Mixed economy is best economy

The Cold War is often described as a struggle between capitalism and communism. The winner, though, was the mixed economy.

That's how it had to be. How to organize human productive activity is too complex and contingent a question to be answered by any grand theory. We do things in many ways, as we should.

Markets are good for producing consumer goods like smartphones. Government is good for building infrastructure and redistributing wealth so that the poor aren't doomed. Families operate to satisfy all kinds of human needs. Charity isn't as strong a force as others above but it's usually pointed at doing very nice things. And sometimes, somehow, groups of people spontaneously generate Wikipedia.

Depending on the conditions, any of these systems may be optimal for organizing some sphere of activity. I doubt any economic theory that unduly constrains our options, so that we can't use all these systems or invent others. And I doubt any theory of rights so proprietary to one of these systems that it would treat the others as unjust.

Last Dance With Mayor Pete (Indiana Boys On An Indiana Night)

Pete Buttigieg has started attacking Medicare for All and talking up Anthony Kennedy as a model Supreme Court Justice. I used to have him behind Warren and Sanders as a serviceable third choice. I'd still take him over Biden, and of course I'll vote for any Democrat against Trump, but this makes him a much worse option for the primary.

What explains his abrupt shift? The most obvious answer is that with Biden fading in the polls, fundraising poorly, and looking less electable, Pete is trying to become the top centrist option. It might be his best strategy for winning the nomination, even if the crass opportunism is obvious.

I see another reason. If Mayor Pete loses, his political future is in Indiana. All nine statewide offices in Indiana are controlled by Republicans, testifying to the state's conservatism and leaving Democrats with a weak candidate pool. I don't know if Pete would have time to jump into this year's Governor's race, but there's also a Senate race in 2022. Both are against undistinguished Republicans who won their last races with barely over 50% of the vote.

Those are races where we could use an ambitious, media-savvy small-town mayor with centrist credentials and a military record. If selling out in the primary improves his fundraising connections with corrupt interests, that may help too. And if he's a skilled opportunist, so much the better! So let's use our primary votes to send Mayor Pete where he'll be best for maximizing aggregate utility -- his home state of Indiana.

The quid pro quo scandal ends the Biden electability argument

I'm a Biden electability skeptic of long standing, and recent events have only deepened my skepticism.

My old argument was that Biden was just enjoying the reflected glory of Obama, and his mediocrity would emerge as soon as he had to be his own man. He lost Democratic primaries a couple times because he's bad at campaigning. The passage of time would not make him better at this.

Now there's a big new problem. Through no great fault of his own, the right-wing smear machine has its biggest guns pointed straight at him. They have to defend Trump from the quid pro quo scandal, and the best way to do it is to shoot at Biden.

(I like calling this the 'quid pro quo' scandal. Say we discover more quid pro quos. With the Saudis? With Erdogan? With Uncle Vladimir? The name rightly weaves them into the scandal. And it supports an obviously important rule: No trading public stuff for private favors!)

If I were in charge of defending Trump, and Biden was my general-election opponent, I'd go for the 2-for-1 that defends Trump as it attacks Biden: Deep Biden skulduggery was going on in Ukraine, and Trump was heroically fighting it.

Obviously this involves making up nonsense. But Fox News can easily push made-up stories about Ukraine. Americans are not knowledgeable about matters in Ukraine. And Putin might be of assistance.

So. The right-wing noise machine getting an early start against an establishment democrat? On nonsense that Uncle Vladimir is in good position to help push? And we chose the candidate for electability! Do you know how this story ended last time?

If you don't, I can send you some emails.

How did Mark Milley feel when Pelosi said, "All roads with you lead to Putin"?

Donald Trump tweeted this photo with the caption "Nervous Nancy's unhinged meltdown." Pelosi then maximized utility by making it her Twitter cover image.

Mark Milley is the Army general next to Trump -- one of the many men on Trump's side of the table wishing they were somewhere else. He's serving his first month as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after being confirmed by the Senate in an 89-1 vote. I think it's most interesting to imagine the meeting from his perspective.

Early in the meeting, Trump handed out copies of the blustery letter he had written to Erdogan, which begins "Let's work out a good deal! You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy -- and I will." Apparently Erdogan put the letter in the trash. Milley has a Masters in International Relations from Columbia, and he knows that this is utterly ridiculous.

Trump then called former general James Mattis "The most overrated general in the world. You know why? He wasn’t tough enough. I captured ISIS. Mattis said it would take two years. I captured them in one month." Milley has been in the military for 39 years, and I doubt he enjoys hearing this language from a man who claimed bone spurs to avoid military service.

Milley had warned during the meeting that ISIS was "not destroyed" and could "reconstitute" if Erdogan's attack on the Kurds freed captured ISIS fighters. Trump then claimed that only the least dangerous ISIS fighters had escaped. When Chuck Schumer asked Defense Secretary Mark Esper if any intelligence confirmed this, Esper said there was no such intelligence.

Schumer then asked Trump, “Is your plan to rely on the Syrians and the Turks?” Trump replied, “Our plan is to keep the American people safe.” Pelosi told him, “That’s not a plan. That’s a goal.”

Trump then complained about Obama and started insulting Pelosi. She told Trump that he gave Moscow a foothold in the Middle East. As far as I can tell, the photo is taken as she says, "All roads with you lead to Putin."

There are many other ashen-faced men on Trump's side of the table. But it's Milley's torment that seems the most exquisite to me. His boss has just been arrogantly stupid on issues his entire career has trained him to understand. Now he is forced to contemplate working for a President who has been compromised by the enemy.

If he thought Pelosi's remark was unfair or wrong, he might be glaring back at her, or at least sitting with a straight-necked military bearing. But he isn't. His head is bowed, his hands are clasped, and his eyes are squeezed shut.

The marble bust of Benjamin Franklin stares sternly over his shoulder. Behind Pelosi in the photo is a statue of George Washington. I wonder if he tried not to meet their eyes when he left the Cabinet Room.

Legislative leadership

I often make boasts like like "I've been a Nancy Pelosi superfan ever since the Ice Age." Just for verification / trivia purposes, here's me blogging in the Washington Monthly back in 2008 about how she had defeated Social Security Privatization three years before. You might have heard me tell this story before.

Most people understand politics in terms of Presidential elections, probably because those are the most-publicized political events. But for determining policy, legislative politics is no less important. Good legislative leadership is about counting votes, trading favors, and having a good sense of political possibilities. Speechmaking and PR are secondary considerations.

Presidents are outdoor politicians. Speakers and Majority / Minority Leaders are indoor politicians, operating from their proverbial smoke-filled rooms. If you watch legislative politics for a while and try to grasp what's driving the outcomes, you start to learn what makes a good indoor politician.

In the case of my recent conversion on impeachment, the issue was just thinking I can trust Pelosi on when coordination is likely to break down with Republican Senators. It's a matter of understanding when votes might move around -- not necessarily to remove, but to get a worthwhile outcome. Understanding instabilities in the other side's caucus is part of what she did to beat privatization. I trust she can do that again.

Pelosi supports impeachment, so I do too

Nancy Pelosi has initiated a formal impeachment inquiry. I've been an impeachment naysayer all year. But when Pelosi changes positions, I change too. I'll explain.

I opposed impeachment because the Senate trial looked like a disaster. Several Senate Democrats (Manchin, Tester, Jones) seemed ready to vote for acquittal. This would marginalize the charges against Trump going into the 2020 election and make it harder to put pressure on Republicans.

Moreover, most of the rules for conducting an impeachment trial can be changed by a Senate majority vote. This lets Mitch McConnell turn the trial into whatever he wants, if he can hold a majority. After the Kavanaugh confirmation, I anticipated the horror of my Democratic friends when the impeachment trial became whatever celebration of Trump's innocence McConnell wanted. It would be a hideous mockery of accountability.

All of this comes down to Senate vote totals. Get 4 Republicans to join united Democrats, and you have a majority that takes control out of McConnell's hands. And a bipartisan majority vote against Trump -- while insufficient for removing him -- would at least send the right message rather than the wrong one.

Pelosi counts votes better than any politician in my lifetime. Remember McConnell losing Obamacare repeal on the Senate floor after John McCain gave him the thumbs down? Pelosi doesn't let that happen. What she does is governed by her knowledge of the vote totals -- what they are, and what they'll become in a variety of possible future situations.

I think she's moving now because the Ukraine scandal has finally loosened things up in the Senate to where we have a shot at winning over Republicans. Senate Republicans are more fractured over this scandal than anything else, with Burr, Sasse, Romney, and Toomey cited in the media as alarmed. If this doesn't hold up for some reason, Pelosi might wait for a better setup in the future. But this as good an opportunity as anything we've seen.

This scandal hits close to home for Republican Senators. They don't want a future Democratic President using federal money to bribe foreign rulers for dirt on them. If only they cared so much about brown children in cages! But if this is what will make them turn on Trump, it's what we go with. It's how to get an impeachment process that really damages him and his party.

I've been actively following Congressional politics for 15 years now. It's been 15 years of watching Pelosi make the right move on every big issue, because she could see how the votes would go. It's how she stopped Bush from privatizing Social Security, how she turned the Democratic Party to favor withdrawal from Iraq, and how she passed Obamacare when everyone thought it was doomed.

Now she's on the march. I march with her.

Veggie mutton biryani

Apparently I have the Buddhists to thank for fake mutton, one of the best veggie meats I’ve encountered in Singapore. This biryani plate and a cheap mango lassi went for $5 SGD ($3.62 USD) at a university cafeteria.

Ibid

In my first year of college, I encountered "Ibid" in a footnote. I had heard of an ancient poet named Ovid, so I assumed that Ibid was one of his contemporaries. As the footnotes continued, I was impressed by how significant Ibid's work had been -- he was getting cited again and again!

Elizabeth Warren is favored in Iowa

Elizabeth Warren is leading in the favorability averages of the historically best Iowa pollsters, compiled by Nate Silver. Biden still leads the national polls. But I think these Iowa numbers are underrated in contemporary internet speculation. If you're worried that Biden might coast to the nomination, let me render Optimism Guy services in my new Elizabeth Warren Fan Club uniform.

First, some history about Iowa and why it's historically such a big deal. It's the first actual election in the primary, so it's a huge focus of media coverage, and plays a major role in winnowing the field. That's the point at which the primaries become more a mass-media story rather than an inside story for activist types. And with the national primary coming on, lots of people are starting to seriously decide how to vote. It's the moment when you want the media to treat you as the popular candidate on an upswing. You do this... by winning Iowa! It's the place where Obama became the front-runner in 2008. There are changes of various sorts that probably dampen this effect a little relative to history, but I think it's still significant.

Now for our polls. Among Iowa Democrats, Warren's favorable-unfavorables lead the pack at 80-11, followed by Harris at 73-10 and Mayor Pete at 72-7. Bernie is at 68-24, and only then do we see Biden at 67-24.

We're in the stage where candidates start to drop out. Because these polls register information about how you might vote if your first choice drops out, they're better for predicting the direction of consolidation than polls that just ask you about your first choice. And that direction of consolidation favors Warren.

Nicely, it also favors Harris, Pete, and Bernie (MoE tho) over Biden. They each have a decent electability case -- Harris with minority turnout, Bernie with good general-election poll numbers, and Pete with skillful navigation of the media environment. I think they'd all make much better presidents than Biden, who really has the full versions of bad traits that people attack the other three for in overheated primary debates.

In summary: Warren is on top in a highly consequential polling average. If she falters, some alternative superior to Biden gets a serious shot. If you're a Warren fan or an anybody-but-Biden type (I'm both), Iowa favors you.

China policy: Hong Kong heroism and American uselessness

The right China policy for the West seems to be something like this: We'd like to maintain good trade relations, expand immigration, and sign treaties to reduce our militaries. But human rights abuses will be met with trade sanctions, and we'll promote a NATO-like regional security alliance with China's democratically governed Pacific Rim neighbors who don't want to be invaded.

The hope is to set the right incentives and keep things in China from getting worse. The threat of sanctions for human rights abuses will get economic interests to push against those abuses. Well-coordinated defense will prevent China from invading its neighbors and get it to sign the arms treaties. If all goes well, China moves towards liberal democracy through the gentle slow process of cultural engagement. It works -- it's a big part of how Communism fell in Eastern Europe.

America's China policy is not on that track right now. Donald Trump is starting trade wars not to punish repression, but because he likes trade wars. Relations between Japan and South Korea are falling apart, and where diplomats of any previous Administration would be mending things between top regional allies, we're not seeing that right now.

That brings us to Hong Kong. The Chinese-approved government supported legislation to make it easier to extradite people from Hong Kong to China, using a recent sensational murder as a pretext. Public outcry in Hong Kong was intense. The government says that the legislation is dead, but hasn’t formally withdrawn it. Protestors are calling for further reforms, including genuinely democratic elections. The protests have been amazing, with over a million people sometimes coming out. Recently they shut down the airport. This photo shows protestors surrounding police headquarters.

At a time when America is being useless, the protestors in Hong Kong are making an amazing display of nonviolent force. They aren't getting any cover from America's erratic trade policy, and they can't count on much in the way of outside support. They're just asserting their own control over Hong Kong for Beijing to see, and demanding democracy. I hope we can set them up to receive the support they deserve around about January of 2021.