Brian Beutler’s analysis is 100% correct: There’s a theory, popular among liberals, that most of politics is downstream from economics, where rising tides lifting all boats should also leave reactionaries treading water—yet America is booming and reactionaries are as emboldened as ever The center-left’s response to this unfortunate reality is to appeal to MAGA voters with manufacturing jobs and culture-war concessions and hope for the best But the best way to deradicalize the GOP isn’t indirectly by softening up its voters with better industrial policy; it’s directly, by making the party’s extremism and corruption a first order liability for all of its candidates BOOM AND GLOOM By certain measures, we’re living through a brighter morning in America than the younger half of the population has ever experienced. Not by all measures. There’s always a great deal of ruin in a nation, and ours is currently experiencing a decrease in life expectancy, excess death from a new endemic disease, the reversal of progress toward social equality on certain fronts, and very expensive eggs. In that same nation, though, unemployment has never been lower. The inflation crisis you heard so much about wasn’t imaginary, but it was more than offset for most workers by higher wages, and in any case, it appears to have ended months ago. A greater percentage of Americans have health insurance than ever before. And the economy is poised for huge investments in domestic manufacturing, infrastructure, and clean energy. Plug it all into some of the tidier theories…