Ruy Teixeira returns: to same drum he’s been beating for some time—the Democratic Party’s support among non-white voters is waning:

Democrats may have thought that they were on the right track in the wake of the “racial reckoning” of 2020. Surely if Democrats went all-in on social justice and racial “equity,” that would lock down the nonwhite vote. That was a chimera as a careful examination of actually-existing opinions and priorities among actually-existing nonwhite voters would have quickly revealed. Perhaps now that declining nonwhite support for the Democrats is “official”, that much-needed examination can take place.

There is a thorny question to which I do not know the answer but I would bet there are some Democratic pollsters who do. What turnout among non-white voters do Democrats need to win national elections? Recent elections have been sufficiently close that they don’t need to lose all non-white votes to lose the election. Just enough of them.

I found this commentary on the war in Ukraine by Michael Kofman and Rob Lee at War On the Rocks informative and optimistic although not unduly so. Here’s a snippet:

The West ought to be introspective about missing important decision points, which had a profound impact on the course of the war, constraining everyone’s options later on. Decisions about future support should have been made well before this offensive even began, assuming that it was unlikely to end the war. Instead, another cycle of attritional fighting may ensue after this offensive, followed by yet another surge effort to restore Ukraine’s offensive potential. In short, the West has been unappreciative of the lead times required to reconstitute military potential or provide Ukraine with a decisive advantage.

The recent anonymous criticism by officials spilling select narratives in the press, rather than fostering an open discussion about Ukraine’s challenges and successes, reveals enduring problems in this war effort: The first, is a lack of Western understanding of how Ukrainian forces fight. The second, which is closely related, is an insufficient Western presence on the ground to enable closer coordination or even the invaluable understanding that could be offered by battlefield observers. Western capitals have sought to keep this Ukraine’s war, avoiding an in-country presence that includes contractor support or trainers. To be clear, there are Western contractors and companies operating independently in Ukraine, but this is not the same as a government sanctioned and supported effort. There is much more that could be done without becoming directly involved in fighting or deploying uniformed personnel on the ground. The hitherto cautious approach has clear limits to its efficacy. Western support thus far has been sufficient to avert a Ukrainian defeat, and arguably has imposed a strategic defeat on Russia, but not enough to ensure a Ukrainian victory. Independent of the outcome of this offensive, Western countries need to be clear-eyed about the fact that this will be a long war. Taken together, Western industrial and military potential greatly exceeds Russia’s, but without the political will, potential alone will not translate into results.

I found the observation about what I think is a general Western indifference to understanding how the Ukrainians make war particularly astute.

Meanwhile at New Statesman Lily Lynch offers a more somber assessment:

As a more sober reality sets in, it’s worth asking why Western governments and the media were such effusive boosters of Ukraine’s war effort. The writer Richard Seymour has suggested that part of it was about identity formation, wherein Ukraine is emblematic of an “idealised Europe” or even democracy itself, while Russia represents Oriental despotism and authoritarianism. The war thus embodies the supposed civilisational struggle theorised by Samuel Huntington between democracies and autocracies, promoted by the Biden administration through initiatives such as its Summit for Democracy. That annual event aims to “renew democracy at home and confront autocracies abroad”, underlining the continuity between liberal opposition to the putative authoritarian affinities of Donald Trump and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But beyond the merely symbolic there was a practical rationale for the kinds of coverage we saw in the war’s early months: the conflict in Ukraine has revived a waning Atlanticism – a long-sought aim of proponents of Nato enlargement. Just a few years ago Emmanuel Macron, the French president, declared Nato “braindead”; the war in Ukraine has brought it back to life. Finland and Sweden applied to join. Critics say that the governments of both countries used “shock doctrine” tactics to convince their respective populations to abandon their policy of neutrality, making the decision to apply for membership while the war was top news and the public was still afraid.

I don’t believe that the change in tone betokens an imminent change in policy.

These are tiny snippets from lengthy pieces.

I’ll just contribute this which touches on a theme I have mentioned before. As U. S. aid to Ukraine in its prosecution of war against Russia approaches $100 billion

1. How much of that aid has been spent opposing Russia?
2. How much of that has been siphoned off by corrupt U. S. and Ukrainian businesses and officials? 1%? 10%? 90%? It makes a difference.
3. How do you know?
4. How much has just been wasted?

I’m seeing quite a few articles demanding that either Joe Biden’s or Donald Trump’s name be withdrawn from contention for the nomination of their respective parties for president in 2024. Let’s engage in a little thought experiment. What would happen if neither Trump’s nor Biden’s name are on the ballot in 2024?

My speculations are that

1. whoever succeeds them would be more extreme than either Trump or Biden, the Democratic candidate being more left wing than Biden and the Republican candidate more right wing Trump
2. victory would hinge on turning out the base
3. the campaign would be even more negative

Not a particularly bright prospect.

In comments my attention was called to this statistic:

Find more statistics at Statista
The NYT took note of the same phenomenon, noting that no one understood why that was happening.

My reaction was this:

Both graphs address the same period; one shows that total costs are falling while the other illustrates that the average cost continues to rise. I’ll leave the interpretation of that to the interested reader.

All I ask is that any decline in total Medicare spending not be used as an argument for increasing Medicare reimbursement rates.

The graph above was sampled from a Washington Post editorial. I find it difficult to relate their thesis, that young Americans are eager to work, to that graph. Perhaps what they meant to say is that young Americans are more eager to work now than they were a few years ago. College enrollments are down, too, so that doesn’t explain what’s going on, either.

Things are certainly different from when I was a kid. I have filed a 1040 every year since I was 14.

Update

After looking at that graph again, it’s clear that graduating from high school used to be synonymous with working for 40-50% of the population and that was very consistent over a long period. That changed in the 1990s, coincident with the push for higher education. Whether that was cause, effect, or both I have no idea.

Labor Day is traditionally a celebration of and for organized labor. Let’s think about organized labor a bit. The demographics of the construction trades look like this:

All of these trades are composed almost entirely of men.

There are probably multiple reasons for the distribution including preference, history, and that in the trades you work your way up. You don’t enter as a master craftsman. You begin by doing menial work, then become an apprentice, a journeyman, and, finally, a master. If you’re not willing or able to do the menial work, you won’t become a master.

One more statistic to reflect on. The majority of union members in the American workforce are now government employees.

In her Wall Street Journal column Peggy Noonan wrote, like a middle schooler, about how she spent her summer vacation. She spent it reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Tolstoy’s masterwork is long (more than 1,000 pages) but his thoughts remain relevant.

I wanted to cite one passage from her column because it provides some direct quotes on Tolstoy’s assessment of the Germans, French, British, and Russian that are worth reflecting on:

I didn’t understand what good company Tolstoy is. The Russian general Pfuel, an ethnic German, is “self-confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion—science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth.” A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally as irresistibly attractive. “An Englishman is self-assured, as being of the best organized state of the world.” “A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known.”

I wonder what his assessment of today’s Americans would be?

I read War and Peace (1,200 pages), Anna Karenina (800 pages), and Resurrection (300 pages) along with other, shorter Tolstoy works in one 16 week period more than 50 years ago. I doubt I’ll read any of them again not because they’re not worth reading but because reading them is such a fulltime job.

I encourage you to read this piece from The Moscow Times by Boris Bondarev. Here’s a snippet:

As Kyiv’s counteroffensive stalls and a decisive Ukrainian victory looks increasingly unlikely, suggestions by some American experts that the United States should initiate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine may seem tempting. However these arguments are nothing but counterproductive in terms of ensuring a lasting peace in Europe and the world beyond.

The very statement that the U.S. should launch negotiations indicates that the author seeks to present the war as a purely regional conflict rooted in a land dispute between neighboring states. Such a reading is undoubtedly intended to reduce anxiety about the prospect of further escalations. Unfortunately, that understanding is far from the truth.

No matter how much Washington assures itself with the incantation that the U.S. is not a party in this conflict, Moscow assumes the opposite. For President Vladimir Putin, this war is the culmination of an epic and eternal confrontation between an independent Russia and its eternal enemy, the West led by the United States. In this context, Ukraine is not a sovereign actor, and Kyiv’s unilateral surrender is the only outcome Moscow will accept.

The Moscow Times is a dissident news web site in both Russian and English. Originally, its headquarters was in Moscow. Since the crackdown on coverage of the war in Ukraine, it has been in Amsterdam. Here’s the kernel of the post:

It is time for the U.S. to make a clear decision about whether it supports Ukraine and, by extension, Western democracy and rules-based order from violent revision. Or, on the other hand, whether it has made a mistake by agreeing to help Ukraine, in which case it should urgently make peace with Putin (neglecting the fact that the billions of dollars of the U.S. taxpayers spent on helping Kyiv have been actually wasted).

The goal of the war for Ukraine, and the West as a whole, should not just be a military victory in Ukraine. Rather, they need a global defeat of Putin’s regime and to banish it from the world stage.

To this end, the following steps would be required. The U.S. must abandon its half-hearted arms supply policy and provide Ukraine with all the necessary weapons as soon as possible. It must lift the ban on hitting military targets deep inside Russian territory and untie the hands of the Ukrainian military, given that the Russians do not restrict themselves in the same way. Finally, the U.S. has to clearly state that it is Putin himself who is the enemy of Ukraine and the West and to offer a vision of future relations without Putin – a vision potentially acceptable for both Putin’s own elite and Russian pro-democratic forces. Engaging with the Russian opposition movement could be instrumental in fleshing out such a vision.

I agree with Mr. Bondarev’s assertion that we should clearly identify our strategic objectives and pursue them. I don’t believe we agree on what those strategic objectives should be. I think he may be conflating his own objectives with the U. S. strategic objectives. Where I think we disagree most is that I think he’s wrong in attributing U. S. posture to “hesitancy” or half-heartedness. We don’t have the ability to supply Ukraine with arms at the rate they’re requesting. We abandoned that ability decades ago. We haven’t really begun rebuilding what we’ve been tearing down and it will take us a considerable amount of time to accomplish that. If we want to accomplish it which I do not believe is completely clear. I think we should want to rebuild our industrial capacity. What does the Biden Administration think?

In their zeal to return DC and by extension other big city workers back to the office, the editors of the Washington Post have produced a list of “carrots” to extend to lure workers back to their offices and reinvigorate downtowns:

1. Give out $10 lunch coupons in September.
2. Waive food truck fees through the end of the year.
3. Hire private security.
4. Offer free or reduced-price parking downtown on weekends.
5. Lower fees to open a small business through year-end.
6. Heavily promote events and eateries.
7. Get the second gentleman and other celebs out downtown.

Maybe some of those might have some incremental benefit but I suspect the editors will be frustrated by how little effect they will have.

IMO if they want to reinvigorate downtowns there are two sine qua non measures:

• Reduce crime in the downtown shopping areas
• Make public transport clean, safe, and efficient

As to office workers, I think there’s a question they need to ask themselves. If most of the people with whom you interact in the course of a day are not in the office, why should you be? That’s even more true when the people with whom you interact aren’t even in the same hemisphere as you are.

There’s another factor I think they should consider. Different age cohorts find different things motivating. When dealing with Baby Boomers telling them to come into the office might be enough but that is unlikely to be the case with Generation X, Millennials, or Generation Z.

Generation X invented the notion of “work-life balance”. They and subsequent cohorts find that motivating to various degrees. How do you achieve work-life balance while spending a couple of hours commuting and eight (or more) hours in the office? That’s a question. I don’t know the answer. I don’t even know if it’s possible.

Considering federal government workers only, most are either Baby Boomers or Generation X. With the right legislation they could be compelled to return to the office. I suspect an amazingly large percentage would choose to retire rather than return.

Here’s a round-up on motivating different age cohorts. In my own experience it’s like herding cats.