Miscellany Central

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Trump mocks the faith of others. His own religious practices remain opaque.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey,

Julie Zauzmer and

Josh Dawsey

Feb. 15, 2020 at 10:25 a.m. GMT+9

In September 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump gathered evangelical pastors, whose support he had courted assiduously, to discuss the political beliefs that they shared.

The Rev. Robert Jeffress, who leads the megachurch First Baptist Dallas and would preach at the church service Trump attended on the morning of his inauguration, recalls looking at the agenda and starting to discuss the first item. Trump interrupted him.

“Pastor, don’t you think we ought to pray first?” Trump said, according to Jeffress.

As president, Trump has surrounded himself with a tightknit group of pastors like Jeffress, evangelical leaders who heap praise upon him for his socially conservative stances, his judicial appointments and his support for Israel’s government. Trump often invites these pastors to pray and seems to enjoy hearing their professions of faith. Many of the pastors insist that Trump is a Christian believer.

But Trump — who recently mocked the expressions of faith of two devout politicians, the Catholic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Latter-day Saint Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) — very rarely puts his own religious beliefs on display.

Evangelicals aren't turned off by Trump's presidency. They're delighted by it.

He does not belong to a church in Washington, though he refers to himself as a Presbyterian. He only occasionally attends a service, including multiple visits to St. John’s Episcopal across from the White House, which past presidents historically have attended, and Christmas and Easter worship at the Florida Episcopal church where he was married or at Washington National Cathedral, another Episcopal church.

The president says the Bible is his favorite book but has declined to name a verse that is particularly meaningful to him. And he has said multiple times that he does not like to ask God for forgiveness, which is traditionally seen as a core part of the Christian faith.

Christians preach of the importance of evidence, or “fruit,” that shows that a person has had some kind of conversion moment. “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” reads a crucial text from the book of Romans. Once they have converted, Christians tend to take up certain spiritual disciplines, such as prayer, church attendance, tithing and reading the Bible. In interviews with several religious leaders and observers, there is no indication that Trump engages in any of those practices regularly.

“Anybody who says ‘I’ve never asked for forgiveness’ is not in the born-again camp,” said Stephen Mansfield, an evangelical author who wrote books on the faiths of former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Of Trump, he said: “Submit your life to Jesus, born again, conversion: that heart of Christianity is not something he has absorbed.”

Still, a host of evangelical pastors whom Trump frequently invites to the White House tell their followers that the president is a Christian.

“I think there’s no question he believes,” said the Rev. Franklin Graham, who has followed in the footsteps of his father, Billy Graham, as a faith adviser in the White House. Graham said he believes Trump has had a conversion moment, but he doesn’t know when it might have happened.

Trump keeps uttering what many supporters consider blasphemy. Here's why they forgive him.

Instead of an ecumenical faith advisory council, Trump chose to create an evangelical advisory board, with no members from Catholic, mainline Protestant, Jewish, Muslim or other traditions. Johnnie Moore, an unofficial leader of that advisory board, said Trump speaks “multiple times a week” with spiritual advisers including Graham, Paula White, Georgia pastor Jentezen Franklin and Texas pastor Jack Graham.

“I absolutely believe he’s a born-again Christian,” Moore said. “I see it in things he’s said publicly and privately. I’ve seen it in his desire to stand up for what he believes is right."

Many of Trump’s faith advisers, including White, who is now a part of his White House staff, declined to comment.

Paula White will join the White House

Trump does not regularly talk about religion with many of his advisers, who said they knew little about how the president views God. Aides and supporters -- including the vice president -- have urged him to stop saying “goddamn,” a word particularly offensive to some Christians, and some have been perturbed by his use of profanity in the Oval Office.

Some chafed at the questioning, saying it was a private matter.

“President Trump is a man of God, and faith plays an important role in his life. The President values the close counsel of many in the faith-based community, as well as the daily prayers of the many Americans who pray for him, his family, our country, and our military. I have personally witnessed the President in worship many times and have also seen him use his faith and prayer to privately comfort and console Americans after a tragedy,” Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Evangelical leader James Dobson has credited White with bringing about Trump’s Christian conversion. In the months before the 2016 election, Dobson told voters that Trump was a “baby Christian,” who might not have behaved as a religious man ought to earlier in his life but has since changed.

Even though Obama regularly spoke of his faith and described how he converted to Christianity as a young man, many evangelical Trump supporters say they believe that Trump prays in the White House and that Obama did not.

Last month, Trump became the first president to speak in person at the annual March for Life, an antiabortion event with religious overtones. Michael Capps, who brought his three children to the rally, said Trump had “put God back in the spotlight, which is amazing for the country” and was “the most religious” president ever.

Trump, who was raised in the mainline Presbyterian tradition, does not have an evangelical background. He has cited a pastor he knew early in this life, the late Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, author of “The Power of Positive Thinking,” as influential in his worldview. He says the book helped him overcome bankruptcy.

“His idea of religion was Norman Vincent Peale and making a lot of money,” said Tony Schwartz, who co-wrote Trump’s bestseller “The Art of the Deal,” spent time with him in the 1980s and is now a vocal Trump critic. “I never heard him use the word ‘God.’ He never cited any religious beliefs.”

Peale officiated at Trump’s first wedding. The next two were also officiated by mainline Protestant ministers, one Presbyterian and one Episcopalian. First lady Melania Trump said in 2017 that she is Catholic.

After Vatican visit, Melania Trump says she is Catholic

Most of Trump’s current relationships with evangelical pastors, particularly with believers in Pentecostal, charismatic and prosperity gospel strains of Christianity, appear to have developed only as he considered running for president. Trump also changed some of his beliefs in recent years, including his shift to oppose abortion.

Several pastors, as well as two former White House officials, said they have never seen Trump pray in front of others. Instead, he regularly asks for Vice President Pence or for one of his many evangelical Cabinet members to pray. He does not regularly reference God in making his decisions, these aides say, and they have never seen him open a Bible. But he has long coveted the visual of having pastors pray for him, including the distinct image of the laying on of hands.

Sean Feucht, a Christian musician running for Congress in California, attended a meeting in December organized by White, which brought about 50 Christian leaders, most of them Pentecostal, to the Oval Office. Trump asked the guests to pray for him.

“It was bold, loud prayer” in the charismatic, Pentecostal style, Feucht said. “We were all praying at once, lifting our voices. It wasn’t solemn and organized. It was lively and loud. I think that he’s drawn to that."

Trump was a silent appreciator, not joining in.

The president’s first line to the pastors that day, before the prayer, was a jab at Pelosi for claiming to pray for him, Feucht said.

Last week, Trump returned to that theme at the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event that is a prime opportunity for a president to talk about his faith.

At National Prayer Breakfast about unity, Trump swipes at Romney, Pelosi

Speaking about Romney, who said his religious beliefs guided him in casting his vote against Trump during the impeachment trial, and Pelosi, who has said she prays for the president, Trump said: “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not so."

He rewrote his speech on his way to the prayer breakfast to include the barbs at Romney and Pelosi, White House aides said. Several aides said that Trump genuinely thinks the two members of Congress are falsely claiming to act based on faith, something they say the president would never do.

Monday, February 17, 2020

“屋形船で感染拡大か” 新型ウイルス東京で新たに５人感染 | NHKニュース

“屋形船で感染拡大か” 新型ウイルス東京で新たに５人感染

東京都は、東京大田区の医療機関に勤める男性医師など新たに５人が新型コロナウイルスに感染したことを明らかにしました。医師の同僚の女性看護師が、タクシーの運転手などに感染者が相次いでいる屋形船の新年会に参加して感染したことが確認されていて、都は、医師がいつどこで感染したのかさらに調べています。

都は、16日午後７時半から記者会見を開き、新型コロナウイルスに新たに５人が感染したことを明らかにしました。

都によりますと、このうち１人は東京大田区の「牧田総合病院」の「蒲田分院」に勤めている60代の男性医師です。

この男性医師の同僚で「牧田総合病院」に勤める女性看護師は、タクシーの運転手などに感染者が相次いでいる先月18日の屋形船の新年会に参加して感染したことが確認されています。

男性医師は、女性看護師のほか複数の人とともに病院の外で食事をしたことがあるということですが、いつどこで感染したのかはわからないということで、都が感染ルートを調べています。

また、屋形船の新年会に参加した60代のタクシー運転手の男性と参加した運転手の家族の30代の男性もそれぞれ感染していることが新たに確認されました。

都は、「屋形船という比較的閉じられた空間の中で感染が広がった可能性がある」と話しています。

16日は、このほか都内に住む30代の会社員の男性と埼玉県に住み都内の医療機関を受診した60代のハイヤーの運転手の男性も、それぞれ感染していることが新たに確認されました。

これで都内で感染が確認されたのは19人になりました。

都は、16日午後７時半から記者会見を開き、新型コロナウイルスに新たに５人が感染したことを明らかにしました。

都によりますと、このうち１人は東京大田区の「牧田総合病院」の「蒲田分院」に勤めている60代の男性医師です。

都は、「屋形船という比較的閉じられた空間の中で感染が広がった可能性がある」と話しています。

これで都内で感染が確認されたのは19人になりました。

Saturday, February 15, 2020

What if Buttigieg Said That he Doesn’t Accept the “Fashionable” View that Climate Change is a Problem? by Dean Baker

Dean Baker

Feb 14 at 7:39am

What if Buttigieg Said That he Doesn’t Accept the “Fashionable” View that Climate Change is a Problem?

To my knowledge, he hasn’t said anything like that, but Buttigieg did say that he doesn’t accept the “fashionable” view that current deficits are not a problem. When he made this comment, many progressives denounced him for supporting deficit reducing policies that will slow growth and raise unemployment. Since most plans for deficit reduction also involve cuts to social programs (it’s compromise land), this is likely to mean additional hardships for the poor and elderly who are the primary beneficiaries of these programs.

The response of many centrists to these attacks (e.g. here) was to say that Buttigieg was just using campaign rhetoric, he doesn’t really mean it. Guessing what is in any politician’s head is always difficult, but it is especially hard with someone like Buttigieg, with a very short track record and few clear ideological convictions.

But whatever may be in Buttigieg’s head, we can certainly look at his words. He didn’t just indicate he disagreed with a view on deficits that has been largely embraced by the mainstream of the economics profession, he implied that this view was frivolous – a fashion that could change at any time.

This is more than a little annoying for those of us who have spent a lot of time in budget debates, especially in the dozen years since the collapse of the housing bubble gave us the Great Recession. The view that large deficits, like the one the country is now running, are not a problem came about as a result of an analysis of the evidence.

Ever since the collapse of the housing bubble, the economy has suffered from a persistent shortfall in demand. The loss of demand from the collapse of the bubble was enormous. At its peak in 2005, housing investment was 6.7 percent of GDP. In the most recent quarter it was just 3.8 percent of GDP. The difference of 2.9 percentage points of GDP translates into more than $600 billion in lost annual demand.

In addition, there was a falloff in consumption demand associated with the collapse of the housing bubble. The ephemeral wealth created by the housing bubble led to a surge in consumption spending, as people spent based on the newly generated wealth in their homes. At the peak in 2005, households consumed 97.5 percent of their disposable income. When the bubble burst and the housing wealth disappeared, so did the bubble driven consumption. In the most recent quarter, households were consuming just 92.3 percent of their disposable income. The difference in consumption shares translates into more than $800 billion annually of lost demand in today’s economy.

If we add the loss in annual demand from the falloff in housing investment and reduced consumption, it comes to more than $1,400 billion. As we have painfully learned since the Great Recession, there is no easy mechanism to replace this lost demand. The view formerly held by many economists, that the Fed could just lower interest rates and bring the economy back to full employment, has been shown to be clearly wrong. Even with the Fed’s interest rate at zero for seven years, the economy still did not rebound to anything like full employment.

This is the context in which much of the mainstream of the economics profession came to embrace the view that large budget deficits could be sustained for long periods of time. Given a persistent shortfall in demand in the economy (a.k.a. “secular stagnation”), there is no other sector that could provide the boost to growth necessary to bring the economy to full employment.

Rather than being a liability, large deficits are needed to lower the unemployment rate. And, low unemployment rates are especially important to African Americans, Hispanics and other disadvantaged groups in the labor market, since they disproportionately are the job gainers as the labor market tightens. In a tight labor market, employers have no choice but to employ people who would otherwise be the victims of discrimination. With the unemployment rate now well under 4.0 percent, there are accounts of employers even reaching out to people with criminal records who they might otherwise never consider employing.

Tight labor markets also give workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution the bargaining power needed to achieve wage gains. After seeing declines in real wages in the years immediately following the Great Recession, workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution have been seeing real gains of more than 1.0 percent annually over the last five years.

If we had smaller budget deficits, we would have seen less demand in the economy and less growth. This would have meant fewer jobs, higher unemployment, and less bargaining power for workers. That is the Pete Buttigieg world. He may not know this or he may not care, but we should be clear, this is what his call for lower budget deficits means.

The Story of Evil Deficits I

The conventional story of the evils of budget deficits is that they lead to higher interest rates, which then crowd out investment. Less investment (both public and private) is bad news because it means that productivity growth will be slower, leaving us poorer in the future than we would otherwise be.

This story clearly does not fit the current situation. The interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds is just 1.6 percent. That compares to interest rates of 4.0-5.0 percent back in the late 1990s when we were running budget surpluses. With interest rates at historically low levels for the last decade, it is pretty hard to make the case that the deficit has been crowding out investment.

The conventional story would also hold that large deficits could lead to inflation, if the Fed failed to act by pushing up interest rates. This story also does not fit with the data. The inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index was 2.5 percent over the last year, but this reflects jumps in energy prices last fall. The inflation rate in the core personal consumption expenditure deflator, the rate targeted by the Federal Reserve Board, has been just 1.6 percent over the last year.

This is well below the Fed’s 2.0 percent target, which is meant to be an average. That means that the Fed would like to see the inflation rate occasionally be somewhat above 2.0 percent in order to balance out the periods of below 2.0 percent inflation. From the Fed’s standpoint, the problem has been that the inflation rate has been too low, not too high.

In short, we are not seeing either of the short-term problems usually attributed to large budget deficits. Interest rates are at historically low levels, so we can’t tell a story about deficits crowding out investment, and inflation has been consistently below its targeted rate, so there is no basis for complaints about the deficits causing inflation. So, if Buttigieg has a story about deficits doing harm to the economy, it is not one of the conventional stories economists tell.

The Story of Evil Deficits II

The other story often told about the budget deficit is that it will be a burden on our children, since they will have to pay interest on the debt. The story goes that our current publicly held debt of $16.9 trillion (79.2 percent of GDP) will impose an enormous burden as future generations struggle to pay it off. There are three points to be made on this.

First, these interest payments are an intragenerational issue, not an inter-generational issue. The debt is overwhelmingly held domestically. This means that the interest payments will be made by some of our children to the children of other people. In twenty or thirty years, ordinary workers may be paying taxes to pay the interest on the bonds held by the children of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. That could be a problem, but it is one that is easily solved by taxing the children of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. This is just saying that inequality can be a problem, which is obviously true, and if Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos’ kids hold lots of government bonds, the interest they get on those bonds could be part of the problem.

The second point is, that in spite of the large debt, the interest burden is relatively low, due to the extraordinarily low interest rates we have seen in recent years. The latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office show that interest payments, net of remittances from the Federal Reserve Board, will be just 1.4 percent of GDP in 2020. This compares to payments of more than 3.0 percent of GDP in the early and mid-1990s. It is pretty hard to get too upset about a burden that is less than half as large as what we faced three decades ago. And, that burden did not prevent the 1990s from being a relatively prosperous decade.

The final reason the debt interest burden argument richly deserves our ridicule is that it is very selective in choosing what burdens to consider and what burdens to ignore. Direct spending is only one mechanism the government uses to pay for things it wants done. It also gives out patent and copyright monopolies. These government-granted monopolies can be thought of as private taxes that the government allows companies to collect from the public in exchange for innovation and creative work.

The amount of money at stake in the rents from patent and copyright monopolies swamps payments of interest on the debt. In the case of prescription drugs alone the rents are going to be in the neighborhood of $400 billion in 2020 (1.8 percent of GDP). If we add in the rents from these monopolies in medical equipment, computer software, recorded music, movies, and video games, we are almost certainly over $1 trillion, or close 5.0 percent of GDP.

It doesn’t make any sense to hyperventilate about an interest burden of 1.3 percent of GDP, while ignoring rents from patent and copyright monopolies that are more than three times as large. If Buttigieg wants to make a big deal about the interest burden from the debt, then it is clearly not due to any objective reality. He is either appealing to prejudices or simply reflecting his own ignorance of budget and economic realities.

Yes, People Who Care About Economic Policy Should be Offended by Buttigieg’s Budget Comments

Only Buttigieg knows his actual motives for dismissing the lack of concern about budget deficits as a “fashion.” However, this lack of concern is based on hard data and clear theoretical thinking. Whatever reason Buttigieg has for saying that we should be concerned about budget deficits, those of us who have done our homework have every reason to be angry at Buttigieg, just as serious climate scientists are justified in their anger at the climate denialists.

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Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Early-Voting States Aren’t a Problem for Democratsby Jonathan Bernstein

Early-Voting States Aren’t a Problem for Democrats

by Jonathan Bernstein, bloomberg.com

February 11, 2020 06:54 AM

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With the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, get ready for another round of complaints about how Iowa and New Hampshire are unrepresentative of the Democratic Party and warp the process by going first and second. After all, they are dominated by white voters in a party in which Black and Latino voters are major constituencies. So one last reminder for this cycle that those complaints are, while not entirely wrong, very much exaggerated.

That’s been particularly evident in the 2020 cycle. It’s true that a number of well-qualified candidates won’t be on the ballot in Nevada, South Carolina, and other more diverse states. Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand; Governors Jay Inslee and Steve Bullock; former governor John Hickenlooper; and former secretary of housing and urban development Julián Castro are all gone. What did them in, however, was a national process: the “invisible primary” of donors, endorsements, other support from party actors, media attention, and early success or failure in public opinion polls.

None of those winnowed candidates were doing well in Nevada, South Carolina or the national polls when they dropped out. Most of them had very little support from party actors. Harris did have quite a bit of national support, but she took the risk of ramping up her campaign when polling was good, and wound up collapsing when her polling, and therefore her fundraising, went south everywhere.

The other piece of this is that the results in Iowa and New Hampshire are interpreted — by party actors and by the media — with their demographics in mind. Pete Buttigieg did get a boost from winning (sort of) in Iowa, but a lot of observers discounted it because it was regionally and demographically friendly for him; similarly, Joe Biden’s weak showing did hurt him, but if he really keeps his support among black voters in future states and party actors across the nation, he’ll probably survive it — and if they desert him, there’s a good chance he would have lost them anyway had South Carolina gone first.

The same thing will be true today. A Sanders win would be discounted because he’s from Vermont. Biden would be in big trough if he can’t break 10% of the vote, but a solid third-place vote would help him because no one thinks New Hampshire is a good state for him. Of course, that’s not the only thing that determines media reactions. But then again, any candidate who does well in Iowa and New Hampshire but can’t convert that into success in Nevada and South Carolina isn’t going anywhere anyway.

Yes, it’s true that Iowa and New Hampshire (and Nevada and South Carolina) may have a better chance than other states to have candidates pander to their parochial interests. But the importance of the national invisible primary puts some serious constraints on that. A candidate who ignored groups just because they aren’t present in Iowa would soon find national support drying up, and no amount of local campaigning can make up for that.

All of this is separate from the question of Iowa’s caucus system — and the ability to administer it competently. That may well be a good reason to strip that state of its position at the head of the line, although as Josh Putnam points out such changes are easier said than done, given the severely limited authority of the national parties. The idea I like, which I’ve seen floated by political scientist Dan Hopkins, would be to let a city or county — not a whole state — get added to the current early mix. There’s no particular reason that it couldn’t happen in theory, although see again what Putnam says for why it would be hard to make it actually happen.

(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

1. Dan Drezner on Trump’s 5G policy.

2. Dante J. Scala on Sanders and the rest in New Hampshire.

3. Rachel Bitecofer on Buttigieg’s prospects. The problem with handicapping the Democratic contest right now is there is good reason to believe that each of the candidates other than Biden has real vulnerabilities with black voters — but it’s not at all clear yet how any of that will play out. That said, there seem to be more hints so far of black voter resistance to Buttigieg than to any of the others. It’s still early, however.

4. Catherine Rampell on Fed candidate Judy Shelton.

5. Megan Messerly on the possibility of another botched count in Nevada.

6. Margot Sanger-Katz on Trump’s budget for health care.

7. And Jacey Fortin on ranked-choice voting.

Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net

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Monday, February 10, 2020

A Game-Theory Solution for a Fractured America

by Noah Smith, bloomberg.com

September 8, 2017 06:00 AM

It’s time for some game theory.

The U.S. is divided as never before. Partisan polarization has been on the rise for many years now. Anyone who uses American social media knows that the culture has degenerated into a never-ending shouting match over politics, race, ideology and other fault lines. People don’t want to work or shop next to Americans from the opposite tribe. They don’t even want their kids to marry someone from across the political divide.

This excessive animosity is hurting the country. It’s paralyzing policy, for one thing. The use of filibusters and other veto points in the political system is making it very hard to reform U.S. health care, the tax system and other creaking institutions. In addition, it’s probably reducing social trust -- both in government in each other. Lower levels of trust are bad for economic growth. And to top it all off, partisanship is probably making Americans less happy.

But I believe that a concept from game theory can help reduce partisan rancor. Once Americans of all stripes realize that the other side is never going away, they’ll realize that it makes more sense to find a way of living in harmony.

Game theory -- one of the main branches of economic theory -- is often used to make very precise, quantitative predictions, but it’s also sometimes useful as a metaphor for human interaction. And the deepest metaphor in game theory is the prisoner’s dilemma. In this hypothetical situation, each of two prisoners in separate cells has to decide whether to cooperate with the other, or betray them to the cops. The best outcome overall would be if the prisoners cooperated. But because of the way the game is set up, each prisoner has an incentive to sell out the other.

If the prisoner’s dilemma gets played only one time, the dread logic of self-interest prevents the good outcome from ever happening. Each prisoner chooses to betray the other, and so both end up losing out. Even if the game is repeated a finite number of times, the outcome is the same -- betrayal and disaster, again and again. The prisoner’s dilemma would seem to be a good reason to be pessimistic about human interaction.

Except that if the game is repeated an indefinite number of times, something amazing happens. People start to cooperate. Because they don’t know exactly when the game will end, the players can’t plan to screw each other over at the end. And knowing this, as long as they care about the future, they choose to cooperate again and again -- leaving both parties much better off in perpetuity.

The repeated prisoner’s dilemma is a powerful metaphor for real human interaction. If people know that they’re going to have to live with each other into the indefinite future, the incentive to fight is reduced, and the incentive to cooperate increases. So to reduce American partisanship and social fracture, it helps to realize a fundamental truth: Neither side is going anywhere.

First, take race -- the country’s oldest and bitterest divide. On one hand, the country is not going to return to being 85 percent non-Hispanic white. Only three out of five Americans are non-Hispanic whites, and soon it’ll be closer to one in two:

U.S. Population by Race

Source: Census Bureau, July 2016 estimates

The U.S. population is 323 million. That means that there are already more than 120 million nonwhite Americans, and the number will soon be more than 150 million. This is not a small minority that can be ignored, suppressed or waved away.

But white America is also here to stay. Rumors of the demographic eclipse of white people have been greatly exaggerated. For one thing, non-white fertility rates, especially Hispanic fertility rates, have plunged over the last decade, and are now pretty close to white rates:

U.S. Fertility Rates by Race

Average number of children per woman in child-bearing years

Source: National Vital Statistics Report

Also, Hispanic immigration has slowed dramatically. Immigration from Mexico, including illegal immigration, has been in reverse for around 10 years now.

Finally, more Hispanics are identifying as white. Between the 2000 and 2010 Census, approximately 1.2 million Hispanic Americans -- almost 4 percent of the total -- changed their race from “some other race” to “white.”

So among reduced Hispanic immigration, reduced nonwhite birth rates and slowly changing racial identification, white America will not vanish. Instead, the nation will remain about evenly split between whites and nonwhites, with a slowly increasing number of people who identify as two or more races.

The political divide isn't going away anytime soon, either. This should be apparent just from looking at history -- there has always been a left and a right. Even Spain, where a bloody left-right civil war killed hundreds of thousands in the 1930s, still has conservative and socialist parties.

The future of liberalism and conservatism can also be seen by looking at a map. Unlike in the period before the Civil War, when the divide was mostly regional, today’s political division is between big cities and small towns. Smaller cities and the rural countryside lean strongly Republican, while urban areas are deep blue, with the suburbs split roughly down the middle. This pattern holds true even in strongly Republican and Democratic states.

Big cities, small cities and rural areas aren't going away anytime soon. Big cities are essential to U.S. prosperity -- the counties won by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election are responsible for almost two-thirds of the economy. Rural areas and smaller cities are essential, too, because they command natural resources, are attractive places to raise children, and have fewer restrictions on housing development.

In other words, there can be no secession of Red America from Blue America, or vice versa -- the two are inextricably connected and dependent on one another.

So all political groups and races in the U.S. need to understand that nobody is going anywhere. This truth runs exactly counter to the apocalyptic thinking currently in vogue in the U.S., where every election is treated as the must-win final battle that will secure the future of the country. Poisonous short-term rhetoric creates the illusion that U.S. politics is a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma, where the only rational option is to fight to the bitter end. But it’s an illusion. There will be another election after 2020. And another, and another. There is no end in sight.

The U.S. is an indefinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma. Everyone is locked in a room with everyone else, forever. There is no escape, so the only rational strategy is to learn how to get along.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Noah Smith at nsmith150@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Mark Whitehouse at mwhitehouse1@bloomberg.net

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the two words Trump didn't say at the state of the union

February 9, 2020

By Will Bunch

Imagine that it’s January 1941, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt is delivering his annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. The planet is literally on fire from the Big One, World War II. Nazi Germany has overrun France, and Adolf Hitler’s regime has been raining bombs on London for months. Japan has overrun much of Asia.

But FDR begins his speech with a long riff on how great the American economy has done under his presidency— including some gratuitous swipes at his predecessor Herbert Hoover, even though it’s been eight years since Hoover left the Oval Office. There’s a brief, bloodless mention that “our relationship with our European allies has never been stronger," and then he moves on — urging a standing ovation for the oldest living veteran of the Civil War. And when the speech is done, the radio pundits gloss over Roosevelt’s snub of the global conflagration.

That’s too crazy to contemplate, so then how insane was it that President Trump rambled on for one hour and 18 minutes (and four seconds) last Tuesday in his reality-show-influenced 2020 State of the Union address and ignored the cataclysmic fires that have engulfed Australia and echoed the flames that are ravaging California year after year, let alone the increasing scientific evidence that we’ve entered a time of rapid sea rise, drought and killer storms?

How could the leader of a global superpower give a serious talk on the current state of his nation in 2020 and never once utter the words “climate change”?

And how did so few people even notice? Delivered just hours before his impeachment trial ended in acquittal, Trump’s third State of the Union summoned up a whirlwind of distracting pop-culture headlines — awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to cancer-stricken hatemonger Rush Limbaugh to own the libs! — and a now-predictable blizzard of lies, including a false narrative about a black Philadelphia schoolgirl that was exposed by my Inquirer colleagues.

Amid that 130-decibel assault of political noise, the planet’s actual crisis of climate change became the equivalent of Sherlock Holmes’ most famous clue, the dog that didn’t bark. Centuries from now, when Rush Limbaugh’s hate words have drifted off to space and his name is long forgotten, scholars -- if there still are scholars -- will find that Trump’s stunning denial of science and a raging crisis was this speech’s only historical significance.

The president occasionally tries to deny being a “climate denier,” but Tuesday’s silence was deafening. Especially when Trump did take time to brag that America under his so-called leadership is pouring fossil fuels on the world’s fires. “Thanks to our bold regulatory reduction campaign, the United States has become the No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world, by far,” he declared to thunderous applause.

That truth — hardly comforting in a time when oil and natural gas are the major sources of greenhouse-gas pollution — was typically followed by Trumpian distortions. If the U.S. is “energy independent,” then why do we continue to import about 10 million barrels of oil every day, much of it from murderous dictatorships? If our interest in fuel production is job creation, why does Team Trump ignore the employment power of clean energy?

But those deceptions pale in comparison to the biggest problem — that the American president is bragging about its oil-and-gas growth when scientists are predicting planetary catastrophe without major cutbacks by 2030 in fossil fuels, and near elimination in the generation after that.

Trump’s ode to climate denial came just before the news that Antarctica — with its massive glaciers that could swamp the low-lying areas where 40 percent of Americans (and billions elsewhere) live — posted its warmest day in history, 65 degrees. This followed a report that one of Antarctica’s largest glaciers, the size of the state of Florida, is melting much faster than earlier predicted, with a potential to sharply increase projections of sea level rise.

But you don’t have to travel to the South Pole to see climate change. I can just look in my back yard here in suburban Philadelphia, where snowdrops and other spring plants are blooming after January was nearly six degrees warmer than normal. Ditto for Europe, which just experienced its hottest January on record.

And yet, of course, President Trump dared not mention any of this, because viewers might question why his administration keeps making it easier to burn coal or drill for oil — both as a sop to his full embrace of oil-and-gas lobbyists and their money, and because undoing all things Obama is catnip to his base. (Although worth noting is that Obama also hailed rising oil-and-gas production, and history will also not remember that kindly, either.)

Team Trump is betting that 2020 voters will only care about low gas prices at the pump. But that’s only true if you talk only to the typical Fox News viewer, a white person over 50. Ask most Americans currently under 35 — a voting bloc that gets bigger by the day — and they’ll say climate change is their No. 1 issue. (And among all Democrats, it ranks No. 2 behind only health care.) Trust me, these voters heard the dog that didn’t bark on Tuesday.

This weekend, Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, reporting from the final frantic days of the New Hampshire primary, found a thirsting among voters — especially, but not exclusively, younger ones — to hear even more from the Democrats about what they will do to roll back four years of devastating climate denial from Trump.

Marcotte noted that at an Elizabeth Warren event, her biggest applause moment came from a seemingly arcane question about the Granite State’s endangered moose population, because it teed up a stirring defense of the Green New Deal. She also hung out with a group of mostly under-25 protesters outside Friday’s ABC News debate who are mad there’s been such little discussion of climate. Said 19-year-old Kyle Burzycki: “It’s embarrassing how little they’re talking about it, seeing as it’s the most important issue facing our country.”

The so-called grown-ups don’t seem to be receiving the message. The one ABC debate question on climate came late, and it came with the how-are-you-going-to-pay-for-it baby boomer skepticism that continues to alienate under-35 voters. The Democratic National Committee — which nixed a plan for a climate-only debate and reversed itself on taking fossil-fuel donations — hasn’t helped, either. The party seems to have learned little from 2016, when young-voter defections to the Green Party’s Jill Stein helped elect Trump.

Many Democratic voters are demoralized right now by Trump’s acquittal, the triumphalism of his base, and the inept chaos of their own party’s Iowa caucus. And while there are significant differences between the Democrats — only Warren and Sanders have fully embraced the urgency of the scientific warnings — everyone still in the race would represent an 180-degree reversal from the cynical denialism of Trump. If the party wants to win in November, it’s time to wave that banner higher, shout a little louder, and make sure that Tuesday night was America’s last State of the Union address to pretend that climate change is not real.

Posted: February 9, 2020 - 1:37 PM

Will Bunch | @will_bunch | wbunch@inquirer.com

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