Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i’m not disputing your analysis. hope is a duty, not a prediction. i’m glad we’ve shared a pretty long road. look forward to better days down that shared road when you are ninety.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
you can give it up if you want to. i'd say it's my often difficult job not to.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
it does no good to dwell on how narrow the odds are. we have to identify things that can be done (not just this one, a portfolio) and find ways to make them happen. of course we can fail, but it's a vulgar Pascal's wager at this point. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i hope you live a long time, and i don't mean that as a backhanded curse. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
I think we want legislation to be popular, across party lines. Like electoral reform. There’s consensus the contemporary two party system has reached a cul-de-sac. @leedrutman.bsky.social’s already drafted text to remedy it, at least in the house. (i’d add approval voting for the Senate.)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
lots easier than formal amendments. Biden got IRA, CHIPS, BIL through despite not controlling. it is possible to legislate through disagreement.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Yes! Exactly! And we can make changes, important changes, to that entire body of work, much more easily than extraordinarily cumbersome constitutional amendments.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
“candor and honesty” were sarcastic here.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
I am an American citizen. It is the foundational document, but it is only a few pages long. It’s a sketch. It does constrain the shape of government, but much of how government and elections actually operate we’ve had to fill in. And we can change, all within the bounds of the Constitution. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
How many House members are there? Act of Congress. How big is the Supreme Court, and what is its relationship to subordinate courts? Act of Congress. How are House members elected? Act of Congress. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
There is an incredible amount you can change the structure and form of our government with only an act of Congress. The US Constitution is only a sketch. It has a few immovable bones, but much of how the government is elected and operates is malleable.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
why should we assume a Trump SEC won’t normalize Elon Musk levels of candor and honesty?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
“we’ll add artificial banana flavor to idaho spuds. american ingenuity!”
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
you’ve made my day. and let me tell you, it was looking unmakable.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
“some of them, i assume, are good things.”
Loading quoted Bluesky post...
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
one answer, perhaps hard to communicate in the political rough and tumble but good on the merits, is free trade but with balance enforced via capital controls (taxation of foreign investments) rather than destructive tariffs. drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/04/20/k...
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i think they’ve decided, the way you deal with annoying “follow the science” people is ensure that there is no science to follow.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
depends how unpopular they become.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
they’ve graduated from constitutional hardball to unconstitutional hardball, or maybe as @jamellebouie.net might put it anticonstitutional hardball.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
[new draft post] Overall but not bilateral balance https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/04/30/overall-but-not-bilateral-balance/index.html
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
If we impeach Trump, Vance, and Mike Johnson, then Grassley is the President. Not that he's great, but he's old and old-school, and if the MAGA-ists are sufficiently disgraced so this could happen, we can insist on a decent VP nomination too. It's a caretaker administration until 2028.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(2028 election, 2029 inauguration.)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
no, i didn't know that. i guess many other countries are free of disease then.