How are leftists working to re-elect Trump? There are almost too many ways to count:

1. Trump was reeling after his candidates did horrible in the 2022 midterms, and people like Ron DeSantis were soaring in the polls. Then leftists saved him by making him seem like a victim, and he began rising in the polls. Even better, they insured that the only case likely to be decided before the election is the one bogus case:

Trump faces more serious charges elsewhere, over his alleged attempts to interrupt the peaceful transition of power and retention of classified documents in the bathroom of his Mar-a-Lago mansion.

But it is the “hush money” case — revolving around allegations of a sordid, backroom deal made in the days before the 2016 election to prevent the revelation of an extramarital affair — that looks increasingly likely to be the only one to be heard by a jury of Trump’s peers ahead of November’s election.

2. Woke leftists have greatly helped Trump by promoting a completely over-the-top version of identity politics, combined with Chinese Cultural Revolution style cancel culture. Even moderate liberals are disgusted.

3. On economics, the left wing of the Democratic party has moved away from the pragmatic centrism of Clinton (and to a lesser extent Obama) and re-embraced the once discredited big government policies of the 20th century.

4. The left blames Biden for being too pro-Israel, even as Trump is far more pro-Israel. Ditto for Biden’s supposedly pro-fossil fuel policies. Trump also says and does lots of things conservatives don’t like, but that doesn’t cause conservatives to attack Trump, rather it energizes them to attack the left even more vigorously. One thing America’s right and left have in common is contempt for Biden. I also don’t like Biden, but ever heard of the concept of “the lesser of two evils”?

5. “Progressive” city officials enact weak on crime polices, as well as education policies that discourage excellence. This taints the Democratic brand.

I understand that Republicans are working hard to re-elect Trump, but none of that matters. It will be woke leftists that put Trump over the top, by delivering swing voters. I hope Trump remembers to thank them in his victory speech on election day.

I don’t know. But the possibility is greater than I would have wished to see.

Inflation data is often noisy and unreliable, for a wide variety of reasons. Wage inflation is the most meaningful for monetary policy. Among all of the various price indices, the service sector inflation ex-housing and energy is probably the most closely tied to wages. Wages aren’t closely linked to housing or gasoline prices, but they are fairly closely linked to the price of haircuts, fast food, and medical care. And while this series is pretty noisy (red line), it does seem to be trending up since last May and June, when the monthly rate bottomed out at only 0.1% Here’s Bloomberg:

The most recent reading is 0.6%, and the most recent three month average is even higher than 0.6%.

Again, this data is erratic, and it may well slow again going forward. But as I’ve been saying ad nauseam over the past few years, it’s not at all clear that the Fed has adopted a tight money policy. Money is still too loose. I expect 2024:Q1 NGDP to be “hot”. In other words:

Wake me when the tight money starts.

Update: Jason Furman has an interesting thread.

There are many different types of superintelligence. Some people understand quantum mechanics. Some people are really good at chess. Some people can read Finnegan’s Wake.

[I’m tempted to say, “Some people understand supply and demand

Scott Alexander is really, really good at analysis. So good that he’s become famous for engaging in this activity, with a cult following all over the world. (In recent years, the new people I meet in Orange County are largely through Scott Alexander meet-up groups.)

Thus it would be interesting to see what would happen if Alexander took a deep dive into the Covid origins debate, and looked at all of the evidence that’s been presented by both the Lab Leak and Zoonosis advocates.

Now he’s done so. First in a post that looked at a highly publicized debate between the two sides, and now in a follow-up post that dealt with a wide range of comments on his first post. (For those who don’t know, his comment sections are very long and full of high quality observations. If the objection is not in his comment section, it’s probably not worth considering.)

In the end, Alexander comes down pretty close to where I am:

For now, I’m still at 90-10 zoonosis.

And like me, he gets frustrated with the game of whack-a-mole played by Lab Leak proponents:

I know this comments post won’t be the end of the story. I know that (just as with every other one of my posts, I’m not blaming origins debaters in particular here) someone’s going to go “Sure, Scott confronted 489 arguments. But he failed to confront the strongest argument against his case – this one obscure article in a Nepalese journal that nobody except me has ever heard of. That means he’s a bad-faith actor strawmanning everyone he disagrees with!” I know that someone will find some detail I’m wrong about and spam it all over Twitter with “Scott didn’t realize that an 91Q mutation is different from a ZY6 mutation, how can you ever trust anything he says?” And I know that next month, someone will come up with another SMOKING GUN! – and if I don’t respond to it immediately they’ll say I’m scared and know I’ve lost and am refusing to admit I’m wrong out of sheer stubbornness, and twist some quote of mine to show I’ve admitted I’ve changed my mind.

You need to devote a considerable period of time to the debate if you truly wish to become informed on this issue. Alexander’s two posts are a good place to start.

I occasionally read some really smart bloggers who view both lab leak and zoonosis as being roughly equally probable. I respect their views, as that likely means they didn’t waste enormous portions of their life taking a deep dive into this debate like I did. Good for them. I suspect that if they read Alexander’s two posts carefully, they’d switch their views toward strongly favoring zoonosis—the evidence is pretty strong in that direction.

A couple years ago, commenters raked me over the coals for refusing to admit what they thought was obvious—that Covid came from a lab leak. They claimed I was stubbornly refusing to admit the obvious out of some sort of strange loyalty to the CCP (despite the fact that I said lab leak is a danger worth worrying about, and despite the fact that I severely criticized the CCP at the beginning of the pandemic, and despite the fact that zoonosis is far worse for China’s reputation than lab leak, which explains why the CCP has vigorously tried to cover-up the zoonosis evidence.)

No doubt these commenters will show up here and apologize for their slander against my character.

Just kidding!!

PS. I enjoyed this comment, in reference to a picture of WIV scientists:

This is the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s coronavirus research group, out for a team dinner at a local restaurant on January 15th 2020 (ie a month after the pandemic started). This isn’t the most rational probabilistic evidence in the world. But we’ve already seen people take the rational probabilistic evidence twenty different directions. So let’s ask the same question Peter did – do these look like people who secretly know they just started the worst pandemic in modern history?

If they secretly knew they’d just started the worst pandemic in modern history, wouldn’t they at least be wearing masks?

Like Alexander, I don’t see the picture as being definitive evidence, rather it’s a reminder that these are real people. When I read lots of recent western commentary on China, I get the impression that the Chinese people are viewed as some sort of totalitarian cyborgs. But when I visit China and talk to people, they seem kind of like Americans. I’m slightly more persuaded by a western scientist that met the WIV people at a conference at the end of 2019, and reported that their mood seemed completely normal. Scientists aren’t like lawyers—they’re pretty transparent.

I also believe that people underweight the fact that the Chinese scientists clearly thought it was zoonosis in the early stages of the pandemic, before the CCP told them to keep quiet and began pushing alternative theories.

People who’ve never been to China often have this weird idea that the CCP is omniscient, and that nothing happens in China without the CCP knowing about it. China is different in some respects, but nowhere near as different as many of you assume. Like the US, it’s a vast and endlessly complicated place.

Here’s Jim Geraghty of the National Review:

We’ve reached the point where Biden administration officials, Democrats, and pro-Biden columnists are tearing their hair out, furious that the electorate perceives the economy as being subpar. But if you look in the right places, the economic frustration makes perfect sense — and those right places include grocery prices since before the pandemic, the number of new jobs that are part-time jobs, the current high gas prices and likely summer price hikes, how inflation counteracts the good recent run of the stock market, and how many people owe more in car payments than the worth of their automobiles. Americans measure the economy by a lot more than just the unemployment rate, and no amount of wishing, ranting, or berating is going to get them to change their minds about how they perceive their household finances.

I hope you see the problem here. Americans rate their “household finances” as good, it’s the overall economy they view as poor. No amount of ranting and berating from Jim Geraghty will change that fact. Here’s Axios:

By the numbers: 63% of Americans rate their current financial situation as being “good,” including 19% of us who say it’s “very good.”

Neither number is particularly low: They’re both entirely in line with the average result the past 20 times Harris Poll has asked this question.

The survey’s findings were based on a nationally representative sample of 2,120 U.S. adults conducted online between Dec. 15-17, 2023. (More on the methodology.)

Americans view the economy as poor partly because of the inflation and partly because they hate Biden. Americans view their personal finances as good because their incomes have generally risen faster than the cost of living since the pre-Covid period. (Comparisons with early 2021 are meaningless, as the data was heavily distorted by Covid.)

PS. Biden’s economic policies are really bad, but for reasons that have nothing to do with the current state of the economy.

PPS. Trump has a 6-part plan to bring down inflation:

1. Favors NIMBY policies to prevent housing construction in the suburbs.

2. Expel all the illegal workers that pick our food and provide other key services.

3. Put heavy tariffs on imported food and other goods.

4. Have Medicare do less negotiation of drug prices.

5. Run super massive budget deficits.

6. Easy money.

What? You don’t think that will work?

1. Be careful what you wish for (from Matt Yglesias’s Substack):

While several states have banned abortion, a bunch of other states have made it easier to get medication abortions and otherwise reduced restrictions with the result that there were actually more abortions in 2023 than in previous years. And abortion rights is getting more popular. A new Fox poll showed that 70 percent of the public believes mifepristone should be legal and the previously popular idea of a 15-week ban is now underwater 43-54. Abortion rights have become a millstone around the GOP’s neck, and the more people argue about this, the more they seem to be moving in favor of abortion.

As a matter of law, I agree with the Supreme Court. But as a matter of policy, I’m pro-choice.

2. I’m so glad to live in a state where pot is legal, abortion is legal, physician assisted suicide is legal, you can buy Teslas directly from the manufacturer, and lab produced meat is legal:

Lawmakers in US state capitals are seeking to stifle development of “lab-grown” tuna, pork and other animal proteins, taking a stand against a novel food technology backed by investors such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.

Republicans in at least seven states have introduced legislation since the beginning of the year to ban sales or distribution of lab-grown meat, a form of edible protein cultivated from animal cells. . . .

Florida’s legislature in March sent legislation banning sales of lab-grown meat in the state to DeSantis, who in February said: “We are not going to do fake meat. That does not work.” A spokeswoman for the governor declined to comment on whether he will sign the bill.

The GOP fervently believes that every American should be free to pursue GOP-approved lifestyles.

3. Market participants seem surprised by the Tesla sales slump:

A myriad of red flags went up throughout the quarter. First, Tesla warned its rate of growth will be “notably lower” this year, blaming interest-rate hikes that have kept its cars out of reach for many consumers even as it’s slashed prices. The company dealt with multiple disruptions at its plant outside Berlin. Musk engaged in inflammatory posting on X, turning off prospective buyers, and China’s EV market grew even more cut-throat.

I don’t have a Harvard MBA, but when most of your customers are Democrats, does it make sense for the CEO to spend all his spare time insulting liberals on Twitter, er, . . . I mean X?

Maybe he thought it would convince Republicans to buy EVs. Did Trump convince Republicans to take the vaccine?

BTW, I think Tesla is a great company. But that new pickup truck? Yikes.

4. What do you mean, “fool’s gold“?

But that can be worthwhile. Some 5-10% of the world’s gold production derives from pyrite. And this is likely to increase. According to estimates by McKinsey, a consultancy, 24% of the world’s gold reserves are “refractory”—meaning the gold must be yanked from the clutches of some mineral, in most cases pyrite.

5. I’ve been dismayed to see the GOP become an increasingly pro-Putin party. Previously, I attributed this to Trump. But a GOP Congressman suggests that extensive Russian propaganda also plays a role. (If I didn’t block lots of Russia trolls, this blog’s comment section would be almost entirely dominated by pro-Putin posters.)

6. I thought that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might cause a few anti-China people to rethink their views on the “real enemy”. Unfortunately, it did not. And according to The Economist, things are even worse than I imagined:

To get involved directly, says Mr Biden, would be “World War III”. He has refused calls to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, act as the intermediary for Polish MIG-29 jets or even supply American-made Patriot anti-aircraft batteries. . . .

Mr Biden’s caution in Ukraine contrasts with his almost careless talk about defending Taiwan against China. Last year Mr Biden said America had a “commitment” to defend the island. America’s “strategic ambiguity”, whereby it promises to help Taiwan defend itself but will not say whether it would intervene directly, has become less ambiguous.

So we should not risk WWIII with nuclear armed Russia, but we should risk WWIII with nuclear armed China? I agree with Biden on Ukraine, but his China policy is madness. Yes, I know. Gotta defend those semiconductor factories. As George C. Scott once said, “I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed”.

7. Making fun of the intelligence of conservatives is like shooting ducks in a barrel. (Ditto for leftists.) But the following tweet also makes me wonder why so many conservatives wish our educational system went back to teaching the classics. Say what you will about extremists like the Taliban, at least they understand that the arts are a force for liberalization.

Hey conservative parent. Do you really want your children to read what Jesus said about how you should treat the poor refugee that shows up at your door?

(Of course Romeo and Juliet should be mixed race. My only complaint is that the two actors don’t look like children.)

8. China has been demonized for supposedly building lots of “overcapacity.” This led the US to impose high trade barriers. But as David Fickling at Bloomberg recently pointed out, the accusations are not true:

The trouble is, none of it was true. China wasn’t seeking to produce more steel than long-run demand would dictate. It wasn’t even a particularly important exporter. It wasn’t responsible for weak prices in the US. The tariffs didn’t halt a jobs decline in US metals manufacturing.

It’s bad enough that misguided steel protectionism over the past decade has served only to raise costs and reduce competitiveness for the rest of the US economy. Worse still is the way the same failed policy is now being dragged out to support far more damaging barriers on clean technology, slowing our ability to halt the rise in global temperatures.

9. The Biden administration is pursuing an “industrial policy” aimed at boosting manufacturing. Australia tried a similar policy back in the 1960s, and it failed. Here’s The Economist:

The [Australian auto] industry survived so long only because successive governments refuelled it with subsidies. GM guzzled about A$2bn ($1.3bn) before the handouts were cut by Mr Morrison’s party in 2013. Rightly so, according to a report released the following year by the Productivity Commission. It found no evidence that they had helped the wider economy, concluding that the “costs of such assistance outweigh the benefits”.

Manufacturing’s share of Australia’s economy peaked in the 1960s, in Holden’s heyday. It now accounts for just under 6% of GDP, well below the level of most other rich countries. But that has not stopped the Australian economy—and local wages—from growing faster than their peers.