Hello! I'm a congressional procedure nerd, serious card player, and hockey fan. If you're not sure whether you should email me, you probably should. ...
I’m going to write in much more detail about this over August recess, but in my view people are overthinking the political dynamics of Congress right now. It boils down to five things: Narrow majorities in both chambers, but particularly the House. A POUTS unusually disinterested in protecting the House moderates. No Senate majority to abolish the filibuster. Partisan polarization between the…
I’m headed home to Upstate NY today, to meet some of my high school and college friends for our annual reunion in Saratoga. This year marks the 27th time in the last 28 years we’ve done it, 2020 being our only miss. Thanks a lot, COVID. Here’s my old Substack post on the majesty of Saratoga. It’s a very strange feeling being on Caroline Street at night now that I’m in my late 40s. Saratoga is very…
Watching the Todd Blanche confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee for his nomination to Attorney General, we are seeing some unusually explicit examples of one of my favorite reasons to hold a confirmation hearing : to get nominees to promise you things in public. You don’t hold hearings to gather information. If you want information, you can get it much easier via phone call and…
Lindsey Graham has died . Whatever else you might say about him, he's the author of this quote: “When I was first elected to the House,” he recalled, “I looked for the they. They who run things. They who know how things really work. They who know what they are doing. But I couldn’t find the they.” After that, he went on, “I went to the Senate. But there was still no they. And then I started to get…
A lot (probably too much) has been written about Graham Platner's faux working class credentials. Takes galore. Here's some scattered orthogonal thoughts. The whole episode is a specific example of a more general phenomenon, and that is the political presentation of self. Every politician inherently constructs a public identity and persona; this can be more or less intentional, and it can be more…
If you were alive in the 1970s or 1980s, you probably saw this bumper sticker more times than you can count. You still see it occasionally today, and you still see the sentiment expressed all the time on social media. As a policy matter, there's was never anything wrong with the bumper sticker, then or now. It's absolutely fine to be in favor or more education spending and less defense spending.…
Back in November, I wrote a substack post describing various dimension of political moderation. You can go read the longer details, but here’s the abridged list: You have a middle-ground position on a policy issue(s). The classic definition. Maybe You have a mushy centrist position on abortion or slavery. You buck your party on important issues. You are a pro-gun Democrat or pro-choice Republican.…
People keeping asking me variations of "what do you think about what is going on in Maine" and so I'm just going to write it down. I never liked Platner as a person, and was wary of him from the get-go. He has always reminded me of every New England prep school fuckup I met in college. 1 After all these scandals, he reminds me of them even more. I'm glad he's likely done. Of course, that's easy…
President Trump's political style is classic populist strongman. As such, he is going to explain politics as a set of illegitimate institutions setup by corrupt elites, which require nothing more than a strong leader with the will to rein-in the institutions, throw out the elites, and replace it all with obvious, virtuous policies. Such a leader isn't common but, luckily, he alone can do it. He…
A speculative theory: Current politics is making people increasingly miserable because at a participatory level it has become for many people, on the margin, a more national , more electoral , and more passive activity. All three of these trends are bad for your political happiness return-on-investment. The first dimension above is scope. All else equal, people get more satisfaction engaging in…