Shocker

 Donald Trump has been credibly accused of sexual assault by over 20 women. He has been caught on a hot mic bragging about his assaults. He treats women poorly unless they are subservient to him.

Matt Gaetz has fashioned himself into a mini-me version of Trump. Crude, bigoted, sexist...now it looks like we can add sexual predator to the list of his Trumpist affects. His "damage control" interview was off the rails.

If you build a movement on resentment of racial and gender equality, you are going to attract a lot of shitty human beings like Matt Gaetz (and Louis Gohmert and Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Traitor-Greene and Devin Nunes and Ron Johnson and Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump and Glenn Greenwald and Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham and Mike Lee and Ron Desantis and Brian Kemp and Greg Abbott and...).

This news is strikingly unsurprising. 

I Think I Found Your Problem

 Why does college cost so much, when so much of the teaching is being done by poorly paid adjunct?

Administration!

Universities have become places for a few well-connected people to enrich themselves...just like everywhere else.

Populism Is Bad

 This is yet another example that "populism" is bad. Whether on the right (Trump, Bolsonaro) or the left (AMLO), disdain for "experts" is unsustainable in the modern world. Andrew Jackson's populism was "bad" but it was rarely lethal. His disdain for experts rarely extended to what passed for medical and scientific knowledge. Jackson simply assumed that any reasonably smart person could do government work. Even that is no longer true. Would you want some dude designing your highways?

AMLO spent decades trying to become president. At least rhetorically he offered what Mexicans wanted: as assault on corruption and resources directed at rural and indigenous populations. Instead, Mexico is in the running for worst Covid response in the world. 

Technocracy is boring. Cool edgelord shit on Twitter is boss; making the mail show up on time is boring. In the US, we've seen the difference between Trump's radical incompetence and Biden's basic functionality on vaccine distribution. Trump's "Operation Warp Speed" did work well in backstopping drug companies to help smooth the way for vaccine development (done in labs by scientists). But distribution was left up to a patchwork, incompetent system of dog-eat-dog. 

Today, I'm getting my Dos Dose of the Pfizer vaccine, at least in part because boring old Connecticut has done really well in distributing vaccines. That boring competence is critical to a functioning modern state. Populism can't clear the bar.

Dear News Media

 There is not a crisis on the southern border.

There is a seasonal migration surge. 

Detaining people and returning them to their country in a more or less orderly fashion is not a crisis.

Stop it.

Did Georgia Kill The Filibuster?

 Georgia's new Jim Crow Law seems likely to face some significant judicial hurdles. However, John Roberts has been fairly consistently fine with various Republican efforts to obstruct people from voting. If you're waiting on the Courts to save Democracy, you might be sorely disappointed.

So, it might come to the Senate. I overheard a typically overheated MSNBC panel attacking Joe Manchin for being a prima donna on this issue. Maybe. Probably. But that's not how you change a prima donna's mind. Getting Manchin and Sinema to embrace some sort of filibuster reform is an on-going project, and I imagine we will see something done in conjunction with the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill. 

My guess is that there will be a few reforms, including limits on unanimous consent, requiring 40 votes to block, as opposed to 60 votes to move forward and possibly some sort of decaying filibuster. The filibuster will remain, but it will be weakened. Will it be weakened enough to overturn Georgia (and other states') attempts to limit the franchise? Unknown.

Finally, the parts of the Georgia law that directly target Black voters seem unlikely to even pass muster with the Roberts' court. The inability of people to give water to voters waiting in line is absurd. Limits on early voting will likely remain, but it's unclear whether that will hurt Democrats in the future. Democrats voted early in 2020 because of the pandemic, but Republicans make extensive use of early voting themselves. As the suburbs drift from the GOP, will restricting voting even work the same?

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

 For the past two weeks, I've been at the family farm trying to close up the house for sale and conduct a burial ceremony for my mom. It was...a lot.

I try to blog every day but the internet was bad and the hours were short.

Not Out Of The Woods, Yet

 News that Miami is enforcing a curfew because young dipshits are partying like it 1999 should come as no surprise. Young people are mostly stupid about risk assessment, and to be fair, Covid is unlikely to dramatically effect them (which is not to say that it won't). It's Russian Roulette with a revolver with 150 chambers and one bullet. The odds are good, but it's still Russian Roulette. 

That this comes in Florida, governed by a JV Trump is hardly surprising. 

In many ways, we are coming to the end of the pandemic. I'm due for my Dos Dose in about ten days. Two weeks after that, I'll be immune from serious effects and mostly immune from any effects. I'm looking forward to that day. 

Navigating to that day is going to be tricky. The "vaccine Eeyore-ism" means that people want the shot and then want to go bar hopping. There needs to be a two week period after your second dose. Even then, if the vaccinated are wandering around unmasked that will enable to the unvaccinated to go about flaunting masking rules and so on. 

I don't know what the solution is, but there has to be a balance between continuing to enforce some public safety measures while also relaxing the overall vigilance. 

Reverse Passing

 Paul Campos notes the phenomenon of "reverse passing." Basically, it falls under certain categories. There are obvious charlatans who fake being minorities in order to benefit from programs set aside for minorities. This was the charge against Elizabeth Warren, though I don't think she was trying to "reverse pass" so much as relaying bad family history. 

But there are clearly others who have a significant trauma in their past and therefore identify with marginalized groups in order to subconsciously contextualize their own trauma. There is also the desire to avoid being a white, cishet, man, especially when you, yourself, feel marginalized by the impersonal forces in society. 

It's a fascinating idea. I've been surprised by the size and vocal nature of the recent trans-rights movement. Apparently there are a lot of strong feelings about this in the trans community. I do wonder if some portion of transgender people are processing a trauma, possibly gender-related, by rejecting their birth sex. I'm hardly qualified to speculate on that, but perhaps a better question would be: Why are transgender people so much more visible now than 15 years ago? Were we not looking? Were they not identifying as trans? Something seems fundamentally different about transgender activism recently, and I'm genuinely curious.

Alexandra Petri Is A National Treasure

 Sometimes satire is clearer than commentary.

Being Right Is No Consolation

 I can remember in 2003, telling students that there was nothing that could be done, we were going to war with Iraq. We would win the war but find the country ungovernable because we simply didn't care enough to understand Iraq before we invaded it ("welcomed with flowers and candy"). I can remember bring right about the fact that all the GOP can do in control of Congress and the White House is cut taxes and confirm reactionary judges. It's not me, it's the informational ecosystems that "liberal" inhabit. When the pandemic hit "believe the science" was a shorthand for a largely liberal (and college educated) vision of the world. There ARE things we can know and act on that knowledge. 

Global warming is the thing that the left of center is currently right about. Being right isn't going to help in 20 years, though.

The One Norm He Abided By (Though Not By Choice)

 Donald Trump has disappeared. It would be premature to say he's gone for good, but he's disappeared from our daily consciousness. The Twitter ban broke his hold over the news cycle and ousting the caudillo from the White House deprived him of the pomp that all caudillo's require. Hopefully, (what's taking them so long?) the Southern District of New York will file charges and we will really see him slink into Beta territory.

Meanwhile, CBS News/YouGov did a poll (I know, I know). Biden's job approval? It's at 62% with 36% - plurality - strongly approving. Biden rates a 67% on handling Covid very well or somewhat well. Distributing the vaccine? He comes in at 69%. Biden gets 60% approval on the economy. Those are numbers Trump could never have dreamed of. Even accounting for the quirkiness of polls in the age of Trump, those numbers are striking.

We Were Going To Invite Him To Campus...

 A few years ago, a group of conservative students lamented the lack of conservative voices in our school assemblies. So, through a contact, they wanted to invite Tucker Carlson to come and speak. He's a St. George's grad and his children applied to our school. I interviewed one in Admissions.

There was considerable pushback from students and faculty alike. This was before Carlson dove deep into Trump's arsehole and embraced white nationalism for ratings. He was only about halfway up Trump's anal sphincter when we decided not to pursue him speaking at out school.

Now we have Carlson openly embracing anti-vaxxer nonsense. (Let me tell you, he absolutely has had the vaccine himself.) As Lemieux notes, Fox News demographics suggest that antivaxxer positions will get people killed. At this point, my parents are gone and their remaining friends have been vaccinated. Yes, having a bunch of morons refusing the shot will prolong the pandemic in some ways, but if the only people it kills are OANN addicts...I guess that's fair.

In the end, the decision not to invite Carlson - like every other position adopted by the left and center left in the last 20 years - turned out to be correct. The problem is not that we are trying to indoctrinate our students in a particular political ideology, but that a particular political ideology is incompatible with our school's mission.

Unmasked

 Down in rural Georgia...lots of people without masks. A shocking number of People of Color, especially Hispanics. We know that Covid has been disproportionately deadly for Blacks and Hispanics, and I wonder if mistrust of officialdom among those communities has led to less masking. Apparently, the higher your degree of social trust in institutions the more likely you are to wear masks. So the conspiratorially minded are obviously not masking. While admittedly it's highly anecdotal, what I've seen suggests that a sizable number of Blacks and Hispanics are simply not masking. I'm also not saying it's their "fault." But it is noticeable.

Vaccine Eeyores

 I have to agree with Dr. Wen here. I just got my first Pfizer shot (my arm feels like a 2x4 was broken over it), and the palpable relief I felt knowing that in a few weeks I won't really have to worry about this disease was amazing. The rate of protection from the vaccine is amazing. And if you get it, you won't get the serious complications. 

If the CDC can't sell a return to normal activities, then the marginally motivated won't get the vaccine and our attempts at herd immunity will sputter out.

A year ago, we had no idea what this virus would do, how contagious it was, how deadly it was, how to treat it. It remains very dangerous for the elderly and those with co-morbidities. We now know the vaccine basically reduces your ability to get the illness to almost nothing and you don't seem to shed virus if you have been exposed. Last year we cancelled reservations for my wife's milestone birthday party. I'm looking forward to going two weeks after the second shot. That's one reason why I'm getting it.

I realize that there are sound scientific reasons to slow roll a return to normal activities. And, yes, listen to the science and all that. But let's also listen to common sense. 

Tetanus can kill you or seriously mess you up. But I've had the shot and I feel fine working with rusty nails.

To What End?

 Clausewitz famously said that war was politics by other means, which is to say, war must have realistic, achievable political ends. 

Can anyone tell me what those realistic ends are in Afghanistan? 

The "foreign policy blob" remains committed to a policy that exists because it exists, rather then because it makes any sense or is in any way achievable. There is no way, after 19 years, that somehow there is an exit from Afghanistan that leaves it at peace with a reasonable government in charge. The Taliban are going to win, just as the Viet Cong were going to win. There is no additional window of time that will reverse this outcome.

There is, instead, the risk averse practice of making sure that you don't advocate for a policy that will lead to Al Qaeda (remember them?) somehow makes a comeback in the mountains of Afghanistan...where they must already be, if we're worried about that. How do a few thousand American troops in Kabul somehow keep Al Qaeda at bay?

What will happen when the Taliban takes over will like be very bad. There's no getting around that. But this outcome is now inevitable, and no amount of time will reverse that.

We lost that war. Time to admit it and move on.

2022

 Jennifer Rubin takes a look at what Democrats should be looking for in 2022 Senate races. With razor thin margins in the Senate, it will be a massive battleground, although it is worth noting margins in the House are similarly thin. She identifies a few races like Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin and North Carolina as potential pickups. She also notes that Democrats were pretty sanguine about their Senate races in many of these same states, especially North Carolina, Iowa and Maine, last cycle.

I really think 2022 will tell us a lot about the next decade of American politics. Trump had a unique hold on a certain segment of the population. Maybe he fades away into his grift or a jail cell, but he will definitely NOT be on the ballot in '22. A lot of his voters are low propensity voters who obviously don't answer pollster's phone calls. Do they not show up with him in exile? And do the Democrats new suburban voters stick with the party? They historically vote.

Having control of the Congress in '23 will allow for Biden to continue to govern properly and set the stage for a win in '24. Rubin is right that North Carolina needs its Stacey Abrams, but so does Iowa and Wisconsin. Winning Ohio or Florida would be satisfying. Winning Missouri or Kansas would be a miracle. But to do so starts now.

The Road To Power Runs Through The Suburbs

 Zack Beauchamp runs through the recent scholarship on Democratic strength in the suburbs. Basically, there is a class of neo-Marxists (Beauchamp doesn't use that term) who see economic policy entirely through an industrial era, Marxist lens. In order to be a progressive party, Democrats must rely on working class votes.

Except what we have seen is Trump make serious inroads with working class whites and whites without college degrees, as Democrats have made as big or bigger gains with suburban voters.

First of, as the article notes, people assume the positions of the parties they belong to. Heterodox positions exist, but they are increasingly rare.

Second, one of the critics of Democrats winning the suburbs is that it will lead to a "new Gilded Age." Except we are already IN a new Gilded Age. The Progressive Era that ended the Gilded Age was largely centered on - wait for it - the college educated middle class. Where class-based Populism and unionism failed, middle class reforms remade American society. 

Finally, while the idea of "post-material materialism" is... ok, I think the piece misses what's true about the suburban college educated voter. They DO care about BLM and global warming, but they also know how skewed the system is towards billionaires. If the system is broken, it's not killing them, but they also know what the very top looks like. 

Being college educated means you DO think ideologically, and as the GOP becomes the GQP, they will sink deeper and deeper into left wing positions.

Oh, and they vote.

GOP Death Cult

 Let's run through the ways that the GOP wants to kill Americans:

- Unlimited access to guns, including preventions on people with mental illnesses or restraining orders from being banned from owning guns.

- Restricting access to health care, by not taking advantage of the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act and then trying to destroy the ACA when they had the chance.

- Rolling back regulations on pollutants, including ridiculously toxic ones like lead and mercury.

- Refusing to monitor Rightist extremist groups who have a long history of killing Americans.

And here cometh Covid. The GOP wants to let that kill you, even if a few more months of mask wearing will likely get us through to the other side. My wife and I are scheduled to get our Fauci Ouchies tomorrow. Hopefully Johnson & Johnson, but I'll take what I can get. That will still mean several more weeks of masking.  And that is fine. 

Just as we are getting a handle on this thing, the GOP wants to rollback our best chance at saving lives. They say it's freedom, but it's really more reminiscent of a tantrum. 

Democrats In Array

 It is a popular trope among shallow commentariat and the Online Left to decry that the Democratic party is bad at politics. Personally, I thought (and think) that "Defund the Police" was bad politics, which is more a product of the Online Left than the Democratic Party.

Anyway, let's take a look at what has happened in the last 48 hours. Chuck Schumer used a sneak attack to bypass Tom Cotton's blocking of Merrick Garland. Joe Manchin has signaled that he's open to filibuster reform. And, oh yeah, the Democrats have passed a massive Covid relief bill that will have positive effects this year and beyond. 

Biden started out at $1.9T and in the end, he got $1.9T. They extended unemployment benefits. They funneled money to cash starved schools, municipalities and states. They provided billions for ramping up vaccinations. They introduced a more generous tax credit for children.

Personally, I don't think our family will get some or any of the direct cash payments. We are right on the cusp of qualifying. But here's the thing: I don't care. We are OK. Any problems we have right now will be solved by reaching herd immunity. Our worries are about our communities, not our bottom line. The caterwauling from Trust Fund Socialists should be drowned out. This bill is an objectively good thing.

It would not have happened without Stacey Abrams, Jon Ossoff and Rafael Warnock. Or Joe Biden. Or anyone who voted for Democrats. 

There is still a lot of work to do, and I hope they start with a stand alone minimum wage bill, even if it is "only" $12/Hour. I hope they get voting rights on the floor of the Senate and break the painless filibuster. The emergency bill has passed, not comes the slow grinding of wearing down the opposition.

Reforming The Filibuster

 Josh Marshall takes on one of the more important issues facing the government: the filibuster. Let's start with the obvious: the filibuster is terrible. It is almost always used for terrible things. For much of its history it was reserved for blocking civil rights legislation. Since "conservatism" became a rabid anti-governmental ideology, it has morphed into basically stymieing any measure proposed by Democrats. Since Democrats run on making the government function better for more people, Republicans can hamstring those proposals from becoming laws...therefore proving that government doesn't work. Look at the Affordable Care Act: it was basically unpopular, until it became settled law. Now it's pretty popular and Republican efforts to actively kill it backfired on them.

I've long held that the filibuster should be "decaying." That is to say that when a measure comes to the floor, it requires 60 votes for cloture, but three weeks later, it needs 57. Three weeks after that, 54. Three weeks after that? A majority. Marshall brings this up as a possible example of reform.

Another example, and one I could see Manchin and Sinema supporting, is to flip the burden of the filibuster. Rather than require 60 votes for cloture, require 40 votes to block cloture. That means that when Schumer brings a minimum wage bill to the floor, and maybe it's only raised to $12 and hour to placate Sinema, Manchin and others, the Republicans would have to come to the floor and block it. The optics are just different. Plus, it's exhausting to maintain. Marshall's right that currently the filibuster is easier than opting out of an email subscription. All McConnell has to do is tell Schumer he has the votes and it never even appears on the floor. This way, you force individual members to show their ass.

The Senate just passed a $1.9 trillion relief plan. Naturally, the Twitterverse and Cosplay Socialists are up in arms, because it only does a helluva lot for Americans as opposed to everything for Americans. This is a monumentally important bill and it was necessary to get it through.

Now, we will see standalone bills for voting rights, police reform, immigration reform and the minimum wage. As currently structured, McConnell can invisibly block these bills. By reforming the filibuster in a way that could appeal to Manchin and others, you can shift the burden on to Republicans.  

I guess I can understand why Manchin voted against a $15 minimum wage (Sinema's decision escapes me), given the economics of his home state. I am marginally hopeful that he has been a pain in the ass on Neera Tanden and aspects of the Covid relief bill in order to support filibuster "reform" when the GOP starts blocking everything in sight.  We shall see.

Is Cancel Culture Working For Cons?

 Conservatives in post-Trumpistan have no idea what they believe anymore. Having yoked themselves to an erratic narcissist, they ultimately decided their party platform was "Whatever Orange Julius Caesar Says It Is." At this time, conservatism can't even be defined by opposition to the welfare state (at least for white people). Trump embraced direct cash payments and people like Josh Hawley are backing some mildly progressive measures on economics.

Sure, in the end, they all agree on low taxes and fewer regulations, but that isn't really popular.

They've landed instead on Cleek's Law, in that conservatives want the opposite of what liberals want, updated every 15 minutes. This means their entire message is negative: opposition to liberals. Which brings us to "cancel culture." There is a strain of left wing politics interested in de-platforming people who are, you know, Nazis and shit. The old liberal beau idyll was that the free exchange of ideas would expose the bankruptcy of things like white supremacy and being Nazis and shit. That idea is actively in question now. 

Some of these examples are farcical, like the San Francisco school board taking Abraham Lincoln's name off a school, because bad things happened to the Sioux while he was president. Yes, leaders make bad decisions and sometimes circumstance lead to having to make decisions that you know are bad. That's the complexity of life. No one is immune from that. This form of purity politics on the Left is annoying as shit.

But that's pretty much it: it's annoying. 

Right now, all Fox and OANN and Breitbart can talk about is "canceling Dr. Seuss." This, of course, did not happen. The Seuss Foundation that owns the rights to his books decided to pull some with some decidedly racist imagery in them. I remember reading those books to my boys and being "yikes." Cool! The Seuss Foundation is doing something good by pulling some minor volumes from the catalog.

Conservatives freaked right on out and made it the most important issue of the day. We still don't have the pandemic under control, the economy hasn't recovered, two months ago, the President tried to launch an insurrection... and you want us to give a shit about "If I Ran The Zoo"?

I can't tell if they have polling to back this up. Maybe they do. Maybe this is the great wedge issue to force them back into power. I don't think people will be looking at Joe Biden as a socialist in 2024, but they might be upset that they can't tell "risque" jokes. 

I'm worried that our politics are so degraded and stupid right now, that this complete and utter bullshit might work.

Criminal Justice Reform

 Radley Balko is one of the best, most measured and seasoned writers on criminal justice reform and his critique here is worth reading. I didn't even know this law existed, but hearing it described...yikes. I do wonder if perhaps there aren't ten Republican Senators who could be convinced to vote for cloture on this, because of its flagrant abuse of habeus corpus, but then I remember that Republicans are primarily interested in punishment, not justice.

Get Your Shot

 The good folks at Lawyers Guns and Money have started cataloguing what they call "Vaccine Eeyorism." Basically a form of gloomy pessimism about how effective the vaccine is. As Vox has outlined, the vaccines work GREAT. The problem is the nature of scientific discourse, which places a primacy on 100% accuracy, proven by experimentation and observable data. Scientists didn't know if getting the vaccine makes you incapable of shedding the virus if you had an asymptomatic infection. They still don't "know," but it sure as hell looks like it does. That scientific uncertainty doesn't mix well with clickbait headlines and superficial soundbites. 

TL/DR: Get your shot.

UPDATE: Chait takes on the same topic.

Grifters Only Party

 I've spilled ample pixels arguing that the GOP has become an undemocratic, white supremacist party. It's a radical outlier among major right wing parties in the developed world, closer to the French National Front than to Britain's Conservative Party.

It's worth noting that "conservatism" is increasingly a grift, a con, corrupt in it's basic operating structures. This article is a great example of the grift at the heart of the GOP. First, you find a "face," in the case of this article, African Americans who repeat the "Democratic Plantation" line. You run them in districts where they are going to get smoked. You fundraise off the fact that you have a Black Republican who is taking on a liberal Democrat like Ilhan Omar. You funnel that fundraising into massive consultant fees.

It's basically Republican politics in a nutshell: rile up the rubes and the donors and then channel the money to a few elites. It's GOP fiscal policy as a business operating model. 

It's also worth noting that there are apparently significant numbers of Republicans who are willing to light their money on fire by supporting these long shot candidates. Democrats fell into this trap, too, as millions were sent to Amy McGrath in order to lose to Mitch McConnell by 20 points. However, I was not aware of people funneling 8 million dollars to someone running against Matt Gaetz. Spending money in Kansas or Iowa Senate races makes a lot more sense that sending massive amounts to a safely Blue House seat.

There is no doubt that money corrupts our politics, but I think we can safely question whether money corrupts our elections. By that, I mean we assume that these billions of dollars sluicing creates an undue influence over election results. It seems to me more that these billions create a bifurcated political landscape where each side his their agreed upon reality. Those sides are mostly set in stone. Elections in the US are no longer persuasion campaigns designed to convince voters to choose the best person to implement a policy portfolio to improve their lives. Elections in the US are about partisanship and cultural signifiers. Every election that middle tranche of voters who are up in the air shrinks more and more. 

In this environment, spending millions on "viral advertising" is a grift. You aren't going to win that race, no matter how clever your ads are. In most House districts - in most Senate races - your chances at winning are entirely dependent on the letter after your name. But we are so wedded to the idea that we have an enlightened, informed citizenry exercising critical judgments about candidates that unwinnable campaigns are winnable with "one weird trick" that we ignore the reality that most aren't.

If you want to give money to elect Democrats, find the next Stacey Abrams, not the next Amy McGrath. You might hate Mitch, but organizing and registering voters is all that will win you elections. 

Elections Matter

The unambiguous good news today is that Merck will partner with Johnson and Johnson to make their vaccine. This was brokered by the Biden Administration. It could double the output of the one-shot vaccine. This is exactly the sort of use of the Defense Production Act that Trump failed to leverage a year ago. If anyone thinks the assorted gang of hoodlums, fools and failsons surrounding Trump could have managed this, they are delusional.

Today, "conservatives" are freaking out about the Seuss family pulling some of his works, because they are - blatantly - racist. This is the bullshit that they care about, because it keeps their rubes in a state of frenzied agitation and willing to vote for people like Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and Roy Moore. They do not care about actually governing, and we saw that in the "response" to the pandemic.

Biden hasn't been "perfect" because such a state of being is imperfect. The continued deference to Saudi Arabia rankles. He has been such an improvement, however, that it's inconceivable that there are tens of millions of people who would prefer Mango Mussolini.

The Grand Old Problem

 Vox has a nice visual run down of why the GOP is increasingly abandoning democracy as a central political tenet. I worry about a reinforcing effect referenced in the charts: as Republicans see Democrats as inherently evil and untrustworthy to govern, they will abandon democracy and then Democrats will, necessarily, see them as inherently evil and untrustworthy to govern. 

We could be entering a doom spiral.