What a year! It began with America barely surviving an attempted coup, and Joe Biden surprising nearly everyone by resolving to govern in the spirit of FDR. It is ending with a whimper, as Joe Manchin holds the entire progressive agenda hostage.
Here were some of my favorite pieces this year:
I remain optimistic that 2022 will be better, and that the Democrats not-so-secret weapon, as I wrote, will be Donald Trump, who will wreak plenty of havoc in his own party, thus reminding dispirited Democrats of the importance of mobilizing to vote.
I follow a number of beats, including China and other trade subjects. Heres a sampling of that.
My two favorite feature pieces of the year were this one making the case that capitalism has become so toxic that liberal values require something very like so*ial*sm
and this deeply reported piece on the relationship between the progressive movement and the Democratic Party.
I paid close attention to Fed Chairman Jay Powells deft campaign to get himself reappointed to chair our central bank. As I wrote in this piece, he turned in a masterful audition in which he dismissed inflation worries and pledged allegiance to low interest rates. That evidently did the trick. No sooner did Biden reappoint him than Powell reversed course and became an inflation hawk. So it goes.
I love the three-times-weekly On Tap format. It gives me a chance to write short, topical posts, and to indulge my interest in political language, as in this piece on how lousy liberals are at political language.
As a sometime poet, I offered my rhymed defense of Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel) who was in fact a great racial progressive.
I also keep close track of faithless Democrats, as in these pieces on Larry Summers and Jason Furman.
The rediscovery of industrial policy and the end of nave or corrupt globalization is another subject of long-standing interest.
The American political economy reaps what it sows. It is his fate that it falls in on President Bidenand up to us to revive a majority progressive politics.
Thank you for reading and supporting the Prospect, and wishing all of us a better new year.
