What Is A Meaningful Democracy?

 Was America a democracy from 1877-1965? We systematically denied the vote to people who were constitutionally guaranteed a right to vote. You could argue that Jim Crow made at least part of the country undemocratic.

It is not surprising that the Neo-Calhounists in the Republican Party have also adopted anti-majoritarian policies. As this post lays out, we have a situation where the quirks and oddities of our political system tilt one way in our partisan divide. Every non-majoritarian feature of the Constitution is now an advantage for the GOP. 

Because of this, as the piece notes, the GOP is insulated from the negative consequences of being bad at government. The raging dumpster fire of Trumpistan does not matter to them electorally. Their voters will stick with them, and the system preferences their voters.

I'm don't know if we can survive ANOTHER minority presidency. The first one botched 9/11, invaded Iraq and allowed a housing bubble to form that nearly destroyed the global economy. The second one botched the pandemic, abused the powers of office and tried to launch a coup.

It would be really cool if we didn't have to worry about whether we were a democracy or not.

The Anti-Racist Left Has A Language Problem

 The James Carville interview I flagged earlier touched a nerve in some quarters as - as is per usual on the internet - people rushed to get their hot takes in rather than try and understand what he's saying. However, his point about "faculty lounge speak" was made at a time when we have a significant piece of new scholarship on how using language centered on race can undermine programs designed to fight broader inequality. Matthew Yglesias took this a bit further and his take is worth a read.

There's a LOT to unpack in all these discussions, but I wanted to talk specifically about language, and Carville's central point about "faculty lounge speech."

I have an abiding hatred of jargon. To a certain degree, professional jargon can be helpful as a communications short cut. Military jargon is largely indecipherable, but it makes sense to say FOP as opposed to the longer Forward Observation Post. Same with doctors. And to a degree, the same with academics, as long as they are talking to other academics.

Once you try and jump to the broader population, these complicated, unwieldy, un-euphonious neologisms fall flat. Interestingly, we had Dr. Bettina Long address the school, and much of it was new and interesting in its celebration of Black Joy. I would guess that "landed" with white students. As I was listening, I was scrolling Twitter somewhat absent-mindedly and there was a thread of mostly Black people talking about how they hate the term BIPOC or Black, Indigenous and People of Color. This largely comes from the fraught significance between "Colored People" and "People of Color." 

To person not steeped in Chomsky and other forms of academic linguistics, the only difference between "Colored People" and "People of Color" is that the second one sounds weird. A knowledge of history would remind is that "Colored People" was a Jim Crow term. So "POC" is "decolonizing" language. 

Now, there are certain terms that have come out recently, that I think work well. Intersectionality is both a very important idea and also pretty clear to anyone who has been to a traffic intersection. If it was called Interfaces Across Multiple Identifiers or IAMI it would suddenly fly over the heads of most listeners.

Dr. Long ended her talk by saying that racism can only end when White people decide to end it. 

First, I wonder if that's true. We have a LOT of evidence that people naturally group together according to some sort of cultural signifier. This is the point of English and Kalla's paper. If a program is seen as helping reduce ECONOMIC inequality, people like it. Talk about RACIAL inequality and supports declines, even among Black people. Ending child poverty is great; ending poverty among "historically marginalized identifiers" polls poorly. If we could somehow miraculously end historic forms of racism I fear something else would take its place.

Second, let's assume that's true. How do we change White people? Because - as Yglesias notes - programs to address racism are not the problem, it's clothing non-racial programs in terms of racial equality that hurts their appeal. There is a segment of White America that wants to do better in race. Look at the reaction to the Chauvin verdict. You have 70% of Whites agreeing with the verdict, which means about 30% of Whites are basically cool with the extrajudicial murder or a Black man caught on camera. (I'm curious about the 7% of Blacks who disagreed with the verdict.) However, getting 54% of Republicans to agree that the verdict was correct means that the most obvious case of police brutality is sinking in even there. I doubt 54% of Republicans or 70% of Whites felt the same way about Eric Garner's death. So there's progress outside the Trumpian White Nationalist Right.

The question is "How do you build on that?" It's painfully obvious that what we are seeing is simply the fact that a ubiquity of cameras has exposed what Black America has always known and, in the words of Bluegrass musician Tyler Childers, is "shoving its roots through the screens in our face." There is an inflection moment happening. How do you leverage that?

I just don't think you do that by erecting walls of jargon to separate the Savvy from the Unwashed. There actually IS a degree of virtue signaling going on when you bring very technical, largely academic terms into public discourse. I know the shibboleth, you do not. 

Back when Black Lives Matter began, Bernie Sanders stepped on a rake in 2016 when he replied with "All Lives Matter." In some ways, his presidential aspirations died right there. As activists explained, the reason Black lives matter is BECAUSE ALL lives should matter and they currently don't. It's a reasonably effective way of engaging people. It did, however, create an instant barrier that people like Sanders bumped into. Sanders, who was willing to engage, did engage, and was wiser for it. (It's not like, coming from Vermont, he had a lot of experience navigating issues of race.) It's similar to the idea of White Privilege. That concept is a really good challenge for people already interested in engaging with this issue.

I enjoy language, that's why I hate jargon. I feel I'm reasonably adept at language, and I don't know how to solve this dilemma. How do you reach the White boy in a way that simultaneously challenges him and supports his growth? The walls of jargon are not going to help. 

Simply talking about the "Golden Rule" is insufficient for the activists and academics who are pushing for change on these issues, but something as simple as that could work. First, you teach people compassion and empathy and a sense of justice, while simultaneously teaching the truth about the past. I've found students remarkably receptive to the idea that almost all White people in the past held some sort of racist idea. In fact, not being racist by today's standards was a huge outlier. 

As you point out how the Civil Rights movement used universal American values to frame their struggle, you are pointing out how to reach White Americans today. What the earlier - and more successful - part of the Civil Rights movement did was express their demands in terms of the American creed. The naked violence of Jim Crow was excused by White America for a century; Black America made them look, held up their own values and asked them to compare the two. That worked to change America.

Current scholarship and activism point out that this was not enough. (Again, I don't think we eradicate prejudice from human character. I'm pessimistic that way.) In creating laudable goals, they have also created barriers in language and pedagogy that makes it harder to engage precisely those White boys who are reachable (not all will be).

I don't think I have the answer, in fact, I know I don't. I worry that we will lose this inflection point in history. Every movement towards a more progressive, more just America meets its own backlash. In nakedly symbolic terms, every Obama creates its own Trump. We already see the frantic Fox News/Republican attacks on "wokeness," because that's all they've got...and it works.

It feels wrong to only offer an observation and not a solution, but that's the best I can do right now.

Grand Old Prevaricators

 The GOP's platform of outrage is built upon lies upon lies.

Not sure how you go about governing with them.

Is He Wrong?

 James Carville is a bit of a buffoon who won with a remarkably adept politician in a three way race. However, I don't that means he's necessarily wrong about Democrats falling into jargony "faculty lounge" speak. I'm part of those faculty conversations and terms like Latinx don't make a damned bit of sense to me, any more than they do to Hispanics.

Biden has largely avoided some of that - or more accurately no one cares because most people are simply happy that he's doing a decent job and not tweeting out nonsense at 2AM. 

Still, going forward, we need to be more accommodating of the Joe Manchins in the party.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall has a more subtle take on it.

No Rules

 Reading this report, it's tricky to put people into tidy boxes. On the one hand: Trump supporting Floridians basically threaten to fire teachers who get vaccinated. That's...not an exaggeration, and it's very much in keeping with the current trajectory of American "Conservatism."

Then you get this passage:

The Centner Academy opened in 2019 for students in prekindergarten through eighth grade, promoting itself as a “happiness school” focused on children’s mindfulness and emotional intelligence. The school prominently advertises on its website support for “medical freedom from mandated vaccines.”

Ms. Centner founded the school with her husband, David Centner, a technology and electronic highway tolling entrepreneur. 

So we have anti-vaxxers and a tech-bro entrepreneur both somehow married to a school mission that sounds like it would fit perfectly into a Berkeley neighborhood. So I'm reading this "Uh huh. Anti-vaxxers...got it...Trumpists...sure...tech-bro embracing regressive fees...got it...mindfulness and emotional intelligence? What?"

As a school, we are looking at reducing some of our more punitive measures, including at-home suspensions and how we address late penalties on academic work. When I brought it up with my students, their response was that it wasn't punitive enough. Basically, young people do secretly crave structure, even as they rebel against it...maybe SO they can rebel against it.

"Structure" used to be a hallmark of Conservatism. My eldest son introduced me to the hilarious show Letterkenny recently, and it's a fascinating mixture of fart and sex jokes combined with dizzying word play and a really sweet sensibility. The main character is an Ontario "hick" farmer who lives by a code - structure - that we would normally associate with good old conservative values. "When a friend asks for help, you help him." "When your partner cheats, you don't go back." Wayne relishes a good donnybrook and isn't afraid to get in a scuffle. Yet, many of the characters are queer, including his sister and he's fine with that. He's oddly compassionate while also being rather rule bound.

In short, very Canadian.

American Conservatism is no longer interested in rules and structure. They are interested in power and authority, which are not the same thing. This yahoo in Florida who wants to basically fire teachers who  get vaccinated is simultaneously celebrating a lack of rules and reveling in their authority. In fact, mandatory vaccinations is a good rule, a structure, to allow for better public health. "When a friend asks for help, you help him" only writ over an entire society. I got vaccinated for myself, but also my family and my students and to reach herd immunity. This school isn't interested in rules and structures for its students, it's interested in power over its faculty and students.

The current "Conservative" movement as still defined by Trump isn't interested in rules and structures the way a "Burkean Conservative" would be, which is why it's not right to call it conservative but rather "Conservative." If the main impetus for Republican actions today is "own the libtards" then this is again understood best as a movement fundamentally about power (and the perceived loss of power and status of white men). There is no governing philosophy beyond servicing great wealth through tax cuts and deregulation that really doesn't energize those resentful white men and women. 

For Republicans, winning is the point. Maybe this is why they can't concede that they lost in November. For Democrats, winning is a means to an end. Biden's governing agenda is largely popular. This has been true of Democratic policy for decades. Majorities want higher taxes on the rich, reasonable gun safety measures, climate action, more public goods like childcare and eldercare, infrastructure improvements and reproductive freedom. Republicans don't have a comparable set of agenda items - they have opposition to the Democratic agenda. No wonder they didn't need a platform for the past election beyond supporting Trump - Trump's entire appeal was that he hated Obama and would do the opposite of Obama.

This is why negotiating with a party that is beholden to the 33% of the population that is wedded to the Republican Cult of Owning the Libs is pointless. 

I don't know how long the culture of grievance can persist as a potent force in electoral politics. At some point they will reach an inflection point of despair. They will give up in the face of overwhelming odds. 

Can't happen soon enough.

UPDATE: Jon Chait looks at how some "conservative" commentators are doubling down on the PWN THE LIBTARDS.

The Census

 We have the winners and losers of Congressional seats (and therefore Electoral College votes).

Given that Democrats tend to cluster in cities, there is a natural gerrymander in favor of Republicans, and in several states they have control of redistricting, which should exacerbate these trends. Still, here are my best guesses.

Democrats could gain a seat:
Colorado, Montana, Oregon
These Western states have seen some "urban" growth and Colorado, in particular seems ripe to add a Blue seat.

Republicans could gain a seat:
Texas (at least one, Texas gets two), North Carolina (from gerrymandering), Florida (gerrymandering)

States that are losing a seat:
California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia.

I would think that Ohio will be a lost Republican seat and West Virginia HAS to be a lost GOP seat. Given the urban populations of PA and IL, the lost seats could come from rural areas.

It will be interesting to see...

Actual Herd Immunity

 Stories about "breakthrough infections," the J&J "pause" and stories about devastating side effects from the second shot have increased vaccine hesitancy.

This is bad, and I blame journalism for some of it.

The idea behind vaccines is fundamentally the same as masks: "I'm protecting myself and I'm protecting you." My vaccine means it is MUCH less likely that I get sick or infected. Therefore, I am unlikely to be a vector for future transmission.

The virus needs to be present in a person that then sheds it to another person. If you have a combination of people who are immune - via vaccination or having had it - that reduces the ability of the virus to spread either TO that person or FROM that person. Add in masks, and it becomes very hard for the virus to spread.

If it does not spread, it dies out.

That's the goal. That's what New Zealand and Vietnam did.

Can we get America there? If we keep being stupid, I doubt it.

What Has Biden Learned?

EJ Dionne has a column suggesting that Biden has taken a long look at Clinton and Obama's presidencies and how they were crushed in the ensuing midterms. In both cases, the argument goes, a sluggish economy led to punishment at the polls.

I've wondered if that's true.

Clinton was presiding over the beginnings of the '90s boom, but it had largely failed to sink in with people. He failed to reform health care, because his plan was successfully labeled as a government take over of doctors. (It wasn't.) He also embraced certain cultural positions on gays in the military that pushed him into looking like a Big Government/Cultural Liberal. As a result, Democrats got hammered in the South and rural areas. Long time incumbents fell by the wayside as the white rural voters abandoned the Democratic party. If you look at the map from 1994, it is almost unrecognizable. West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, the Upper Plains and much of Texas is Blue and the Northeast and California are unexpectedly Red.

By the time Clinton leaves office in 2000, the West Coast is Blue, but there are still many Blue seats in the South. As late as 2008, Earl Pomeroy and Stephanie Sandlin are representing the Dakotas for Democrats. The 2010 bloodbath was the movement of rural white voters away from the Democrats. The 2018 election was the movement of the suburbs towards the Democrats.

Were these movements all about economics? Or more likely was the cultural sorting that is currently dividing the country? And most importantly, will Trump voters (as opposed to Republican voters) stay home without him on the ballot (as they did in 2018)?

I'm all for taking as big a bite of the apple as possible. Republicans will likely win the House in 2022. But just as likely, some of the seats in Iowa, New Mexico and California that Republicans picked up might shift back to Democrats.

Quick! To The Fainting Couches!

 Biden has a radical, socialist new tax plan to jack the income tax on top earned all the way up to levels that haven't been seen in this country since...2017? The usual Beltway media drones have labeled this as radical and it's really not.

There is something slightly radical in Biden's capital gains tax cuts, but it's also "progressive" in terms of who it hits - Big Time investors. In the past the GOP has been pretty successful at scaring both voters and Senators into not jacking up taxes on capital gains, but hopefully this time is different. We tax investment income at a fraction of other income and that needs to stop.

What Do Polls Measure?

 Reading this ABC/WaPo poll makes me wonder what's actually being captured here. To a large degree, this poll is simply measuring the partisan and demographic divide in the country. Democrats and most independents feel that more needs to be done to police the police and protect minorities from police misconduct. More Republicans feel that way than they used to, but they are still largely less sympathetic to the idea. The hardcore 1/3 of Americans who are borderline or outright fascist want the police to do more.

I have a hunch we will see more of this sort of polling that simply captures existing partisan divisions through different lenses. The question 2016 and 2020 ask is whether we are capturing a certain segment of the population that more explicitly backs Trump and Trumpism. If we are not seeing them, we are in deep trouble. If they are being captured, then it's pretty clear that Trumpism was the last gasp of a generation of whites who will be increasingly marginalized in a changing America.

This Will Come To A Head

 Biden feels like a character who comes in to a story to clean house and right wrongs. He is correcting the mistakes made early in the Obama Administration of trying to find Republican votes for Democratic priorities. My guess is that if Republicans try and use the debt ceiling as leverage, Biden will simply nuke the debt ceiling. And that will be a good thing.

On American foreign policy, Biden has already committed to ending the Forever War in Afghanistan, and I really think he is going to follow through on this. An area where I'm also enthusiastic is in Biden's apparent decision to label the Armenian Genocide as such. That Turkey committed genocide and ethnic cleansing against its Armenian population is largely uncontested in non-Turkish historical circles. Yet, it's been an issue of profound sensitivity to the Turks, so American presidents have largely used euphemisms to describe it. Biden is basically telling Turkey to suck it up. 

Turkey has long held a form of immunity because it is a NATO member that is overwhelmingly Muslim and controls access to the Black Sea. The base at Incirlik is a critical military installation for American operations in the Middle East. But as Erdogan has retreated from democracy and increasingly acted contrary to shared NATO interests, the fewer allies he has in the halls of Washington. Trump may have liked Erdogan, but fewer and fewer policy makers do.

Among the potential actions America could take if Turkey continues to estrange itself from NATO would be to recognize an independent Kurdistan in northeastern Iraq. Move the airbase from Incirlik to Erbil. The Kurds are really our only friends in the region and after Trump screwed them over, it's the least we could do.

The worry, I suppose is that Erdogan might cozy up to Putin, but Turkish suspicions of Russia are older than the nation itself. All dictators require the military on their side, and if Erdogan's actions lead to an independent Kurdistan, and overtures to their ancient enemy to the north, the military might just decide they've had enough of Erdogan.

What We Learned Today

 To me, there was never any doubt that Derek Chauvin would be found guilty, simply because his guilt was so manifestly plain to see. It's not 1992. George Floyd is not Rodney King. We have reached something of an inflection point.

But not a turning point, necessarily.

Chauvin's guilt was established by the video, but his conviction happened because the police and the prosecutor's office could not deny the crime. We have seen cops who kill people get convicted, but only when the Blue Wall of Silence is breached. The fact that multiple members of the police department came forward to testify that Chauvin was not justified in his use of force meant that the defense was reduced to saying, "Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?"

This means that the issue of police violence - against everyone but especially People of Color - is fundamentally a political one. I don't mean elected officials, except maybe sometimes, yes. What I mean is that this is a societal issue where societal and political pressure to hold police accountable is of paramount importance.

How much this extends to other cops will make a difference as to whether we can change their behavior, which is the most important thing in the end.

Chauvin

 Depressing number of people think he will walk or only get the lightest sentence. I'm cautiously optimistic. People point to how police are rarely held culpable for their crimes and this is true. But as we saw from the Laquan McDonald case, if the cops break the Blue Wall, juries side with THOSE cops over the one in the defense stand.

I certainly hope I'm right.

However, it doesn't mean that we've turned a corner on prosecuting the police.

Didn't Think I'd Start My Day Agreeing With Cornel West

 But, yes, the Classics are important.

This Is Infuriating

 Apparently, back at the beginning of our long war in Afghanistan, we had a shot at peace. This makes sense, given the weak legitimacy of the Taliban. Through a combination of our own lack of strategic planning and the nature of blood feuds in Central Asia, we wound up squandering any chance at finding a peaceful solution in Afghanistan, perhaps even including leads on bin Laden. 

The Bush Administration never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He remains our worst two-term president.

Hey, Midwest. Get Your Crap Together

 George Floyd, Duante Wright...Derek Chavin, Kyle Rittenhouse...Brandon Hole...

From the Covid deniers who tried to kidnap the governor of Michigan, to the mass shooting in Indiana, the violence in Wisconsin, to the police murders around Minneapolis...there's some shit going wrong in the Rust Belt.

A lot of pixels have been spilled arguing whether the GOP's descent into Trumpist inchoate rage and racism has been caused by "economic anxiety." The idea that a trend this significant could have a single cause is ridiculous. Trumpism, the gun-humping, violent racism that engulfs so many white men is most broadly about "status anxiety" rather than specific economic issues, but there is no doubt that it is tied to the decline in status of white men without college degrees - no matter their income. 

Being a cop is a pretty decent job for those without a college degree; it's a public service job with good benefits and the opportunity to make a lot on side jobs. Plus, up until recently it was a job that was respected. Through the actions of many police, that respect is gone - especially from the groups that white men (and women) feel are getting all the privileges: college educated and people of color. 

This is at the heart of the "anti-wokeism" movement from even Republican elites. They are appealing to the anger of people who place of primacy has been diminished both by elevating pointy headed college grads and "those people." The fact that Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson is an heir to millions and went to fancy prep schools is besides the point. In fact, it helps that Trump is a fucking moron in this context.

It will be interesting to see if Georgia becomes like Virginia and North Carolina becomes like Georgia over the next few elections. But Ohio? That might as well be Alabama.

Imagine

 Reading the news is often an exercise in despair. Today is no different. While the pandemic remains the number one policy concern, only 99 people died of it yesterday, roughly the same number killed by guns. We are moving heaven and earth - rightly - to address the pandemic. We are doing nothing to address guns.

America's gun sickness kills us in four ways.

- It leads to the mass shootings that capture headlines. These random, horrific killing sprees focus our attention, but do not represent the bulk of firearms deaths: just the most American of them.

- The intimate deaths wrought by suicide. A mental health crisis need not be fatal. With a gun in the house, it could be.

- The deaths wrought by criminals. Whether a domestic abuser who reaches for the gun or a criminal robbing a convenience store, this is an area that American access to guns makes larger than it should be.

- Finally, the epidemic of police shootings - and not just of African Americans - is tied to the fear among police of the population that they ostensibly serve. Some of this fear is absolutely rooted in racist ideas about Black strength and savagery. 

It is also based on so-called "Warrior Training" that a lot of police undergo. Frankly, I would fire every cop who went to one of those seminars. The basic idea is that every interaction between police and the public is potentially deadly, so police should be ready to use deadly force at any moment. The officer who shot Duante Wright had attended one of those seminars; her readiness to use force, any force, over a misdemeanor warrant makes sense if you think every person you interact with could be hiding a lethal weapon. That intersects with racism and you get the steady stream of police killings.

But American police kill a ton of White people, too. Warrior Training is popular, because Americans ARE armed to the teeth. And those who are most aggrieved or ill are the most likely to stockpile weaponry.

Imagine an America that had safely and sanely regulated guns in 1968 and then kept those regulations in place, even adding to them as needed.

The GOP/NRA Axis of Evil is a death cult. That can't be said enough.

I Agree With You; Now Make Me Do It

 Interesting snippet about how Biden has responded to pressure on immigration. For a certain segment of the young, foolish and very online, immigration is an example of Biden's perfidy. In fact, his movement is exactly how interest group politics should work.

Biden is pursuing the policies he is - some of them quite radical - because he's responding to pressure. That's good. My guess, though, is that a few of more vocal factions won't be able to take the W.

Bush Chirps

 George W. Bush has been as invisible as any retired president since Reagan - who largely disappeared from public view due to his Alzheimer's. Which is why I was surprised to see him weigh in with an editorial in the WaPo. Ostensibly, this is the equivalent of going on the Tonight Show to flog your new movie, as Bush has a book coming out. To be more charitable, as a former governor of Texas, Bush has always been something of a moderate on immigration (the topic of his op-ed).  

My first instinct was to dismiss his assertion that "So how is it that in a country more generous to new arrivals than any other, immigration policy is the source of so much rancor and ill will? The short answer is that the issue has been exploited in ways that do little credit to either party." This is the sort of lazy "bothsides" rhetoric that has largely obscured the rise of the genuinely dangerous extremism at the heart of Mr. Bush's party. George Bush was one of our worst presidents - and I would argue he is our worst two-term president - but Trump's unique awfulness has obscured this truth about his Republican predecessor. I'm not inclined to go along with Bush's "bothsides" argument on immigration.

However, he lays out a set of broad principles on immigration that is somewhat interesting.

From a "left" perspective, he offers an expedited path to citizenship for Dreamers, he urges work in Latin America to improve conditions there to stop refugees from coming to our border, increased legal immigration, especially for certain classes of workers, and a path to citizenship for undocumented people currently in the country. 

From a "right" perspective, he offers increased border security, better rules to prevent asylum from being abused, and that the path to citizenship for undocumented people be pretty rigorous. Somewhere in the middle, he offers an improved guest worker program.

It's pretty clear from looking at the above that this plan tilts center-left. I think Joe Biden would sign this in a minute, even if it did mean money spent on a stupid border wall. This is not the plan for open borders that a certain segment of far-left activists want (but no one else really does). This also reflects, somewhat, Obama's agenda on immigration. Obama beefed up border security to try and offer a carrot to Republicans on other items, like Dreamers and a path to citizenship.

Obama was rejected. I don't see 10 Republican Senators who would support this plan on the merits, much less as a bill that would give Biden a "win" on immigration. 

Bush was a conservative president. He was a neocon, he wanted to privatize Social Security, he was a deregulator and tax cutter. On immigration, he is currently far to the left of his party in Congress. In fact, what Bush has exposed is something interesting. Democrats should seize on this plan, put it into a bill by cooperating with his Presidential Center, and then put it on the floor of the Senate. (Don't force House members to vote on a centrist bill that will never pass and expose them to the wrath of some far-left activists.)  Open negotiations with the Romney-Collins-Murkowski-Portman group. Go whole hog on "bipartisanship" even if it means a flawed bill that spends too much money on border security.

And then watch it fail.

Bush has exposed - perhaps without really realizing it - the source of excessive partisanship ON HIS SIDE OF THE AISLE. Bush introduced something similar as president and his own party rejected it. That party has moved further into nativism and racism since he left office.

I doubt it would move Manchin and Sinema to axe the filibuster, but if you REALLY want to expose how obstructionist the GOP Senate is: force this bill and discussion on them.

A Big Biden Deal: Get The Lead Out

 Matt Yglesias keeps sending me his posts every morning, because I subscribe to his blog. This morning he attacked the idea of replacing lead pipes as part of Biden's infrastructure plan.

First, let's dismiss the lunatic arguments from the GOP that pipes aren't infrastructure. They are almost the definition of infrastructure. Moving on.

The idea that lead is a silent public health crisis is a legitimate one. One thing I've noticed as a teacher is that students coping with the pandemic just have less thinking ability. It's a concept called "cognitive load," and when a person gets overwhelmed, their brain just functions worse. It's transient, but it could leave huge gaps in this generation of young people. Cognitive load isn't permanent brain damage, but I can observe it in my classroom, and in myself for that matter. We talk about "Covid Brain" in our house when we can't remember things. Everyday actions just have an additional layer of difficulty that impacts our entire brain function.

Lead is much worse than that. It's permanent brain damage that can be treated a bit, but often goes undetected. There was a speech by Sir Ken Robinson that noted that ADHD diagnoses go up as you move across the country. He dismissed this as being an epidemic. I think he's wrong. Population density means more environmental lead - in the air, in the soil, in the pipes, in the walls - and lead absolutely is toxic to thinking processes.

While we are at it, let's throw mercury into the mix, as well as other heavy metal toxins that we pumped into our atmosphere. We live on a planet that we have systematically poisoned for several centuries. As Yglesias notes about lead, we've known for over a century that lead is a neurotoxin, yet we continued to put it into paint, gasoline and water pipes. (This is yet another example of scientific/health knowledge being subverted by the profit motive. Kind of like coal companies and global warming.)

This Scientific American article asks important questions about the idea of an "autism epidemic." The first and most important question is: Is there an autism epidemic? The answer seems to be, no. What we are seeing, though, is a better grasp of learning and cognitive disabilities. Have these gone up or are we just diagnosing them better? That's unclear.

What should be investigated is the degree to which our polluted environment impacts young people's brains. Perhaps two kids are exposed to the same amount of lead or mercury. One has a genetic vulnerability and the other doesn't. Or one was exposed in one precise way and the other was not. One kid will struggle with self-control and cognitive ability and one won't. 

And some idiot will blame it a vaccine, because it's somehow more comforting to believe that a choice action - whether or not to get the vaccine - causes this than just a random throw of the genetic and environmental dice. We are so desperate to think we have control over things, that we create conspiracy theories to explain the random nature of the world.

The reality - in my mostly uninformed opinion - is that the cognitive issues we see in young people are caused by centuries of global indifference to the toxins we pumped into our environment. 

Biden vs Boot

 Joe Biden has finally positioned America to accept what has been a fact since at least 2003: we cannot win a war in Afghanistan. We have spent literally a generation there fighting America's longest war. We cannot change what Afghanistan is or who "Afghans" are. The country was broken long before we got there and will be broken no matter when we leave.

On the other hand, you have Never Trumper Max Boot who - incredibly - compares Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan with Nixon's plan to leave Vietnam to argue AGAINST leaving. Vietnam was America's first great defeat that could not be spun away (the way 1812 was). It signaled the limits on American power at a time when Americans had falsely concluded American power had no limits. America failed to win in Vietnam, because it could never win in Vietnam. 

In Vietnam, in Afghanistan, somewhat so in Iraq, America has tried to prop up friendly governments that lack legitimacy with large swaths of the population. The Diem regime in Vietnam was...terrible. We even sanctioned a coup to replace with another terrible government. In Afghanistan, the central government struggles to produce legitimacy in large sections of Afghanistan, especially the Pashtun areas. Providing roads and jobs is irrelevant, when the source of those roads and jobs is a hostile invader whose troops are in your country against local wishes.

After Saigon fell, horrible things happened. When Kabul falls - and it will fall - horrible things will happen. Ultimately, America's security will only be truly impacted by the return of Al Qaeda, which is not dependent on who controls Afghanistan. If anything, our presence in Middle Eastern wars has strengthened the rhetorical case for Al Qaeda, even as it has degraded their operational capacity. The Islamic State has largely served as a sponge for radicalized Muslims, and IS is not in Afghanistan.

The Taliban are bad. America cannot, in the long term, stop the Taliban from gaining power. Armchair generals like Max Boot - a neocon who never served a day in uniform - don't seem to grasp this fact.

We Really Struggle With Vaccine Messaging...

 ...at least the efficacy and safety of the vaccines are...

Damnit...

We Will Struggle To De-Covid

 One website I've visited a lot during the pandemic is this one. Covid ACT NOW aggregates a lot of different metrics to see how bad it is in your area. Currently, they rank Connecticut light red. When you look at the metrics, you struggle to see why.

Connecticut has a fairly high number of new cases every day. However, the R0 is low (around 1), the positive test rate suggests that we are simply catching the new cases. This site doesn't tell you if the new cases are symptomatic or not.  Connecticut ICUs are in good shape and almost half the population is vaccinated with at least one dose.

Yet they code CT as being at "Very High Risk."

As of today, I'm two weeks out from my Dos Dose of Pfizer. Theoretically, I should be able to do just about anything I want. Work requires a mask: fine, most of my students are NOT vaccinated. Shopping? Sure, I'll wear a mask. It helps keep everyone on the same page. Especially since we are NOT out of the woods until several tens of millions more Americans get the vaccine

However... we are going out to eat in a restaurant for the first time in a year on Friday. I feel weird about it. I imagine I'm not alone.

It took a great deal of messaging wrapped in fear to get America to (largely) change its behavior last spring. The fear was because we just didn't know a lot about the virus. The current fear is that unchecked spread will create mutations that might evade the vaccines. 

The thing is, at some point, we need to stop being afraid of Covid. That has to be a rational decision. Right now, we need to still fear it, because not enough people are vaccinated/immune and the variants are a real issue. But the day is fast approaching when we should stop living in fear of this virus. 

I don't know how you change that messaging, because people will continue to die or get gravely ill from Covid after we reach herd immunity, just as people get gravely ill or die from the flu every year. The number will never be zero.

It made perfect sense to overreact last spring. It made perfect sense to overreact to the second wave and the holiday wave and to the spring break wave we are having now. But we are going to have to stop overreacting at some point, or the very idea of vaccines and public health will be discredited.

I just saw that the band Dawes is touring this fall. I'd like to go, but it's going to take a while for me to get comfortable in crowds again. And we need to be comfortable in crowds again! Crowds can be fun!

With all the talk of the Spring Break wave hitting places like Michigan, here's the critical stat from the Covid dashboard: 24 people died of Covid yesterday. Around 475 people die every day from gun wounds, including suicide. 

We are reaching the end, and we need to acknowledge that.

Police Need To Get Their Shit Together

 It just keeps coming and coming. I am not one who believes ACAB. I think that way of thinking is structurally indistinguishable from thinking that Blacks and Brown people are inherently criminal. When you start lumping everyone into a single group that is bad, society falls apart.

But Jesus.

The law - to be seen as legitimate - must BE legitimate and enforced fairly. Body cams are, perhaps, making a difference in holding men like Officers Gutierrez accountable by losing their jobs, but that can't bring people back to life.

The incident in Minnesota plays out against the background of the Chauvin trial. I lived in LA during the Rodney King riots, and I remember when the jury came back being shocked that the jury acquitted those officers. Unlike most cases against cops, the Chauvin prosecution has been thorough and rigorous. It is tough for outside observers to see him as anything but guilty. Even conservative/fascist outlets have been distancing themselves from him.

But if one juror acquits... Cities will burn and it will be hard to argue they shouldn't. If Chauvin isn't guilty than cops have a license to kill and the laws are meaningless.

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias takes a nuanced view on sentencing and criminal justice reform. To the degree that it intersects with the above, it is that we are trapped in outmoded ways of thinking about crime and punishment. I'm not sure how we get to "better policing" given the current status of policing in America.

UPDATE 2: This is good analysis from Adam Silverman about how - aside from the awful mistake of drawing her Glock instead of her Tazer - the officer who killed Daunte Wright needlessly escalated the situation over a fucking misdemeanor. 

UPDATE 3: Paul Campos would like to remind everyone that American police kill all sorts of different people - not just Black people - way more than they should.

Decline And Fall

 It appears that Cyrus Vance is getting closer to indictments against the Trump Organization. I think there was some expectation that the DOJ would be able to launch prosecutions on January 21st, given how much crime there is at all levels of the various branches of the Trump Crime Family. It would be nice to see some perp walks, just saying.

Meanwhile, you can begin to see Trump's hold on the GOP start to weaken some. His unhinged rant at Mar A Lago is the verbal floundering of man unable to cope with his loss of status. We've all known Trump was a malignant narcissist, and it shouldn't be a surprise that electoral defeat and the loss of his precious Twitter platform has unmoored him.

The sad fact is that Trump was always bad at being an actual politician. As Peter Segal notes, it's odd that the Trump movement coalesced around rallies and speeches from a guy who is REALLY BAD at making speeches. The two most important questions in American politics are:

- Will the "Next Trump" be smarter and more self-controlled, or is being smarter and self-controlled incompatible with tapping into Trumpists?

- Will Biden's "moderate in tone, radical in substance" style of governing win over a rock solid majority of Americans to forestall anyone from even getting traction as the "Next Trump"?

I think it's worth remembering that Trump and Trumpism (the Tea Party) were never about the size of government or any policy agenda. It was rooted in outrage that a Black man became president and was way cooler than they were.

Biden is neither Black nor cool and maybe that will be enough.

Get Out

 There is a lot of people in punditry wearing their Surprised Faces at how Joe Biden is basically implementing the consensus agenda of his political party. Despite the "politicians lie to get elected" trope, most politicians actually TRY to govern on the principles and policies that they campaigned on. Trump even tried to build his big, beautiful wall.

This led Ezra Klein to write about the "radicalism" of Joe Biden. The strongest argument is Klein's last. Biden is a true politician. He tries to understand what people want and give it to them. He also understands, as a veteran of Obama's White House, that the Washington GOP is no longer a reasonable negotiating partner. Biden is therefore crafting plans that appeal to broad majorities of Americans, including many Republican voters. This leads to funny ads like this one.

All of this is to say, I'm hopeful that Biden will simply walk away from Afghanistan. America cannot solve the problems of that benighted land and our continued presence simply drags out whatever outcome that will happen from happening. 

The Disconnect

 Two examples of why the Very Online Left and the Academic Left are perhaps not as attuned to the needs of the people they claim to represent.

First, Matt Yglesias takes Andrew Yang's mayoral campaign as an example of how activist groups are often wildly divergent from the various groups that they purport to represent. He also talks about Elizabeth Warren, who in many ways was the perfect Academic Left candidate. She was, after all, a professor. She reached out to the various advocacy groups for African Americans and Latine - excuse me, Latinx - voters. 

But she never broke through with those actual voters. She never escaped the college educated crowd. The "moderate" Joe Biden was the one who racked up Black votes. Yglesias also puts forth Julian Castro. Castro ran on "open borders." This is a terribly stupid idea, both practically and politically. And you know who REALLY hates it? Hispanics. Almost as much as they hate the term Latinx. 

"Defund the Police" had a similar effect on Black voters. The activist class wanted police "defunded" which didn't mean what it really meant or maybe it did. As Deray McKesson explained to my school, African Americans don't want NO policing, they want the same policing that white communities get. The problem with Black neighborhoods, is that they are simultaneously UNDER policed (crimes against African Americans are not investigated rigorously) and OVER policed (petty crimes by African Americans lead to George Floyd or Michael Brown or Freddie Grey or....

As someone working in academia, I'm routinely exposed to the neologisms of the Academic Left. The latest addition to LGBTQ...I'm not trying to be trite or disrespectful when I say there is limited utility to trying to keep up, because there will simply be a new one added once I've learned what comes next. I absolutely support the fundamental right for people to be their whole human selves, the live their own lives in the way they define it for themselves. Trying to keep up with the increasingly narrow turf wars (or TERF wars) within the very narrow activist base is impossible. 

While there is a commendable effort to draw the circle of understanding wider and wider, paradoxically it can wind up excluding more people - even those of good faith. 

This is the fundamental flaw of Leftist Identity Politics. It ultimately defeats allyship with the majority by adopting increasingly specific terms and rules.

Another example is the apparent defeat of efforts to unionize Amazon. Among a portion of the Economic Online Left, Amazon is evil incarnate, simply by being Amazon. The retail giant DOES stifle competition; it DOES dominate the market in unhealthy ways. 

And apparently, it's not as bad a place to work as some make it out to be. Or simply that unions are so unpopular in Alabama that even if it was as bad as people say, no one wants to join a union.

The problem with living in a theoretical world is that you lose touch with actual human experience. Women don't want to be made uncomfortable at work, but that doesn't mean they are outraged that people aren't using the word "womxn." Unless, that it, you are wedded to a theory about language creating reality in a way that having "man" in "woman" makes women subservient to men. 

In this moment strides Joe Biden. Good old boring Joe Biden. Ignoring demands to center certain specific language, he is instead attempting to radically alter our relationship to government. And he won. 

SCAB

 Radley Balko, arguably America's top journalist on police misconduct, has a nice explanation of the two trends in American policing on display in the Chauvin trial.

The Warrior Creed in policing is killing Americans.

Common Clay Of The New West, You Know...Morons

 Dan Crenshaw was purportedly a rising star in the Reasonable Right, primarily because he went on SNL and made some jokes with Pete Davidson. He's a war hero, he's reasonably telegenic...and he's a fucking moron.

For all the corruption and self-dealing of the Trump years, it will be the rank dishonesty and warping of the very meaning of agreed-upon words that might be its longest legacy. The GOP has now equated corporations speaking out against policies they don't like as...fascism?  Meanwhile, a new phrase they are using is "Corporate Communism." Presumably, they don't mean the use of corporatist structures to reinforce state power. 

Basically, Republican rhetoric is "Communism and Fascism: BAD. Freedom: GOOD." Therefore compare public health measures to communism and fascism, even though they have NOTHING to do with two distinct political ideologies. It's like a computer bot that uses predictive text to churn out word salad that sounds a little like English but doesn't make a lick of sense when subjected to the slightest scrutiny.

And here's the thing: It will work. Not on everyone and not on most people. But I have a cousin - a lovely woman in most ways - who is exposed to this Death of Freedom bullshit. You see it enough on your Facebook feeds and it starts to feel like the truth. Licensing and background checks for gun purchases? FASCISM!!!!11!! People criticizing Republican vote suppression? COMMUNISM!!!!!

The sad truth about the 2020 election is that Republicans lost just enough so that they can return to the non-stop carping about minor parts of major legislation without being responsible for actually legislating. They retained control of gerrymandered state houses, so they can gerrymander House districts this year. As the lose the urban and suburban areas, the unique structures of American democracy allow them to sink into their rural strongholds.

UPDATE: Hoooboy. This is really good.

Well...Crap

 Joe Manchin has laid his marker, he will continue to allow massive obstruction of any positive agenda in Congress by a minority of Senators representing a minority of the country. Both Manchin and Sinema have used egregiously stupid and/or cynical arguments to validate their awful positions. Here are some of Manchin's "arguments":

- The Founders wanted small states to be able to veto larger states.

    This is true, but at the time, the largest state was not 50 times larger than the smaller states. There was also the fact that in order to get the Constitution ratified, they had to overcome local prejudices. People in 1788 saw themselves as New Yorkers before they saw themselves as Americans. That is no longer true.  Plus, ending the filibuster will not end the over representation of small states, so what the fuck is he talking about.

- As we have weakened the filibuster in 2013 and 2017, political gridlock has gotten worse.

    Sweet merciful Jesus, this is worst confusion of correlation with causation I've ever seen. The GOP launched massive and unprecedented obstruction of Obama's agenda on January 21st, 2009. They have not signaled any willingness to accede to the majority when in the minority. They have become a party that can cut taxes and confirm judges... and that is it. Democrats have a legislative agenda, and Manchin and Sinema just sank it in a sea of false equivalency. 

- We should not abuse reconciliation to pass bills.

    See above. There is NO substantive bill that Democrats can propose that Republicans will support. Donald Trump launched a violent coup attempt at Congress and only a handful of Republicans could be bothered to condemn THAT. Because Manchin and Sinema won't change the rules, we have to use the rules that exist to us.

- What goes around comes around. What will the Democrats do when Republicans try this?

    REPUBLICANS DID TRY THIS. They used reconciliation to try and repeal Obamacare. It was so unpopular, they couldn't get the votes.

- If we gut the filibuster, we will get wild swings in policy.

    You FUCKING MORON! Because the Senate is dysfunctional WITH the filibuster, the entirety of the regulatory process and much of policy making has shifted to the Executive Branch. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS THEN?

- We can work together if we just keep regular order.

    Prove it. Pass ANY important voting rights bill with 10 Republican voters. I FUCKING DARE YOU TO TRY.

Joe Manchin is largely the best we can do in West Virginia. We can do better than Krysten Sinema in Arizona. But in 2022 we have to defend Raphael Warnock's seat, have Fetterman win in Pennsylvania and then try and win a few seats from the list of Iowa, Wisconsin, North Carolina or (yuck) Florida. Manchin might be the best we can do in WV, but he cannot remain the swing vote determining whether the Senate can function.

Oh, and hold the House in face of what will undoubtedly be massive GOP gerrymandering.

This Is Really Good Writing

 Enjoy.

Covid and Suicide

 Early date for 2020 shows that - despite worries to the contrary - suicide rates actually fell. As Josh Marshall explains, suicide rates fall during wartime, and the pandemic was basically like wartime. Suicide has a lot of causes, but one is clearly emotional isolation. The pandemic brought us together as it physically separated us into six foot squares. The shared experience of dealing with the pandemic has been overshadowed by a few videos of anti-maskers yelling at cashiers. This is one of the way social media amplifies belligerent outliers. Most people have put their shoulder to the common wheel and pushed.

If we are talking about a healthy society - mentally as well as physically - we have to address the increasing isolation that too often accompanies modern life. I was depressed most of the time I spent in Los Angeles and only stopped being routinely and clinically depressed when I started teaching. Some of that was being busy, but it was also being part of a community. 

Connections are everything.

Well, Actually...

 There have been two "Well, Actually..." attempts at hand waving away most of the Georgia law. Nate Cohn has a "I know the price but not the value" take explaining why there is a decent chance that the Georgia law will not demonstrably effect voter turnout. Cohn waves away the most disturbing part of the law that allows the gerrymandered GOP legislature to seize control of local electoral boards and focuses on the fact that a lot of ways to expand voter access does not lead to more voter turnout - and vote suppression efforts often mobilize the very voters that are trying to be disenfranchised. Absent from Cohn's take is the fact that - you know - vote suppression is bad no matter how "effective" it is.

Yglesias (sub req) makes the case that there has been too much heat and not enough light on what the law does or does not do. He makes a case that Democratic voting rights advocates have made too many far reaching claims that have allowed Republicans to claim they are being hysterical...as if the GOP would make good faith arguments in the first place.

The question for Georgia is what they intend to do now. Local voting rights advocates do not want to see things like the All Star Game removed from their state. Those events mean jobs. Yglesias' case that this is not "Jim Crow in a suit in tie" misses what Jim Crow was. Blacks were not banned from voting under Jim Crow, they simply had so many obstacles put in their way that they effectively couldn't vote. THAT was Jim Crow and this bill reflects the idea that if you put enough obstacles in people's way, they won't vote.

One positive contribution that Yglesias makes is the idea that this law is a direct result of Trump's lies about the 2020 election and therefore proposes solutions that could possibly lead to really bad results. I'll let him explain it.

The risk is simply that in the future, GOP officials will do what Trump wanted and steal elections. The spectacular and alarming events of January 6 ended up creating what I think is an overstated sense in some people’s minds that the country is facing some kind of violent terrorist movement that might try to seize power. A much more plausible threat is just that a bunch of boring state legislators who are insulated from electoral accountability by gerrymandering will, through one means or another, assign their state’s electorate votes to the Republican candidate.

Back to Georgia, the election reform package also includes a great deal of centralization of power, further raising the risk that the GOP-dominated state legislature will try to invalidate the election.

After all, one big problem for Trump in 2020 was that he lost the election pretty badly. He needed three states to flip in his favor to win, which was a hard hurdle to cross. But suppose he’d lost the popular vote by 3.5 points rather than four points? Then Georgia and Arizona flip to Trump, and Biden’s wins in both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania become razor-thin. Now the GOP only has to flip either Wisconsin or Pennsylvania to steal the election, and it becomes a lot more tempting for one of the legislatures to do it and just brazen it out.

That's the nightmare. And the Georgia law makes this a possibility (though Georgia itself is unlikely to be a presidential tipping point state). 

I am perfectly willing to defer to Stacey Abrams on what would "fix" the Georgia law, but it seems to me that reducing the power of the legislature to possibly steal and election should be at the very top of the list. Way ahead of whether you can give someone a bottle of water in line.

Church And Race

 Matt Yglesias is prone to the "David Brooks Fallacy" of taking an interesting data point and running too far with it. In the above piece (sub req), he takes two interesting data trends and reaches an unusual conclusion.

First, America is secularizing at a rapid pace and much - if not all of it - is in the Mainline churches. Evangelicals remains strong, no doubt because evangelical groups tend to be homogenous and insular. You go to the same church your folks and grandparents go to. It's a cycle. It's unclear if we are seeing evangelicals actually evangelize doubters.

Second, he takes a trend of non-White voters shifting somewhat to the GOP in the last two electoral cycles. These non-White Republicans are most likely NOT to be church goers. Yglesias argues - plausibly - that the Black church, in particular, serves as a political socialization organization (Souls to the Polls). and Black men who don't go to church voted for Trump, because they either left the church over Democratic politics or were never socialized into Democratic politics.

Put another way: White conservatives go to church, Black and Hispanic conservatives do not.

It IS true that Trump did better among Black male voters by 6 point from 2016 to 2020 and did 4 points better with Latine voters. We have to remember the power of incumbency on low information voters. Non-College voters tend to be lower information voters, so if these are non-college, low-information voters, they likely supported the guy because the economy had been pretty good and maybe Trans people freak them out.

I don't think you can make a broader case that Black men and Hispanics are becoming Republicans as they leave church. Not yet.

It's Tough To Sympathize With Willing Marks

 The Times did what the Times does best and published a rigorously sourced article on Trump's latest law breaking. This one was tied less directly to Trump and more to the grifters and hangers-on that a slob like Trump cultivates. And the rot exposed runs right through the modern GOP.

The basic contours of the scam were/are this: You went to WinRed - the conservative counterpart to ActBlue - and made a contribution to Trump or the RNC. Unbeknownst to you, there was a pre-checked box making your donation a recurring donation. It might also have a prechecked box making a larger one-time donation. You think you've made a $100 donation to Trump and two months later, you've got a $2500 set of charges on your credit card.

We - and possibly you - have had some experiences with entities <cough Wells Fargo cough> who have signed us up for services we don't want without our explicit permission. Eventually the fees were refunded, because...laws. Same goes for Trump and the RNC. They have been refunding tens of millions of dollars to the dupes who thought Donald Trump cares about them.

So, on the one hand, we have the GOP using skeevy telemarking practices that everyone hates to bilk their supporters into making donations against their will. But the kicker of the piece was this graph.

Mr. Wilson, an 87-year-old retiree in Illinois, made a series of small contributions last fall that he thought would add up to about $200; by December, federal records show, WinRed and Mr. Trump’s committees had withdrawn more than 70 separate donations from Mr. Wilson worth roughly $2,300.

“Predatory!” Mr. Wilson said of WinRed. Like multiple other donors interviewed, though, he held Mr. Trump himself blameless, telling The Times, “I’m 100 percent loyal to Donald Trump.”

At what point should I care? I feel bad for the elderly when they are duped by horribly cynical scammers who prey on old people's unfamiliarity with modern life. We spent the last year of my mom's life telling her not to respond/click the box/sign up for any number or probably scams. Maybe you've heard that your car warranty has expired? Or your Social Security number has been changed?

What's amazing is that a political party - presumably one that needs to cultivate popularity with people - is engaging in the sort of behavior of America's least favorite business AND NOT LOSING SUPPORT OVER IT.

The commitment of Trump's hardcore supporters is why conmen succeed. They have been duped. Duped that Trump cares for them, fights for them. He doesn't. He channels their grievances in a way that makes them happy without evet actually doing anything to make their lives better. But because he's basically saying, "Wasn't it great when we could say the N word and didn't have to worry about making sexist jokes at work?" he has won the allegiance of a sizable part of the electorate, BILKED THEM OF THEIR MONEY and NOT LOST ANY SUPPORT.

So... yeah...what Trump's campaign did either SHOULD be illegal or IS illegal. I hope those behind it get convicted. But I'm struggling to sympathize with the marks who insist on remaining marks.

The Problem With Following The Science

 Former colleagues Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein separately take on some of the problems in how we talk about "following the science." This article from the Times sums it up nicely. There is a broad disconnect between how scientists talk about data and how the rest of us understand data. Vaccines are not 100% effective. Nothing is. A scientist would say - rightly - that there is not 100% certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow. Still, you should keep flossing and applying sunscreen. 

If you have had both doses, the current question is whether you can get infected but not sick. In a few cases, it appears you can get an infection, thereby spreading it to others, but overwhelmingly, you will not even get an infection. To most people's ears, "infection" and "sick" are the same thing. So they hear that if you get the vaccine, you could still get sick. That's just a vanishingly small chance of happening.

Klein similarly takes on a Covid policy gadfly, Alex Tabarrok, who thinks we pretty much botched a great many aspects of our Covid response from Day One. Some of that was simply that we haven't had to do this since 1918. A great deal of it was Trump's attack on medical authority coupled with our fractious politics. 

The big issue Tabarrok has is how the FDA and other agencies required caution. This is similar to the debate over whether you can get infected after having had a vaccine. The infection answer seems to be: almost certainly not, but there is a slim possibility of asymptomatic infection. But an FDA scientist would say: "What is someone who has been vaccinated DOES get symptomatic Covid and even dies? We don't have enough data to say that can't happen." Which is true!  And irrelevant to the process of getting 80% of Americans vaccinated. The average person thinks "Why should I get the vaccine if I will just get sick anyway?" Or "Why should I get the vaccine if I still have to mask and distance?"

Basic scientific illiteracy is at the root of much of this, also a mental blind spot on probabilities. Add in the robust partisanship of...everything, and I don't know the answer. People like Tabarrok are right that the FDA and other agencies screwed up testing, which is hugely important in controlling spread. If we had universal, at-home/at-work testing we could catch the infected before the become symptomatic (if they even become symptomatic) and prevent spread. But we haven't done that, and it's hurt. The reason countries like South Korea have done so much better has been almost entirely testing. But those at-home tests are a little inaccurate. Which is fine. You aren't trying to catch everything all the time. And if someone has to stay home from work for a few days because of a false positive...Also fine!  

We expect science to provide miracles, but really they provide probabilities. And most of us don't understand either.

Nit Pickers

 Joe Biden's infrastructure plan is ambitious and largely very good. It addresses climate change in ways that have not even been tried in America before and addresses environmental racism and classism that forces the costs of pollution on poor and minority neighborhoods. It's really good. 

Catherine Rampell argues that Biden's plan is flawed because it only raises taxes on the rich. Her philosophical argument is that we need to understand that taxation is how we pay for things, including new infrastructure and a livable environment. As a philosophical exercise...sure. OK. Luckily, Joe Biden is not an ideologue or a philosopher. He wants to get this thing done. So, taxes on the rich - very popular - it will be.

Matt Yglasias (sub req) attacks it from a very "on brand" perspective. He's arguing that the WAY Biden is cobbling together the plan is flawed. For instance, it includes a lot of money for light and high speed rail, without demanding reforms of the entities that build and maintain them. OK, that's a legitimate complaint, but is that the first priority? He also complains about the amount of money spent on "surface transportation" - roads, bridges, ports, airports - because that's not necessarily an efficient use of money. This was money that should have been spent in 2009-2012, but isn't as necessary now. This largely ignores the bigger crisis in America's crumbling infrastructure. We've underinvested in basic things like highways for decades, and now the bill is coming due. 

There's some more blah blah blah about how it could be bipartisan - which...what planet are you from, Matt? - and the progressive criticisms from the irrelevant minds of people like David Sirota. I'm certain there will be parts of this bill that will change to accommodate certain stakeholders, but you have Fox News running chryons complaining about how the bill removes lead pipes and lead paint from housing or helps fund community colleges...like that's a bad thing? (My favorite was Kristi Noem (R-Covid) complaining that the infrastructure bill focused on things like housing and pollution. Do you even infrastructure?)

Trump endlessly promised "Infrastructure Week" without delivering, to the point where it became a sick joke. Biden is offering a transformational bill that will extend infrastructure improvements into the next decade. (Even Republicans won't cancel it, should they - Dog forbid - regain power.)

It's finally Infrastructure Week, and I couldn't be happier.

WaterGaetz

 The Florida Man angle just keeps growing. Apparently, Bill Barr was so disturbed by what his DoJ was finding, he began to duck Gaetz...who must've known about the DoJ investigation into his buddy, the sex trafficker (among other things). 

All of Gaetz's public posturing for Trump autogolpe and his support of the Beerbelly Putsch can be seen as a chance to try and finagle a pardon or some sort of immunity from Trump's second term. But Gaetz was too skeevy for even Barr to protect. Meanwhile, we have QAnon and the hysteria about trafficking.  THE PHONE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE.

These fucking people...

UPDATE: I think we are 24 hours from Matt Gaetz resigning amidst a tearful confession of a "sex addiction" and how mean the swamp is to well meaning sex addicts like Matt Gaetz who is the real victim here.

Primaries

 It's welcome news that Democrats are considering sidelining Iowa and New Hampshire from helping select their nominees. One of the ideas is to make Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada all on the same day. This is an excellent idea. (First, though, they should get rid of caucuses entirely.) 

Iowa and New Hampshire are overwhelmingly white and rural/exurban. While NH is sort of a swing state, IA is trending Republican. Of course, SC is a solidly Republican state, but the Democrats in SC are overwhelmingly African American and are currently less integral to the decision of who will be the Democratic nominee.

Biden successfully overcame Bernie Sanders appeal among the white, rural progressives of IA and NH when he started tallying victories in more diverse states, but it didn't really look that way for a while, and there is another scenario where a different "Not Bernie" candidate consolidates support amongst either African American or Latine voters. 

The other advantage of having four states on one day is that you will have to create a nationwide campaign right off the bat.  The quirky, personal politics of IA are completely divorced from the realities of running a national campaign. 

Let IA, NH, SC and NV go first. Then, two weeks later, have a slate of mid-range states: VA, NJ, WA, MN for instance. Then GA, MI, MA and CO. At that point, it will be clearer who can reach across ethnic, racial and educational demographics.