I Said "Pass the Baton" to Those Further Left than I, Not "Bend the Knee"
Last night at dinner at Iyesare, Noah Smith admonished me for not making it clear that I said "pass the baton" to those further left, not "bend the knee". So here I make that clear, and repost:
Carville-Hunt "Two Old White Guys" Podcast:
Al Hunt: Brad, your critique is brilliant.... Your solution that worries me. Turn it over to the left, and then try to make their proposals slightly more palatable. I don't see how that becomes in any fashion a winning coalition, legislatively or politically.
Brad DeLong: I said: pass the baton, right? I said: pass the baton.
And yet as the thing spreads out into the Internet, it gets turned into "surrender", "abandon my beliefs", "bend at the knee", all kinds of other things. [It was pass the baton.] You pass the baton for a lap in the race. [It is a long race.]
What will be possible legislatively in 2021 depends on a lot of things. We cannot now forecast them. I've given up forecasting what the American political system will do. I gave that up in December, 2000. [The American political system is] simply not rational at all. It will do whatever it does, in whatever crazy way. And we don't really know what the state of things we'll be at the start of 2021. [We cannot yet know] what we should not do, what we should not do, [for that lap]...
#highlighted #politics #moralresponsibility #orangehairedbaboons #publicsphere
