Paul Nadeau

Here's a neat trick they teach in authoritarianism school: If you purge the people who measure the effects of your policies (BLS, MMWR), you can just claim everything's great, and nobody can prove how much damage you're doing.

Gonna need to sit with the fact that I spent four years to achieve nothing.

The worst part is that it's not just that the author didn't cite me, they didn't even need to cite me. I'm entirely out of the picture on the field that, as PhD students, we're told that we're supposed to make our own.

Anyway, I got a book yesterday that makes the same theoretical argument as my dissertation I wrapped up in 2001, so the author beat me to the argument.

Might've passed the review, but I failed the assignment. Completely failed. That shit's over for me now, I'm finished.

Edo-era map of the Dutch settlement of Dejima in Nagasaki harbor

Only took 400 hundred years, but maybe these guys got the last laugh

But I think @suika.bsky.social's suggestion about the comparison to Dutch politics is right...we're about to find out what it's like to have a G7 nation but with the stability of Dutch politics

I'm not sure what I'd think if I was Sanseito right now...sure, they'd probably do well if a snap election was called shortly, but at the same time you've got an LDP who might be more ideologically coherent as a conservative party if Aso and Takaichi dig in, and that would syphon off a lot of votes

Which is to say, the situation could be managed well with the right personalities that recognize that no one really has the upper hand here.

But then also there's Aso Taro

My glass-half empty view is that personalities overestimate their own leverage to overreach on coalition building and legislative priorities, devolving into party infighting, undermining the potential to take action on public priorities, and cycling through least-common-denominator governments

My glass half-full view of what comes next for Japan's politics is that minority rule forces parties to come together pragmatically issue-by-issue, passing solutions that are closer to public priorities and therefore more legitimate, a little like Ishiba's experience: clumsy, but functional

Look the reason we have to keep TikTok out of the United States is because, as a PRC-sanctioned app, it will violate basic norms of freedom of speech and censor content that party leaders may find objectionable wait hold on I've just been handed a note

Deleting

gah shoot you're right

aaand we are officially in the hide-your-neighbors stage

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW).

The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

Completely agree, a lot of party leaders have badly misread the moment

Nikkei article suggests that the LDP could lose 20% of the single-member district seats it won in 2024 (132) if Komeito leaves the coalition government. Of these, the CDP could overtake the LDP in 20 districts. Holding PR seats consistent, seat totals could lean 166-168 to CDP.

Illustrating my point - the loss of Komeito is a massive blow to the LDP's seat count in an upcoming election. Conservatives here might think they can make up those seats by becoming a more ideologically-coherent party, but Tamaki, Ishin, and the rest aren't terribly good at vote-getting

Someone talked me into that possibility only last night!

Bad Place is still bad

His take is holding up pretty well so far!

Feel like I need to pull my old Gerry Curtis books down off the shelf as a refresher

I don't know enough about Dutch politics to say, but a multipolar party system could certainly work...I even thought Ishiba's minority government was functional if awkward. The biggest risk IMO is the political instability that comes with it

Get ready for the multipolar era of Japanese politics...lots of parties, none with much of an identifiable advantage over the other, few critical constituencies to leverage, little public sympathy for anyone

At least Liz Truss managed to become PM.

Right? I know Aso wants to rehabilitate his people but this is looking like it was a complete self-own

Absolutely, which is why I don't see an LDP-led government calling a snap election whatsoever

Here we go...Polymarket is ticking up the odds of a snap election

Cartoon of man looking out a window with "sickos" written on his shirt saying "YES...HA HA HA YES!"

Me, if I didn't live here and depend on political stability

I know, but also isn't that what he would say if he's seeking maximum concessions?

And do we get our chaos scenario of the opposition cooperating to put forward a candidate for PM with the express purpose of calling an election? I don't think anyone wins in that scenario but the LDP would definitely get a red wedding