My problem with this article is that it seems very much like a vibes based analysis than anything. I'm not an HCR reader, but some of the surrounding evidence used for critique of this supposed branch of Dems that she represents seems...not very rigorous.
For instance, what evidence is there to suppose that Kamala is the preferred nominee for Resist Libs? And what exactly makes Newsom more of a ResistLib democrat than an Abundance one? Is a podcast episode from Oct of 2024 somehow more representative than when Newsom explicitly name dropped Ezra Klein and the Abundance movement while signing CEQA reforms earlier this year? (And even by the podcast metric, Ezra Klein just had him on as a guest on his show.)
It seems like a lazy way to group people based on personal feelings.
To be honest the better dividing line to analyze Democratic party politics is educated vs working class
The educated are little-c conservative, care more about restoring norms. Resisting ICE is a top issue. They aren't impacted by affordability issues.
The working class, OTOH, is suffering. They resonate with affordability messaging. They might be ambivalent - or even pro Trump - on immigration. Whether abundance or more lefty perspectives, they're open to any affordability solutions
Dems problem is when they're led by the former, they alienate the latter. Dems won't be successful until they get back to being a working-class led party.
The norm being that they don't have to hear about democrats rounding up hundreds of thousands and putting them into ice for months. If I was anti-ice, I'd vote for maga just because then protestors care and actually try to stop it.
To add a layer to this; while it might at first blush feel like all factions are coalescing around affordability after the elections, I can see a future where it starts to ring hollow due to that same over representation you describe. What is the democrats comprehensive view of the problems with our economy and solutions to affordability nation wide? The only reason we talk about abundance and the Bernie left as faction leaders is because they both had the audacity to offer an opinion about what needs to change
The Democrats don't actually care about affordability. At least the ones who run WA and OR don't. They tax the hell out of -- get this -- home heating fuel. Oh yeah, the party of the common man? Bullshit. The Democrats haven't cared about the common man for decades.
“For instance, what evidence is there to suppose that Kamala is the preferred nominee for Resist Libs?“
I was literally about to come to the comment section to ask who is advocating for Harris’ return.
My biggest piece of evidence on this is that, in a recent Times profile on Harris’ future aspirations, every single comment I found — every single one — had some kind of negative reaction to the idea of her running for President again.
One could argue that Times readers are mostly abundance types or something… but I really don’t think there is any camp that wants her back.
I'm very tapped into YIMBY and Abundance groups here in California. The Abundance people are cautiously optimistic about Newsom at best. They're REALLY passionate about Beshear and Shapiro and Gallego, almost if not entirely because they think those guys can win. The people who REALLY like Newsom are definitely the resist libs, who I think because they tend to be older and women people think are not as "bloodthirsty" as Newsom is but they 100% agree with his political sentiments
That argument - even if anecdotal - makes much more sense than what Nate Silver used to argue that Newsom is a standard-bearer of this Resist Lib branch and not for Abundance.
My issue with this article is that Nate Silver uses a link to an October 2024(!) interview Newsom had with Jennifer Welch as the main proof that he's the standard-bearer for this faction, and never even addresses the fact that if we're going by that logic, Newsom just this past week was on a podcast by Ezra Klein, where Klein called him the frontrunner. Also, it ignores that Jennifer Welch also hosted Mamdani for a friendly interview on her show. So is Mamdani the standard-bearer of the Resist Lib and not the progressive branch? I would argue Jennifer Welch has been closer to the progressive branch than whatever faction Newsom is or isn't in considering her focus on AIPAC and authenticity.
Yes. I don't know what they are talking about: IMO a jump-off from the high prices of first eggs (now okay again) and then beef, but both were caused by by kill-offs of livestock for respectively bird flu and drought. People complained about that and gave the K-Street types a foothold to complain about a lack of abundance. Seems crazy to me; there is more plenty in the USA than anywhere on Earth.
Reminds me of the line in the movie Labyrinth: "You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is.” The United States is the world standard for abundance, at least outside of Heaven or the Garden of Eden, a country where even the poor people are all overweight and diabetic. What more could people really ask for?
Jesus! You are seeing the trees instead of the forest. Here's this person, Richardson, who has become rich and influential within the Democratic Party by spreading a lot of partisan misinformation--the very thing she purports to decry.
You're missing the forest for the trees. His taxonomy isn't wrong. The labels can be disputed. The idea is pretty solid. What is it about liberals that makes you so god damned defensive is my question.
The "suburban wine mom - thinks every Republican is an affront to God" types from the meme that's been circling around do seem to be more nationally backing Newsom these days.
I trust HCR more on history, Nate more on elections, and neither of them much on diagnosing where the Democratic coalition is headed. Nate's snark-ridden take on HCR is a prime example of why he needs to steer clear of this.
I have similar issues with Paul Krugman. He's obviously got areas of expertise and his writing is remarkably clear and precise when he's operating within those areas. The portions of his writings that attempt to address politics are useless, however, and do little more than reveal the political worldview of a guy who spent decades in a faculty lounge at Princeton. The political takes are so bad and poorly reasoned that it makes you question his writing on his areas of expertise.
Krugman got the Nobel prize because they didn't give it to Keynes when they should have, and have felt guilty for decades. Krugman broke no new ground, and has been a political hack ever since, just like Richardson. There used to be a formidable Democratic brain trust, but that was then and this is now. The Democrats haven't had an original idea for at least a couple of decades.
I fully agree, and as an economist myself, I would argue that his areas of expertise are also narrower than you think. I.e., he received a Nobel prize for trade theory, but he now often writes on macroeconomics and monetary economics, areas where his expertise is closer to replacement level, and his conclusions are driven by political preferences about as much as technical expertise.
How many people are writing on macro and monetary economics that have the equivalent of Krugman's trade theory credentials, and who are a few publishing regularly that you would recommend?
Bonus points for links to documents that cover where their opinions differ from Krugman's.
Well, none have his trade theory credentials, but my point was that the trade theory credentials don't imply his writing on macro and monetary economics is particularly insightful. For monetary stuff particularly I could recommend Steve Williamson (https://stevewilliamson.substack.com/) or David Andolfatto (https://andolfatto.blogspot.com/), but unfortunately both have stopped blogging recently.
OK - having rummaged around a little, I am happy that the three of them (Krugman, Andolfatto and Williamson) have lived up to the truism of 3 economists being able to provide 10 explanations about something.
In general, it does seem that Krugman does more surface level descriptions, but of course he has a strong background writing for non-economist readers.
As for specific predictions, it doesn't look like any of them bat better than .300 over the past few years. Of course the time since 2019 is pretty challenging.
Andolfatto's crypto interest is a little odd. Seems like a little bit of shiny object syndrome, unless he is actually holding crypto and not mentioning it. That seems unlikely, but I also can't find him specifically ruling it out, for example as part of a disclosure of conflict statement.
I fully agree that Krugman is in his element more when writing about trade than macroeconomics more generally. At the same time, he really does have a knack for explaining complex macro topics to the masses (https://slate.com/business/1998/08/baby-sitting-the-economy.html). Still, the canard that Krugman has predicted 27 of the last two recessions (at least when a Republican is President) is evergreen. My model of Krugman's writing is that any piece that does not contain the word "Republican" is better than any piece that does contain that word, and the quality of any point within a piece is directly related to the number of words that exist between the "point" and the word "Republican."
See, this is actually a perfect example where he misses an important point because he is not an expert in monetary economics - or because he ignores certain aspects of the story to push for a solution he likes politically. A big issue for the co-op was that nominal prices were fixed, and letting prices adjust would have provided a simple solution. See e.g. here for the same argument: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/05/krugmans_baby-s.html
I think Nate doth protest too much about the Tyler Robinson “misinformation” issue—he cites a quote from the Utah governor as if it were fact, when the gov has every incentive in the world to paint Robinson as far-left. Remember how regretful Cox sounded at the arrest press conference that Robinson was not some Intifada outsider? Just because Robinson has a trans partner is no guarantee he is liberal on other issues. Funny that Nate points to that as evidence, but then dismisses the fact that he grew up in a gun loving Republican family. Also , while I read HCR sparingly, to compare her to the insult-spewing, tear-it-all-down Tea Party is just a ridiculous stretch.
“Just because Robinson has a trans partner is no guarantee he is liberal on other issues.”
A guarantee? No, but it’s a pretty strong hint in our highly polarized politics. I also question how relevant that is, given that the motive (probably) has something to do with his left-leaning position on that issue. I think if we found an essay written by Robinson that espoused a pro-tariff position, it wouldn’t move the needle.
“Funny that Nate points to that as evidence, but then dismisses the fact that he grew up in a gun loving Republican family.”
… yes, and reports, including interviews with some of his immediate family, indicate that his political views differed significantly from those of his family, which was associated with the LDS church.
"Just because Robinson has a trans partner is no guarantee he is liberal on other issues."
Uh, yeah --- probably is a guarantee!!!!!!! You can't really come back to the right from that. And the gun-lovin' Republican family? Given this Robinson kid did badly in college and dropped out, I'd say we've got some serious rebellion here.
I think this is probably the worst socio-political analysis I've ever read. Not because it's unsophisticated or isn't rigorous in some ways. But it is precisely for those reasons. It will trick people who don't have a good grasp of political economy and social psychology into thinking you've said something new, when what you're really doing here is defending the technocratic center-left neoliberal normative political stance. Which is far more discredited and faces far more electability challenges than this invented category of "Heather Cox Richardsonism".
I don’t read much Richardson, but I think I know what Nate means when he refers to “resistance libs”. At least, I’ve seen plenty of left-leaning folks stake out apparently hypocritical positions to defend Biden and other Democratic Party politicians.
I think it’s weird to criticize Nate for holding a “center-left neoliberal normative political stance” when Nate’s chief critique of resistance libs is their defense of center-left neoliberal normative politicians.
"But if you’re going to send out missives about electoral politics to 2+ million subscribers, you probably ought to “do the reading” about the many reasons that a Trump win was, at a minimum, highly plausible." Yup. The Kirk/Robinson/Groyper criticism is also dead on. I suspect HCR agrees in both cases and appreciates the constructive parts of your criticism. The Tea Party analogy is pure trolling. Ditto for your assertion that HCR's readers hang on her every word. "A much better analogy is Walter Cronkite—an imperfect icon of trust. He famously said, 'History must share with reading, writing and arithmetic first rank as the most important subjects in the curriculum. Understanding the issues on which citizens of a republic are expected to vote is impossible without an understanding of the past.' Nobody understands this better than HCR."
In politics you have a kind of triangle, the "principled - pragmatic - honest" triangle. The more you lean towards two of them, the more you distance yourself from the third. HCR is all-in on "principled", thus lacking honesty and pragmatism. Nate is very much on the "pragmatic - honest" line (subsequently weak on principles, which is not bad per se). Thus HCR and Nate cannot accord.
I’m not sure the choice is that stark. My top issue for the 2024 election was democracy/rule of law and I suspect that is pretty well aligned with HCR. But I would not have urged Kamala Harris to campaign on that issue because I know very few swing voters care about it. I’m not happy about that - I wish they cared more! But if I want their votes, I need to address what they care about, not what I think is most important. At the end of the day, I didn’t need Kamala Harris to talk about democracy - I knew she was better on that issue- I needed her to win. That’s why it’s important to actually identify issues that the voters who matter- swing voters- care about.
I would guess your "rule of law" is different from what I want from rule of law: I want safe streets. I want a virgin to be able to walk safely coast to coast carrying a bag of gold, as someone said of the time of a particularly good King of England ------- one lost in the mists of history, naturally, and a myth.
As for democracy, I'm for it assuming it's by the actual stakeholders, decent citizens, not what too many on the left push today, democracy belonging to the self-described victims who are incompetent to do well in the wealthiest society the world has ever seen, and the criminals, whose only saving grace is that they don't vote.
People often talk about "Law and Order" as if they were a single concept, but they're actually two different ideas.
"The Rule of Law" means that laws apply to everyone, including the powerful and rich, Kings and Presidents.
"Order" means that you have a society where citizens can feel safe walking alone at night, where criminals aren't roaming the streets prowling for victims.
Liberals and libertarians tend to prioritize the "Rule of Law", where elected officials are bound by the same laws as ordinary citizens. Conservatives tend to prioritize an "Orderly Society" where common citizens can feel safe from common criminals.
Thus you are on the "principled - pragmatic" line, distancing from the honesty (not judgemental, just saying you would promote Harris not for your true reasons in order to make her win).
The other thing that jumps out to me here is that Nate likes chiding Democrats (correctly) for their epistemic failures - HCR saying that Kirk's killer was a Republican, refusal to acknowledge Biden's senility, but I often wonder what the point of harping on these same few examples (it is usually the same few) is.
If the idea is to argue that Democrats aren't superior on the question of epistemic hygiene from Republicans (on average), well, I am not convinced. Mainstream Democrats did after all get Biden off the ballot. If HCR's one sin is mistaken information about Robinson - well, that's bad, but I am not sure that makes her worse than her competition in the right-wing media sphere. If the idea is to get Democrats to admit that they aren't perfect, and have their irrational biases, then fine - no argument at all from me. But that seems like an awfully basic and simple point, given how much time and energy Nate dedicates to litigating it.
I think Mr. Silver is trying to hard too fit people into categories instead of understanding approaches to information here. Ms. Richardson is neither a political strategist nor a journalist. She writes her letters to give historical context to current events. I don't read her to try and determine who I should vote for or what messaging will resonate with voters. I don't need her to tell me that nor do I consider her to have any expertise in that area. I don't read this substack for that either. I do hang on her every word and I am a big supporter of both AOC and Graham Platner despite being an older, over educated, white woman. Maybe this is because I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, lived in Ann Arbor in the early 1980's and did an MFA in technical theatre at Yale? I wonder is Mr. Silver can tell how these things might affect my politics from an historical perspective? Assuming he is familiar with the relevant history? If not I suggest he get familiar with it.
I own a dog too. His middle name is "God Damn It" every time I go into the dining room to pick up what he has left there. Doesn't make me depressed either, but it can make me cranky. As for Richardson, she's just one more hack.
Why should Nate Silver get familiar with technical theatre at Yale? I am not getting this post.
Reminds me of that kid who was getting a puppetry degree at Columbia in NYC and complained bitterly to a reporter that it was pretty terrible when people like him couldn't even get a job in his field!!!
I was making a point about the history I lived thru and how it affects my perspective. What HRC does is provide that perspective relative to current events. So I grew up in a union town and then lived in the Detroit area during the collapse of the car industry. I went to high school at a time when a kid could graduate high school and get a union card and therefor a family supporting job the day after graduation. I lived thru a time of profound working class displacement. It affects my world view. I went to the Yale School of Drama at a time when Athol Fugard and August Wilson were often in residence and that also affects my perspective. Point being that there is more to understanding our current moment than what is going on today. I didn't have any trouble getting work as a theatre tech by the way - most of us didn't. Its not the same as acting. Everything I learned at YSD was relevant to my second career in information systems by the way. Troubleshooting a light plot and troubleshooting a program - same, same. I think maybe you made an assumption here. I wasn't complaining about my economic condition. I do just fine.
Well I apologize if that seemed like name dropping. I was a student and Mr. Fugard and Mr. August were resident playwrights. I was influenced by their writing. I was not friends with them. I will try to be more clear in future.
My worry is that sometimes political analysis gets hijacked by "I just find these people annoying." I think Nate's coverage of Sanders in 2016 was guilty of this, but now his new enemy is the Resistance Libs (possibly due to lingering bad feelings over COVID restriction arguments), so all of a sudden Sanders and co. are "very good at politics."
That being said - I think this piece gets a lot right. If we think of the Democratic party as a three-legged stool of those 3 groups, then my next question becomes - what is the most natural alliance that can be formed between them? Or should we expect all 3 to play a role, ala the older Republican version built on anti-communist foreign policy, religious conservatism, and free markets.
I consider myself very politically engaged but i've never heard of Heather Cox Richardson before reading this post.
Going only by what I've read here Nate comes off just a little bit jealous of her success. Somewhat ironically, he's sounding very much like the out of touch legacy media he usually lampoons (and rightly so).
Not to mention, going from being a fairly popular substacker to being the face of one of only 3 wings (apparently) of one of only two major political parties in America seems like a huge leap not supported by other evidence.
Like other posters mention, he seems to just be using her as an avatar for a bunch of different stuff he doesn't like about Dems but it doesn't seem to hold together as any kind of political philisophy/ISM at all other than by his own definition.
I think the larger point about a potential Tea Party-esque movement on the left is valid- there are plenty of us who think the current Dem leadership is mostly worthless but also just hate Trump and anything associated with him. I could be persuaded to support an "outsider" candidate, IF (and i wish could emphasize it more) i thought they could actually win both the primary and the general. That's 100% of the calculus for me.
But, according to Nate, this faction's standard-bearers are Harris (!) and Newsom. It's the most centrist option ever, which hardly seems like the battle cry of the remnants (again apparently) of the woke left. I don't think many/any Dems are interested in a Harris rerun and Newsom is the governor of the most populous state in the country and is very visible and well known- he's gonna be factor in the primary by default unless he somehow just decides not to run.
Again the idea of HCR-ism just seems forced and incoherent to me, but maybe it will make more sense in part 2
I'm not sure that Richardson deserves to be cast as the head of a political faction, although she does deserve to be lampooned at every turn. Still, the main event isn't really the label but the set of behaviors and assumptions being labeled.
One of several Interesting articles on the direction that the left, and the Democratic Party, are going. That said, it feels like you are focusing almost exclusively on the highly engaged voters. I have an idea of something that I call a "Change Voter", people who are largely disengaged with day-to-day politics, unaffiliated or only loosely associated with a Party, and interested primarily in what it feels like the government is doing for them. These are the Obama/Trump voters, and perhaps Trump/Mamdani voters in New York. They don't know much about high principle economic or social arguments, but what they do know is that the status quo is not working for them, so the solution is "Throw the bums out" every 2-4 years and try something different, anything different. It's just theory and conjecture, but I think there's enough evidence that the same voters are swinging wildly between political principles to warrant further investigation.
You wrote: "Yes, as the New York Times’s Jamelle Bouie points out, I’m fond of my little categories and “isms”. Blueskyism shares some attributes with Richardsonism, such as a reverence for academics, although they’re not exactly identical. (Bluesky has a mean streak that is very much not shared by the kinder, gentler Richardson, for instance.) While you’re welcome to disagree, I think these anthropological explorations of the Democratic Party are one of the better beats we have going at Silver Bulletin."
My problem is that I'm a subscriber and have long admired your work, but I'm also a grassroots volunteer who's put in many hours every year trying to elect Dems (fortunately doing pretty well so far) and none of the "three factions" you mention resonate with me in the slightest. They either seem faintly or not so faintly repulsive or are just totally different from who I am. Perhaps you need to add some more "little categories" to sketch out who Dems are.
The sooner the educated take a backseat to the working class in Dem politics, the better off the party will be.
The working class is the biggest electorally formidable force in politics. They used to be the backbone of Democratic party strength. Yet somehow a vocal, coalition partner (the educated) co-opted the party establishment. These folks (bluesky-ians and HCR-ians) shouldn't be in charge. They mostly just alienate potential working class voters and limit Democratic success to cities and the coasts. They're economically more secure and don't actually connect with working class people's needs (it's pretty bad when somehow Trump does a better job)
It's telling both the pro-abundance / left of the party talk more about affordability than "Orange man bad".
Put the working class in charge of Democratic party politics and they'll start to expand+succeed. Persist with educated class, they'll always complain about underperformance.
How do you think social issues fit in though? It's something that needs to be addressed. And can the party actually deliver in affordability when in power beyond vapid slogans? It's not like the Biden admin didn't try solutions favored by the capital L left.
My problem with this article is that it seems very much like a vibes based analysis than anything. I'm not an HCR reader, but some of the surrounding evidence used for critique of this supposed branch of Dems that she represents seems...not very rigorous.
For instance, what evidence is there to suppose that Kamala is the preferred nominee for Resist Libs? And what exactly makes Newsom more of a ResistLib democrat than an Abundance one? Is a podcast episode from Oct of 2024 somehow more representative than when Newsom explicitly name dropped Ezra Klein and the Abundance movement while signing CEQA reforms earlier this year? (And even by the podcast metric, Ezra Klein just had him on as a guest on his show.)
It seems like a lazy way to group people based on personal feelings.
To be honest the better dividing line to analyze Democratic party politics is educated vs working class
The educated are little-c conservative, care more about restoring norms. Resisting ICE is a top issue. They aren't impacted by affordability issues.
The working class, OTOH, is suffering. They resonate with affordability messaging. They might be ambivalent - or even pro Trump - on immigration. Whether abundance or more lefty perspectives, they're open to any affordability solutions
Dems problem is when they're led by the former, they alienate the latter. Dems won't be successful until they get back to being a working-class led party.
Educated small c only care about immigration when Trump's doing it. They vote democratic so they can virtue signal while hoarding all the wealth.
Those are the "norms" they seek to restore, along with making sure Joe & Mika & Rachel & Hillary are pleased with the sitch.
The norm being that they don't have to hear about democrats rounding up hundreds of thousands and putting them into ice for months. If I was anti-ice, I'd vote for maga just because then protestors care and actually try to stop it.
To add a layer to this; while it might at first blush feel like all factions are coalescing around affordability after the elections, I can see a future where it starts to ring hollow due to that same over representation you describe. What is the democrats comprehensive view of the problems with our economy and solutions to affordability nation wide? The only reason we talk about abundance and the Bernie left as faction leaders is because they both had the audacity to offer an opinion about what needs to change
The Democrats don't actually care about affordability. At least the ones who run WA and OR don't. They tax the hell out of -- get this -- home heating fuel. Oh yeah, the party of the common man? Bullshit. The Democrats haven't cared about the common man for decades.
“For instance, what evidence is there to suppose that Kamala is the preferred nominee for Resist Libs?“
I was literally about to come to the comment section to ask who is advocating for Harris’ return.
My biggest piece of evidence on this is that, in a recent Times profile on Harris’ future aspirations, every single comment I found — every single one — had some kind of negative reaction to the idea of her running for President again.
One could argue that Times readers are mostly abundance types or something… but I really don’t think there is any camp that wants her back.
it's less ideological and the fact that nobody likes a loser
I'm very tapped into YIMBY and Abundance groups here in California. The Abundance people are cautiously optimistic about Newsom at best. They're REALLY passionate about Beshear and Shapiro and Gallego, almost if not entirely because they think those guys can win. The people who REALLY like Newsom are definitely the resist libs, who I think because they tend to be older and women people think are not as "bloodthirsty" as Newsom is but they 100% agree with his political sentiments
That argument - even if anecdotal - makes much more sense than what Nate Silver used to argue that Newsom is a standard-bearer of this Resist Lib branch and not for Abundance.
My issue with this article is that Nate Silver uses a link to an October 2024(!) interview Newsom had with Jennifer Welch as the main proof that he's the standard-bearer for this faction, and never even addresses the fact that if we're going by that logic, Newsom just this past week was on a podcast by Ezra Klein, where Klein called him the frontrunner. Also, it ignores that Jennifer Welch also hosted Mamdani for a friendly interview on her show. So is Mamdani the standard-bearer of the Resist Lib and not the progressive branch? I would argue Jennifer Welch has been closer to the progressive branch than whatever faction Newsom is or isn't in considering her focus on AIPAC and authenticity.
That "Abundance" stuff has the stench of a meeting of K Street consultants.
Yes. I don't know what they are talking about: IMO a jump-off from the high prices of first eggs (now okay again) and then beef, but both were caused by by kill-offs of livestock for respectively bird flu and drought. People complained about that and gave the K-Street types a foothold to complain about a lack of abundance. Seems crazy to me; there is more plenty in the USA than anywhere on Earth.
Reminds me of the line in the movie Labyrinth: "You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is.” The United States is the world standard for abundance, at least outside of Heaven or the Garden of Eden, a country where even the poor people are all overweight and diabetic. What more could people really ask for?
Jesus! You are seeing the trees instead of the forest. Here's this person, Richardson, who has become rich and influential within the Democratic Party by spreading a lot of partisan misinformation--the very thing she purports to decry.
You're missing the forest for the trees. His taxonomy isn't wrong. The labels can be disputed. The idea is pretty solid. What is it about liberals that makes you so god damned defensive is my question.
There isn’t that much to bleed out of the generic ballot and Trump approval ratings. Eleven months before s midterm is a great time for vibes.
The "suburban wine mom - thinks every Republican is an affront to God" types from the meme that's been circling around do seem to be more nationally backing Newsom these days.
Wonderful characterization, and unfortunately includes me --- an affront to God?
This is why I'm having trouble deciding to go to my East Coast college reunion in May -----
I say go there and get shitfaced. How else could you bear it? LOL
So that's why Kamala Harris has traction. All about the wine and the 'burbs. LOL
FYI Boulle backed Biden to stay in the race until the debate.
I trust HCR more on history, Nate more on elections, and neither of them much on diagnosing where the Democratic coalition is headed. Nate's snark-ridden take on HCR is a prime example of why he needs to steer clear of this.
She deserves every possible bit of snark, and then some.
I have similar issues with Paul Krugman. He's obviously got areas of expertise and his writing is remarkably clear and precise when he's operating within those areas. The portions of his writings that attempt to address politics are useless, however, and do little more than reveal the political worldview of a guy who spent decades in a faculty lounge at Princeton. The political takes are so bad and poorly reasoned that it makes you question his writing on his areas of expertise.
Krugman got the Nobel prize because they didn't give it to Keynes when they should have, and have felt guilty for decades. Krugman broke no new ground, and has been a political hack ever since, just like Richardson. There used to be a formidable Democratic brain trust, but that was then and this is now. The Democrats haven't had an original idea for at least a couple of decades.
HaHa. Keynes died in 1946 and the first Nobel Prize in Econ was not awarded until 1969. Your ignorance is showing!
I fully agree, and as an economist myself, I would argue that his areas of expertise are also narrower than you think. I.e., he received a Nobel prize for trade theory, but he now often writes on macroeconomics and monetary economics, areas where his expertise is closer to replacement level, and his conclusions are driven by political preferences about as much as technical expertise.
Replacement level top drawer economists?
So what exactly are we talking about here.
How many people are writing on macro and monetary economics that have the equivalent of Krugman's trade theory credentials, and who are a few publishing regularly that you would recommend?
Bonus points for links to documents that cover where their opinions differ from Krugman's.
Well, none have his trade theory credentials, but my point was that the trade theory credentials don't imply his writing on macro and monetary economics is particularly insightful. For monetary stuff particularly I could recommend Steve Williamson (https://stevewilliamson.substack.com/) or David Andolfatto (https://andolfatto.blogspot.com/), but unfortunately both have stopped blogging recently.
OK - having rummaged around a little, I am happy that the three of them (Krugman, Andolfatto and Williamson) have lived up to the truism of 3 economists being able to provide 10 explanations about something.
In general, it does seem that Krugman does more surface level descriptions, but of course he has a strong background writing for non-economist readers.
As for specific predictions, it doesn't look like any of them bat better than .300 over the past few years. Of course the time since 2019 is pretty challenging.
Andolfatto's crypto interest is a little odd. Seems like a little bit of shiny object syndrome, unless he is actually holding crypto and not mentioning it. That seems unlikely, but I also can't find him specifically ruling it out, for example as part of a disclosure of conflict statement.
Thanks!
FYI, it looks like Andolfatto has resurfaced on substack : https://davidandolfatto.substack.com/
I fully agree that Krugman is in his element more when writing about trade than macroeconomics more generally. At the same time, he really does have a knack for explaining complex macro topics to the masses (https://slate.com/business/1998/08/baby-sitting-the-economy.html). Still, the canard that Krugman has predicted 27 of the last two recessions (at least when a Republican is President) is evergreen. My model of Krugman's writing is that any piece that does not contain the word "Republican" is better than any piece that does contain that word, and the quality of any point within a piece is directly related to the number of words that exist between the "point" and the word "Republican."
Of course it is also evergreen that Republicans in the White House correspond to economic downturns.
But the Deficit Henny Pennies have predicted 20 of the last 0 economic collapses.
See, this is actually a perfect example where he misses an important point because he is not an expert in monetary economics - or because he ignores certain aspects of the story to push for a solution he likes politically. A big issue for the co-op was that nominal prices were fixed, and letting prices adjust would have provided a simple solution. See e.g. here for the same argument: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/05/krugmans_baby-s.html
I think Nate doth protest too much about the Tyler Robinson “misinformation” issue—he cites a quote from the Utah governor as if it were fact, when the gov has every incentive in the world to paint Robinson as far-left. Remember how regretful Cox sounded at the arrest press conference that Robinson was not some Intifada outsider? Just because Robinson has a trans partner is no guarantee he is liberal on other issues. Funny that Nate points to that as evidence, but then dismisses the fact that he grew up in a gun loving Republican family. Also , while I read HCR sparingly, to compare her to the insult-spewing, tear-it-all-down Tea Party is just a ridiculous stretch.
“Just because Robinson has a trans partner is no guarantee he is liberal on other issues.”
A guarantee? No, but it’s a pretty strong hint in our highly polarized politics. I also question how relevant that is, given that the motive (probably) has something to do with his left-leaning position on that issue. I think if we found an essay written by Robinson that espoused a pro-tariff position, it wouldn’t move the needle.
“Funny that Nate points to that as evidence, but then dismisses the fact that he grew up in a gun loving Republican family.”
… yes, and reports, including interviews with some of his immediate family, indicate that his political views differed significantly from those of his family, which was associated with the LDS church.
Fact is, that she lied about Robinson. But she's a "progressive," and when they lie it's perfectly okay because ... why, again?
"Just because Robinson has a trans partner is no guarantee he is liberal on other issues."
Uh, yeah --- probably is a guarantee!!!!!!! You can't really come back to the right from that. And the gun-lovin' Republican family? Given this Robinson kid did badly in college and dropped out, I'd say we've got some serious rebellion here.
I think this is probably the worst socio-political analysis I've ever read. Not because it's unsophisticated or isn't rigorous in some ways. But it is precisely for those reasons. It will trick people who don't have a good grasp of political economy and social psychology into thinking you've said something new, when what you're really doing here is defending the technocratic center-left neoliberal normative political stance. Which is far more discredited and faces far more electability challenges than this invented category of "Heather Cox Richardsonism".
I don’t read much Richardson, but I think I know what Nate means when he refers to “resistance libs”. At least, I’ve seen plenty of left-leaning folks stake out apparently hypocritical positions to defend Biden and other Democratic Party politicians.
I think it’s weird to criticize Nate for holding a “center-left neoliberal normative political stance” when Nate’s chief critique of resistance libs is their defense of center-left neoliberal normative politicians.
Just seems like a bit of trespass into political and social psychology, intuited from very suspect categories. But that’s just me.
"But if you’re going to send out missives about electoral politics to 2+ million subscribers, you probably ought to “do the reading” about the many reasons that a Trump win was, at a minimum, highly plausible." Yup. The Kirk/Robinson/Groyper criticism is also dead on. I suspect HCR agrees in both cases and appreciates the constructive parts of your criticism. The Tea Party analogy is pure trolling. Ditto for your assertion that HCR's readers hang on her every word. "A much better analogy is Walter Cronkite—an imperfect icon of trust. He famously said, 'History must share with reading, writing and arithmetic first rank as the most important subjects in the curriculum. Understanding the issues on which citizens of a republic are expected to vote is impossible without an understanding of the past.' Nobody understands this better than HCR."
I like HCR a lot but this is a very fair critique
I like her too but this post is Nate’s version of “childless cat ladies.”
I think Richardson is the spokeliar for the "progressive" childless cat lady faction that controls the Democratic Party.
Some guy is on another rant.
in rose emoji twitter we'd call them blue wave resistance lib winemoms (no misogyny there at all)
Winemoms ------ I will say you leftist people are good with language. [:-)
In politics you have a kind of triangle, the "principled - pragmatic - honest" triangle. The more you lean towards two of them, the more you distance yourself from the third. HCR is all-in on "principled", thus lacking honesty and pragmatism. Nate is very much on the "pragmatic - honest" line (subsequently weak on principles, which is not bad per se). Thus HCR and Nate cannot accord.
I’m not sure the choice is that stark. My top issue for the 2024 election was democracy/rule of law and I suspect that is pretty well aligned with HCR. But I would not have urged Kamala Harris to campaign on that issue because I know very few swing voters care about it. I’m not happy about that - I wish they cared more! But if I want their votes, I need to address what they care about, not what I think is most important. At the end of the day, I didn’t need Kamala Harris to talk about democracy - I knew she was better on that issue- I needed her to win. That’s why it’s important to actually identify issues that the voters who matter- swing voters- care about.
Your top issue in '24 was your hatred, but you'd never admit it.
I would guess your "rule of law" is different from what I want from rule of law: I want safe streets. I want a virgin to be able to walk safely coast to coast carrying a bag of gold, as someone said of the time of a particularly good King of England ------- one lost in the mists of history, naturally, and a myth.
As for democracy, I'm for it assuming it's by the actual stakeholders, decent citizens, not what too many on the left push today, democracy belonging to the self-described victims who are incompetent to do well in the wealthiest society the world has ever seen, and the criminals, whose only saving grace is that they don't vote.
People often talk about "Law and Order" as if they were a single concept, but they're actually two different ideas.
"The Rule of Law" means that laws apply to everyone, including the powerful and rich, Kings and Presidents.
"Order" means that you have a society where citizens can feel safe walking alone at night, where criminals aren't roaming the streets prowling for victims.
Liberals and libertarians tend to prioritize the "Rule of Law", where elected officials are bound by the same laws as ordinary citizens. Conservatives tend to prioritize an "Orderly Society" where common citizens can feel safe from common criminals.
Good analysis; I believe you are right.
Thus you are on the "principled - pragmatic" line, distancing from the honesty (not judgemental, just saying you would promote Harris not for your true reasons in order to make her win).
The other thing that jumps out to me here is that Nate likes chiding Democrats (correctly) for their epistemic failures - HCR saying that Kirk's killer was a Republican, refusal to acknowledge Biden's senility, but I often wonder what the point of harping on these same few examples (it is usually the same few) is.
If the idea is to argue that Democrats aren't superior on the question of epistemic hygiene from Republicans (on average), well, I am not convinced. Mainstream Democrats did after all get Biden off the ballot. If HCR's one sin is mistaken information about Robinson - well, that's bad, but I am not sure that makes her worse than her competition in the right-wing media sphere. If the idea is to get Democrats to admit that they aren't perfect, and have their irrational biases, then fine - no argument at all from me. But that seems like an awfully basic and simple point, given how much time and energy Nate dedicates to litigating it.
I think Mr. Silver is trying to hard too fit people into categories instead of understanding approaches to information here. Ms. Richardson is neither a political strategist nor a journalist. She writes her letters to give historical context to current events. I don't read her to try and determine who I should vote for or what messaging will resonate with voters. I don't need her to tell me that nor do I consider her to have any expertise in that area. I don't read this substack for that either. I do hang on her every word and I am a big supporter of both AOC and Graham Platner despite being an older, over educated, white woman. Maybe this is because I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, lived in Ann Arbor in the early 1980's and did an MFA in technical theatre at Yale? I wonder is Mr. Silver can tell how these things might affect my politics from an historical perspective? Assuming he is familiar with the relevant history? If not I suggest he get familiar with it.
I’m getting pretty sick of the “older, over-educated white woman” bashing - like those were bad things.
Good point. Cats are okay, too. I love cats. I like being a Karen, too. One is either a Karen or a patsy, and I don't want to be anyone's patsy.
You forgot "depressed, cat owning, vindictive." LOL
I own a dog and am allergic to cats. Also not depressed - because I own a dog.
I own a dog too. His middle name is "God Damn It" every time I go into the dining room to pick up what he has left there. Doesn't make me depressed either, but it can make me cranky. As for Richardson, she's just one more hack.
Why should Nate Silver get familiar with technical theatre at Yale? I am not getting this post.
Reminds me of that kid who was getting a puppetry degree at Columbia in NYC and complained bitterly to a reporter that it was pretty terrible when people like him couldn't even get a job in his field!!!
I was making a point about the history I lived thru and how it affects my perspective. What HRC does is provide that perspective relative to current events. So I grew up in a union town and then lived in the Detroit area during the collapse of the car industry. I went to high school at a time when a kid could graduate high school and get a union card and therefor a family supporting job the day after graduation. I lived thru a time of profound working class displacement. It affects my world view. I went to the Yale School of Drama at a time when Athol Fugard and August Wilson were often in residence and that also affects my perspective. Point being that there is more to understanding our current moment than what is going on today. I didn't have any trouble getting work as a theatre tech by the way - most of us didn't. Its not the same as acting. Everything I learned at YSD was relevant to my second career in information systems by the way. Troubleshooting a light plot and troubleshooting a program - same, same. I think maybe you made an assumption here. I wasn't complaining about my economic condition. I do just fine.
Name dropping who overlapped with you at YSD definitely alleviates our desire to bash older over-educated white women.
Well I apologize if that seemed like name dropping. I was a student and Mr. Fugard and Mr. August were resident playwrights. I was influenced by their writing. I was not friends with them. I will try to be more clear in future.
Well, I'm glad you do just fine, anyway.
My worry is that sometimes political analysis gets hijacked by "I just find these people annoying." I think Nate's coverage of Sanders in 2016 was guilty of this, but now his new enemy is the Resistance Libs (possibly due to lingering bad feelings over COVID restriction arguments), so all of a sudden Sanders and co. are "very good at politics."
That being said - I think this piece gets a lot right. If we think of the Democratic party as a three-legged stool of those 3 groups, then my next question becomes - what is the most natural alliance that can be formed between them? Or should we expect all 3 to play a role, ala the older Republican version built on anti-communist foreign policy, religious conservatism, and free markets.
Yeah Nate seems to conveniently forget how AOC had co were Biden dead enders, which has been a mortal sin for him lately.
I consider myself very politically engaged but i've never heard of Heather Cox Richardson before reading this post.
Going only by what I've read here Nate comes off just a little bit jealous of her success. Somewhat ironically, he's sounding very much like the out of touch legacy media he usually lampoons (and rightly so).
Not to mention, going from being a fairly popular substacker to being the face of one of only 3 wings (apparently) of one of only two major political parties in America seems like a huge leap not supported by other evidence.
Like other posters mention, he seems to just be using her as an avatar for a bunch of different stuff he doesn't like about Dems but it doesn't seem to hold together as any kind of political philisophy/ISM at all other than by his own definition.
I think the larger point about a potential Tea Party-esque movement on the left is valid- there are plenty of us who think the current Dem leadership is mostly worthless but also just hate Trump and anything associated with him. I could be persuaded to support an "outsider" candidate, IF (and i wish could emphasize it more) i thought they could actually win both the primary and the general. That's 100% of the calculus for me.
But, according to Nate, this faction's standard-bearers are Harris (!) and Newsom. It's the most centrist option ever, which hardly seems like the battle cry of the remnants (again apparently) of the woke left. I don't think many/any Dems are interested in a Harris rerun and Newsom is the governor of the most populous state in the country and is very visible and well known- he's gonna be factor in the primary by default unless he somehow just decides not to run.
Again the idea of HCR-ism just seems forced and incoherent to me, but maybe it will make more sense in part 2
I'm not sure that Richardson deserves to be cast as the head of a political faction, although she does deserve to be lampooned at every turn. Still, the main event isn't really the label but the set of behaviors and assumptions being labeled.
One of several Interesting articles on the direction that the left, and the Democratic Party, are going. That said, it feels like you are focusing almost exclusively on the highly engaged voters. I have an idea of something that I call a "Change Voter", people who are largely disengaged with day-to-day politics, unaffiliated or only loosely associated with a Party, and interested primarily in what it feels like the government is doing for them. These are the Obama/Trump voters, and perhaps Trump/Mamdani voters in New York. They don't know much about high principle economic or social arguments, but what they do know is that the status quo is not working for them, so the solution is "Throw the bums out" every 2-4 years and try something different, anything different. It's just theory and conjecture, but I think there's enough evidence that the same voters are swinging wildly between political principles to warrant further investigation.
"anthropological explorations of the Democratic Party are one of the better beats" - it definitely is! Keep at it!
You wrote: "Yes, as the New York Times’s Jamelle Bouie points out, I’m fond of my little categories and “isms”. Blueskyism shares some attributes with Richardsonism, such as a reverence for academics, although they’re not exactly identical. (Bluesky has a mean streak that is very much not shared by the kinder, gentler Richardson, for instance.) While you’re welcome to disagree, I think these anthropological explorations of the Democratic Party are one of the better beats we have going at Silver Bulletin."
My problem is that I'm a subscriber and have long admired your work, but I'm also a grassroots volunteer who's put in many hours every year trying to elect Dems (fortunately doing pretty well so far) and none of the "three factions" you mention resonate with me in the slightest. They either seem faintly or not so faintly repulsive or are just totally different from who I am. Perhaps you need to add some more "little categories" to sketch out who Dems are.
The sooner the educated take a backseat to the working class in Dem politics, the better off the party will be.
The working class is the biggest electorally formidable force in politics. They used to be the backbone of Democratic party strength. Yet somehow a vocal, coalition partner (the educated) co-opted the party establishment. These folks (bluesky-ians and HCR-ians) shouldn't be in charge. They mostly just alienate potential working class voters and limit Democratic success to cities and the coasts. They're economically more secure and don't actually connect with working class people's needs (it's pretty bad when somehow Trump does a better job)
It's telling both the pro-abundance / left of the party talk more about affordability than "Orange man bad".
Put the working class in charge of Democratic party politics and they'll start to expand+succeed. Persist with educated class, they'll always complain about underperformance.
I know more than a few people with Master's degrees and working class jobs.
Why, because their Gender Studies degree didn't get them a white collar university slot?
How do you think social issues fit in though? It's something that needs to be addressed. And can the party actually deliver in affordability when in power beyond vapid slogans? It's not like the Biden admin didn't try solutions favored by the capital L left.