To me it's actually shocking the imperical advantages we have over the GOP, yet this remains competitive. I think it proves the importance and need for Hopium. The right wing media will lie and distort anything to push their agenda, while most mainstream media is focused on the horse race and covering stories that will push their profits.
Good at connecting the dots. Again, Simon. Yes, most folks aren't paying attention this far out. More will tune in as Trump goes to trial in the coming weeks. It's going to be ugly. Again. Elections typically come down to choices. The choice will be clear. I remain quietly comfortable. Abortion, democracy....and good chance Trump will be a convicted felon by November. Plus, he calls our troops "suckers and losers." Easy choice. Hard to see him expanding his base from the low 40s?
Easy choice. Biden for the win in November. Love listening. Will see you on Tuesday on Lawrence O'Donnells show. Watching from WA state where we are having Governor retiring this yr. Voting 💙. No worries. Cannot wait for trial on Monday.
I'm going to have to push back a bit on your stat of the day. The figures you put up are a bit deceptive (not trying to sound pejorative), since there were >9 million jobs lost during COVID. I think a more fair measure is to look at the median job gain across all months, as the outliers (like during the COVID period) are minimized. For Republicans this was 93,000 jobs while for Democrats this was 236,000 jobs. So Dems come out ahead, but these figures I think are more fair. I don't think you should advertise the graph you made (as good as it looks!) because it can be easily criticized by anyone with a college-level statistics knowledge.
Here is a stat which I like. There has been a lot of talk about how polls suggest that Black and Hispanic voters are moving towards Republicans. An interesting fact is that while Trump got 12% of the black vote in 2020 and recent polls have this at up to 25%, in fact during 2022 midterms only 5% (!) of black voters voted for Republican candidates. In my view polls may not be very accurate in predicting actual voting for some voting blocks or when taken at certain times (like months before the actual vote). A similar analysis holds for Hispanic voters.
Roberto, I’m gonna have to push back on this comment a little bit. First, nothing that Simon posted is untrue. Second, their mishandling of disasters and crises are part of why the job losses are as bad as they are. What you’re saying here literally is the equivalent of saying, “we should give Trump a pass on how bad the economy was during Covid.” His mismanagement of Covid is a large part of why the economy was as bad as it was, a large part of why we had as many job losses as we actually did, and Joe Biden‘s actions upon immediately taking office and passing the American rescue plan are a huge part of why we have recovered as well as we have.
Anything that minimizes the “outlier months“ which always hurt Republicans, is doing them way too much credit because at some point in time, it can’t be a coincidence that these catastrophes always happen on their watch, and they always do an absolute shit job responding to them.
Second, I’m goddamn sick and tired of playing by a set of rules that our opponents are not playing by. This is true data that we can present to bolster our brand and damage theirs… They are more than happy to just make shit up out of thin air and lie to the American people about it to do the same thing in reverse. No, we should not find a way to be more “fair“ to the Republican Party in the infographics that we share during elections. They have not earned, nor do they extend any grace whatsoever. And for the handful of people with “college level statistics understanding“ who want to play ticky-tack games about our stats, let them. We’re here to win a goddamn election, plain and simple. The stakes are too high to undersell our brand and give them one ounce or one inch of leeway in the disaster that they have wrought upon this nation.
Thanks for your comments. In my defense (not to be defensive [but obviously I am]), I don't mean to give Trump a pass for what happened during COVID. But then do we give equally bad marks to every president/prime minister in the world because jobs were lost under their watch when the pandemic hit?
There were 25M jobs lost in the euro area. By population, the US lost about 18% more jobs than Europe (by my calculation). So the US fared more poorly, but not by that much.
I agree that the Trump administration was a shit show. And if we want to 'advertise' our 'brand' then maybe the figures you put out may work. But if I see a comparison of 49M to 1.9M I have to ask myself: what is really going on? And COVID can explain it (for me). For me the median monthly job gains is a good measure of what was generally going on during normal times (BTW, there were ~22M jobs lost during COVID. So to average this into the mix doesn't seem right to me. [Sorry about the college-level stat remark; it was a bit snarky]).
Your graph makes it look like there was a 25-fold difference between administrations. I'm saying there were many jobs lost during Covid with skews the picture. You say Trump was responsible for jobs lost during Covid. I'm saying that he was about 18% (not 25-fold) worse than Europe.
We're not talking about a 18% job loss. We're talking about the relative number of jobs; that is 1.18-fold job loss. Compared to 25-fold, it seems quite a bit less. But again, I'm not here to defend Trump.
Here’s my problem with this assertion… If Trump had managed the pandemic worth a shit, like most good executive politicians would do in a time of crisis, then he would’ve likely been reelected BECAUSE of it… Good politicians act responsibly during a time of crisis and then get rewarded heavily for it by the public. Had he done this, he would have been reelected, and then he would be able to claim credit for the gained jobs that came after the pandemic subsided offsetting the losses due to it. I don’t have any doubt that there would have been many millions of lost jobs had Joe Biden or any other Democrat been president when Covid began… But I do believe they would’ve taken the job seriously, pushed for every drop of necessary aid to keep people on payrolls, And contained as much damage as possible, both economically and medically…thereby putting us in a better position to reopen the economy and make people whole again. So, I have no problem with this graph because it helps us paint an absolutely true narrative that Republicans are really good at creating catastrophes, and even if they aren’t responsible for creating them sometimes, they do a terrible job of managing them.
Roberto, I also want to note, as you have become a very prolific poster here, that you are repeatedly introducing arguments into our chat that echo Republican narratives and memes. We try to not bring their propaganda in here, and keep this a place where we work on our developing our narratives, our arguments. Our daily discourse in America has been heavily degraded by their decades of lies and untruths. It is a core tenet of this project that we try to not craft our understanding of the world based on their narratives and lies, and work to keep them out of this place, not repeat them. There is perhaps no greater lie or untruth than Trump is not responsible for the mismanagement of COVID on his watch and the economic calamity that followed; and then that Biden is not responsible for all the job gains that came in the early years of his Presidency. I am disappointed to see that big lie repeated here, and if it something you believe you are not just putting yourself at odds with Hopium but with the entire foundation of Biden's re-election argument.
Roberto, I am going to ask that you take a few weeks off from posting. Part of my responsibility here is to ensure that all the information that is here is accurate and true. You are introducing tons of data from outside the great deal of data that is already here, available to this community. I am obligated to check all of it, so folks here don't get misled or use data in their own work that is wrong and misleading. One of the primary things my old think tank did was global and domestic economic policy analysis. I am deeply familiar with all this data and have been working with it every day since 1992. I work incredibly hard to bring factual and truthful data and arguments in here, distilling my more than 30 decades of work into a cogent body of work that folks can engage with and learn from. There is no model of this site that can work if folks are bringing in entirely new sets of data and arguments that need to be validated and fact checked, particular if they challenge the core understandings here, and even if they appear to be operating in good faith. This place is about my body of work, my narratives, my arguments and cannot become about yours. There simply is no way for this work. It isn't worth the $45 you pay to be a part of Hopium if every day you are introducing completely new arguments and data - and posting 3-4 times a day, and repeating things again and again, that all must be fact checked and validated. This is particularly true as you are not an economic policy expert but a retired neuroscience professor. I also want to note that you have tonight exhibited the core tactic of a troll - rather than engaging our arguments in good faith, you just keep repeating your own. I reject your challenge of my data. I don't agree with you. The Biden White House doesn't agree with you. No leader of the Democratic Party agrees with you. If you want to keep fighting and forcing me to spend hours of my time engaging here I am just going to remove you. It's self-indulgent. It's preventing me from doing other work. It's distracting us from other far more important matters. Please take a break from posting here for a few weeks and think about all this. This is not an academic endeavor or a debating society. We don't have time for that. We have a democracy to save and you are getting in the way of this work.
I'm sorry you find my views as echoing Republican talking points. I see that if I bring in new data, it will make you work harder. And I don't want to take you away from your important work.
In my defense, I've been a physician scientist for 40 years (MD-PhD). I'm a member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. I've published many scientific publications (Nature, Science, Cell, etc). None of this automatically keeps me out of the Republican sphere, but I do think I know how to look at data. I thought I could bring new insights.
Aha! "Voted Democrat," instead of "Democratic," sounds to me like a tell. FWIW & my $0.02. Your sci publication record is in my view completely irrelevant unless you have somehow done clinical trials involving politics. With all due respect.
Roberto, I have a background in statistics (masters level) with several decades of professional experience in data analysis and median is not considered a good metric for job loss or any other metric that occurs over time since the median undershoots the economic impact and does not reflect a rapidly changing environment. Simon is using the accepted metric for job creation, IMO.
Median IS a good metric for a snapshot (i.e., short period of time) of a characteristic across a "population" which is not normally distributed. It allows a better measure of central tendency than average (or mean) in these circumstances. The two most popular "real world" examples are median home price and median salary. You can then look at the trend over time for these median values, but you always use a relatively short period of time to gather the data from which you calculate the median.
Pew has a report right now that shows no real movement away from Dems in those two groups. When you see these ridiculous numbers from the NYT on Latinos, it turns out they only polled in English! I mean really....how can polling be so bad?
I just got off a catch-up call with a family member, a life-long Republican who told me today she is now "for choice" (!). She will not vote for Donald Trump, is completely disgusted with him and has changed 180 degrees. Bringing up the issue of "age" she said she wished we had younger candidates. I asked if she had voted for the young candidate in 2008. She admitted she hadn't (good point, she said) but added, "I was actually happy he got elected." I mentioned Biden is the only person to ever beat Trump, and giving up incumbency is never a good idea (her husband was a State Senator, she knows). "But, that's why we have Vice Presidents. No matter what happens to a President there is someone standing in the wings; and we have a great one in Kamala Harris," I said. She really had not thought of that. I cannot get over the joy I feel knowing this person, once all-in, a generations-long GOP family legacy, is now a pro-choice Biden voter. One at a time, everybody. There must be more of these folks everywhere. As Simon keeps telling us, we can do this. Loud and proud.
Great CNN spot just now, Simon. The narrative really is shifting this week. And as you point out, it's going to change coverage and politicians' behavior when that shift is recognized.
To me it's actually shocking the imperical advantages we have over the GOP, yet this remains competitive. I think it proves the importance and need for Hopium. The right wing media will lie and distort anything to push their agenda, while most mainstream media is focused on the horse race and covering stories that will push their profits.
To me, at least, this Post-Factual Era is proving to be an extremely frustrating time.
Good at connecting the dots. Again, Simon. Yes, most folks aren't paying attention this far out. More will tune in as Trump goes to trial in the coming weeks. It's going to be ugly. Again. Elections typically come down to choices. The choice will be clear. I remain quietly comfortable. Abortion, democracy....and good chance Trump will be a convicted felon by November. Plus, he calls our troops "suckers and losers." Easy choice. Hard to see him expanding his base from the low 40s?
Just in case, we can expand our base. Register Democrats, save democracy.
https://www.fieldteam6.org/volunteer-ops
Great Job Sir!!
I received an email from Carolina Forward and one of their featured articles was about a wonderful milestone achieved by the NC AG's office.
https://www.axios.com/local/raleigh/2024/04/09/north-carolina-clears-decades-long-rape-kit-backlog-ag-josh-stein-says?
Many of you know that Josh Stein, our current AG, is running for Governor against the MAGA nut case, current Lt. Goverernor Mark Robinson:
https://www.realmarkrobinson.com/
Quite a contrast we've got in that race - maybe even as big as Biden vs. Trump.
North Carolina can use all the help we can get, so here's a hearty thank you for those who have donated to the NCDP via Simon's link or who are writing Field Team 6 postcards (https://fieldteam6.herokuapp.com/getting_started) and/or sending texts (https://www.fieldteam6.org/byop-textbanks) to regisiter new NC voters or who are banking Vote Forward letters (www.votefwd.org) to GOTV in North Carolina!
Just finished my stack of PA Primary postcards!
Easy choice. Biden for the win in November. Love listening. Will see you on Tuesday on Lawrence O'Donnells show. Watching from WA state where we are having Governor retiring this yr. Voting 💙. No worries. Cannot wait for trial on Monday.
Simon,
I'm going to have to push back a bit on your stat of the day. The figures you put up are a bit deceptive (not trying to sound pejorative), since there were >9 million jobs lost during COVID. I think a more fair measure is to look at the median job gain across all months, as the outliers (like during the COVID period) are minimized. For Republicans this was 93,000 jobs while for Democrats this was 236,000 jobs. So Dems come out ahead, but these figures I think are more fair. I don't think you should advertise the graph you made (as good as it looks!) because it can be easily criticized by anyone with a college-level statistics knowledge.
Here is a stat which I like. There has been a lot of talk about how polls suggest that Black and Hispanic voters are moving towards Republicans. An interesting fact is that while Trump got 12% of the black vote in 2020 and recent polls have this at up to 25%, in fact during 2022 midterms only 5% (!) of black voters voted for Republican candidates. In my view polls may not be very accurate in predicting actual voting for some voting blocks or when taken at certain times (like months before the actual vote). A similar analysis holds for Hispanic voters.
Roberto, I’m gonna have to push back on this comment a little bit. First, nothing that Simon posted is untrue. Second, their mishandling of disasters and crises are part of why the job losses are as bad as they are. What you’re saying here literally is the equivalent of saying, “we should give Trump a pass on how bad the economy was during Covid.” His mismanagement of Covid is a large part of why the economy was as bad as it was, a large part of why we had as many job losses as we actually did, and Joe Biden‘s actions upon immediately taking office and passing the American rescue plan are a huge part of why we have recovered as well as we have.
Anything that minimizes the “outlier months“ which always hurt Republicans, is doing them way too much credit because at some point in time, it can’t be a coincidence that these catastrophes always happen on their watch, and they always do an absolute shit job responding to them.
Second, I’m goddamn sick and tired of playing by a set of rules that our opponents are not playing by. This is true data that we can present to bolster our brand and damage theirs… They are more than happy to just make shit up out of thin air and lie to the American people about it to do the same thing in reverse. No, we should not find a way to be more “fair“ to the Republican Party in the infographics that we share during elections. They have not earned, nor do they extend any grace whatsoever. And for the handful of people with “college level statistics understanding“ who want to play ticky-tack games about our stats, let them. We’re here to win a goddamn election, plain and simple. The stakes are too high to undersell our brand and give them one ounce or one inch of leeway in the disaster that they have wrought upon this nation.
Roberto, these are apple to apples comparisons of what happened during the last six Presidencies. It's simple. It's fair and true.
The idea in my view that Trump is not responsible for the job loss during COVID is, to be kind, ridiculous.
Thanks for your comments. In my defense (not to be defensive [but obviously I am]), I don't mean to give Trump a pass for what happened during COVID. But then do we give equally bad marks to every president/prime minister in the world because jobs were lost under their watch when the pandemic hit?
There were 25M jobs lost in the euro area. By population, the US lost about 18% more jobs than Europe (by my calculation). So the US fared more poorly, but not by that much.
I agree that the Trump administration was a shit show. And if we want to 'advertise' our 'brand' then maybe the figures you put out may work. But if I see a comparison of 49M to 1.9M I have to ask myself: what is really going on? And COVID can explain it (for me). For me the median monthly job gains is a good measure of what was generally going on during normal times (BTW, there were ~22M jobs lost during COVID. So to average this into the mix doesn't seem right to me. [Sorry about the college-level stat remark; it was a bit snarky]).
20% greater job loss than Europe isn't a huge number? What in the world are you talking about?
Your graph makes it look like there was a 25-fold difference between administrations. I'm saying there were many jobs lost during Covid with skews the picture. You say Trump was responsible for jobs lost during Covid. I'm saying that he was about 18% (not 25-fold) worse than Europe.
We're not talking about a 18% job loss. We're talking about the relative number of jobs; that is 1.18-fold job loss. Compared to 25-fold, it seems quite a bit less. But again, I'm not here to defend Trump.
Here’s my problem with this assertion… If Trump had managed the pandemic worth a shit, like most good executive politicians would do in a time of crisis, then he would’ve likely been reelected BECAUSE of it… Good politicians act responsibly during a time of crisis and then get rewarded heavily for it by the public. Had he done this, he would have been reelected, and then he would be able to claim credit for the gained jobs that came after the pandemic subsided offsetting the losses due to it. I don’t have any doubt that there would have been many millions of lost jobs had Joe Biden or any other Democrat been president when Covid began… But I do believe they would’ve taken the job seriously, pushed for every drop of necessary aid to keep people on payrolls, And contained as much damage as possible, both economically and medically…thereby putting us in a better position to reopen the economy and make people whole again. So, I have no problem with this graph because it helps us paint an absolutely true narrative that Republicans are really good at creating catastrophes, and even if they aren’t responsible for creating them sometimes, they do a terrible job of managing them.
Roberto, I also want to note, as you have become a very prolific poster here, that you are repeatedly introducing arguments into our chat that echo Republican narratives and memes. We try to not bring their propaganda in here, and keep this a place where we work on our developing our narratives, our arguments. Our daily discourse in America has been heavily degraded by their decades of lies and untruths. It is a core tenet of this project that we try to not craft our understanding of the world based on their narratives and lies, and work to keep them out of this place, not repeat them. There is perhaps no greater lie or untruth than Trump is not responsible for the mismanagement of COVID on his watch and the economic calamity that followed; and then that Biden is not responsible for all the job gains that came in the early years of his Presidency. I am disappointed to see that big lie repeated here, and if it something you believe you are not just putting yourself at odds with Hopium but with the entire foundation of Biden's re-election argument.
Roberto, I am going to ask that you take a few weeks off from posting. Part of my responsibility here is to ensure that all the information that is here is accurate and true. You are introducing tons of data from outside the great deal of data that is already here, available to this community. I am obligated to check all of it, so folks here don't get misled or use data in their own work that is wrong and misleading. One of the primary things my old think tank did was global and domestic economic policy analysis. I am deeply familiar with all this data and have been working with it every day since 1992. I work incredibly hard to bring factual and truthful data and arguments in here, distilling my more than 30 decades of work into a cogent body of work that folks can engage with and learn from. There is no model of this site that can work if folks are bringing in entirely new sets of data and arguments that need to be validated and fact checked, particular if they challenge the core understandings here, and even if they appear to be operating in good faith. This place is about my body of work, my narratives, my arguments and cannot become about yours. There simply is no way for this work. It isn't worth the $45 you pay to be a part of Hopium if every day you are introducing completely new arguments and data - and posting 3-4 times a day, and repeating things again and again, that all must be fact checked and validated. This is particularly true as you are not an economic policy expert but a retired neuroscience professor. I also want to note that you have tonight exhibited the core tactic of a troll - rather than engaging our arguments in good faith, you just keep repeating your own. I reject your challenge of my data. I don't agree with you. The Biden White House doesn't agree with you. No leader of the Democratic Party agrees with you. If you want to keep fighting and forcing me to spend hours of my time engaging here I am just going to remove you. It's self-indulgent. It's preventing me from doing other work. It's distracting us from other far more important matters. Please take a break from posting here for a few weeks and think about all this. This is not an academic endeavor or a debating society. We don't have time for that. We have a democracy to save and you are getting in the way of this work.
I'm sorry you find my views as echoing Republican talking points. I see that if I bring in new data, it will make you work harder. And I don't want to take you away from your important work.
In my defense, I've been a physician scientist for 40 years (MD-PhD). I'm a member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. I've published many scientific publications (Nature, Science, Cell, etc). None of this automatically keeps me out of the Republican sphere, but I do think I know how to look at data. I thought I could bring new insights.
But fine, I'll take a break. Cheers.
RM
and I've voted democrat every opportunity; and i've given thousands of dollars to many democratic candidates around the country.
rm
Aha! "Voted Democrat," instead of "Democratic," sounds to me like a tell. FWIW & my $0.02. Your sci publication record is in my view completely irrelevant unless you have somehow done clinical trials involving politics. With all due respect.
Roberto, I have a background in statistics (masters level) with several decades of professional experience in data analysis and median is not considered a good metric for job loss or any other metric that occurs over time since the median undershoots the economic impact and does not reflect a rapidly changing environment. Simon is using the accepted metric for job creation, IMO.
Median IS a good metric for a snapshot (i.e., short period of time) of a characteristic across a "population" which is not normally distributed. It allows a better measure of central tendency than average (or mean) in these circumstances. The two most popular "real world" examples are median home price and median salary. You can then look at the trend over time for these median values, but you always use a relatively short period of time to gather the data from which you calculate the median.
thanks for your comments. My response is directed to Simon above. cheers.
Pew has a report right now that shows no real movement away from Dems in those two groups. When you see these ridiculous numbers from the NYT on Latinos, it turns out they only polled in English! I mean really....how can polling be so bad?
Terrific presentation on MSNBC.
I just got off a catch-up call with a family member, a life-long Republican who told me today she is now "for choice" (!). She will not vote for Donald Trump, is completely disgusted with him and has changed 180 degrees. Bringing up the issue of "age" she said she wished we had younger candidates. I asked if she had voted for the young candidate in 2008. She admitted she hadn't (good point, she said) but added, "I was actually happy he got elected." I mentioned Biden is the only person to ever beat Trump, and giving up incumbency is never a good idea (her husband was a State Senator, she knows). "But, that's why we have Vice Presidents. No matter what happens to a President there is someone standing in the wings; and we have a great one in Kamala Harris," I said. She really had not thought of that. I cannot get over the joy I feel knowing this person, once all-in, a generations-long GOP family legacy, is now a pro-choice Biden voter. One at a time, everybody. There must be more of these folks everywhere. As Simon keeps telling us, we can do this. Loud and proud.
Amazing!!!!
Lee, that was a really nice story. Thanks.
Wonderful to read this before breakfast while traveling!
Great CNN spot just now, Simon. The narrative really is shifting this week. And as you point out, it's going to change coverage and politicians' behavior when that shift is recognized.
Thank you Simon for all your hard work leading the charge! I really maintain positivity when I listen to you!