Trying to follow US politics from a distance can be challenging because there are so many questions and so few answers.
- Is California a national bellwether?
- Is the full court press in CA a sign of strength or weakness?
- Can the progressives buy their way to victory with the infrastructure bill?
- At what point does the economy rival the pandemic as an issue? When does the clamor for freedom break even with the desire to feel safe?
- Can Biden use the pandemic to beat down the states?
We have perverse incentives. The greater the crisis the more power the govt grants itself to ‘fix’ it. Thus the return of freedoms via a return to normalcy may be a blocked path because it doesn’t benefit a faction. Emergencies are a source of legitimacy. In CA for example, Larry Elder is the emergency justifying a run on gorilla sits.
We are likely to diverge from the old normal rather than regain it.
Andrew Yang to launch a third party
But the book’s publisher, Crown, did give some clues about the type of platform Yang may pursue. It writes that the book is an indictment of America’s “era of institutional failure” and will introduce “us to the various ‘priests of the decline’ of America, including politicians whose incentives have become divorced from the people they supposedly serve.”
Politico