Josh Barro Profile picture
31 Jan, 7 tweets, 2 min read
I am genuinely unsure how the efforts to make MTG the face of the GOP (sure to be heartily assisted by MTG) will play in the midterms.
Without getting into the relative *merits*, this is something the parties do a lot in campaigns — highlighting the most extreme and unappealing personalities on the other side — and I generally think it has less effect than you’d expect.
Like we heard this whole narrative about how AOC and messaging about defunding the police/bail reform was a huge problem in suburban New York. But then Biden significantly improved on Hillary’s margin and Dems gained seats in the state senate.
Obviously MTG is a crazy person and AOC is not. But anti-AOC messaging has a clear story about how AOC is supposed to affect *you*. For most persuadable or weakly-attached voters, the story about why it matters that MTG is a conspiracy theorist is one more step removed.
To be clear, I think this is a real problem: some of the most alarming aspects about Trump were essentially electorally irrelevant.
Sure. But she’ll barely be on any ballots. Can you convince people not to vote for other Republicans because of her, a backbencher?
(Also I think the main way MTG helped lose the GA senate races was by playing into conspiracy theories that suppressed GOP turnout...)

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More from @jbarro

1 Feb
Rather alarmingly, both Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang say they want to rely on converting newly-depressed hotel and office properties into housing as a key part of a housing strategy. Shouldn’t Plan A be to reboot the economy so those hotels and offices are busy again?
I don’t think conversions should be prohibited but those investments are based on a timeline of many years and I certainly hope we will be getting occupancy back up. Office and hotel uses are essential to our economy and our tax base.
Also a lot of office buildings don’t even work well as residential conversions because the footprints are too large. Yes, you can convert a hotel, but that doesn’t mean you should.
Read 4 tweets
31 Jan
“Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier” sounds like a pair of will-they-or-won’t-they characters leading a procedural show.
Ideally played by David Boreanaz and Mariska Hargitay.
Read 4 tweets
30 Jan
Are flowers cheaper because of the pandemic? Whole Foods is selling pretty nice bouquets for $5-10.
Also, 10 tulips for $6.30, or 24 roses for $19.99
People keep saying “no demand for weddings” and I’m sure that’s a key part of it but lots of flowers sort of go in the background in commercial settings — restaurants, offices, hotels — and I bet that’s way down too. Also fewer occasions for people to gift flowers.
Read 8 tweets
29 Jan
Elected officials should stop praising risky trades by ordinary investors as a good way to make money.
Deleted, but here it was:
See also here — a congressman! spreading the idea that They are trying to stop you from speculating on stocks because you might make too much money
Read 4 tweets
29 Jan
This is a fundamental misunderstanding, as @matt_levine explained a couple times in his newsletter last week. When the short interest grows, so necessarily does the long interest, because *two* investors are long any share that is sold short.
A higher short interest puts the short sellers at more risk, for sure, but there’s nothing special about the line where you go over 100% of the shares outstanding.
Adam wants to sell short, so he borrows a share from Bob to sell to Christine. Now Bob and Christine are both long the same share. When Bob is squeezed and has to exit his short position, maybe he buys from Christine. That still leaves Bob long.
Read 4 tweets
28 Jan
Whoa. Were we supposed to get Novavax data this soon?
Novavax says 15000 person UK trial showed 89+% effectiveness for its vaccine.
cnbc.com/2021/01/28/cov…
Worse results on a smaller sample in South Africa though. nytimes.com/2021/01/28/hea…
Read 4 tweets

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