Putting COVID-relief aside for a moment, here are many things that I want in a mostly ideal world:
-Better housing, incl permanent housing
-Universal healthcare, w/ a strong publicly funded component*
-Heavy investment in K-12, as well as universal pre-K
-Free childcare b4 pre-K
-Increased food assistance
-Subsidized public transport
-Free college
-Student loan cancellation
-Literally any investment you have to make to mitigate climate change
-And a whole lot of other things
But we don't live in the mostly ideal world I would like us to live in, so we do have to make choices. I want college to be free or very, very cheap. But if money in this imperfect world were taken to make that possible at the expense of K-12, I would be unhappy.
I want, desperately, for us to be a society where we help people. I can see all the things we could do to help and I *want* those things, but I also see we can't wave our hands and make them a priority, so we have to compromise.
I have no idea why the Biden team chose to go w/ 50k student loan relief then to 10k. I wish they hadn't. But I'm also irritated by the number of people who claim to be progressive & act like they're personally harmed while doing nothing to advocate for K-12.
As a side note, I added an asterisk to my comment about the public role in healthcare. In an ideal world, I think Single Payer--~100% public--looks like the best system. But that's not the world we live in, so I prefer a hybrid system that provides universal care to all.
And trust me: if I was convinced MMT made sense as an economic theory and we could get support for it, I would be for printing all the money to make our society better in every domain
But I'm not convinced it makes sense & I know it wouldn't have support, so I'm a realist, here.
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These data are interesting and should be studied by Dems, w/ Latino politicians, academics, etc. taking the lead. I am not going to opine on why I think these shifts occurred, given I do not belong to one of the aforementioned groups. I will make a few other comments
1st, the visualizations are of shifts. Biden still won many of the areas in the article by a lot. The shift scale is from 10-30%. The shifts indicate changes in proportion from '16-'20. There's no way to tell if we're talking about primarily new voters, swing voters, or a mix
So, a few comments: after the election, based on the data I saw at the time, I said it was possible that the new Democratic weakness w/ Latinos was perhaps overstated by the media & very regionally specific (mostly S. FL). I think that was clearly incorrect.
I would say this website turns self-righteous hindsight bias into an art (& I would be correct) but at this point I don't even think a lot of folks who are aggressively engaging in such bias are applying it to memories that are factually correct.
I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but my personal recall of October is not that McConnell passed a bill that Pelosi turned down. I also recall that the 1.8 T deal was discussed between Mnuchin & Pelosi. & Trump lost interest at one point--entirely calling off stimulus talks altogether.
There are a lot of moving pieces here. The 1.8 T bill had a liability shield that Democrats found too much of a poison pill. There was also, of course, hope we would win the Senate and could get a better bill.
1. It's absolutely rage-inducing to see privileged GOP members of congress get the vaccine when they've downplayed the crisis + refused aid 2. continuity of gov makes sense* 3. politicians should get the vaccine to instill public trust
in terms of 2: continuity of government: of course Pelosi, the current occupant of the WH, Pence, Biden, & Harris should be prioritized. Why Lindsey Graham has a part in this group is understandably questionable, but it also makes logistical sense to just vaccinate them all
So, personally, I think broad government vaccination makes sense + I think it has some societal benefits beyond government continuity (addressing vaccine skepticism). At the same time, people have the right to be angry when they see COVID denialists getting vaccine-priority.
Okay, so I was prepared for all kinds of debates (some interesting; some not) about overall allocation rankings, but I was not prepared for controversy over the first in line: medical workers. I can't believe some aren't aware of the multiple logical arguments to support this.
I mean, there are a lot of reasons to vaccinate medical workers first, but a primary one is that we don't have enough doctors/nurses in the workforce to combat COVID even if they are all well. Hospital capacity ain't just about beds and ventilators.
remember April? When many states were spared, but the NE, esp. NYC, were just pummeled? remember how doctors and nurses bravely volunteered to travel to NY to help? How inspiring it was?
Well, that can't happen now b/c almost every state is experiencing capacity issues.
I don't think all progressives completely realize this, but they're unlikely to get someone better for their interests than Pelosi as Speaker. She is both personally quite progressive compared to the caucus as a whole, as well as politically effective.
I have no idea what the problem with Clyburn is other than that he's older. Is he bad at whipping votes? Does he shut down prog ideas? I haven't seen any of this. In the absence of actual criticism, I find something distasteful about arguing a Civil rights leader should step down
I have less strong feelings about Hoyer. I think he can be off in messaging (not aggressive enough). The Dem House caucus was held together quite effectively during the past 2 yrs, but how much this is attributable to Hoyer, I don't know.
Again, journalists could serve the public better in the next four years if they learned a bit more about about stuttering. Otherwise, we're in for a long haul of hyper-focus on minor errors that both drags down political discourse + further stigmatizes stuttering.
I know it's not *entirely* easy, but it does present a good challenge for journalists: how do you report on a politician who has atypical speech/language? We're used to hearing about errors from politicians, so how should this be different?
I think one simple rule might be to learn about stuttering patterns, which include word/name substitutions. Do you need to exhaustively report on each one of these instances? I don't think that you do.