Friday, November 11, 2016

Arnold Kling on Trump

I also think that those progressives who are predicting that the election will have dire consequences for women, gays, and people of color are making a tactical error. They are setting a very low bar for Mr. Trump and the Republicans. When four years from now we still have civil rights laws in place, mostly-legal abortion, and widely-legal gay marriage, these putative victim communities will be wondering what all the fuss was about.

Going forward, the Republicans desperately need to catch on with one or more of the demographic groups that currently is in the bag for the Democrats. Read David French’s piece again. My takeaway is that if the Republicans stand still, then all the Democrats have to do to win the Presidency is find a candidate who does not turn off the weakly-attached voters.
Nor is Trump an ideologue:
As for ideology, Mr. Trump is not a man of strong principles. He will not treat his victory as a conservative mandate, nor should he.

On health care policy, pundits are talking as if a Senate filibuster is inevitable if the Republicans try to repeal Obamacare. I would bet against this. For one thing, I don’t think Democratic pollsters are going to be advising their clients to fall on their swords to keep Obamacare. For another thing, I would not put it past Mr. Trump to work with Democrats on a new law. You may have forgotten that before Mr. Obama, whose idea of talking with the other side was to say “I won,” we had Presidents who were able to negotiate bipartisan bills. Do not be shocked if Mr. Trump does this. That would, however, result in health care policy that is at best a mixed bag for those of us with a preference for market-oriented solutions.
BTW, I'm NOT one of those with a preference for a "market-oriented solution."

And we're going to get infrastructure projects, in part because regulatory issues are going to be disappeared.

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