Georgia on my mind....

Stacey Abrams easily defeated Stacey Evans to get the Democratic nomination for Georgia. Great. She should be a strong candidate. Especially if she ignores some of the advice she's been getting about completely ignoring the white vote (see link below) and counting mostly on turning out the minority vote.

Not that turning out the minority vote--and in Georgia, we're talking overwhelmingly about the black vote--is a bad idea. High black turnout will be essential to an Abrams victory. it would be ridiculous to deny this.

But it's equally ridiculous to deny that Abrams must perform relatively well among white voters to win Georgia. There is a very simple reason for this. While the minority vote is large in Georgia, the white vote is much larger. It's highly unlikely to be under 60 percent of the vote and will probably be a bit higher.

Even in 2012, when Georgia black turnout was actually higher than white turnout (and way higher than white noncollege turnout), whites were still 62 percent of voters and blacks were just 32 percent.

Clinton in 2016 actually did better than Obama in Georgia, losing the state by just 5 points, compared to Obama's 8 point deficit. This improvement is entirely attributable to Clinton's improved performance among whites, both college and noncollege. Granted, her absolute support levels were still low among these groups, but her relative improvement was enough to make the state significantly closer.

But wasn't black turnout low in 2016 in Georgia? Yes, it did decline and slip below white turnout levels. But here's the thing. If Clinton had replicated Obama's 2012 black turnout levels in Georgia in 2016, she would have improved her margin by 2 points in the state. But, if she had replicated Obama's poorer 2012 white support in 2016, she would have done 6 points worse.

The lesson is clear. The Democratic candidate in Georgia will have to walk on two legs, as it were, to win. My guess is that Abrams, a savvy pol by all accounts, understands this. But we shall see.

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The Revolutionary Implications of Stacey Abrams’s Victory

Her campaign bet on expanding the electorate, especially people of color and progressive whites. They won big.

THENATION.COM

What's going on in Italy?

Nothing good. The populist parties that "won" the last Italian election--the Five Star Movement and the Northern League--are forming a government that will be mostly reactionary and mostly unstable. As Paul Mason puts it: "a coherent programme of xenophobic nationalism and neoliberal economics will always beat a bunch of quasi-populist progressive rhetoric with no substance."

How should the left respond when the current government starts fallling apart? Mason recommends:

1. Ditch neoliberalism. Rip up the copy of the Lisbon Treaty that exists inside your heads and come up with a programme that actually solves the crisis of stagnation and low growth that the Eurozone imposes on countries like Italy.

2. The national investment bank, the citizens’ minimum wage and the state investment plan in health, transport and education are all things a left-wing government should offer. To do so it has to fight for fiscal leeway within Europe and to reform the EU treaties in the direction of social justice.

3. In complete contrast to the Italian right – the left has to fight for progressive taxation and state intervention. Their idea that growth alone can solve the problem of debt and deficit, without the need to tax the rich, tax assets and tax big corporations is a chimera.

4. The left has to find ways of separating citizens’ genuine concerns over illegal migration from the general atmosphere of racism, and prevalence of ethno-nationalism in Italy.

[I particularly liked this last one, because it is so very, very true. Anyone who follows left politics in Europe has be struck by how profoundly uninspiring most social democratic "leaders" are these days.]

5. Finally, the left has to find popular leaders. Matteo Renzi, the leader of the Democratic Party, was touted as the Blair, the Obama and even the Macron of the left. He’s the opposite. Unfortunately, as we’ve found in Britain, social democratic parties that make peace with a dud system tend to attract generation after generation of dud politicians. All over Europe, left-wing intellectuals and technocrats seem to think it’s beneath their dignity to speak in the language of their own people; to speak of hope, pride, dignity, community and struggle.

Amen. Now let's get to it.

What the new coalition means for Italy – and why it matters for the left in Britain

The new government’s programme is the first coherent example in Europe of what I’ve called “neoliberalism in one country”.

NEWSTATESMAN.COM

Time to panic....or not?

Keen-eyed observers of recent polling data will have noticed that Trump's approval rating has edged up lately achieving the exalted level of 42 percent in 538's rolling approval average. In addition, the generic Congressional ballot has also narrowed so that Democrats now have only a comparatively weak 5 point lead over the GOP in 538's rolling average.

These figures are both the best Trump and the GOP have achieved for almost exactly a year. So...how worried should Democrats be?

Well, here's the thing. Even as this trend has manifested itself, the Democrats' prospects in specific 2018 races have remained very good--if anything, they have improved (see the link to Inside Elections' latest rating changes). And of course, the results of elections that have already been held in 2017-18 have been nothing short of spectacular for the Democrats. Nate Cohn runs it down:

"On average, Democrats have run 14 points ahead of a district’s partisanship (as measured by the last two presidential elections, compared with the national popular vote) in special elections for Republican-held districts so far this cycle. They’ve run more than 20 points ahead on three occasions — Kansas’ Fourth, Pennsylvania’s 18th and Arizona’s Eighth — and that doesn’t include Doug Jones’s victory in the Alabama Senate race.

These Democratic over-performances are a startling departure from the Obama years, when congressional election results polarized along national political lines.

Over the more than 1,000 special and general House elections in Democratic-held districts in the Obama era, there were only four elections when the Republicans ran 20 points ahead of the district’s lean in presidential elections. This cycle’s Democrats have pulled it off three times out of seven.

In a broader historical context, though, the Democratic over-performance is not quite as startling. It is still impressive, but the Democrats ran 20 points ahead of a Republican-held district’s presidential partisanship in 31 races combined in 2006 and 2008.

Over all, the Democrats’ performance in 2018 special congressional elections looks a lot like their showing in open districts in 2006, and well above the average from wave elections in 1994, 2006, 2008 and 2010. On average, Democrats ran 14 points ahead of a district’s partisanship in open races in 2006 — exactly the same as the Democratic over-performance so far this cycle. The Democrats had a similar 10-point over-performance in 2008."

So, there you have it. Some cause for concern, some cause for optimism. Where you land may depend partly on your personality type and partly on your preferred interpretation of the GOP's recent polling uptick. Finally getting payoff from an improving economy? Endless press coverage of Trump scandals actually benefits Trump? Democratic malpractice? Just a blip? Not enough of a swing to counteract Democratic enthusiasm?

Personally, I vote for concerned optimism. YMMV.

About this article

Rating Changes in 19 House Races, All Toward Democrats

The playing field of competitive House races is expanding and shifting to almost exclusively Republican territory, Nathan L. Gonzales writes.

ROLLCALL.COM

Who creates a nation's economic value?

Mariana Mazzucato has a new book coming out, The Value of Everything: Who Makes and Who Takes from the Real Economy. Who is Mariana Mazzucato? You should know her. She is one of the most interesting and creative economists writing about contemporary capitalism.

Her earlier book, The Entrepreneurial State, made quite a splash. In that book, she argued that the role of the state is not just to supply public goods the private sector ignores but needs (though this is very important) but also to be an entrepreneurial agent investing in areas that are far off the private sector’s radar screen because of extreme uncertainty in economic returns. This is particularly the case with fundamental knowledge generation and very early investments in new technological sectors. Current theories of economic growth assign such innovation a key role in economic growth and it is the “entrepreneurial state” in Mazzucato’s phrase who can afford—and is willing--to bear the inherently immeasurable risks of such innovation.

This has been the case in the United States where pretty much all research underlying the internet and modern computing was funded and initially capitalized by the US state. For example, the immensely profitable Apple corporation’s signature products, like the iphone and ipad, rest on fundamental innovations developed by government funding . This includes everything from the internet to GPS to touch screens to Siri voice recognition. In other words, no entrepreneurial state, no Apple.

More generally, a Brookings Institution study found that 18 of the 25 most important breakthroughs in computer technology in the seminal 1946-65 period were underwritten by the federal government . And it’s not just information technology where the role of the state has been critical: between 1971 and 2006, 77 out of the 88 most important innovations outside of computing/communications , as rated by R&D Magazine, were heavily dependent on government support, especially in their earliest developmental stages.

The role of the entrepreneurial state has been critical to growth in the past and there is no reason to think it will not be critical in the future. Progress in such emerging fields as biotechnology, nanotechnology and, of paramount importance, green technology will continue to depend on the entrepreneurial state being willing to provide support in areas where the private sector sees only unknowable risks. And without such progress both the quantity and quality of economic growth will fall well short of potential.

In her new book, she extends her critique of contemporary capitalism to the ways elements of the private sector extract value, rather than create it. As summarized by Martin Wolf in an excellent essay on her book in the Financial Times:

"Who creates value? Who extracts value? Who destroys value? If we mistake those who do the second or third for those who do the first, or mistake those who do the first for those who do the second or third, we will end up with impoverished and unhappy societies, in which plunderers rule.

Many advanced western countries, in particular the US and Britain, have already reached that state, according to Mariana Mazzucato. The consequences of this, including soaring inequality and declining growth are already visible, argues the author, a professor at University College London and sometime adviser to political parties and international institutions.

We need to change course, she insists, in this challenging and stimulating book. Among other things, we need to re-think the relationship between markets and governments; make a clear distinction between creators of wealth and those who merely extract it; embrace bolder collective ambitions, notably a shift to a greener economy; and spend on the future, instead of embracing a sterile and counterproductive austerity....

This book’s big point is that it is far too easy for those operating in the market economy to get rich by extracting economic value from those who add it, not by adding it themselves.

An obvious example is the way the financial sector generated a huge increase in household debt in the years leading to the financial crisis of 2007-09. This funded zero-sum competition to buy the existing housing stock at soaring prices. Its legacy included a huge crisis, a debt overhang, weak growth and political disenchantment. Yet, for those who created, manipulated and sold this debt, it was a gold mine. This represented value extraction and destruction.

Much the same picture can be seen in asset management, with its excessive trading, exorbitant fees, lack of transparency, poor stewardship and conflicts of interest. This financial sector, together with the “shareholder value maximisation” that economists have promoted, has had a malign effect on the corporate sector as a whole, argues Mazzucato, by encouraging excessive pay and also, partly to that end, manipulation of stock prices in preference to long-term investment.

That it is hard to see much wider economic benefit from the massive increase in the relative size and influence of finance over the past half century seems self-evident. Today, many western economies are, after all, burdened by high levels of private debt, high inequality and low rate of productivity growth. If this is success, what might failure look like?"

What indeed? The book looks like an essential read. I've got it on order.

Who creates a nation’s economic value?

A challenging analysis that forces us to reconsider how our economies work — and who it works for

FT.COM

What exactly do we mean by "racial resentment"?

If you read any survey-based studies of racial resentment, Trump, etc. you're bound to run into the questions below. But what are these questions really telling us? Political scientists Riley Carney and Ryan Enos put this to the test in a ground-breaking paper, excerpts and link below.

"The four-question modern racism scale consists of the following questions:

1. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.
2. Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.
3. It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.
4. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.

We suspect that respondents may answers these questions in a consistent manner, regardless of whether the target is Blacks or another group. If conservatives, in particular, respond consistently to these questions by endorsing conservative attitudes toward out-groups regardless of the target, this indicates that a common belief system is behind responses to these questions. For example, if white Americans will endorse the statement “It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if Niueans would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites” at the same levels they will when the statement is made about Blacks, then responses to modern racism scale are likely driven by other psychological features of political conservatives that lead them to endorse these statements across target groups, rather than specific attitudes about Blacks.

In our trials, subjects were asked two primary sets of questions. One set included questions used in the standard racial resentment scale with Blacks as the target group. The second set of questions was identical to the first, but with a non-standard target group in place of Blacks. The target group was randomly assigned from a diverse list of groups, such as “Bhutanese” or “Nepalese,” that are unlikely to be associated with stereotypes or racial animus like those expressed toward Blacks. We also included “Hispanic,” “some whites,” and “Americans” to test whether just world belief is driving responses in a way that would cause subjects to endorse statements about the importance of hard work, even if they have well-formed attitudes about the groups in question. We tested a total of seventeen nonBlack target groups, with each subject answering questions about two groups: Blacks and one non-standard target group…..

What is the difference in resentment when asked about a Black versus non-Black target group? Pooling all target groups, we see little to no difference between Black and nonBlack resentment. In Figure 1, we display average racial resentment toward different target groups, revealing a striking similarity in average racial resentment. The figure shows the distribution and median resentment for responses when the target group is Black, white, or all other groups collapsed into a single variable. The distribution of resentment toward Black and non-Black target groups is very similar, except that the spread of responses for Blacks, especially the bottom quartile, is larger than all other groups, indicating that a higher portion of respondents express low levels of resentment toward Blacks than toward other groups."

Food for thought, eh? And sorry, if you want to see the figures, you'll just have to look at the actual paper!

scholar.harvard.edu

SCHOLAR.HARVARD.EDU

Is the GOP Playing Generational Poker?

Ron Brownstein thinks so. In his latest piece for the Atlantic, he notes that:

"[T]he GOP strategy for surviving the midterm elections is based on a generational wager. The Republican bet is that the party can mobilize elevated turnout among their older and blue-collar white base without provoking the young and racially diverse voters who personify the emerging next America to show up on Election Day to defend it. Few things are likely to shape November’s outcome more than whether that bet pays off."

He then goes on to discuss various warning signs that indicate that bet could, in fact, pay off. A useful read, buttressed with copious data, that helps guard against complacency.

About this article

The Republican Party's Generational Bet

The GOP is doubling down on its older white base—and hoping the more diverse Millennials don't show up to the polls.

THEATLANTIC.COM

2, 3, Many Jobs Guarantee Programs....

It seems like you can't swing a dead cat these days without hitting a new jobs guarantee program floated by progressives. And that's a good thing! It's about time that programmatic support for full employment became a standard part of the progressive repertoire.

Of course, full employment is by one means a new idea, even if programmatic support for it has hitherto been tepid. Full employment was enshrined in the US as a primary goal of the federal government in the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978 and, in a softer form (“maximum sustainable employment”) was made part of the dual mandate of the Federal Reserve (along with price stability) around the same time. Ironically, the record of sustaining full employment has been dreadful since then. In the 1949-1979 period, the US economy was at full employment 69 percent of the time; from 1979 to the present day, the economy has only been at full employment 29 percent of the time .

This is because the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment bill happened to coincide with the conservative economic counterrevolution that attached little significance to full employment as a policy goal. Instead, it was deemed far more important to keep inflation down, lower taxes, remove regulatory inefficiencies and let capitalism find its natural level. If more unemployment resulted, so be it—it would do more harm than good to interfere and risk a spike in inflation.

It is unsurprising that a period where full employment was the exception not the rule has coincided with a period of rapidly escalating inequality. The most straightforward effect of full employment is that it increases employer competition for workers, leading to rising wages, especially at the low end of the labor market. Conversely, the lack of full employment produces slack labor markets where employers call the shots and low wage workers are particularly disadvantaged. This of course increases inequality, just as we have generally seen since 1979 (with the exception of the 1995-2000 period, a period of—you guessed it—full employment).

This rising inequality in and of itself undermines growth by taking money out of the hands of those most likely to spend, not save, their income. Running the economy at full employment most of the time should partially reverse this trend and boost growth. And full employment forces employers to increase investment and deploy their (now more expensive) workers more efficiently, which should have beneficial effects on productivity and therefore also boost growth .

In short, more full employment means less inequality and more growth. So it's great that progressives are now willing to put big ideas on the table to make full employment a permanent fixture of the US economy.

Of course, how exactly to do this is tricky and Annie Lowrey of the Atlantic provides a good guide to some of the jobs guarantee programs out there, along with their strengths and potential pitfalls. The Center for American Progress (full disclosure: I work there!) also has a new one out that is well worth a careful look.

It should be stressed that the details of a jobs guarantee plan don't need to be settled right now. Let a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend! This is a debate well worth having and sends good signals about what the Democratic party really stands for. And that in the end is probably just as important--perhaps more so--that getting all the policy details worked out in advance.

About this article

A Promise So Big, Democrats Aren’t Sure How to Keep It

Progressives are lining up behind a jobs guarantee—but leaving the details for later.

THEATLANTIC.COM