The incredible shrinking president.

Forget the polls. What really matters is that Donald Trump’s ratings are down:

The shock factor around President Trump’s unplanned announcements, staff departures, taunting tweets and erratic behavior is wearing off, and media companies are scrambling to find their next big moneymaker…. Digital demand for Trump-related content (number of article views compared to number of articles written) has dropped 29% between the first 6 months of the Trump presidency and the most recent 6 months, according to data from traffic analytics company Parse.ly.

I’ve always figured this would happen. Americans get bored with their TV gossip phenoms pretty quickly, and the faster they go up the faster they come down. Trump rode TV to victory, and now he’s dealing with the inevitable ratings decline.

But who knows? Maybe he can reinvent himself. Or maybe he can find a new topic to mesmerize the viewing public. Or maybe he can start a war.

OK then:

More than a third of Americans would support a preemptive nuclear strike on North Korea if that country tested a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States, new research has found, even if that preemptive strike killed a million civilians….Most did not want their government to launch a preemptive strike, but a large minority supported such a strike, whether by conventional or nuclear weapons.

What accounts for this? Fear? A board-game view of the world? Or do lots of people not really take poll questions like this seriously?

In 2002 I initially supported the Iraq War, and since then I’ve often wondered why. What I’ve concluded is that until that point I had never really taken war seriously. During my adult lifetime the United States had been involved in various forms of military intervention almost continually: Afghanistan, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, and so on. Some of these were real wars while others were proxies of one kind or another, but they were always around. It just seemed like part of life. Deciding whether you were “for” or “against” any particular military action was like deciding if you supported some particular version of welfare reform or national health care. It was just everyday politics.

It was only when I started blogging that I was forced to think more closely about it. And when I did, I eventually turned against the Iraq War. But that doesn’t happen to very many people. The vast majority of us, whether pro- or anti-war, are never forced to think very hard about it. It’s just background noise, and our positions are part of the tribal loyalties that control our lives.

In that sense, then, it’s not surprising that a third of Americans think it would be a great idea to nuke Pyongyang. They aren’t thinking about a million dead, or the millions more that might die in a counterstrike. They’re all thousands of miles across the ocean anyway.¹ It’s just another US military action, and saying you’re for it isn’t much more than acknowledging that you’re a conservative and accept the conservative line on the military. That’s why 50 percent of Trump supporters approve of a nuclear strike while only 20 percent of non-supporters do.

But I still wonder: how many of these people would actually press the button if they were the ones who had to do it? Not a third or a half, surely. But a tenth?

¹In fact, the poll makes this obvious. In one scenario, 15,000 North Korean deaths are expected. In another scenario, it’s 1.1 million. Support for a nuclear strike is exactly the same regardless.

Over the weekend we learned that many schools named after Robert E. Lee would like to change their name but don’t want to pay for new signage. This means they need to find someone else named Lee to name their school after. But who?

We can help. Vote for your favorite Lee below, and I’ll post the results later today. This will give us a definitive list of the best Lees for schools to name themselves after.

UPDATE: Polling is closed. See the results here.

Paul Krugman writes today about the fate of the rural poor in two neighboring states. Kentucky accepted Medicaid expansion while Tennessee didn’t:

According to a Georgetown University study that covered a seven-year period spanning the introduction of the A.C.A., the percentage of low-income rural adults without health insurance fell 27 points in Kentucky, only six points in Tennessee.

I clicked and took a look at the Georgetown study. Here’s what the rural uninsured rate looks like for all expansion states compared to all nonexpansion states:

In 2009, the states are pretty mixed up. By 2016, however, there’s virtually no overlap at all: it’s all red at the top and all blue at the bottom. On average, the expansion states reduced the uninsurance rate of their rural population by 19 percentage points. The non-expansion states reduced it by only 6 points.

And it’s all for nothing. Literally. Expansion cost the states nothing at the start and only a tiny amount past 2020. It was virtually free, and the funding came from taxes these states were paying regardless. There was no reason to refuse Medicaid expansion except for sheer spite toward Barack Obama or else simple hatred of providing services for the poor—or both.

I can barely conceive of the kind of mind that thinks this way. The cruelty and contempt for their fellow citizens is just jaw dropping. And then they go out and tell all these rural folks that only Republicans have their best interests at heart and Democrats just want to rob them blind. How do they sleep at night?

Tom Williams/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom via ZUMA

Democrats are split over a bill to fund $4.5 billion in emergency humanitarian aid for the southwest border:

With a House vote on the package planned for Tuesday, some Democrats are revolting over the measure, fearing that the aid will be used to carry out Mr. Trump’s aggressive tactics, including deportation raids that he has promised will begin within two weeks….In separate conference calls on Sunday, more than 30 members of the Progressive Caucus and more than 15 members of the Hispanic Caucus aired their concerns, many of them arguing that the legislation did not set high enough standards for migrant shelters or do enough to block money from going toward enforcement.

“We all want to address the problems at the border, but we don’t know that there are enough sticks in this bill to make sure that the Trump administration actually spends the money the way they’re supposed to,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and the co-chairwoman of the Progressive Caucus. “He’s creating these crises and then trying to point a finger at Democrats to give him more money, which he then uses for his own purposes.”

Under normal circumstances, it might be best to pass the bill quickly and hope for the best. But Donald Trump has made it clear that he considers congressional appropriations to be mere suggestions, giving him the authority to “reprogram” the money any way he chooses. It’s hardly surprising that Democrats don’t trust him after watching him rip up Pentagon funding to build his wall.

On this one, I’m with AOC. Her politics aren’t entirely mine, but her instinctive understanding of how to deal with people like Trump is unrivaled. “I will not fund another dime to allow ICE to continue its manipulative tactics,” she said earlier this evening, and I agree. Democrats should put reasonable restrictions into the legislative language and then dare Trump to veto it. The hostage-taking approach to politics won’t stop until it’s crystal clear that it will never, ever work.

The appalling part of this, of course, is that it requires us to grit our teeth and allow Republicans to continue their usual callous treatment of the weak unless they agree to spend the money the way it’s supposed to be spent. But there’s no choice. McConnell and Trump are counting on bleeding-heart liberals to be patsies. They have to learn that we won’t be.

My last post was half in jest, but something I mentioned in it got me curious: there hasn’t been a single president born in the 1950s. And there’s a good chance there never will be. Here’s the birth timeline of every Democratic candidate for president who’s currently polling at 1 percent or higher:

It’s just a coincidence (there were no presidents born in the ’30s, either), but it seems a bit strange. The 1950s were the heart of the most famous generation ever, and not a single person from that decade has ever made it to the Oval Office. I guess the 1946 babies took up all the available slots for president.

Since I’m being cranky today, I might as well stay cranky. Over at Vox, fellow boomer David Goldstein says that our generation ruined college for everyone else:

Boomers like me have pulled up the ladder behind us after being educated largely at taxpayer expense. No wonder young people have piled up more than $1.5 trillion in student debt.

Boomers need some defense here, and I’m going to do it in a time-honored way: by blaming everything on our parents. Here’s a look at tuition at the University of California over the past half century:

UC tuition was free until the late ’60s, when Gov. Ronald Reagan pressed the California legislature to impose a tuition charge. This took the form of an “educational fee,” and this is where it all started. At the time, boomers were about 18 years old on average and had nothing to do with it. Reagan was a member of the Greatest Generation, and so were most members of the legislature.

The next increase came in the early ’80s. Boomers were about 30 and still had little to do with it. The governor at the time was Jerry Brown, a member of the Silent Generation. Ditto for most of the legislature.

The next increase came in the early ’90s. The governor was Pete Wilson, another member of the Silent Generation. The legislature was younger than that, and it’s not until this point that there are finally a fair number of boomers who have to take some blame.

Long story short, the whole concept of charging tuition started with the Greatest Generation and then continued forever once they had set the example. So if you’re going to blame anyone for “pulling up the ladder,” it’s the two generations before the baby boomers, who really did get lots of government bennies and then staged a tax revolt and methodically took them away. On a national level, the modern era of limited government was a product of the Reagan era, and was created by Reagan himself (Greatest Gen) and members of Congress at the time (mostly Greatest and Silent gens). They’re the ones who cut taxes on the rich. They’re the ones who pared back Social Security. They’re the ones responsible for mass incarceration. They’re the ones who blew up antitrust law. They’re the ones who made corporate deregulation into a religion. They’re the ones who turned abortion into an endless political brawl. They’re the ones, exemplified by Alan Greenspan (b. 1926) who created the housing bubble. They’re the ones, starting with Newt Gingrich (b. 1943) and continuing all the way through Mitch McConnell (b. 1942), who transformed American politics into a bloodsport. Boomers simply didn’t have much to do with this. For most of this time, they were too young to have any serious influence.

Now, if you want to blame boomers for welfare reform, sure. Bill Clinton was (barely) a boomer. If you want to blame boomers for the Iraq War, I guess so. George Bush was (barely) a boomer—though the real force behind it was Dick Cheney (b. 1941). If you want to blame us for screwing up Obamacare, that seems sort of churlish, but whatever. Barack Obama was (barely) a boomer—though the real roadblock to a public option was Joe Lieberman (b. 1942) and his centrist pals.

But the fact is that boomers have mostly been left out of power. Not a single person born between 1947-1960 has ever been president. Clinton, Bush, and Trump were all born in 1946¹ and are only barely boomers at all.² Obama was born in 1961 and is more Gen X in outlook than boomer. The entire 1950s heart of the baby boom generation has been shut out.

In any case, it wasn’t us who took everything away from the rest of you. Blame our parents instead.

POSTSCRIPT: For the record, I don’t think that dividing people up into generations makes a lot of sense, and I don’t really blame the Greatest Gen or the Silent Gen for anything. Like all of us, they did their best and ended up with the usual mixed record of good (the Civil Rights Act) and bad (getting us into Vietnam). Ditto for boomers and Xers and millennials.

I just get tired of the whole “boomers pulled up the ladder” thing. If you’re going to play the generational blame game, at least get your generations right.

¹In fact, all three were born in the summer of 1946. What the hell was in the water in the fall of 1945?

²Although they all evaded the draft, which counts for something, I suppose.

Our friends Ken and Kate are the curators of this week’s photos. Their first selection is a pair of pictures of an eastern swallowtail butterfly. The top picture shows the swallowtail in flight, approaching a yummy looking bit of phlox. The bottom picture, taken half a second later, shows the same butterfly after it’s landed. It looks as if the butterfly has three wings, but that’s actually just one of its hindwings, which you normally don’t get a very good view of. But today you do.

Bernie Sanders proposed today that all existing student debt—amounting to about $1.6 trillion—should be wiped off the books. As Kara Voght reports:

In recent years, researchers and policymakers have begun to view student borrowing and its side effects as an economic crisis. The Federal Reserve blames student loan debt for young adults’ declining rate of homeownership, and its current chairman, Jerome Powell, has worried publicly that it could stymy long-term economic growth.

I want to push back against this again. Here’s the raw data on homeownership:

The homeownership rate for young families went up during the housing bubble more than any other age group, so naturally it dropped more than any other age group during the housing bust. This means that if you cherry-pick the year 2005—which you shouldn’t since it’s the biggest outlier in modern housing history—then it looks like young people suffered more than anyone. But they haven’t. Today their homeownership rate is nearly the same as it was in 1995. And aside from retirees, they’ve recovered better than any other age group.

As for total consumer debt, here’s a chart from the New York Fed:

Among all consumers, debt has increased from $7.1 trillion in 2003 to $13.7 trillion today. Adjusted for income, that’s an increase of about 30 percent. Among families under age 30, it’s increased by only 7 percent. Among 30-something families, it’s increased by about 15 percent. If you adjust for the drop in interest rates over this period, it turns out that actual debt service payments have decreased for young families.

It may well be a good idea to make public universities free, but the enormous debt burden faced by young people isn’t a good argument for it. Compared to two decades ago, young workers make about the same amount of money; own homes at about the same rate; and have about the same amount of debt. I wish this were more common knowledge.

Here’s a trip down memory lane:

September 12, 2016: Candidate Donald Trump whines that the Fed should be raising interest rates, but won’t because it’s protecting the economy for Obama. “Any increase at all will be a very, very small increase because they want to keep the market up so Obama goes out and let the new guy … raise interest rates … and watch what happens in the stock market.”

Two years pass, during which the Fed raises interest rates….

June 22, 2019: “I am at Camp David working on many things, including Iran! We have a great Economy, Tariffs have been very helpful both with respect to the huge Dollars coming IN, & on helping to make good Trade Deals. The Dow heading to BEST June in 80 years! Stock Market BEST June in 50 years!”

Today: “Despite a Federal Reserve that doesn’t know what it is doing – raised rates far too fast (very low inflation, other parts of world slowing, lowering & easing) & did large scale tightening, $50 Billion/month, we are on course to have one of the best Months of June in US history….Now they stick, like a stubborn child, when we need rates cuts, & easing, to make up for what other countries are doing against us. Blew it!

Two years ago Trump said the Fed was raising rates too slowly. Today he says they raised rates too fast. If anybody bothers to ask—and it hardly seems worth the trouble—I’m sure he’ll say that he’s always wanted low interest rates. He did say he was a “low interest rate person,” after all. In any case, this gives him a handy, demagoguish excuse to haul out when the economy declines on his watch because he forgot to time his tax cut to help his reelection campaign.

Hey, remember back when Trump said he had been against the Iraq War from the start, even though he wasn’t? Good times.