Tag Archives: politics

By James Kwak Ever since I finished Economism (and the 2016 elections, which happened about the same time), there has only been one thing I have wanted to write. I tried in “The Importance of Fairness: A New Economic Vision for the Democratic Party,” and in “A New Economic Vision, in 27 Words,” and again in “Hey Democrats, the Problem Isn’t Jobs and Growth.” I wanted to write this thing because it has become clear to me not only that our economic world is screwed up in all sorts of...

Political leanings through time for birth cohorts A chart on “political preferences by generation” from Pew Research has been making the rounds in the past few days. Here it is: Figure 1 This chart tells the simplistic story that older generations are more conservative than young ones. It’s considerably misleading. After all, how did the democrats ever win if older generations, who vote in higher percentages, are always more conservative than younger...

The oncoming generational UK and US political tsunamis No big economic news today, so let me put up a couple of striking charts about the UK election last week. First, the change in party results in 2019 (left) vs. 2017 (right) in millions: Tories:   13.9. 13.6 Labour: 10.3. 12.9 (a 20% decline!) Lib Dems: 3.7  2.4 SNP:        1.2  1.0 Total turnout was down 1.5%. As should be obvious, as the accompanying commentary said, the Tories didn’t win; Labour...

Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: December 17, 1868 In the Senate, Senators Dixon and Ferry, both Republicans from Connecticut, continued the debate from several days prior concerning a federal imposition of African-American voting rights on the States: Dixon: [M]y colleague … proposes to amend the Constitution of the United States in a manner which to me is very revolting, not because I hate negro suffrage, but, sir, I do desire that the proud old...

Amazing . . . President Trump’s Letter to the Speaker of the House Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi The first clue that much of the six pages of this letter was not written by Mr. Trump is the salutation; “Dear Madam Speaker.” Then it goes through a series of rants. You can catch a version on Politico also.

At This Point Richard Nixon Resigned Richard Nixon resigned as president after the House Judiciary Committee recommended he  be impeached, the vote that just happened yesterday for President Trump.  In the case of Nixon that vote was followed by a famous visit from three powerful GOP senators, including Barry Goldwater, who informed Nixon that he had lost the support of the GOP in the Senate.  Of course now we have the GOP Senate Majority Leader...

Stealing The 2016 Election? (Dan here…Thursday)  I have been watching the later stages of the still-ongoing House  Judiciary Comm hearing on impeaching Trump.  I have seen Republicans repeatedly ranting on about how this is an effort to undo the “popular election” of Trump, the will of the “63 million” who voted for Trump. Really, how dumb are these people? Hillary had three million more than Trump, 66 million.  He was not the popular winner.  What a...

Liz Cheney Loves Traitors Dick Cheney lied a lot so I guess his daughter feels compelled to do the same: So I would just ask people to remember that they have failed despite the fact that they had a process that basically put everything tilted in their direction. The Democrats were able to act as judge and prosecutor. The Democrats were able to select every single witness. The Democrats were able to prevent, and did prevent, witnesses from answering...

Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: December 7, 1868 In the Senate: “Mr. Craving asked, and by unanimous consent obtained, leave to introduce a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States: . . . “No State shall deny the right of suffrage or abridge the same to any male citizens of the United States twenty-one years of age or upwards except for participation in rebellion or other crime and also excepting Indians...

The End Of The Harris Candidacy I should probably not waste time on this, but I was a fan of Kamala Harris. Her ending her candidacy while still in fifth  place in the polls and  if in a long slide, has me disappointed.  As it is, given her declining polls, lack of money, and reportedly internally divided campaign staff; her chances of actually getting the nomination had fallen to effectively zero.   It is actually an act of class on her part to get out...