This is a good @mattyglesias post about techno-politics but I want to quibble with the part of it that’s about my essay on the policy feedback loops you can build by Just Helping People Fast. Matt writes: https://t.co/MuBlgQV6LW

Over at Mischiefs of Faction, @Smotus makes a similar point: https://t.co/al6fS5tZXP
I want to be clear here: I’m saying that the Affordable Care act was, from a political perspective, badly designed, and that *a different health care plan* might’ve led to a better Dem performance in 2010. But these arguments don't grapple with that.
To @Smotus’s point, Pelosi released those House Democrats at the end, not the beginning. Having covered the beginning of this, I can tell you a lot of those Democrats thought a bipartisan health care bill would be great politics for them!

But they didn’t get that.
This is key. The ACA was built on the political theory that:

1. Bipartisan policy is easier to pass — and more popular once passed.

2. Working off of the Heritage Foundation/Romney template could get you a bipartisan health bill.

1 was probably right. 2 was utterly wrong.
Given that 2 was wrong, my counterfactual is this: What if Dems had done something like drop Medicare eligibility to 50 and expand Medicaid eligibility up to, say, 250% of poverty. (Or pick your simple, quick health policy.)
I think that could’ve passed through reconciliation in 2009 and been implemented in 2010. If you don't, imagine something else that could've passed that way, and been implemented at speed.
Would Democrats have performed better in the midterms under that scenario? I can’t prove it, but I think so.

(Dems also would've performed better if the political theory behind the ACA had panned out, but it didn't!)
(Someone will pop in and say that moderate Senate Democrats wouldn’t have voted for that plan in 2009 and they are right! That is why I am trying to convince Senate Democrats to think differently about this going forward.)
To put this differently, Dem policymaking has, for decades, been operating under pre-polarization rules. Complexity is often a function of dealmaking inside broad, ideological coalitions. It can be worth it if you get the coalition. But these days, you don’t.
Instead, you get the worst of both worlds: the complexity you added to try to make the deal, plus attacks on that complexity by the people you were trying to make a deal with.

Chuck Grassley told Dems he’d support the individual mandate then slammed it as unconstitutional!
So as I say in the piece: policy needs to speak for itself, and speak clearly. At times, that will lead to worse policy. It will sometimes lead to less-expansive policy, so you can move quicker. But bad politics leads to much worse policy, long-term. https://t.co/H7nnSykgwM
This is, in recent decades, an untried strategy. Perhaps it would fail. To tag Matt’s big theory of politics, it is unlikely a coalition with enough power to pass stuff aggressively could discipline itself against also passing a bunch of unpopular stuff its activist class wanted.
But I want to stand up here for the idea that we haven’t collapsed into a nihilistic politics where nothing matters.
It is hard for policy to break through into people’s lives. But not impossible. Obamacare actually does help Democrats in elections now! So did $2k checks in Georgia.

Go faster, go bigger, go simpler. At least try.
One last ACA point: I covered that bill closely. I supported it then, I support it now. But it was designed under the ideological constraints and theories of its moment in a way people now forget.
Its immediate political failure needs to be appreciated, precisely so those ideological constraints and theories are different next time, and the bill can be better designed. What moderate Dems think is good for them is a very important constraint on policy design.

More from Ezra Klein

This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong?

My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.

But what if that wasn't true?

Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.

The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!

I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.
What we're seeing from Trump and his allies today is an autocratic attempt. It's not a competent one, and it probably won't be an effective one. But that's what it is. And far worse would follow if it succeeded.


As @mashagessen explained in this interview, using Balint Magyar's framework, an autocratic attempt is "the first stage when autocracy is still reversible by electoral means."

The point is to make the regime's rule irreversible by electoral means, which is explicitly what Trump, et al, are trying right now.

"Then, at some point, there comes the autocratic breakthrough when you can no longer use electoral means to reverse that autocracy."

"Then autocratic consolidation, where it’s just consolidating ever more power and money, making it ever less possible to change."

There is an element of farce to Trump's tweets, his actions, his cronies. It makes it easy for many to discount what he's actually saying, and trying. https://t.co/GwC3KGbpkC

It's fitting for the internet era, when the worst ideas and figures come layered in irony.

More from For later read

Wow, Morgan McSweeney again, Rachel Riley, SFFN, Center for Countering Digital Hate, Imran Ahmed, JLM, BoD, Angela Eagle, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Lisa Nandy, Steve Reed, Jon Cruddas, Trevor Chinn, Martin Taylor, Lord Ian Austin and Mark Lewis. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut 24 tweet🧵

Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, launched the organisation that now runs SFFN.
The CEO Imran Ahmed worked closely with a number of Labour figures involved in the campaign to remove Jeremy as leader.

Rachel Riley is listed as patron.
https://t.co/nGY5QrwBD0


SFFN claims that it has been “a project of the Center For Countering Digital Hate” since 4 May 2020. The relationship between the two organisations, however, appears to date back far longer. And crucially, CCDH is linked to a number of figures on the Labour right. #LabourLeaks

Center for Countering Digital Hate registered at Companies House on 19 Oct 2018, the organisation’s only director was Morgan McSweeney – Labour leader Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. McSweeney was also the campaign manager for Liz Kendall’s leadership bid. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut

Sir Keir - along with his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney - held his first meeting with the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM). Deliberately used the “anti-Semitism” crisis as a pretext to vilify and then expel a leading pro-Corbyn activist in Brighton and Hove
I’ve been frustrated by the tweets I’ve seen of this as a Canadian. Because the facts are being misrepresented.

We’re not under some sort of major persecution. That’s not what this is. A thread. 1/8


This church was fined for breaking health orders in Dec. They continued to break them. So the pastor was arrested and released on conditions of... you guessed it, not breaking health orders. And then they broke the health orders. 2/8

So then he was arrested and told he couldn’t hold church services in person if he was to be released. He refused. He’s still in custody.

Here is my frustration as a Christian in Canada:

1. They were able to gather, with some conditions. They didn’t like those. 3/8

2. He is not actually unable to preach. He is just unable to hold church services because they broke the conditions given by the public health office in Alberta. He says he can’t in good conscience do that, so they are keeping him in jail (because he will break the law). 4/8

3. This is the 1st article of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” 5/8

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