The Democratic field right now
I think I can identify with the way a lot of Democrats must feel right now. I believe it parallels how I was feeling for much of the 2016 campaign season.
At first I was excited. After eight long years of Obama, he was finally going to be out of office, and his likely successor Hillary Clinton had a lot of negatives. The GOP had a variety of candidates. Some of them annoyed me and none were perfect, but I thought several were strong and had a good fighting chance to defeat the not-very-popular Hillary.
And then Donald Trump started rising, and rising, and rising some more. I had many reasons to dislike him—too tedious to reiterate at this point—but one of those reasons was that I thought he had no chance against her.
Of course, that turned out to be wrong. But that’s how I felt, and I felt it very strongly: nominate him and Hillary waltzes to the presidency.
It was a sinking feeling. It was like watching a batter hit an easy pop-up that could end the World Series with a win for your team, seeing the fielder take his place right under it with plenty of time to spare, and then staring aghast as the sun gets in the fielder’s eyes and the ball plops onto the ground.
Right now the rank and file Democrats must be feeling at least a little of that. They haven’t endured Trump for eight years, but it must feel like eight hundred to them. They don’t have as good a group of candidates as the GOP did in 2016—at least, it doesn’t seem that way to me, unless the voter favors the party’s going hard left.
And Joe Biden is the leader.
Biden is not a parallel to Trump. But he’s strange, very strange. And he’s old (makes Trump look like a youngster). Plus, Biden may be going gaga, at least that’s the appearance he gives at the moment. And yet he remains the frontrunner.
One compensation for the Democrats watching this is that Biden leads Trump in the polls. But Democrats who were around for 2016 also may have come to distrust polls, particularly polls involving Trump.
I don’t sense a lot of enthusiasm or a lot of security among Democrats about Biden or any of the others. I sense a lot of jitteriness. Will this one slip past their glove, as well, against the hated Trump?
I certainly don’t know. But I think I can sense the feeling.
What’s similar to the 2016 election is that there is an absurd amount of candidates. This is what led to Trump getting elected. Whether that will work for the democrats I don’t know. (Hopefully not.)
It’s also politics has gotten weird. I support the guy but it is weird that the president is Donald Trump. Plenty of weirdness on the left though. Biden is possibly senile. The DNC has been taken control of by AOC who has no real experience in politics or really anything. It’s interesting times we live in.
For balance, another point of view:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/newt-gingrich-trump-new-york-times-washington-post-liberal-media-shock
Admittedly, no one should be “getting cocky” here (as the Instaprof likes to say), but there are competing points of view and we need to avoid letting the media steamroll its opinion. Unlike 1972, and thanks to the internet, the elite media no longer has quite that same stranglehold on public sentiment.
Lets see. Dems nominate Biden, who chooses Harris as running mate. Biden wins and then is declared mental incompetent. Harris is then President. She appoints? Hillary as her VP. Then Harris resigns and Hillary is then President. There, that’s how its done.
“Biden may be going gaga, at least that’s the appearance he gives at the moment. And yet he remains the frontrunner.”
I think that is a function of Trump’s high negatives. Many moderates are looking for someone who can beat Trump, and who they hope is moderate.
“But Democrats who were around for 2016 also may have come to distrust polls, particularly polls involving Trump.”
Do you see that a several days ago, the results of a Monmouth Poll were published and a day or so later they questioned its meaningfulness? They called their own poll results “an outlier.” I had trouble even finding any record of the event (because that was last week’s history), but here is Breitbart with the story.
An important difference between 2016 and 2020, though, is that in 2016 Trump was the 900-lb. gorilla in the room in terms of name recognition and media attention, not to mention sheer force of personality. It was an advantage which compounded from primary to primary. In retrospect Trump’s march through the 2016 field is less surprising than it seemed at the time.
Biden is as close as Democrats come to a gorilla in 2020 and he’s more of a chimp. Very different dynamic.
Different dynamic alright, though he’s less like a chimp than he is an ancient, handsy, dumbassed, self-fellating bonobo, I think.
The big difference between 2016 and 2020 is that the Democrats will get behind whoever the nominee is and lie and cover and defend him/her no matter what.
There will be no prominent group of Democrats going all NeverBiden. And once he’s the nominee (a big if, still think it’s Warren) they will do everything in their power to erase all these weaknesses.
Republicans on the other hand will have a group amplifying all Trump’s perceived problems and a willing media to help them.
I don’t think the Never Trump group are all that prominent any more in Republican or conservative circles.
Kate,
I don’t know about that. David French is still bloviating at NR and Jonah Goldberg is still droning on and on and there are others. Plus CNN and MSNBC have their own stable of NeverTrumpers that they label as conservatives or Republicans.
You are correct that they lost huge amounts of influence in conservative circles but they still have voices in mainstream media.
Do you think the same would be true of a NeverBiden Democrat one year from now?
Biden Mystique
Some are charmed by the stumbling bumbling gaffetasms. They have similar family members whom they’ve debated moving to assisted care. That’s how they see the White House. Sure, he can barely remember his name, but he’ll have good help. With Uncle Joe in a rocking chair with a TV remote, Obama staffers and deep staters will “manage the decline” and finish off the country for good.
Yes, Griffin, they’re still obviating and droning on, but these days they have little influence with people who are considering voting for Trump. They serve mostly to prop up the egos of the leftists. But you’re right, if Biden is nominated, Democrat ranks in the media will close to try to protect him.
Griffin: Trump is sui-generis — one of a kind — so I’m not sure how useful he is for generalizations between Dems and Reps. I don’t remember any NeverRomney or NeverW movements.
What the Democrats have, however, is the DNC and media significantly spinning against some candidates and for others. Arguably Bernie Sanders could have won the Dem nomination in 2016 had not insiders shifted the playing field against him and the media decided they were standing with Hillary. Though there was no NeverSanders movement.
https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-rigged-hillary-clinton-dnc-lawsuit-donald-trump-president-609582
huxley,
Yes, in the primaries. But in the general election I can’t see them doing it for anybody except for Sanders maybe. I think Sanders actually may be a bridge too far for a lot of Democrats for a number of reasons. But for Biden, Warren, and Harris (the only three realistic candidates to me) once a choice is made ranks close tightly. The media and dem operatives will magically forget all the negative things being said about whoever the nominee is and they will suddenly be the greatest most awesomest person ever.
It’s actually the reverse McCain effect.
He was all mavericky and wonderful then he was the nominee and suddenly he was unfit and couldn’t work a phone and by the way may have been having an affair with some lobbyist.
Watching them spin Warren’s native American problem and all it’s tentacles will be sight to behold. But I guarantee you it will somehow be Trump’s fault.
This was a trending hashtag on Twitter a couple days ago, but seriously #googleandrewyang. I’m on the fence about voting for Trump (I went third party in 2016) and Yang is the only other person involved in 2020 who I don’t think is a socialist or a terrible person. Yes, he’s the $1000 a month guy, but he’s a very different kind of Democrat. His supporters are actually really excited about him and he’s pulling in some interesting support, some of it from the right.
I don’t know about that. David French is still bloviating at NR and Jonah Goldberg is still droning on and on and there are others. Plus CNN and MSNBC have their own stable of NeverTrumpers that they label as conservatives or Republicans.
David French and Mona Charen are paid salaries from philanthropic endowments and donation streams. Such was Jonah Goldberg’s life from 1998 to 2019. The crew on salary at the Bezos Bum Wipe derive their income from a haemorrhaging subsidiary of Amazon. Nobody’s making any money off their work and they don’t have much of a starboard audience anymore. The Weekly Standard‘s toast and Commentary‘s about two wealthy Jewish septuagenarians away from oblivion; John Podhoretz is Medicare eligible in seven years; then it shuts down. As for Hot Air and National Review, the smart money says they survive because they’ve hedged their bets.
Art,
I agree in the long run these people are going to face a rude awakening when Trump is gone and suddenly there is no market for them anymore as they are not needed by our media betters and they have thoroughly torched their careers with most on the right.
LYNN HARGROVE on August 31, 2019 at 11:43 am said:
Lets see. Dems nominate Biden, who chooses Harris as running mate. Biden wins and then is declared mental incompetent. Harris is then President. She appoints? Hillary as her VP. Then Harris resigns and Hillary is then President. There, that’s how its done.
* * *
Given Hillary’s medical condition in 2016, there may have been some similar scenarios being gamed for her VP, Tim Kaine.
(small pause)
Well.
I actually had to check his name (having already forgotten who she picked), and discovered that I wasn’t off-target in that speculation.
“In discussing her potential vice presidential choice, Clinton stated that the most important attribute she was looking for is the ability and experience to immediately step into the role of president.” – Wikipedia
Whether the Dems would have added a third layer after Kaine, I don’t know.
However, I suspect the person in the VP slot for Biden won’t give away the Presidency for anyone, and especially not for Hillary. The Clintons are now very old news, and no longer have the power base they once enjoyed.
Dem presidents are always “run” by the Deep State anyway, so what difference, at this point, does it make?;)
Melissa on August 31, 2019 at 2:52 pm said:
This was a trending hashtag on Twitter a couple days ago, but seriously #googleandrewyang. I’m on the fence about voting for Trump (I went third party in 2016) and Yang is the only other person involved in 2020 who I don’t think is a socialist or a terrible person. Yes, he’s the $1000 a month guy, but he’s a very different kind of Democrat. His supporters are actually really excited about him and he’s pulling in some interesting support, some of it from the right.
* * *
I saw a nice post on Yang recently that had him dancing with a seniors’ exercise class which shared the building floor where he was having a rally or meeting of some kind.
He obviously was a hit with them.
Don’t forget that Obama made tremendous inroads with the voters by “working” the social circuit, especially popular tv & radio shows and entertainment media.
T on August 31, 2019 at 11:12 am said:
For balance, another point of view:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/newt-gingrich-trump-new-york-times-washington-post-liberal-media-shock
* * *
Gingrich isn’t like by quite a few on the Right, but he is ignored at peril.
This appears to be the second in a series, so I backed up to the first entry.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/newt-gingrich-trump-future-history-president-fate
1972 was my first vote in a presidental election.
Being a typical college student brain-washed by the MSM’s coverage of Watergate, and not having read much outside of that (remember there were no independent conservative blogs, and nearly zero private computers at the time), I actually voted for McGovern.
I have since repented.
I went to a watch party for the second debate. We’re in Shanghai. So there were only six of us — it was like eight a.m. our time. Maybe the Democrats I’m watching are not representative. But they seemed fine, upbeat. I think most Democrats still underestimate Trump. The fact that they did well in the midterms — which they were very likely to do well in — only adds to the hubris. They think they are going to win. Their voters want to pick someone that has a good shot. But I think the politicos believe that whoever gets the nomination gets the whole shebang.
It is going to be a long primary season for them. But they are winnowing, and some of the more establishment candidates will be forced out or face the wrath of their peers. Nonestablishment candidates like Yang and Williamson will probably stay in for a lot longer. Bernie will also stay in it until the convention. So it almost makes sense to just give it to Bernie — to avoid the protracted fight. But I imagine Warren or Harris or someone will insist on taking it to the convention.
That’s the worst thing for them, a long primary season with a few dark horses that might mess up everything.
“That’s the worst thing for them, a long primary season with a few dark horses that might mess up everything.”
Worth a read, a piece from Aug. 20th in the Washington Examiner — “What if Kamala Harris endorses Joe Biden?”:
The democrats started down the road to socialism with FDR promising a small pension to Americans after they had spent their life expectancy working- i.e., social security- and they’re ending it promising vast sums to pay the living expenses of foreigners who ignore US law to come stay here.
In case that last isn’t clear, I’m thinking of the debate when every democrat candidate raised their hand to endorse free health care for illegal aliens.
Yikes. If they faced anything resembling a competent opposition, they’d long since have been politically obliterated. But no, they faced the gee oh pee.
Thus, my guess is either Trump wins, simultaneously transforming the gop into something able to successfully defeat the left, or one of the insane democrats defeats him.
In that case the maniacs of the left will get their wish of fundamentally transforming the legal structure of the country of into Venezuela del Norte- and the country disintegrates, as various states and sections of states aren’t willing to go down that path to oblivion.
This won’t be pleasant- duh- and it won’t be made better by the usual claims that only the wreckers and hoarders are destroying the glorious dreams of socialism.
Vote Trump, to save the future.
I have a suspicion that the democrat nominee will not be any that are now debating each other for that honor.
I expect the democrat convention will be a brokered convention, and that someone will come out of the shadows that has not had to but his or her views to the public test.
Michelle, perhaps…
Michelle, perhaps…
edward: Say the secret word and win a hundred bucks!
“You Bet Your Life – Secret Word: Voice”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWUNe2yB2tA
Nah, that’s when Oprah will give in and take the job.
“Michelle perhaps…”
So, they ran one ex-president’s wife, who did have some elected political experience, and lost. So, they should try again, but with an ex-president’s wife who doesn’t have any elected political experience. If this makes any sense, the logic escapes me.
I do see the logic of a brokered convention, but one in which they shut down voices of the far left socialists and pick some moderate senator who can appeal to the center and peel off some of the Republican voters who are not comfortable with Trump.
What interests me more is to see if any of the Republican primary contenders gain any traction. Personally, I think Bill Weld would make a fine president.
So, they should try again, but with an ex-president’s wife who doesn’t have any elected political experience.
Roy Nathanson: My wording would be:
So, they should try again, but with an ex-president’s wife who isn’t deeply unlikeable with a substantial record of lies and corruption.
But other than that, yeah.
Nah, that’s when Oprah will give in and take the job.
Ann: Good out-of-the-box thinking except I suspect Oprah doesn’t really want the job and is too smart to try for it.
She is comparable to Trump except Trump had been thinking about the presidency for years before his legendary escalator ride.
In the early 2000s I was a gung-ho Tony Robbins volunteer. During events Tony would try out his latest thinking on us backstage. Back then he seriously considered “stepping up” and running for president. The times demanded leadership and Tony was all about leadership.
Well, he went on a few talk shows to build a political brand, but the effort withered pretty fast and he dropped it. I never got the inside baseball, but my guess is the response wasn’t good and his powerful friends (Tony has powerful friends) told him to forget it.
Good thinking, Tony.
Joe Biden will not catch that pop-up.
I do not understand the alleged “high negatives” re Trump.
We surely do no longer live in a polite society. The F word is on everyone’s lips all the time. The obscene screams from the Dems are simply a sign of that social decay. Trump’s tweets are modest in comparison, though sometimes unnecessary.
I think the “high negatives” are a falsehood.
Trump has quite simply done an amazing job for the USA.
There are high negatives by True Blue Believer Dems, who hate all Reps (until they die – then they’re great!).
With increased indoctrination by almost all colleges, which all discriminate against hiring Reps, the number of “leaders” who think Reps are evil continues to increase.
I’m already tired of the “campaign”, and think there should be more real news discussed. And more real news.
Like indictments against Comey, McCabe, and other Deep State criminals.
Also about how China is using Google-provided tech to put millions of Chinese under surveillance and many into real concentration camps.
My guess is Warren wins the nomination, tho I hope Yang does well for his ideas; but she loses to Trump if there’s no recession.
Two mentions in this thread about Andrew Yang, who supports UBI. UBI strikes me as the modern elite’s version of feudalism. Very revealing about what he thinks of the general populace and their role in society. It’s not pretty.
I miss Tom Wolfe.
Neo, please do a post on UBI. I can imagine all kinds of negative repercussions from such a policy. For example, no food stamps or Section 8 – what are the kids going to eat and where are they going to sleep when Mom spends the money on meth? But then maybe fewer fatherless children and anchor babies if aid is not based on dependents? I’d like to hear what you and your audience think.
I hate UBI, certainly the way it is being proposed. If UBI happens, I think I’m pretty much done with America. I will try to go to Singapore, where at least the government is semi competent.
Andrew Yang just thinks people are morons. You should read how he talks about out of work veterans being a potential threat to him and his friends. He says he’s an entrepreneur, but the guy ran a test tutoring company. It isn’t exactly a hard product to sell. But maybe my perceptions is distorted by living in China. He actually sort of plagiarized a section of the War on Normal People from the Bell Curve. You can’t really nail him for it in the wild, but he’d have a rough time in front of an honor committee.
UBI (Universal Basic Income) — I don’t like it either — is probably in the cards as AI and robotics advance. I don’t see any way around it. Only so many people can retrain as coders or event organizers.
Michelle, perhaps…
No clue why this meme will not die. How many times does she have to say ‘no’ before you believe her?
Michelle Obama quit practicing law in 1991 and allowed her license to lapse in 1993. Over a period of 17 years, she had a series of puzzling patronage jobs working for the Mayor’s office (responsibilities?), the housing authority (during the time her license to practice lapsed), and sundry NGOs. What was odd was the willingness of people to pay her handsome salaries for ?, salaries which increased every time her husband’s career advanced a notch. Her position with the University of Chicago Hospitals was a component of the diversity racket, and it was eliminated in a hiring freeze when she vacated it. IOW, she’s someone with no genuine technae at all.
She once said to someone that what was pleasing about fundraisers (held in the homes of the well fixed) was that they gave her lots of great decorating ideas. She wanted her husband, ca. 2000, to get out of public office and to land the presidency of the Joyce Foundation, a job for which he interviewed and which paid quite handsomely (and might allow them to retire their escalating revolving debt. What explains her husband’s willingness to associate with Tony Rezko bar her desire to own a grand home?
She has what she wants, and more time in public office ain’t it.
UBI and the Green New Deal and other grand glorious ideas that just won’t work (eventually you run out of other people’s money). AI and robots and the death of the economic systems as we know them. Sounds to me like the saboteurs complaints at the onset of the industrial revolutions. Don;t worry, socialism and big daddy/mommy government will solve the problems!
She has what she wants, and more time in public office ain’t it.
Art Deco: Sure, but she’s also a leftist and an Obama. Barack is not pleased with what Trump is doing to the Obama legacy. Besides once she gets into office, she can just be a ceremonial figurehead while Barack and his team run things.
As the philosopher Jagger once said, “You can’t always get what you want.” Life is filled with compromises.
This isn’t a far-out idea. Rush Limbaugh considers it a serious possibility and I consider him a serious pundit.
om: My point is that AI and robotics have been rolling up jobs and will continue to roll up jobs.
I go into a grocery store and see how more and more I am being funneled into the self-serve area to cashier and bag my own items. Some people are losing jobs because customers like me are doing that.
What jobs will those cashiers do instead? Are you going to tell them learn to code? Maybe that will work for some of the young, smart ones.
Modern people like to make fun of the Luddites, the textile workers who destroyed the new mill machines in the late 1700s. Eventually the new industrial economy made up for the lost jobs and then some, but that took a few decades and the original Luddites were out of luck.
Maybe it works out in the long run, but it looks to me like the computer revolution is consuming jobs faster than it is creating new ones and it is picking up speed.
What do we do when there really aren’t enough jobs for everyone? Let them sleep in the parks and eat garbage? I think not.
om: My point is that AI and robotics have been rolling up jobs and will continue to roll up jobs.
I’ve been hearing variations on this for fifty years. Edward Banfield had some fun skewering Paul Goodman for such gems of wisdom as, “For the uneducated, there will be no jobs at all”. The employment-to-population ratio hasn’t been declining.
Art Deco: Sure, but she’s also a leftist and an Obama.
She’s a girly girl into decorative arts. And she keeps telling you all ‘no’. You might consider listening to that.
Rush Limbaugh considers it a serious possibility and I consider him a serious pundit.
He needs stuff to talk about when he’s on the air.
Huxley is right. It sucked to be a Luddite. People like to portray them as irrational but they weren’t. They’d spent a lifetime training for something and the suffered the indignity of seeing their children been used as cheap, disposable labor to keep looms going.
My problem with the Dems is this. I’m not going to even considers supporting someone that wants to do Universal Healthcare and Green New Deal and Universal College and Universal Basic Income and Reparations. If they could just pick one scheme, maybe I could get on board. But all of that? No way. Not even two. The idea that even doing one of those things is politically feasible is a stretch. But doing two, that’s pretty much impossible. So it makes you wonder what they actually stand for asides saying whatever they think it takes to get the job.
Let them sleep in the parks and eat garbage? I think not.
Though that currently is a solution of sorts.
[Limbaugh] needs stuff to talk about when he’s on the air.
Art Deco: That’s a substantive response.
Art Deco: As to the employment-to-population ratio:
https://www.multpl.com/us-employment-population-ratio
That doesn’t look like a stable curve to me. It looks like it goes up after women enter the workforce and increases until the computer-driven dotcom bubble pops, then recovers a bit, then drops like a rock with the 2008 collapse, and has been recovering somewhat since 2010.
Nice, but as a chart reader I’d say that looks like an overall downward trend since 2000 and the current 60.7% is only 3% over 1955 when women were mostly not working. I don’t see that curve as a source of comfort. There are quite a lot of men not working who once were.
My bet is that curve bounces along but overall down.
Technology and society do not stand still, in the west anyway. What happened to all the farmhands and farmers who relied on horses instead of tractors? What happened to the German army who relied of horses to a large degree still in WWII.
What happened to the market for whale oil the for illumination, and then to kerosene for illumination? It sucks to be in a dying obsolete industry, that isn’t new. UBI won’t solve that Huxley.
UBI also won’t solve the problem of individuals who are drug addled from adolescence onward, or who never had sufficient innate intelligence, and consequently are not trainable or teachable. Life continues to be hard for them.
om: Tell me something I don’t know.
My point, and I could be wrong, is that the computer revolution in all its guises is consuming more jobs than it creates. If that is the case, more and more people will be able to find employment, so what do you do with them?
Shrug and say “Life continues to be hard for them”? Sleep in the parks and eat garbage?
The upside of the computer revolution is that overall it makes society richer. Most jobs being automated, I’m happy to see people not having to do. Society can pay a UBI (and to an extent already is.) The problem is that people without meaningful activity go down the tubes. It’s a serious problem.
So, what’s your solution, within the constraints I’ve outlined?
Huxley:
You proposed UBI for the great unknown threat of AI and economic change and then complain about being reminded about history. Current events (immigration and education/indoctrination) will “we all know” render UBI bankrupt but it would be mostly fair in that everyone (except the Yangs and party elites) will be eating garbage and sleeping on dirt (we had paved roads and sidewalks before UBI). Welcome to San Francisco.
Apparently Beto is now saying he is for forcible by backs, and the outright banning of AR-15s and AK-47s.
In this context, here is Sen. Cruz’ answer to Alyssa Milano’s taunt, asking where is the “right to self defense” mentioned/justified in the Bible.
In giving his decisive answer, Cruz uses some brilliant quotes I’ve never seen before.
See https://www.dailywire.com/news/51284/milano-wants-know-why-self-defense-god-given-right-ryan-saavedra
Milano one Hollywood’s pretty on the surface plastic faces hiding a whole lotta stupid.
“Society can pay a UBI (and to an extent already is.) The problem is that people without meaningful activity go down the tubes. It’s a serious problem.” – Huxley
It’s the primary problem.
Handouts without meaningful employment are never a good idea, but the government cannot take the place of a robust workplace that provides jobs, because that’s where the innovation surfaces that might possibly take into account the limitations of some people who aren’t able to “move up” the scale to more sophisticated careers.
For instance, most of the supermarkets I shop at employ mildly handicapped people as baggers; they are quite competent, and provide a useful service for the shoppers who want it, and earn their income instead of having it given to them.
Win-win situation, IMHO.
(I think it’s even possible that the government subsidizes their wages, but it’s still not a direct handout, with the attendant problems.)
Reinstituting the WPA and CCC programs, or some kind of “American Peace Corps” wouldn’t even work now, because the jobs those programs provided are among the ones being automated out of existence.
According to a story generally attributed to Milton Friedman about a jobs program in China,* once technology has changed the way a job is done, you really can’t go backwards just to employ more people.
It is a moral, philosophical, and ideological conundrum indeed.
*
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/
Snow on Pine on September 2, 2019 at 11:09 am said:
…
In this context, here is Sen. Cruz’ answer to Alyssa Milano’s taunt, asking where is the “right to self defense” mentioned/justified in the Bible.
* * *
The only time the Left acknowledges the moral stature of the Bible is when they think they can use it against believers. I wonder if Milano has ever read any of it?
Cruz, as always, gives a superb answer.
He was my first choice, although I am not yet dissatisfied with the President we got.
These very likely ill-educated, spoiled, usually doped up Hollywood lemmings, parroting what they have been told are the “approved” progressive thoughts, are really a joke, and despicable.
Why anyone would look to them for any informed analysis, wisdom, or take anything they said seriously is a mystery.
It’s just the omnipresent and powerful influence of TV and the movies–the “Entertainment Industry,” I guess.
The Lemmings dress the part, with all of their surgeries look the part, and when they read the lines that someone else wrote for them and are presented at their best, they seem like they’re smart, informed, empathetic, wise; great-hearted, and great human beings.
But, alas, that is all make believe, and the truth is far less noble and happy.
That doesn’t look like a stable curve to me. I
It has varied between 0.55 and 0.65 throughout the entire post-war period. And the question at hand is not whether it is ‘stable’, but whether there has been a secular decline.
Nice, but as a chart reader I’d say that looks like an overall downward trend since 2000 and the current 60.7% is only 3% over 1955 when women were mostly not working.
There hasn’t been an ‘overall downward trend’. It was unusually elevated in 2000, as you can see.
About 1/3 of the working population in 1957 was female. The composition of the working population has changed since 1957 as more married women are working and fewer elderly and disabled men are working. The change in the composition was all but complete by 1995, by which time 46% of the working population was female (v. 47% today).
I’m not going to even considers supporting someone that wants to do Universal Healthcare and Green New Deal and Universal College and Universal Basic Income and Reparations. If they could just pick one scheme, maybe I could get on board. But all of that? No way. Not even two
‘Green New Deal’ is mostly a sloganeering gimmick and mo’ subsidies for well-connected businesses to the extent that it isn’t. ‘Reparations’ is a bad idea tout court and should never be enacted. ‘Universal college’ is a complete waste and should also never be enacted. Public financing of medical care, l/t care, and schooling is properly restricted to a fixed % of total personal income and delivered through vouchers, insurance and allowances. In medical care (and l/t care) you benefit from high deductibles and an out-of-pocket market segment where real prices can emerge. In schooling, you benefit from a voucher-financed sector (operating within a global budget of public financing) and a tuition-financed sector which is unsubsidized and in which real prices can emerge.
Always glad to see that someone in the punditocracy agrees with me!
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/02/trumps-tightened-labor-market-wins-dream-jobs-for-disabled-americans/