A musing Beam

This is the eighth and final installment of a series of posts on lessons we progressives should take on the Presidential election. The overview is here . Okay, so this last installment is about tactics, not policy.  Progressives need to start telling better stories.  Facts are important and all, but … well, most people obviously don’t really care about them .  It doesn’t matter that NAFTA probably was a net positive on the economy as a whole as long as the opposition has a story of a factory closing. Global consensus among people that have spent their lives on studying climate is irrelevant when we have scandalous emails that show peer review processes are not perfect . Saying you had one position on the Iraq invasion even when there is demonstrable proof you had another  is irrelevant if you have a cool narrative about a secret conversation with a TV personality. Note that I’m NOT being snarky here.  I’m being absolutely serious that, as far as elections ...

This is the seventh installment of a series of posts on lessons we progressives should take on the election. The overview is here . Simple economics says that if you pay more for something, you get more of that thing. If I had to choose one area where I most commonly believe my progressive brethren go wrong, it is in not seeming to understand this truth.  They understand it for some areas: Want more hybrid cars? Subsidize them. Want more foster parents? Pay more! Why are we having trouble getting good teachers? They aren’t paid enough! But when you turn to other areas …. For instance, do we want more single mothers? We should pay for them. Do we want more people claiming poverty or disability? Do we want more poor children (or just children in general, for that matter)? Want more unemployed people? And we can verify that this happens, if that is needed – look, for instance, at the dramatic increase in disability claims after the reduction to welfare . Of course, I would di...

This is the sixth installment of a series of posts on lessons we progressives should take on the election. The overview is here . We really need to stop trying to control speech.   I get it: Free speech is tough, and it always has been. We don’t make speech free because it is weak – we make it free because it is strong, and “bad” speech can be really hurtful.   But one of our societal values has been that we learn to have thick skin, and we don’t try to exercise control over what others say. This doesn’t mean that we don’t have counter-speech. Free speech isn’t speech without consequences , it’s speech without control .   So if you say something that is jerky, the correct response is for someone to say you are being a jerk, and that’s completely within the spirit of free speech, which goes both ways.   What is not okay is to say that the person cannot speak AT ALL. We should let people say hateful and hurtful things, and then get good people to denounce ...

This is the fifth installment of a series of posts on lessons we progressives should take on the election. The overview is here . As I mentioned in the original post, though there were many factors that led to the Democrats not retaining the White House in 2017, one major factor was losing the Rust Belt. The Democrats have not found a solution to the problem of union manufacturing jobs disappearing, and candidate Trump flipped the Republican script and went anti-free trade .   Somebody was listening to the working class, and it wasn’t the Democrats, and that was possibly the deciding factor.   Ignoring this constituency and trying to placate blue-collar factory workers with training grants was insulting, most importantly because it simply doesn’t work.   They believe that NAFTA and free trade let foreigners steal their jobs. Of course, the jobs didn’t go to Mexico or China, and it wasn’t free trade that created the problems. Protectionism might create a small up...

This is the fourth installment of a series of posts on lessons we progressives should take. The overview is here .   NOTE:  I took a long hiatus for several personal reasons.  The entire series was already written a few months after the 2016 Presidential election, but I'm updating as needed as I post the ones as yet unpublished.  Surprisingly little has changed.   One of President Trump’s main slogans during the campaign was to “drain the swamp.”   The swamp was Washington, and draining it meant removing the corrupting influences, like lobbyists. We won’t be diving into why I think he has made no real attempt to actually fulfill that promise, but instead, let’s focus on why it resonated.   Congress has an abysmal popularity number.   As Arnold points out in this humorous (but slightly NSFW) video , cockroaches and herpes have higher poll numbers.   The President’s are better than that, but still more people dislike him than like him. ...

This is the third installment of a series of posts on lessons we progressives should take on the election. The overview is here . One of the most important functions of a democracy is to allow people who vehemently disagree to reach fair compromises that prevent non-legal solutions. This works when people believe that the process is fair and that, while their solutions didn’t win, at least they had the opportunity to make their case, and they can still win out if they can convince enough other people to join them. For many years, it was considered the role of the elected official to guard this process and preserve its prestige and strength.  There have, of course, always been those that wished to win out no matter the cost – the feud between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson has dozens of examples –, but they at least tried to appear otherwise. For most of our national history, bipartisanship has been viewed as a virtue. When there is a process that everyone thinks is fair, it...

This is the second installment of a series of posts on lessons we progressives should take on the election. The overview is here . One area that the message put forth by progressives is counter-productive is when intents are discussed instead of outcomes.  (Conservatives, of course, do this, too, but they are not my focus here.)  Let me go through some examples. The biggest example is using the term “racist.”  I don’t know that we’ve had an actual racist President in several decades, but every election that term is brought out. People said Mitt Romney was racist because of some "free stuff" comments after his NAACP address .   McCain was called a racist who reminded Rep. Lewis of George Wallace.  It happens virtually every election. The end result is that the term "racist" is so watered down that it has lost its meaning.  People are so jaded that, when the KKK announces its support for Trump and the KKK and the American Nazi party praises Trump's choi...