The History Wars

 Yglesias makes some interesting points about the newest front in the social wars: the teaching of history. Conservatives are up in arms about the 1619 Project, which I think Yglesias does an excellent job of summarizing. Basically, there was one line in Nikole Hannah-Jones essay that makes an unsupportable claim about slavery being a root cause of the American Revolution. Conservatives have seized on that to try and discredit the entire set of essays, many of which represent fairly established understandings of how institutions in the United States evolved under white supremacy.

(I think it's important to label it as "white supremacy" rather than "racism." Mainly because "racism" has become a cudgel rather than an academic description. Also, white supremacy better captures the ideology that led to slavery and the ethnic cleansing of Native populations. But it's probably still inadequate, because it doesn't capture the virulent anti-Catholic beliefs of the Founders.)

One thing Yglesias tries to tackle, and I think somewhat less well, is historiography. He notes that history is often about the present as much as the past, and gives the generic examination of the Progressive historians vs the Consensus School vs the New Left. Some of that it true, though I struggle to put Hofstadter in the neat box Yglesias puts him in. He notes that the Beards - Progressive historians - tend to almost willfully ignore race in favor of class. So therefore Progressive historians ignored race. Except DuBois was writing at the same time the Beards were. Hofstadter actually centered class in a different way in his Age of Reform, seeking to remove some of the Marxist cant and replace it with the sort of urban/rural class divide we see today. Not to mention the Paranoid Style, which perfectly predicts Trumpism.

What I think Yglesias gets fundamentally right is that current historical work casts conservatives as the villains. My textbook already incorporated the first two years of Trump's presidency and it's no-hold-barred. William Buckley said that conservatism was standing athwart the stream of history and saying, "stop!" That's...not great, Cotton. 

If America's foundation was based on two competing ideas - universal freedom and equality before the law and also white supremacy. Lincoln and Douglass saw that contradiction as holding the ability to challenge white supremacy and slavery. As I've argued here repeatedly, social movements that argue on the grounds of universal values succeed more than "special pleadings." Garrison's extreme rhetoric limited his following to a few true believers. Douglass and Lincoln tied their arguments to the broad ideals of America. Dougless did it caustically, sarcastically, while Lincoln was more reverent, but the basic idea was the same.

What is undeniable - and I challenge "conservatives" to deny this - was the "conservativism" in the 19th century was wedded to slavery, white supremacy and eventually Jim Crow. That remained true throughout the 20th century. Read Eisenhower - a relative moderate - on Brown v Board of Education. His argument that you shouldn't overturn "established folkways" couldn't be more "conservative." 

If we center white supremacy among America's founding ideal - which we must if we want to understand our history properly, then we have to place conservatism as the defenders of that white supremacist status quo. If we do that, it drags Eisenhower, Goldwater, Reagan and especially Trump, into the historical spotlight in ways that are simply undeniable and unavoidable. People like Ross Douthat must realize that and it scares them. Tough shit.

No Redemption

 Bill Barr's attempt to redeem his reputation is both predictable and largely futile. Back when he was nominated, there were ample voice saying he was awful and an acolyte of untrammeled executive power. I doubt very much that objective voices will be able to argue that Barr is a neutral arbiter of justice. 

In fact, his effort to show he was protecting the election more or less prove the opposite. Yes, he drew the line at Trump's more brazen statements, but as we've seen again and again, Republicans were willing to entertain the idea - IF IT WAS CLOSE ENOUGH. Trump got walloped by enough that a plausible route to overturn the election was not there. Plus, no one likes Trump in the institutional GOP. He was a useful tool, but he has no loyalty and inspires no loyalty among those who actually get to know him. His loyalty is among those who only know him from television.

Still, the cynicism of Barr, McConnell and the rest needs to hang on them like the stink of a dead skunk.

Believing In Science

 During the pandemic and Trump's ridiculous response, the cultural left began to boast that they believed in science. As we confront a greater threat than the pandemic - global warming - is there reason to believe that science can save us from the threat science created?

Carbontech is a fascinating example of how clever humans can be when prompted by a crisis. While the urgency of the pandemic helped prompt the use of mRNA vaccines, they had been in development for years. If you combine industrial processes for using CO2 with carbon capture technologies, maybe we won't cook after all.

The Other Other Infrastructure

 It looks like Biden will get some sort of infrastructure deal, either through the bipartisan deal agreed to, or more likely when the GOP walk away from that, a strictly partisan deal through reconciliation. It does seem that there's a chance that a "bricks and mortars and modems" infrastructure bill has a chance of making it into law through regular order. The "soft" infrastructure of child and elder care workers is more likely to pass with only Democratic votes.

But there's a third infrastructure in this country, and its problems are on tragic display in South Florida. For private real estate companies, avoiding expensive repairs is a profit imperative. With global warming making the soil under Miami less stable, who knows how many more buildings are in danger of collapse. I would guess there is zero chance that Champlain Towers is the only building in South Florida with some sort of subsoil structural issue.

Global warming is in the process of making parts of the planet unlivable. South Florida will be under water if we don't change things very, very soon. Infrastructure to combat global warming is in the existing bill - smart grids, clean energy - but the cost of relocating millions of Americans? We haven't begun to look at that.

This Fucking Guy

 I guess we still need to talk about Trump.

The GOP leadership, I think, is staring at two realities.

The first is that Trump commands the loyalty of a significant part of the Republican electorate in ways that they simply don't.

The second is that Trump is largely toxic in creating a national governing coalition.

I don't think the first point requires much elucidation, as we all know it to be true. The second point is one that I think is important. Biden's approval rating is solidly and consistently around 55%. Trump never sniffed that level of support. A lot of Trump's fear mongering about "socialism" and "American carnage" has not and will not come to pass. Trump's unexpectedly strong showing with Hispanic and African American men would likely erode if he ran in 2024. College educated whites will continue to be repelled by him in the wake of 1/6. 

Trump would still likely win between 40-45% of the national vote in a two way race. But would a John Kasich run as a Center Right spoiled and keep his numbers around 35-40%? 

Let's take that out across multiple races. The real worry for Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy is not necessarily that Trump wins the nomination in 2024, though I think he would do very poorly compared to his previous two runs. The real worry is that Trump creates his own party and fractures the Right. 

Imagine a scenario in 2022 where the Florida Senate race consists of Marco Rubio, Val Demmings and an indicted but a not yet convicted Matt Gaetz. In 2018, Voldemort impersonator Rick Scott won 50.5% and Bill Nelson won 49.93%. Let's drop Demmings to 47%, but let's give Gaetz that Trumpist vote, which we will peg around 15%. That leaves Rubio with around 38%. Voila, Dems pick up a key battleground seat.

In a scenario like that one, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Kentucky, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Iowa, Indiana, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio and Kansas could all be in play or switch. That's six years of a Democratic Senator from Mississippi.

THAT is the nightmare that keeps Republican leadership kotwowing to Trump's splenetic whining. And it it's not going to end any time soon.

It's A Matter Of Time

 Reading this from Michigan, it seems inevitable that there will be violence. The members of Cult 45 have basically ceded the ground of objective reality to Democrats and a few Republicans - some of whom will be replaced by the like of Marjorie Traitor Greene, Lauren Boebert and (yikes) Ammon Bundy.

However, these Bizarro World recounts and audits will not show fraud. The QAnon prophecies of Trump returning to power in August will not happen. For some - hopefully the vast majority - this will signal that the whole system is corrupt and they will drop out of electoral politics. Maybe they'll move to Hungary or Russia where they will feel more comfortable under authoritarian rule, but I doubt it.

But some will turn to violence. There's a Timothy McVeigh out there, just waiting for his moment. We've already seen the capacity for violence on January 6th, but there will be something horrible in our future, because Trump and the Republican Party are feeding their deluded base dangerous lies. 

They've already started upping the rhetoric; it will get worse.

Where Bernie Was Right

 Yglesias (I promise I read other people) makes the case against centering race and for centering class as a way to combat racial inequality.

There are two important points I want to highlight.

First, the idea that poorer Whites vote "against their interests" neglects that fact that white supremacy has real benefits for them. If they are poorer financially because they vote for Republicans, they are better off socially because of white supremacist politics. There are real social and psychological benefits for poorer Whites in voting for Donald Trump.

Second, Democrats have a natural constituency among poorer Whites, but they have failed to maximize it since Trump came on the scene. In terms of raw numbers, Biden got more votes from WWC (Whites Without College/White Working Class)  than he did from either Blacks or Hispanics. He barely beat Trump among Whites WITH College but then his winning margins came from people of color. 

It is tempting to write off WWC because some of them are so firmly ensconced in Cult 45. The problem with that is simply electoral math. It is very possible - even likely - that you can consistently win a majority of the popular vote with the existing Democratic coalition. However, we know how 2016 turned out and how close 2020 was in the Electoral College, and we know how disproportionately White the Senate is, in terms of who is represented.

Bernie Sanders ran an aggressively class-based campaign, and he lost support for it among Black voters. However, there are few voting blocs more tactical in their decision making than Black voters (especially in the South). In the primaries, they will vote for who they think enough White people will vote for. That's how Biden swept the South. 

What Sanders was right about, but struggled to express well, was that Democrats need to create a class-based policy agenda for public consumption, while also making sure that activists representing People of Color know that any class-based policy portfolio will have a proportionally higher impact on their constituencies. Sanders tended to get bogged down in his own Soft Socialist rhetoric and the need to both defend and live up to his label as a Socialist that his ability to craft a message that could appeal to everyone on the basis of class, while wink-wink-nudge-nudge play to the activist base.

If there's a great example of this dynamic, I would say it's the term "environmental racism." When you read the definition, it is undoubtedly true that Black and Brown people suffer from the degradations of environmental toxins at disproportionate effect. But, again, if you were to look at absolute numbers of people living in blighted communities, it wouldn't shock me to discover that the plurality of people living near environmental hotspots were White.

Selling environmental cleanup of places like Flint will have a huge impact on the health of all Americans, but disproportionately on Blacks. Selling it as race neutral on CNN, while selling it as racial justice in the community centers in Flint is the way to getting 60 votes in the Senate and a lock on the White House.

Public Safety First

 Josh Marshall points out that a rise in crime rates - whatever the reason - will lead to more people like Trump getting elected. It doesn't matter WHY crime rates are rising (in fact, given Fox News, it won't even matter IF crime rates are rising), if they are rising people will look to authoritarian style leaders.  Same goes for "open borders."

Any criminal justice reform has to be centered around public safety first.

UPDATE: A little off topic, but also not. Martin Longman looks at how the GOP has to seize on a sort of veiled/not veiled racism, because they have lost their other organizing ideas. They have to give a permission structure that allows "old school" Republicans to avert their eyes from the current white supremacist ideology of the GOP.

Crime will be a major way to accomplish. The rhetoric on crime from Republicans in 2022 will be apocalyptic and it will be bluntly racist - if ever so slightly hedged to allow a segment of their coalition to ignore the obvious.

UPDATE 2: Maybe the NYC Mayor's race captures this.

To Elaborate

 I wanted to expand on the post from last night, because as I was writing it a family travel emergency arose and had to be dealt with.

When we talk about "hidden government" what we should be differentiating is things that need to be messaged in one way, while hiding aspects of other achievements. So, Biden's relief plan that sends money to people - you need to crow about that. Trump putting his name on relief checks was likely a violation of the Hatch Act, but it was effective politics. There are plenty of popular things that Biden and the Democrats have done and they should be relentlessly pushing that stuff.

When it comes to other issues - and I would focus especially on race and gender/sexuality issues - I think it helps to be more subtle. For instance, police reform is popular, defund the police is not - though if you give a "defund the police" person a half hour to explain what they mean, many of their proposals are popular. Having mental health crisis intervention teams are a great idea, for instance. 

If you frame police reform within the context of Black Lives Matter, it will be unpopular with a large swatch of the American electorate. You can say that's bullshit and it is, but it's still a reality. A few weeks ago, Yglesias took on Obama's interview with Ezra Klein. He points out that Obama obscures some of the hard choices he made in his rhetoric surrounding race and immigration. Obama today is routinely derided by that activist base for soft-peddling those issues. Some of the reason why Obama walked a tightrope on race was the burden of being the first Black president, but that's only half the picture. As a Black politician, Obama was incredibly in tune with White America, in many ways more so than White politicians, who take it for granted.

Obama understood that he needed to avoid taking strong stances on racial, LGBT and immigration issues. You could not bear the burden of being "Barack Obama" and track hard to the left on important cultural issues. When Republicans labelled the Affordable Care Act "Obamacare," what they were hoping to do (and to some degree achieved) was to associated his health care reform with welfare handouts to African Americans. As time went by, and Obama retreated from the scene, ACA/Obamacare became more popular. It's true that the provisions became more understood, but it's also true that in rural White America, ACA is popular and Obamacare is not.

Biden and the Democratic Party has moved its rhetoric and policy to the left in response to the changing nature of its coalition. City dwellers, college graduates and to a lesser degree racial minorities are further to the left on cultural issues, so it makes some sense to reward your base. I'm glad that Biden is supporting the Trans Rights movement.

However, there is something to be said to crafting reform in a way that is invisible to the casual critics of "Woke" politics. The tension is - as I mentioned last night - that the activists want to trumpet the changes, whereas a savvy politician would prefer to whisper it into friendly ears. 

Biden, for instance, is doing a lot of Green Energy in his various infrastructure bills that have already passed. He will do more in whatever comes out of the Sausage Factory. What he is not doing is calling it a Green New Deal, a decent enough term but one that has already been poisoned by the Fox News Machine.

In 2022 and 2024, Democrats simply need to not get slaughtered in rural, White America. If they are losing rural counties 60-40 as opposed to 70-30, they retain control of the House and possibly build on the Senate. 

Bleeding the tension out of cultural issues is an excellent way to do this. Can Democrats do this?

The Hidden Functionality Of Our Government

 Yglesias writes about the "Hidden Congress" that manages to pass a fair amount of legislation under the cover of anonymity.  That's similar to the dynamic of "All news is bad news." We focus on things that don't work. No one writes a story about "dog bites man."

There's a lot of talk about the threat that Republicans currently pose to democracy in America. I certainly share some of those fears. I do wonder, however, if we can remove Trump from the equation, if the next Republican leader will be as brazen in his or her denial of reality. Or if they will carry the charismatic influence that Trump did with his dead-enders.

The government is actually functioning, but all we hear about is what isn't functioning. We are passing bills, but we only hear about what we aren't passing.

At the end, Yglesias touches on how the actual work of the Hidden Congress is anathema to activists' ideas of how to secure change. Activists need visible victories to drive fundraising and support, but politicians like Biden would prefer to do quiet work that adds up to positive change.

Have to say I'm on Biden's side here.

What Is Juneteenth?

 Here's a very solid summary of what Juneteenth is.

TL;DR: Slavery ended via the Emancipation Proclamation and more so the 14th Amendment. The White South refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of these twin actions and refused to emancipate their slaves, especially in Texas. Texas was the last Confederate state to surrender, and resistance lasted longer there.

If anything, Juneteenth is a celebration of the collaboration between Black advocates and Federal power to insure that freedom was a universal condition. The "Second Founding" of the country from 1861-1876 created a "new birth of freedom." 

That's worth a holiday.

Iran's New President

 Iran has had an election for its presidency. Ebrahim Raisi won in a very low turnout election. As former Iranian political prisoner and journalist Jason Rezaian explains, the Guardian Council bars candidates for running for the presidency or the legislature if they are insufficiently loyal to the religious principles of the velayat e-faqih, or rule by religious scholars. As a result, you have had cycles in the Iranian presidency, where a reform oriented president (Mohammad Khatami 1997-2005; Hassan Rouhani 2013-2021) is succeeded by a revanchist hard liner (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 2005-2013 and now Raisi).

Because of the role of the Guardian Council, Iran - under its current regime - will never elect a republican who would change the nature of the Islamic Republic. Iranian elections are neither free nor rigged. OK, 2009 was rigged. But usually the Guardian Council simply denies the Iranian people a true choice.

When the media refer to "hardliners" in Iran, they are not talking about their religious views. It's not that they are hardliners about human rights or democratic rights, because few candidates that espouse democratic values are even allowed to run.

Raisi is a rank authoritarian, but it's unclear what his position will be on the Joint Plan of Action or Iranian Nuclear deal. Perhaps Rouhani can re-negotiate the deal during the lame duck period. It's unclear that Raisi would withdraw from that deal. From the American perspective, getting everyone back into the JPA is the primary goal of American Iranian policy.

The more interesting question is what happens within Iran.

Iran is suffering through multiple crises. Their early Covid response was awful; they have a massive opioid problem; the economy is in the toilet; they only have a handful of friends abroad. Iran has a well-educated underemployed urban population and a conservative underemployed religiously conservative rural population. When an educated urban population win over enough disaffected working class people, you have the conditions for a revolution.

Raisi is the president for a regime that will reach for the "Chinese solution" of meeting protest with lethal force. However, the role of martyrdom in Shiism could make that backfire. That was what brought down the Shah. 

Tocqueville famously said that the most dangerous moment for a bad regime is when it tries to reform itself. Iran has not tried to reform itself so much as rearrange its role in the world. However, the population is clearly fed up with aspects of the regime's corruption, repression and incompetence. Rouhani protected Ayatollah Khamenei by being from a different faction of Iranian politics. With Raisi now becoming the focus of Iranian discontent, there is no buffer between the presidency and the Supreme Leader.

Revolutions are rare and rarely "successful." But Iran looks increasingly ripe for civil discontent. Who know how far that will go?

Annnnnd, I'm Back

 After a rather exhausting but amazing trip to the Southwest American National Parks (Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, Mesa Verde, Great Sand Dunes), I am back. If the constant go-go-go was tiring, at least I didn't have to marinate in the constant doom scrolling of Twitter. It's tough to be impressed by the latest online kerfuffle when you are staring at the direct example of millions and billions of years of geology.

In that vein, I thought I'd flag this piece by Yglesias. One thing the Left and Right share is a profound distrust of social media giants. No one like Facebook. I have a hunch even Zuckerberg hates Facebook. The real problem with Facebook's algorithm is not the algorithm; it's the people.

As social scientists are noting, people seem to crave that doom scrolling. They WANT the negative story. Especially those stories that let you hate the other side. We rightly look at Faux News and see a network largely divorced from reality. But MSNBC also peddles alarmist, negative posts.

One thing that I've noticed is that a lot of people think that democracy in America is on life support. My guess is that most of these GOP vote suppression efforts will either not work or will backfire. A lot of older people vote for the GOP and they like increased ballot access. The pandemic and Trump made the 2020 election different. Democrats voted early and the GOP voted on election day. That's not usually the case.

There are some legitimately worrisome measures in the GOP bills, including allowing the legislature to override the election results in some cases. THAT is worrisome. But the various speedbumps placed in front of the ballot - combined with the lingering legacy of 1/6 - will likely do more to increase Democratic turnout than suppress it.

Still, we seem obsessed with bad news. Covid was just the worst. Except for the last pandemic, the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that took 50,000,000 lives, as opposed to the roughly 4-7 million lives lost to Covid. We obsess over the horrific shooting, while violent crime falls. We are now freaking out over a momentary inflationary blip caused by excessive demand. 

It's never ending.