Kathy Hochul Can Only Solve Problems She Created
After the election, with the congestion pricing lawsuit hearings looming, Kathy Hochul announced that she’s going to restore congestion pricing, at the lower rate of $9 per entry, as opposed to the $15 per entry in the original program that she’d unilaterally canceled in June weeks before it was supposed to begin implementation.
The main reaction by transit advocacy groups in the region seems to be “We did it”: the combination of political pressure (reducing the governor’s approval rate), bottom-up pressure like mass phone calls, and lawfare led her to go back and restore 60% of congestion pricing. Perhaps, after the lawsuit is resolved, she will stop violating 40% of the law and go back to following it entirely.
But then there are people who insist that this was some savvy political move to delay congestion pricing until after the election, to save some congressional Democrats. This is stupid. The Democrats did okay in the congressional elections in the region, but their performance in the presidential election, in which Donald Trump tried to make congestion pricing an issue, was beyond awful, with the single largest Republican swing in the country from 2020, followed by adjacent New Jersey and frequent destination for out-migrants Florida. No: people rejected Hochul’s capricious government as much as they could given other partisan and ideological views.
Because what we’re seeing is that Hochul is perfectly capable of solving a problem – well, 60% of a problem – provided she is the sole cause of it. Otherwise, she can’t do anything. The state has a stack of problems, and she and the political appointees, including both her own and those carried over from Cuomo, can’t do anything to solve them, and I don’t even think they have any interest in. They lower people’s expectations so that they can claim credit for meeting 60% of them. No wonder people think so little of New York governance.
Pedestrian Observations 
Kathy Hochul is a Democrook that only does things that fits her political objective.
Well stated.
Congestion pricing is a carrot-and-stick technique. If the stick doesn’t hurt, the plan will not work.
However, I believe the benefits should be shared a bit in imp[roving off-peak train service from outside NY City. A significant number of people drive into the central city to assure the ability to get home easily in the evening.
When democracy started in Spain 45 years ago, politicians came from all sides of life, there were doctors, engineers, etc… Nowadays, the ministers come almost completely from law or economics, and whenever they have to take technical decisions (say, about pubic transport or emergency management in València, ehem), they are completely removed from their area of knowledge (which is basically generic management, climbing in the party and lawmaking). People in the USA will know better, but I have a hunch that they completed this process decades (or centuries?) earlier.
We have one exception in Catalonia, a conservative politician with a degree in public works engineering, who gets appointed by all parties of all colors for public transport projects “because he’s the one who knows about this”. Rara avis.
I like your point about all walks of life. Contrast with China’s engineering heavy leadership that sees most things as engineering problems and the US law heavy leadership that sees most things as law problems. Not sure how you align the incentives to ensure that continues though, clearly the worker Soviets failed at that (not that that was explicitly the goal).
Oh my god this meme is stupid.
1. Hu Jintao and co’s 3-4 years of engineering degrees during the disruption of the late Mao era does not a technocratic elite make. They are professional politicians reliant on patronage networks as much as any NY pol. You can make a point that the cursus honorum of the CCP does mean these officials have more useful administrative experience than their democratic counterparts given the graduation pathway of county-prefecture-province-ministry-standing committee. Everyone has professional politicians, the question is how to make them better. My take is you need capable local government with strong local competition. NY is not that.
2. The fundamental reason China is good at building is because one they have what Anglo-saxons lake which is bureaucracies on the non-political side for administering infra.
3. The entire fiscal system of Chinese government from the mid-1990’s tax reform is based on real estate expansion powered by infrastracture investment.
4. Because China doesn’t have a proper tax system, its reliant on controlling the banking system to supress interest rates and send money to SOEs which include the state sector. This means china massively overbuilds relative to demand (hence the explosion of debt to worse-than-US-levels everywhere except the central government balance sheet).
To give a non-railway example, every high-growth East Asian state had a stupid-water project proposed, Tanaka wanted a canal connecting Niigata to Tokyo through the mountains, Lee Myung Bak wanted an inland canal between Busan and Seoul. Only the Chinese actually built that project specifically to avoid having to do the politically hard but technically obvious thing of shift the North China plain to less water intensive agriculture (and industry).
And oh my god chinese health and social policy is a list “too hard for the Emperor who prefers to abuse minorities, give speeches with stupid references and plot world domination”.
Also Spain is as good as China at building infrastructure. Spain’s problem in terms of economic performance is the protected small business sector, the labour segmentation and underbuilding housing in Madrid and Barcelona made worse by German enforced sado-masochistic mercantilism across the Eurozone. Pretty standard Southern European stuff. This cuts across the usual Spanish political divides.
Spain built pretty aggressively in Madrid and Barcelona until the Financial Crisis.
China’s leadership isn’t engineering-heavy; it’s lifelong party politicians who went to school for STEM but never practiced. Closest example I can think of to Xi in a democracy is Shimon Peres, who worked on a kibbutz farm for a week so he could say officially that his profession was “farmer” when he was a lifelong politician.
The PRC reaching the state and social capacity of Bulgaria (good day) or Serbia (bad day) is a historic achievement but also not anything to treat with awe. If it weren’t for its sheer scale.
It is still significant that many of China’s leaders did STEM degrees even if they never worked in the professions, even if the degree was a bit nominal. Just like so many politicians who studied law and economics but who went straight into a political career, few escape that early influence. It’s a way of thought and logic, not to mention prioritisation of what really matters. In general society I get myself in trouble all the time because the vast majority of people, no matter how many degrees they might have, if it is non-STEM which is bound to be the case, it can be impossible for them to grasp importance of various facts or even appreciate the importance. Worse, I find they are resistant to any explanation as if it is an insult. In addition to the unwashed public, in the west we can see this attitude in so many of our politicians with the obvious absurd endpoint we saw 2 weeks ago and the announcement of know-nothings to run some of the most complex organisations on complex issues (health, defence, AG, intelligence etc).
My point wasn’t that STEM backgrounds are intrinsically better for politicians. And I’m not that naïve to think that it’s possible to have a purely technocrat government without ideology. Historically political positions have been appointed as stepping stones for people’s careers, so I assume that’s hard to avoid.
But at least, if you’re going to need to make a certain type of decisions, you should have an adequate background. For a ministry of Energy, or Science and Technology, I do expect a STEM background. There’s also profiles more adequate than others for cabinets like Health, Education, Agriculture… Also, having variety of backgrounds is better for an organization’s decision-making in general, I believe.
You’ll know better, but looking from the abroad, it feels that Kathy Hochul is a case of appointing solely for career promotion, without attention to adequacy.
In some cases I see nominations with an ideological purpose, though, of putting the fox in charge of the chickens. Like putting a big name of an automaker company in charge of Public Transport, a director from an oil company in charge of Ecology and Sustainability, or an Anti-vaxxer in charge of Health.
Like most Guardian reading Bigots, Michael belives good government is all about choosing the Moral Elect who went to the right schools, right degrees, had the right breeding and the common people who are Holy Fools must wait for the moral elect to save them from the evil people. Especially those of “the country” that must not be named.
if it is non-STEM which is bound to be the case, it can be impossible for them to grasp importance of various facts or even appreciate the importance.
Guy who was wrong by three orders of magnitude for how long it takes the Ogallala aquifer to replenish is worried about people not grasping facts.
In addition to the unwashed public,
Behind the vast majority of people concerned about “qualified” or “technically capable” politicians and bureaucrats are simple totalitarians who think they are better than everyone else and would support a dictator in a second if the dictator looked like them or liked what they like. Funny thing is in the current political environment most of these people loudly worry about “saving democracy” as they look down on the masses, even as the very definition of democracy is the majority getting to decide how they are governed. Michael’s dismissal of the public as “unwashed” rather than as a group of people who are capable of deciding for themselves what they want and what is best for them fits this mold exactly.
The years of Michael repeatedly criticizing the British aristocracy, followed by him using the most aristocratic phrase “unwashed masses” is one of the slowest motion but most perfect definitions of both irony and hypocrisy out there.
Onux, seriously? Of course it was intended as pure irony and indeed hypocrisy. The latter in the sense that we all, if honest, hold those thoughts. Like the common Churchill (?) quote about changing one’s enthusiasm about democracy after spending 5 minutes with a typical voter. Most would agree that the result of the US election proves it. As to technocracy versus meritocracy versus democracy etc. Borners is not entirely correct in comparing Boris and Xi because the latter was “elected” by the inner CPC of about 60m members; both Boris and Xi are nepo-babies, but one can confidently observe that at least Xi is both more expert on almost anything (except Ancient Greece or whatever Boris did his thesis on at Balliol) and focused on what he considers national interest. My own preference is some combo of technocracy with meritocracy and, yes, France does a fair approximation of that.
Anyway, on the verge of a major voyage, I am about to disengage from most online media for ≈6 months, and I wanted to comment that Alon’s blog has taken an unfortunate turn in the last few years. Why is Borners, not to mention RM, so intent on personal abuse and vilification? I note that Onyx is one of the few willing to call out RM, given his & B’s response to anyone who expresses a differing opinion. Like Trumpism & Muslims it seems to be infecting the wider commentary. Everyone should read the WordPress guide to comments or any well-run commentary page, including Alon who must take responsibility because his somewhat Musk-like free-for-all is not helping the problem. “Sad”.
FWIW, the most basic policy is: “personal attacks (against authors or other users), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated”, and yes, it is from the derided Guardian but which has one of the best, widely-used but permissive commenting systems without being toxic.
@Michael, I do agree with you that having more STEM people in Western Parliaments would be a good thing. Not to the exclusion of the humanities, but as well as for sure.
There are four Senators that are physicians. Doesn’t help much when it comes to health legislation. ……. every time someone who is a victim of gun violence gets elected to the House it’s going to … not do anything at all when it comes to gun control laws. Because there are people elected to the House, who were victims of gun violence, going back at least 30 years.
…… you can’t reason with dogma…
@Michael An opinion “differing” is not enough to justify it being held, when it can be empirically–or even just structural-ontologically–wrong. If the world is close to any major, meaningful, productive fracture, it’s over that point: some people are just incorrect. Truth does exist, however deeply veiled it may be to us.
Technocracy is valuable insofar as the ends being sought can be quantified; things like the efficacy of a congestion charge, e.g. Otherwise, you need philosophy, i.e., qualitative reasoning, which technocratic governance is almost uniquely ill-suited to provide.
Yes, China is a really great example of democracy coming from all walks of life, what with so many women on the Politburo and how many ethnic minorities there are in government and how Xi Jinping was elected president in a free fair election in 2013 and all that.
/sarcasm
Democracy isn’t really the value to attack the PRC on. Its the idea that’s its a meritocracy of capable bureaucrats. But that with tens of millions of Boomer chinese they chose a Princeling…yeah.
Boris Johnson is a greater meritocrat than Xi Jinping. And so were most Ming era high officials (Qing less so because the Manchu racial priveledge).
After the 2030 census and reapportionment, NY state will likely lose two members of the House. People vote not only at the polling station, they also vote with their feet.
They voted “stay home”. People can ascribe all sorts of motivations to the “stay home” vote but the only thing that can be determined is that they are unconcerned about anything. And unlike anyone who ascribes anything to “stay home” they, people who showed up and people who stayed home, almost all of them realized that Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Kirsten GIllibrand and whoever was running for Congress in their district, is not the governor. Whoever that might be. In even in states you can’t see from the top of the Empire State Building.
Don’t vote in New York. Or drive in New York to a great extent. Few of them want to go into Manhattan. And a vanishingly small amount of the want to drive into the congestion zone. If they heard about congestion pricing at all because they live in FLORIDA. Which is a reallllly realllly long drive from Manhattan. So far away it can’t be seen from the top of the World Trade Center.
The results in New York haven’t been certified. Wikipedia says 97 percent of the vote has been reported. Donald Trump got 213,816 more votes than he did in 2020. Kamala Harris got 857,999 fewer votes than Joe Biden. They stayed home. And because of the wonders of the Electoral College it doesn’t matter.
WIkipedia says 98.1 percent of the national vote has been reported. 2.2 million more people voted for Donald Trump in 2024 than did in 2020. 7.5 million fewer people voted for Kamala Harris than voted for Joe BIden. They stayed home. Which means they don’t care about congestion pricing. Or inflation. Or border policy. Or any of the other things pollsters ask prospective voters about. And they are okay with the racism. Or the misogyny. Or the religious bigotry. Lets not forgets the transphobia standing in for LGBT+ phobia. Or all of it. Because the only thing staying home says is that you don’t care one way or the other.
Come on Alon given what has happened you cannot argue politically that Kathy Hochul’s approach on the congestion charge wasn’t the correct one.
So what that Trump had a swing towards him in the presidential election in the New York area? Those states were still comfortably won by the Democratic Party.
Where the Democratic Party did do better than at a national level was in the New York suburban congressional districts which given the pro-Trump trend they over-performed – and which will keep the Republicans House Majority to a minimum.
Hochul was not micro-tuning anything to sacrifice presidential votes in exchange for more valuable House votes. That’s not how anything works. What happened was that the House votes are being compared with 2022, a bad year for NY Democrats, whereas the presidential votes are compared with 2020, a less bad year.
Alon, it was quite obvious to me at the time that that what was afoot.
How else did she get everyone to go along with the hold?
Almost no one outside of a few people in metro New York cares enough to think about congestion much less change their vote.
Both parties are comically incompetent or George Santos never would have been elected.
There’s been a re-redistricting in New York since 2022 that makes comparisons difficult. Especially if you squint at the 2022 loses and attribute most of the flip to bad New York redistricting.
Squinting at the uncalled races, at the moment, which may change an hour after I type this, it seems the split is going to be 215-220. ……Until Elise Stefanik resigns and Governor Hochul puts off a special election as long as possible. Then it will be 215-219. Miracles do happen in the Adirondacks. I doubt the Conservatives are going to be stupid enough to repeat their 2009 performance. But who knows?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_New_York%27s_23rd_congressional_district_special_election
The main driver for Kamala Harris losing is the economy, because basically median wages in the US are down on early 2020 – and actually she did a lot lot better than for example the UK Conservative Party who got their worst ever result.
The secondary drivers are probably running a far more liberal social and immigration policy than for example Northern Europe even though the US is significantly more socially conservative than any country there. Some examples of this are the ongoing half century long controversy over abortion and Americans coming back in canvassing data still being reluctant to vote for a woman even when the opponent is a senile criminal.
The third driver is that the Democratic Party doesn’t appear to really do any deep canvassing out of election time which is important to make it clear to ordinary voters that the party cares about then.
People realize that saying “I like the racism of Republicans” would be rude so they say “It’s the economy”.
Republicans effectively are unanimously are pro-life. Yet when in the secrecy of the polling booth vote for abortion rights. They stopped putting ban-gay-marriage on the ballot because it fails. On immigration the Biden Administration is doing better than the Trump Administration did. They even had legislation that appeared to be about to pass. Trump killed it. Because if they pass legislation they can’t run on the xenophobia.
They’ll probably go back to some good old fashioned religious bigotry soon. Probably Muslim. But the legislatures are chomping at the bit to compel the Protestant Ten Commandments in schools. That might rear it’s head again. That there is more than one version of the Ten Commandments. People realize it’s uncouth to say “I like the misogyny in that too” and tell you it’s all about teaching history ( that they are imagining ).
The commonality between 2016, 2020 and 2024 is the racism or xenophobia or bigotry or a combination.
If the main driver of people voting Trump is racism then that makes holding a more liberal policy on social issues than either party in Britain when our Conservative Party has just elected a black woman as leader is absolutely bonkers.
But certainly it is true that for the median American wages went up more under Trump than under Biden or Obama. And that inflation over the past 4 years has been little lower in America than e.g. Britain.
And they hadn’t gone up under Trump at all when they voted for his racist, xenophobic bigotry in 2016. It’s the commonality between 2016, 2020 and 2024.
It’s really really difficult to stare it in the face. If you want to convince yourself people voted for Trump in 2024 because of the economy go right ahead.
Dude! Making-shit-up-from-far-away dude! Here’s some News You Can Use, dude!
Americans are RACIST as FUCK.
They’re almost as MISOGYNIST AS FUCK, but not quite. Not yet! Gotta deal the non-whites first before fully addressing the wimmin. Priorities!
@Adirondacker, @RichardMlynarik
Trump technically did worse among white voters in 2024 vs 2020 (by only 1 pp, so actually the same), but did better with Blacks, Hispanics and Asians (much better among Hispanics; with Blacks again only a 1 pp gain so really the same). He outright won “other”/multiracial voters. He also won first time voters, which a Republican has never done as far as I can tell. Are all of those Black, Hispanic and Asian voters racist against themselves? Can we stop with the “Everyone who voted for Trump is a white racist” nonsense when the data doesn’t support it?
Bradley Effect is old news, almost half a century old. Obama, Deval Patrick, Hakeem Jefferies, Tim Scott, Winsome Earle-Sears, Raphael Warnock etc. all show that Americans have no problem electing minorities across the political spectrum.
Turnout was lower in 2024 than it was in 2020. If you are fiddling around with a fraction or perhaps maybe 1 percent, low turnout is gonna screw your fractions/percentages. I’m just a lowly bookkeeper, I leave it up to accountants to produce an analysis once all the votes are certified.
…… Odd how elections were riddled with fraud, abuse, fraud and illegal aliens being bused around to fraudently vote. Until they weren’t.
That doesn’t change that after years of being a racist, misogynistic, religious bigot people still voted for him. And the people who are truthfully saying it’s the economy, that means money is more important to them than the racism, misogyny etc. Which is almost as sad as just lying about voting for the racist.
@adiron as per the latest data from Charles Gaba on Bluesky turnout is only down slightly from 2020. It’s not an enormous drop.
They are still counting votes. The population has grown since 2020. According to the Republicans by millions and millions of illegal aliens who spent election day being bused between polling places to vote illegally. Turnout, for the two parties is lower. When it’s small amounts it’s going to affect percentages. And if it keeps trending, Trump may fall below 50 percent of the popular vote. Wikipedia says he’s at 50.0 percent.
It doesn’t change that after almost a decade of being a racist, misogynistic, dictator worshiping religious bigot people voted for him anyway. Though the insistence that people are eating cats and dogs is mostly xenophobic.
Hochul and other machine Dems working on the basis of lowering expectations remind me of Khan.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2k09dnjvy3o
FYI the man used his planning powers to jack up affordable housing requirements while increasing demands for transit contributions and shockingly it hasn’t produced more affordable housing.
His only politics is “MOAR money” and “somebody take responsibility”.
N/B I voted for him.
But then there are people who insist that this was some savvy political move to delay congestion pricing until after the election, to save some congressional Democrats. This is stupid. The Democrats did okay in the congressional elections in the region, but their performance in the presidential election, in which Donald Trump tried to make congestion pricing an issue, was beyond awful, with the single largest Republican swing in the country from 2020,
If NY state had a huge swing towards Trump but didn’t see a loss of Congressional seats, that would be an argument for it being a savvy move, not an argument against it. First, the argument was always that it would help democrats in local house races, not that it would affect the presidential election. You can’t prove a negative (what if she hadn’t suspended, would Dems have lost more seats?) but if a major shift to a Republican candidate nationally wasn’t reflected locally, that is at least consistent with the ‘savvy move’ argument.
No: people rejected Hochul’s capricious government as much as they could given other partisan and ideological views.
Neither does this make sense. No one is going to vote for Trump nationally because they are upset with Hochul locally, but then turn around and vote for Hochul’s associates locally. Voting for the democratic presidential candidate but voting republican for state assembly or Congress would be a rejection of Hochul’s governance, but we saw the opposite, with democrats gaining a few House and Assembly seats.
Most likely congestion pricing and/or Hochul had nothing to do with Trump’s performance and New York voting like a near swing state not a democratic stronghold. Rather it was almost certainly a result of the Democrats lying about Biden’s decline and the debacle when it became obvious at the debate and he had to drop out.
When did you poll every Democrat? Democrats had free open vigorous discussions about his ability and convinced him to step down.
Yet Trump produces hour, hour and half long, word-salad-fests that rarely if ever make sense and almost one questions it. And supporters eventually admit some of the more outrageous hallucinations were fabrications and almost no one questions it.
I can see where it’s all the Democrats fault.
I was not referring to everyone who registers or votes democratic, but the Democratic Party establishment/Democrats in office. Those people only had vigorous discussion about Biden’s ability after the disastrous debate when everyone realized the emperor had no clothes. Up until that point administration officials and Democratic higher ups claimed Biden was totally capable. Just weeks before the debate they coined the term “cheap fake” to try and discredit earlier videos of Biden’s decline (making the argument that the videos were not fabricated deep fakes, but somehow not representative of his mental acuity, when they really were).
You are right Trump lies all the time. However, the Democrats got caught in the biggest lie of all: the mental state of the person supposedly in charge of nuclear weapons. That made democrat arguments about trump‘s falsehoods hypocritical. When they got rid of Biden it made the ‘save democracy’ argument hollow since they picked their candidate via the most undemocratic backroom method, reminiscent of decisions in smoke filled rooms in the bad old days.
Determinists will argue that given the state of things (high inflation, people think country is on the wrong track, wars in Ukraine and Israel, etc.) the incumbent was bound to lose. But if that’s not true, then yes it is all the Democrats fault. They could have convinced Biden not to run at the start (or in extremis forced him out via the 25th amendment) to have an open primary. Kamala may not have been the candidate (probably not, given her performance in the 2020 primaries, and polling prior to Biden announcing his run in 2024). But whoever it was the Democrats would not have been stuck with a “100 day” candidate lacking momentum, time to make their case or a clear mandate from Democratic voters. That Kamala was burdened with all of these philosophical and practical problems was entirely the result of Democratic Party bungling, not Trump’s fault.
On Fox News and their even wackier competitors. Donald Trump hallucinates so wildly even Fox News cuts him off.
It’s not my fault or either party’s fault that you are unaware that substituting the vice presidential candidate has been the procedure for a very very long time. Like what would have happened if either assassination attempt had been successful. Or either of then, being quite advanced in age, had died on October 30th. Or December 30th.
You can go on hallucinating whatever you want to.
You can believe that Biden has not declined or that almost everyone on the the left didn’t say he hadn’t, you can ignore his nonsensical statements in the debate like “We finally beat Medicare”. But almost everyone else feels otherwise based on what they saw in the news or in the debate. The emperor had no clothes.
The idea that Biden’s decline was just a right wing talking point was actually the problem: the White House and top Democrats claimed that for months until the debate decisively showed it was a lie. At that point the consequences of pushing the claim that he wasn’t declining were disastrous.
For the Vice President elect to replace the President elect before inauguration is in the constitution, but nothing says a Vice Presidential candidate/nominee has to replace a presidential candidate/nominee. What would happen in an election where a sitting President isn’t running (like Obama/McCain) or where a VP nominee has not been picked? The rules for both parties are actually that the party convention/delegates are supposed to vote again if the nominee can’t run after the convention, or that it is an open convention if the presumptive nominee can’t continue before the convention. They don’t have to pick a sitting VP or VP nominee, they vote for whoever they want.
Kamala technically met this standard (the convention voted for her) but the optics were terrible. Biden didn’t die or fall into a coma. The fact he wasn’t the nominee was a problem – he isn’t fit to run for President, but he will still be president for 6 more months? Unlike old school party conventions she never ran in the primary or made the rounds pitching to state delegations like Kennedy in 1960. It looked like insiders pushed him out then anointed her without asking Dem voters. In a year where a major part of the Dem message was ‘Vote wisely or you may not get to vote again’ the fact that no one voted for their nominee was a problem. Together with the ‘Biden is healthy’ line it made two of the biggest Dem talking points appear to be false, which makes it hard to sell the third talking point: ‘Trump is a liar.’
You keep referring to Trump voters as if they are all super-MAGA, but the issue is moderates and independents. Trump won the middle (suburban voters, soccer moms, etc.) not because they swear by everything he says but because 1) economy isn’t great/inflation hurts and 2) Dem bungling noted above that made it hard for moderate voters to trust them.
The parties have rules. They followed them. I’m going to assume they conform to state and Federal laws because nobody has filed lawsuits about it. I’m sorry you don’t like the rules. I’m sorry you live in a fantasy land where an election can be announced on Friday for next Tuesday.
It is odd how people think Biden is too incompetent to take the oath on January 20th 2025 but aren’t calling for his resignation now. Peculiar, isn’t it? Not even on Fox News. Not that I watch more than a moment or two of Fox News. I’m sure I would have heard about it through other sources. I feel sorry for the defenseless staffers who have to watch Fox and it’s competitors for the outrageous clips.
It’s very very unlikely that people who supposedly care deeply about “We finally beat Medicare” have not heard that Trump insisted for days that people are eating cats and dogs. Has insisted for a long time that doctors are murdering full term babies. Or that exporters pay our tariffs. The word salad has become increasingly bizarre and incoherent. So incoherent that even Fox News cuts him off. Convince yourself, really really really hard, that people who care deeply about Biden’s mental state are unaware of the incoherent word salad. And voted for it. Maybe if you get some ruby slippers, you can click your heels.
I’m sorry you spent so much time and energy squirming desperately to avoid facing that this election confirms voters don’t care about the issues they say they do. They don’t have any problem with the racism. Or the xenophobia. Or the misogyny. Or the word salad.
Checked the news and there has been movement in the Manhattan case. Lets not forget about two impeachments, an insurrection and five grand juries indicted him. ( two separate grand juries in the singular Washington D.C. case. ) Yes they care deeeeeeeeeeply about Biden’s mental state.
Silly me, I forgot the Georgia case required two separate grand juries to both recommend prosecution. Where some of his co conspirators have pleaded guilty. Certainly shows that people are deeply concerned about Joe Biden.
It is odd how people think Biden is too incompetent to take the oath . . . but aren’t calling for his resignation now.
But Republicans were pointing this out, repeatedly. The bigger problem is that it was Dems who think he is too incompetent (because the Dem establishment forced him out of the race) but who are not calling for his resignation. You are right that this is odd, but it is the Democratic Party that is being odd this way, and that is where the credibility gap comes from.
people who supposedly care deeply about “We finally beat Medicare” have not heard that Trump insisted for days that people are eating cats and dogs.
They have heard what Trump said. But if Trump lies about that, then Biden’s team lies about his mental state, people throw up their hands and say ‘all politicians are liars’ and revert to voting because real wage growth is bad. It was the Democrats who made it easy for people to ignore Trumps lies and word salad and anti-democratic tendencies by lying about a candidate who was producing worse word salads and replacing him in an undemocratic manner.
Also, quite frankly you are clicking ruby slippers if you think Trump’s and Biden’s speaking is equal. Trump rambles on with a word salad; during the debate Biden sounded like he had early onset dementia.
voters don’t care about the issues they say they do.
Actually they do. A third of voters felt the economy was the most important issue, two thirds think the economy is poor or not so good, almost half say they are worse off than four years ago, and three quarters say inflation is hurting them. Trump won all of those groups.
they care deeeeeeeeeeply about Biden’s mental state.
Some do. People don’t want someone who seems like an Alzheimer’s patient as President. Polling seemed to show Biden would have lost even worse. The bigger issue is how the Dems handled it. Keep Biden from running and it’s no issue. Lie about it and get caught and it is. “Always the cover up, never the crime.”
Four years ago we were all hoping the Phase three trials of the vaccines were going well. Unemployment was doing great, down from a peak of over 13 percent it was down to “bad recession” levels. Inflation wasn’t a problem, deflation was. Because people were afraid to spend. Or couldn’t because supply chains were seizing up.
People who think they were better off four years ago are deeper in denial than you are.
@adrion, the data from the US government literally says that median wages were higher four years ago adjusted for inflation.
And inflation matters more than unemployment in elections as typically unemployment affects people who are less likely to vote more. People with around the median income do vote however.
People who think they were better off four years ago are deeper in denial than you are.
As I’m sure you are well aware, people answering that question are referring to how they were doing during Trump’s presidency versus Biden’s, not how they were doing exactly on Nov 5th 2020. For most of Trump’s term the economy was great, for most of Biden’s not so much. People are not stupid, they remember how things were for themselves a few years ago.
As you are also aware the inflation question is about how inflation is affecting people now, not what inflation was four years ago. There may have been some short deflation in 2020, but inflation skyrocketed in 2021/2022, and it has impacted a lot of people. Ignoring this fact and calling people who worry about buying groceries racist won’t get them to vote against Vance in 2028.
2022 wasn’t four years ago. Gas was $2.20 a gallon four years ago. Because people weren’t leaving the house.
You are back to arguing that money is the only thing they care about?
I don’t know which is sadder. Voting for the racist because you are racist or voting for the racist because money is the only thing you care about.
@adiron, it’s the economy stupid.
If the economy was so so fabulous during the first Trump Administration he should have won in a landslide in 2020. He didn’t.
Inflation WAS bad. It isn’t anymore. Voting for an execrable candidate because your pocketbook WAS hurting tells me all you care about is money.
Part of that is that Trump handled Covid badly which people don’t care about anymore (also a lot of people have a more lassi faire attitude to Covid now than in 2020)
Keep trying to soothe yourselves. I hope all of the excuses, rationalizations, explaining, forgiving etc. make you feel much better. It doesn’t change that half the people who showed up to vote either support the racism, misogyny, xenophobia etc. or are untroubled by it.
I have done some more looking into congestion charge schemes elsewhere and here is the list:
In comparison to those cities above New York the subway has always been OK when I have used it, but there are a lot of complaints here about reliability and speed, and the improvements since world war 2 have been much weaker than the others on the list. No idea about buses but assume worse than the cities above. Also in terms with access to the surrounding areas the LIRR/Metro North in New York have roughly half of the the regional South East/East to London passenger numbers comparing 2023 for New York with 2022-23 for London. London also has much stronger train service coverage if you look at the public transport map and much higher service levels off peak.
Frankly agreeing to do the congestion charge for New York at $9/day is still pretty bold. It isn’t Paris or Tokyo. When they tried to do a congestion charge in Manchester in the UK it was rejected 80-20 in a referendum.
As for you personally not being impressed with subway improvements since WWII this funding is going to go towards the subway.
“Buried on page 81 of Appendix 18A in the final environmental assessment for congestion pricing is an astounding statistic that shows just how few New York City residents commute by car to the tolling zone of Manhattan from homes that are more than one-half mile from high-speed public transit.
It’s just 5,200 city residents, a smaller number than the average number of people who go watch the woebegone 2023 Oakland A’s.”
As for you personally not being impressed with subway improvements since WWII this funding is going to go towards the subway.
Bad spamfilter. Sorry.
NYC has the advantage, compared to most of those cities, of being isolated by water from its surroundings, with many of the existing crossings already tolled. So a congestion charge is not such a change.
I read this site for amusement and maybe to learn a few things now and then about mass transportation. I have no particular view on congestion pricing. I do, however, truly wish New York, California and Illinois would collectively get their act together so that New Yorkers, Californians and Illinoisans (did you know that’s a real word?) would stop moving to Arizona in general and Phoenix in particular. I’ve lived in Phoenix full time since 1983 and the population has more than tripled since then, with most of the in-migration coming from dysfunctional states such as the three noted above (and yes I did live in all three at one time many, many decades ago, but I had the good sense to leave before the ship hit the iceberg). So please, fix your governance and transportation and whatever else needs fixing so people stop leaving these states and while you’re at it, take back a few hundred thousand of your former residents. Thank you in advance.
Happy would drain the whole sunbelt, thanks