was the problem and it had to go, and those who opposed this idea for whatever reason. 

In short, this isn't a story about who's on the "left" and "right" and who's a "progressive" or a "centrist" but rather specific positions around those big questions.

Values Are Vague, Referenda Are Concrete

One theme of "the discourse" around the results is progressives announcing profound frustration with other progressives who ended up voting for Frey or voting down Question Two. This usually comes in terms of the idea that someone isn't "living their values." But the thing about values is they are vague. What does it mean to say "Black Lives Matter", to put a lawn sign in your yard stating such? That you support "dismantling" the police department and creating a whole new institutions from scratch? Or something else?

At the end of the day a voter in a referendum is being asked to make a specific choice ie "yes" or "no" to a specific question. In this case a specifically worded question that was written to leave the door open to "abolishing the police" (hence the use of "may" rather than "shall"). And a lot of voters, including many liberals with Black Lives Matter lawn signs decided, for whatever reason, to vote no.

To bring it back to lawn signs I remember seeing someone who had a "No Justice, No Peace!" sign AND and Frey sign. You might think that's crazy, I thought it was quite funny, but to this person those values aligned. 

Sometimes Activist Groups Aren't That Representative

A popular story about Minneapolis politics over the last year and a half is that of Jacob Frey as the out of touch white liberal being confronted by protestors furious (and rightly so!) about injustice (see this classic photo). And while there's some truth to this, it's also true that Frey's support among older black voters in North Minneapolis was a key part of his success, and those same voters were part of why Question Two was defeated as well.

It reminds me a bit about Elizabeth Warren who succeeded in winning the support of a number of black activist groups but could win over black voters. And I don't mean this a putdown about lefty activists groups, but just as a statement of reality. Just because a group claims to speak for folks, doesn't necessarily mean they actually do.