• David Leonhardt and Yaryna Serkez do an excellent job of laying out how much better economic gains have been historically under Democratic administrations, writing “Why Are Republican Presidents So Bad for the Economy?” in the NY Times.  Some excepts:

“Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republicans, according to a Times analysis. In more concrete terms: The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades.”

and:

• A good piece by Ezra Klein, writing in the NYT: Democrats, Here’s How to Lose in 2022. And Deserve It. Lots of work to be done, little time to do it, and the big question of what to do about the filibuster.

• Jennifer Senior delivers an excellent read in her NYT opinion essay Good Riddance Leader McConnell.  One delightful and fitting except re. McConnell:

“So if hitching his wagon to a sub-literate mob boss with a fondness for white supremacists and a penchant for conspiracy theories and a sociopath’s smirking disregard for the truth meant getting those tax cuts and those conservative judges … hey, that’s the cost of doing business, right?”

• This was a good discussion of the free speech and 1st amendment claims related to the president’s deplatforming from social media.  Kim Wright authors the article in Harvard Law Today, with content from discussions with Yochai Benkler and evelyn douek.

Katz, Lu, and Sanger-Katz, writing in the NY Times, provide some perspective on what the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has meant in the US; using mortality data from the CDC, there were some 400,000 more deaths than normal from March 15, 2020 through December 26, 2020.  Researchers from USC and Princeton estimate that average US life expectancy has declined by 1.13 years to 77.48 years, the lowest since 2003.  Reductions for Black and Latino populations are 3-4 times more than for Whites.

• From John Gruber’s excellent Daring Fireball, quoting George Orwell, who was writing in 1946:

“The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

• On the eve of its anniversary, Heather Cox Richardson presents a heartbreaking reminder of the events leading up to the tragic massacre at Wounded Knee in her December 28 Letters from an American post.  Heartbreaking indeed.

• Richard North Patterson’s essay on the future of Republicanism, The Ghost of Conservatism Future, is definitely worth a read.

• The destructive behavior of the White House’s current occupant has provoked a number of thoughtful pieces on the corrosive effects of the widening gap that exists between political affiliations in the United States.  Some examples:

Bret Stephens, Donald Trump and the Damage Done: “But the catastrophe of Trump’s presidency doesn’t mainly lie in the visible damage it has caused. It’s in the invisible damage. Trump was a corrosive. What he mainly corroded was social trust — the most important element in any successful society…it’s hard to think of any person in my lifetime who so perfectly epitomizes the politics of distrust, or one who so aggressively promotes it. Trump has taught his opponents not to believe a word he says, his followers not to believe a word anyone else says, and much of the rest of the country to believe nobody and nothing at all.

• It’s self-evident that T***p has no concern for his country or the American people, as the damage from his misinformation campaign mounts and the toll of the pandemic worsens; he’s the one doing the “rigging” of the election and subverting the obvious will of the people.

Mitt Romney: “Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the president has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election,” Mr. Romney wrote. “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American president.”

Ben Sasse: “Based on what I’ve read in their filings, when Trump campaign lawyers have stood before courts under oath, they have repeatedly refused to actually allege grand fraud—because there are legal consequences for lying to judges,” Sasse said. “President Trump lost Michigan by more than 100,000 votes and the campaign and its allies have lost in or withdrawn all five lawsuits in Michigan for being unable to produce any evidence,” he added.

Michael Beschloss, in the NYT: “In this case, no serious person thinks enough votes are in dispute that Donald Trump could have been elected on Election Day…This is a manufactured crisis. It is a president abusing his huge powers in order to stay in office after the voters clearly rejected him for re-election.” He added: “This is what many of the founders dreaded.”

Brad Raffensperger, in the NYT, affirming that Georgians voted for Biden: “I live by the motto that numbers don’t lie,” the Georgia official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said at a Friday morning news conference at the state capitol. “I believe that the numbers that we have presented today are correct.”