I really enjoy Substack’s chat feature! Today Matt Yglesias joined me for a wide-ranging discussion about politics, policy, technology, and other fun stuff. We didn’t do Q&A, but next time we will!
Here were my key takeaways from the chat:
Electric technology (batteries and motors and some other stuff) is incredibly important, and will eventually take over. But almost no one in America seems to realize how important it is. Fortunately, I think I have fully electric-pilled Matt.
As a result of no one realizing how important it is, our politics around this technology are very stupid. American conservatives have decided to make opposition to this technology a culture-war issue, while progressives view it only through the lens of climate and often allow their NIMBY instincts to prevail.
Back in 2021-22, I thought that the Biden administration’s focus on climate was good because it would persuade progressives to support industrial policies for electric technology. In the short term I was right, but in the long term Matt was probably right to be somewhat skeptical of this approach. It helped cement conservative opposition to the technology, because painting everything in terms of climate instead of in terms of economic growth, American power, abundance, etc. made it feel to many people like a culture war issue instead of an economic one. (Of course climate change is also an economic issue, but most people don’t see it that way.)
Elon Musk has been trying to sell the right wing on electric technology, but he has so far failed to make inroads, much as Trump failed to sell the right on vaccines.
Matt and I agree that America’s complacency toward Chinese competition stems from a certain inward-looking arrogance; Americans think our country is the whole world, and that our domestic market is all we need.
Matt and I both came of age during the fight against the George W. Bush administration, and we had lots to say about the parallels and the differences between that era and this one.
I pointed out that whereas the Boomer generation got their happy hippie “peace and love” anti-war movement at the same time that they got leftist rage and riots, we Millennials got these two things at different times. In the 2000s and early 2010s we got the anti-Iraq War and gay marriage crusades — peace and love. But in the mid to late 2010s we finished our peace and love arc, and we got riots and angry leftist extremism. This made it hard to find something positive and constructive to get enthused about in the late 2010s.
Matt pointed out that the gay marriage battle was won so quickly that the center-left and far left didn’t have much time to actually learn to cooperate.
Matt and I both lament the fact that Barack Obama’s presidency was judged more on his race than on his actual ideology. Obama was a basically conservative Black guy who could have convinced conservatives that Black American leaders are essentially bourgeois and sort of conservative. Instead, they freaked out, over-interpreting Obama’s offhand comments to paint him as some sort of radical Black-nationalist. And this caused the left to veer toward racial pessimism, fueling an appetite for very negative views of America itself among progressives.
I argue that although America’s racial discussion has gotten very toxic and bad, we’re sort of moving toward a new paradigm where White people are just another minority group. That could ultimately facilitate the development of an inclusive, overarching American national identity that goes beyond race.
I also think that the backlash against wokeness is overdone, and the changes in national identity and representation that it engendered could ultimately help create a post-racial American identity — as could the Trump administration’s efforts to sue on behalf of White people under the Civil Rights Act.
Matt sees a parallel to religious issues. He says that in his youth, he didn’t think Christianity deserved the same protections as other religions did, but now, seeing that Christianity has become a minority religion, he has changed his mind and thinks it does deserve the same consideration as Orthodox Judaism, Islam, or any other religious minority.
Matt and I agree that everyone should read Richard Alba on race. It’ll make you more of a racial optimist!
The discussion then shifts to politics, and the woes of the Democratic party, which is still far less popular and effective than it ought to be.
Matt thinks Democrats focus too much on the identity of their candidates, and that they’re just sitting there waiting for a charismatic Obama-like savior figure with the right identity background. He thinks that paradoxically, many Dems are now too afraid of running women and minorities, because they managed to convince themselves that Kamala Harris lost because of her race and gender.
I point out that in the Bush years, Democrats managed to capitalize on Bush’s many failures — civil liberties violations, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and the financial crisis — to retake power in 2006 and 2008 and to build a modern progressive movement while doing it. Now that Trump is screwing things up — tariffs, the debt, the quasi-alliance with Russia, and so on — Dems should be able to do something similar. And yet this time they seem mired in self-doubt and internal disputes, while nationally their popularity is totally in the gutter. Why? (I don’t think we ever arrive at a completely satisfying answer to this question.)
Matt thinks that in the 2000s, Democrats still had a lot of popular cred from Bill Clinton’s popularity, and from the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000. Right now, a lot of Americans have a sour memory of Democrats from the Biden administration, which makes it harder for Dems to win back credibility with the American public.
I bring up George W. Bush’s defeat of John Kerry in 2004, which included a popular vote victory. Matt thinks Kerry did better than economic fundamentals would have predicted, and that Kerry was a good candidate. But in any case, I remain optimistic that Trump’s 2024 mandate can be reversed like Bush’s 2004 mandate was.
Matt argues that deficits are going to be a big issue, and that Democrats need to get themselves back into Bill Clinton-style deficit-cutting mode, and that this will be very difficult after a decade and a half of fiscal profligacy. I agree, but I think the pivot will be aided by Americans’ natural aversion to the idea of deficits.
I argue that Biden’s industrial policies were good, and not actually very expensive, and that we should therefore preserve industrial policy even as we do austerity overall. Matt counters that everyone in the Democratic party thinks that their particular issues are of great importance, and that it’s someone else’s priorities that need to be cut.
I point out that the way Dems could get away with the “expand everything” strategy in the past was that economic conditions allowed it. The New Deal enjoyed a massive capacity overhang due to the Depression, while postwar liberalism and 90s/00s liberalism benefitted from productivity booms. Right now we are suffering from inflation, which makes the macroeconomics of typical Democratic governance a lot harder.
Matt points out that Democrats lack a strong leader who can simply tell the party which policies to prioritize. This is in contrast to the Republicans, who do have a (very) dominant leader who has chosen to spend his political capital on personal corruption and weird stuff like cozying up to Russia, while letting deficits explode and letting American technology flounder.
Matt thinks that this is a great time for “idea entrepreneurs” in the Democratic party to get their ideas out there and help define the upcoming battle against Trumpism.
Matt and I discuss whether the donor class or the staffer class has more real power within the Democratic party. Matt thinks it’s the donors who ultimately win.
I ask Matt whether Democrats still think that they’re the country’s true majority party. He answers that they’re beginning to realize that they’re not, and that right now what we’re seeing is “the bargaining stage of grief”, as Dems are forced to abandon their illusions and begin rebuilding and fighting back.
Anyway, this was a great chat! We plan to do more of these in the future, and maybe get some other writers involved as well. Happy Memorial Day!
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