Kevin Drum 🕸

I can taste salt! Hooray!

From the New York Times: Mr. Trump has accused federal officials and social companies of trying to suppress conservative speech, while they have said they were only trying to identify falsehoods about elections, vaccines and the like. Potayto, potahto.

Yesterday I asked "What changed?" to cause Democrats to lose the election. Today I spent some time diddling around in the General Social Survey to see if I could find out. My question was: What big gaps have recently opened up between Democrats and Republicans. For starters, here's an example of what I'm not talking ...continue reading "Here’s what’s changed politically over the past few years"

More from Ben Dreyfuss: I genuinely have no idea what people mean when they say they’re “queer.” I used to understand it to mean gay but now it seems to mean…someone who wants to attend the Pride parade. Maybe they’re gay. Maybe they’re not. — Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) November 11, 2024 It's been my assumption ...continue reading "Who’s queer?"

Here's the latest weirdness from Donald Trump: All three of the leading candidates to replace Mitch McConnell immediately replied with some version of "Yes sir!" But what does Trump even mean? Recess appointments are just a thing the president can do when the Senate is in recess. No one has to agree to it. The ...continue reading "Trump demands permission to appoint anyone he wants"

Why does California take so long to count votes? I wanted to find out once and for all, so I started to dig. And I got nowhere. The universal answer was always something like California is a big, complex state that wants everyone to vote. That takes a while. Please. Voting is complex everywhere; there ...continue reading "Why is California vote counting so damn slow?"

How big an impact did culture war issues have on Donald Trump winning the election? Here is recent public polling on a variety of hot button issues: On the old warhorses of guns and abortion, liberals have long held an edge. Large majorities say abortion should be generally legal vs. generally illegal, and voting on ...continue reading "Raw data: What the American public thinks of culture war issues"

Everyone—including me!—has a theory about why Democrats lost this year. The leading contenders are: Inflation. Illegal immigration. Too woke. Lost touch with working class. But there are some simple facts to contend with for all of these things. Here are inflation and wages since Joe Biden took office: In the 2022 election, inflation was above ...continue reading "Here’s some simple background to the Democratic losses in 2024"

Ben Dreyfuss, probably from fear of being tossed in a reeducation camp, is trying to think of things he agrees with Donald Trump about: He’s also right about shower pressure and making the Europeans pay their nato dues. — Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) November 9, 2024 I have bad news for Ben: Republicans are sworn foes ...continue reading "YIMBY, shower heads, and NATO"

The Washington Post investigates why so many poor and working class Latinos in Texas border counties shifted rightward in 2024: Democratic and Republican party leaders said the Biden administration’s border failings are only part of what explains it. “You can tell me things are better, but if my food stamps don’t last the month, I’m ...continue reading "Did you know that Joe Biden has increased food stamp benefits 43% since taking office?"

The weekly YouGov poll came out late this week because they waited to do the fieldwork until after the election. For some reason, I found the shifts from before to after the election amusing: Last week, Kamala Harris had a higher favorability than Donald Trump by four points. This week it's suddenly switched. Trump is ...continue reading "Suddenly we conducted a fair and clean election"

NGFS—the Network for Greening the Financial System—is a group of all the world's central banks that tries to estimate the macroeconomic effects of climate change. They published their latest report this week, and it's grim: This is the "current policy" projection, and they estimate that global GDP in 2050 will be 15% lower than it ...continue reading "Central banks warn that climate change is getting worse"

I saw my oncologist yesterday and officially discontinued the Talvey. The new plan is to try a similar but different bispecific called Tecvayli that targets CD3 and BCMA instead of CD3 and GPRC5D. In theory this should be less effective since I've already had a BCMA treatment, but in practice it seems to work well ...continue reading "Health update"

A contingent job is one that's not expected to be permanent. It does not include independent contractors, on-call workers, temp agency workers, or workers provided by contract firms. Anyway, every once once in a great while the BLS measures this, and their first report in six years dropped today. After such a long wait I'm ...continue reading "Raw data: Contingent employment in the US"

Say hello to Edgar. He lives down the street but roams the near neighborhood and occasionally comes by to visit us. He's a pretty sociable cat. However, Hilbert isn't. Neither is Charlie. As you can see in the bottom picture, with his arched back and bushy tail, Hilbert is none too pleased with Edgar's visit. ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 8 November 2024"

China makes about 90% of the shoes worn in America. Donald Trump's tariffs could end that: The American shoe company Steven Madden will cut nearly half of its China production within the next year as it braces for tariffs under a second Trump administration. ....[CEO Edward] Rosenfeld said on Thursday that Steven Madden had been ...continue reading "Shoes are hotfooting it out of China"

It's been a while since we looked at rising medical costs. Here's the latest: Medical costs surged in the early '80s, but steadily came down over the next 20 years. Since 2000, medical inflation has been fairly well controlled, averaging about one percentage point higher than overall inflation. More recently, medical care wasn't affected by ...continue reading "Raw data: Medical inflation has plummeted over the past three years"

Here's an interesting chart from the Financial Times that shows how well governing parties have done in elections through the years: The point of this chart is supposed to be that, for the first time ever, governing parties have lost every single election so far in 2024. People all over the globe wanted to throw ...continue reading "Bad economies only recently started to affect elections"

Over at Mother Jones, my old colleague Mike Mechanic says the reason for voter discontent is more fundamental than most pundits think: I’m talking here about something even more basic, something that undergirds so much of America’s discontent. The best explanation, after all, is often the simplest: Wealth inequality. There is little that leaves people ...continue reading "Does wealth inequality explain Trump?"

Here's a happier picture to make up for yesterday. It's a farmer (?) waving to us on the boat with a big smile on his face.