Paul Davidson (1930-2024) and Post Keynesian Economics

Paper on Paul with Tom Palley and Jamie Galbraith published by ROKE. From the abstract:

"Paul Davidson was a critical figure in the preservation of John Maynard Keynes’s ideas, sticking with them when they were out of fashion. He was also key to the survival of the Post Keynesian school. Davidson endorsed Keynes’s liquidity preference theory of interest, and he emphasized fundamental uncertainty as a central feature of economic reality, essential to making sense of a monetary economy. His greatest legacy is the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, the intellectual home for a generation of Post Keynesian economists. Without his efforts, the heterodox economics community would be significantly smaller than it is now."

Full paper available here.

The Economist and the American Economy

It takes something for me to say that The Economist is probably right. Sure enough the cover of The Economist, which has led to many critiques, sarcastic comments, and plain mockery by some friends on the left, was a bit hyperbolic. But the main argument of the piece -- basically that the American economy did pretty well in the recovery from the Pandemic, and that the United States has done well when compared to other advanced economies, and better than it did in the last few recoveries, which is not the case with China, which still grows faster, but has slowed down -- is correct.

Regarding the recovery, it is clear that the US has outperformed most economies, and it is also true that to a great extent that is due to the fiscal packages from the Pandemic, including the Biden ones, that were derided by many, including many Dems, like Larry Summers (and inflation, which resulted from the supply chain problems, in the absence of significant conflict went down pretty fast).

 

Not only this was the first recovery that was NOT jobless in a while, as can be seen by the fact that real GDP went back to trend, it also puts in doubt the notion that there is some fundamental secular stagnation problem with the US economy.

There are, no doubt, structural issues, like increasing inequality, and an hegemonic challenge from China*, but no significant reason that dooms the economy to grow less in the long run. The lower growth was a result of policy decisions, not structural problems. As Steindl would have said, stagnation policies. Had Obama (and then Trump) pushed for a more robust fiscal expansion after the 2008/9 Great Recession as Christina Romer wanted (and contrary to what Larry Summers advocated) then the growth rate would have been higher, and perhaps even the deficits (as a share of GDP, with GDP growing faster) would have been smaller.

Trump's victory in 2016 is, to some extent, the result of that choice too (and not prosecuting the Wall Street crooks, in my view), and Kamala has failed to adopt a more populist tone during the campaign, which I hope does not end up leading to another turn to the far right. The limits to growth have been political, and the Dems have played a role in that. Paradoxically, Biden had moved to the left on that (his willingness to promote a more healthy fiscal expansion).

* On the exaggerated fears of the end of American hegemony, also very common on the left, I'll write later.

IMF surcharges

A long demand by progressive economists demanding the end of the surcharges that the IMF imposed on developing countries has had a positive outcome, with the executive board reducing them. The statement by Kristalina Georgieva can be read here. A strong effort on this by Joe Stiglitz, Martín Gúzman, Kevin Gallagher, Mark Weisbrot, to cite a few should be noted. I had recently signed the letter below favoring this policy.

"Dear International Monetary Fund Board of Directors,

This Friday October 11, 2024, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is expected to announce reforms to its policy on charges and especially surcharges, which levies extra fees on countries whose debts have surpassed certain size and time thresholds. We the undersigned urge the IMF to meaningfully reform its policies, especially on surcharges.

Research shows that IMF surcharges are procyclical and regressive, extracting higher lending rates and fees from countries during financial crises when they should be investing in their own recovery. For years, researchers and advocates have documented how the current surcharge policy prevents low and middle-income countries from regaining financial stability, including by piling on higher borrowing, and preventing access to international markets. Surcharges increase the total potential annual interest rate imposed by the IMF to almost 8%. Moreover, the arguments put forward in defense of the surcharges have shown to have little if any validity.

We are concerned by reports that the IMF is not considering significant reforms that would remedy the flaws inherent in its surcharge policy. We fear that the IMF is instead contemplating insufficient half-measures. Tinkering at the edges will not help ensure global stability. The IMF itself projects that the number of countries paying surcharges will keep increasing. Already, 675 million people live in low- and middle-income countries whose taxpayers are projected to pay the IMF roughly $2 billion just in surcharges every year for the next five years. Every one of those dollars is a dollar not spent on health, education, and the clean energy transition. If the IMF Board maintains its current system of charging the taxpayers of already struggling, indebted countries extra surcharge fees, which cushion its general reserves, its members cannot expect that we will perceive the Fund as the steward of global financial stability that it was founded to be and confidence and trust in the Fund will diminish."

For the list of signatories go here.

More on the possibility and risks of a recession

So both the (inverted) yield curve and the Sahm rule indicate a recession. This together with two months of slower employment creation, and the slightly higher unemployment rate, has many wondering whether the economy will crash soon. I discussed before -- a while ago, before the pandemic recession, that had nothing to do with the yield curve -- why an inverted yield curve doesn't necessarily mean a forthcoming recession. The Sahm rule, like the inverted yield curve has an impressive track record. It suggests that if three month moving average of the rate of unemployment rises 0.5 or more above the minimum of the same averages for the previous twelve months a recession is under way. Figure below, although scale doesn't help, shows that we are at 0.57 for last August [ominous music here].

This is essentially an a-theoretical measure, contrary to the yield curve which could have different explanations, including the Wicksellian one used by the mainstream. It expresses basically a trend. Unemployment rates go up in recessions, and after a while going up, you're basically in one. The two episodes in which it fails, as far I can tell, were in 1959 and 2003. No clear reason for why, as opposed to housing market measures that failed in 1951, 1967, and perhaps now (if you believe me), because of two wars (Korea and Vietnam) and fiscal packages (Bidenomics).

In a few weeks now, the Fed is very likely, almost certainly really, going to reduce interest rates. I don't expect that to stimulate the economy much, and it certainly will not create any danger about an inflationary resurgence. Also, as I noted on Marketplace a week or so ago, there are some positive signs about the economy. Real wages at the bottom are growing, and consumption went up. And no, you should not be concerned with the low savings rate. I was a little less sanguine that I sound in that short soundbite, but overall I think that's correct.

Sure enough a recession could certainly imply a return of Trump, and Trumponomics. I doubt that it would cause inflation and that his election would deepen the recession, as some had argued. Not because tax cuts for the wealthy would stimulate the economy. But the truth is that Republicans in power don't care about the deficit or debt. They care about cutting social benefits, and about facilitating the lucrative relations between the corporate sector and government. What Jamie Galbraith called the Predator State. Trumponomics shares with Reaganomics, and other GOP supply side voodoo economics notions, a persistent characteristic. It is always against unions and higher wages, and always for lower taxes for the wealthy.

Dems are less consistent, but certainly less keen on both (and Kamala seems to have accepted Bidenomics and the pro-union agenda). The problem with that is that it has opened the door for right wing populism. The differences with previous versions of conservative economics are subtle, and in some sense rhetorical, since they do very little for working people. On right wing populism economics and their connection to the working class, and the problematic relation of Dems with the working class, I suggest the recent piece by Kim Phillips-Fein on the London Review of Books. She says:

"In 1968 George Wallace talked to a working class that was afraid of dispossession. Trump speaks to workers too, but more directly uses the language of money and corporate success; his appeal derives from identification with the boss -- reflecting the extent to which he seeks to win the allegiance of small business owners. Just as American political institutions have been hollowed out since the 1960s, so has the country's political economy, in ways that have helped to increase Trumps' appeal."

The self-made man myth, an American neologism (Henry Clay, if I'm not wrong), is incredibly corrosive. I hope I'm right and we can avoid a recession, and Trump.

Two letters to The Economist about Donald Harris and what they reveal about ideology

 

Spaghetti economics: Shootout at Harvard Square

There were two letters about the poorly written (not the English, always impeccable, contrasting to my spaghetti English, which is always slightly off, like the Westerns) piece that The Economist had on Donald Harris. One by Robert Blecker, Steve Fazzari and Peter Ho, setting the record straight on the breadth and depth of Harris' contributions to economics. On this, they echo what the Post said about Harris' policy advice in his native Jamaica. The subtitle of the Post piece said: "An unconventional economist at Stanford, Donald J. Harris pushed strikingly nonideological economic solutions to the nation of his birth." Harris was (and still is, from what I can assume) a reasonable man, both as a scholar concerned with knowledge, and as a policy advisor. Nonideological being the key word.

The other one, that I reproduce in full, is by Professor Avinash Dixit, who says:

"You say that Mr Harris 'proposed that firms must choose from a 'book of blueprints', which need different capital goods' in his book published in 1978. Alas, that had been proposed more thoroughly and rigorously in 1953 in a brilliant paper by Edmond Malinvaud, for which he should have won a Nobel prize. And Robert Dorfman, Paul Samuelson, and yes, Robert Solow, whom you cite as author of the aggregate capital-growth model, covered it more comprehensively in a book from 1958. Perhaps the mathematics of all this were beyond the capacity of the so-called Marxists of Cambridge."

This, and The Economist piece itself, confirms the high degree of confusion about the meaning of the capital debates. The problem is not so much the lack of mathematical savvy of the Cambridge, UK, economists, Marxists or otherwise, but the lack of understanding of theory, by some very serious and important mainstream economists, and mainstream magazines (they do think they are a newspaper too, btw).

The Economist piece, commits the mistake that I suggested (see my old post on the Capital Controversies here) was typical of most incorrect views on the debates between the two Cambridges, and suggests, essentially, that it was an aggregation problem, and that:

"Mr Harris did not move on. In his 1978 book he developed a model of growth without an aggregate capital stock. Rather than the smooth 'production function' of Solow, in which the rate of saving and population growth determines capital per worker, Mr Harris instead proposed that firms must choose from a 'book of blueprints', which need different capital goods. Capitalists will compete to ensure the rate of profit is consistent across different industries, picking a blueprint based on the level of wages and profits in the economy."

That's why Dixit suggests that the choice of technique models in Malinvaud, and in Dorfman, Samuelson and Solow, using disaggregated notions of capital would avoid the circularity of the aggregative model. It is always the case that firms will choose, given distribution, the technique that minimizes costs. Of course, that's not the issue. The problem is that one cannot obtain a measure of capital that is independent of distribution, and hence, the idea that supply and demand in factor markets can determine the remuneration of capital and labor cannot stand. The classical concern with distributive conflict, both of Marx, but also of bourgeois economists, as he called them, Smith and Ricardo, becomes relevant again [meaning, if I need to clarify, the notion of conflict in the distribution arena was held both by critics of capitalism, and defenders of what Smith referred to as commercial societies].

Disaggregation does little to solve the problem. First, as noted by Garegnani, long ago, the abandonment of the notion of aggregate capital, and the notion of factors of production, came together with the view that means of production got their own rate of return, but also with the disappearance of the notion that the forces of competition lead to a normal and uniform rate of profit. The traditional long run method of economics, that was the theoretical foundation of the discipline, was abandoned. Further, it is still the case that, even with a disaggregated set of means of production, in the the aggregate, savings must be equalized to investment, and some process for that has to be used. That is why some notion of the quantity of capital was necessary for the mainstream [in recent times, mainstream economists and policy makers have started talking of the natural rate of interest again, a notion that had vanished more or less, and about very simplistic negative relations between investment and interest rates, w/o even knowing the logical problems associated with that, reinforcing problematic views about distribution].

In other words, forget the notion that firms actually face a book of blueprints, and that they can substitute and change the structure of production with relative ease, according to changes in relative prices, and that somehow that, by affecting the relative supply and demand for capital (many capital goods) and labor, would determine distribution, since that is obviously highly improbable in reality. Choices are more limited, and substitution irrelevant, at best. The Cambridge, UK, economists (and not only the Marxists; most were some kind of Post Keynesian, as The Economist notes) and Harris knew better. Distribution is determined by the relative bargaining power of workers and capitalists.

Samuelson knew enough, math and theory, to know when he was wrong. Mr. Dixit thinks his mathematical knowledge puts him above the rabble [the so-called Marxists of Cambridge, and Mr. Harris]. But what his letter [and the piece by The Economist] actually shows is lack of engagement with the theoretical argument, and, in contrast with Mr. Harris, an incredible amount of ideological bias. After all, the idea that distribution is according to effort, and that markets produce optimal outcomes is at play. It shouldn't be. He raised Malinvaud, I counter with Smith, which knew way less math than he does, for sure, but whose book is still worth reading.

Milei, Mankiw, and pagliarism in economics

I start teaching this week (tomorrow). One of the things we are encouraged to discuss with students is the issue of academic misconduct. One of those problems that always existed, and not just among students, and it is hard to say whether things are better or worse than before, even though everyone thinks it has worsened. Certainly AI has made things even more complicated. At least in my classes, AI has limited impact, since it is an average of what is out there, and that is conventional economics.

Economics, as a field, is also not particularly good, with fewer retractions than other fields. Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff was never retracted, even though the mistake was acknowledged. More recently Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely were caught, essentially, fabricating data, and putting in doubt the whole sub-field of behavioral economics.

Over the last few years, and in particular since he was elected president, Milei's extensive plagiarism has been documented. In some of his books they even lie about his qualifications, saying he got a degree from the University of Buenos Aires (with high reputation in Argentina), and that he has a PhD from the University of California (not saying which one). Both untrue, of course. Now Noticias has uncovered further plagiarism, this time from Greg Mankiw's intro to microeconomics.

The examples above are copies, almost textual, of the Spanish version of text. The title of the book is at least original, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (no, just kidding, Capitalism, Socialism and the Neoclassical Trap; as all Austrians he confusedly thinks he is not neoclassical). At any rate, nothing surprising, besides the fact that Mankiw's publisher doesn't take action. Respect for property rights to attract investment, that is the basis, btw, of their theory. The jokes write themselves.

Pluralism & teaching in economics

My colleague and friend Geoff Schneider on teaching and pluralism in economics.  He was the director of the Teaching & Learning Center at Bucknell, when I arrived here, and I learned quite a bit from him. At any rate, worth watching it.

Challenges and Perspectives of International Monetary Policy

 

Carlos Pinkusfeld interviews Ramaa Vausdevan (Colorado State University) and Franklin Serrano (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) to discuss the complex challenges of monetary policy in the international arena. Exploring issues such as financial globalization, the influence of large economies on the global monetary system, and the implications for developing countries, the experts offer important perspectives on the role of central banks and the effectiveness of monetary policies in the globalized economy. This is an essential debate for those who want to understand the direction of the world economy in a context of dynamic changes and growing uncertainty.

 

30 years of the Real Plan: Unoriginal Lessons from Latin American Stabilizations

 

Original thoughts

 

The 30 year anniversary of the stabilization plan that controlled high inflation in Brazil, the so-called Real Plan, just passed earlier in July. I wanted to write something about it, but it got buried with other things. Here just some very short reflections.

 

There was a huge coverage in the media and several new books and papers written about it, including by several of the actual participants of the stabilization plan. If I have to leave one impression beyond the problems of all the mythology making, and the self-congratulatory mood of the whole thing, is that most of the analysts, including the economists that designed the plan, unlearned what they knew back then. People start defending some ideas because they are convenient, and next thing they end up believing their own half-baked justifications. The book shown above by three central figures in the conception and management of the Real -- Gustavo Franco, who wrote a dissertation under Jeff Sachs, with Lance Taylor in the committee that is worth reading, Pedro Malan, who was a very reasonable macroeconomist concerned with balance of payments problems in the 1970s, with a thesis supervised by Albert Fishlow, and Edmar Bacha, perhaps mostly known for his Belindia paper with Lance Taylor -- is a disappointment, but not a surprise. It suggests stabilization was possible because of the fiscal adjustment, and (this is somewhat interesting given the current debates in Argentina, where everybody wants a Plan) because the Plan wasn't really a plan, in the sense that it had no surprise measures. They mean, there was no price freeze.

The book is composed of short newspaper pieces, some previously unpublished but similar in size and style, over the last 30 years. The more recent are more illuminating for obvious reasons. The diagnostic is essentially that stabilization followed a serous fiscal commitment, an independent central bank concerned with inflation, and a flexible exchange rate to solve the external problem. There is almost nothing about the URV (Unidade Real de Valor), based on the Larida proposal, which was the center piece of the plans way of dealing with the realignment of relative prices during the transition to the new currency (one of the main problems with price freezes). Prices kept changing in cruzeiros, the actual currency, but remained fixed in URVs, that had a daily exchange rate with the cruzeiro. Then the cruzeiro was eliminated and the URV became the real, with a stable exchange rate with the dollar, one might add. Perhaps the lack of discussion can be blamed on the fact that neither Pérsio Arida nor André Lara-Resende participate in the book.

However, in a recent piece on Piauí, Lara-Resende, the more controversial and less conventional, at least these days, of the Real Plan forefathers, although he does say that the URV is the Columbus' egg that allowed to eliminate the problem of inertia, but then goes on to say that:

"Inflation is the result of a long process of fiscal disorder, that mirrors social demands and political conflicts, that cannot be resolved by the established institutional channels" (my translation).

In other words, inflation is caused by too much social spending and fiscal imbalances. The conflict is not, apparently one about income distribution, in the face of an external problem (foreign debt back in the 1980s). There is no mention of the exchange rate, the external obligations or the amount of reserves held by the central bank necessary to service the foreign debt.

Of course what allowed for the stabilization was the change in capital flows in the 1990s, in part the result of the lower rates in the United States after the financial crash of 1987, and more so after the 1991 recession, together with the Brady renegotiation of the external debt, that Brazil signed in 1992. By 1994 the reserves were reasonably large as can be seen below.

Reserves were very low in the 1980s, and that was the main reason for the failure of the heterodox plans, not just in Brazil, but in many other countries like Argentina. In May 1993, when Fernando Henrique Cardoso became Finance Minister, reserves were at about US$ 23 billion, and by the time the real became the currency, and the exchange rate between the real and the dollar was stabilized, reserves had more or less doubled (one can see the erosion of them after the 1999 crisis, and all of that is dwarfed by the accumulation of reserves that started in the second Lula government). There is a brief comment on the round-table at the Catholic University in which someone said that Gustavo Franco was instrumental in trying to keep the exchange rate stable, but it is almost an after thought.

This is lack of understanding of what allowed for stabilization in the 1990s, and not in the 1980s (in the case of Israel the US provided a large transfer of reserves to their central bank; stabilization by invitation, one might call it), is generalized. Many papers trying to find some specific element of the stabilization plans miss the fact that everybody stabilized in the 1990s, once dollars started flowing to the periphery.

At any rate, many other problems with these papers, books, round-tables, on Lula, and his views, on what would allow for higher growth now, on why price stability has been maintained, and so on. But the ideas are mostly conventional, unoriginal, and for the most part incorrect. They provide less knowledge now than what they knew back then.

Sharing Central Banks’ costs and profits of monetary policy in the euro area

By Sergio Cesaratto

A debate has developed in Europe (on Vox.eu and elsewhere) on the fiscal costs related to the interest payments that central banks in the eurozone are bestowing on commercial banks, a result of the way monetary policy is currently conducted. The implementation of monetary policy currently revolves around the ECB’s direct control of the interest rate paid on an abundant excess of bank reserves (relative to mandatory reserve requirements) (see Cesaratto 2020, chapter 7). This excess is the result of past quantitative easing (QE) operations whereby the eurozone’s national central banks (NCBs) bought government and corporate bonds by issuing reserves (liquidity). At the ECB’s current target rate of 3.75 per cent, banks are collecting considerable sums, more than 118 billion per year rebus sic stantibus. This also happens in other monetary areas, but there are European peculiarities.

Read rest here.

Very brief comments on Venezuela

The election in Venezuela is always contentious. I've written quite a bit about it over the years (see everything here; on the previous presidential election see here). Some have decided already that is a fraud, and sustain that the previous ones were also, although that is far from clear, and most likely Maduro (let alone Chávez) did win all the previous elections. This time around things are less clear. First of all, the opposition seemed more unified, even with the disqualification of Maria Corina Machado, a mistake by Maduro, both from a general preoccupation with democracy, and also, because the actual opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, might have been more effective.

In my view, the only way to know what happened one would have to check the data, and that is still not possible. Both Lula and Petro have asked for a peaceful recount of the votes. It is the only way to find out what actually happened. Same calls have been issued by reasonable opposition people like Francisco Rodriguez.

There is a great distance from saying that there were problems with the election, to suggest that is what fraudulent, and that Maduro is a dictator. Obviously Venezuela is flawed democracy. But, in all fairness, the US is very flawed too. A lot of people are excluded, some for questionable reasons, like being jailed, which disproportionately affects blacks and Hispanics, and several can't vote on a Tuesday, with limited numbers of polling places and not enough voting machines in poor areas, leading to much longer waiting times for working class people. Disenfranchisement is common here, and has been historically speaking. These are just some examples. And it would be an understatement to say that Trump, and many others, have authoritarian tendencies.

That is NOT to say that everything is fine with Maduro and Venezuela. Certainly he has authoritarian tendencies, and even if he is proved to be the actual winner, there were too many problems with the elections. However, these are only exacerbated by the sanctions imposed by the US, and the anti-democratic tendencies of the opposition, always ready to promote a coup, with US support. Lifting the sanctions, and a more rational American policy towards Venezuela could be the actual path for more democratic outcomes there. Hope springs eternal.

PS (8/4/24): It has been now almost a week, and the government has not provided all the information necessary for the recount of the votes and it looks increasingly like they won't do it. I still think that best solution, rather than acknowledging the victory of the opposition candidate, a mistake the US committed before, would be to lift the sanctions and engage in diplomacy, as Lula has been trying to do, in order to get the government to provide full vote tallies. After all, the US has engaged in diplomacy with much worse international actors.

Argentina on the verge

The big question in the case of Argentina, as always is when it will explode. If the current developments are an indicator of anything, it should be sooner rather than later. Note that the fundamental problems regarding the possible crisis and default are associated to the external debt in dollars (one has to repeat this all the time). It does not mean that there weren't other problems with the Argentine economy, but the domestic issues do NOT lead to a default (yes, that means the fiscal problems).

In spite of all the criticism of the Fernández government, and some of that is certainly correct (but not the fact that they didn't do fiscal adjustment or not enough industrial policy; it's the reserves idiot!), the increase in debt happened all during the Macri administration (2015-2019). Milei's 'plan' was to make a fiscal adjustment and devalue the official exchange rate to close the gap between it and the parallel exchange rate (the blue). The notion was that fiscal adjustment would solve the inflationary problem, caused in this view by monetary emissions to cover the fiscal deficits. Regarding the devaluation the logic was that the official rate was incompatible with the market determined one, and, hence, this was inevitable.

Milei depreciated the official exchange rate by more than a 100 percent, to reduce the parallel market premium, and implemented a draconian fiscal adjustment, that he claims has led to a balanced budget. In reality his adjustment is a bit of a sham, an accounting gimmick. For example, the distributor of electricity, privatized in the 1990s, has stopped payments to the producers, and the government is negotiating the bill, which will not be zero, even though that is what they show in the balances. Many other cuts are unsustainable. In this case, even the IMF has suggested that the measures have gone too far, and might have severe social consequences. Note that fiscal adjustment and depreciation are the traditional IMF policy prescriptions.

As a result of his measures, inflation accelerated to more than 25 percent per month in December right after the depreciation, and as the exchange rate depreciation moderated, inflation has decelerated, remaining for now more or less at the same level as before Milei’s inauguration, which corresponds to an annualized rate of about 180 percent. However, in the last month inflation increased again, from 4.2 percent in May to 4.6 in June.

More importantly, the exchange rate premium has started to increase again, as the parallel exchange rate depreciates more than the official one, and reaching a gap of 60 percent, before falling back to somewhere in the 40 something percent.

Of course the devaluation only managed to accelerate inflation, and reduce real wages, and the blue continued to devalue, since the expectations that the government will be able to stabilize the exchange rate are minimal, given the lack of reserves. The central bank is now intervening in the foreign exchange markets to reduce the gap. But all hinges on the ability to obtain dollars. And that's why we are on the verge of a crisis. The IMF will probably not pony up more dollars, even if Trump gets elected, which seems to be Milei's bet. And now Argentina will have to start make significant payments servicing the debt. Default is imminent, and there is an increasing need to acknowledge that the Argentine debt is unsustainable.

A bad day for whom? The Left for one

 

I blink, you lose!

Will Rogers supposedly said that he was not a member of any organized political party. He completed that noting he was a Democrat. That feeling is alive and well among Dems. The confusion caused by Biden's withdrawal seems to have led to many peculiar views among pundits and public intellectuals. Two typical reactions are the ones that are certain that Biden would have lost, and now with Kamala the election is in the bag, and the ones that suggest that the lefties in the party were wrong in supporting Biden. It's true that Biden was trailing in the polls, but it is unclear that he had already lost (although the chances were high), and even less that Harris will win for sure. I hope she does, to be clear, given the alternative.

But it seems only reasonable to assume that dropping the incumbent that, at least on domestic issues, presided over a fast recovery, and one that has favored those at the bottom of income distribution, is a bad idea (if he was to drop because of his cognitive issues, which were known, that window probably had closed in March, same date as LBJ stepped down, as some connected with the party had hinted). He was clearly pushed aside by donors, backed by the party establishment. And now Dems will have to defend the record, but also suggest that the person behind that record was not up to the task of running the campaign (not to mention the added problem of explaining how he still remains in the presidency, w/o invoking the 25th amendment, which the GOP is obviously going to call for, if they already didn't).

 

Blame the left, a winning strategy

As noted, the other common reaction was to suggest that Bernie, AOC and others in the Squad were completely wrong in supporting Biden, and, even with significant differences (and not just on foreign policy), thought that he was the best candidate. It is evident that Bidenomics has been reasonably good because he veered to the left, approved a large fiscal package, contrary to Summers and others associated with the party establishment, and that saved the economy from a recession. To some extent that was the legacy of Bernie's two runs for the presidency. He pushed the party to the left. The internal coup carried by donors and the establishment basically will move the party back to the right. One may dislike Bernie's views on this, but they are perfectly rational.

Finally, now the NYTimes and most party insiders are lionizing Biden as a selfless martyr for democracy. But if Harris loses in November (and again I truly hope she doesn't; as I noted Trumponomics will be much worse) he will be hang out to dry by the establishment and the media. He will be seen as responsible for the defeat, for his stubbornness and delay in leaving (and even, perhaps, for the inflation he caused with his fiscal plans; again, just to make sure, the latter is ludicrous). This is a defeat for Biden, and inevitably for his allies moving the party to the left.

Long ago, in 2016, before the election, I suggested that the results would be closer than they should be, because of the persistence of the neoliberals within the party. And after the election I noticed that Dems refused to learn that lesson. It seems that we are in the exact same place, with the same dangers as in 2016. The fact that Dems are incapable of organizing a coalition that includes the working class, and are dominated by donors in Wall Street and Silicon Valley is problematic. Hope springs eternal.

PS1: Of all the neoliberal Dem's bad ideas, and their willingness to veer right, the best, by far, was Aaron Sorkin's suggestion that they should nominate Mitt Romney.

PS2: Note that no Republican candidate for president has earned 51% the popular vote since 1988. W got 50.7 in 2004, with 9/11 the war and all. And that was the only time a GOP candidate won the popular vote after 1988. Both Bush in 2000, and Trump in 2016 lost it. And Trump is truly unpopular (but might win). But the fact that is going to be close suggests that the Democratic establishment is also very unpopular. Their refusal to learn and promote candidates like Bernie is not a mistake, it is consistent with their own economic interests.

PS3 (8/18): It seems increasingly that Kamala's chances have increased, and that a Trump resurgence is less likely (not impossible, sadly). In part, that is because she seems to have basically accepted the move to the left (on economic issues) that was promoted by Biden, and that is clear from her choice of vice president, someone supported by Unions, and by Bernie Sanders. A pivot to the left, rather than the middle.