Brian Beutler wrote a slightly rambling article this morning, Will Marco Rubio’s Fragile Appeal Be Shattered in New Hampshire? It’s worth reading in full, but I want to focus on one small part of it where he talks about the reformocons.

For those of you who don’t know, the reformocons are conservative pundits who want to reform the Republicans Party and the conservative movement generally. I usually call them “reformish” conservatives after Ryan Cooper’s article on the subject. And the moniker is good, because they aren’t actually interested in reform. They aren’t the equivalent of the Democratic Leadership Council and they would never lead to the rise of “New Republicans.”

Reformocons Are Frauds

Instead, the reformocons are, as Mike Konczal put it, “more gestural than substantive.” Or as I put it, Reform Republicans Only Sound Reasonable — It’s in the Job Description. They fiddle around the edges, but mostly they just want to teach the Republican Party to talk nice and not offend people. When it comes to actual policy, they are as committed to the Randian utopia as Paul Ryan.

But in Beutler’s article, he noted that it was strange that the reformocons have gathered around Rubio. He quoted Michael Brendan Dougherty saying, “Rubio’s candidacy is essentially based on the premise that nothing from the George W Bush era has to change for the Republican Party.” Indeed! The one area where Rubio was supposed to be a moderate was on immigration reform. And if you are out of your teens, you must remember how hard the Bush administration fought for immigration reform.

Reformocons Hate Trump

The supposed basis of the reformocons is that they want the party to be less elitist and to try to make the economy work for the middle class. Well, who in the Republican primary is pushing that message? Certainly not Rubio who “alone proposes reforms (zeroed-out investment taxes, zeroed-out inheritance taxes, significantly reduced corporate taxes) designed to minimize (and in many cases eliminate) the tax liabilities of members of the Republican donor class.” No, the person that the reformocons should be backing is Donald Trump. Yet they hate him!

Given what I’ve already written, it shouldn’t be too hard to understand why the reformocons don’t get behind Trump: because they are frauds! Their reform agenda (such as it is) is designed only to keep the Republican Party competitive. And it isn’t as though they fear Trump won’t be an actual conservative. He proposed a ridiculously regressive tax plan (pdf). But it is other areas where it seems clear that Trump would actually do what the reformocons claim to want to do: help the middle class.

Obviously, Trump cuts against the number one thing that the reformocons want: a more “presentable” Republican Party. His outspoken xenophobia isn’t “nice.” But ultimately, the reformocons don’t get behind Donald Trump for the same reason that the Republican elites don’t: they don’t think he can win the general election. Because that’s all they really care about: winning elections so that the tax cuts on the rich continue to roll in and the reproductive freedom continues to roll out.

The other night, my friend Will told me, “You’ve really been coming out strong for Bernie Sanders recently!” That surprised me because I feel more and more stuck in the middle. I have substantive problems with Clinton on policy. And I have real concerns about Bernie Sanders’ general election chances. This isn’t, of course, a brand new thing. I’ve been grappling with the question for some time. Back in September, I wrote, What Risk Is Bernie Sanders Worth? I wrote then, “If I think that Hillary Clinton has a 55% chance of winning the general election and Bernie Sanders has a 45% chance, then there is no question: I’ll go with Bernie. If Bernie has a 10% chance, I’ll go with Hillary.”

The funny thing is, at the last Democratic debate, I got a sense that Sanders himself is a little concerned that he might win the primary. All throughout this campaign, I’ve thought that Sanders was the real deal — that he wasn’t an issue candidate, but someone who really thought he could win the presidency. Now I don’t know. But it could be that I’m projecting. If Bernie is a real threat to Hillary, I need to get very serious about both of their general election chances.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Playing the electability game is foolish. In 2004, as a party, we chose Kerry over Dean because he was more electable. But knowing what I now know about political science, Dean was clearly our best chance of winning the presidency. The only way that we could have won that election was by making it about the Iraq War, and that was something that Kerry just couldn’t do. I do think that under normal circumstances, Clinton has the better general election chances. But if the economy starts to crumble, Sanders will likely be the only chance the Democrats have.

Bernie Sanders’ General Election Chances

One concern about Sanders that I’ve had for some time now is that if the economy continues to improve, the Republicans might be smart and make the election about foreign policy and terrorism. Now, as was fully on display at Saturday’s GOP debate: the Republicans have the problem of not actually wanting to do anything different than the Democrats; they just want to talk tough. But that could be enough to convince the electorate. In the end, it is all about perceptions anyway. But the Republicans couldn’t do that if Clinton were the candidate. So I tend to think that even a major domestic terrorist attack would benefit Clinton.

Last week, Max Fisher wrote a very good article, Why I’m Not Writing Off Bernie Sanders on Foreign Policy. Basically, he said that foreign policy was really all a game. There are certain advisers that presidents have, and this is how foreign policy is determined. The media are caught up in Sanders going through a certain political theater where he shows that he understands foreign policy and he knows who the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan is. Sanders is instead focused on the economy, which is why I love him. But it also hurts his general election chances.

My second concern comes from an article by Jeff Stein, We Asked 6 Political Scientists if Bernie Sanders Would Have a Shot in a General Election. It’s an actual article genre at Vox, with articles like, “We Asked 6 Zoologists What the Giraffe’s Most Distinctive Feature Is.” But they are useful. And the consensus was that Bernie could win under the right circumstances. Much of it is just conventional wisdom and I don’t buy into it. I continue to wonder about one bit of political science that no one seems to understand: why does the electorate get more liberal when a conservative is in the White House and vise versa. And if that’s the case, why do most presidents win re-election?

But Seth Masket said something that concerned me. He said that Sanders’ more liberal positions would probably cost him 2 to 3 percentage points in the general election. Now, maybe I’m just letting my natural affinity for math sway me — he used numbers! But he put it into a context that I know very well and believe in very strongly, “It’s not as big an effect as flipping a growing economy to one in recession. It’s more like flipping a growing economy to a stalled one.” Ouch.

If true, that makes Bernie Sanders’ general election chances more like the 10% case than the 45% case. And that frightens me. A Republican president would be a catastrophe. I keep thinking, “The electorate has to wake up eventually! They can’t keep voting for the same failed promises and utter incompetence!” But all evidence says that they can.

Meanwhile, I will continue to accumulate information about Bernie Sanders’ general election chances.

I wish politics were more kind and honest. But I hardly expect it. What I would hope is that at least the “liberal” party could have a presidential primary in which we didn’t get lost in fantasy. I’m not talking about Sanders’ proposals, which are fantastic to one degree or another. I’m talking about pretending to be outraged because you’ve chosen to read a bit of data in a way that will allow you to be outraged. I am, of course, talking about what Washington Blade reported over the weekend, Clinton Surrogates Pounce on Sanders Over ’82 Marriage Resolution. Is this what the Democratic primary has come to?

I am trying to be very even-handed in this Democratic primary, and this afternoon, you will see an article I’ve written that is very critical of Sanders’ chances in a general election. But this story is just ridiculous. Back in 1982, while Sanders was mayor of Burlington, he signed a document for “We Believe in Marriage Week.” The third part of it says that marriage “should be viewed as a lifelong commitment between husband and wife filled with mutual respect and open, honest communications.” Aha, say the Clinton surrogates! Christine Quinn tweeted, “@BernieSanders says he pure on #lgbt.Cites 80’s Pride March-omits yr before as Mayor he signed reso affirming marriage ONLY btw man/woman??”

Really?! I don’t read it that way. This sounds so much like most of what you find in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed? When I wrote about that book (and elsewhere), I noted that most of the cases of outrage were just people insisting upon seeing a statement or tweet in the worst possible light. In those cases, it is just people who so want to feel superior and love the rush that outrage brings with it. Here it is just a political game.

Note that same sex marriage was not always a gay rights issue. There was a strong contingent of the LGBT community that was distinctly uninterested in the matter. But regardless, does anyone anywhere think that such a milquetoast resolution in 1982 would have explicitly included same sex marriage? The first state to allow same sex marriage was Massachusetts in 2003. And regardless, not explicitly including same sex marriage is not the same as excluding it. Quinn’s statement is factually wrong. You could say that it “only affirmed marriage,” but you can’t say it the other way around. And that is the point: to make it sound like Sanders signed something like DOMA.

Does This Help Clinton in Democratic Primary?!

In addition to all of this, I really wonder how this all helps Clinton in the Democratic primary. After all, it is Clinton who is worse on this issue. It was her husband who signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. (And who is, right on cue, doing his crazy husband act.) Sanders voted against it. Clinton was still in favor of it in 2000 when she ran for Senate. She didn’t come out in favor of same sex marriage until 2013, which is, let me see now, after my 80 year old father did. And for the record, I was ranting rather loudly back in the early 1990s about the lack of same sex marriage being an explicit form of government oppression. Still, I don’t care one way or another about when either of these candidates came around.

Let’s face it: they both exist in different political environments. Sanders has been in a smaller league where it was easier to be bold. But he didn’t have to be bold, and he should be given credit. Clinton has been in the major league for decades, and her positions indicate that: from the Iraq War to same sex marriage. But I think she too needs to be given credit, because if she had acted as Sanders, she wouldn’t have been a player; she would have been like Eleanor Roosevelt: beloved by liberals, but sidelined.

Just the same, this attack on Sanders is nonsense. This is exactly the kind of thing that I did not want to see in this Democratic primary. It’s not even submental. It’s too practiced for that. It’s demagoguery of the most facile kind.

As most of you know, I have a PhD in physics. And I know a lot of stuff about arcane topics. But I did not major in economics. I didn’t even minor in economics. I just took one stupid course! I really enjoyed it. The subject was fascinating and I had a great teacher. Still, I write about economics. But I probably shouldn’t. After all, according to Hale Stewart, “Econ isn’t something you can teach yourself.”

If this is the case, why should anyone read about economics from writers like, oh, I don’t know, Hale Stewart? I mean, if econ isn’t something you can teach yourself, what is the point? If a stack of good books on the subject isn’t going to help you, how are some articles at Business Insider written by lawyer?

This is all a response to an article at The Bonddad Blog, where Hale Stewart recently wrote, Ed Morrissey Should Really Stop Writing About Economics. According to him, having some kind of formal education is very important. (For the record, my self-study of physics before I became a formal student was probably the best part of my education. But that’s just physics, not a real subject like economics!)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m with Hale Stewart: Ed Morrissey really should stop writing about economics. But Stewart’s argument is elitist nonsense. I would have let it go if it hadn’t been for the second part of his article.

Hale Stewart Should Stop Writing About Labor Force Participation

Stewart complained that Morrissey is constantly talking about labor force participation. This is a very interesting issue. You see, since about 2000, the fraction of people in the labor force (employed or seeking employment) has dropped — precipitously. And that has many people concerned. Stewart does a good job of going over the demographic factors that explain most of this: retiring baby boomers and fewer students working. But that still leaves us with a problem.

If we look at prime age workers (people between the ages of 25 to 54), these demographic factors don’t apply. And Hale Stewart grudgingly admits, “There is a percentage of people ages 24-54 (the prime working age) that have left the labor force.” That’s actually a highly deceptive statement. It implies that there is 1% or one percentage point. Instead, if we look at civilian employment, it is well over two percentage points since the financial crisis, and well over three since the high tech boom of the late 1990s.

But not to worry! Hale Stewart wipes that all a way with a wave of his callous and elitist hand:

Oh, well! Why didn’t he just say that to start with! There’s a reason these people are unemployed, so we can just abandon these people. But there’s one little problem with this theory. Globalization didn’t suddenly get worse after the financial crisis. There are very real reasons for not being impressed with the current economy, as discussed by Kevin Cashman, Prime-Age Workers Left the Labor Force During the Recession And the Recovery.

It amazes me how elites like Hale Stewart can be so cavalier about what’s going on with less educated workers. But it is hardly new. The argument that Stewart is implicitly making is the skills gap: these people just don’t have the skills for the modern economy! That’s an easy argument to make when you don’t hang out with those blue collar workers who are having a rough time of it.

I would prefer that Ed Morrissey go away too. He’s a hack, as I discussed in, Conservatives Will Never Get Over Obamacare. But his problem is not that he didn’t minor in economics. And on the labor force participation rate, he’s right. The big problem with him is that if there were a Republican in the White House, he wouldn’t be making this argument. Instead, he’d be making Hale Stewart’s argument: low skilled workers are out of a job; so what?!

Paul Krugman provided this fine pie chart that shows who exactly is paying taxes on long term capital gains. The reason it is important is because Marco Rubio wants to eliminate this tax. Up until now, this idea has been extreme even for Republicans. And you can see why: over half of benefits from Marco Rubio’s tax cut would go to the top 0.1% — the people in the top 1/1000th of the income distribution. And if you look at the whole of the top 1%, that’s almost 80% of where all the benefits go.

Still, I find the graph a tad bit deceptive, because people tend to assume that “everyone else” is somewhat equitable. I’m not suggesting that Krugman means to imply this. He’s making a different point anyway. I just know how non-mathematical people think about this kind of stuff. Something that Krugman has written about over the years is that inequality is kind of like a fractal. (Actually, I believe that’s my analogy, not his.) It doesn’t matter where you are in the income scale, the people above you are a lot more rich than you are. It’s such that people barely in the top 1% often think of themselves as poor because they are around people who are so much more wealthy. And so on until you get to Bill Gates, who when asked if he was rich said only, “Well, I’m certainly not middle class.” (Or something like that.)

The data for this graph comes from the Tax Policy Center. And if you look at the top 5%, you get 92.3%. The top 10%? 95.4%. And the top 20% — the upper class? 97.5%. So 97.5% of Marco Rubio’s tax cut on long term capital gains would go to the upper class and only the upper class. Pretty amazing, huh?

So let’s talk about what these high incomes mean. In order to just make it into the top 10%, you would be making over $115,000 per year. To just make it into the top 1%, you need to be making more than $400,000. I can’t find data on the top 0.1%, but we are talking millions per year. So these are not people who are struggling. They are not the people who need helping and they are not the “job creators” who will start hiring if only they had just a bit more money.

But it’s worse than even that. There’s 2.5% left over for the bottom 80%. Is it shared even somewhat equally? Of course not!

The upper middle class gets most of the remaining: 1.9%. The middle class gets almost all of the rest: 0.6%. The lower-middle class get the final 0.1%. The lower class — those in the bottom 20% — get nothing at all. Of course, you can depend upon the Republicans finding some middle class person who gets all their income from long-term capital gains and dividends, and making a commercial where they talk about how much better their lives will be. Meanwhile, millions more children will go to bed each night hungry. But that won’t be mentioned.

Income inequality is a virus that is killing our democracy. And it does those who have excessive money no good. As Henry George noted long ago, “Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.” I don’t think this is a natural state, but rather the result of a civilization that has no values beyond that of commerce. And people like Marco Rubio think this is just great. The next time he mentions God, remember what he really worships.