Bob Graboyes riffs on “the thrill of victimy and the agony of DEIfeat.”
The defeat was less a resounding endorsement of Mr. Trump than a repudiation of progressive governance. America rejected the consequences of left-wing policies. Democrats lost ground from 2020 across many demographic groups, according to the exit polls. Even women moved percentage points closer to Mr. Trump. How could Democrats possibly lose like this to a man they think is Hitler? Allow us to offer a list for liberal reflection:
• The failure of Bidenomics. Democrats once understood that private business drives growth and higher incomes. Sometime in the 21st century, they came to believe that government spending creates wealth—via the “Keynesian multiplier” and other nostrums.
Thus they passed, on a party-line vote, a $1.9 trillion pandemic-relief bill that wasn’t really needed, fueling the highest inflation in decades. This robbed millions of workers of real wage gains, which haunted Democrats on Tuesday as two-thirds of voters said they were unhappy with the state of the economy.
• Cultural imperialism. Democrats took their 2020 victory as an invitation to turn identity politics into woke policy. They stood with transgender activists instead of parents who don’t want boys to play girls sports or elementary teachers to pass out pronoun pins. Republicans hammered Democrats with ads that attacked Democratic votes against tying federal funds to transgender school policies.
Arnold Kling offers an insightful take on the 2024 U.S. election. A slice:
You can say that the Democrats could have won if only ____. There are many possible ways to fill in the blank that are probably true. There are many plausible “if-only”s. If you like the Democrats on policy, your if-only will emphasize special factors, such as Biden’s late withdrawal, or Harris’ missteps, like choosing Walz rather than Shapiro. If you don’t like the Democrats on policy, you will say that they lost because of the issues on which you disagree with them. The game is to emphasize an if-only that raises your own status.
And Tyler was right.
GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino cast his 2024 presidential vote – quite sensibly – for Phil Gramm.
Vice President Kamala Harris will never win any awards for inspiring oratory, but credit where due — it’s a good thing that she accepted the results of the election, and that she called President-elect Donald Trump and assured him that she would do her part to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.
These used to be routine things in politics unworthy of mention, but in 2016, we had an immediate effort to try to delegitimize Trump’s victory by claiming he colluded with Russia to steal the election. And then of course we had Trump’s disgraceful refusal to admit defeat in 2020 that culminated with the Capitol riot.
Megan McArdle helps explain why Harris lost. Here’s her conclusion:
While some voters were undoubtedly voting on democracy, or immigration, or race, or gender, most of them seem to have been participating in a pretty normal anti-incumbent election in which a telegenic candidate beat a weak opponent who was tied to an unpopular administration and following a suboptimal playbook. Obviously, that’s disappointing if you supported Harris and think Trump’s character is unworthy of the office. But it also means that in four years, you’ve got the normal chance of taking that office back.
Colin Grabow’s recent letter in the Wall Street Journal is excellent:
Beyond the issues identified by Mary Anastasia O’Grady (“Puerto Rico Is a Political Football,” Americas, Nov. 4), another cause of Puerto Rico’s economic ails is the protectionist Jones Act. By restricting domestic water transport to those vessels registered and built in the U.S., the law produces some of the world’s costliest shipping. That’s no small matter for an island that counts the U.S. mainland as its largest trading partner.
A study by two Purdue University economists this year pegged the Jones Act’s annual welfare burden to Puerto Rico at $1.4 billion. Similarly, a 2020 RAND report identified the Jones Act as a leading impediment to the island’s economic growth.
The Jones Act’s contribution to Puerto Rico’s energy woes is particularly noteworthy. Accessing bulk liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the U.S. mainland, for example, is impossible due to a lack of Jones Act-compliant gas tankers to transport it. This de facto embargo has led Puerto Rico to inefficiently import from as far afield as Nigeria and Oman to meet its needs.
Puerto Rico must get its economic house in order. But Washington can also help by either repealing the Jones Act or exempting the island from this wretched law.
Colin Grabow
Cato Institute
Washington
Industrial policy’s tools include giving out subsidies, tax preferences, trade protection, preferential financing, and regulatory advantages. To be sure, we already have plenty of that, including a tax code littered with exemptions for special interests and a budget full of costly subsidies. What makes industrial policy distinct is that it picks certain economic activities to promote in attempts to reorder our economic landscape—sometimes even for cultural reasons.
Democrats use it to force a transition away from energy sources they dislike. They use mandates, subsidies, and tax incentives to permanently change the way we consume energy at the national level, whether we want it or not. Meanwhile, lots of Republicans want to impose tariffs that push more people into manufacturing jobs and incentivize women to stay home so that America looks more like it did in the 1950s.
Both sides want to coerce some people into activities that are not in their best interests. So, to achieve a national order that intellectuals and politicians prefer over the current one, the economy must suffer.
