Even more reasons to read my newsletter

Sorry, I’m not ready to get off my soapbox just yet. In my last piece, I discussed what this blog is and is not and why you should read it. I’m going to do more of that here with a lot more shamelessness. Like in my last piece, I’m using “political writers” as shorthand for commentators, pundits, reporters and others, even if not all of them write.  

One thing I do better than most other political writers is stay grounded and keep things in perspective. My area of expertise is electoral politics and I make it my mission to not get sidetracked and distracted by things having little to no relevance to it. I spend plenty of time online and read all kinds of publications and political writers. I like doing that, but it’s easy to get carried away and fall into traps.

In the context of this year’s election, a tendency many political writers have is to overstate the importance of every last thing going on. When any event happens, no matter how small, it frequently gets talked about and reported on as if it will make or break a candidate. Every event is discussed as if it will help or hurt Trump or Biden. The boring reality is almost nothing that gets reported on and talked about regularly will have any effect.

I don’t like writing about the campus protests, but they have served a purpose in illustrating some bad habits political writers can fall victim to. Because they were a big news story, it was guaranteed they were going to be talked about in terms of their effect on the election in November. As I have said before, their effect will be zero and that simple insight is something this blog has to offer that most other political writers don’t.

The protests provided plenty of fodder for anyone who thought those protesting were angels or demons. What they also provided plenty of was viral videos and stories about protesters or counter protesters saying or doing something bad or stupid. That’s something you won’t find here. No matter what the subject is, you won’t find me citing any such video or story, especially one that tells me what I want to hear about anything or anyone I don’t like.

There are many problems with doing that, not the least of which is that they often turn out to be missing key context, selectively edited or fake. Even if they’re accurate, all they’re designed to do is make people angry. Many political writers thrive on that and dedicate their entire existence to riling up their readers/listeners/viewers to keep their attention. That’s not something I want to do.

To avoid falling into that trap, I remind myself of one significant fact. This is a big country. We have more than 330 million people. In a group that big, you can find some of everything. Social media amplifies the loudest voices and those are often the worst and the dumbest.

If you’re someone on the left and you want to scroll through social media to find an idiot on the right saying or doing something stupid or bad, it won’t be hard. The same goes for someone on the right looking for left-wing idiots. You can find a different person saying or doing something bad or stupid every minute if you want to.

The question isn’t do bad or dumb people exist. With 330 million people, at any given time a small percentage is going to be saying or doing something bad or stupid. Even if it’s only 1%, that’s more than 3 million people.

That’s not a cause for alarm, just the opposite. The vast majority of people are not like your favorite monsters. The question I ask myself when a political writer makes a bold claim based on a viral video or story is “So what?” Someone said or did something bad or stupid, but what does it prove beyond that? The answer is almost always nothing.¹

A tendency many political writers have is to find a viral video or story about someone they don’t like saying or doing something bad or stupid, go ballistic over it and extrapolate it onto the entire country. You won’t find that here. That’s the most unproductive thing to do if you actually care about the substantive matter at hand. But if your goal is to make people angry so they’ll give you more of their money and attention, then it makes sense. I don’t make any money from writing so you don’t have to worry about that here, at least not yet.

I don’t want to make readers angry. Being unsatisfied with or worried about things is inevitable and sometimes good, but it doesn’t always have to be like that. I try to write about progress that has been made, to celebrate the passage of legislation I think is good and to offer ideas for how to improve things. I try to write about solutions to problems and to give readers an idea of what the tradeoffs are.

Yes, I do plenty of scolding, too. When I do that it’s usually because someone on my side of the aisle is acting inconsistently with what they claim to believe. I don’t spare Republicans and the right any scathing criticism, but I’m less scolding of them than I am of Democrats and the left. That’s because my expectations of Republicans and the right are almost non-existent so I don’t get mad when they act inconsistently with what they claim to believe. Given that they’re in thrall to the world’s biggest carnival barker, it’s surprising when they don’t act that way.

Biden’s unpopularity and the false claims about it

All that may have seemed a little abstract, so let’s make it concrete. I find most of the writing on Trump’s unpopularity to be good. He’s been unpopular since he first showed up in 2015 and it’s no mystery as to why. He’s a terrible person, is under indictment and tried to overturn an election, among many other transgressions. With Biden, there are a few political writers I read and follow who I think do a good job of explaining his problems, but most others have a tendency to make it more complicated than it is.

A big mistake political writers make is over analyzing things. As I said earlier, very few things that get lots of attention from political writers are going to matter in November. Elections are simple affairs. They are usually determined by a few core factors and issues with everything else being noise.

In explaining Biden’s unpopularity, almost everyone acknowledges inflation as a culprit. Where many go wrong is in trying to give additional explanations. Biden has been plagued by inflation just like almost every incumbent leader around the world has been. That comparison matters a lot because it runs counter to other explanations for why Biden is unpopular.

It’s not uncommon to hear claims about him being too old. There was non-stop media coverage of his age in January and February, but since his state of the union address in March, the number of news stories about his age has plummeted. Make of that whatever you will, but if age is a dire issue for him, I don’t know why it suddenly stopped getting covered. Inflation certainly hasn’t stopped getting covered.

Anyone who thinks age is Biden’s big problem should take a look at some other world leaders. The UK’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is 44 and his approval rating is way worse than Biden’s. Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, is 52 and his approval rating is worse than Biden’s.

Biden is unpopular for the same reason almost all other incumbents are. Inflation has been a problem all over the world. Incumbent leaders and parties have been tossed out in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South America. Absent something crazy, that will happen this year in Canada and the UK.

What I try to avoid is becoming wedded to a narrative, especially one that is self-serving. That’s not to say I have no narrative, I do, although I struggle to articulate even to myself what it is. I’m definitely biased and have an agenda, but I’m not going to claim that Biden or any politician is struggling because they aren’t listening to me.

The inflation-as-the-cause of Biden’s problems story is very inconvenient for almost everyone’s narrative. Biden isn’t unpopular because he’s not pushing for someone’s personal preferences. “If only Biden would yell at a drag queen, punch a transgender athlete and throw a student protester out a window, then he’d win all 50 states in a landslide.” That’s only a slight exaggeration of what some political writers think. I can’t promise many things, but one thing I can promise is I won’t ever write something even 1% as dumb as that. That said, the key to Biden winning in November is to tell everyone to subscribe to my blog. If he does that, he’ll get 100% of the vote.

To be sure, inflation isn’t literally the only problem Biden has. The surge in border crossings hasn’t helped, but I’m skeptical of how big of a problem it is. I say that because those who cite immigration as the most important issue are mostly Republicans who were never going to vote for him. Immigration will matter in November, but not nearly as much as inflation.

Another error many political writers (but not economists) have made when talking about inflation is suggesting there was a way it could have been avoided. In their telling, if Biden hadn’t spent too much money in early 2021, inflation wouldn’t have been much of an issue and he would be in a great position now. As I wrote about some time ago, that idea is pure fantasy.

That’s another thing I have to offer. I don’t indulge in fantasy scenarios, especially when it concerns large scale macro issues. In dealing with a pandemic, there was no cost-free way to do it. There was no universe where we weren’t going to go through some pain. All things considered, I think the economic response to the pandemic from Congress and the Fed was outstanding.² Call me pro-establishment if you want, I’ll take that over braindead populism in a heartbeat.

We live in a world of tradeoffs. You can have good things, but you have to deal with the downsides, too. There is never going to be a scenario where everything is wonderful and perfect and everyone is 100% happy.

Am I saying Biden was going to take a hit no matter what he did? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. The biggest cause of his problems was preordained. Had he done everything perfectly with perfect foresight, inflation would probably be lower, but it still would have been much higher than what people had gotten used to. That’s very unsatisfactory, but that’s the reality of it.  

People hate inflation, but not that much

The issue of inflation presents another opportunity to do some shameless self-promotion. Tradeoffs are often messy and ugly with nothing but gray areas. There is not always an obvious right answer and even when there is, it’s not without costs. Most political writers don’t like talking about tradeoffs because it undermines their black-and-white, good-versus-evil narrative. Not me, I love diving headfirst into talking about tradeoffs.

Inflation is something most political writers aren’t terribly familiar with because economics is not their thing. It’s not my thing either, but I’m aware of it and a lot of them aren’t. I’m bragging, but it’s true.

When it comes to arguing over what caused the inflation surge in 2021-2022, that’s light years beyond my expertise. When it comes to arguing over how much of a role monetary policy played in bringing down inflation, I wrote about it last year, but I have no idea whose story is more right. I wrote about a possible reason for why inflation had come down without unemployment rising, which I thought was convincing, but I’m no authority on it.

What I can tell you about inflation is that, like everything else, it involves tradeoffs. People hate paying higher prices, but inflation doesn’t go down entirely on its own. Interest rates have risen substantially over the last 2 years and people absolutely hate it. People hate inflation, but they hate bringing it down, too.

We’ve been fortunate to not see unemployment rise, contrary to what most everyone seemed to think in 2022 and most of 2023. Still, higher interest rates have made borrowing more expensive while stalling out housing production, which people hate. Are there other ways to bring down inflation? Yes, and that’s the good news.

The bad news is people hate those things, too. Congress could cut spending and raise taxes now. What that would do is reduce overall spending because the federal government is a big spender in the economy. It would also reduce the amount of money in peoples’ pockets because they’d be paying more in taxes and so would have less to spend on goods and services. If you think there’s any chance in hell of Congress doing that, I have a degree from Trump University to sell you.

Another way to bring down inflation is to allow more immigrants in. Increasing immigration, for all the uproar it’s caused recently, has helped to keep job growth humming while inflation has gone down. More immigration would mean more workers producing more goods and services, which would reduce prices.

I think everyone is aware of what the politics of immigration are like right now. There is almost no support for increasing immigration. The focus has been, with some justification, entirely on security measures. Still, immigration is a way to reduce inflation while avoiding raising unemployment, but it’s not something people want now.

Trade is another way to reduce inflation, but the politics of pushing for more trade deals now are toxic. The world from 2001-2020 that was flooded with cheap goods from China is gone. Support for moving away from trade with China is bipartisan, but there’s no consensus on what should happen next and it’s unclear whether people will be willing to live with higher prices indefinitely. For now, there’s no uproar over protectionist measures.

Biden and Trump are both departures from the pre-2016 trade consensus. In the case of China, I think moving away from trade is good, but it should be done in an orderly fashion, i.e., not an all-out trade war. For allied countries, we should be trading even more with them, but there’s not much support for that right now in either party.

While Biden doesn’t prioritize reducing inflation, Trump is much worse. Biden is still (mostly) a believer in trade sans China. Trump is hostile to it all around. What are his plans for inflation? He wants to make it great again.

For starters, he wants to impose 10% tariffs on every good imported into the US. That’s in addition to 60% tariffs on all goods from China. On top of that, he wants to make the tax cuts he signed in 2017 permanent. Without offsetting it with spending cuts, it will mean higher inflation and interest rates.

That’s not even the worst of it. Trump and his transaction partners (he has no friends) are working on a plan to make the Fed more subject to presidential control. The good news is Trump is limited in what he could do. The bad news is even trying to subject the Fed to more presidential control will be a disaster for the US and global economy.

Central banks in other countries have been under political control and it hasn’t been pretty. A Fed that always kept interest rates low and created more money to finance spending by politicians could easily fuel an inflation surge. If something like that happens, we’ll be yearning for the days of 9% inflation.

All that should be disqualifying for Trump, but it’s not. If he loses, that won’t be why. Normal people don’t follow politics closely, if at all. Most probably don’t know what the Fed even is, let alone what it does. Would it be different if they knew that? Sure, and if I could breathe fire I’d be a dragon.

That’s another benefit of reading this blog. I’m not a normal person. I follow politics more closely than 99.9999999% of the population. Most political writers will acknowledge they aren’t normal when prodded, but probably will forget it right afterwards. It’s easy to forget that you don’t represent public opinion when you write about politics for a living, but you have to remember it. I say that in my head all the time, especially when venturing online.

Normal people have few defined views on policy matters. That’s especially true on complicated issues that aren’t intuitive and involve big tradeoffs. Lecturing someone who’s upset about inflation, but hates everything that could bring it down, about how they’re wrong won’t likely win them over, but they’re still wrong.

What many normal people are hoping for is a return to the 2019 economy, which is probably why Trump polls better on the economy. The problem is that world is gone and won’t come back no matter who wins in November. Maybe some political writers think it can come back, but I’m not one of them and I’m not going to sell anyone a bill of goods.

1. That’s on the rare occasion when I pay attention to any kind of viral video or story. Almost all the time I just ignore it. When I see a political writer post a video or story and go ape shit about it, it tells me to think less of them and give less weight to what they say in the future.

2. I would argue the CARES Act is the single best piece of economic legislation ever passed. I think the American Rescue Plan was good despite its critics and think Biden made the right call in going big. Jay Powell is on track to be the greatest central banker of all time and has crushed more iron laws of economics than anyone else. He’s brought down inflation while avoiding a recession, which almost everyone thought was impossible. He did all that in the face of relentless attacks from critics sitting on the sidelines with their fancy models talking about how the Fed was “behind the curve.”