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Megan McArdle Profile picture
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7 Oct, 5 tweets, 1 min read
Independent of any current political issues, this qualified defense of ethnic retail politics--or as we've now branded them, "identity politics"--is one of my favorite pieces I ever wrote, so I'm resurfacing it.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
tl;dr: Liberal proceduralism often ends up as IDpol for educated elites, and tends towards sclerosis. IDpol endures b/c it delivers respect, revenge for past discrimination, and even some kinds of public goods that LP struggles with--at the cost of corruption and slower growth.
Unmentioned in the piece, but implied: Roosevelt remains such a hero to Democrats because he and LBJ were the only Democratic presidents who successfully married these two warring strains within the party--and unlike LBJ, FDR chose a good war to join.
Obama tried to marry them, and initially seemed to succeed, but the union dissolved before he left office. Which is why the party has not just lost the WWC decisively, but seems to be in the process of losing much of the hispanic WC as well.
Or so I mote.

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More from @asymmetricinfo

Megan McArdle Profile picture
29 Sep
Sinema has to win re-election in Arizona. Sinema apparently does not think that she will win re-election in Arizona if she supports massive new social spending. Unclear why progressives think that they can resolve this fundamental structural problem by refusing to pass anything.
Perhaps Sinema's Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement is passing the massive social spending bill rather than passing nothing at all ... but as far as I can tell, *she* thinks her BATNA "passing nothing at all", and progressives don't seem to be doing much to change her mind.
Whereas it is obvious that the progressive BATNA on the BBB bill is "pass the infrastructure bill". As far as I can tell, they want to kill it purely as a matter of coalitional positioning: show people you're serious so they'll worry harder about you in the next negotiation.
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Megan McArdle Profile picture
23 Sep
This statistic is so bonkers wrong I cannot fathom how it could have made it past an elementary gut check, even if the gut belonged to an ardent Communist. (Rep Pramila Jayapal is not an ardent communist).
I mean, Rep Jayapal was born in India, surely she does not actually believe that on a consumption basis, America has more poor people, as a fraction of our population, than three out of the seven nations of the Indian subcontinent.
Or, for that matter, that poverty in America is worse than the majority of nations in central America, south America, and the Caribbean, whose citizens are piling up on our border.
Read 5 tweets
Megan McArdle Profile picture
21 Sep
All right, I'm too tired to read the Very Serious Book I was going to read, so instead, let me regale you with the story of Mom and the Incredible, Ever Expanding Pre-Dinner Buffet.
My mother is not like other mothers, when it comes to weddings. In general, I gather Moms have very strong opinions about dresses, and table settings, and guest lists, and flowers. A surprising number have bitter fights with their daughters over necklines and embroidery on SYTTD
This is Not My Mom.

It is so Not My Mom that when I said "Mom, do you have thoughts on wedding planning?" she looked blank and said "I don't know, your grandmother planned mine."
Read 27 tweets
Megan McArdle Profile picture
21 Sep
Also, true story: when we bought our house in 2010, banks were understandably tightening up on those documentation requirements. They were still, hilariously, willing to lend us approximately twice what I was willing to borrow, but you know, really well documented.
Anyhoo, we'd just gotten married. And part of our downpayment came from money that people had--much to my surprise!--given us in lieu of gifts.

The bank wanted proof that we were really married, and had just had a wedding. Which, fair.
(If you've never bought a house: banks want you to have a certain amount of $$$ in bank to cover mortgage + expenses following your purchase. They want you to actually have that money, not just borrow it from Mom for a few weeks to pad the account. Hence: proof, please!)
Read 19 tweets
Megan McArdle Profile picture
13 Sep
My hot take is that the problem isn't regulation, the problem is that seniors with dementia sometimes become a danger to themselves and others and no one wants to pay for the enormous staffing levels that would be required to care for them without sedation.
We would like to think that the problem is that we're just not cracking down on nursing homes hard enough to keep those greedy bastards from neglecting patients for fun and profit, or that Republicans just hate welfare spending, but actually it's just fantastically expensive.
Obviously there are terrible nursing home operators, because there are terrible people doing any profession you'd care to name, but mostly my sense is that they negotiate a huge gap between the lavish care we want them to provide, and the middling sums we want to spend on it.
Read 9 tweets
Megan McArdle Profile picture
27 Aug
If you went to a NYC private school--and I went to one of the ones quoted in this article--this quote is amazing. These schools are purpose-built machines for manufacturing and sustaining inequity.
It was a nice school. I'm glad I went. I learned more than even Penn classmates from some of the top-ranked public schools in the country. My teachers were excellent, the grounds were lovely, and I was shielded from people who otherwise might easily have persuaded me to drop out.
But if you want to fight the systems that create inequity, the board of the Brearley School is a peculiarly ineffective vantage from which to do so, unless the board's in the process of shutting school down, transferring the kids to PS 151, & donating the endowment to charity.
Read 6 tweets

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