A Message from the New Democrats

A conversation with the New Democrats.

To all the people who have lost their homes in California, we are sorry fires keep breaking out on federal land. We have not restored the Forest Service budget since 2017.

But you must understand, as part of our master strategy, we need to compromise with the Republicans to move things through. In the long term, this will end up being better for all Americans because… well… compromise is the highest virtue of society.

We must get along with our neighbors no matter who they are. Being friendly with others is the most paramount value.

Oh, your dog died after your house was engulfed by a forest fire? I’m truly sorry, but there’s nothing we can do about it.

Your dog gave his life for his country. We are working towards a better society for all, you must understand this.

What better society? Well, you see, as part of our negotiation tactic we cannot show our hand. We need to keep our cards close as we are part of very complicated negotiations which are absolutely necessary in order to maintain control of government for the future. We cannot tell you our entire strategy, because that would make us look weak.

Hold on, I’m getting a call from the Kremlin, they are saying that if we put boots on the ground in Ukraine they are going to bomb New York. Let me just apologize to the Ukrainians that while their grandmothers are being raped and killed by the Russians that we just can’t prevent it and they are a sacrifice as part of our greater plan towards Unity.

Unity is the paramount value of the Southern Democratic Party. The tall blade of grass is the first to get mowed, so don’t stand out.

Damn, hold on, I just saw on the news that every Democrat who lost their seat in the midterms in 2022 was a member of our caucus, regardless of the political swing of the district. Why won’t you just accept we are right?

Fuck, Elizabeth Warren keeps calling us to restore funding for the Forest Service, she is so annoying, hold on.

Yes, Senator McConnell? Oh yeah, sure, we can scrap the funding for post natal care from the funding bill, yes we do believe you,  you won’t filibuster it now? Great. I’ll call Senator Manchin and tell him to kill that welfare money. See you at the golf club on Saturday.

Sorry, where were we? We need you to accept on faith that we know what we are doing and things will work out. Trust us. The election is in a few months and we will definitely win this election.

*A few months later*

Trump wins a plurality of the popular vote.

You fucking progressives didn’t vote for us again? You are traitors to the party, and you might as well be… oh wait, hold on, I’m getting a call from my staffer.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY HIGHEST VOTE TURNOUT WAS FROM THOSE FUCKING COMMIES! Where are the middle class white suburbanite families?! You mean they swung to Trump? What happened with college students? Oh right, they still voted for us overall, but at a lower amount. Ok, people who grew up under Comrade Obama still vote Democrat, damn. What about people who grew up under my good friend Bill? They voted Republican!? What is it, the Defense of Marriage Act, Rwanda Genocide, or deregulation of Wall Street? Fuck. Who kept their seats?

Fuck, AOC is still in Congress. We won in West Virginia, right? God dammit, we lost West Virginia. Arizona? Oh, we have that socialist Gallego in there now. Both Manchin and Sinema are gone, damn, I liked them. Gallego is going to be such a pain in the ass.

Our numbers are thinning, Trump won the election, our most reasonable Senators are gone, and Trump has a trifecta.

It looks like our strategy failed.

 

It’s time for a change. Vote progressive.

Trump’s keys

Trump will be reinaugurated in 9 days, and there are already telling signs of what the Republican nominee’s keys might look like in 2028.

It is unlikely Republicans will have a lot of keys in 2028, no matter who is on the ballot.

 

Year Party mandate No primary contest Incumbent seeking re-election No third party Strong short-term economy perception Strong long-term economy perception Major policy change No social unrest No scandal No foreign or military failure Major foreign or military success Charismatic incumbent Uncharismatic challenger False keys
2024 False True False True False False False True True False False False True 8
2028 TBD in 2026 Likely False False unknown False False unknown False False False False False unknown at least 8

Trump is going to have a lot of false keys. The only way an incumbent could seek re-election is if JD Vance becomes president at some point during Trump’s second term. I think it is highly unlikely Trump will have a strong economy after his performance his first term. This will lead to social unrest and his handling of problems will generate at least one scandal. I don’t think he has the ability to create a solution in Israel, Palestine, or Ukraine, so there will not be any major foreign policy or military successes due to him, though there will likely be at least one failure.

Neither Trump nor JD Vance are charismatic.

It will be challenging for Republicans to win in 2028.

I’m also modifying the keys slightly to not be actual economic indicators but the perception of the economy. If more people perceive the economy is doing poorly, this matters more than actual economic performance. When we flip these keys for Harris in 2024 to what people perceived, do not give her a key for a non-existent foreign policy success, and BBB did not make any major permanent changes to US code aside from a lot of pork barrel spending, I realize she had 8 false keys.

The Republican media operation to make people perceive the economy as doing poorly combined with the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the support of the Republican party was successful in terms of getting Trump back into office.

It has never mattered before economic perception vs. reality because in the past they have been aligned strongly, but in our highly fractious media environment, and with social media spreading nonsense regularly, many people are not exposed to real data anymore and this is reflected in their extremist politics. This was not an issue when people read actual newspapers. But now it is.

So if Trump gets his way and we have the Trump tariffs during his presidency this will cause him to flip two keys to false immediately and permanently. He will not repeal his tariffs once they are in place. This will cause the economy to stutter.

The best we can hope for is Trump puts his tariffs in place this year, this burns up his political capital preventing him from doing further legislative damage. The impact on the economy will be severely negative, leading to his struggle to get anything else done.

I doubt the Republicans will win in 2028, unless if Democrats run a New Democrat, in which it will be a tossup.

Doubt me? Remember President Gore, President Kerry, and President Hillary Clinton?

Biden’s legacy

In 10 days Biden’s legacy will be cemented and Donald Trump will again be President of the United States. Trump will in his second term be the same as he was in his first, mostly ineffective, but bent on the goal of dismantling every piece of progress from his predecessor’s administration.

Legislative achievements, Domestic policy

Biden’s legislative achievements are far less impressive than those of Barack Obama, but there are some important laws in their own right.

The Inflation Reduction Act and American Rescue Plan are on par with the stimulus package President Obama signed in 2009. They are also on par with the 5 Cornoovirus Relief Acts Trump signed in 2020. They provided immediate temporary relief to a struggling economy, but they did not fundamentally change any laws for the long term.

President Biden signed Juneteenth into law and signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. He codified gay marriage. These are his signature legacies in social policy.

No major economic laws were signed which significantly changed regulation, and no new major programs were created, though many were proposed.

In terms of legislative accomplishments, nothing has changed from when I made my ranking in 2022. He was good on domestic policy, but not revolutionary.

Foreign policy

His foreign policy has been defined by three crises which I believe are connected.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan was supposed to be a success and we were told the Taliban would not lead to power. Either the administration was deeply misinformed or the President lied. The way we continued the withdrawal even when it was obvious Afghanistan was under attack with us leaving was a disaster. This was a continuation of Trump’s policy.

6 months later, Russia intensified its invasion of Ukraine. We have provided aid, though with significant strings attached. The restrictions have prevented Ukraine from winning the war and have increased costs in human lives. We only diverted from the Clinton/Bush/Obama/Trump policy of avoidance of supporting Ukraine fully until after the election.

The War in Gaza has no clearly defined end state. President Biden proposed a ceasefire which the Israeli government refused without any counter-proposal. There is no peace plan for Israel today. There is no clearly defined end state when the war will end. Biden has failed to bring peace to the Middle East. Not just that but his sending of American weapons has led to the largest escalation of death in Israel and Palestine since the Nakba in 1948. It has been a total failure. We continue Trump’s policy of completely supporting Netanyahu’s premiership and we likely will until he is dead.

The only success has been the deposition of Assad, which is undeniably the only good foreign policy accomplishment while Biden has been President. We have increased aid to Ukraine and removed some strings. Russia has had to readjust its military aid to the Assad regime, so Syria won.

1/4, a 25% success score. Failure.

Executive actions and appointments

There were very few executive actions to mention. The big ticket proposals which his base supported by and large were not signed into law. They will all be repealed by Donald Trump, so they are not worth mentioning.

His appointments to the courts have been superb, and appointing Lina Khan to the FTC is a win for the middle class.

Unfortunately, if we wanted a Democratic majority in the Supreme Court we needed to win in 2016 or the 2014 Senate election, but we lost both. There are only 3 liberals on the Supreme Court today, and it will not flip until Clarence Thomas, Alito, and Roberts are all replaced as long they are replaced by Democrats. So if we control the Presidency consistently from 2029 to 2050 there is a small chance we might see a liberal Supreme Court again.

Or we could see more resignations like we saw from Anthony Kennedy which can push the timeline even further in the future.

If Clinton had won in 2016 we would have had a liberal Supreme Court.

Short of an expansion of the Supreme Court or impeaching a current conservative justice, there is no realistic chance there will be a liberal court for the next quarter century. The courts have been fully captured by the Republican Party.

But her emails…

The Elephant in the room

The biggest issue with Biden’s presidential legacy is how he will be succeeded by Donald Trump in 10 days. Over the last 4 years, Biden has failed to convince the American people that Democratic government is significantly better than Republicans, leading to yet another Republican trifecta in 10 days.

He harassed his friends and coddled his adversaries. Americans now need visas to travel to the Schengen Area and the United Kingdom. Biden’s utter incompetence at diplomacy has built more walls than Donald Trump has seriously proposed.

In 2021 Biden had the opportunity of a lifetime to show that he stood with the American people, our allies, and human rights. Instead, he has shown that legal restrictions on military aid do not matter. He has shown that the reality on the ground with military engagement does not trump the statements in unratified treaties. While Israel can do basically whatever with the weapons we give them, Ukraine has onerous restrictions well beyond the law. The double standard is staggering.

The economic impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine cannot be overstated. Shutting down food exports from Ukraine sent global food prices spiraling, while sanctions on Russia sent the global price of oil and gas through the roof. The sanctions have been working, albeit much slower than most would like. This stage of the war has now lasted for three years. For comparison, the Invasion of Sicily which was the straw that broke the camel’s back in World War II happened only two years before Hitler killed himself in a bunker. The Invasion of Ukraine could have and should have been won by now. That will prove to be Biden’s most enduring legacy.

His legislative achievements have been modest, with nothing revolutionary.

None of his executive actions will last.

The fundamental problem of the Biden presidency is that after the rife unbridled corruption of the First Trump Presidency, which was in many ways a continuation of the Presidency of George W. Bush which climaxed with increasing visa restrictions around the world and the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression, enough Americans are somehow still convinced that a Republican presidency will do a better job than the Democrats.

The messaging from the administration has been so poor that many Americans truly believe the economy is doing poorly even though on almost every metric except the price of housing the economy is doing extraordinarily well, especially compared with our international peers. We have the strongest major economy in the world today, yet many Americans believe our economy is doing poorly. We are in a weird situation where people know they are doing well but believe the economy is poor overall.

His foreign policy has been one failure after another with no major successes. Ukraine is still fighting for their lives and there is no realistic path to peace in the Middle East. The only solution for Israel and Palestine is to pull out at this point. They are not interested in peace.

In 50 years Biden will be a mostly forgotten presidency. No major laws to remember him by, and he will not be the oldest president ever, with no major accomplishments to his name. I doubt he will get a section in history books to himself. He is not a bad man, but as president, he has been average overall.

One of the most fundamental parts of being a politician is to convince people that you provide real answers to problems without creating more problems, at least more than your opponent. On this front, Biden has utterly failed. This is only the second time a Republican has won a plurality of the popular vote in the last 35 years.

To put this in perspective, Bill Clinton deregulated Wall Street, sold off Amtrak, stood by as Rwanda had a genocide, criminalized gay marriage, and even still more Americans voted for Al Gore than George W. Bush.

Joe Biden couldn’t even manage that.

2024 is the first time a Republican has won the popular vote following a Democratic President since 1980.

Like Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden was primarily brought down by foreign policy. Jimmy Carter failed to resolve the hostage crisis. Joe Biden failed to end the War in Ukraine and bring peace to the Middle East. Jimmy Carter managed to administer the Camp David Accords. Joe Biden couldn’t manage that.

The biggest and most enduring legacy of Joe Biden will always be the second Presidency of Donald Trump.

In his own words

There many immortal quotes by Presidents which reverberate over time and define their legacy. The most famous are of course Kennedy’s speech about the moon, Roosevelt’s declaring the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, or Lincoln’s immortal Gettysburg Address.

When it comes to Biden when looking at his moderate legislative accomplishments and his foreign policy, no one can summarize the Biden Presidency more accurately than Joe Biden himself.

Nothing will fundamentally change.

He was preceded by Trump and he will be succeeded by Trump. We have had no major changes from the foreign policy of Trump’s first term. The expansion of visas globally has accelerated under Biden’s time in office. The major civil rights victories of the last 50 years were all under Obama’s presidency. We had a Republican Supreme Court entering this century, and we still do 25 years later. There is no sign of peace in the Middle East, the War in Ukraine still rages.

This is Joe Biden’s legacy.

Promises made. Promises kept.

It doesn’t really matter if its causation

Sure… there may be a clear correlation between people who throw their money solely into annuities and bonds going bankrupt, but are we sure it is causal?

Sure… GDP per capita, long life expectancy, democracy, low corruption, and high press freedom are highly correlated, but how do you know it is causal?

Sure… vaccinated people have fewer instances of catching disease, spreading disease when they get sick, and have less severe symptoms, but how are we certain it is causal?

Correlation doesn’t equal causation! Sciencism is anti-human!

All of this is absolute nonsense.

We have no alternative universe to test gravity. How do we know gravity exists?

First of all, people never say correlation doesn’t equal causation about things they believe in, only things they doubt.

Second, it is the most annoying phrase in the English language.

Third, it doesn’t really matter.

There are multiple ways scientists use to find information. Sometimes scientists can do double blind experiments, setup identical situations in two Petri dishes, and change one variable and see how the bacteria react to one change. This gives very precise information and is great when it can be done. But most fields don’t have the ability to have granular control like microbiology.

The obvious problem is in practically all of physics. You can’t create a parallel universe. So you cannot create two situations with and without fundamental forces of the universe to test how they impact things the same way a microbiologist can test the impact of various environmental factors in infections.

Fortunately, there are other ways to run experiments that show very clearly that things are related with enough certainty to determine that yes, there probably is a causation between sex and babies.

Statistics does a pretty good job of controlling for variables in large datasets to the point where only a fool would deny the findings of science.

If there is an alert that a heating pad in my house is known to malfunction and create a house fire, I’m not going to snarkily say “correlation doesn’t equal causation” and continue to use it… I’m going to throw the damn thing in the trash.

So yeah, while it’s nice to know causation when we see instances of clear trends it’s really not worth it to say “You haven’t proven causation so you have nothing”. Maybe you want to try running the analysis again while putting in more variables, but ultimately if someone shows that using a website correlates with your credit card number showing up on the black market, maybe instead of saying “you haven’t proven it” you should just get off it and use a more reputable website, even if they haven’t exposed the actual emails from the website to the black market.

It’s nice when we can definitively say one action causes another action, but ultimately, it’s not necessary to create a parallel universe to know that magnetism exists.

Trump’s second foreign policy

Let’s compare Marco Rubio’s positions vs those of Joe Biden

Issue Biden/Blinken Trump/Rubio
Israel Unconditional support Unconditional support
Ukraine Restrictions on aid that can be used Restrictions on aid
Visa policy Restrictive Restrictive
Europe Ambivalent Ambivalent

There are large and important differences between Biden and Trump regarding domestic policy, and we have seen this in his polices.

Nothing fundamentally changed when Biden was elected regarding foreign policy, and there is reason to believe nothing will fundamentally change, at least when it comes to foreign policy.

Recipe for success

Since finishing my degree in the field, I’ve spent the last ten years of my life poring over political economic data. I’ve read many books, but most importantly, I’ve pored over large datasets and come to some conclusions.

Press freedom, democracy, corruption, income, inequality, life expectancy, education levels, and visa restrictions are closely connected.

If you are in a country that is already high-income and free, defend your extant institutions and support further crackdowns on corruption. You probably have a fairly open visa policy, or you are Anglo.

However, if you are in a country that is low-income, undemocratic, and poorly educated, where do you begin?

Start with democracy. This is what we find in Latin America and Eastern Europe, the most successful development stories in the world today. Increase press freedom and crack down on corruption.

Once you have democratic institutions that are responsive to your citizens, you can boost your economy by keeping children in school through high school. Every additional year in school increases lifetime earnings exponentially.

While increasing the quantity of education youth receive, crack down on corrupt institutions that keep people in poverty. Enable everyone access to a diverse market economy.

That’s the order of operations.

Transitioning to a high-income economy is impossible without first increasing the mean years of schooling. There is a clear logarithmic relationship between mean years of schooling and GDP per capita.

However, with a well-educated workforce, you also need to crack down on corruption for ordinary people to have access to legal institutions that allow them to build wealth.

With more wealth comes longer life expectancies.

This is how countries can transition to high-income democracies.

Relevance to current events

Georgia and Ukraine are doing exactly what they need to do to continue the path they have been on for the last twenty years. Georgia needs to overthrow its Georgian Nightmare, and Ukraine needs to be able to send the Russian Army back into Russia. They will not develop further if they fail in this goal first.

Other countries around the world should follow their example. But it cannot start from outside. It must start from within.

If foreign armies or paramilitaries are invading a country, it is good to support them, such as how the United States has supported Afghanistan and Ukraine. While we can protect allies from external threats, and we should, we cannot determine how they develop their internal mechanisms.

Once they have established a democracy, build up education, and grow their economies to build strong societies.

Three terms in a row

Shower thoughts… how many times has a single party held the presidency for at least three terms in a row?

  • Reagan – Bush: 1981-1993
  • Roosevelt – Truman: 1933-1953
  • Harding – Coolidge – Hoover: 1921-1933
  • McKinley – Roosevelt – Taft: 1897-1913
  • Lincoln – Johnson – Grant – Hayes – Garfield – Arthur: 1861-1885
  • Jefferson – Madison – Monroe – Adams – Jackson – Van Buren: 1801-1841

It has been 36 years since the presidency stayed in the hands of one party after two terms.

This, however, gets more interesting when we consider that Bush and Trump lost the popular vote in their first elections, meaning we can add the following for times when a party has won the popular vote three times in a row:

  • Obama – Clinton – Biden: 2009-2025
  • Clinton – Gore: 1993 – 2005
  • Cleveland: 1885-1897
  • Lincoln – Johnson – Grant: 1861 – 1877

We must also break up the Lincon – Arthur streak because Hayes lost the popular vote.

The 2016, 2000, and 1892 elections are interesting for two reasons. First, the popular vote winner did not win the Electoral College. Second, they formed three times where a party won a plurality of the vote three times in a row but did not have the presidency for three terms.

How many times has a party won the popular vote three times?

Not all pluralities are majorities. A majority is when a candidate wins at least 50% of outstanding votes, while a plurality is when a candidate wins the most votes.

There have been nine popular vote plurality streaks lasting at least 12 years in US history:

  • 1828 – 1832: Jackson-Van Buren, Democrats
  • 1860-1872: Lincoln – Grant
  • 1884-1892: Cleveland
  • 1896 – 1908: McKinley – Roosevelt – Taft
  • 1920 – 1928: Harding – Coolidge – Hoover
  • 1932 – 1948: Roosevelt – Truman
  • 1980-1988: Reagan – Bush
  • 1992 – 2000: Clinton – Gore
  • 2008 – 2020: Obama – Clinton – Biden

There have been six popular vote majority streaks lasting at least 12 years in US history:

  • 1828 – 1832: Jackson-Van Buren, Democrats
  • 1864 – 1872: Lincoln – Grant
  • 1896 – 1908: McKinley – Roosevelt – Taft
  • 1920 – 1928: Harding – Coolidge – Hoover
  • 1932 – 1944: Roosevelt
  • 1980-1988: Reagan – Bush

Hillary Clinton in 2016, Bill Clinton in 1996, Harry Truman in 1948, Grover Cleveland in 1884, and Abraham Lincoln in 1860 all failed to win a majority of the popular vote.

It has been a long time since a political party has won a majority of the popular vote for the presidency three times in a row.

Determinants of Freedom

There is a clear correlation between the number of nationalities who can travel to a destination country without any form of visa and press freedom today.

It’s hard to find a stronger correlation than this.

Of countries with a democracy score over 7, only Cape Verde, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Malaysia, India, and the United States allow fewer than seven nationalities to travel there without a visa. The next is Timor-Leste, where 32 nationalities can travel without a visa. So, former British colonies tend to have more visa restrictions than other democracies today.

There is essentially no correlation between homicide and visa policies. There is no global trend of people traveling without a visa to another country to kill people.

There is no evidence worldwide that increasing visa restrictions increases safety.

However, there is strong evidence that travel restrictions correlate with a restriction in press freedom, increases in corruption, and general democratic backsliding.

Demand thoughtful, effective policy.

  • Demand laws that prosecute money laundering and other anti-corruption laws.
  • Oppose travel restrictions that don’t target criminals. No-fly lists do the job better than visas.
  • Demand evidence for policy changes.

Happy New Year.

Banks want you to only use cash

Banks love cash-only businesses. Cash-only businesses are their profit center. Credit cards have very small profits in comparison.

I bet you have been told differently. Let me explain…

I’m walking around Brooklyn, and there are two restaurants of comparable quality competing with each other. One of them has an ATM which will charge me up to 30% to access my cash from my checking account, from experience. Another one does not. The one with the ATM will not take my credit card, the one without the ATM will take my credit card and pay somewhere around 2-4% in order to process my payment.

I withdrew only $20 from the ATM restaurant and paid a $3 fee to access my money with my debit card. The meal for my friend and I cost just under $20, so I don’t buy a drink worth $2-3. They saved $0.40 in transaction fees and lost $3 in revenue they would have made if they accepted my card. The customer at the restaurant with the credit card processor bought drinks, and their bill was around $25 minus $0.42 to the credit card processor, so $24.58 in revenue; the ATM restaurant only made $18, and the bank made $3.

Banks make more money from cash-only businesses. Local retailers make less.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OceYCEexDqQ

Often, I will hear the call that lower-income users are subsidizing higher-income households who use credit cards. While this is technically true, we have to remember that cash is not free. If a business decides to go cash-only, it is far easier for an employee to siphon off a dollar here or there from cash in the till than it is for someone to siphon off money from credit card fees. While credit card fees are 2-4%, those are predictable. It’s hard to predict exactly how much cash will be siphoned off from the till by employees, and in a big store it is even harder to track who is stealing the cash. The average dishonest retailer employee costs their employer $1551.66, according to https://explodingtopics.com/blog/employee-theft-stats.

Ultimately the cost of cash-only costs businesses the same amount in theft as they would pay in credit card processing fees. The main benefit to the credit card is that people generally have hundreds if not thousands of dollars in credit available when using a credit card, while if you are cash only your customer is limited to the amount of money in their wallet, typically $40 or less. Over that limit, and your customer will have to hold back spending, reducing your company’s profit.

In summary:

  • Credit card fees are not significantly different from the percentage businesses would lose from employee theft of cash.
  • Cash-only customers are limited to the cash in their wallet, which is much lower than the credit available on their credit card.

This is the real reason why most businesses choose to take credit card purchases.

Consent

Every relationship, romantic or otherwise, has an assumed base level of consent. There is always going to be some level of interaction which doesn’t require constant asking in order for the relationship to work. i know we are in an era where we are somehow expected to ask verbal permission every time for everything, but that is unrealistic.
For people who are dating, sleeping together is usually an assumed level of consent. If I’m dating someone and they are already asleep and we usually share a bed, it is not necessary for me to wake them up in order to sleep in our shared bed.
Some couples have a baseline consent of cuddling together. One of my best friends will lay her head on me without asking permission, and that’s somewhere around our baseline consent level. Some people would want verbal consent every time, but we are both comfortable with that without needing to ask 30 times a day. After a while, it evolves to be an assumed level of consent.
The problem with what people are expected to do now breeds an unstable and unrealistic relationship model. It is up to each couple to determine where that line is. I cannot say that a line which has worked in one of my relationships is the line which every couple should use. It’s both unrealistic and patriarchal.
The way we can determine whether someone is consistently violating another’s consent boundary is if there is a consistent and egregious moving past the established line for that relationship without verbal consent. It’s more complicated, but its also more realistic.
There also needs to be a statute of limitations for most transgressions, because we cannot live our lives worrying if a relationship we had 20 years ago will someday come up and claim things which might not be true. It’s complicated. We need to stop pretending this is a simple issue.

Consent can of course always be rescinded, but I think we need to seriously think about how to design a reasonable way of looking at consent and I do not think we have reached it yet. There is more work to be done.