The debt ceiling needs to go; Houston, we have a problem (with the liberal non-profit and activist worlds)

On October 18, the debt ceiling will be reached, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. If it is reached, the US will default on its bond payments for the first time in its history. Needless to say, that would be really bad. It is highly unlikely that will happen, but the odds are much greater than they should be, which is zero. What makes the situation all the more infuriating is that everyone agrees that defaulting would be awful and yet here we are.

The Republicans in the Senate are certainly at fault in part. They have refused to let Democrats pass a clean extension of the debt ceiling timeline and have insisted Democrats use reconciliation to pass it. That can be done and will most likely be what happens. Democrats are not without blame here, however. They could have included a debt ceiling extension in the stimulus they passed in March, but chose not to. They could have gotten it eliminated when it was raised under Trump several times, but chose not to. Mitch McConnell is terrible, but we knew that already. That does not absolve Democrats of their negligence and being so stupid as to think they could shame him into cooperating by appealing to his non-existent conscience. Anyone in Congress who thinks he has any ounce of shame or consistent principles beyond obtaining power needs to find a new line of work.

Democrats have been cowards on this. They are afraid of raising the debt ceiling on their own out of fear of being subject to Republican attack ads. It is beyond pathetic. Outside of DC, not a single person has any idea what the debt ceiling is. Only in DC do people vote on that issue and obsess over it. Of all the reasons Democrats might have to be worried about next year, how they vote on the debt ceiling is not even in the top trillion. I can count on no hands the number of people who have lost re-election because they voted to raise it.

This is not first time the debt ceiling has been a major problem. We came within an inch of defaulting in 2011. The last second raising resulted in the awful sequester, one of many reasons it was such a terrible episode. Republicans in Congress then were demanding cuts in federal spending for them to agree to raise the debt ceiling. That was a really bad precedent to set of using the country’s credit as a bargaining chip. Obama made a huge mistake of negotiating over it. He later realized that and rightly refused to negotiate on it again. Biden has done the same.

That is where a new twist comes in here. Unlike 2011, Republicans in Congress are not demanding any policy changes in exchange for their cooperation. They are simply refusing to cooperate at all. It just goes to show the huge evolution they have undergone since 2011. Today, they care about power and culture war fights, not substantive policy. In other words, if we default, it will not even be over substantive policy disagreements. It will be because one party could not care any less and the other has its head in the clouds and cannot get its act together. Again, I highly doubt we will default, but the fact that I am writing this is really not good.

Since Democrats can raise the debt ceiling via reconciliation, that is what they will almost certainly do even though they do not want to. If they are smart, they will not raise it, but get rid of it. What makes the debt ceiling so bad is both that breaching it will be catastrophic and that its existence brings no benefits. Literally nobody is made better off by having to periodically worry about whether we will default on our debt payments. The only substantive argument for having it, that it serves as a check on spending, has been disproven by experience over and over again. It serves no purpose and needs to go. We have plenty of things to worry about as a country. Whether we willfully destroy our credit rating should not be one of them.

The liberal non-profit and activist worlds need an intervention

Once again, the ACLU has embarrassed itself. This time, they edited a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the centrality of women being able to make the choice about whether to bear a child. What did they do? They took out the word “women” and replaced it with “people.” Editing a quote from someone is eyebrow raising on its own. But what they did strikes at a much deeper problem that the liberal non-profit and activist worlds have.

That problem is being out of touch with 99% of the population. Yes, in some liberal circles now, apparently, we cannot even mention the word women. We cannot say women because that excludes transgender men who give birth and non-binary people. See this article for some more detail. It has gotten to the point where some young activists have to be fed different talking points from what normal people are given because those given to normal people mention the word women.

Having this fight any time would be dumb, but right now is especially inopportune. Texas has now effectively banned almost all abortions. That is the battle that needs to be fought. It is a terrible law on so many levels. Fighting it, and other laws like it in other states, is not going to be easy. If you believe, as I do, that this is a vital fight that needs to be won, then it is incumbent upon you to try to reach as broad a coalition as possible. We will need all the support we can get.

As is quoted in the article I linked to, you have to ask what is it that you really want here? Do you want to be “inclusive” by using phrases nobody understands like “birthing people” and “menstruating persons” and risk alienating whole swaths of people or do you want to win? It will not be both. This is a serious problem on the part of the non-profit and activist left that is obsessed with language policing. It is prioritizing using the supposedly right language over substantive policies. Whether abortion is legal is a substantive policy. Whether we use phrases like “birthing people” is not. We need to keep our eye on the ball.

Mark my words, using those phrases appeals to approximately nobody. It will not gain the pro-choice movement any supporters they do not already have. Conversely, it could alienate many supporters and potential supporters. The benefits of it are zero while the costs are massive. If the only way to defeat laws against abortion was to use those phrases, even if they alienated some, I would be all for it, but it is not. A small group of younger people may understand and use those phrases, but almost all others will have no idea what you are talking about and will think you are from another planet. Let’s not do that, please. There is no guarantee the battles for abortion rights will be won, but it is guaranteed they will be lost if the pro-choice movement alienates everyone.

The problem with the use of those phrases is not the only major problem of the liberal non-profit and activist worlds inhabiting their own tiny bubble. I have written before about my concerns about Planned Parenthood and their embracing defunding the police. They were not the only left-wing group to jump on that suicide train. NARAL, one of the biggest abortion rights advocacy groups, did the same. So did NextGen, a group dedicated to fighting climate change. Many other groups did it as well despite that slogan being radioactive and having nothing to do with their missions.

Somehow, it has got to get into the heads of these groups and their leaders that they screwed up royally so they can avoid embracing the next unpopular fad, which will come soon enough. All of them embraced a horrible and unpopular idea having nothing to do with their missions. They all did it at more or less the same time. That tells me they all have a kind of hivemind. All of them have leadership that is not only extremely insular, but only knows people just like them. They have lost any connection to the world outside of their tiny bubble. That is problematic in any setting, but is especially so when these groups are involved in pushing substantive policies.

Pushing substantive policies necessarily means involvement in electoral politics. Involvement in electoral politics necessitates being connected to the real world. It is fine to have your own beliefs, including beliefs that may be to the left of what most people think. What is not fine is to think that your beliefs are shared by everyone else and that everybody lives just like you. The reality is, there are some things pushed by liberals that are popular and others that are not. Language policing is definitively in the latter group. Those in the liberal non-profit and activist worlds do not seem to get that at all. If those groups are going to be effective in fighting for the causes they claim to care about, that has got to change. They could do worse than simply reminding themselves who the median voter actually is (spoiler alert: not a 25 year old woke, socialist, liberal arts major living in a big east/west coast city).

The disconnect is a serious problem because it can prevent good people from winning elections (some Democrats needlessly lost in 2020 because of things like defund the police). Winning elections does not solve every problem in the world, but if you want to enact good policies and govern well, it is a must. If you cannot win elections, forget about getting anything done. If you believe, as I do, that our democracy is in danger and the Republican Party is a threat to it, then you should be trying to reach as many people as possible to prevent them from getting back power. That will not be an easy task. It should not be made harder by using language that alienates people and embracing toxically unpopular ideas.

What am I asking for here? For starters, just talk like a normal person. Normal people say “women,” not “birthing people.” Normal people do not call groups names they do not want to be called, like latinx or BIPOC. Normal people talk about substantive policies as being helpful to improving people’s lives, not as being “intersectional.” Talk to people in ways they will understand. If you cannot even do that, forget about everything else.

On substantive policies, stick with what is popular and avoid what is not. Some things that are popular include raising the minimum wage, infrastructure spending, expanding health insurance subsidies and Medicaid and Medicare. Stay away from unpopular things like abolishing private health insurance, banning fracking and throwing open the borders. Needless to say, do not advocate for defunding the police and do not call yourself a socialist.

Is it really either/or?

Why do we have to pick and choose? Can’t we talk about substantive policies and use “inclusive” language, too? If your interest is winning elections and governing, no. Electoral politics, particularly on the national level, requires assembling a fairly broad coalition of support. Things that alienate whole swaths of people while not bringing in others to offset that need to be avoided. As I said earlier, using “inclusive” language does not bring in anybody who is not already a supporter. Nobody who is on the fence about abortion is going to become pro-choice because someone said “birthing people.” Conversely, if the only association someone like that has with the pro-choice crowd is that they sound like space aliens, they are probably not going to be inclined to support that cause. That would be a real tragedy and completely unnecessary. Let’s not do that.

Another reason to avoid using that language is because it is purely cultural and has no substantive policies connected to it. Right now, Democrats are the ones who care about economics. Republicans do not care about it. The one thing that keeps them together is resentment of Democrats and the left. Their entire argument is that Democrats and the left are out to get them. The use of language policing is a very powerful tool that the left has needlessly given them to use. When the fight is over economics, Democrats have the edge. Many of their ideas are widely popular in red states (look at ballot initiatives raising the minimum wage and expanding Medicaid). Focusing on those issues gives Democrats a fighting chance in a whole lot of difficult places. The second the discussion turns to culture all bets are off. Unfortunately, culture beats economics because it animates way more people, does not involve tough tradeoffs and is easier to understand. Republicans want nothing more than to argue over culture because it gives them an advantage, particularly in the Senate where there are more solidly red states than blue states. They have made it clear that is their preferred terrain. When Democrats and the left focus on popular economic issues, they are counteracting that. When they fight culture war battles, they are saying “game on.” Pick your battles wisely.

What about those who are transgender men who give birth and non-binary?

Let me be clear that I do not begrudge anyone who is a part of those groups. People are entitled to identify as whatever they please. I have no problem with that. If that is what makes someone happy, more power to them. It would not surprise me if in the not-too-distant future such things become widely accepted and recognized. I do not think that would be bad at all.

Here is my problem: we are not there today. The liberal non-profit and activist worlds live in a bubble where we are, but in the world outside of that the idea of someone being non-binary is completely foreign. In fact, I have only known about people being non-binary for maybe two years and first heard about it from watching the show Billions. The idea of men having babies is even more foreign and sounds like science fiction. The problem with the tiny bubble that the liberal non-profit and activist worlds inhabit is that they do not realize that the rest of the world is not like them.

If the rest of the world gets there, it will be because of wider acceptance in pop culture and from more people knowing people who are like that, similar to what happened with gay rights. What will not happen is the world changes because politicians led the charge. That is never how cultures change, at least in democracies. Those who hope we get to that place will have to be patient and work with the huge majority of people who have no idea what things like non-binary are. Acting as if the world is already there and calling someone who reacts strangely to that a bigot is no way to win converts.

Getting to that world is a long-term project, if it happens at all. There are more immediate concerns right now. Fighting for abortion rights is one of them. Legislation can deal with things like abortion, healthcare, taxes, energy, infrastructure, etc. It cannot deal with attitudes.

Am I saying candidates should not discuss those who are non-binary or transgendered men who give birth? For now, yes. It is too new a concept for candidates and elected officials to get involved in. Their job is to focus on substantive, not cultural matters. The transgendered men who give birth and non-binary discussions are cultural. No substantive policies can address them. Unlike the fight over gay marriage, there are no laws preventing such people from getting married. They are also generally protected by anti-discrimination laws.

While I have nothing against those who are non-binary or transgendered men who give birth, those groups need to understand how unfamiliar they are to most people. They should not take it as some kind of insult that words like “women” are used and that people react to phrases like “menstruating persons” strangely. As I said, we may get to the point where those phrases are commonplace, but we are not there today. Those groups and their advocates need to realize that and understand that alienating whole swaths of people does nothing to advance any of the causes they care about.