Democratic donors dramatically over-invest in elections and grassroots organizing and under-invest in actually understanding how to use the massive and complicated government they are about to take over.
It's an unpopular hot take but maybe hiring a few people to think about how to use the Commerce Department with its authority to, oh I don't know, restructure the entire economy, is better than handing Amy McGrath another eleventy zillion dollars.
The Federal government is a $5 trillion behemoth. Maybe it's a good idea to know stuff about how to run it.
The net result of the obsessive focus on community organizing and grassroots to the exclusion of all else is that progressives win elections so that #biglaw corporate lawyers get to govern.
Let me put it another way. Progressives and Democrats completely whiffed on seeing that the pandemic was coming in February and in preparing a response. They let Mitch McConnell write the CARES Act.
Why? They under-invest in governing.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Trump’s narrow loss despite his massive governance failures show that what happened in 2016 wasn’t really about Hillary Clinton, but a deeper anger and mistrust towards Democrats.
The political problem for Democrats is that the GOP is now plotting to take the entire working class, and Dems kind of want them to take it.
The problem with Nate Silver's framework has never been the models, but that the whole enterprise of trying to predict elections just to predict elections is fundamentally useless.
Nate Silver uses his models to disguise an elitist pro-Wall Street ideology. Here's his strong pro-bailout rant in Feb 2009 titled "Give Geithner a Break." fivethirtyeight.com/features/give-…
Here's @NateSilver538 during the financial crisis in 2009.
1. "I’m sorry, but somewhere between 99.9% and 99.999999% of us are severely underqualified to be making policy recommendations on this issue." This is neither the time nor the place for mass movements..."
1. Let's get away from left-center debates and get to the two real Dem theories of social justice. (1) neoliberalism, or helping the individual with college education in a global corporate world (2) structuralism, which is downsize corporations so everyone has a bit of capital.
2. Both neoliberalism and structuralism have their cultures. One is very much McKinsey aristocracy philanthropy compliance oriented, the other is chip on your shoulder populist universalism. Think, Pete Buttigieg vs Thomas Frank.
3. The core of neoliberal political culture is to avoid talking about policy at all costs. Politics for neoliberals is only about what happens in elections, and to them there is simply no connection between government and elections. It's all messaging, narrative, left vs center.
This dissenting statement from @chopraftc is an incredibly clear and honest assessment of the catastrophic role the FTC has played in pharmaceutical prices via mergers. ftc.gov/system/files/d…
"The FTC’s record when it comes to reviewing pharmaceutical mergers suggests that the agency will simply never seek to block a merger."
Ouch.
"Virtually every market participant I have spoken to in this industry believes that there is simply no risk of the FTC blocking an unlawful pharmaceutical merger outright."
Basically, hand the building over to the National Gallery so the public gets something useful out of it.
So @ggreenwald@lhfang@mtracey@mtaibbi@davidsirota were skeptics of corporate power, surveillance, and Wall Street during the Bush and Obama eras. None of them like being hated but they don’t need to be liked. They are among the more curious free thinking writers out there.
I never really understood the establishment vehement hatred of criticism and being proved wrong. It’s unpleasant to be wrong of course but it’s how one learns.
Anyway I think it’s a fascinating time and both parties and most elite institutions are in flux. We missed big things like the pandemic and the public is unhappy. But I do think there’s real learning going on.
The Department of Justice Antitrust Division will be filing an antitrust suit today against Google. wsj.com/articles/justi…
Yesterday I noted that Biden will be much stronger than Obama on corporate power, in large part because the environment has changed.
To wit, the Republican Trump administration is trying to restructure a trillion dollar corporate giant. Truly extraordinary times.
Still waiting to read the Google complaint. The DOJ case is likely to be narrow, because that's what the DOJ lawyers could deliver in Barr's timeline. But there will be two more cases coming, both state AGs and both broader.