Author: Matt Bruenig

Matt Yglesias has a piece titled Against Murder-Suicide Politics where he criticizes the left for threatening or actually withholding electoral support from Democrats who do not pursue their desired policies. Yglesias starts the piece by establishing what he thinks is normal and productive behavior within a political coalition by pointing to how the right-wing of… Continue reading Dysfunctional Coalition Politics

I’ve written three times before on the question of how much the Dobbs decision, which gave states the power to tighten abortion laws, has actually reduced abortion in the US (I, II, III). The upshot of those pieces was that it has not reduced abortion very much (~2%) because the vast majority of the US population lives in… Continue reading Abortions Now Exceed Pre-Dobbs Levels

Noah Smith wrote a piece at his newsletter (which I generally find interesting) titled “Western leftists have lost the plot” where he collects a handful of extreme reactions to the recent Hamas attack and then pivots to psychoanalyzing why the Left has reacted this way. The short of it is that the Left, in his… Continue reading Why Did Noah Smith Post This?

When you are in the discourse for as long as I have been, you start to spot certain patterns of discursive behavior. One such pattern is that groups of people who are loosely affiliated in some way will create and then reinforce myths and misinterpretations about individuals and institutions that don’t make any sense. What’s… Continue reading Alarmgate

Ross Douthat had a response to my response to the various promotional pieces about Melissa Kearney’s new book. Douthat’s response is generally OK but, in addition to clarifying my point, I do want to respond to one part of Douthat’s piece here, as he says something that has been annoying me for a while but… Continue reading Response to Douthat on Two-Parent Families