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2 Mar, 4 tweets, 2 min read
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CPAC was full of debunked election conspiracies, warnings about “cancel culture” and fealty to Donald Trump.

What it was missing was much in the way of policy ideas to raise wages, improve health care or support families.
This is the modern G.O.P.: a post-policy party obsessed with symbolic fights and uninterested in the actual work of governing.

But wouldn't Trump have won if McConnell had passed a final round of stimulus in the fall? Is abandoning governance actually working for Republicans?
I don't think so — it's bad for them, and worse for the country. But the GOP doesn't listen to me. Maybe they'll listen to @RameshPonnuru though: nytimes.com/2021/03/02/opi…
And full transcript here, if you're into that sort of thing: nytimes.com/2021/03/02/pod…

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More from @ezraklein

Ezra Klein Profile picture
2 Mar
I raged about this at the time but New York's early COVID response was poor. There were better governors and better state policies but the media is based in New York and NYC was a disaster so Cuomo's news conferences got media attention no other governor could touch.
Cuomo wasn't uniquely ahead-of-the-curve on COVID and so got lionized, and now is falling from grace. It was always a weird convergence of where the media was and where he was, and it overwhelmed the obvious, even then, fact that he wasn't the right protagonist for this story.
(And also Cuomo had a known national name, and a brother with a CNN show. That helped, too. )
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
2 Mar
Lots of good stuff in this @mattyglesias post on schools and COVID and worker power, but I want to highlight this section, as it gets to a broader problem in COVID response: slowboring.com/p/school-closu…
There's been a weird literalism in public health communication wherein policymakers ignore substitutions. If you close indoor gathering spaces, people go outdoors. But then some places closed outdoors spaces (beaches, parks) too, so people just gathered in homes!
You really see this with kids. We've gone through long periods with playgrounds and schools closed. But parents still need to work and toddlers will still light the house on fire if they don't get taken outside.
Read 8 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
28 Feb
In simulations, “getting people vaccinated sooner with a lower efficacy vaccine prevented many more Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths compared to waiting even just a month for a higher efficacy vaccine.” nytimes.com/2021/02/26/opi…
Right now, my preference is to get the J&J vaccine, because I’m young and (thankfully) healthy, and leave more doses of Pfizer/Moderna for more vulnerable folks. All the evidence suggests J&J is plenty for my needs. Zero hospitalizations or deaths in trials!
Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems to me there should be more messaging about how to approach vaccines from a social solidarity perspective, just as there was with masking/distancing. I don’t just want the best vaccine for me, I want the best vaccine for us.
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
26 Feb
You all know how I feel about the filibuster, but the parliamentarian was right to rule that minimum wage changes don't fit budget reconciliation rules. That's not what budget reconciliation is for. The answer here is to end the filibuster, not abuse other rules.
Not to get all Coen Brothers on this, but the coin has no say here, and nor does the parliamentarian. This is all a distraction. Every Senate rule can be changed with 51 votes. The issue isn't what the parliamentarian wants to do, but what Manchin, Sinema, etc, want to do.
As I wrote here, this weird dance around the rules is just cowardice, and it comes with real costs. nytimes.com/2021/02/04/opi…
Read 9 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
24 Feb
If you haven't read @CitizenCohn's interview with president Obama on the lessons of Obamacare yet, you should. huffpost.com/entry/obama-in…
"If you ask me what has contributed to the cynicism ― of government, and to some degree what contributed to the cynicism around the health care initiative ― it’s the fact that a small minority of people can put a halt to everything," says Obama.
One important, but less sexy, theme in there is that the mixture of endless partisan opposition and paralyzed institutions make it really hard to do iterative legislating. But we need to do that! There's got to be a feedback loop between implementation and tweaking.
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
24 Feb
I subscribe to — and enjoy! — @DavidAFrench's Dispatch newsletter. But I think he gets something consequential wrong in yesterday's edition, "Doubling down on the yeehaw."
The phrase refers to politicians distracting from governance failures by leaning into the culture war. The first example is the entire Republican leadership in Texas. It's a great example.
David's second example, though, is the San Francisco school renaming debacle, and it's built around my recent column on California. And here I think David errs. There's a huge difference between these examples.
Read 15 tweets

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