Two differences between 2008 and 2020 for the Left: money and climate. We didn’t think much about either then and have thought about little else since.

opening up the black box of finance, aided in part by central banks needing to communicate, and listening to populations at the business end of adjustment has been key

Fewer people buy “we can’t pay for it.” The catch: that goes for the Right too. Who will wield the “bazookas” of monetary policy will be the stuff of open politics in coming years not backroom deals as it was last time.

Which is why celebrating the “return of the state” in the abstract is deranged. The question is what kind of state and for whom. Attaching new state capacity to transformative policy, especially for a low-carbon future, will have to happen very soon

My bigger fear is we still assume too much rationality in the sequence of: new threatexpanded state fight for control or cooperation. Global politics eight months from now may well be dominated by varieties of corona-fabulism as the dust settles and the Right regroups.