Kevin Drum 🕸

As everyone predicted, economic growth in the final quarter of 2023 was excellent: Over the last year and a half, GDP growth has averaged about 3%. This is a nice, healthy growth rate, but without being so high that it threatens to overheat the economy and reignite a surge of inflation. This trend continued in ...continue reading "GDP rises a healthy 3.3% in Q4"

Over at National Review, Michael New insists that abortions have declined since the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. In particular, he objects to contrary findings based on the WeCount project, which is fairly new and doesn't have very much pre-Dobbs data. He's right about that, but the Guttmacher Institute does have many years of data and their ...continue reading "Dobbs has (probably) had little impact on the abortion rate"

Donald Trump says he wants to run on the border. Is this a sound strategy? Here's the share of Republicans who say the border is their #1 issue: The border ranks second in importance among Republicans (the economy is first), generally getting about a 15% share over the past few years. But it's spiked recently, ...continue reading "Even Republicans aren’t super concerned about the border"

Here's the daily death toll of Palestinians in Gaza through January 24: The blank space in the middle is the late-November ceasefire. Also, there have been several periods during which the death toll wasn't updated. I've interpolated those figures with a slight adjustment for randomness. The good news, such as it is, is the trendline. ...continue reading "Raw data: The death toll in Gaza"

It is, as Tom Edsall points out today, both remarkable and dispiriting that so many Americans continue to support Donald Trump. But then he asks: Has Trump created a broad and enduring Republican coalition out of MAGA supporters, added backing from Republicans hostile to Democrats, a scattering of minority voters as well as white independents ...continue reading "There is no Trump coalition"

Can we do anything about the surge of illegal immigrants at the southern border? Republicans would like to, of course, and they're hopeful they can persuade President Biden to go along with tough legislation. Or are they? Jake Sherman reports that Mitch McConnell told a closed meeting of Senate Republicans, “The politics on this have ...continue reading "Republicans don’t really want to solve the illegal immigration problem"

The Washington Post describes a new Pew report about people who answer "none" when asked about their religion: As the nation’s fastest-growing segment of religion (or nonreligion) in recent decades, the nones may reflect the front line of future spirituality. Fifty-six percent say they believe in “some higher power” aside from the God of the ...continue reading "Life, the universe, and everything"

This is the Morongo Casino just off Interstate 10 on the way to Palm Springs. I pass it regularly when I go out to the desert for some stargazing. I took this photo around 3 am, and I was lucky to get it because a security guard shooed me off right after I snapped the ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Hum de hum: Texas’ razor wire is an effective deterrent against the illegal border crossings encouraged by Biden’s open border policies. We continue to deploy this razor wire to repel illegal immigration. pic.twitter.com/PE8wiMYaYI — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) January 24, 2024 Didn't the Supreme Court rule just two days ago that the Border Patrol could cut ...continue reading "Texas defies Supreme Court, keeps on installing razor wire on the border"

A recent podcast from the Niskanen Center focuses on whether political elites have a good sense of what the public believes. Short answer: not really. Alex Furnas, a professor at Northwestern's business school, summarizes his research this way: We found that for policies that elites themselves strongly favored, they overestimated public support by about 12 ...continue reading "Are political elites in touch with what the public really thinks?"

There was nothing super interesting about this year's BLS report on union density. Total union density declined slightly from 10.1% to 10.0% and private sector union density stayed the same at 6.0%. But I did notice something peculiar. Even though overall union density barely changed, there were significant movements in individual states. Here are the ...continue reading "Raw data: Union density by state"

Over lunch I was pondering the fact that people forget so quickly about the problems of the past, which is part of what makes the problems of the present seem so overwhelming and unique. But just compare today to the late '60s, the era of Vietnam, the Cold War, the Six Day War, race riots, ...continue reading "How do we compare to the ’90s?"

Jeez. AP called New Hampshire for both Trump and Biden about one minute after the polls closed? That's gotta be a new record. The exits must have been a tidal wave.

Here is the growth of US energy production since the beginning of the Biden administration: Note that energy use is seasonal, so comparisons have to be made between the same month in different years. The latest data is for October 2023, so all comparisons are between October 2020 and October 2023.

Bob Somerby takes me to task today for posting a clip of Donald Trump that he says is grossly misleading and dishonest. I don't agree. The Biden campaign's snarky summary is fairly conventional Twitter abridgment and the video is right there for anyone who wants more. It wouldn't pass muster in a PhD dissertation, but ...continue reading "The United States is one of the world’s great problem solvers"

This is the St. Martin Canal in Paris, somewhere near République, I think, where a lock takes it underground. The lock was used back in the day, when boats cruised the canal for both commerce and pleasure, and it's still functional. I don't know how often it actually gets used anymore, though.

The Chevron rules says that if a law is ambiguous, courts should defer to any reasonable interpretation of the agency charged with enforcing it. Jonah Goldberg doesn't like this: The question of whether the judicial or the executive branches should be the final word on regulatory policies misses the elephant in the room: Congress should ...continue reading "Congress should not pretend to be a homeowners association"

I agree with Charles Cooke! I don’t know how much more plainly I can say it than this: If you believe that Donald Trump represents a unique threat to democracy — as Joe Biden and his team keep saying that they do — then you should not want Donald Trump on the ballot. There are ...continue reading "Nobody should be rooting for Donald Trump"

The top chart shows total federal social welfare spending (adjusted for inflation) since 1960. The bottom chart breaks out the categories for 2023 so you can see exactly what I'm including. The trendline in the top chart is for 1960-2019, extended through 2023. Social welfare spending surged during the pandemic for obvious reasons, and is ...continue reading "Raw data: Social welfare spending"

What is Trump even saying here? Trump: Which is incapable of solvin’ even the sollest problem. We are an institute in a powerful death penalty. We will put this on pic.twitter.com/eM7dTV8iHe — Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 23, 2024 On his good days, Trump is still fine. On his bad days he can barely string two ...continue reading "Everything is going to hell"