On a rational level, Trump's supporters realize that having him as their leader hurts their cause. Rationality would say dump him, take the L in 2020, and come back next cycle with someone who isn't an incompetent corrupt chaos agent.
But rationality isn't what's driving Trump supporters.
Trump, to them, represents a stiffening of the back, a refusal to knuckle under, a pugnacious extension of the jaw. In short, an act of Resistance.
Trumpism is the real Resistance in America. An unthinking, blind, short-sighted, knee-jerk resistance to the multiracial nation we've been in the process of becoming. Defiance for the sake of defiance, even if it means crashing the plane that is America.
Taking the L in 2020 and coming back with better leaders next cycle is the smart move for the GOP. But people who feel their honor has been challenged can rarely beat a tactical retreat.
(end)
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It's very hard to have a nice, civil discussion with a friend on Twitter without randos jumping in and insulting both participants and trying to make it into some sort of dunk contest.
Not only does this disrupt the discussion, and not only does this convince bystanders that they're witnessing a fight rather than a pleasant chat, but it also gives the false impression that one's interlocutor has deliberately summoned a gang of attack trolls.
For example, yesterday @tylercowen had a very nice chat about minimum wage policy. But as you can see from the replies to our tweets, a number of people jumped in on both sides to insult us. It was very unhelpful.
A good example of the difference between pro-business and pro-market is this paper by @arvindsubraman and @rodrikdani. They argue that pro-business policies of the 80s were more important than pro-market reforms of the 90s in driving India's growth surge.
And @jamesykwak's book "Economism" gives a good rundown of how pro-market economic theories were always a rather poor tool for advancing pro-business ideology.
I think people naturally trust big media outlets less when there are more small outlets (incl. Twitter accounts) to argue with them. Before, people naturally trusted the NYT because they didn't read 100 people shouting "The NYT sucks!" in response to every article.
I also think that in a highly fragmented, nationalized media marketplace, each outlet has an incentive to serve a narrow but loyal customer base, and that's probably going to make them less trustworthy to the people outside that narrow customer base.
Happily, this doesn't apply to Bloomberg nearly as much, because our terminal business insulates us to a large degree from the market incentive to cater to a narrow slice of society. (Yay my company! The most trusted name in news! Hehe)
2/China's rapid growth is not, by itself, a reason to think the Chinese model is superior to the American model.
After all, China is still much poorer than the U.S. It's a lot easier to grow fast from a low base -- just build a lot of stuff and copy foreign technology...
3/But in recent years, China has advanced to the technological frontier in many areas. That's something few middle-income countries are capable of doing.
For example, China is clearly in the top rank of nations when it comes to A.I. technology.