Month: November 2024

How big an impact did culture war issues have on Donald Trump winning the election? Here is recent public polling on a variety of hot button issues:

On the old warhorses of guns and abortion, liberals have long held an edge. Large majorities say abortion should be generally legal vs. generally illegal, and voting on abortion initiatives in the states confirms this.

But liberals are underwater practically everywhere else. Small majorities are uncomfortable with they/them pronouns, and building a wall along the border with Mexico has gotten more popular. It's now a majority view.

Other issues have swung harder in the conservative direction. Large majorities favor tougher policing, even among Black voters. Ditto for opposition to affirmative action. Trans issues are more nuanced: large majorities support anti-discrimination laws for trans people, but similarly large majorities oppose both the use of puberty blockers among teens and biological boys competing in girls' sports.

Views of the Middle East are complicated, but on the straightforward question of Israel vs. Hamas, Americans favor Israel by a huge margin. They also approve of Israel's bombing of Lebanon.

Finally, most Americans support some kind of path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, but large majorities also say immigration is a very serious problem and we should reduce the level of immigration. Small majorities even favor mass deportation.

By itself, none of this dictates what either liberals or Democrats should do. But there's never any benefit to sticking our heads in the sand. We should at least acknowledge what we're up against.

Everyone—including me!—has a theory about why Democrats lost this year. The leading contenders are:

• Inflation.
• Illegal immigration.
• Too woke.
• Lost touch with working class.

But there are some simple facts to contend with for all of these things. Here are inflation and wages since Joe Biden took office:

In the 2022 election, inflation was above 7% and had been for more than a year. Wage growth for the working class had been falling behind just as long. Here's immigration:

In the 2022 election, illegal border crossings were astronomically high and had been for over a year. Finally, here's the popular vote for the House of Representatives:

The 2022 election was fought on inflation, immigration, and wokeness. It was the height of the DEI/cancel culture/book banning/CRT panic, and it was practically the only thing Fox News could talk about. And the election came after Biden's "disastrous" withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Now, Democrats did lose some ground in 2022. But not as much as this year even though inflation was down, immigration was down, wages were up, and the woke frenzy was subsiding. Every single measure of both culture war and economic issues was considerably worse in 2022 and had been for more than a year.

So for all of us, the question is: What changed between 2022 and 2024? Looking at the popular vote for the House helps to keep some distance from personalities, but it's still worth noting that Donald Trump was either president or the leading Republican candidate the entire time. Nothing much changed on that side.

It so happens that I'm on the wokeness/immigration side of the debate. I have been for a long time. And I think there's a good case to be made that Kamala Harris was viewed as worse along both dimensions compared to Joe Biden in 2020 or Hillary Clinton in 2016. Still, those things were at more of a fever pitch in 2022 than today. So why were Democrats in general so roundly rejected?

Ben Dreyfuss, probably from fear of being tossed in a reeducation camp, is trying to think of things he agrees with Donald Trump about:

I have bad news for Ben:

• Republicans are sworn foes of YIMBY shit. They consider liberal efforts to end zoning restrictions and build higher density housing a sinister plot to force everyone into socialist beehives.
• Trump could reinstate his higher shower head standards, but hardly anyone would bother producing them. States and cities still mandate limits (1.8 gpm in California, 1.5 gpm in Miami, etc.) and the shower head folks prefer to make one product for the whole country.
• NATO has already reformed itself. It started in 2014 under Obama and then picked up steam under Biden when Russia invaded Ukraine. Only eight out of 31 NATO countries are still below the 2% requirement for defense spending:
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Ben needs to make a more serious commitment here. Maybe offer up some family expertise on electrocution vs. being eaten by a shark?

The Washington Post investigates why so many poor and working class Latinos in Texas border counties shifted rightward in 2024:

Democratic and Republican party leaders said the Biden administration’s border failings are only part of what explains it. “You can tell me things are better, but if my food stamps don’t last the month, I’m not going to believe you,” said Toni Treviño, the chair of the Republican Party in Starr County, where nearly 58 percent of voters supported Trump.

Well, OK, but I'm going to be that guy again. Here are SNAP (food stamp) benefits compared to inflation over the past few years:

In mid-2021, SNAP benefits jumped thanks to ARRA, Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. After that, SNAP benefits increased more than inflation every single year.

After the 2021 jump, SNAP benefits increased 24% compared to 16% for food inflation. For the entirety of Biden's presidency, they increased 43% compared to 20% for inflation.

Is Treviño right anyway? You can only receive SNAP benefits if you're below the poverty line. That means you're living a pretty rough life and SNAP benefits probably do run out before the end of the month. Who cares if they've (supposedly) gone up if they still aren't enough?

I don't know if people think that way. Then again, I also don't know if they have any idea that Biden gave them a big raise in 2021 and then kept smaller raises coming every year after that. I didn't know that until I looked it up. Did Biden or the DNC or local Democratic Party leaders spend any time in Starr County bragging about this? I don't know that either.

But I'd guess not. After all, bragging about increasing welfare benefits might help with the people getting them, but it might also hurt with all the people who aren't. It's a dilemma.

The weekly YouGov poll came out late this week because they waited to do the fieldwork until after the election. For some reason, I found the shifts from before to after the election amusing:

Last week, Kamala Harris had a higher favorability than Donald Trump by four points. This week it's suddenly switched. Trump is viewed more favorably by two points.

The same thing happened to the parties. Last week Democrats had a higher favorability by five points. This week it's Republicans by two points.

And the best for last. A week ago only 23% of Republicans thought the election would be fair. This week it's suddenly 77% while Democrats didn't change much at all. Only 1% of Republicans think the election was rigged. 97% think Trump won fair and square. Apparently the lying, cheating Democrats inexplicably took this election off from their usual vote rigging and illegal immigrant stuffing.

POSTSCRIPT: Why the change in favorability? Is it real? Or do parties and candidates just benefit from a winning aura?

NGFS—the Network for Greening the Financial System—is a group of all the world's central banks that tries to estimate the macroeconomic effects of climate change. They published their latest report this week, and it's grim:

This is the "current policy" projection, and they estimate that global GDP in 2050 will be 15% lower than it would be if there were no climate change. That's only 25 years away.

Note that this is not a bunch of lefty enviro rabble rousers. It's central bankers, normally a fairly sober lot. But like insurance companies and the military, they're starting to get pretty worried.

Still, probably not much will be done. Here are the regional effects of climate change from the study that underpinned the NGFS report:

The effects of climate change are mostly felt in poor areas like South America, sub-Saharan Africa, and China. Europe and the US are affected only modestly. So hurricanes and wildfires will continue to get our attention, but the major damage will be just another headline on page 13 about flooding in Bangladesh or famine in Africa. Out of sight, out of mind.

I saw my oncologist yesterday and officially discontinued the Talvey. The new plan is to try a similar but different bispecific called Tecvayli that targets CD3 and BCMA instead of CD3 and GPRC5D. In theory this should be less effective since I've already had a BCMA treatment, but in practice it seems to work well even so.

Tecvayli has all the usual side effects—CRS, fatigue, immune system degradation—but it doesn't affect the mouth or taste buds. I'm going to wait a month for all my Talvey side effects to (hopefully) go away, and then start Tecvayli in early December. This means another hospital stay while they ramp up the dose and watch for neurological problems, but at least it's only a week this time around. And neither the CAR-T nor the Talvey produced even a hint of neuro side effects, so I'm optimistic that Tecvayli won't either.

Fingers crossed.

A contingent job is one that's not expected to be permanent. It does not include independent contractors, on-call workers, temp agency workers, or workers provided by contract firms.

Anyway, every once once in a great while the BLS measures this, and their first report in six years dropped today. After such a long wait I'm sure you're eager to see the results:

This is the first significant increase ever, and it's not clear why. More side hustles? More gig workers? Straggling effects from the pandemic? Hard to say. Still, the increase amounts to only 800,000 workers out of 160 million, so it's probably not a big deal in any case.

Say hello to Edgar. He lives down the street but roams the near neighborhood and occasionally comes by to visit us. He's a pretty sociable cat.

However, Hilbert isn't. Neither is Charlie. As you can see in the bottom picture, with his arched back and bushy tail, Hilbert is none too pleased with Edgar's visit. Oddly, Edgar himself didn't react at all. He just sat there calmly while Hilbert and Charlie (outside the frame) hissed at him.

China makes about 90% of the shoes worn in America. Donald Trump's tariffs could end that:

The American shoe company Steven Madden will cut nearly half of its China production within the next year as it braces for tariffs under a second Trump administration.

....[CEO Edward] Rosenfeld said on Thursday that Steven Madden had been working for several years to build up a factory base outside China in places like Cambodia, Vietnam, Brazil and Mexico.

Even if Trump follows through, it won't benefit American shoemakers. There aren't any. We'll still import all our shoes, we'll just import them from other countries.

Will China retaliate if Trump raises tariffs? Maybe, but their leverage is limited. We don't export much to them, and their only truly strategic exports to us are pharmaceuticals and rare earth metals. Restricting those could do real damage, but even that would be temporary. Pharmaceuticals would migrate to India or other countries that already have good supply chains, and there are plenty of rare earths outside China. We just have to build the mines to get at them.

Of course, China also sells us lots of consumer goods that may not be strategic but will suddenly cost more if they're hit by big tariffs. Nobody seemed to care much about it during Trump's first round of tariffs, but that might be because the impact was swamped first by the pandemic and then the broader surge of inflation. It might be different this time. We'll see.