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Biden’s Talents and His Achievements.

  By 2024, Biden, Elections, People

One reason I think Biden has been such a good president. He doesn’t get swept up in the last moment but thinks ahead. He did that in getting out of Afghanistan early. I know many of you disagree but I think his policy in the Israel-Gaza war has been setting the stage for a new push to a peaceful settlement. (If only an Israel government would arise willing to grasp that possibility!) And on domestic policy he has been just brilliant . The way he maneuvered Manchin into support the inflation reduction act was absolutely and totally masterful, not just as a matter of political strategy but in adopting a very different policy strategy that Manchin would accept. He challenged his policy people to figure out a way to attack climate change with tax credit carrots instead of regulatory sticks in the IRA. By doing that he won over Manchin.… Continue reading

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Eight reasons to stop Trump

  By 2024, Elections, Resisting Trump, Uncategorized

Is it really going to be hard to convince people leaning to our side to vote? Here are eight  lines of argument. 1. Tump’s threat to democracy. 2. Trump’s threat to abortion and other basic rights including to contraception. 3. Trump’s embrace of deep tax cuts for the rich. 4. Trump’s promise to repeal the ACA. 5. Trump’s threat to social security if he keeps deepening deficits through tax cuts. 6. Trump’s threat to student debt relief and Republican efforts to block of the student debt relief Biden promised. 7. Trump demanded that Republicans blocked their own immigration reform bill because Trump demanded it. 8. Trump’s threat to our climate and the earth as a whole. I know how deeply entrenched the Trump movement is and how insane the Republicans are. But it’s still  hard for me to believe that these 8 lines of argument aren’t enough to give Democrats… Continue reading

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No, Joe Biden is not demented. Not even close.

  By 2024, Elections

Next time you are in a conversation at a meeting, listen to how other people talk. Very few people talk in complete sentences and coherent paragraphs. Most of us start sentences, double back, often get a bit lost in the middle and then find our way to the end. We stumble over words. And our sentences don’t track in full paragraphs. Some of us, especially if we have had experience public speaking can do better. I can do pretty well most of the time, unless I’m a little tired and then it is really hard. Even Obama was not perfect much of the time. (You know who was perfect? Paul Warnke, the foreign policy specialist in the 70s and 80s. He spoke slowly and deliberately in complete paragraphs. And G.D.H. Cole, the British Socialist. That’s about the only two I’ve ever seen or heard who could do that.) Biden is… Continue reading

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Why it’s so hard to debate a gaslighting moron. And how to do it the right way.

  By 2024, Elections, Elections and Voting

Part I: Why it’s so hard to debate a gaslighting moron. I was on the debate team in high school. (I know, you are shocked!) And I was pretty successful in my first varsity year as a junior. I left high school so I never had a second year, but my former teammates were extremely successful that year. The hardest debates I had were not with the well prepared teams that made sensible, plausible arguments. I knew how to question and rebut them. Sometimes we couldn’t quite overcome them. Far more often we did. The really hard debates were the ones with teams who had no idea what they were doing. They would put forward a number of seemingly random, outlandish ideas backed not by reasons evidence but by absurd notions and false claims they pulled out of the air. Sometimes debaters who did this actually had a nice speaking… Continue reading

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Democrats: Stop the bedwetting. You aren’t helping.

  By 2024, Elections, Elections and Voting, Politics

Democrats: Stop the bedwetting. You aren’t helping. It was obviously from the beginning that Biden was not at his best. And I knew that it would freak Democrats out. Here is why. Middle class liberals really hate the fact of political disagreement. They believe that since they are intelligent and good-hearted, everyone should agree with them. And they are shocked and bewildered when they face strident disagreement. The first reaction is to deny it. So when, seven years ago, I first started to talk about Trump’s fascist appeal, most people thought I was hysterical. And then when strong disagreement continues, middle class liberals worry and lose confidence in themselves. And that happens even though poll after poll shows that on issue after issue the majority of people in this county are on our side. This is one of the reasons that Democrats in office are so reluctant to act on… Continue reading

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A missed opportunity, not a disaster; what the polls are showing about the debate.

  By 2024, Elections and Voting, Politics

Two post-debate poll results that allow for comparison to pre-debate polls. Almost no change compared to polls before the debate. Ipsos: Biden down 1.5; Trump up .4; Biden ahead by 2.8 Morning Consult: Biden up 1; Trump unchanged, Biden ahead by 1 Other post-debate polls show a very close race. No evidence that the debate cause a significant drop in Biden’s support. Data for progress Trump 48-Biden 45; no recent previous polls Survey USA Trump 45- Biden 43; no recent previous poll Polls do show most people think Trump won the debate whatever that means and more are worried about Biden’s age. But no sharp changes. Why didn’t the debate have more impact? 1. Biden’s age was already baked into the result. As I pointed out above, the real harm is that Biden didn’t do anything to change concerns about this age. But those concerns were not much greater and… Continue reading

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Would another candidate be stronger than Biden?

  By 2024, Elections and Voting

Data for Progress–a really good pollster I’ve worked with a few times in the past–has a new poll showing that no other Democratic candidate does any better against Trump than Biden. Two important notes: 1. The undecideds go up a both D and Trump drop a bit with other candidates. Many of the alternatives to Biden are not well known. So they would have a a greater opportunity to pick up more support among undecideds than Biden does. If Democrats chose someone I think is a really good candidate, like Gretchen Witmer, I think that as she became better known (and assuming no skeletons we don’t know about) she’d win by five points, despite the handicap of being a woman. (Most sexist aren’t voting for Democrats no matter what gender they are.) 2. Trump’s support is pretty static. He tops out at 48%. That suggests that those undecideds are not… Continue reading

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What Happens If Biden Steps Down

  By 2024, Elections, Politics

I mentioned in a previous post that whether it makes sense for Biden to withdraw depends on what we think the process of replacing him will look like and who the likely candidate would be. Here are my thoughts about that first part. To begin with, the only way the nomination is opened up is if luminaries like Obama and Clymer, along with Jill Biden can convince the president to withdraw. I think that’s unlikely. If that does happen, then there is going to be a wide open process involving 6 or 7 candidates that will likely involve some debate as well as many meetings with groups of delegates over a six to eight week period. I imagine that Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsome, and Gretchen Witmer will run. Josh Shapiro, Cory Booker, Amy Kobuchar and Elizabeth Warren may run as well. Who knows, maybe Bernie Sanders will jump… Continue reading

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A Point of Extreme Political Danger

  By Resisting Trump, Tump, US

I wrote this in 2019. “Trump is like a Bond villain. Totally over the top. Bent on world domination and the accumulation of riches without end because of a terrible psychic injury in childhood. Determined to dominate all the men and sleep with all the women around him because of the same injury. Utterly self-involved and untrustworthy. In other words, almost totally unbelievable. Except that it is real we are stuck with him for the foreseeable future.” I have seen no reason to change my mind except to say that, even though I understood Trump’s appeal in teh summer of 2016, I did not expect that his hold over the this country would be so impossible to shake. Trump is not by any means a political genius. His hold over half the country is a a product of the gruesome fit between his psychic flaws and the deep, long-standing flaws… Continue reading

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Statement on Child Tax Credit Expansion

  By Child Tax Credit, Penn Policy Center, Statement, US

STATEMENT on Child Tax Credit Expansion- Marc Stier. Executive Director, Pennsylvania Policy Center The House Ways and Means Committee today voted in favor of bi-partisan tax legislation that includes an expansion of the child tax credit along with the restoration of some expired business tax credits. The legislation is the product of negotiations between the Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Jason Smith (R-MO) and the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden (D-OR). This legislation would benefit 16 million children in low-income families, or 1 in 5 of children under 17, including 506,000 children in Pennsylvania. It would especially help Black, Latino, and Asian children, whose parents are overrepresented in low-paid jobs due to structural barriers to opportunity. In the first year, the expansion of the child tax credit would lift 400,000 children nationwide- and roughly 16,000 kids in Pennsylvania- out of poverty. Additionally, another 3… Continue reading