Part One:
“THE FIERCE URGENCY OF LESS.” We speak to Harold Meyerson, editor at large at the American Prospect, about his artIcle with the above evocative title. He chastises the so-called “moderate” Democrats — Biden, Buttigieg and Bloomberg — for trashing the more progressive candidates (Warren, Sanders, and to some extent O’Rourke).
Buttigieg’s argument that big proposals are unenactable — and that anyone who supports them is not qualified to be president — is empirically baseless. Pete relies on the assumption that more moderate, gradual proposals have a chance to win over support from Republicans in Congress (and in the electorate). Buttigieg fails to mention that not one single Republican voted for Obamacare (the ACA). Nor has he offered any reason to believe that any Republicans, now, would support Pete’s own plan (Obamacare-plus-the choice of a public option).
Amy Klobuchar offers the same philosophy: offer less; that’s what people really want. She bragged about her commitment to not offer any plans that she won’t be able to deliver on. This essentially means she will not offer anything substantive at all, because, as Mitch McConnell famously admitted: “I will oppose anything that you (Democrats) support.”
As our guest explained, a true leader’s approach would be to build public support for ambitious programs, by using the bully pulpit (as FDR and TR did). And later, after mobilizing public support for your goals, and advocating for them as strongly as possible, only then should a leader make compromises with opponents, in order to achieve the best result possible in light of the political circumstances. But the negotiations have to be a two-way street: both sides make substantive compromises and do their best to accommodate the other side’s interests as well.
Part Two:
CAN INSURANCE COMPENSATE FOR DAMAGES CAUSED BY CLIMATE CHANGE. We speak with Gireish Shrimali, a researcher at Stanford University, about the enormous damages caused by wildfires, floods, and droughts, as climate change wreaks havoc throughout the world. Insurance companies have become less and less willing to compensate people for the increasing damages. They’ve raised premiums, limited what’s covered under the policy, and have even refused to underwrite any insurance for some people.
The key is that the risks of damage due to climate change have been skyrocketing. Economists have been using “static” models to evaluate risk — i.e., they use models based on historical evidence (past trends) in order to predict how much compensation they’ll have to pay out in the coming years. But in recent years, the trend lines seem to have changed. Because of climate change, the gradual increase in, say, wildfire damage in no longer applicable. As climate change accelerates, the trend line is now a lot more steep in an upward direction. We need models that will take that into account, or else no one who lives in a wildfire zone (or a flood or drought zone) will be able to get their property insured against climate risks — or they’ll have to be exorbitant prices to obtain such insurance.
