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Paul Krugman Profile picture
@paulkrugman
Sep 17, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
A lot of people in the news media seem baffled by the utter failure of Trump's law and order stuff to move the needle, at least if the polls are right. As many are now pointing out, 2020 isn't 1968; but why didn't everyone realize that? My answer is, examine thyself 1/
After 2016 many in the media effectively reached the cynical conclusion that white Americans are very, very racist. And a lot of them (us) are. But remember that Trump barely squeaked through — and he wouldn't have gotten close without a lot of help from ... the news media 2/
I mean, judging from media coverage the most important issue of 2016 was Hillary's email server; Trump's racism and dishonesty, while not ignored, were crowded out by breathless coverage of a fake scandal 3/
But rather than acknowledge the crucial role of this peculiar coverage, post-election takes emphasized the appeal of prejudice. Reporters talked to guys in diners, not the suburban women scared off by the saturation coverage of the Comey letter 4/
Biden hasn't received anything like the same treatment, at least so far. I guess there's still time for another massive media fail; and yes, there is a lot of racism out there. But not enough for Trump to transform the election by getting even more racist 5/

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More from @paulkrugman

Paul Krugman Profile picture
Feb 17
With the recent rise in consumer sentiment, time to revisit this excellent Briefing Book paper. On reflection, I'd do it a bit differently; same basic conclusion, but I think partisan asymmetry explains even more of the remaining low numbers 1/ briefingbook.info/p/asymmetric-a…
The Michigan sentiment index has two components: current conditions and expectations. It's kind of legitimate to have partisan diffs on expectations, if you think your party has better policies. It's the gap on current conditions that's startling 2/ Image
Michigan doesn't provide partisan breakdowns every month until 2017 (hence the limited range of that chart). A quick and dirty approach is to use annual averages, with whatever months they do provide for each year, which lets us push back to 2006 3/
Read 7 tweets
Paul Krugman Profile picture
Feb 10
Recent economic news has been extremely good. But there's a strange meme among some D consultants that Biden shouldn't boast about it, because it seems out of touch — that people aren't feeling the good economy. But they are! 1/
The venerable Michigan survey has rocketed up lately 2/ Image
It's true that consumer sentiment is still weaker than you might expect given the economic numbers. But that's largely partisanship. Using Civiqs numbers, Democrats have more or less fully accepted the good news 3/ Image
Read 7 tweets
Paul Krugman Profile picture
Feb 2
Immigration is looming larger in the campaign, partly because it's becoming harder for Republicans to run against Biden on the economy. But there's a strong case that immigration has been a key part of Biden's economic success 1/
Inflation has come down so easily in part because of strong labor force growth. How much of that growth can be attributed to foreign-born workers? All of it 2/ Image
Some people might look at that and say that foreigners have stolen 3 million jobs from Americans. But we have full employment, indeed a very tight labor market. Look at what the Conference Board survey says 3/ Image
Read 6 tweets
Paul Krugman Profile picture
Jan 26
A tale of two inflation measures. Some analysts are still citing the blue line, when they should be citing the red line. This is professional malpractice 1/ Image
Using annual core CPI puts you way behind the curve, for 2 reasons. First, annual: even core CPI was 4.6 in the first half of 2023, 3.2 in the second half. Second, known lags in official shelter prices lagging far behind market rents 2/
So annual CPI creates a spurious impression of stubborn inflation, with a difficult last mile to cover. PCE puts a lower weight on shelter, and on a shorter-term basis tells us that we've already traveled that last mile 3/
Read 4 tweets
Paul Krugman Profile picture
Jan 24
The debate over Fed policy, especially about when to start cutting rates, seems to have become disconnected from the reality of rapid disinflation. Thinking about it reminded me of ... an experience I once had on a cycling trip 1/
In 2015, I think, I went on a week-long cycling tour in Vermont. I was in pretty good shape, but hadn't done a trip like that for a while, and was slightly worried about my stamina 2/
On the second day, I was getting close to what the notes from Discovery Tours said was a major climb. As I approached, there were a series of short, sharp uphills, and I thought "if this is the approach, the real thing must be really hard" 3/
Read 8 tweets
Paul Krugman Profile picture
Jan 19
Debates about the causes of inflation and disinflation are getting strangely tangled, partly because some people don't seem to recognize that both aggregate demand and aggregate supply can shift. Here, using standard textbook pictures, is what I think happened 1/ Image
During the pandemic and early aftermath, we had a lot of fiscal stimulus. This sustained growth and employment despite an adverse supply shock, but doing so involved a temporary surge in inflation. Then the supply shock reversed, and we got immaculate disinflation 2/
Doing it this way avoided one risk — long-term scarring from a persistently depressed economy — while running another — inflation getting entrenched. Given how things have actually turned out, it seems obvious that policymakers made the right call 3/
Read 4 tweets

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