Greg Mankiw, deep inside the Harvard bubble

I guess we could have seen this coming. Greg Mankiw, Ec10 mastermind and former Bush advisor, trying to explain why Republicans so dramatically lost the youth vote:

Why? I am not enough of a political scientist to be sure, but recent conversations I have had with some Harvard undergrads have led me to a conjecture: It was largely noneconomic issues. These particular students told me they preferred the lower tax, more limited government, freer trade views of McCain, but they were voting for Obama on the basis of foreign policy and especially social issues like abortion. The choice of a social conservative like Palin as veep really turned them off McCain.

So what does the Republican Party need to do to get the youth vote back? If these Harvard students are typical (and perhaps they are not, as Harvard students are hardly a random sample), the party needs to scale back its social conservatism. Put simply, it needs to become a party for moderate and mainstream libertarians.

This saddens me. That Mankiw actually thinks Harvard students -- among the most privileged, self-important, limousine-libertarian groups of people in the country -- could be a representative sample of anything is beyond ridiculous. (Not to mention, those students who wind up discussing politics with His Conservative Holiness are likely either wingnuts or Ec10 sycophants.) "Perhaps" is not nearly a strong enough qualifier here.

...Also, Ross Douthat, incidentally a rather disgruntled Harvard alum, is right to point out in response that today's young people are generally liberal on economic as well as social issues. I would go further and suggest that the "liberaltarianism" Mankiw's reaching for is basically a yuppie fantasy, a silly and impractical ideology which exists nowhere -- except silly and impractical places like Cambridge.

It'll take a long time before the elite media can admit it, and the right wing never will, but redistributionism is popular; we just saw a resounding affirmation of that, after Republicans called Obama a SOCIALIST!! at the top of their lungs and, surprise, Obama won anyway. (Don't even get me started on "limited government and free trade," which are not exactly big-ticket vote-movers either, DLCism notwithstanding.) Point is: people who think that kids these days are predominantly libertarian are probably spending way too much time writing textbooks.

Halloween- Dems Trivia Edition

    While I was planning on saving this story for the weekly edition of Talking Points, the timing of this piece of news was unfortunate. As a result, I decided to turn this into my first ever DemApples post before too much time passed. I'm hoping that I will have plenty of opportunities to chime in on DemApples as time goes on.

    Without further ado, here's a bit of trivia. Let's see if you can figure out who these quotes are attributed to:

1. Halloween: what is it teaching our kids?...Everybody deserves Handouts!

2. The real reason we need to Hallow-wean ourselves off of this holiday...is that is a pagan celebration of panhandling.

3. Halloween is a liberal holiday, because we're teaching our children...to beg for something for free.

And the answers are:

1. The Onion, in an editorial cartoon.

2. Stephen Colbert, on his show.

3. Sean Hannity, who denounced Halloween on the October 31th edition of Fox News' Hannity and Colmes. Apparently even our satirists cannot manage to outdo the ridiculousness that the right wing media machine often demonstrates. While many conservative groups denounce the pagan origins of the holiday, most conservatives still view Halloween as a secular holiday that allows children to dress up in eat candy. Consequentially, we may not need to worry about the War on Halloween just yet, even if Hannity is coming to take away our Snickers.

    Then again, Greg Mankiw spotlighted this article concerning the deadweight loss of Halloween. Children, your 3-pound candy bags may very well be in jeopardy.