Trump has one great superpower: utter shamelessness. With it, he has won some battles others would have lost, notably Kavanaugh. And it enables him to be the world's greatest slogan A/B tester, because if something he said yesterday bombs, he drops it and tries something else.
But this superpower is extremely limited, and a boundless willingness to say literally anything, combined with no attachment to principles of any kind, is a bad political strategy for the long run.
People without principles aren't trusted, which means they can't build coalitions, which is why the big "wins" his supporters like to cite are a handful of modest executive orders, and a tax bill and supreme court nomination that were exactly what the GOP establishment wanted.
If he leaves office in disgrace, having lost badly, his supporters will lose interest, the party will repudiate him by never mentioning his name, and his legacy will be that a decade hence, even Republicans will grudgingly admit he was a screw up, a la Democrats with Carter.
Against a different candidate, he would have lost; any other plausible GOP nominee would have done better; and his supporters will have gotten none of the things they told us they needed him for, while handing the Senate, the presidency, and maybe the Court to dems 4 years early.
That's my take, and I'm sticking to it. Maybe he'll surprise me by winning again, and I'll need to rethink. But I can't see how at this point. He's an embarrassment who couldn't even see his own base self-interest clearly enough to protect himself from covid, much less America

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More from @asymmetricinfo

30 Sep
My husband likes to pick the meat out of my braises and leave the liquid. I have turned this into a kitchen hack, which works like this:
Every time I make a familiar dish--oxtails Ancient Rome style (ish), pot roast, beef stew, osso buco, chili verde, etc--I save excess liquid in the freezer. Then I use the leftover liquid as a starter for the next one, supplementing with wine, tomatoes, mirepoix, stock, whatever.
The result is in "infinity braise" where each braise has just a little bit of all the previous ones in it. Sacrifices some consistency, but I usually freestyle the stuff I make really often with whatever's on hand, anyway. On the plus side the flavor is much richer & more complex
Read 5 tweets
31 Aug
My MBA class, the Class of 2001, had the worst job market experience of any class in living memory. (Yes, worse than the financial crisis). The Class of 2021 will probably outdo us. wsj.com/articles/m-b-a…
Before you ask, how could 2001 have done worse than the classes of 2008 or 2009?

Because companies that had fired whole associate classes found themselves, 5-8 years later, without the middle management layers they needed. In 2008, they resolved not to let that happen again.
2001 was hammered because we were right in the eye of Hurricane Stock Market Crash--the Class of 2000 got a year of relatively normal job experience and seniority when the layoffs started; 2002 got some warning. 2001 got hosed.
Read 5 tweets
26 Aug
Stories of people like Jon Ponder are inspiring, but also illustrate how far we have to go in really offering convicted felons a fresh start. It's great that people like Mr. Ponder have a new life helping felons start over, but we need more success stories in ordinary businesses.
There is still so much prejudice against ex-convicts, and while that's understandable--recidivism is not zero--it's an enormous barrier that helps shove people back into a life of crime.
I don't want to take anything away from the people who do amazing work helping reintegrate felons. I just want to challenge us to do better, as a society, in finding ways to let people who did bad things put that past behind them after they've paid their debt to society.
Read 4 tweets
24 Aug
Lots of potential answers, other than the unprovable "Dems are just better".

1) Dem coalition structurally gains more from redistribution
2) Parties reflect their leaders
3) Dems just earlier in process of becoming fixated on symbolic politics to the exclusion of concrete policy
One could argue, for example, that #1 might be shifting towards #3 because of the changing nature of the coalition: with more and more rich people and affluent professionals shifting Demward, Dems have both more to gain and to lose from redistribution, complicating the politics.
At the micro level this manifests as people loudly demand "affordable housing" while coming up with endless reasons that that housing doesn't belong in their neighborhood; supporting racial integration while choosing affluent neighborhoods/schools that perpetuate segregation, etc
Read 5 tweets
18 Aug
With businesses failing, I'm watching the multi-level marketing people scrounging on personal finance boards to lure in desperate people. So PSA: your friend who is making great money from home and offers to schedule a time to tell you all about it is not your friend.
Multi-level marketing is mostly a legal Ponzi scheme where the money comes from recruiting new victims, not selling product. Even if this were not true, a pandemic is not a great time to try to be selling stuff through in-home demonstrations!
The in-home or social network distribution channel basically died as a viable business with the advent of the radio. The only way you actually make good money from home this way is by recruiting lots of salespeople under you, who "invest" in worthless product they can't sell.
Read 7 tweets
16 Aug
New York's budget doesn't work without the finance hub. At all.

FIRE (Finance, insurance, real estate) generates more than 60% of NYC's wages, and an even more disproportionate share of its taxes, due to NYC's progressive tax structure.

bls.gov/opub/mlr/2019/….
If finance moved, and took the workers with it, the immediate effect would be to make New York City's basic operations unsustainable, much less its gigantic welfare state, without an immediate bailout from New York State.
However, since New York State is almost as lopsidedly dependent on FIRE for tax revenue, that bailout would not be possible, much less forthcoming.
Read 10 tweets

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