Where Are the Obama Boosters?
Jonathan Bernstein has a post wondering where the “liberal hack economists” are:
You know what the Democratic Party is missing? Hack economists (or pseudo-economists) that go around talking about how terrific the president’s program has been, and how Gadzooks the economy sure is growing now. I seem to remember plenty of Republican hack economists who spent at least the first half of 2008 denying that a recession had started…where are the Democratic hack economists cherry-picking numbers to point out how terrific things are now? The most prominent Democratic pundits on the economy — people such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich — certainly don’t hesitate to remind people about how terrible they think Bush was, but they also are clearly pessimists about the economy right now. I’m not saying that I agree or disagree, but just that I find it odd. I don’t think it’s true across all issue areas. On foreign policy, for example, I think there are plenty of people eager to talk about how much safer the world is now that Bush/Cheney have been replaced by Obama/Sanity.
I wrote about “optimism inversion” back in January 2009, noting that over the previous five years liberal commentators had been consistently more pessimistic about the economy than conservative ones. I saw three factors at work:
- I believe left-wing politics and pessimism are generally correlated traits.
- Left-of-center commentators are generally smarter than right-of-center ones and pessimism was the correct position.
- People inclined to be hostile to the incumbent administration are naturally disposed to believe that disaster looms around the corner.
I then noted “at some point after the inauguration, the valence of factor (3) will switch and I wonder how much force that’ll have in pulling things along.” It seems, in general, to have had very little influence. As a general matter, I think that both (1) and (2) are underrated features of public discourse. I also, despite factor (2) and the fact that I’m pessimistic about the next 24 months worth of economic outlook for the USA, generally think that left-of-center people are too pessimistic about the trajectory of human affairs.
53 Responses to “Where Are the Obama Boosters?”
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February 4th, 2010 at 8:39 am
Don’t forget more handsome and modest as well…
February 4th, 2010 at 8:48 am
Well this is pretty simple. Conservatives don’t give a shit about the truth, they just try to bamboozle the public into voting against the general interest because all they care about is preserving privilege. Liberals want the world to be better so they try to be honest. They are also generally smarter and better informed, and more committed to knowledge and critical thinking, so they just can’t bring themselves to make shit up for political advantage.
We don’t have a divide in this country between competing value systems or analyses. We have a divide between truth and falsehood. It’s that simple.
February 4th, 2010 at 8:53 am
Left of center economist tend to actually consider the lower and middle classes as part of the economy, a part that recently tends to do significantly less well than the upper classes.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:02 am
The difference might be skepticism… lefties seem to have too much of it while the righties have none. The righties decide what to believe and then stick to it never mind the facts. The lefties constantly doubt their own shadow. Oh, and lefties have a tendency of eating their own.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Wow. what a load of crap. I’m optimistic about America;s future. Yeah, it sucks now, but the future can be better if we make it so. Give people jobs and it will work itself out. But giving people jobs ain’t so easy. For the lower jobs, building shit works. They get jobs. And look, I’ve taken construction jobs when the engineering jobs aren’t there. It paid the rent then and will pay the mortgage now. Throw out some construction jobs and there will be takers. Throw out banking jobs, and it won’t make a difference because they already have ridiculously high paying jobs subsidized by the government. The capitalists are the new communists. Sadly, the workers can never become capitalists. And sadly,only capitalists get to taste communism. We are every bit as socialist as China, but we do it in reverse. China socializes wealth and privatizes risk. We socialize risk and privatize wealth. If you’re a banker here,take all the risky investments you want. If you win, you keep your money. If you lose, the government pays your losses and gives the bonus you’d get as if you made money. If you fuck up in China, you lose your ass and more. If you fuck up here, hey, it’s no problem, we pay you to fuck up. So who’s the socialist? Certainly not China. And certainly the US.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Spinning the economy doesn’t work. One can debate whether or not the American people are safer from terrorism, but it is hard to convince me that I am not out of work if I am.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:09 am
I believe left-wing politics and pessimism are generally correlated traits.
That’s an odd thing to say. I thnik we progressives look forward to a brighter future, while conservative look back to a better past.
And let’s be honest – right wing economists talk shit because they work for the Republicans and Republicans talk shit.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:10 am
Left-of-center commentators are generally smarter than right-of-center ones and pessimism was the correct position.
Turns out, of course, that this was completely and utterly wrong. The moronic left-wing commentators were babbling incoherently about the coming depression, the inevitable deflation and liquidity trap, blah, blah blah, none of which occurred. Basically, none of the things that the idiots among the left-wing economic commentators told us would come to pass ended up occurring. We ended up with a fairly standard recession – nothing worse than what occurred in the early 80s or late 50s. There was no deflation – two or three months of falling energy prices were an isolated event that had basically no effect on core inflation. There was no liquidity trap. None of those things occurred, despite repeated assurances from the left that they would.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:11 am
The major difference between economists on the left and right is one lives in the reality-based community and judges outcomes based on reason, while the other is a keeper of a set of faith-based tenets, that if subscribed to will lead to everlasting life.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:12 am
Actually, the reason for liberal pessimism is idealism. When the standard for anything is perfection, disappointment and pessimism is sure to follow.
Consider income inequality for instance. Incomes can never be equal because people are not created equal. So frustration with the idea and it’s obvious limitations will depress those wanting an ideal world.
Pacifists will always be met by the human impulse to physically deal with insecurity, fear, or greed.
Socialists will always be met with the human tendency to work harder for ones self than for others.
Conservatives on the other hand tend to recognize the limitations of being human and deal with them on a realistic basis. We can applaud record profits, taller buildings, abstinence, and all manner of things anathema to liberals.
In short, for liberals the glass is always half empty.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:14 am
Al illustrates the point perfectly. The left is realistic, hence pessimistic, and the right is out to lunch.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:14 am
I believe left-wing politics and pessimism are generally correlated traits.
Figures.
/sigh
February 4th, 2010 at 9:18 am
Spinning the economy doesn’t work.
Actually, the Republicans do a very good job spinning the economy – spinning it right to the the precipice.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:19 am
Much simpler. Lefties are reality based. They care about the truth. The right is tribal. See Markos’ R2K poll.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:23 am
In the end, China worries about the farmer not having crops to sell. We worry about the banker not having caviar to eat. Oh that poor, poor banker having to drive his Bentley five miles to a restaurant that serves caviar. The economy is so destroyed that his caviar delivery guy had to go to Thailand for surgery. How can that rich man possibly survive without his servants? Well, he has to fire servants to cut costs. And somehow, he has less service. Who would have thought that firing the servants would result in less service? Economic theory says the servants would just work harder, right? How is it possible that I have to wipe my own ass when I fired the guy who wiped my ass? These are the questions Republicans must face. The idea that reality might intrude on their lives must be so disturbing.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:25 am
There’s the old definition that an optimist sees the glass as half full while the pessimist sees it as half empty. That’s wrong.
The optimist sees the glass 3/4 full while the pessimist correctly sees that it is half empty, and tries to get more water into the glass before the optimist drinks it all. The optimist then drinks it, because he’s confident that there’s going to be more water.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Why is Al so stupid? That’s stunned me what he wrote at #8.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:29 am
Wow, I actaully agree with something Shooter 242 said:
Liberals have high standards and are disappointed when they aren’t met. Of course, there’s a duality here, as inherent in this belief is an optimism that things can get better.
The rest of what Shooter 242 wrote, however, is horsesh*t. Idealism and realism can go together, and can be found on both the left and the right.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:30 am
And we keep giving the kids vaccinations for diseases they never get.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:31 am
I believe left-wing politics and pessimism are generally correlated traits.
Just because you’re a pessimist doesn’t mean the rest of us on the liberal side are pessimists too.
Was Franklin Roosevelt a pessimist, or John F. Kennedy, or Martin Luther King Jr., or Gandhi? What about Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
And successful politicians aren’t pessimists, no matter what side of the aisle they sit on.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:32 am
That’s stunned me what he wrote at #8.
I know the Left often has a difficult time with reality. So let’s take a concrete example. Left-wing moron #1: Paul Krugman, January 8, 2009: “This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.” As I said: MORON!
February 4th, 2010 at 9:32 am
I think it would be more properly stated that satisfaction with the status quo is naturally associated with conservatism, and dissatisfaction with the status quo is naturally associated with progressivism. In turn there is a certain kind of optimism that will be associated with satisfaction with the status quo, and a certain kind of pessimism that will be associated with dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Anyway, for some reason at one point all my old comments got purged from the archives, so in that linked thread you can see people responding to me, but not my actual posts. So I’m not sure if this is consistent with I wrote back then or not, but I tend to think that in order to get an actual optimism inversion, net public sentiment on the near-term direction of the economy will have to go positive. At that point people will start filtering the evidence to support that narrative, optimism will feed on itself as people take their cues from the people around them and the sources they trust, happy Democrats will be crediting themselves with their manifest wisdom (and yes, superior looks and modesty as well), and so forth.
And eventually that growing optimism will turn into excessive exuberance, and I suspect there will indeed be a cadre of people who further down the road will end up looking like liberal hack economists. But all that is in the future, because right now public sentiment on the near-term economy is still net negative, and probably will remain so until we’ve had several months of significant job creation and declining unemployment rates.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:35 am
Shorter Shooter: “Thomas Jefferson, you lie!”
February 4th, 2010 at 9:37 am
More Al reasoning:
Why did you swerve around that tree branch? You didn’t hit it.
Why is there a security guard standing there? I haven’t seen anyone try to steal anything.
Why did those bad firemen make my kitchen wet? My house didn’t burn down.
And so forth.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:38 am
In “The Optimistic Child”, a longitudinal study of how optimism/pessimism affects success and happiness later in life published a couple of decades ago, two of the findings which rose to the attention of the researchers were:
1) optimistic children tended to lead more successful and happy lives than did their more pessimistic counterparts
2) pessimistic children were more likely to be right
February 4th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Al, Remember TARP? Remember the stimulus package? Think the reason why things aren’t worse might have something to do with those measures, as opposed to simply that warnings of “the coming depression, the inevitable deflation and liquidity trap, blah, blah blah,” were overstated?
And as for the idea that only liberals were concerned, bull. Paulson, certainly not a liberal, had Congress pass TARP by telling Congressional leaders that if it wasn’t passed then by the next Monday there wouldn’t be an economy. Greenspan, meanwhile, was so shaken that he recanted his belief in the rational market, quite something from an Ayn Rand acolyte.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:40 am
More DTM resoning: OMG, unicorns and faeries are everywhere! You turned left, so it must mean there was a Yeti over on the right! We stopped because little green men in UFOs were up ahead!
February 4th, 2010 at 9:41 am
lol on Al.
Really – he doesn’t get it. Cause and effect don’t matter to him. How does he do anything.
Plus, he thinks we have no deflation worries right now. He just loves to ignore reality. He loves to talk about how prices were just barely going lower – in the middle of the largest massed liquidity programs the world has ever seen.
Imagine if we didn’t have these programs – oh that’s right Al cannot do this. He literally cannot make the connection.
Our capacity utilization is at 30 year lows, our employment/pop ratio is at 25 year lows. He doesn’t understand that the inflation we might see is push inflation – due to supply constraints that he almost certainly denies.
The debt deflation is not over, and it will be a serious concern over the next 4 years.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:41 am
You don’t need to turn to some psuedo-psychological explanation. The Obama economic team is made up of guys who are essentially free marketeer/pro-Wall Street types. Very little space between them and republican economists. Why would a liberal hack have any interest in defending those people or their ideas?
February 4th, 2010 at 9:43 am
Paul Krugman, January 8, 2009: “This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.” As I said: MORON!
But it did, and so soon after that congress passed a stimulus bill, as Krugman had advocated, and hundreds of billions of dollars managed to head off a great depression, as was hoped, and intead we got a severe (nothing “fairly standard” about it) recession instead. Seriously, do you even follow the news? Bizarre
February 4th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Addendum
The idealism liberals strive for, is a necessary thing in the world. It is one of, if not THE, finest of human natures. Progress would be impossible without it.
But as in all things, value lies in degrees. Water is required to live, and in the wrong degree will kill.
Seeking perfection in human nature to the point of frustration, can lead to perpetual disappointment, and then pessimism.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Cervantes,
Not just preserving, but constantly augmenting privilege.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Economics: Not really a science. Or an artform. Or anything but court astrology.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:51 am
and so soon after that congress passed a stimulus bill, as Krugman had advocated
Actually, the “stimulus” (*snicker*) bill that was passed was nothing like what Krugman advocated. And, as we all know, it was a complete failure. Nevertheless, we were not then, nor were we ever, going into a second great depression.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:54 am
Re Matthew “I …generally think that left-of-center people are too pessimistic about the trajectory of human affairs.”
————–
That’s because we know our fate is in the hands of the Democratic Caucus.
Excuse me while I go slit my wrists.
February 4th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Al,
I’m ready to have an adult conversation about these topics whenever you are. I’m not holding my breath.
By the way, for those not getting their economic analysis from the esteemed firm of Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin, this is an interesting read. Source data is here.
The upshot is that we aren’t out of the woods yet. I think we will be OK provided employment and wages start turning around in the next few months, but until that actually happens, I won’t be inclined to declare the risk of deflation entirely eliminated.
February 4th, 2010 at 10:08 am
Actually, the “stimulus” (*snicker*) bill that was passed was nothing like what Krugman advocated. And, as we all know, it was a complete failure.
OK, Al is anonymous, but it’s amazing how much discipline the right shows in signing their name onto embarrassing bullshit when it’s needed to support the cause. Yes, let’s ignore Paulson and even the almighty stock market which both acted as if the world would end and pretend it’s just stupid liberals panicking over a standard-issue recession.
I appreciate Krugman but why can’t we have more shameless hacks on our side?
February 4th, 2010 at 10:14 am
[...] I usually like Matt Yglesias, but I don’t like this kind of thing: [...]
February 4th, 2010 at 10:28 am
The answer is this: liberals who “make it” as economists by dint of their good work and research get professorships and other jobs that depend on their reputation for integrity. Liberals who don’t make it leave that career path and find a job in finance or consulting, effectively putting them out of the “game.” Conservative failures in the economics research/policy job market can get a choice position at a right wing think tank where they are retained and rewarded for their ability to be hacks.
February 4th, 2010 at 10:39 am
soullite = Eyeore
AI = Pangloss with an extremely low IQ
There are so many pessimists in Matt’s comment section, it’s hilarious. And it’s funny when they’re proven wrong and and pretend like they were never wrong. Health care reform is dead! Health care reform is dead!
Cornel West made a good distinction between hope and optimism. Optimism is an unrealistic take on things, where you’re ignoring problems and contrary evidence.
Hope is where you have an accurate assessment of how bad things are but you recognize that there’s a chance things can turn out well and focus on that so you don’t get demoralized. Pessimists are masochistic.
February 4th, 2010 at 10:52 am
fostert wrote:
Wow. what a load of crap. I’m optimistic about America;s future. Yeah, it sucks now, but the future can be better if we make it so. Give people jobs and it will work itself out. But giving people jobs ain’t so easy. For the lower jobs, building shit works. They get jobs. And look, I’ve taken construction jobs when the engineering jobs aren’t there. It paid the rent then and will pay the mortgage now. Throw out some construction jobs and there will be takers. Throw out banking jobs, and it won’t make a difference because they already have ridiculously high paying jobs subsidized by the government. The capitalists are the new communists. Sadly, the workers can never become capitalists. And sadly,only capitalists get to taste communism. We are every bit as socialist as China, but we do it in reverse. China socializes wealth and privatizes risk. We socialize risk and privatize wealth. If you’re a banker here,take all the risky investments you want. If you win, you keep your money. If you lose, the government pays your losses and gives the bonus you’d get as if you made money. If you fuck up in China, you lose your ass and more. If you fuck up here, hey, it’s no problem, we pay you to fuck up. So who’s the socialist? Certainly not China. And certainly the US.
I figure someone needed to point out what total crap hilarious nonsense this is. “We are every bit as socialist as China, but we do it in reverse. China socializes wealth and privatizes risk. We socialize risk and privatize wealth”? Dude that makes no fucking sense. Stop smoking the weed, fostert!
February 4th, 2010 at 11:02 am
Al,
Is the Dollar’s value being destroyed by Obama and the liberals?
You would think with all of this inflation that we would be extremely concerned with a huge fall in the value of the dollar.
Also, it looks like inflation is the lowest it has been in a generation. Certainly it is lower than every year but one of the Regan presidency.
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet
February 4th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Al,
Who are the liberal equivalents of Donald Luskin and Larry Kudlow?
Where is the liberal economist with 4 hours of TV time a day who relentlessly pushes the conservative party line?
Remember the “Greatest Story never told” and the “Bush Boom”?
For years I heard that clown push the conservative economic theory.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Wow, either Joe from Lowell hijacked Al’s name or Al is really that stupid. It is like he is standing in the middle of a hurricane saying “this is just a downpour, you’re wrong”.
Sometimes I think that the right believes that if you say something often enough it becomes true. Like in the Wizard of Oz. Next thing you know Al will be telling us faeries are real.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:54 am
I appreciate Krugman but why can’t we have more shameless hacks on our side?
We have lots of hacks on “our side.” Pointing them out is frowned upon b/c supposedly it helps the Republicans.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Saying demonstrably-false things about the economy, which are bound to be proven wrong in short order, is idiotic politics. Look at what happened to the Republicans after their hack economists spent 2008 impersonating Kevin Bacon at the end of Animal House.
It’s the type of short-sighted, news-cycle-obsessed, tactics-uber-alles politics that made the Republican Party the teeny, tiny, itty bitty, despised little minority they are today.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
TARP? ARRA? What on earth are those?
Don’t you people get it? Trillions of dollars in bailouts, loan guarantees, and stimulus spending has absolutely no effect on a national economy!
February 4th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
I blame the media. They spent almost three solid years after 9/11 doing everything they could to make the public believe that everything that comes out George Bush’s mouth was true. Power corrupts, and absolute power to dictate public perception corrupts absolutely.
It’s a very bad trap to get into, because now they run around saying idiotic, easily-disproved things, and expecting that they will be repeated and believed just like their phony assertions about WMDs and Saddam/bin Laden golf outings were believed.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Oh come on Mathew, what kind of a foolish dumbass are you? Seriously.
In groping for an explanatin for this mysterious phenomenon, Young Matthew reaches for various attitudes and intelligence levels.
LOfuckingLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Dude, the Republicans are LIARS. Get it? Its their attitude toward LYING that is the key here, you moronic simpleton.
Oh god our country is so fucked.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Now That I’ve read the thread, I seE that Cervantes nailed it in Comment #2. The rest of the comments after that up until mine are just as off point as Matthew’s pitiful attempt at explanation.
Wake up Democrats! Wake the fuck up!
IT’S THE LYING, STUPID!!!!!!
LEARN IT.
LIVE IT.
NEVER, EVER, FORGET IT.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
‘Human affairs’? Would it be possible to formulate an accurate evaluative statement about ‘human affairs’ at any distinct point in time? I wouldn’t know how to begin to start.
February 4th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Yes, one of the problems of being in the “reality-based community” is having to acknowledge, well, reality. The right, having coined that phrase and defined themselves in opposition to it, have no such burden. Just the opposite in fact. For all there talk of moral absolutes and the like, the right has always, however belatedly and simplistically, been prone to be the strongest embrace of new ways of thinking. From Nietzsche and Romanticism, Neocons and Marxism, and now the Republicans and Postmodernism. It’s the Permanent Revolution meets Stockholm Syndrome.
February 4th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
As to all these comments about pessimism vis-a-vis idealism, I really just don’t think this is the main problem. While it’s true that many on the left are idealists, I wouldn’t say that all, or even most, of us are. Unless, of course, you find the idea that equality is, generally, a good thing and we should do what we can to foster and encourage it, to be particularly “idealistic”. I just think of it as the heuristic (again, with that word!) by which we on the left operate. I don’t see why it should, in and of itself, lead to pessimism; unless one is some sort of revolutionary perfectionist, in which case nothing will ever be “good enough”.
No, I think the problem is being rational, policy-wise, and equating that to being reasonable politically. Democratic reasoning seems to assume that: others are also rational, policy-wise, and, furthermore, that is at all politically advantageous to be so. In other word, they’re saps, not idealists. That, or the fact that, the incumbent interests whom, as has always been Left-wing politicians’ stated purpose, they are there to combat, are also to whom they are almost totally dependent on to secure reelection. In which case, they are less sappy, and more incoherent. The Republicans, even if they had such dilemmas, would never let them, or any other pesky “reality”, get in the way of politics.