SBSQ #22:⚡Lightning Round edition⚡
How the Big Beautiful Bill is ugly for gamblers, why Zohran's opponents are unhinged, how I use ChatGPT, and more.
Greetings from New York. It’s my first full day back in the city after more than a month on the road, mostly at the World Series of Poker.
I don’t like going a full week between newsletters, but I wound up making it to Day 5 of the Main Event last week and decided to follow my own advice by putting other work aside. I’m also dealing with some version of jetlag. Not only is Nevada three hours behind the East Coast, but Vegas runs late even relative to Pacific Time. And playing poker at a high level1 is draining; I’ve learned to summon my energy so as mostly not to punt while playing, but the approach of “leaving it all out on the field” means there’s inevitably fatigue to deal with later. I do expect a fairly busy week or two of posting, starting with this, then an update to our NBA Future of the Franchise rankings featuring some special guests, plus posts by Eli and by our new Assistant Sports Analyst Joseph George, perhaps something on the WSOP, and then some catch-up on politics.
But for today, it’s a much-delayed lightning round edition of Silver Bulletin Subscriber Questions. You can leave questions for the next SBSQ in the comments below. See also last week’s post on Elon Musk’s America Party, which was also inspired by a reader question.
In this edition of SBSQ:
Will the Big Beautiful Bill crush Republicans in the midterms?
Why does Zohran drive his opponents zany?
How do I use AI in everyday life?
Why did the Big Beautiful Bill screw over gamblers?2
Does New York City need casinos?
Will the Thunder and Pacers change the NBA team-building paradigm?
Will the Big Beautiful Bill crush Republicans in the midterms?
Steven Thomas asks:
Question: Why can’t Republicans persuade working class voters that BBB helps them by increasing child tax credit and material cuts to taxes for overtime and tips? Does the mainstream media now have more influence to define how public views such things?
Question: Is the best way to help working families low inflation? Is that more important than child tax credits or cutting taxes for overtime and tips?
There were various questions on the One Big Beautiful Bill, which Congress passed by narrow margins earlier this month. I picked Steven’s because it’s a little spicier than some of the others, introducing the idea that the tone of media coverage could matter in how the bill is received by the public.
Certainly the base case is that the bill will be be damaging to Republicans. OBBB is very unpopular, and there is plenty of precedent for legislative overreach costing a party at the subsequent midterm: for instance, Obamacare in 2010.
At the same time, it’s not clear how much attention the public really pays to complicated legislation like this. The OBBB did receive a spike in public attention at passage, but it quickly dissipated as compared to something like tariffs. And Trump’s overall approval rating hasn’t been affected much in our tracking.
To me, this speaks to something of an unhealthy obsession Democrats have with “winning the message war”. They often have an advantage here, because the mainstream media does lean left, and for a complicated piece of policy like this, people might default toward trusting the tone of media coverage rather than poring into the details.
But they’re mainly reaching people who are already highly attuned to politics. And Democrats are mostly already winning these voters. So perhaps they’re winning the messaging battle but not the war.
What will matter more is for Democrats to sustain attention to the bill and tie it to tangible effects on people’s lives, rather than getting distracted by culture war issues. Ultimately, people will do a gut-check against how the OBBB affects them personally. If a bunch of people lose their health insurance, for instance, Democrats will want to ensure that they’re (correctly) attributing the problem to Trump and Republicans.
As you say, Steven, there are also some people who will benefit from the bill, whether because of provisions like no taxes on tips or the increase in the SALT cap. In general, though, Democrats are playing on fertile ground because of the distributional effects of the bill — there are more losers than winners — and the public’s general aversion to changes in fiscal policy. It also doesn’t help the OBBB that most of it is making tax cuts permanent rather than producing new benefits people will notice when they fill out their taxes next spring. You might almost say that Democrats can’t screw it up — but because they’re Democrats, of course they can.
Why does Zohran drive his opponents zany?
Matt P asks:
Long-time resident of NYC here. Zohran Mamdani's politics don't seem to me to be *that* different from Bill Di Blasio's who was the mayor of NYC during the large majority of what most people would consider "peak NYC" (post-financial crisis/pre-COVID) in terms of things like restaurants, nightlife, crime, perceptions of safety, cleanliness, real estate values, etc. Yet Mamdani is being demonized by the local press and generally triggering a real panic among the wealthier slice of NYC about crime, taxes and real estate values that wasn't the case when Di Blasio assumed office. Do you think that Mamdani's race and religion are the primary drivers of this very different treatment? Or do you think that the perception of his being significantly farther to the left of Di Blasio is accurate? Or something else?
In general, it’s an advantage for a politician to make his or her opponents unhinged. Obama had that; Trump has that. It isn’t always a winning formula — Sarah Palin’s star faded quickly — but it’s always nice to put your opponents on “tilt”.
So why does Mamdani have this quality?