The following article, by Sherry Linkon and John Russo of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, is cross-posted from Working-Class Perspectives:

Predictably, politicos and commentators spent much of 2020 debating why working-class voters supported Trump and how the Democrats could win them back. Although we’ve occasionally contributed to these conversations, we’re also getting tired of them. They tend to envision “the working class” as if it were one group with a well-defined set of interests, and worse, they treat working-class people as a marketing problem. These habits reflect not only the commentators’ distance from the working class but also, for many, a sense of meritocratic superiority to people they view as deluded, foolish, stupid, or even amoral. If we want to improve the lives of the working class, and especially if we want to heal the divisions of American political and public life, we need to reframe the problem.

That should start by resisting any effort to define the working class in any singular way. Simplistic definitions fuel both stereotyping and resentments. Defining based on occupation or income highlights important differences in economic interests, but it doesn’t address the resentments that even many fully-employed, unionized, economically-comfortable working-class people feel in the U.S. today. To define the working class based on the college degree, as many pollsters do, ignores the complex array of forms, amounts, qualities, and outcomes of education. Focusing on one variable, like education, might be necessary in polling, but it erases the relationships among education and occupation, social status, and cultural patterns. Electricians and plumbers may lack college degrees, but their specialized training yields them secure and well-paid work as well as pride in their blue-collar status. Meanwhile, K-12 teachers often have graduate degrees but earn less than plumbers or electricians. If we link class with unions, a common (if outdated) assumption, then we might also note that teachers may be more likely belong to active unions than many industrial workers these days.

One illustration of the problem of simplistic definitions is the either/or debate about how to appeal to “the working class” as a voting bloc: either promote economic populism or talk about racial justice, either embrace the dignity of work or value the dignity of marginalized people. These options suggest that the working class is either white, blue-collar, and struggling economically or Black and Latinx and focused on racial rather than economic justice. If we reject this false choice and envision a working class that includes all of these people, one that might not respond as a bloc to any one political strategy or message, it can seem like we’re ignoring class altogether. Addressing working-class concerns – economic, practical, but also social and cultural – requires more complex thinking about class, culture, and policy.

It doesn’t help that discussions about working-class voters so often focus on how politicians should talk rather than on what they should do. That’s part of why we appreciated the invitation to contribute to a forum in  Social Policy, due out next week,to suggest what the Biden administration could do to help the working class. Simply framing the question in terms of policy rather than politics is a step in the right direction.

We recommended a few fairly obvious actions, starting with getting the coronavirus under control, a concern for everyone but especially for the working class. Even before the pandemic, many working-class people had limited access to good health care, and they were more likely to have underlying medical problems that made them vulnerable to COVID. Contrary to the old blue-collar stereotype, most working-class jobs today are in the service industry, including many of the jobs we now deem “essential” – grocery clerks, nursing assistants, janitors, delivery drivers, postal workers. This has put many workers at risk. Others face economic risks because of lost jobs. To address the needs of the working class, we need to stop the spread of the virus and provide substantial economic relief to ensure that millions of Americans with little or no savings will not lose their homes or go hungry.

To strengthen the economy going forward, the Biden administration should also develop a broader industrial policy that includes infrastructure projects, a buy American program, improved labor laws, improved training opportunities, and a higher minimum wage. All of this will create jobs and improve economic conditions for working people. It can also help address some social problems. Expanded access to health care, improved early childhood and K-12 education, and support for elder and child care could decrease some of the despair that has played out in high rates of drug addition, family violence, and mental health issues for many in the working class.

These are not new ideas, nor are we alone in suggesting them (see, for example, the list from the Economic Policy Institute). But to make a real difference for the working class, Biden and Congress must move beyond talking about these ideas in campaign speeches, as they have done in the past. They need to take significant action.

This will all help, but we need to do more to heal the divisions that leave many in the working class feeling disrespected and aggrieved. That will require a change in attitude from those who so often look down on the working class, smugly certain that they have earned their privileges and are intellectually, culturally, even morally superior to those who are struggling. As philosopher Michael Sandel argues in The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?, the pandemic makes clear both our mutual dependence and the hollowness of the refrain that “we are all in this together.” We failed to come together, he suggests, because of a combination of unprecedented inequality that separates those who succeeded economically have become ever more disconnected from those who are struggling and a deeply-embedded belief that those on top deserve their success because they have the education needed to compete in the global economy. The winners see themselves as better than the losers, and the losers are all too aware that the winners not only don’t care but actually hold them responsible for their own problems. As a result, neither those on the top nor those on the bottom actually believe that we are all in this together.

Sandel argues that we must reject the toxic mix of professional-class hubris and working-class resentment that has shaped so much of our public life in recent years. That will require more than economic populism. We’ve spent a lot of time this year applauding doctors and nurses but we too often ignore the janitors, medical assistants, teachers’ aides, and food service workers who are less visible and widely underpaid, treated with disdain, seen as less valuable, less smart, less human. Raising their wages is a step in the right direction. Sharing their stories is a good start. Real healing will require a step beyond: to genuine respect.

To serve the interests of the working class, we should learn from the model of Bargaining for the Common Good, an organizing strategy that emphasizes connections between the needs of workers and the needs of communities and in the process builds relationships and collective power.  It is time to embrace policies as well as attitudes and relationships that move us all toward a greater sense that we really are in this together.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Only a few more days of the Orange One! But Joe Biden and the Democrats have a huge challenge ahead of them in terms both of governance success and future electoral success. At The Liberal Patriot, John Halpin has a lucid analysis of the need for a Democratic brand reset to accomplish all this. You will perhaps recognize some of the themes I have touched on in my posts. But there’s plenty new here as well. I heartily endorse it all–this is exactly the course the Democratic Party needs to chart.

“Given the upcoming transition to unified Democratic control of government, it would be wise for the party as a whole—and the Biden/Harris administration and congressional leaders, in particular—to acknowledge and take steps to fix its image problem. With Republicans facing their own internal fissures post-Trump, the House majority on the line, and Democrats locked out of many state legislatures, governorships, and Senate seats across the country, the party needs to think clearly about strategies that add voters to its ranks rather than subtract them.

Unfortunately, to many voters, the Democratic party is the one where you get handed a list of 25 rules at the door about what you can and can’t say; and cliques of people—probably lawyers—whisper and size people up; and you can’t find a beer and you just want to get the hell out before the lecture on “Structural Normativity and Late-Capitalist Hegemony” gets going.

Instead, the Democrats need to be the party where people of all backgrounds get together to ensure that everyone has a job and health care. The party that stands up for American workers and businesses in the world, and that fights the bullies and thugs who prey on the vulnerable and weak. The party that welcomes new people and has their back and doesn’t cast out anyone who looks, talks, or thinks differently. The party that believes in a fair shot for everyone and special privileges for none….

With a new Biden administration taking office, it is time for a reset. What needs to be done? This is not an exhaustive list but here are a few ideas to help get the Democratic brand back on track as the party of the people, not the elites.”

Read it all! Halpin’s ideas for the reset are spot on.

Some insights from “Biden Begins Presidency With Positive Ratings; Trump Departs With Lowest-Ever Job Mark: 68% of public does not want Trump to remain a major political figure in the future,” based on a study by The Pew Research Center, “conducted Jan. 8-12 among 5,360 U.S. adults, including 4,040 who say they voted in the presidential election”:

As Joe Biden prepares to take office just days after a deadly riot inside the U.S. Capitol, 64% of voters express a positive opinion of his conduct since he won the November election. Majorities also approve of Biden’s Cabinet selections and how he has explained his plans and policies for the future.

Donald Trump is leaving the White House with the lowest job approval of his presidency (29%) and increasingly negative ratings for his post-election conduct. The share of voters who rate Trump’s conduct since the election as only fair or poor has risen from 68% in November to 76%, with virtually all of the increase coming in his “poor” ratings (62% now, 54% then).

Trump voters, in particular, have grown more critical of their candidate’s post-election conduct. The share of his supporters who describe his conduct as poor has doubled over the past two months, from 10% to 20%.

The study notes further that “About two-thirds (68%) say Trump should not continue to be a major national political figure for many years to come; just 29% say he should remain a major figure in U.S. politics.” Also, “A narrow majority of Americans (54%) say it would be better for the country for Trump to be removed from office, with Vice President Mike Pence finishing the last few days of his term…” However,  “45% say Trump should remain in office until his term ends Jan. 20.”

The survey also found that “Among voters overall, 65% say Biden definitely or probably “received the most votes cast by eligible voters in enough states to win the election”; 54% say he definitely won the most votes.” Yet, “34% incorrectly say Trump definitely or probably was the rightful election winner.”

In addition, “57% – approve of Biden’s Cabinet choices and other high-level appointments. Almost half (46%) expect Biden to improve the way the federal government in Washington, D.C., works, while 28% say he will make things worse; 24% say he will not have much of an effect.”

Clearly, President-elect Biden and his fellow Democrats have reason to be hopeful that they have adequate political capital to enact major elements parts of their legislative agenda, such as pandemic vaccination acceleration and Biden’s stimulus proposals. But the thin margins they hold in congress will require successful bipartisan oputreach to enact many Democratic priorities.

The significance of the Georgia U.S. Senate runoff elections have been overshadowed by the media coverage of Trump’s goon riot in the U.S. capitol. Fortunately, Nate Silver provides an insightful take on the Warnock and Ossoff victories at FiveThirtyEight. As Silver notes,

“…Having a Senate majority is a big deal. It means that Democrats should be able to confirm Supreme Court justices and President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet. They’ll likely be able to pass additional COVID-19 stimulus legislation at the very least, along with other budgetary policies through reconciliation. Other policy changes would require eliminating the filibuster — unlikely — or getting cooperation from enough Republicans. But at least Democrats will have the chance to bring to the floor election-reform bills like H.R. 1 and policies like Puerto Rico statehood, giving them a fighting chance instead of having Majority Leader Mitch McConnell squash them from the start.

And symbolically? Well, it’s Georgia. With the possible exception of Texas, no other state has been as much of a symbol of an emerging Democratic coalition of college-educated white voters and high turnout among Black voters and other minority groups. Both Warnock and Ossoff are breakthrough candidates, not the moderate, white Blue Dogs that Democrats have traditionally nominated in Georgia. Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, will become the first Black senator from Georgia and the first Black Democrat ever to serve in the U.S. Senate from the South. Ossoff will become the youngest senator elected since Biden, in 1973, and the first Jewish senator elected to the U.S. Senate from the South since the 1880s.

Then there’s the fact that the runoffs came during a lame-duck period in which — in a predicate to Wednesday’s violence — Trump and other Republicans tried to overturn and subvert the results of the election and undermine faith in the democratic process. If Republicans get the message that anti-democratic actions have negative electoral consequences, they may be less inclined to push democracy to the brink in the future.”

To all of the above, we might also add that the GA Senate runoff elections complete Trump’s loser trifecta — during his term, he has booted the White House, the House of Representatives and now the Senate to the opposition party. Republicans who cling to him as he circles the drain run the risk of looking like dimwits when they next run for re-election.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Republicans are in disarray after the disastrous Georgia election. As Sabato’s Crystal Ball put it, Democrats now have the “51 percent trifecta” that will shortly allow them to control the Presidency, Senate and House, albeit with thin majorities that could easily disappear in the 2022 midterms. How can Democrats make the best of their current opportunity and maximize their chances of retaining political control for more than two years?

It seems obvious that the less the country and political debates focus around Donald Trump in the next six months, the better off Democrats will be and the more they’ll be able to get done. For better or worse, it now seems minimizing Trump-centered politics will have the challenge of a second Trump impeachment. That train, as they say, seems to have left the station.

Whatever else a House vote for impeachment may accomplish, nobody seems to be arguing that it will actually help Biden organize and pass his legislative agenda. The preferred argument is that it won’t really matter. I find this highly dubious but the best way I can think of to at least minimize damage is to delay the Senate trial as long as possible–Clyburn has suggested 100 days–or, even better, never have it, since it will hoover up political oxygen and is highly unlikely to actually result in a conviction (the only way, people should be reminded, that Trump can be prevented from running again in 2024; a second impeachment by the House has no effect on this).

So that brings us back to the necessity of large-scale action to beat the COVID pandemic and deliver enough stimulus to rapidly restore the economy to health. Without successful action along these lines, Trumpism could easily come roaring back; the idea that impeaching Trump and otherwise holding him to account is the key to preventing this is a chimera.

Therefore, Democrats and the left need to exert some discipline in the months ahead and resist the temptation to talk endlessly about Trump, Trump, Trump. That is what he wants. Instead they need a laser focus on improving the country’s situation fast and broadening the Democrats’ coalition. That is the best way to undercut Trumpism and fragment his support.

The alternative could be grim. A surge in white working class turnout and GOP support could easily sink the Democrats in 2022. Don’t think it couldn’t happen. The Democrats’ 51 percent trifecta is mighty fragile.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Things look a little brighter today than just 2 days ago! I will discuss two items in this post: (1) How did the Democrats pull off their twin victories in Georgia?; and (2) What does this mean for how the Democrats can/should move forward?

To the first item. To the extent we can rely on available data, the differences are striking between how the Democrats put together their Senate victories yesterday vs. Biden’s win in the state last November. In Biden’s victory, despite the conventional narrative, it was apparent that his win was actually not attributable to exceptional performance among black voters. Nate Cohn and colleagues observed, based on precinct-level analysis of the Georgia Presidential vote:

“Joe Biden put Georgia in the Democratic column for the first time since 1992 by making huge gains among affluent, college-educated and older voters in the suburbs around Atlanta, according to an Upshot analysis of the results by precinct. The Black share of the electorate fell to its lowest level since 2006, based on an Upshot analysis of newly published turnout data from the Georgia secretary of state. In an election marked by a big rise in turnout, Black turnout increased, too, but less than that of some other groups.”

But they presciently added:

“[T]he relatively low Black share of the electorate could mean that Democrats have the potential for a better showing, perhaps even in the two Senate runoffs in January.”

And that does indeed appear to be what happened. Nate Cohn provides these data about yesterday’s [Tuesday’s] runoffs:

What this suggests is not that black turnout actually went up relative to November—that’s quite hard to do in a runoff election—but that it fell less than among other groups. Put another way, while absolute black turnout didn’t go up, relative black turnout did.

That assessment is supported by data from AP/NORC VoteCast, a survey source generally considered superior to the exit polls. The VoteCast data show blacks at 29 percent of Georgia voters last November but 32 percent yesterday. Conversely, white voter share declined from 63 to 60 percent. White noncollege voter share declined more, from 36 to 34 percent, but white college share also declined from 27 to 26 percent.

VoteCast data also allow us to compare voter preference across the two elections, which also reveals interesting differences. Biden carried black voters by 92-6 but Ossoff did even better at 94-6 (I will use Ossoff as the point of comparison since this was the closer race). But Biden did better among white voters, particularly white college voters. He had just a 22 point deficit among these voters, significantly smaller than Ossoff’s 30 point deficit among this same group. Biden also did better among white noncollege voters (-54 vs. -58 for Ossoff) though the difference was smaller.

So two somewhat different paths but with positive, albeit very narrow, results in each case. Ideally, Democrats would put together the strong points of each path and turn Georgia into the next Virginia. But it could also turn into the next North Carolina. We shall see.

So where do the Democrats writ large go from here? The winning strategy seems obvious. It seems almost certain the Democrats will not be able to get rid of the filibuster so many of the ideas Biden ran on will have to be put aside for now. But he should now be able to lean into One Big Thing the Senate victories should allow him to do–something that will greatly help the country and could allow the Democrats to escape a backlash midterm election such as Obama experienced in 2010.

That One Big Thing is a massive budget reconciliation bill to get the economy going again and advance some progressive priorities in the process. Jonathan Chait:

“Democrats can use reconciliation to pass economic relief, including the $2,000 checks that proved highly popular. This will give them a chance to accelerate the economic recovery, which in turn will create conditions likely to make voters reward Democrats in the majority.

They can also enact many of Biden proposals to shore up and expand Obamacare. A budget reconciliation bill could increase subsidies for people buying insurance in the exchanges, and also create a public option. Democrats have a fair amount of consensus on these changes. They might be able to also create some form of general income support, like “baby bonds.”…

It will be a battle. Crafting (and, hopefully, passing) the Budget Reconciliation Acts of 2021 is likely to be the drama that defines Biden’s domestic legacy.”

That’s exactly right. And it would fit perfectly into what Biden ran on. Bill Kristol:

“[Biden} made a bet on America. He never wavered from the promise to unite the country and actually get things done. People to his left scoffed. Trump supporters disdained him. But Biden never gave in. Tonight’s result in Georgia will at least give him a fighting chance to do what he promised—and to focus not just on the very real threats we face, but also on the opportunities before us.”

In other words, he ran as a liberal patriot. Here’s hoping he can make good on the promise.

The major media has called the U.S. Senate race in Georgia for Democrat Raphael Warnock, and they will likely call GA Democrat Jon Ossoff the winner of his U.S. Senate race later today. As of this writing, Rev. Warnock has 50.6 percent of the vote, compared to Loeffler’s 49.4 percent, while Ossoff leads Perdue by a margin of 50.2 percent to Perdue’s 49.8 percent, according to CNN Politics.

FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley notes that “CNN reports the following notable vote tallies are left:

• 20,000 to 25,000 votes left in Fulton County.
• 19,000 votes left in DeKalb County.
• Almost 5,000 votes left in Gwinnett County.
• 7,000 votes left in deep-red Coffee County in south Georgia.
• 3,000 votes in Chatham County (Savannah).

So most of what is left is in pretty Democratic territory.”

If Ossoff increases his margin of victory beyond .5 percent, as seems likely,  there will be no automatic recount.

In his recent post, “The CARES superdole was a huge success:  Progressives should learn to be happy when good things happen!” at slowboring.com, Matthew Yglesias shows once again why he is one of the left’s most perceptive, subscription-worthy thinkers:

With the relief bill squared away, the time is right to consider a question the Roosevelt Institute’s Mike Konczal asked the day after Christmas: why didn’t the success of enhanced Unemployment Insurance ever enter the narrative as a progressive success story?

Mike Konczal @rortybomb

For the last 7+ months I’ve been saying that the Left should claim, highlight, and center the fight over extending the massive expansion of UI, not just as an important program but as a model for reinvigorating Social Security. My read is that this didn’t happen. Why is that?

Mike Konczal @rortybomb

Unemployment insurance expansion was a big victory for progressive priorities: social insurance, fighting labor fissuring, empowering workers, especially low-wage ones. It’s also helping to fight a depression. Why isn’t the Left rallying on its extension? https://t.co/Q6ochwcOhT

December 26th 2020

259 Retweets1,331 Likes

I think there are a lot of specific ingredients that went into this, some good and some not so good. But I also think those specifics came together the way they did because there’s a norm in American progressive politics of looking at every glass as half empty.

Basically, the understanding is that whoever can paint the darkest possible portrait of the status quo is the one who is showing the most commitment to the cause. And you see this norm at work across climate change, health care, criminal justice reform, the economy, and everything else. If you’re not saying the sky is falling, that shows you don’t really care. A true comrade in the struggle would deny that any progress has been made or insist that any good news is trivial.

I tend to think this approach to politics is counterproductive — it’s psychologically and emotionally exhausting, out of touch with people’s lived experience of the world, and ultimately demoralizing and un-motivating. But even if it does in some sense work, it’s simply not true.

Progressive catastrophism is everywhere

In my recent post “A better way to cure recessions,” I noted that the personal savings rate is up in the United States (down from its peak when everyone got their $1,200 but still well above the pre-pandemic baseline) and also that “unlike during the Great Recession, the 67 percent or so of the public who owns a home and the 55 percent of Americans who own stock have seen their net worth rise.”

In the very next paragraph, I acknowledged that this is happening “amidst stories about overwhelmed food banks from San Antonio to Miami and beyond” but I got a lot of blowback for pointing out that most people are doing okay as if that was a way of dismissing the suffering of the minority of people who’ve lost their jobs and are now in desperate need of relief.

Similarly, back in late May, I ran into accidental intra-office controversy by pitching a piece about how police killings of African-Americans had become less common since Ferguson. My thought was that this was good, it showed that political pressure for reform was delivering results. But it was heard by many people as dismissing the problem, or ignoring the lived experiences of people who’ve suffered at the hands of the police.

And of course you see this on climate change, which is legitimately A Bad Thing but where the most keyed-up activists want you to believe it’s literally an existential threat to continued human existence.

When Barack Obama first took office, his administration enacted a bunch of progressive legislation. Bouts of activist legislating normally generate a thermostatic backlash, and Obama’s was no exception. But he managed to end his term popular, and has remained popular since, and most of his legislative achievements remain on the books. Everyone — including Obama — concedes that these achievements were not perfect. But to actually celebratethem as big achievements worth clapping for and taking credit for would be to mark you out as very much not a true progressive.

So I think the left’s attitude toward CARES needs to be seen in that light. Do you judge the Affordable Care Act on how much it helped people compared to the status quo ante or on how far it diverged from a hypothetical perfect health care bill? I’d be inclined to say the former, but the conventional left approach is the latter.

The CARES Act was really good

So what was the CARES Act?

Well, it spent about $300 billion sending direct checks to most American households. It also sent $500 billion to the Fed to capitalize some lending programs targeting large businesses. The funds there overwhelmingly didn’t actually get spent, but their existence likely helped keep corporate borrowing costs low. The law provided an increase in SNAP benefits, more money for child nutrition programs, money for food banks, student loan relief, money for schools, money for mass transit agencies, etc. There was also the Paycheck Protection Program which essentially gave small businesses free money to keep their staff on payroll.

But another huge chunk of it was to set aside normal concerns about incentives and give people who lost their jobs $600 per week in extra Unemployment Insurance benefits, over and above what they would normally be eligible for.

There were a million viral tweets about the bozos in Congress somehow expecting people to subsist on $1,200, but that’s not what happened. The $1,200 was a nice little stimulus sent out to everyone with the expectation that most people would subsist the way they’d long been subsisting — by doing their jobs or perhaps by retiring on Social Security and savings. If you lost your job, you got $600 per week — in other words, $15/hour on a standard workweek — in addition to your normal Unemployment Insurance benefits.

This was a huge, albeit temporary, expansion of the social safety net. But instead of celebrating its success and calling for it to be extended and used as a model in the future, a lot of people on the left seemed committed to pretending that it never happened. Note, for example, that $2,000 Canadian dollars per month is a lot less than $600 American dollars per week.

Ilhan Omar @IlhanMN

Happy Boxing Day! That’s not a big deal here, but it is in Canada. Speaking of Canada, did you know Canada gave unemployed citizens $2,000 a month for 4 months to help them get through the pandemic? It’s time for us to do the same.

December 26th 2020

3,462 Retweets33,143 Likes

This was a very successful program. So successful that personal income actually rose during the pandemic.

And that’s not a “rich get richer” kind of thing — the poverty rate fell. And it’s no surprise. Peter Ganong, Pacal Noel, and Joseph Vavra found that under the CARES superdole, “two-thirds of UI eligible workers can receive benefits which exceed lost earnings and one-fifth can receive benefits at least double lost earnings.”

Indeed, in wonk circles this was the conversation — were CARES benefits too generous? Which makes the lack of enthusiasm for telling the story of how these generous benefits were good all the more disappointing.

A model for the future

The pandemic is, of course, a very unusual situation.

Part of the idea of Unemployment Insurance is that even during perfectly “normal” times when the economy is in fine shape, there are always some businesses somewhere that are failing or laying workers off. Under those circumstances, a UI boost that leaves the unemployed with more money than they were making during employment would be genuinely a bit perverse.

But as University of Massachusetts economist Arindrajit Dube points out, the current benefits are very low and evince a combination of stinginess and paranoia that unemployed people will just deliberately lollygag.

Arindrajit Dube @arindube

Take a moment to imagine: You just got laid off. You, not someone in abstract. Under “normal rules” you’re entitled to ~26 weeks of unemployment benefits, which are ~1/2 your salary…BUT… capped weekly at: $240 in AZ $247 in LA #275 in FL … $823 in MA How would you fare?

Prof Dynarski @dynarski

I do wish that more of the people making policy decisions about unemployment checks had ever subsisted on them

December 28th 2020

11 Retweets42 Likes

One clear message of this pandemic should be that those fears are overstated. Even with the very generous superdole in place, people did go back to work as businesses reopened in the summer and fall. People know that UI doesn’t last forever and prefer a decent job to not having a job at all.

We should scrap these weekly caps, noting with Elira Kuka that more generous UI schemes mitigate the health impacts of unemployment. But we should also make the benefit boosts an automatic thing that happens any time job openings rise. Ioana Marinescu’s research during the Great Recession confirmed that it’s true that generous UI reduces the intensity with which job-seekers seek employment opportunities, but she also finds that since there was no impact on the number of actual job openings, nothing about generous UI actually reduced employment. And as demand-side policy, Unemployment Insurance is a perfect mix of targeted (the people who get it don’t have jobs, so they really need the money to meet current spending needs) and universal (everyone who works is eligible for UI if they lose their job, which is a risk everyone faces).

There is also the longstanding thought in the literature (see Acemoglu & Shimer and Marimon & Ziblatti) that it’s good that UI makes workers less eager to jump at the first job available because it leads to better matching and higher productivity in the long run.

Now of course it’s true that the pandemic also revealed serious shortcomings in our benefits administration system and a lot of people had trouble getting help. But we shouldn’t let negativity bias lead us to overstate those problems. The numbers on personal income and poverty don’t lie — millions of people in need got help. We should view the program as a success to build on for the future. Upgrade the benefits administration (probably by nationalizing the system and taking it out of state hands), bump up the “normal” level of benefits, and make the superdole—the $600 per week increase in UI and stimulus checks—an automatic part of the national macroeconomic toolkit.

Many aspects of America’s pandemic response were a disaster, but poverty went down, which underscores that the welfare state is amazing and we should have more of it.

Nothing ever ends

In my real life, I am a kind of grumpy dyspeptic person. I’m not great at looking on the bright side, at seeing the silver lining, or about living in the now. I get very frustrated by setbacks, very upset when things don’t go the way I planned, and generally speaking am very impatient.

As with any other set of personal characteristics, there are good and bad sides to this sort of mentality, but mostly I want to convey that I really do appreciate the appeal of centering your thinking on an idealized end point and then complaining about all the ways that Obama or the CARES Act or whatever else fell short. After all, compare what I am saying we should do with UI and what CARES did with UI, and CARES looks terrible:

• It did nothing to address the incredibly stingy base benefits in most states.
• It had no automaticity so it expired awkwardly midway through the crisis.
• It not only relied on our antiquated benefits administration system, it did nothing to improve it.

But it doesn’t make sense to do politics this way. One reason is because the model where you sketch out an idealized policy endpoint, then wage political combat, then win, then implement your vision just isn’t how anything actually happens. Not only was Social Security’s rollout bungled from a macroeconomic point of view (they started collecting taxes years before they collected benefits), it wasn’t until 20 years after the original Social Security Act’s passage that benefits were expanded to huge swathes of the population. Then it took 20 more years to get automatic cost of living adjustments. And the program still has some weird lacunae that leave out certain categories of state and local government workers, and doesn’t really meet the needs of the very elderly in an aging society.

Medicaid has been a policy triumph, but the initial program LBJ signed into law in 1965 was tiny compared to today’s Medicaid juggernaut that was largely the result of dogged work by Rep. Henry Waxman in the 1980s, some judicious interventions by the Clinton administration, and then the Obama-era expansion which lives on as a series of state-by-state fights.

The point is that politics is a process, and that’s especially true in a country like the United States that has a lot of institutional veto points. I won’t redo the entire slow boring of hard boards schtick, but the idea that past victories were single decisive battles won at unique moments in time is an illusion. Brown v Board of Education was the culmination of a 15-year litigation strategy that started with a law school case in 1938. But even though the NAACP won in court in 1954, real desegregation didn’t happen until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which in turn built upon the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and its predecessor, the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

It would of course be absurd to be satisfied with any of those interim outcomes, whether on health care or retirement security or civil rights, and it’s just the same with Unemployment Insurance. But successful movements claim victories as victories, highlight the ways in which their victories have helped people and debunked critics’ fears, and move on to build the case for new things. Politicians who do the spadework of getting things done should be praised and not ignored, and while journalists should of course highlight shortcomings, we should also bring perspective to bear. We had more articles written about benefit administration problems than we did about the reduction in poverty — that doesn’t make sense journalistically and it’s not politically constructive.

CARES was really good; it’s really good that a form of enhanced benefits is being extended by the new bill; and while none of this has been perfect, it provides a real template for further improvements.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

The good folks at the Cook Political Report have produced their traditional list of end-of-cycle facts about the the most recent election. I call your attention to the downballot facts. They should provoke some serious thinking about how the Democrats blew it so badly. The 2022 election could be a serious bloodbath without some very smart Democratic campaigning. The 2020 results do not inspire confidence.

SENATE:

12. Senate races still largely went the same way as the presidential election did in that state, save for Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who outran Trump by 7.2 points to win re-election. In 2008, she outran John McCain on the ballot by nearly 21 points, and in 1996 she outpaced Bob Dole in the state by more than 18 points. Her 2020 result is still the largest overperformance in a competitive race with Trump on the ballot by a Republican ever, outpacing Ohio Sen. Rob Portman’s 6.69 in 2016, but Collins was in far more danger than Portman was and Trump won Ohio, while he lost Maine in 2020. In 2016, every single Senate race went the same way as the presidential race; this year, it was all but one.

13. Democrat Sara Gideon in Maine had the worst performance by a Democrat in a Toss Up race in comparison to the presidential results, running behind Joe Biden in the state by 11 points.

14. The Republican who ran the most behind Trump was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose winning margin was 4.4 points less than Trump, but he nonetheless sailed to a very comfortable 20 point win.

15. If Republicans hold onto both Senate seats in the January 5 Georgia runoffs, it will be the first time since tracking our Toss Up races that all the contests broke 100 percent one way for one party.

16. In Senate races we didn’t rate as Solid, Democrats (candidates + outside groups) spent $1,078,640,272 on TV ads, according to data from AdImpact. Republicans meanwhile, spent $850,828,443. In total, $1,929,468,715 was spent on TV ads this cycle.

17. The most expensive Senate race was North Carolina, where a total of $263,675,801 was spent by both parties on TV ads. Democrats spent more ($151,694,974) than Republicans ($111,980,827), outspending them by $39.7 million. Iowa was second, with $217,043,080 spent in total. Again, Democrats ($128,320,541) outspent Republicans ($88,722,539) by $39.6 million. Democrats nonetheless lost both races.

18. The most money spent in a state per vote was in Montana, where Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock and his Democratic allies ended up spending about $323 per vote. In comparison, GOP Sen. Steve Daines, who won by 10 points, spent $193 per vote. The next biggest disparity was in Maine, where Democrats spent $272 per vote compared to $172 per vote for Republicans in a race that Democrats also lost.

19. The best bargain in a state that flipped was in Alabama, where Republicans spent just $12 per vote to have former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville oust Democratic Sen. Doug Jones. Democrats spent $17 per vote.

20. In Colorado, one of the two states Democrats flipped so far, Republicans did outspend Democrats per vote, $31 to $29, only to have GOP Sen. Cory Gardner lose to former Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper by almost 10 points.

21. In all competitive races (excluding both Georgia races), Democrats spent on average $94 per vote, while Republicans spent $60 per vote.
HOUSE:

22. In January, House Democrats will represent 51 percent of all House seats, but just 16 percent of the nation’s land area — the smallest geographical footprint of any majority in modern history.

23. All 13 of the Republicans who have been certified as the winners in Democratic-held districts were women and/or minorities — including three of Cuban descent, two of Korean descent, one African-American and ten women. Of the 46 freshman Republicans entering the House, 18 are women — more than Republicans’ current tally from 13 to 29.

24. The top three most expensive House races of 2020 — in terms of both candidate and outside spending — were California’s 25th District ($37.9 million), New Mexico’s 2nd District ($36.7 million) and Texas’s 22nd District ($34.1 million), according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

25. The four largest outside spenders in House races (the DCCC, NRCC, House Majority PAC and Congressional Leadership Fund) spent a combined $442 million, including $196 million in races that were decided by more than five points and $42 million in races decided by more than ten. Meanwhile, there were 10 races Democrats won by less than five points where GOP groups failed to spend more than $500,000. Had Republicans invested in those races, they might have won back the House majority.”
Now that is genuinely scary. Time for a course correction.