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Monday, November 11, 2024

Why Harris Lost

Many others have offered myriad explanations for how Trump defeated Harris. Some think Harris lost because she didn't appeal enough to women. Some argue that Biden stayed in the race too long, and it doomed Harris because she didn't have enough time to win. Some say it was trans issues. Some say it was inflation. Some even say that Trump voters were duped by a disinformation bubble.

Here are a couple rundowns of reasons from Vox and AEI. I find this explanation closest to my own view, and below, I explain it more comprehensively.

I'm a long-time proponent of the median voter theorem. The concept is more simple than the name. The idea basically is that to win an election, a candidate needs to win a majority of the votes, and to win the majority of the votes, that candidate has to win the vote of the median voter--the voter exactly in the political center of all voters. The candidate who wins that voter, generally by staking positions closest to them, wins the election.

The story of 2020-2024 is that in 2019 Harris was pretty far to the left, and lost the primary. Biden was pretty close to the center and won it. In the general election, he campaigned as a perfect centrist. However, once he became president, he shifted to the left and stayed there. When Harris took over, she moved up to, but not beyond where Biden governed, which left Trump much closer to the center than Harris, so Trump won.

In 2020, Joe Biden ran as a moderate

The 2020 Democratic primary featured candidates spanning the entire Democratic party, from Sanders and Warren representing the far-left to Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar representing less far-left. And of them, Biden had the most experience, name recognition, and political power.

Once he won the nomination, he campaigned on ending the pandemic, but never said how. He was ambiguous on fracking. He thought Trump's immigration restrictions were too restrictive.

The Brookings Institute: "Joe Biden appealed to the center of the electorate across party lines. He did 10 points better than Hillary Clinton among Independents, and he doubled her showing among moderate and liberal Republicans...If the Democratic Party is regarded as going beyond what the center of the electorate expects and wants, Democrats' gains...could evaporate."

The BBC: "Biden stuck with a centrist strategy, refusing to back universal government-run healthcare, free college education, or a wealth tax. This allowed him maximise his appeal to moderates and disaffected Republicans during the general election campaign."

Biden won independents by 9 points--52 to 43, when Clinton had only won them by 1 point in 2016.

Joe Biden barely won his election

Even with all the benefits of running against one of the most singularly despised candidates in decades, a pandemic roiling the economy and the culture, civil unrest, record-setting fundraising, Biden only barely defeated Trump in the electoral college. Biden won three states by less than 1% of the vote--Georgia (0.23%), Arizona (0.30%), and Wisconsin (0.63%). Combined, Trump lost by a total 42,918 votes.1

Votes are still being counted in the 2024 election, but at the moment, Harris's easiest path would have needed to swing Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to have won the election. She would need to swing 255,000 votes. The differences in margin are 1.2% (PA), 1.4% (MI), and 0.8% (WI). Not quite as close as 2020.

Biden Moved Left

Once in office, President Biden swiftly moved left. He issued executive orders "at a record pace," signing more executive orders in his two days than any other president signed in his first 30. His executive orders were not just undoing President Trump's work, or meant to address the pandemic, but showed that he was "taking steps Democrats have long demanded on immigration, the environment and racial justice."

In his initial flurry of executive actions, Biden required masks on federal property, extended foreclosure and eviction moratoriums, froze student debt collection, revoked the permit for the Keystone Pipeline, cancelled other energy rules created under the Trump administration, and pulled back on immigration enforcement. While many of these were demanded by Democrats, even the ones that were arguably centrist positions at the time, came to represent a immoderate president.

In February, Biden indicated he was more beholden to the teachers' unions than science when he waffled on re-opening schools. The head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky indicated it was safe to re-open schools, but teachers unions scoffed, and the Biden administration fell in line and called for more funds before they could re-open.

In March, Joe Biden nominated Lina Khan to be an FTC Commissioner, notably, not the chair. Lina Khan was notable for writing a very famous article calling into question the application of anti-trust law to the current slate of American tech companies, most prominently Amazon, because they served as platforms that gave their products away for free, so the conventional approach of using price increases to prevent monopolies wasn't reliable.

She went on to work for other Democrats, and was considered a talented but pretty far-left expert on anti-trust in the digital age. Many Senators thought being a commissioner was acceptable given it was the President's prerogative, and the FTC could have three Democrat-appointed commissioners. One of them being more progressive was unobjectionable. However, immediately after she was confirmed with bipartisan support, she won confirmation in a 69 to 28 bipartisan vote, President Biden named her the chair of the FTC.

"Her appointment was a victory for progressive activists" according to the New York Times and was "hailed by many Democratic lawmakers." Elizabeth Warren said "With Chair Khan at the helm, we have a huge opportunity to make big, structural change..." The Vice President of NetChoice said she would make the independent agency more political. In office only briefly, she embarked on a aggressive agenda to push the FTC firmly in the progressive direction.

This episode symbolized Biden's move from moderate campaigner to aggressively progressive president. No one expected he would put Lina Khan in change of the FTC, even when she was nominated for commissioner. The change was a shock not only because it was unexpected, but it was unprecedented for a President to have misled Senators and the public on his intentions. In addition, while the business world had strongly supported Biden's campaign, their support of him surely wavered with such an anti-business Democrat put in charge of the FTC.

These are just two early-on instances of his lurch to the left, especially as compared to how he campaigned. There were many more. There was Merrick Garland going after parents who were concerned about what their kids were being taught, labelling them as terrorists; there was the student debt relief which he had avoided during his campaign and steered clear of, but then decided to pursue unilaterally despite previous arguments that it was unconstitutional. He tried to require masks on planes and vaccines for workers. Both of which failed in court. Both of which he continued to pursue despite their unpopularity. He always sided with unions and decided he'd be the first president to stand in a picket line. He discontinued natural gas exports. He tried to apply the protections in Title IX, which was meant to prevent discrimination based on a person's sex, to trans students. Biden also moved to aggressively reduce the number of gas-powered cars and replace them with EVs and his administration briefly contemplated banning gas stoves before it went public.

Biden was so committed to not enforcing the border, he wouldn't enforce his vaccine mandate for illegal immigrants even though he did for travelers. He flew illegal immigrants all over the country though he did his best to keep it quiet. He created an app so that illegal immigrants could bypass the border altogether and schedule their entry via airplane. Lastly, when there was a misunderstood photo of the border patrol and a border crosser, he immediately sided with the immigrant and never apologized for his mistake.

Also remember that the Build, Back, Better agenda was originally another multi-trillion dollar package for which many Democrats tried to expand the definition of infrastructure to include their economic agenda.

The result of all of these individual items and moves was that Biden was perceived by many, on the left, and the right, and the center, to be the most left-wing president of the last fifty years. People compared him to FDR and he basked in it.

Biden's Approval Rating Suffered

Source: 538

The other, more significant, consequence of Biden's policy portfolio was an approval rating that danced around 40% for most of his presidency. It's well-known, that his approval rating plummeted after the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. It reached its lowest point in July of 2022, almost a year later, and just before the Chips and IRA bills passed in August. He enjoyed about six months of approval in the low 40s, before it started dropping again. From December 2023 up until his disastrous debate, his approval was slightly below 40%.

Harris Ran as Biden

While many people think Harris ran as a moderate, to be more precise, Harris ran at the exact point on the ideological spectrum that Biden governed. The illusion of being a moderate was created because she shifted her policy stances from where they were in 2019 (confiscating guns, in favor of trans surgeries, opposition to fracking, in favor of Medicare for All), up to but never beyond the positions Biden held in 2024. While she renounced her previous, left-wing positions, she often didn't provide a detailed policy proposal of her own, but when enough detail was provided, she it would perfectly match Biden's policy.

Her response to every question regarding immigration policy was to support the Lankford Immigration Bill which Biden had supported, but did not have support of enough Republicans to pass. She never proposed or accepted any measure that wasn't part of that bill. On Israel/Gaza, she used the same language and answers Biden gave, that there needed to be a cease-fire and the hostages needed to be returned. There was no daylight between her and Biden on any issue.

Despite many opportunities, Harris refused to stake a position closer to the center than Joe Biden on any issue. She famously told The View and Stephen Colbert that she wouldn't do anything differently than was done by Biden. She adamantly refused to move closer to the Center than Biden governed, and that put her to the left of the median voter.

Donald Trump Ran as a Pretty Moderate Republican

Meanwhile, President Trump ran pretty close to the center. It surely doesn't seem that way because of the parts of his campaign that the media chose to highlight, but he is the least conservative president in decades on abortion, saying he does not want a national ban and he's not sure about Florida's six week ban. On immigration, probably his rightest-leaning issue, he supports deportations, but so do 51% of Americans. It flew under the radar, but Trump also indicated that he wanted to give citizenship to any immigrant who gets a degree in the US, which is surely popular.

One can also consider the outcomes of the Senate elections. Which states flipped? West Virginia, where a Democratic Senator, while a thorn in Democrats' side, eventually agreed to the Inflation Reduction Act, which sealed his fate. Montana and Ohio's Senators lost resoundingly, both red states with moderate Democrats who had won before but voted with Biden on everything. Voters are tolerant of moderates to an extent, but that tolerance was exhausted by Biden's governance.

In the end, Trump ran much closer to the center than Harris, and Harris lost because of it.

Footnotes

1 This would have ended up an electoral tie, which Trump would have won in the House.

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Questions for Harris

Tonight, Bret Baier's interview with Kamala Harris will air. I believe it may have already been taped by now, but before it airs, here are the questions I would ask if I were interviewing her.

If I were a TV interviewer, my goal would not be "gotcha" questions, or to try to embarrass the interview subject, but to highlight important issues that voters should be thinking about. I'd certainly ask some questions that would challenge her on things she's said and done, but the goal would be informational, not to embarrass. Also, I would steer clear of questions she's already been asked, and she's answered. Even if her answers were weak, I'd assume she'd give the same.

Question 1: At what point did you decide that President Biden wouldn't be able to serve another four years as president?

The public should know if she ever reached this conclusion herself, and if she did, when she reached it. She defended President Biden when the Hur report was released, and she defended him after his debate. She can't say she knew before the debate. She will very likely avoid the question because she also doesn't want to say she believes it now, to avoid upsetting anyone. The follow-up should be why she doesn't believe this even though most of the country does, including leadership of her own party. This is an important question because it goes to her ability to tell the truth to voters, do what's best for the country, and recognize other people's abilities.

Question 2: In this week's interview with Charlamagne tha God, a listener expressed concern that Trump might "put anyone that doesn't look white in camps." You responded that the caller "hit on a really important point and expressed it well." Do you believe President Trump will put US citizens in jail based solely on their race?

This should be a pretty easy question to answer, and it gives Harris a chance to clear the record and dial down the rhetoric. If she sidesteps, she should be asked whether she is stoking fear herself and if that's the way she wants her campaign to be perceived. Every chance to dial down political rhetoric should be given to candidates.

Question 3: You've committed to putting a Republican in your cabinet, and having a bipartisan panel to advise you. Many Republicans expect that the Republican you put in your cabinet will be someone like Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger who many Republicans no longer consider in their party. Are these the Republicans you had in mind? If not, care to name others you would consider? Would you put a Republican who endorsed Trump in your Cabinet?

This gives Harris a chance to reach out to Republicans more specifically. Most Republicans surely don't trust her commitments to name a Republican, and this will give her the chance to build on that trust, and even look good to moderates. I doubt she'd answer the question.

Question 4: You've spoken positively about the Lankford Immigration Bill and said you'd sign it into law if you had the chance. Many Republicans believe the Lankford Bill is still too permissive. The House Republicans passed their own immigration bill in 2023 that is more restrictive. If you were president and had to negotiate with Republicans, would you support the House bill? Which provisions in it do you think are too restrictive and should be dropped?

This will be a challenging question because the Lankford bill is very Democrat-friendly, and I suspect she doesn't know much about the House bill since it hasn't been discussed much since it came out, particularly during the campaign. Voters should know her stance on immigration though. Some follow-up questions should drill down on Biden's policies, like the CBP app, the millions of immigrants who came in with refugee status, a wall. Another good follow-up would be, what would she do, through executive action to reduce the number of immigrants coming into the US illegally.

Question 5: How would your foreign policy differ from President Biden's? Would you give more money/aid to Ukraine? Is there a plan to end that war? Would you push Israel to cease its efforts? President Biden hasn't done anything/much to bring back American hostages. Would you do more?

Biden's foreign policy includes some serious gaps, and Biden hasn't had to answer questions about looking forward and how he might try to resolve issues. This question will give voters insight into Harris's thoughts on these issues and how she might face a hostile world, either the same or differently from President Biden.

Question 6: In the past, you have endorsed ending the filibuster and reforming the Court. Which of President Biden's court reforms do you support? If your party wins majorities in Congress, would you support ending the filibuster?

Institutional reforms are important to Republicans and moderates. Categorically committing to maintain institutions would benefit her reputation with both. Additionally, voters should know her stances on such fundamental government issues.

Question 7: You've proposed several initiatives to help reduce inflation. Many economists support your campaign, but economists also believe that one of the only fiscal policies that reduce inflation is reducing the budget deficit. How would your policies reduce inflation?

Simply asking about inflation will cause Harris to repeat her proposals that she's described before, but it's unlikely that those proposals would really reduce inflation. At the same time, the Federal Reserve is the primary actor in inflation. This question would allow Harris to describe her policies in more detail but also provide an explanation of how they'd work in practice.

Question 8: President Biden has been celebrated by his party and criticized by Republicans for pushing the limits of executive power and having an extremely aggressive administration, by historical standards, when it came to enacting policy without Congress. Would you continue in that mold and encourage your appointees to push the limits of executive action or would you, in line with your other bipartisan overtures, return to a more conventional administration that acts within precedent?

This will give Harris an opportunity to put some distance between her and Biden and also signal an intention towards bipartisanship and norm-adherence instead of norm-breaking.

Saturday, August 17, 2024

Why the Child Tax Credit Should Not Be Expanded

I am fully aware that this is not an argument I will win. The child tax credit targets a goal that everyone agrees with--supporting children, and in a time when actual costs are so far in the future that few voters worry about them, a policy that has minor benefits, and no significant harms, the opportunity cost argument will not be enough to sway its advocates or voters.

Nevertheless, expansion of the CTC is not good policy and should not be pursued. It is not the most efficient means to achieve any of the purported goals.

Context

The Child Tax Credit is in the news because both the Republican Vice Presidential candidate and the Democratic Presidential candidate have expressed their desire to expand it should they win the 2024 election.

The Child Tax Credit was created in 1997. It was expanded in 2003, 2012, 2017, and again in 2021. In 2000, the total cost of the CTC was $20 billion. By 2005 it more than doubled to $56 billion. The 2017 TCJA doubled it again and it cost $115 billion by 2019. In 2022, the total cost, boosted by the pandemic relief bills was $226 billion.

Earlier in the year, the likelihood of extending/expanding the CTC beyond the 2017 law was high. The proposal was to increase the program by $35 billion. However, that agreement was never struck.

In the last month, however, Kamala Harris and JD Vance have both offered their own expansions. Harris's plan, would cost $1.6 trillion over ten years, so $160 billion more per year, on average. Vance's proposal hasn't been nailed down as closely, but estimates range from $1 to $3 trillion over ten years.

Arguments in Favor of CTC

The most common argument in favor of expanding the CTC is that it helps to alleviate poverty, and child poverty in particular. In 2021, when the CTC peaked because of the American Rescue Plan, the child poverty rate (at least the one that includes poverty relief programs and transfers), achieved an all-time low. The rate then increased again when the CTC reverted to its pre-pandemic size.

Proponents argue that additional resources flowing to low-income children would have significant positive effects on their lifetime well-being. Proponents further argue that these benefits will accrue to children at higher incomes as well.

Finally, some argue that the CTC will encourage American families to have more children. A country with a growing population faces fewer problems than a country that is shrinking. A younger age profile will produce more growth and provide more workers that will pay for retirees, for example.

Arguments Against

The CATO Institute already provides some good counter-arguments to expansion. Here, I'll highlight three of their arguments I find most persuasive. First, on affordability, CATO points out that the cost of raising a child has been decreasing consistently for sixty years. Second, on the fertility issue, CATO notes, correctly, in my view, that the CTC will have only a very small impact on birth rates, if any.

Lastly, and most importantly, on the poverty question, CATO points to a CBO analysis that shows only 19% of the CTC goes to families in the lowest income quintile. The lowest income 20% of families receive only 19% of the CTC allotted. The CTC is not primarily a poverty-reduction program, but proponents are using child poverty as the primary reason to expand it.

The Child Tax Credit is a markedly less-targeted transfer, to reduce poverty than the Earned Income Tax Credit. The CTC is distributed nearly evenly across all incomes. In fact, the lowest quintile gets a smaller share than any other quintile except for the richest 20% of families.

Proponents would likely argue that this is either because this is how the CTC is intended, it's for children, regardless of income. If this is the case, then they should stop using the poverty argument altogether, because if alleviating poverty is the goal, then surely the EITC (or SNAP or TANF) would be a better program to expand.

The other counter argument might be that the CTC is poorly targeted because Republicans insisted on work requirements and non-refundability (that families that didn't pay income taxes couldn't receive the credit). Again, this counter-argument presumes that the goal of the CTC should be to reduce poverty, and rather than have two programs do the same thing, where they both need to be designed just right, to achieve the desired outcomes, why not have just one, for simplicity's sake?

On top of the argument that the EITC is a much better program to reduce the child poverty rate, it should not go unmentioned that the United States already spends more than enough money to erase poverty, but it's just spent too broadly to do so.

According to CPS data, it would take $190 billion/year to wipe out poverty in the way that proponents celebrated the 2021 CTC expansion. Namely, transferring exactly $190 billion to families below the poverty line would boost their income above the poverty threshold. To alleviate child poverty, it would cost $80 billion.1

The current cost of the CTC in 2024 is $109 billion, already more than enough to erase child poverty. In 2022, $226 billion was spent, $36 billion more than necessary to erase all poverty.

In addition to the CTC, other programs to reduce poverty include the Earned Income Tax Credit, through which $67 billion is transferred, food stamps cost $90 billion in 2023, and TANF cost $31 billion in 2022, split between federal government and states.

US taxpayers spend more than $300 billion a year to solve a $200 billion problem.

Combined, US taxpayers are spending nearly $300 billion on programs that are in whole or in part targeted towards alleviating poverty. This doesn't even include the $800 billion/year spent on Medicaid. If eradicating poverty, and getting every child above the poverty threshold is the ultimate goal, that can be achieved today, by re-allocating funds that are already supposed to be accomplishing this goal.

To summarize, my two primary disputes with expanding the CTC are that we are so far in debt, that we should be maniacally disinclined to add on additional spending without carefully considering the total costs, the goals, the likelihood of meeting those goals, and how this spending rates to other spending. Expanding the CTC fails every one of these tests.

Some people say that the CTC should be expanded without limit. There is no maximum amount to be spent and no group of people to be targeted. These people aren't serious, yet they often win. There are other people who are so dedicated to eliminating child poverty, they are willing to spend untold amounts of money, without any study, to reach that goal.

If eliminating child poverty is a paramount goal, certainly, there's $100 billion somewhere in a $6 trillion budget that is less important and can be shifted.

However, if that goal rises above all others, surely, there are other programs that could be cut because they're less important. Again, an unwillingness to compare one goal to another, is a sign of unserious thinking. It's extremely easy to urge for higher spending, when other people foot the bill.

Footnotes

1I did this calculation myself using 2022 CPS data. I took the market income, subtracted any payments they make, such as payroll taxes and calculated the gap between that and the poverty threshold for that family. This probably isn't the perfect way to do it, but it should account for taxes paid (not credits) and is before other government transfers like SNAP and TANF. The American Prospect said that it would cost $175 billion in 2013. ChatGPT 4 said it would cost $82 billion in response to the prompt "how much would it cost to bring every family currently below the poverty line above the poverty line?".