Beyond Politics

Av Harris of the national fiscal responsibility advocacy group The Concord Coalition joins the show to share insights from his experience working for some of the most colorful -- and colorfully named -- politicians in America, and to explain the new Concord Coalition report on why immigrants will be so vital to maintaining economic growth in the future. Also, what's up with the Congressional Budget Office saying that the Build Back Better bill won't add to the deficit, and then saying well, if you did a bunch of other stuff, it would? Is that actually a meaningful way to look at this (the Concord Coalition says yes, Matt says no), or just fodder for scoring political points?

Photo by Kerwin Elias on Unsplash

On today's show, we highlight the complicated legacy of Bob Dole. For Americans of a certain age, basically age 35 and over, Bob Dole was an avatar of the Republican Party.  After his losing presidential campaign, he went through a transition from a taciturn, gruff politician known as Dr. Gridlock to a much more genial and vulnerable public image cultivated on late night TV, as a spokesperson for World War II veterans, and on behalf of sufferers of erectile dysfunction as a pitchman for Viagra.  In the wake of his death, analysts focused on that later image, and mourned the passing not only of the man, but of a seemingly different and better kind of American politics. But our guest today was one of the few to point out that Bob Dole's record was far more complex, and maybe the nostalgia about the way things used to be in politics isn't quite right. In fact, as much as we praise his military service and personal toughness, it can be argued that Bob Dole was ahead of his time on many of the things that we hate most about today's politics.  He may even have invented them. 

Erik Loomis is Associate Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island. His most recent book is A History of America in Ten Strikes, published by The New Press in 2018.  He also writes for the Editorial Board, and his most recent article is titled The Mean Old Man of the GOP is Dead.

Or Rush Limbaugh? Or the same media echo chamber that exists on the right.  Longtime West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe and Matt Robison dive into where the right wing dominance of slanted media comes from (and make no mistake, the right wing does dominate), and whether it is ultimately fixable. 

Today, we're thrilled to welcome back two friends of the show, Mario Broussard and Alex Ivey, who are Senior Vice President and Vice President of Research respectively at Global Strategy Group, one of the premier polling, research, and public affairs companies in America. They have been running an absolutely fascinating research project, Global Strategy Group’s bi-annual series, The Melting Pot: GSG’s Ongoing Look at Racial Politics in America, which is intended to take the temperature of Black America on political issues, social attitudes, and voting behavior.  As we observed in Mario and Alex’s last appearance on the show, Black Americans are the absolute core what the Democratic Party and turn out an engagement from these voters will be absolutely critical to determining the outcome of the elections in 2022 and beyond. Today, we tackle lessons learned from their research about Defund the Police and even more important, Critical Race Theory. How can Democrats talk about it when it is so politically dangerous?  Our guests have the answer. 

In the last few months American politics has become a little mysterious, if not downright confounding. By almost every measure, President Joe Biden and the Democratic party have had an extremely successful year. Remember we started this year with an insurrection in the very heart of our government, with armed vigilantes roaming the halls of Congress. We also had a brand new set of vaccines but almost no Americans vaccinated against a deadly pandemic. Unemployment was still six and a half percent.  Economic output was hundreds of billions of dollars lower than the start of the pandemic.

Fast forward to the end of October: GDP had fully recovered and grown beyond pre-pandemic levels, employers were adding half a million jobs a month, unemployment was down to 4.6%, and people were leaving their jobs at a record rate because the job market was so good.  Wages were up 5.0% over the year. And Americans had accumulated $2.3 trillion more in savings, with the median household’s checking account balance 50 percent higher than before the pandemic. The US had also carried out the fastest vaccination campaign in our history, and after a painful, wrenching takeover by the Taliban that cost American lives, the US managed to end its longest war, successfully evacuating 124,000 people, including 6000 U.S. citizens, in the largest airlift in U.S. history.

And yet, Democrats running on these successes, and contrasting with the disastrous leadership the country had suffered under Donald Trump, saw a massive swing of voter sentiment against them. President Biden’s approval rating has cratered, and Republican turnout surged so strongly in the New Jersey and Virginia elections that Democrats lost everything in Virginia, and nearly so in New Jersey.

Some of the smartest minds in politics set out last month to find out why. Aliza Astrow is a political analyst at the think Tank Third Way, she helped organize this research effort, and she’s here to tell us what they found.

Markets have been spooked by Omicron news in recent days.  And Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales are down year-on-year.  So which of these is a bigger concern, or are either of them really a bad sign at all?  Also, Dorsey is OUT at Twitter, Amazon is taking over the shipping market, and what can we learn for business from the Patriots? Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money weighs in.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

In 2016 the Democratic Party lost control of every branch of government. Countless explanations and excuses have been offered, and despite an anti-Trump backlash in 2018 and eking out the Presidency in 2020, Democrats have been on a continued downward slide down ballot. And now, facing the midterms, their prospects don’t exactly look rosy. The news media is full of doom and gloom, the President’s popularity is underwater despite some massive successes, and Republican voter suppression efforts look likely to keep them with the upper hand into the future.

So what’s the answer? Our guest, Tom Reston has one. His book Soul of a Democrat: The Seven Core Ideals That Made Our Party — and Our Country — Great, focuses on the root ideas of the Democratic Party and how to start from the foundation of what the party is supposed to be about. He argues that Democrats need a coherent, blunt set of American ideals and in this book, he provides one.

By most measures, the economy is doing great. The country's economic output is way past where it was before the pandemic. In October alone, the country created 531,000 jobs and set a record for the number of people leaving their jobs, which is a sign the people see a hot job market and want to take advantage of it.  Unemployment is way down, wages are way up, and the average American has 50% more their checking account today than they did just two years ago. Not to mention that businesses are also happy and flush with cash: consumer spending is surging while the stock market was up 7% in October, capping off a strong year.

BUT...Inflation. It's on everybody's minds.  It was up 6.2% in October, and that has made Americans feel like the economy is terrible. 68% of Americans told Gallup in October that they thought the economy is getting worse, while the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey finds that Republicans feel worse about the economy than at the height if the Great Recession.

So, how is the economy doing? What’s real, what’s perception, or is perception what creates economic reality? Harvard Kennedy School professor Jeffrey Frankel is the James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at the Harvard Kennedy School, and most important, he graduated from the best undergraduate college in America – Swarthmore College.  He joins the show to explain the real story on inflation, including the sneaky link between vaccination and bringing inflation down.

Matt joins legendary West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe on his show to talk about his Alternet article describing the government's massive bias toward the old over the young, and why it needs to end. Then, a discussion about Republican infighting and growing threats of violence, what it means, and why it's happening.

Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money explains what to make of the very different things people are saying about the state of the economy / their personal finances, and how they are actually acting. Right now, Americans tell pollsters that the economy is bad and that they are worried. But they are spending, seeking new job opportunities, and investing like things are great. So what does that mean, and what do businesses, investors, and analysts do when those things diverge?