Heartache With Hard Work

A very good point from the Democracy in America blog at the Economist:

My feeling is that what we’re seeing here are inherent political weaknesses in the anti-austerity message itself. Asking voters to embrace that message means asking them to approve of the government borrowing money which will add to their repayment burden as taxpayers, and then spend that money on other people. … A neo-Keynesian will say that these are the unsentimental measures needed to restore economic health: you get the most creditworthy entities, the national governments at the core of the dollar and the euro, to leverage up while everybody else in the economy deleverages, so that not everyone is ruinously trying to deleverage at the same time. But citizens do not ordinarily understand things this way; to most people, more debt is more debt, regardless of whether it’s held by government or the private sector, and it scares them.

This ties in with the point I made yesterday (that the public tends to worry a lot about ‘debt’ in the abstract as a stand-in for general concerns about the economy). It is intrinsically difficult to sell people on the value of Keynesian stimulus because it doesn’t sound right. If you’re talking about personal finances, being in debt is pretty bad.

However, I’m not convinced this is really so out of line with the ‘normal’ lives of people.

Let’s say you are unemployed. But you’ve got a really great job offer. The only problem is, it’s about 10 miles away from where you live. Rather than just giving up on the job, it might be perfectly reasonable to borrow some money and buy a car. After all, getting steady employment is far more important to your long term economic situation than the precise amount of money that you owe. With the job, you will have the money to PAY OFF the debt. And you’ll have a job.

What’s more, in this hypothetical, let’s imagine that you somehow have a top-notch credit score and can borrow the money for the car at close to zero interest. Your decision just got even easier!

Anyone who borrows money to go to school is making the same investment decision. Anyone with a mortgage. They’re all in debt, too. The only difference is that the US government is a way better credit risk and so can borrow at way cheaper rates.

Now, if you think the government is fundamentally untrustworthy, you’ll be inclined to see a different analogy: the person who maxes out a bunch of credit cards to pay off other credit cards.  That is: someone who is running ever-escalating cycles of debt.  The problem with that picture is that there’s plenty of evidence that the government can cut its debt when the time is well-suited to it.  See: the 1990s.

The point is not that debt is great. There are genuine long-term problems with consistently running deficits. But they’re not really all terrible, particularly when the basic problem with our economy is a lack of movement.  I think, with some real effort devoted to drawing these connections, you could start to get people to see that.

The Cliffs Of Insanity – Mark Knopfler (from his wonderful soundtrack to The Princess Bride)

Jonathan Bernstein makes a great point on Twitter:

Disappointed that WaPo poll didn’t ask effect on deficit if no fiscal cliff agreement reached. Suspect “increase” would be >25%, maybe >50%.

I don’t have a lot to add here. I am certain that his numbers are correct. Or, if anything, they might be too conservative. I really do think it’s important to keep reminding ourselves just how little people actually understand the economy and how much concern about “the deficit” is simply a stand-in for general worries about the economy. The Fiscal Cliff sounds terrifying, ergo: it must expand the deficit.

Now, this isn’t quite as big of a problem as it might initially appear. The language that people employ doesn’t ultimately matter that much. This is so because, despite the framing of deficits as essential, the public doesn’t tend to vote that way. Rather, they vote based on retrospective economic conditions – which actually tends to produce fairly solid representative incentives.

So the danger is not really that the public is forcing politicians to make terrible decisions based on a failure to understand fairly simple economic issues. The danger is that politicians listen to the LANGUAGE and choose poor representational strategies which damage the economy.

This ‘fiscal cliff’ stuff suggests that they all pretty much understand this. Despite all the freak outs about the deficit, there is basically no one who is enthusiastic about simply ‘going over the cliff’ even though this would be the single best way to massively cut the deficit.

Now, I understand journalists feel obliged to cover the story, but if the public isn’t really talking about the deficit, and if politicians aren’t ACTING like they care about the deficit, maybe it’s worth considering what the story really is.

So here’s my call to those reporting on this stuff: when we hear from the budget scolds over the next few years, please remember to point out how few of them were actually on board with cutting the deficit when it was on the table. And, if you’re really enterprising, you might want to notice that the Republicans really REALLY don’t care about deficits and (in fact) just care a whole LOT about reducing tax rates. Meanwhile, Democrats do care about cutting deficits (too much, in my opinion). Clinton helped generate a surplus (in good economic times, when it made sense) and Obama seems committed to cutting deficits (in terrible economic times, when it’s actually pretty crazy to be focused on this).

Danko/Manuel (live) – Jason Isbell

Every new thing I hear from Jason Isbell leaves me more and more impressed. His work with the Drive-By Truckers in the mid-2000s was fantastic—his membership with the band coincides perfectly with their best work. Since going solo, he has turned out a series of records that step far beyond the ‘southern rock opera’ ethos.

He tells stories about family, about the legacy of history, about lost loves and broken hearts, about drinking away the pain. And he tells stories about the people who live in the midst of all the madness. It’s introspective and honest, a celebration of the South not in spite of its blemishes but because of them.

This all hit a crescendo last year with his wonderful record Here We Rest, which contained “Alabama Pines,” my favorite song of 2011.

So I was pretty excited to find out that he was coming out with a live record this year. Now, live albums are always a bit of a risk. It’s hard to capture the energy of a live performance, and you often end up just hearing slightly less polished versions of the same songs you already know.

Fortunately, that is not remotely a problem here. The best songs on Live from Alabama don’t just expand on the studio versions; they completely redefine the songs. This is most prominent on some of Isbell’s old Truckers songs, which are given new life and freedom to breathe, and simply explode out of the speakers.

“Decoration Day” was a wonderful story and a nice song. Now, it’s a revelation. “Goddamn Lonely Love” has always displayed passion and pain, but those feelings are now visceral.

In its original form “Outfit” felt like a letter being put to song. Now, Isbell’s voice is expansive, the accent is set free, and the guitar sings. You can feel the longing in the father’s voice, the hope for his son, and the deep concern. It’s a mixture of paternal love, of warning, of concern that his son will surpass him, and of soaring hope…that his son will surpass him.  And better than pretty much any song out there, it conveys what the South means to those who love it: a deep passion, tinged with a sense of humor about how badly they want to escape sometimes.

The best song on the album is “Danko/Manuel” – another Truckers-era song that has always been good but is now transcendent. I always felt like the aspirations of this song exceeded its capacity to tell the story. The homage to Danko and Manuel seemed a little bit untethered, the ghost of an idea rather than the manifestation. I see now that this was wrong. The lack of detail in the story is precisely the point. It’s simply the architecture for the sound – for those ethereal horns, for Isbell’s croon on the chorus, for the insistent drums. It’s a song about what it means to sing and play – and the impossibility of making it about anything more specific is precisely the point.

A good live album should give you something new. By that standard Live from Alabama is a glorious success. In quite a few cases, these live performances have now become the definitive version for me. This is not just a record for an Isbell completist; it’s a record for anyone who loves good music.

So, there’s been a fair amount of soul-searching in the Republican Party about its stance on immigration. The biggest questions seems to be whether they want to actually change their policy position or whether it’s simply a matter of tone.

All of which reminds me of this classic bit from Not the Nine O’Clock News, just as the Thatcher government was coming into power:

You should watch the video because Rowan Atkinson is hilarious. But here’s the relevant bit:

Firstly, immigration. Now, people really do get this party wrong every time on this issue, don’t they. We don’t think immigrants are animals, for God’s sake! I know a lot of immigrants personally, and they’re perfectly nice people. They’re Black, of course, which is a shame. But honestly, some of them can do some jobs almost as well as White people…and we acknowledge this. Now, a lot of immigrants are Indians and Pakistanis for instance, and…I like curry, I do! But now that we’ve got the recipes, is there really any need for them to stay? Conservatives understand these problems, you see.

All of which is to say: this is not some kind of new problem. And it’s going to take some serious work to convince people you despise that they should vote for you.

At the National Review, Wesley J. Smith speculates on some possible fixes to Obamacare:

If President Obama is serious about wanting to help the middle class, he will work with Republicans to refashion the law–understanding that he will never agree to a repeal–so that it is less likely to claim working stiff victims. But since he is the reincarnation of Huey Long, I suspect instead that he and his minions will demonize companies for making rational business decisions. Part of the problem, of course, is that the president doesn’t understand the concept of rational business decisions.

I assure you, the Obama administration would love it if the Republicans in Congress decided to work with them to improve Obamacare. In the construction of the bill, the GOP minority adopted a policy of absolute obstruction.  That meant, weirdly, that the policy ended up being more liberal than you might have expected.  Because they didn’t participate, they were not able to extract any concessions to provide the stamp of bipartisanship.  And since then, they’ve passed about 579 bills to repeal it but that’s about it.  If they have specific complaints, those have not been addressed except via the insistence on blanket repeal.

However, if they want to shift their focus, they can definitely play an important role: as a watchdog on the policy constructed by the majority.  Since Obamacare isn’t one single bill but is a huge mass of collected bills, it is absolutely guaranteed that some of it is not perfect. If the Republicans decide to accept its basic existence and shift their role to helping police its implementation…that would be fantastic.

Now, Mr. Smith doesn’t identify any specific things to complain about. So I expect what he really means by ‘refashioning’ the bill is basically just killing it. But if other voices on the right do have specific small-bore complaints, I encourage them to represent their constituents by helping to improve this legislation that will be implemented over the next couple years!

I Don’t Feel Young – Wye Oak

Here’s an awkward article. E.J. Graff is uncomfortable with the relationship between Kevin Clash (the voice of Elmo) and a young man. Here’s why:

But the Elmo puppeteer story does bother me. In case you missed it, Kevin Clash is a six-foot-tall African-American man, now 52, who does the voice of the Sesame Street icon. Earlier this week, word came out that a young man, now 23, accused Clash of getting involved with him when the accuser was 16 years old—under the age of consent. Sesame Street put Clash on a leave of absence while it investigated. The accuser has since recanted, saying he was an adult and that the entire relationship was consensual.

But it still makes me queasy. Why is a 45-ish-year-old man having sex with a teenager? If the 18- or 19-year-old were female, I would be appalled at the probable power imbalance, assuming that a creepy middle-aged man was manipulating a youngster’s immaturity to use her sexually, to soak up the admiration of youth, promising (implicitly or explicitly) things that a more mature adult would know were lies. Why should my attitude be different if the youngster is male?

A couple things here.

First, why on earth is it important that Clash is “a six-foot-tall African-American man”? Is there any way to read this other than a squeamishness over scary big black guys?

Second, the categorical refusal to accept the validity of such relationships seems pretty dogmatic to me. Obviously there are potential power issues. But there are potential power issues in a lot of places. That’s not usually a reason to completely reject the principle of a relationship but rather to make sure those imbalances are taken seriously.

I’ll reference Dan Savage and his ‘campsite rule’ on this question. That is, the older partner should leave the younger “in better condition than they found them.”

Sure, someone who is 18 most likely is not emotionally mature yet. But a caring and considerate older partner can certainly contribute to their emotional growth. And an emotionally manipulative jerk can do serious damage regardless of his/her age.

Look, I’m not unaware of the significance of probabilities. And sure, if you know nothing else about a 45 year old man except that he is dating someone barely over 18, that should trigger a warning for you. But at the same time, I’m aware of the fact that the vast majority of outrage in our society about this sort of thing comes at the expense of older gay men. Which feeds into the narrative that being gay is equivalent to pedophilia. And that does a tremendous disservice to those who quite legitimately participate in caring age-divergent relationships.

If you’re old enough to drive, old enough to vote, old enough to work, you’re old enough to be given some level of trust in your relationships.  ‘Trust’ doesn’t mean categorical approval, but it does mean starting from the assumption that these people are subjects who deserve the dignity of their own choices.

The Corpses Of Our Motivations– The Lawrence Arms

Up through the election, we heard paeans to Silver, hilarious jokes about the fools who tried to ‘unskew’ the polls, and the general triumph of reality-based analysis.

Then Silver returned to his old stomping grounds and wrote a pretty straightforward post explaining why Mike Trout is (rather obviously) the correct choice for MVP. And out came the crazy. The comments section on the article reads like a greatest hits of all the stupid things people on the right said about Silver in regards to the election.

But, the Tigers made the playoffs (despite winning less games than the Angels, and playing in a terrible division). And, your analysis didn’t account for the fact that Cabrera volunteered to move to third (in fact, it does account for that – because the replacement level for third base is higher than first base. Cabrera struck out less than Trout (totally irrelevant information). Cabrera led in total base, slugging percentage, homeruns, and OPS (all of which measure much the same thing – and no one is contesting that Cabrera had a narrowly better offensive season). RBIs (which are a function of opportunity, and Trout scored more Runs). It’s pretty much impossible to measure defense (it is difficult, but it’s difficult in the same way that single polls are never perfectly accurate. But they sure do provide some information).

The point here is that people were absolutely willing to walk through fire to defend Silver’s secret sauce, his commitment to objectivity, etc. But once his opinion began to differ from the preconceived value of his fans, he became just another media fool incapable of correctly assessing the situation.

The attitude of ‘I’ve been watching baseball for decades; you’re not going to convince me that the Triple Crown doesn’t = MVP with some supposed facts’ is strikingly similar to ‘I’ve been watching political campaigns for a long time and it feels like Romney has momentum.’

Suddenly everyone is an expert and Nate Silver is just a rube.

Motivated reasoning is a powerful thing.

Here’s a sad irony: as the economy (fingers crossed) starts to improve significantly in the upcoming years, people will suddenly start to care a whole lot less about the deficit.  And yet, when the economy is booming is precisely when we ought to start paying attention to fixing the long-term deficit risks.  When credit is cheap, we should borrow to stimulate.  Once things start growing faster, the government can step out of the way and let the rising tide of the economy start to balance the budget for us, and devote its energy to reigning in the long-term mess.

It’s a funny thing, that.  Despite it being phrased in terms of ‘handing down these deficits to our children,’ the fever pitch of deficit-mongering always takes place during economic declines and fades away if things are going well.  It’s almost as if the average person doesn’t really understand the complex nature of the global economy and fixates on the deficit as an easy signal of Bad Economic Things.

I’m in a predicting mood, so here’s another one.  Obama is going to put some serious effort into resolving long-term deficit issues in his second term.  And the public, which ostensibly was terrified about the ‘record-breaking’ deficits of his first administration, will be really unhappy about it.  Sub-prediction: the vast majority of media outlets covering this issue will not notice the irony.

At about 8:15 Pacific time on Tuesday night I declared that the Democratic candidate was going to win in 2016.  By at least five points, too.

Here’s the thing: the economy is already recovering and it’s only going to pick up more.  The lost capacity over the past few years doesn’t represent some fundamental collapse of the American economy.  It’s all still latent there.  And once things pick back up for real, they’re likely to really take off.

If Obama was able to keep his approval right around 50% in the current economic climate, you can only imagine what things will look like in a genuine recovery.

All of which points to a big Democratic win.  After all, the demographic advantages possessed by the Democrats right now are substantial.  Which is not to say that they’re eternal.  But for at least the next few years, the Republicans have built a hole for themselves which is going to be very difficult to get out of.

Over the long term, it’s simply impossible to imagine a major political party isolating itself from an increasing-large share of the electorate.  Which means they’re going to have to re-calibrate their relationship with all the non-white, non-male portions of the country.  But for the near future, there’s not really any way to successfully do that.  The base of the Republican party right now is simply not going to accept the kind of changes that it would take to win over those votes.  At least not over the next few years.

Now, there’s always the possibility of strange occurrences which push things out of whack.  But if I were Marco Rubio or some of the other potential up-and-comers in the GOP, I would plan on laying low for the next cycle.

So, the Senate. As I mentioned yesterday, I think this is a really big deal. At the most basic level, it’s important simply that the Democrats held the majority. That seemed pretty unlikely earlier this year. But instead of losing things, they actually GAINED seats. That helps to secure the blue team against potential losses in the next two cycles. And it pushes the median vote in the Senate left.

That is particularly true given the specifics.

Because of the GOP’s incapacity to speak reasonably about abortion and rape, they’ve traded an inconsistent vote (in Richard Lugar) for a reasonably solid Democratic vote (in Joe Donnelly). And they’ve given up an almost certain lock on knocking McCaskill out of Missouri. Instead of taking that seat, they got blown out of the water by a double-digit margin.

Jon Tester in Montana, who was supposed to be a sitting duck, will be serving his second term. He’s a conservative Dem, but not wildly so. Or rather, he appears to primarily be interested in accomplishing specific moderate goals, rather than being a moderate fetishist who tacks to the center by instinct regardless of circumstance.

Speaking of which, it seemed like a disaster when Kent Conrad decided not to run, but he’s now been replaced by Heidi Heitkamp who will likely be less of a pain in the butt for progressives. And then there’s Connecticut, where Crazy Uncle Joe Lieberman is finally gone and has been replaced by a far more solid liberal vote in CHRIS Murphy. Those two are retentions that may end up mattering a lot because although the seats were already blue-ish, they’ve now been given a nice new coat of paint. Tim Kaine is no liberal, but he’s likely to be at least as good as Webb. Heinrich will be a bit more left than Bingaman

We lost the Nebraska seat, but of all the possible seats to lose, that’s probably the least painful. The Benator was a Democrat, sure, but god he was aggravating.

But the really important news is the addition of some genuine progressive voices. The new slate of Democratic Senators includes a number of folks who could be very big names for a very long time. The campaign against Scott Brown is likely the toughest one that Elizabeth Warren is going to have face for a long time. And Warren immediately becomes one of the most progressive voices in the chamber. A role she’ll share with Sherrod Brown, who ended up winning re-election fairly easily.

Angus King is an Independent, but will likely be in the most left-leaning quartile of the Senate. And he’s replacing the perpetually aggravating Snowe who was the most liberal of the Republicans but was still a Republican. And, importantly, King has highlighted filibuster reform a major issue.

Tammy Baldwin is going to do great in the Senate, and is a real improvement over Kohl. She’s not quite Feingold, but is much closer to that mold.

This sort of thing is really important. Building a back bench of strong liberal voices helps to promote the overall agenda, it raises the profile of the issues they care about, and it provides a range of future options to draw from for Cabinet positions or even the presidency.

For people that are disillusioned with the relatively centrist policy positions taken in the first Obama administration, one of the best possible antidotes is a more progressive Senate, which can drag him (and those that will follow him) leftward.