For the past couple of decades the most popular promise from presidential candidates has been to get tough with China. Naturally Ron DeSantis did that today. Boring.
DeSantis also continued his anti-woke jihad by promising to forbid pension funds from adopting ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) standards. I doubt this would even be constitutional, so it's just blather. Boring.
But DeSantis also wants to fire Fed chair Jerome Powell. That's a little more interesting.¹ What does he have against Powell?
DeSantis has increasingly criticized the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell, accusing it of fueling inflation by printing trillions of dollars and saying it accepted Biden administration claims that price pressures were transitory. Interest-rate hikes, he has said, have hurt average Americans.
....DeSantis will appoint a Fed chairman who will focus on maintaining a stable dollar, according to his proposal. “The Fed must focus on stable prices; it is not a social engineer and cannot be allowed to be an unaccountable economic central planner,” the plan says.
Am I missing something or is this incoherent? DeSantis wants the Fed to focus solely on keeping inflation low, but he also thinks high interest rates—which are meant to do exactly that—have hurt people. I suppose he must think that our current bout of inflation is entirely due to increases in the Fed's balance sheet, which did indeed balloon during the pandemic:
During the 2008 recession and its aftermath, the Fed increased its assets by 2x immediately and 4x over time. There was no inflation. During the pandemic recession, it increased its assets by less than 2x. I doubt that was the cause of anything.
Oddly, DeSantis also invoked a certain amount of wokeness in his "Declaration of Economic Independence." He railed against increased wealth inequality. He's against Wall Street and big corporations. He thinks students should be able to discharge their loans in bankruptcy. I wonder where all this liberal stuff popped up from?
¹It's interesting because I want to fire Jerome Powell too. I think he's been a historically terrible Fed chair. I'm not sure I have the same reasons as DeSantis, though.
"I suppose he must think that our current bout of inflation is entirely due to increases in the Fed's balance sheet ..."
DeSantis thinks?
DeSantis overthinks. Then he refuses to change course when it becomes obvious to everyone else that he's misjudged the situation. He's not unintelligent. He simply has less common sense than his erstwhile supporters.
Agreed it is vanishingly unlikely any thinking about the actual economics went into this (thinking about populist political posturing certainly, but economics of inflation, I would bet real money not one second was spent on that)
"I wonder where all this liberal stuff popped up from?"
Straight fascist playbook stuff. Only it's not "liberal" in any serious sense but just raw economic leveling stuff--what in the old days used to be called "socialism."
But of course none of it is even remotely serious. There is no real egalitarian principle here. It's just opportunistic adoption of socialist-sounding polemic by a fascist.
Hence his feeling totally free to call simultaneously for lower interest rates *and* tighter money. Coherence is not a requirement here. Maximizing the mobilization of resentment is all that matters.
The grain of truth in all this is that DeSantis is genuinely anti-liberal in the strict sense. He really is prepared to traduce rights--including the rights enjoyed by corporate persons--in pursuit of power. He's no egalitarian, but he's dead serious about that.
I wonder if his wealthy backers have taken this into account.
Exactly. DeSantis says anything that he thinks might help elect him. If he contradicts himself he probably thinks this makes him a great mind, turning the famous quote about consistency on its head.
He had an excellent example to guide him, didn't he?
Yeah, there are still media outlets out there that claim Trump isn't like other conservatives because he once said he wouldn't cut Social Security.
DeSantis is such a mean incompetent little man, however did the national media convince us he was a serious candidate?
Based on all of the polling the national media only convince itself. Voters aren't impressed.
To me, the national press only looks at results, and ignores the question of whether the result are good or bad.
The bit about DeSantis's wokeness reminded me of a recent Economist article; here is part of it.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/07/13/the-american-left-and-right-loathe-each-other-and-agree-on-a-lot
Also reminded me of Jay Bookman (then still at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) writing that Trump's 2016 campaign rhetoric against Wall Street and corporate CEOs and such was notably absent from his inaugural speech.
https://www.ajc.com/blog/jay-bookman/opinion-dismal-inaugural-speech-many-ways/1AYEdynydPhlYdcuRk1NOL/
Just to add, since the stupid 5-minute limit had passed before I thought to do it: that free (non-subscriber) part of the Economist article is all I have read of it.
I think it’s a mistake to opine on the constitutionality of anything the right wing does or proposes. The Republican justices have increasingly adopted a sort of “living constitution” that accommodates conservative even when they clash with past decisions.
My understanding that this is normal in an authoritarian system, which is the direction we are headed.
Just how much agency do you ascribe to the position of Fed chairman? Particularly when it comes to keeping your money cheap? There is a whole (well one vacancy) board and/or committee who are the decision makers.
Definitely an incoherent policy -- a mish mash of contradictory goals.
But that last line -- "an unaccountable economic central planner" -- is particularly bizarre. The first part only contains a shadow of truth, but gravitates towards an authoritarian executive office, contrasting against the second part which implies an attack against the very centralized power that he seeks to hold.
DeSantis is one weird man. Starting to think Ivy League is worthless.
He’s not stupid, but he assumes Republican voters are.
DeSantis?? Is that still a thing?
"I think he's been a historically terrible Fed chair."
Ah yes, the falling inflation and extremely low unemployment of the Powell era - historically terrible!
Or is it because of the recession you insist is coming, which most agree will likely be mild if it comes at all. A mild recession after inflation reaches a 40-year high - that would definitely make him historically terrible.
Kevin, can you dedicate a post to why you hate Jerome Powell so much? I would find that illuminating.
I logged in to the comments in order to pose this same question:
"Kevin, can you dedicate a post to why you hate Jerome Powell so much? I would find that illuminating."
you beat me to it ... !
DeSantis is desperate to get some kind of traction, KD, is it really fair to expect coherence too? He can feel himself going down for the third time and is seeing his life flash by before his very eyes. He glommed onto Powell because "Powell" is a curse word for a lot of gop primary voters; the "explanation" is fluff to build up the animus and doesn't have to make any sense.
But here's the big idiocy-- notice that he's deflecting blame for inflation from Biden to Powell! This is not your normal shrewd politico move-- if your goal is to get voters to doubt Biden by wrapping inflation around his neck, how does it make sense to dilute the blame now? It'll just confuse people. Desperate times make desperate people take desperate measures, I guess.
Those "lefty ideas" are popping up at various right-wing think tanks, so they're not just Rhonda Santis's doing (closed captions actually show this name fairly often). One of them, American Compass, got some air time from Marketplace this morning for pushing to treat student loan debt like any other debt, and I think several of them have had things to say about income inequality lately.
These are ironic too-- if existing student loan debt is dischargeable in bankruptcy, then Uncle Sam will end up paying for at least the guaranteed part of it, just like Dark Brandon has been trying to do. I think that's called something like "socializing" the debt. And if you're relying on market action and market principles to address income inequality, doesn't the market tend to favor actors with greater resources?
"Am I missing something or is this incoherent?"
It is "simple minded" coherent. The algorithm is something like, "Will the people that I want to vote for me feel better because I'm blaming someone for making them feel bad? If yes, then do it."
Ignorance is a skill, and DeSantis is a rank amateur.
This comment, though aimed at a recent set of "policy" proposals, nevertheless got me thinking about 2016:
"Am I missing something or is this incoherent?"
One idea that I have grudgingly come to accept more over time is that, in many ways, Trump ran an underrated, possibly even a pretty good, campaign in 2016.
"Make America Great Again" is obviously not original, but it is a good slogan. It presents a narrative and a vision that anyone can grasp. And everyone could identify trump's campaign with that slogan (whether they liked it or not).
If I remember correctly, Hilary Clinton's slogan was, "I'm with her." Was that it? Am I forgetting a different (and hopefully better) slogan? Because "I'm with her" is one of the worst national campaign slogans that I've ever seen. It might work as advocacy for an interest group, but for a national campaign that needs to appeal to the whole country, it's simply abysmal. There's nothing in that slogan but identity. There's no coherent narrative or vision (though the idea of a fairer country may be implicit, that very likely goes over the head of most people).
"Build the wall" provided an excellent symbol. It's not a symbol that I agree with, but it's powerful and it instantly conveys the idea that the USA needs to guard its own cultural integrity. And that's a perspective that ever so many people will agree with. The Leftist embrace of open borders (which may have been more explicit in 2020) is, in my opinion, political suicide. Joe Biden was one of the very few, possibly the only (I can't remember for sure) Dem candidate in 2020 who did NOT get behind the idea of open borders. And look who won the nomination (and, of course, the presidency).
"Lock her up" was, for me, the single most repugnant and frightening aspect of Trump's 2016 campaign. Explicitly running on the platform of throwing your political opponents in jail may have been the most illiberal element of trump's political persona (though I realize that's debatable). But it was nevertheless a very effective rallying cry for his base. Did Clinton have any rallying cries? Any at all?
But, in the context of this blog post by Kevin, I'm now trying to remember if Trump's campaign was, at least in its essence, "coherent." And, speaking purely from memory, I'm inclined to think that it was. Of course he was famous for wildly random, long-winded, rambling (but also highly entertaining) statements. He was notoriously ignorant of facts, policy, and maybe even reality. Yet his essential vision (as described above) seemed to remain more or less consistent and, for many people, relatable and understandable.
So, I think Kevin might be hitting on an interesting distinction. It's not just that DeSantis is spouting policy gibberish, that would hardly be anything new. But the main problem may be that his campaign as a whole is just incoherent. Sure, he's "anti-woke," but what exactly does that mean to the average person? Does it in fact mean a dozen completely different things to a dozen different people? And he's against CRT: but no one (outside of some advanced academics) knows what that is. I've studied it in some depth and would still have a hard time pontificating on the topic with confidence. So DeSantis simply isn't making coherent sense. That's his problem.
Her slogan was actually "Stronger Together." Some merch was later shown with the "I'm with her" branding, & i remember a small card for supporters showed that slogan.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/hillary-clinton-zings-trump-ripping-her-2016-campaign-slogan-n970721
No Democratic Presidential candidate has advocated ‘open borders’. Several candidates in 2020 advocated decriminalization of the act of unauthorized entry, but it would remain a civil offense and unauthorized entrants would still be subject to deportation.
Your statement is open to interpretation. If Democratic candidates state that they don't support open borders but then pursue policies that an average voter will easily understand as open borders, then the fine and nuanced distinction is moot. That may not be fair, but welcome to politics. From the Atlantic back during the 2020 primaries:
"Biden’s position—that immigration is generally good, but it should happen legally—has been common among Democrats even in recent years. His progressive opponents, however, are pushing a far more expansive view of how immigrants should be welcomed to America ... Progressive candidates for president are arguing that any kind of criminal enforcement against illegal immigration is effectively siding with Trump."
Sorry, but that progressive approach is so easy to tar as "open borders" that they're basically walking into a boxing match without their safety gear on. And as a result they'll get crushed.
I genuinely fear for the fate of Democrats and our country after Biden is gone. It'll take a while for the largely trump-inspired radicalization of the Left to wear off, and I expect that the Dems will suffer through some fairly dramatic post-Biden bloodbaths before they hopefully learn to moderate again.
Hey, I agree with Puddin' about something, too! Powell really does need to go, he's either incompetent or a saboteur, or both.
But no, Puddin' is not coherent. I think this is what passes as attempting to be likable for him - criticize things that he imagines normies think are hurting them.
The root problem remains - he's an unlikable authoritarian weirdo and is unable to hide it, too dumb to notice what the problem is, and too grifty to trust anyone who could help file down his fangs.
Oh, and thanks for finally posting the Fed balance sheet. But, I disagree with you on whether or not it had an effect on inflation. Its curve aligns very well with the different measures of inflation.