The push for ESG and DEI may resonate with the wealthy white woke, but it also seems to correlate with a great shift of minority voters to the Republicans. I often find the publicized push for DEI to be patronizing and undermining to the real accomplishments of minorities, but I am just an old white guy.

Early voting turnout in Georgia makes the hyperbolic claims of voter suppression following the new voting law signed by Governor Kemp look foolish.

The more that Hispanics and Blacks move towards the Republicans the more irreversible this trend becomes. Identity politics is damaging the left. Most Americans, including ethnic and racial minorities, identify as individuals with values driven by more than race.

The independents increasingly decide elections but are muted in the primaries. We nominate candidates in the primaries that fare poorly in the general election, voting based on who they are not rather than who they are. This dynamic leads to political volatility.

Given the above I am willing to give ranked choice voting a try.

In every recent election the voters send a message and the elected fail to hear it. If the voters are voting against the other team, that does not mean the successful have received a mandate. Biden ran as a moderate but tacked hard left after the election. His party will pay for this in a few weeks. Biden won because he was not Bernie Sanders and not Donald Trump, not because there was wide support for his policies.

Abortion is not the leading issue many Democrats want it to be but that does not mean it cannot become one in subsequent elections as the more pressing current problems subside.

The Fed is torn between fighting inflation and avoiding a recession. Fighting inflation should take the priority even at the risk of triggering a recession. We have survived several recessions, but inflation can destroy nations, undermine rational incentives, and subvert economic growth. This is why the risk of inflation had guided our economic policy for so long. We remembered the inflation of the 1970s and the pain to contain it under Volcker. Biden’s comment that Milton Friedman is not in charge anymore has proven painfully true. I was alarmed when he said it.

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