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Analysis: President Trump's 2020 Position

Selzer & Company, a gold-standard pollster that is rated "A+" by statistics aggregator FiveThirtyEight, released their latest poll at 5am on Wednesday. Because of Selzer's sterling reputation, I am inclined to accept their results at face value. However, this survey particularly shows the importance of looking beyond the headline numbers and digging into the data.


In the poll, former Vice President Joe Biden nominally beats President Donald Trump by 47-43% in the national popular vote. However, only 55% of Biden voters say their minds are made up, compared to 82% of Trump voters. Framed in different terms, 43% of declared Biden voters say they "could be persuaded"; only 17% of declared Trump voters say the same.

Let us do some math. For the sake of simplicity, we will ignore the voters who are "not sure" on the question of persuadability.

We can multiply Biden's total proportion, 0.47, by 0.43 (the proportion of Biden voters who are flappable)…
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Editorial: Coronavirus Shows Drawbacks of Statist Healthcare Systems

Data aggregated by RealClearPolitics indicates that the United States has 133,146 cases of the Wuhan coronavirus. We lead the world handily in infections, but surprisingly, we place sixth for deaths: 2,363 Americans have died from the virus, a death rate of 1.77%.

Out of the "top" thirty countries on RealClearPolitics' list, only six countries purport to have a lower death rate than the United States: Germany, South Korea (which leads the world in testing), Turkey, Austria, Ireland and Malaysia.

The other 23 countries on the list have higher death rates despite a much lower number of infections. Italy clocks in at 11.03%, Spain at 8.38%, France at 6.49%, the United Kingdom at 6.29%, the Netherlands at 7.10%, Belgium at 3.98%, Switzerland at 2.02%, Sweden at 2.97%, and Denmark at 3.01%.


I am deliberate in listing these countries: They are all developed, democratic Western nations with per-capita GDPs in the same neighborhood as the United States. Better yet, many of these…
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City Journal: Bureaucracy Hindered Coronavirus Response

Last week, I published an editorial, "Coronavirus Shows Virtues of Limited Government," which posits the coronavirus crisis as an affirmation of federalism and limited government. A core component of my argument is that the CDC and the FDA -- epitomes of Washington, D.C. bureaucracy -- suppressed private development of test kits. This led to a dearth of testing and limited information on the breadth of the domestic epidemic.


My line of argument has been further developed by James R. Copland, writing in the public-policy review City Journal. Bluntly, Copland notes, "Some of the holdups in the critical early U.S. testing effort read like paradigmatic illustrations of bureaucratic bloat."

Copland elaborates, describing how early actions by the CDC and the FDA led to a shortage of tests:

The reasons [for limited testing]: the American regulatory system, cumbersome even in emergency settings; and the specific choices made by regulators that proved to be tragic misjudgmen…
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Editorial: Nancy Pelosi and the Role of Money

The U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have each proposed their own coronavirus-response legislation. Broadly speaking, the Senate bill is supply-side, focusing on relief for corporations, and the House bill is demand-side, focusing on relief for the public.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's proposal, called the Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act, would  give each American $1,500 (though there are restrictions on payouts for those making more than $75,000 annually). To enact these payouts, the bill calls for the creation of a digitalized dollar. Forbes reports,

The bill establishes a digital dollar, which it defines as 'a balance expressed as a dollar value consisting of digital ledger entries that are recorded as liabilities in the accounts of any Federal Reserve Bank or ... an electronic unit of value, redeemable by an eligible financial institution (as determined by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System).' Additionally, a digital dollar w…
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Editorial: America's Disconnected Political Class

As working-class North Carolinians scrimp and save their way through the coronavirus-fueled economic crisis, they can rest assured knowing that their United States senator -- Richard Burr -- relieved himself of our nation's collective struggle.


Burr, a Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee and sits on the Senate Health Committee, has been briefed extensively on the Wuhan coronavirus. The New York Times' David Leonhardt observes, "On January 24th, attended a private Senate briefing from senior government scientists about the seriousness of the coronavirus."

Burr was so personallyshaken by what he heard that he sold off his stocks in hotel conglomerates. The Wall Street Journal reports,

Mr. Burr ... made 33 stock trades on Feb. 13 worth between $628,000 and $1.7 million, according to the filings. Congressional rules require that trades be reported in ranges, not precise figures. ...Three of Mr. Burr’s sales were in hotel company stocks—Park Hotels and …
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Editorial: Coronavirus Shows Virtues of Limited Government

The Wuhan coronavirus, which has consumed the lives of 7,330 people worldwide, has hundreds of millions of Americans on lockdown. If economic models prove correct, the pandemic will precipitate a contraction in the United States' economy; the Federal Reserve has responded by cutting the federal funds rate by a hundred basis points to 0-0.25%.

It is obvious that the coronavirus will come with a multitude of consequences, many of them profoundly negative. However, one positive effect of the pandemic may be a renewed commitment to the founding principle of limited government, instituted in the U.S. through federalism.

Federalism is an arrangement wherein the feds do what only the national government can do, e.g. maintaining a military, immigration standards, terms for foreign trade, tribunals for crimes committed across state borders, etc. This restriction of federal power, codified by Article One and the Bill of Rights, protects Americans from tyranny.

Obviously, if government is to…
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Editorial: Spending, Not Tax Reduction, Fuels Deficits

A February 12th article in the Wall Street Journal reports -- correctly -- that the U.S. budget deficit grew by 25% in the first four months of fiscal year 2020. The deficit, of course, is the differential between the amount the federal government collects and the amount that it spends. Every year that the U.S. accumulates a deficit, our national debt -- which currently exceeds $23 trillion -- becomes larger and larger.


Many in the commentariat ascribe our runaway deficits to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which reduced the corporate tax rate by 14 points and lowered individual tax rates. However, the article's fine print refutes that sentiment: "Federal outlays rose 10%, to $1.6 trillion, and federal tax receipts grew 6%, to $1.2 trillion—both record highs for the four-month period" (emphasis mine). Later on, the article notes that "corporate tax revenues, which have been rising since last summer, were up nearly 27%..."

So much for the doomsday projections th…
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