Do you actually read any political/policy analysis? Who is better than Yglesias?
This is what Yglesias said about Pence in 2014.
The winning political formula for Republicans has long been, in the immortal words of Dick Cheney, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” Cut tax rates for the rich, make that more palatable by also cutting tax rates for the middle class, and then pay for it by … not paying for it.
Pence was a solid supply-sider as a member of Congress, and took Reaganesque fiscal thinking to new heights in his draft proposal for Social Security privatization. While lesser thinkers proposed to cut guaranteed Social Security benefits in order to offer people the rewards of private Social Security accounts, Pence’s proposal was to simply assume that the benefits of privatization would be so enormous as to make it possible to guarantee that nobody’s accounts would pay less than is offered by today’s guaranteed benefits. It’s all upside with no downside!
It wouldn’t work, of course, any more than promises from Reagan or Bush to increase revenue by cutting taxes worked. But this kind of thing is the time-tested way to sell conservative economic policy and freed from the constraints of Obama-era debates about Keynes, Pence is the ideal person to bring it back.
This is an actual analysis of Pence’s policy positions and how they fit within the broader GOP informed by research. Yglesias was right that the GOP would simply push tax cuts and not pay for them. The only thing he didn’t see was that the GOP would drop social security “reform” like a hot potato (thanks to the “unforeseeable” Trump). Also, he was right in 2014 that the then IN governor would be a major player in 2018 GOP politics even though Pence had yet to announce.
But if you’re reading Yggie for political analysis, that’s not really his thing. Most of his work is focused on examining the academic literature that can illuminate various and sundry “policy” debates of the moment, with an emphasis on macroeconomics.
Sometimes he does foreign policy, like this recent post on the Arab-Isreal conflict. Palestinian right of return matters - by Matthew Yglesias
My opinion of you is high enough to assume you just don’t read his stuff and have a sort of knee-jerk reaction to his general approach of not treating the Democratic left as serious people. I think people dislike that he’s obviously pretty far left but doesn’t regard the left of the Democratic party as coherent or capable actors.
And finally, he obviously has a lot of people who take his views seriously, as he now makes $1M a year writing a twice-a-week newsletter. Vox got rid of him because he was sometimes a jerk. Now Vox is gasping for air and Ygglie is taking long European vacations. Same could be said about Ezra Klein, although he is naturally more deferential. Still, Vox had a top 5 podcast with Matt, Ezra, and Sara Cliff, and now Yggy is on his own and the other two are at the NY Times and Vox is dying. They basically traded away peak Brady, Gronkowski, and a top 10% defensive lineman and now they can’t seem to put together a solid team again.
