Good article. I suspect Vance is speaking out of his hat and playing to the audience, and more widely, the voter. I'd like to think that if he thought a bit about the literal ramifications of that statement, in private, he'd acquiesce.
This would be an excellent critique were it not for the fact that the political alternative this year would be substantially worse.
That said, we’ll have to see whether or not Trump-Vance ‘24 do as Trump-Pence ‘16 did - talk populist but govern conservative (except, sadly, on spending) - or if they actually do govern as they speak this time.
Let’s at least hope we get a chance to find out, as the alternative - not just for manufacturing jobs, but for almost everything else - is far worse to contemplate.
When a progressive spouts lunacy, I shake my head and hope it doesn't affect too many persuadable people towards believing it. Even if it has tactical political value, it likely carries the long-term cost of repelling more intelligent people. Because of this, when a Republican does the same, it makes my blood boil.
The GOP once at least paid lip service to a handful of ideals that have slowly crumbled or reversed. At this point, the GOP's approach to the economy and liberty doesn't look much different from the DNC in the 1990s. I suspect this was a pseudo-deliberate shift in favor of votes on the table from disenchanted union types, etc., over the the past 10 years.
Trump's election this year is definitely not the worst-case scenario . I'm with DH in that I mildly favor him. However, if the slow evolution of "conservatism" - from a being associated with pro-liberty, pro-trade, pro-economic freedom, etc, towards being jingoist worker's ideology, where communism* is a fine approach to economics - is not constantly met with vocal objection and correction from people like David, THAT would be tragedy.
If I could have Trump's rhetoric/platform improved or Harris's, I'd prefer to have Trump's improved. It would take forever to tweak the DNC platform to the point where I could get behind it.
(* Just don't call it "communism", which is associated with "Marxism", which apparently is synonymous with "DEI".)
“Even if it has tactical political value, it likely carries the long-term cost of repelling more intelligent people.”
I’m with you on much of your post, but not this point.
Most of the upper middle class votes leftist today. More than used to be the case. Part of this, of course, is that Dems do even more things that benefit them selfishly (canceling student loans, e.g). But most of it because these supposedly intelligent people believe that this they are being virtuous in doing so.
With young woke leftists, you can at least place a lot of the blame on their miseducators and their lack of experience in the real world. Other than government employees (who have been leftists for all the decades I’ve been alive), OTOH, how do you explain more than ever older supposedly intelligent people voting for this “lunacy”?
It seems to me “more intelligent people” these days are MORE persuadable to all sorts of lunacy…
When I think "intelligent" I'm not necessarily talking about academic achievement - there are plenty of humanities PhDs, for example, who are smart in some dimensions but illiterate/ignorant in others (economics, statistics, etc). What I have in mind is a generally reasonable and thoughtful person who doesn't have a strong social anchor in a political ideology. Typically a younger person.
For example: imagine a college student who is entertaining the idea of leaning "conservative". Some friends are laughing about how Trump, after dancing with some d-bag streamer, just said he would save Tic Toc from being shut down, and that shutting it down would be good for China. While not terribly consequential, Trump's statement was stupid on its face. If you're young and persuadable, you would have to be totally immune to social forces to shrug it off and defend supporting Trump, apart from his myriad absurd issues.
I would think being in the shoes of this hypothetical student would be extremely uncomfortable. At some point, you might just say, ok, neither side is perfect, but certainly the MAGA camp is out of their minds. Good conclusion, bad conclusion? That's hard to say. But it's no doubt an easy conclusion. This is my mental picture, anyway. I was young once, and I don't recall having a hard time defending the conservatism of Ronald Reagan (a bit before me, but...), Bush 41, Dole, Gingrich, etc. None of them were perfect, but if anyone laughed at me, I didn't have to excuse outright absurd stupid statements and platform positions.
The "college student" scenario could be translated to other scenarios - the key aspect is "reasonable/thoughtful/persuadable". But I realize it's just a hypothetical narrative, so there's that.
You and I probably agree on 99% of all of this, stuff. I do like the libertarians/economists to keep Trumpism in check, though. I doubt it pushes votes to Harris - at least I hope not.
If it’s as simple as “Trump sometimes says stupid things”, and more people would vote right of center if he didn’t say stupid things, well, sure… fine, but utterly uninteresting.
In fact Kamala (as Biden) say many, many more actually stupid things.
Either way, students are gonna hear far more left wing propoganda than right wing, so by your logic, we are mostly screwed anyway.
Given that the mainstream media is now overtly biased against Trump and for Democrats they are gonna amplify anything negative Trump says, and basically hide almost all of the stupid things Dems say.
So as far as I can understand your logic, you’re either saying that the right is screwed no matter what, or else you’re saying the right is pretty screwed unless its’s leading pols are near-perfect.
[as an aside, the right has continued to win approximately half the national elections and most governorships and state legislatures despite this enormous drag of the press and academia. And most younger people, especially colleg-educated, started out leftist, although admittedly what they are taught these days is far worse than what we were taught when I was young.]
What am I missing?
[P.S. as an aside, Bush 41 and Dole were certainly *not* conservatives. They were merely center-right. The difference between dole and Bill Clinton was pretty small in 1996.]
Yes Bush&Dole center-right, but they were faces for the GOP and they had minimally decent filters for what they said - like most reasonable people have, especially public figures (politicians, CEOS, etc). Trump often says things that only make sense if he has zero shame for saying whatever it takes to attract any random group of possible supporters: e.g. military tribunal for Cheney, "stand down and stand by" for Proud Boys, etc. The mainstream media has been overtly anti-Republican my whole adult life, but Trump hands them things to quotes on a silver platter, often not needing to be taken out of context or twisted.
Kamala says many stupid things related to political stuff, policy, etc., but it's usually not easy to interpret it as inciting violence, supporting neo Nazis, indicating a future executive takeover* of the system of representative government. (*E.g. Christians should "just vote this one time, you'll never need to vote again" or whatever exact phrase was... I have no clue what he really meant, nor do I care - it was stupid.)
I recall a professor once laughing in front of a class about how some elected official or well known republican - don't recall who - argued taxes could reduce the deficit. The prof said this as if it was the most ridiculous idea ever - long-term or short-term didn't matter to him, it was just laughable. Most of the room laughed too. I didn't know the Laffer curve at that time, but I got the idea. I pointed out that as long as you acknowledge that a 100% tax rate would result in zero revenue, then [...logic...], voila - it's not that absurd. I doubt a single person was convinced by me (it was a western cultures class), but I didn't care, I was annoyed with the guy and had a spine. But some of the crap Trump says that must get quoted and ridiculed in front of classes these days? I'd keep my head down.
I realize that I cite a handful of specific stupid quotes - they're anecdotes, not data. My impression that he says a vast amount of stupid stuff is possibly just me being unusually annoyed by his statements... so I've got an availability heuristic skewing it all. Who knows.
Also, I have a large family, almost all of whom now think free trade is a tool of the globalists to control us all. So I'm uniquely annoyed when Trump says various dumb things because he's had a material negative effect on my holidays. And I guarantee none of them are reading blogs/articles written by economists - they're kind of a lost cause. But I don't like the party platform moving in (IMO) bad directions.
One more thing to perhaps make you feel better (or not, idk): looking at presidential elections over the last 55 years, with only a single exception - 2008 Obama over McCain - when one of the candidates “talked stupider” (in terms of their manner of speech) notably more than the other, the “stupider”-talking candidate won the election.
E.g. W Bush over Gore, then Kerry. Clinton over W Bush, Trump over Hillary.
[I consider Trump vs Biden a wash, as they both talked “stupid”. You could ex post question Reagan over Carter on this axis, I suppose, but the press made a huge deal about Reagan being stupid, so it fits decently enough]
This is roughly analogous to “who would you [Mr/Ms. Average American] rather have a beer with”, but not exactly the same thing.
Kamala talks in word salads, so what she says *is* stupid, but she doesn’t “sound” stupid to the average person.
Full disclosure, except on national defense (where I’m broadly a traditional conservative who is fundamentally fine with Trump’s foreign policy as he governed), I’m a classical liberal / small-l libertarian. You talk like a patrician Republican (admittedly I base this on your combination of relatively high respect for Bush 41 and Dole when the topic started as conservative economics, and partly your fixation on the words Trump utters rather than the actions he took over the 4 years of his presidency).
I’ll also start by saying that at this point I detest talking about Trump rather than policy with my liberal friends (who always change the subject to Trump the man rather than have any substantive discussion of any idiotic leftist policy). But since you’ve acknowledged you are right of center, I’ll do it again. [I ain’t a huge Trump fan, dislike how he talks, but the man governed well, and would be an order-of-magnitude better president than any leftist at this point, even if there are many other Republicans I’d prefer to a) run, and b) govern as president.]
In truth I agree with about 75% of your complaint, and have vast sympathy with your final paragraph [the one and only political phrase I’ve come up with - “‘it’s easy to be liberal if you’re ignorant of economics” - seems to somewhat apply here.]
But as it’s more or less how we got here, I take huge issue with this “Trump is worse than Kamala claim: “Kamala says many stupid things related to political stuff, policy, etc., but it's usually not easy to interpret it as inciting violence, supporting neo Nazis, indicating a future executive takeover* of the system of representative government. (*E.g. Christians should "just vote this one time, you'll never need to vote again" or whatever exact phrase was... I have no clue what he really meant, nor do I care - it was stupid.)”
The most brilliant thing ever written on the subject of Trump was the line: “Those who love Trump taken him seriously but not literally. Those who hate Trump take him literally but not seriously.” Please if you get nothing else out of this reply, try to think hard about this.
Every single thing you claim above as a [bad] big deal is leftist media taking Trump literally but not seriously. Every. One. Of. Them.
If you need me to provide supporting evidence, I can. But it should not be necessary. Stop believing any political spin at all the leftist media puts out. They covered up Biden’s mental acuity issues for years - largely because they “‘knew” that Kamala was even less likely to win in 2024 than he was - then turned on him quickly and even more quickly pivoted back to Kamala being wonderful.
So yeah, Trump “talks stupid”. And says *some* stupid things I wish he didn’t say. But the number is far fewer than the media claims - or you seem to believe - and Biden’s and Harris’ number of stupid and dangerous and offensive things are far higher, but the media covers them up.
I don’t like the party platform moving in bad directions either. And sure there exists the possibility that Trump will govern worse in the future than he did in the past. But a) that’s far less likely than that he will govern largely as he did in the past, and b) he will still be far better than any leftist will govern.
The Left and the press (redundant, I realize) helped ensure Trump would get nominated in 2024, and now we all will - hopefully - have to live with him as president as the alternative is far, far worse.
If it's an excellent critique, the excellence is based on the analysis, not on whether this candidate is better or worse than another. You can want Trump to win, as I only mildly do at this point, but still think that when he or his running mate makes a bad claim, it's a bad claim.
Fair enough, but… as this is your first post about either side since either Vance’s nomination or Kamala’s ascension, is it not odd that it focuses on the sins of the far lesser evil?
I confess to this point I have not read your Substack regularly. Perhaps others are well aware that, e.g. you have nothing but disgust and contempt for Democrat public policy today and simply seek to hold GOP pols to a higher standard. Absent that, it can easily appear like just another Never-Trumper pointing out yet another way their favorite target is oh-so- imperfect.
The other side also being idiots doesn’t give one side a pass on it. Politicians should aspire to be correct, possibly even good, not merely the lesser evil.
I have my concerns about Vance. And being a politician, he’s no doubt… a politician.
But from what I’ve seen he does seem to aspire to good, even if you and I and Henderson agree he is clearly incorrect on this point.
And per my reply above, for a public figure to “shoot at” one side and not the other does feel to we uninitiated as if they are picking sides (or creating a circular firing squad)…
“Yes, but you can't decry every stupid thing a politician says in every post.”
…and yet now you make MY point. There are two candidates running to be president for the following four years.
One of them is highly imperfect to those of us of a classical liberal / libertarian bent.
The other is unequivocally, with far more than 99% certainty, a total disaster.
Why take on a [clearly bad/wrong] comment from the imperfect guy’s nominee to be VP, before taking on a single thing from the person now chosen (undemocratically, though that probably matters not) as the Presidential nominee of the other major party?
Why focus *first* on a moderately bad ill from the person who might never hold power, rather than innumerable far worse ills from the person who unquestionably will?
Probably because Henderson is an economist, and this is an economic question, one the Republicans have been getting worse on over time. You would have to ask him, however.
People are going to criticize the bad policies of even politicians they consider better than the alternative. This is how we get better politicians. You are acting as though it is some great betrayal to criticize something stupid your guy said. Is there some number of criticisms for the other side that must ritually be done before it is ok to criticize your side? What's the rule there?
I also would question whether KH is actually "unquestionably will" hold power, but that's another matter.
“Probably because Henderson is an economist, and this is an economic question”
No, sir, that is simply not an answer as to why to choose to pick on a JD Vance utterance and not a Kamala Harris one at this moment in time.
Both were recently raised up to being on the national ticket of a major party. Surely you don’t deny that this is the exact reason Henderson commented on Vance this week?
One last time, we have an election coming up in November. Vance is the new *junior* (meaning no power) person on the GOP ticket.
Kamala is the new person on the top of the Dem ticket.
It’s not a coincidence that Henderson chose Vance’s speech to comment on, it’s because he’s on the ballot nationally in November.
My critique that it is “telling” (pick whatever adjective/phrase you wish here) that before criticizing anything of Kamala’s in this Substack he chose to criticize one of Vance’s stands.
For me, on economics in the last 20 years the GOP has gone from about a B+ to about a B- under Trump 2017-2019 (Trump on spending is almost as bad as the Dems and on demagoguing touching entitlements is as bad as the Dems; on everything else he governed as an above average GOPer). The Dems meanwhile, have gone from a solid B under Clinton in the late 90s to somewhere between a D- and an F.
Do you deny that whatever grade you choose to give the GOP, Trump and Vance, that Kamala’s and the Dem’s grade would be far, far worse?
My answer to your minimum number of criticisms of the other side required would be… one! Even an offhand note within the Vance criticism that KH is of course way worse on these matters that matter would for me be completely sufficient.
I have no issue with criticizing the “better side” most of the time, and little to no issue with criticizing the better side even now, though this is the one time such criticism can be counterproductive, of course, in the few months leading up to the general election after the primary process is over. That leaves over 3.5 years out of every 4 where it’s completely open season, and about 15% of the time when you should choose your words somewhat more carefully. If what you care about is what’s best for the overwhelming majority of people in the country.
But to repeat, I have no issue with legit criticism of Vance here and now - which this surely is - if there were simply *some* mention that this year’s alternative is far worse. Whether in this piece or even in some recent earlier piece.
But that doesn’t exist on this Substack.
If Henderson has his reasons (he notes elsewhere in these comments that he does at least mildly prefer Trump) I’d like to hear them. A simple “I just assumed that everyone who reads me knows I have contempt for the economic stance of the current Democrat party” would more than cover it.
[FYI, the “unquestionably” reference was simply that one of KH and DJT *will* hold power in 2025. Vance has a far lesser chance of holding actual power sometime further in the future.]
The glaring innumeracy of your example, and knowing you as a real economist make me think you are pulling my chin, like a Robert Reich argument.
You multiplied Vance's 14.6 toaster by one million which gives Vance's statement enough jobs to produce one million toasters. I don't know that employment figure but it is substantially more than the one 50k job you proceed to argue.
You may be blinded by your long history of defending free trade, which I usually agree. The poor manipulation of logic by numbers will only fool the least numerate voter, and they will not read you anyway.
"blinded by your long history of free trade." I'm sure David is quite focused on individual liberty and the attendant ability to engage in voluntary exchange without interference from the state. Do you have a better alternative to free trade?
I'm not pulling your chin. It was J.D. Vance, not I, who said that 1 million cheap toasters were not worth losing one U.S. manufacturing job. I'm sure he wasn't saying that one person could produce 1 million toasters. Instead, he was exaggerating to make the point about how much he was willing to pay or, more exactly, willing to make U.S. consumers pay, to preserve one manufacturing job. It is true that few innumerate voters will read me. But that shouldn't stop me from making numerate points.
It's probably not worth the exercise, given the source, but if we wanted to steel-man Vance's argument , shouldn't we assume he meant it was the difference between a cheap imported toaster and a more costly domestic toaster, times one million, that is not worth giving up a job? To make the math easy, let's assume the domestic toaster is $1 more expensive. That would be $1 million, given his own number. Still doesn't sound worth it.
I also don't accept that we give up jobs to buy cheap toasters. That's not how economies work. But I assume you wanted to focus on the pure innumeracy of the statement.
You're right that I should have taken the difference between the two. Touche. But that difference could easily be $14. Check out toasters on line and you'll see. I'm willing to be that there's no domestically produced toaster that sells for under $29.
Good article. I suspect Vance is speaking out of his hat and playing to the audience, and more widely, the voter. I'd like to think that if he thought a bit about the literal ramifications of that statement, in private, he'd acquiesce.
This would be an excellent critique were it not for the fact that the political alternative this year would be substantially worse.
That said, we’ll have to see whether or not Trump-Vance ‘24 do as Trump-Pence ‘16 did - talk populist but govern conservative (except, sadly, on spending) - or if they actually do govern as they speak this time.
Let’s at least hope we get a chance to find out, as the alternative - not just for manufacturing jobs, but for almost everything else - is far worse to contemplate.
When a progressive spouts lunacy, I shake my head and hope it doesn't affect too many persuadable people towards believing it. Even if it has tactical political value, it likely carries the long-term cost of repelling more intelligent people. Because of this, when a Republican does the same, it makes my blood boil.
The GOP once at least paid lip service to a handful of ideals that have slowly crumbled or reversed. At this point, the GOP's approach to the economy and liberty doesn't look much different from the DNC in the 1990s. I suspect this was a pseudo-deliberate shift in favor of votes on the table from disenchanted union types, etc., over the the past 10 years.
Trump's election this year is definitely not the worst-case scenario . I'm with DH in that I mildly favor him. However, if the slow evolution of "conservatism" - from a being associated with pro-liberty, pro-trade, pro-economic freedom, etc, towards being jingoist worker's ideology, where communism* is a fine approach to economics - is not constantly met with vocal objection and correction from people like David, THAT would be tragedy.
If I could have Trump's rhetoric/platform improved or Harris's, I'd prefer to have Trump's improved. It would take forever to tweak the DNC platform to the point where I could get behind it.
(* Just don't call it "communism", which is associated with "Marxism", which apparently is synonymous with "DEI".)
“Even if it has tactical political value, it likely carries the long-term cost of repelling more intelligent people.”
I’m with you on much of your post, but not this point.
Most of the upper middle class votes leftist today. More than used to be the case. Part of this, of course, is that Dems do even more things that benefit them selfishly (canceling student loans, e.g). But most of it because these supposedly intelligent people believe that this they are being virtuous in doing so.
With young woke leftists, you can at least place a lot of the blame on their miseducators and their lack of experience in the real world. Other than government employees (who have been leftists for all the decades I’ve been alive), OTOH, how do you explain more than ever older supposedly intelligent people voting for this “lunacy”?
It seems to me “more intelligent people” these days are MORE persuadable to all sorts of lunacy…
When I think "intelligent" I'm not necessarily talking about academic achievement - there are plenty of humanities PhDs, for example, who are smart in some dimensions but illiterate/ignorant in others (economics, statistics, etc). What I have in mind is a generally reasonable and thoughtful person who doesn't have a strong social anchor in a political ideology. Typically a younger person.
For example: imagine a college student who is entertaining the idea of leaning "conservative". Some friends are laughing about how Trump, after dancing with some d-bag streamer, just said he would save Tic Toc from being shut down, and that shutting it down would be good for China. While not terribly consequential, Trump's statement was stupid on its face. If you're young and persuadable, you would have to be totally immune to social forces to shrug it off and defend supporting Trump, apart from his myriad absurd issues.
I would think being in the shoes of this hypothetical student would be extremely uncomfortable. At some point, you might just say, ok, neither side is perfect, but certainly the MAGA camp is out of their minds. Good conclusion, bad conclusion? That's hard to say. But it's no doubt an easy conclusion. This is my mental picture, anyway. I was young once, and I don't recall having a hard time defending the conservatism of Ronald Reagan (a bit before me, but...), Bush 41, Dole, Gingrich, etc. None of them were perfect, but if anyone laughed at me, I didn't have to excuse outright absurd stupid statements and platform positions.
The "college student" scenario could be translated to other scenarios - the key aspect is "reasonable/thoughtful/persuadable". But I realize it's just a hypothetical narrative, so there's that.
You and I probably agree on 99% of all of this, stuff. I do like the libertarians/economists to keep Trumpism in check, though. I doubt it pushes votes to Harris - at least I hope not.
I’ve almost completely lost your logic.
If it’s as simple as “Trump sometimes says stupid things”, and more people would vote right of center if he didn’t say stupid things, well, sure… fine, but utterly uninteresting.
In fact Kamala (as Biden) say many, many more actually stupid things.
Either way, students are gonna hear far more left wing propoganda than right wing, so by your logic, we are mostly screwed anyway.
Given that the mainstream media is now overtly biased against Trump and for Democrats they are gonna amplify anything negative Trump says, and basically hide almost all of the stupid things Dems say.
So as far as I can understand your logic, you’re either saying that the right is screwed no matter what, or else you’re saying the right is pretty screwed unless its’s leading pols are near-perfect.
[as an aside, the right has continued to win approximately half the national elections and most governorships and state legislatures despite this enormous drag of the press and academia. And most younger people, especially colleg-educated, started out leftist, although admittedly what they are taught these days is far worse than what we were taught when I was young.]
What am I missing?
[P.S. as an aside, Bush 41 and Dole were certainly *not* conservatives. They were merely center-right. The difference between dole and Bill Clinton was pretty small in 1996.]
Yes Bush&Dole center-right, but they were faces for the GOP and they had minimally decent filters for what they said - like most reasonable people have, especially public figures (politicians, CEOS, etc). Trump often says things that only make sense if he has zero shame for saying whatever it takes to attract any random group of possible supporters: e.g. military tribunal for Cheney, "stand down and stand by" for Proud Boys, etc. The mainstream media has been overtly anti-Republican my whole adult life, but Trump hands them things to quotes on a silver platter, often not needing to be taken out of context or twisted.
Kamala says many stupid things related to political stuff, policy, etc., but it's usually not easy to interpret it as inciting violence, supporting neo Nazis, indicating a future executive takeover* of the system of representative government. (*E.g. Christians should "just vote this one time, you'll never need to vote again" or whatever exact phrase was... I have no clue what he really meant, nor do I care - it was stupid.)
I recall a professor once laughing in front of a class about how some elected official or well known republican - don't recall who - argued taxes could reduce the deficit. The prof said this as if it was the most ridiculous idea ever - long-term or short-term didn't matter to him, it was just laughable. Most of the room laughed too. I didn't know the Laffer curve at that time, but I got the idea. I pointed out that as long as you acknowledge that a 100% tax rate would result in zero revenue, then [...logic...], voila - it's not that absurd. I doubt a single person was convinced by me (it was a western cultures class), but I didn't care, I was annoyed with the guy and had a spine. But some of the crap Trump says that must get quoted and ridiculed in front of classes these days? I'd keep my head down.
I realize that I cite a handful of specific stupid quotes - they're anecdotes, not data. My impression that he says a vast amount of stupid stuff is possibly just me being unusually annoyed by his statements... so I've got an availability heuristic skewing it all. Who knows.
Also, I have a large family, almost all of whom now think free trade is a tool of the globalists to control us all. So I'm uniquely annoyed when Trump says various dumb things because he's had a material negative effect on my holidays. And I guarantee none of them are reading blogs/articles written by economists - they're kind of a lost cause. But I don't like the party platform moving in (IMO) bad directions.
One more thing to perhaps make you feel better (or not, idk): looking at presidential elections over the last 55 years, with only a single exception - 2008 Obama over McCain - when one of the candidates “talked stupider” (in terms of their manner of speech) notably more than the other, the “stupider”-talking candidate won the election.
E.g. W Bush over Gore, then Kerry. Clinton over W Bush, Trump over Hillary.
[I consider Trump vs Biden a wash, as they both talked “stupid”. You could ex post question Reagan over Carter on this axis, I suppose, but the press made a huge deal about Reagan being stupid, so it fits decently enough]
This is roughly analogous to “who would you [Mr/Ms. Average American] rather have a beer with”, but not exactly the same thing.
Kamala talks in word salads, so what she says *is* stupid, but she doesn’t “sound” stupid to the average person.
We shall see…
Full disclosure, except on national defense (where I’m broadly a traditional conservative who is fundamentally fine with Trump’s foreign policy as he governed), I’m a classical liberal / small-l libertarian. You talk like a patrician Republican (admittedly I base this on your combination of relatively high respect for Bush 41 and Dole when the topic started as conservative economics, and partly your fixation on the words Trump utters rather than the actions he took over the 4 years of his presidency).
I’ll also start by saying that at this point I detest talking about Trump rather than policy with my liberal friends (who always change the subject to Trump the man rather than have any substantive discussion of any idiotic leftist policy). But since you’ve acknowledged you are right of center, I’ll do it again. [I ain’t a huge Trump fan, dislike how he talks, but the man governed well, and would be an order-of-magnitude better president than any leftist at this point, even if there are many other Republicans I’d prefer to a) run, and b) govern as president.]
In truth I agree with about 75% of your complaint, and have vast sympathy with your final paragraph [the one and only political phrase I’ve come up with - “‘it’s easy to be liberal if you’re ignorant of economics” - seems to somewhat apply here.]
But as it’s more or less how we got here, I take huge issue with this “Trump is worse than Kamala claim: “Kamala says many stupid things related to political stuff, policy, etc., but it's usually not easy to interpret it as inciting violence, supporting neo Nazis, indicating a future executive takeover* of the system of representative government. (*E.g. Christians should "just vote this one time, you'll never need to vote again" or whatever exact phrase was... I have no clue what he really meant, nor do I care - it was stupid.)”
The most brilliant thing ever written on the subject of Trump was the line: “Those who love Trump taken him seriously but not literally. Those who hate Trump take him literally but not seriously.” Please if you get nothing else out of this reply, try to think hard about this.
Every single thing you claim above as a [bad] big deal is leftist media taking Trump literally but not seriously. Every. One. Of. Them.
If you need me to provide supporting evidence, I can. But it should not be necessary. Stop believing any political spin at all the leftist media puts out. They covered up Biden’s mental acuity issues for years - largely because they “‘knew” that Kamala was even less likely to win in 2024 than he was - then turned on him quickly and even more quickly pivoted back to Kamala being wonderful.
So yeah, Trump “talks stupid”. And says *some* stupid things I wish he didn’t say. But the number is far fewer than the media claims - or you seem to believe - and Biden’s and Harris’ number of stupid and dangerous and offensive things are far higher, but the media covers them up.
I don’t like the party platform moving in bad directions either. And sure there exists the possibility that Trump will govern worse in the future than he did in the past. But a) that’s far less likely than that he will govern largely as he did in the past, and b) he will still be far better than any leftist will govern.
The Left and the press (redundant, I realize) helped ensure Trump would get nominated in 2024, and now we all will - hopefully - have to live with him as president as the alternative is far, far worse.
Best to you, sir.
If it's an excellent critique, the excellence is based on the analysis, not on whether this candidate is better or worse than another. You can want Trump to win, as I only mildly do at this point, but still think that when he or his running mate makes a bad claim, it's a bad claim.
Fair enough, but… as this is your first post about either side since either Vance’s nomination or Kamala’s ascension, is it not odd that it focuses on the sins of the far lesser evil?
I confess to this point I have not read your Substack regularly. Perhaps others are well aware that, e.g. you have nothing but disgust and contempt for Democrat public policy today and simply seek to hold GOP pols to a higher standard. Absent that, it can easily appear like just another Never-Trumper pointing out yet another way their favorite target is oh-so- imperfect.
The other side also being idiots doesn’t give one side a pass on it. Politicians should aspire to be correct, possibly even good, not merely the lesser evil.
I have my concerns about Vance. And being a politician, he’s no doubt… a politician.
But from what I’ve seen he does seem to aspire to good, even if you and I and Henderson agree he is clearly incorrect on this point.
And per my reply above, for a public figure to “shoot at” one side and not the other does feel to we uninitiated as if they are picking sides (or creating a circular firing squad)…
Yes, but you can't decry every stupid thing a politician says in every post. Even Substack's servers have a limit :) One at a time.
“Yes, but you can't decry every stupid thing a politician says in every post.”
…and yet now you make MY point. There are two candidates running to be president for the following four years.
One of them is highly imperfect to those of us of a classical liberal / libertarian bent.
The other is unequivocally, with far more than 99% certainty, a total disaster.
Why take on a [clearly bad/wrong] comment from the imperfect guy’s nominee to be VP, before taking on a single thing from the person now chosen (undemocratically, though that probably matters not) as the Presidential nominee of the other major party?
Why focus *first* on a moderately bad ill from the person who might never hold power, rather than innumerable far worse ills from the person who unquestionably will?
Probably because Henderson is an economist, and this is an economic question, one the Republicans have been getting worse on over time. You would have to ask him, however.
People are going to criticize the bad policies of even politicians they consider better than the alternative. This is how we get better politicians. You are acting as though it is some great betrayal to criticize something stupid your guy said. Is there some number of criticisms for the other side that must ritually be done before it is ok to criticize your side? What's the rule there?
I also would question whether KH is actually "unquestionably will" hold power, but that's another matter.
“Probably because Henderson is an economist, and this is an economic question”
No, sir, that is simply not an answer as to why to choose to pick on a JD Vance utterance and not a Kamala Harris one at this moment in time.
Both were recently raised up to being on the national ticket of a major party. Surely you don’t deny that this is the exact reason Henderson commented on Vance this week?
One last time, we have an election coming up in November. Vance is the new *junior* (meaning no power) person on the GOP ticket.
Kamala is the new person on the top of the Dem ticket.
It’s not a coincidence that Henderson chose Vance’s speech to comment on, it’s because he’s on the ballot nationally in November.
My critique that it is “telling” (pick whatever adjective/phrase you wish here) that before criticizing anything of Kamala’s in this Substack he chose to criticize one of Vance’s stands.
For me, on economics in the last 20 years the GOP has gone from about a B+ to about a B- under Trump 2017-2019 (Trump on spending is almost as bad as the Dems and on demagoguing touching entitlements is as bad as the Dems; on everything else he governed as an above average GOPer). The Dems meanwhile, have gone from a solid B under Clinton in the late 90s to somewhere between a D- and an F.
Do you deny that whatever grade you choose to give the GOP, Trump and Vance, that Kamala’s and the Dem’s grade would be far, far worse?
My answer to your minimum number of criticisms of the other side required would be… one! Even an offhand note within the Vance criticism that KH is of course way worse on these matters that matter would for me be completely sufficient.
I have no issue with criticizing the “better side” most of the time, and little to no issue with criticizing the better side even now, though this is the one time such criticism can be counterproductive, of course, in the few months leading up to the general election after the primary process is over. That leaves over 3.5 years out of every 4 where it’s completely open season, and about 15% of the time when you should choose your words somewhat more carefully. If what you care about is what’s best for the overwhelming majority of people in the country.
But to repeat, I have no issue with legit criticism of Vance here and now - which this surely is - if there were simply *some* mention that this year’s alternative is far worse. Whether in this piece or even in some recent earlier piece.
But that doesn’t exist on this Substack.
If Henderson has his reasons (he notes elsewhere in these comments that he does at least mildly prefer Trump) I’d like to hear them. A simple “I just assumed that everyone who reads me knows I have contempt for the economic stance of the current Democrat party” would more than cover it.
[FYI, the “unquestionably” reference was simply that one of KH and DJT *will* hold power in 2025. Vance has a far lesser chance of holding actual power sometime further in the future.]
MTLA? There went my consumer surplus. Damn!
The glaring innumeracy of your example, and knowing you as a real economist make me think you are pulling my chin, like a Robert Reich argument.
You multiplied Vance's 14.6 toaster by one million which gives Vance's statement enough jobs to produce one million toasters. I don't know that employment figure but it is substantially more than the one 50k job you proceed to argue.
You may be blinded by your long history of defending free trade, which I usually agree. The poor manipulation of logic by numbers will only fool the least numerate voter, and they will not read you anyway.
"blinded by your long history of free trade." I'm sure David is quite focused on individual liberty and the attendant ability to engage in voluntary exchange without interference from the state. Do you have a better alternative to free trade?
I'm not pulling your chin. It was J.D. Vance, not I, who said that 1 million cheap toasters were not worth losing one U.S. manufacturing job. I'm sure he wasn't saying that one person could produce 1 million toasters. Instead, he was exaggerating to make the point about how much he was willing to pay or, more exactly, willing to make U.S. consumers pay, to preserve one manufacturing job. It is true that few innumerate voters will read me. But that shouldn't stop me from making numerate points.
It's probably not worth the exercise, given the source, but if we wanted to steel-man Vance's argument , shouldn't we assume he meant it was the difference between a cheap imported toaster and a more costly domestic toaster, times one million, that is not worth giving up a job? To make the math easy, let's assume the domestic toaster is $1 more expensive. That would be $1 million, given his own number. Still doesn't sound worth it.
I also don't accept that we give up jobs to buy cheap toasters. That's not how economies work. But I assume you wanted to focus on the pure innumeracy of the statement.
You're right that I should have taken the difference between the two. Touche. But that difference could easily be $14. Check out toasters on line and you'll see. I'm willing to be that there's no domestically produced toaster that sells for under $29.
Great analysis, and it's fun to know actual numbers.
Thanks, Joy.