Kevin Drum

The LA Times says that here in California we value accuracy over speed in vote counting. Fine. I'm all for that. Still, I just looked at the LA mayor race and as of 9 am this morning we've counted 14% of the vote. That seems a mite slow even for the accuracy obsessed, doesn't it?

Well, that could have been a lot worse, couldn't it? However things ultimately turn out, there sure wasn't any sign of a red wave this year.

The downside, of course, is the House. As a friend reminded me, even a narrow Republican win means two years of investigations, hearings, "oversight," debt ceiling brinkmanship, and government shutdowns. In other words, all the usual GOP temper tantrums when they get bored and have nothing better to do.

I'm basically in favor of anyone with a D by their name tonight. Still, we all have certain races that we care about more than others. Some of them are local. Some just feature people who personally piss you off. Here are mine:

Los Angeles County sheriff. Alex Villanueva is not only a bad sheriff, he's also a terrible human being. His old-school brand of corruption needs to have its ass kicked.

California 47th congressional district. We all love Katie Porter around here. That would be enough by itself, but the fact that she's running against the loathsome Scott Baugh cinches it.

Arizona governor. Kari Lake is an election denier and a MAGAnaut. What's worse, she's probably a fake election denier and MAGAnaut, just doing what she has to do to win. More importantly, she's a rising Republican star. I'd like to see her crushed before she gets off the ground.

Pennsylvania senator. I don't happen to care all that much about John Fetterman, but Dr. Oz? Spare me.

Wisconsin senator. Can you get any dumber than Ron Johnson? Ugh.

Good ol' Larry Agran has been part of progressive Irvine politics for more than 40 years. With the exception of a hiatus during the 90s, he's been either mayor or a city council member practically the entire time. This year, at age 77, he's running for city council yet again. Naturally I voted for him.

Now get out there and vote if you haven't already! Democracy may or may not depend on it, but a non-lunatic government sure does.

This doesn't inspire confidence:

On Monday, the Justice Department announced that it would send federal monitors to 64 jurisdictions nationwide to monitor how elections are being conducted. Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties were all slated to receive federal monitors from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. But Brad McVay, the chief counsel for the Florida Department of State, said in a letter issued late Monday that those monitors would not be allowed inside polling places under Florida law.

....Separately, Missouri officials on Friday denied the Justice Department’s request to conduct routine inspections under the Americans With Disabilities Act and Voting Rights Act at polling places on Election Day. Secretary of State John Ashcroft (R) reiterated that stance in a meeting Monday....He compared Justice Department officials from the U.S. attorney’s office from the Western District of Missouri to “jackbooted thugs.”

As for John Ashcroft, he generally goes by the name Jay. He's the son of the real John Ashcroft, upholding the family tradition.

Remember a decade ago when we were all obsessed with leverage? Whatever happened to that, anyway? According to the Fed's latest report, our nation's big banks are doing fine if you look at the usual measure of leverage that uses risk-weighted capital. On the other hand, if you use a plain-Jane measure of tangible assets, things are looking a little dicey:

There's also this:

None of this is in disaster territory. Capital ratios are still well above their 2008 levels, and there are no financial disasters on the horizon. Still, if we move into recession and there's another couple of years of this, things could get a little precarious. Let's all hope the Fed is keeping a close eye on it.

So much rain here in Southern California. So much.

But don't let that stop you from voting, you over-coddled snowflakes. As my mother used to say, a little water never hurt anyone.¹ SO GO VOTE.

¹Exceptions: wicked witches, people sleeping with the fishes, fake mermaids.

Over at National Review, Andrew Stuttaford admits that a recent column by Tim Bond doesn't "inspire confidence." But he really likes this part:

According to the BIS [the Bank of International Settlements], since the start of this century, advanced economy non-financial debt (that is debt owed by governments, business and households) has risen by 86 percentage points of GDP to just shy of 300 per cent of GDP. The world has never been as levered as it is today.

This is under the headline, "The Great Unraveling (2)." But let's take a look at the BIS data:

First things first: how do you like the chart? Once in a while I come across something where the data is noisy and it's better to show a trendline instead. But I hate to get rid of the raw data itself, so this time I just faded it out a lot. It's still there if you're interested, but it doesn't make it impossible to pick out the trends.

Now on to the data. As you can see, household debt is down. No problem there.

Corporate debt is up, but not by much. It doesn't really look like a problem either.

So there's really nothing here at all except for one thing: the stale old conservative bugaboo of government debt. The problem is that conservatives have been hollering that rising debt will destroy the West for decades and decades. Literally. Here is a review of Our National Debt from 1949:

The peace of mind of a conscientious American must be disturbed every time he is reminded that his government is 250 billion dollars in debt. He must be shocked by the frequent announcement that every newborn baby is burdened, not with a silver spoon, but with a debt of $1700....The [Committee on Public Debt Policy] believes that the challenge can be met...but these hopeful prophecies are voiced in the tone of a leader summoning his people to an uphill struggle which will demand all their courage, wisdom, and devotion.

The reviewer is none other than James Tobin, who thinks the Committee is overreacting. Nevertheless, this was the kind of thing that greeted the public with regularity.

I'm not really in favor of ignoring the national debt and letting it rise without restraint. Still, after 70 years of being wrong about this it strikes me that it's now conservatives who bear the burden of proving their case. There's a limit to how long you can cry wolf before you need to show receipts, especially when it's your own tax policies that have been largely responsible for the problem you're so distressed about.

I could use some help here. This is a mural painted on an apartment building in Les Andelys, France, and by American standards it looks a little problematic. But maybe it has a different meaning in France. Are these random characters, or do they represent something well known? Any ideas to share?

Here's a telling tweet from Paul Waldman about yesterday's stump speech by Republican Blake Masters in Arizona:

And here comes Blake Masters! On the stump he's solid if less than spectacular. Most of his speech is about how Mark Kelly and Joe Biden are in cahoots to destroy America. "So much of it looks intentional" he says. pic.twitter.com/ZhfOOx7yXc

— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) November 7, 2022

"So much of it looks intentional," Masters says to a cheering crowd. And with that we see the big difference between conservatives and liberals these days. Maybe we both hate each other equally. Maybe we misunderstand each other equally. Maybe we fear each other equally. But we liberals, no matter how misguided we think the MAGAnauts are, don't think they're deliberately trying to destroy the country out of sheer malice.

Many conservatives do. They believe that liberals hate America because it's the root source of racism, militarism, gun culture, Christian nationalism, greed, police violence, and more, all of which means it needs to be taken down a peg. So things like terrorism, high inflation, and the explosion of fentanyl aren't merely problems to be solved, but problems that liberals have deliberately spawned and secretly bankrolled as a way of weakening and eventually bringing down America as a world power.

This is the great fear. Not merely that liberals are wrong and need to be opposed, but that liberals are steadily and purposefully trying to destroy the soul of the country. This is why they fight back so viciously. You would too if you believed this.