Terrible WATB

 Josh Marshall is, again, correct here. When news came out that Manchin and Schumer have a deal on climate, health care and deficit reduction, McConnell and the Very Serious Susan Collins said that future deals with Democrats were off the table, notably codifying same-sex marriage.

It is perfectly fine to vote against measures you genuinely do not support or that your constituents oppose wholesale. That's why you join a party and get into politics. If you really believe that same-sex marriage is bad, by all means, vote against it. You're a bigot and all, but you do you.

The idea that the GOP got outmaneuvered on the CHIPs bill and then Manchin's deal should not predicate your support for bills that you otherwise support. When Susan Collins says she won't support protecting same sex marriage because the Democrats were smarter than her party...what the actual fuck? Are you an adult? Is your entire personality tantrum based?

The GOP as a party is simply opposed to the job of running a government. This was true before Trump mainlined outright authoritarianism and it remains true of the "Thoughtful Conservatives" like Susan Fucking Collins.

(By the way, thanks a fucking lot, Maine.)

A Deal Is In The Works

 Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have agreed, apparently, on a reconciliation bill that will make huge inroads on climate and raise taxes. I think it also allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices. 

Because of the cheaper energy, tax increases and lowered drug prices, this can plausibly be considered anti-inflationary and that is the way Manchin is selling it. Frankly, every Democrat should be calling it the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, not only to puff up Manchin's ego, but because that's actually a great thing to call it!

What really tickles me is a little is a note towards the end of Lemieux's rundown: there was a separate bill to subsidize making computer chips in the US - for supply chain and national security issues, I guess. Here is the sequence of events:

-McConnell said he would hold up the bill as long as Dems tried to pass a huge reconciliation bill. 

-Manchin says he can't support the huge reconciliation bill. Progressives scream bloody murder.

-Senate passes the computer chip bill.

-Manchin suddenly supports the (slightly less) huge reconciliation bill.

There is no direct evidence that Schumer used Manchin's penchant for flakiness against McConnell, but damn if it sure doesn't look that way.

Nuke It From Orbit

 TPM has been doing a good job getting Democratic Senators to publicly commit to what they are calling Roe and Reform. Basically, will a Democratic Senator promise to repeal the filibuster to bring a version of Roe to a majority vote in the Senate. The argument - and it's solid enough - is that Democrats can run on "Give us the House and X numbers of seats in the Senate, and we will make Roe law." This crystalizes your message both to your base and that mushy middle. There are two clear holdouts in Manchinema. Angus King and Mark Warner are currently holding out, but with enough pressure, they could flip. Then there are others who haven't commented...anyway, you can look at the list,

Marshall goes on to make a more important point that I think is really solid: the filibuster empowers the authoritarian forces in American political life. By requiring a super-majority to pass any substantive legislation (aside from taxation and confirming judges), the filibuster crushes the motivation for voters to engage in politics. If you want, say, a broad criminal justice reform bill, you won't get it, because it will never come to an up or down vote.

It's possible, as Marshall notes, that we will get a federal bill legalizing same sex marriage, before the Assembly of Religious Experts gets a chance to gut it. We might also get a bill passed to make a repeat of January 6th much, much harder. What's odd is that this is so freaking rare! We rarely only pass what we can pass through reconciliation, which limits the scope of federal legislation considerably.

Why engage in with politics if Washington (namely the Senate) is so fundamentally broken?

Marshall dispenses with most of the arguments in favor of the filibuster, but there have been two institutions slowly crushed by the GOP's decades long assault on the basic idea of governing: the professional civil service and the Congress. The latter is a direct result of the GOP's neo-Calhoun position of minority nullification in the Senate. 

Congress should be central to every aspect of governing, but it isn't because it can't function. It can't function because of the Senate filibuster.

Health Care

 Yglesias takes on why US health outcomes are generally bad, despite being a wealthy country with excellent doctors. There are a couple of problems with simply looking at life expectancy, which is that it doesn't explain WHY American outcomes are lower and it seems to be pretty much two reasons.

One is clearly the unavailability of health insurance to many of the poor. This manifests mostly in people not accessing regular medical check-ups and care.

The second is basically mental health. Yglesias focuses on land use driving more people to drive further, which leads to more automobile deaths. If you die at 30 in a car accident, that really doesn't say much about our health care delivery. Same goes with being murdered or committing suicide. But it does have a major impact on overall life expectancy. Most especially, overdose death tend to effect those that are younger.

When someone in their 20s is murdered or commits suicide or overdoses, that has a measurable impact on life expectancy.

Then there is obesity. Americans are overweight and usually have high levels of bad body fat. Why? Because eating shitty foods make us feel good. When I'm bummed out, I'm much more likely to drink alcohol - itself a source of bad calories distinct from the drug effects - and eat crappy foods. Sure, "food desserts" contribute to this, but the hectic pace of American life - which helps make us richer - also prioritizes picking up "bad" food that it quick and easy.

There is little doubt to me that America is having a broad mental health crisis that precedes the Covid pandemic. What's more, mental health is almost never covered by health insurance. I have no solutions, but I would guess that improving the overall happiness of Americans would go a long way to extending their lives.

Trumpism In 2022

 Josh Marshall points out that Trumpism had now completely and probably irrevocably divorced itself from any policy agenda. The GOP had already been tilting towards a post-policy party when they failed to even publish a platform in 2020, but that process is now centralized around Trump's grievances. Quick, name a positive GOP policy that they agree on. Something that is a positive step to improve the lives of Americans. Sure, the old cut taxes and regulations agenda is around the edges there, but those actions are, by definition, negative. 

Dubya Bush ran on expanding Medicare drug coverage and immigration reform. Even Trump ran on the "big beautiful wall" and a hand-waving gesture at "national greatness." Instead, now all they stand for is the screaming id of American politics, the pulsing spleen of outrage and anger. Which works to win votes, I guess.

The GOP always seems happier as an opposition party, since they have the luxury of doing what they do best: sit on the sides and whine and complain. Trump is a perfect symbol of that decline.

Could This Pass

 Eight Senate Republicans have signed on to reform the Electoral Count Act. It was this law that (sorta but not really) formed the platform that Trump launched his coup attempt from. Basically it removes any temptation for Vice Presidents or Members of Congress to interfere with the Electoral College certification and increases penalties for intimidating election officials.

Of course, eight Republicans is not ten Republicans. Currently there is Collins, Murkowski and Romney of course. Portman is retiring so he's in. Sasse is young enough to think he can be there for the post-Trump GOP. The others are interesting. First off...Lindsay Graham?! Maybe he's feeling the heat from those impending indictments from Georgia, but that's a real WTF. Thom Tillis isn't that far gone, but still a surprise. I barely remember that Shelley Moore Capito and Todd Young exist, so...yay?

Who else can you get? 

I would think Pat Toomey is a natural. He's retiring, voted to convict and has no reason not to try and undo what Trump did to our institutions on January 6th. Bill Cassidy voted to convict Trump at the second impeachment, so he should be on board.

If you get Toomey and Cassidy on board, that gets you to 60. Could any additional Senators grow a conscience? Could Tim Scott follow Graham's lead? Could Chuck Grassley or Marco Rubio feel pressure from their challengers to move to the center?

Regardless, I think they have 60 votes. I just hope the House doesn't try and fuck it up to make a point about... something.

This Is Interesting

 I don't always agree with Erik Loomis, as sometimes I find him a bit one-note in his analysis of things. (I adore his "Erik Visits An American Grave" Series.)

However, Loomis flags a really interesting analysis of the rise of neoliberalism. Thankfully, he repudiates the idea that neoliberalism is "anything I don't like that Democrats do" and focuses more on the economic and legal theories that ascended from the 1970s through today. 

In it, he talks about how the neoliberal view prioritized a sort of hyper-individualism. I had always put some of this at the feet of the instantaneousness of the internet. If you want something, you're a click away. Want to watch a show? Stream it. The idea of waiting until 11:25 to get the baseball scores from your local news is insane today. 

We are excellent consumers but poor citizens, because we have been trained to be excellent consumers and poor citizens. This is an interesting idea about how far back this trend goes.

Legacy Laws

 The Dobbs decision did not outlaw abortion. It threw the issue of abortion back to the states. Many states have anti-abortion laws on the books, so they simply snapped back into place. Other states are feverishly working on truly draconian laws that are perhaps even more restrictive than the laws that existed before Roe.

Other laws are being highlighted now that the extraordinary misogyny of forced birth is being resurrected. Take this law in Missouri. How the hell is this a thing in 2022?

I was born after the Civil Rights Act of '64 and the Voting Rights Act of '65, but the legacy of Jim Crow still hovered around the early years of my life. What was still in place were laws in many places that forbade a woman from having her own checking account without her husband's approval. Divorce in many places was still a challenge.

In my youth, most of these measures faded away, but it's pretty clear that - having taken us back before 1973 on abortion - the Christianist Right wants to resurrect the restrictions on women that extend beyond abortion.

I want to think that the GOP support for awful laws will cost them dearly in November, but gas is expensive, so whatever, I guess we're Gilead now.

Coalitional Politics

 Good piece from Josh Marshall on how the Democratic Party is - by necessity - much less homogenous than the Republican Party, making it harder to sustain coalitional politics. We see this all the time with niche issues like student debt forgiveness. That appeals to part of the Democratic Base, but not all of it and it probably alienates middle-of-the-road voters.

And Democrats are really dependent on middle-of-the-road voters. We don't have a built in reservoir of authoritarian-leaning Christianists to depend on. 

The whole tedious "Bernie Would've Won" crowd assumes that Clinton lost because she wasn't radical enough. (In fact, she went pretty far left on cultural issues.) Very, very few Americans are consistently radical in their politics. They might rail against the "status quo" but many of them are reactionaries, wishing to drag us back to a time when we didn't have to tolerate gays, Blacks and uppity women.

Biden won, in large part, because he wasn't radical. He was the safest possible bet. Democrats need to meet this moment by presenting universalist positions that had broad support, because the Republicans are running on christofacism. 

I Was Wrong

 They are coming for Obergfell and Lawrence. While I'm not 100% sure they will get five votes to overturn marriage equality and the right to private sexual acts, I am absolutely certain they will try. Thomas and Alito voted against it the first time and will again. Roberts voted against Obergfell but wasn't on the Court for Lawrence. If I had to guess, he would be the 5th vote to preserve, but would vote to overturn it if there were already five votes against, similar to his precedent in Dobbs.

I don't think Kavanaugh would overturn Obergfell, but that's really not based on anything. For same vague reasons, I bet Gorsuch would overturn. Comey Barrett? No clue. But I think there are clearly at least three if not four votes to overturn marriage equality.

With abortion, as I mentioned yesterday, there has been egregious moving of the goalposts. Scott Lemieux adds to the literature cataloguing how they are saying basically, "Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?" We will see the same arguments made about Obergfell: "Oh, they won't really overturn marriage equality, they will just refer it back to the states." This, of course, means that theocrats in broad swaths of the country will immediately strip a right away from millions of Americans.

I thought that the Assembly of Religious Experts would not touch marriage equality as a fundamental right, because there was no money in it. The fundamental purpose of the Federalist Six is to transfer wealth upwards, or so I thought. Dobbs - and in particular Roberts' joining the majority - has convinced me that I was wrong.

These Goalposts Won't Move

 "Moderate" Republicans or people who lean Republican have tried to keep moving the goalposts on abortion. "The laws don't really say what people say they say," or words to that effect. "These bans aren't that draconian." 

In fact, they are routinely more draconian than laws that existed before Roe v Wade. Recently, the Biden Administration issued a ruling that women with life threatening conditions caused by their pregnancies should be given emergency medical care - including abortions - to address their emergent health needs.

Texas has sued to stop it.

The idea that a woman who might be hemorrhaging or suffering from an ectopic pregnancy should be denied an abortion and therefore directly imperiling the life of the woman is as clear a statement of contempt for women that I can recall a major elected official make. Basically, the Texas GOP (and every other reactionary theocratic state regime in the country) is going to hide behind meaningless arguments about the "Tenth Amendment" and such, and they can be reasonably sure that the theocrats on the Court will back them.

And women will die.

We have already seen this fandango with the 10 year old rape victim from Ohio. First, the story was a lie. Then it wasn't a lie, but she shouldn't have to leave the state. Then she did have to leave the state, but the Indiana doctor committed a crime. Then the Indiana doctor did not commit a crime, but...I dunno, Megan McCardle was Twitter's Main Character yesterday for saying that 10 year old rape victims getting pregnant was enough a statistical outlier that we shouldn't even care about it. Or something, I'll be damned if I'll read her screeds.

From now until election day, women are going to die from these draconian abortion rules and brave doctors will be arrested for performing life-saving abortions. And everything the GOP will tell you that the facts in front of you are not the facts in front of you. 

And fuck if it might not work.

UPDATE: And they are going after other rights as well.

The Senate Is Important

 Conventional wisdom is that Republicans will benefit from a wave election tied to Biden's poor approval numbers. However, we are seeing shades of 2012 play out in the Senate races. Republicans, tied to Trump, have nominated some truly egregious candidates in places like PA, AZ and GA, where Democrats nominated people who have run state-wide races. In NV and NH, reasonably popular incumbents enjoy the advantages of office, too. 

Then there is the politics of abortion, and there is no doubt that this could scramble the "fundamentals" of the race for both the House and Senate. Democrats have difficult holds in GA, AZ and NV, possibly NH and CO, though I don't buy it. If they hold those seats, then they can work to build their majority. Seats in PA and WI seem really winnable, but I wouldn't sleep on NC, OH and FL because of abortion. I would've considered those reaches but OH Republicans nominated JD Vance, who's a total shitbird and Tim Ryan has exactly the same sort of appeal that Sherrod Brown has. Chuck Grassley is a million years old and facing a strong challenger in IA. Even MO could be in play, because the GOP nominated an absolute sewer of a human being in Eric Greitens.

Democrats need to expand their majority by about 3-4 seats for three reasons. The first is get rid of the filibuster. If Democrats lose the House, then this could be irrelevant for the short term, but getting rid of the filibuster is a critical long term need for democratic rule in Congress.

Secondly, in 2024, Democrats will have to defend WV, OH and MT. Those states are trending away from Democrats at warp speed. Winning those would require a second round of Trumpist nominees and a Democratic wave, perhaps engendered by Trump's run for the presidency. There aren't many opportunities to pick up Senate seats in 2024, outside of Texas and Florida and those two states exist primarily to break Democrats' hearts.

Finally, a Democratic Senate majority allows for Biden to appoint judges at his convenience. The long task of undoing the Federalist Society's radical alteration of the nation's courts can't be done in two years. 

Relying on the GOP to nominate horrible people isn't the worst bet in the world, but it's not a sustainable strategy in the long run. Winning 6 year Senate terms when we can is essential.

Counterfactual History

 Yglesias takes on a few counterfactuals in his latest "mailbag." It demonstrates some of his weaknesses as a thinker.

My understanding is the Yglesias was a philosophy major, not a history major, and it shows. His idea that changing a single event could dramatically reshape history seems flawed. He cites For All Mankind as an example. Now, I too enjoy the show. It's fun. But it's shit history. It's a fun parlor game to imagine that a single pivot point could reshape everything, but the name of his damned blog is Slow Boring. That's a reference to Max Weber's quote about politics being the slow boring of hard boards. Change happens slowly for multiple reasons. 

For instance, the coming of the Civil War was broadly about the expansion of slavery into western territories, but it also touched on the radicalization of the South and then the North over the Fugitive Slave Act and Dred Scott. It was also caused by specific acts of violence like the Caning of Sumner that heralded a broad breakdown in political life. And it was also the many other things that the Republican Party stood for in 1860: homesteads, a transcontinental railroad with a terminus in the North, higher tariffs and a central bank. So, if you were to say, "What if Lincoln weren't elected in 1860?" you are proposing that only Lincoln's election caused the Civil War.  That's nonsense.

This fascination with "one weird trick" comes up when Yglesias talks about policy. He assumes that policy - especially the policies he likes - will unlock some sort of easy majority for center-left politics. People, in fact, vote for a myriad of different reasons. If they are strictly policy voters, they've largely made up their minds years ago. The policies of the two parties are pretty different. He points to Trump not pushing the Paul Ryan fiscal austerity model as somehow unlocking a bunch of voters who were convinced that Trump wouldn't cut Social Security benefits. This accounts for him winning 2,000,000 more votes than Romney.

Or maybe people just liked the celebrity "billionaire." Or didn't like Clinton, which was true, although Clinton won roughly the same number of votes as Obama in 2012.

My point is that world events are multicausal and ignoring that is a massive problem in your cognition of the world.

Horrible People

 The horrifying story that came out of Ohio/Indiana about a 10 year old girl who was raped and had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to terminate the pregnancy is the tip of a very ugly iceberg.

First, obviously, is the fact that a 10 year old girl was raped, allegedly by a 27 year old man. This should be the singular horror around which everything starts and end. However, conservative figures, including the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page, immediately cast doubt on the story, some calling it an outright fabrication. For them it was "too convenient" that immediately after Dobbs triggered Ohio's antiabortion law, the "perfect" example of keeping abortion legal - a child raped and impregnated - should happen to pop up.

Think about the cynicism. Think about the callous disregard for the victim - and doubtless the other victims that will come. For these cynical political operators and media figures, the "truth" is whatever you can get away with. "The election was stolen." "Tax cuts trickle down." "Dobbs won't really impact women." If that is your mindset then any story that contradicts your position is just another "whatever the Left can try and get away with." Every accusation is a confession, and what this story exemplifies is the cynical way that conservative figures make shit up to advance their goals.

What's more, conservatives have been trying to cast the Democratic Party as the party of pedophiles and "groomers" because Democrats tend to favor the right of gay people to exist as gay people. Yet her is a horrific example of actual child rape, but because it led to a very necessary abortion, they attacked the credibility of the story.

Incredibly there have been voices that have wondered if maybe she consented, as if a 10 year old could consent. By definition, her pregnancy was created by rape. The problem is that Republicans have crafted laws that require children to carry their rapist's child to term at great risk to their health. It's barbarism that even the Taliban would blanche at. So much of the handwaving that "respectable" members of the GOP have tried to advance about abortion access post-Dobbs is that events like this were outliers and weren't worth carving exceptions out from the extreme "pro-life" position.

It's only a matter of time before they shift their focus to the immigration status of the rapist. Some reptile at Fox or OANN will find out the child's name and create smears to suggest that she was somehow sexualized and adult. You can count on that, because these are horrible, horrible people.

As I've written several times here, one of the curses of being a bog standard liberal is that you carry the curse of Cassandra. Cassandra was cursed to be able to see the future, but no one would believe her. For decades, Democrats and liberals have warned and warned. "Invading Iraq is a terrible idea." "Climate change will create more extreme weather events." "The Supreme Court is on the ballot in 2016." 

"Women will be killed by Dobbs."

The screaming disregard for this outcome is going to come to our attention again and again. Women are going to die in states with terrible, regressive bans stripping women and their doctors of the autonomy to make medical decisions. 

When those stories start to come out - and they will start any tragic day now - you can expect conservative politicians and the Right Wing Media Wurlitzer to deflect and cast aspersions on every story, every victim.

These are horrible people.

I Think The DOJ Will Charge Trump

 Yesterday's testimony is basically part of a Grand Jury strategy pursued by the January 6th Commission. They are setting out several benchmarks.

First, it was not spontaneous. This was planned in December, in conjunction with groups like the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers and the 3%.

Second, Trump was not duped by the "Crazies." This was his plan. 

Third, the plan, hatching by Trump and those closest to him, was to overthrow the election that he knew he had lost.

Ideally, Trump goes to jail. Even more ideally, Trump has a narcissistic breakdown and splinters with the GOP, creating his own party - something he has threatened to do - and drags the Right out of power for the next two elections.

Hopefully, there will be indictments soon for Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell and Roger Stone. Stone has been at the center of electoral corruption for 50 years. His scalp would look good on the DOJ's wall, as they have already convicted him once (Trump commuted his sentence, because of course he did). Taking down "the Kraken" team would be a nice step towards legal accountability and it would tighten the noose on Trump.

As it is, the January 6th Committee appears to have a LOT of information, including encrypted communications. This could be devastating for Trump's defense.

I said months ago that the proper time to indict Trump was right after the midterms. Don't give his crazy cultists and excuse to flood the polls. Instead, indict everyone up to Trump, then indict him. 

However, Trump is clearly pursuing witness intimidation. They might not be able to wait.

Future Democratic Nominee For President

 Pete Buttigieg is pretty good at this shit.

Political Cannibalism

 Yesterday, there were protests aimed at Joe Biden over Dobbs. Several protestors consciously invoked Alice Paul, by "chaining" themselves to the gates of the White House.

I have thoughts.

First, historically, Alice Paul was the more "romantic" hero of the woman suffrage movement. She was the outspoken radical who took bold, dramatic actions. My own opinion is that she was at best marginally effective in winning women the right to vote. Woodrow Wilson (unlike Joe Biden) was a fairly vindictive guy. If you crossed him, he remembered it and his epic feud with Henry Cabot Lodge, for instance, is the centerpiece in many textbooks and biographies. Wilson did not like Paul and her efforts to "shame" him into supporting woman suffrage.

Carrie Chapman Catt, on the other hand, did the necessary cajoling and assuaging of Wilson's ego to get him to come around and support a constitutional amendment. Wilson's support, in turn, won over enough Southern Democrats to allow the passage of the XIXth amendment. In much the same way that Obama finally coming out for marriage equality moved African Americans to support it, Wilson's support signaled to an important constituency that this was now the orthodox position.

Wilson didn't "win" the fight over woman suffrage - generations of women did that. But Catt - unlike Paul - knew where the important levers to pull were and how to manipulate them

Protesting Joe Biden because you are upset with Dobbs is nuts. 

The reason it's nuts is that there is only one way to get Roe written into law: adding 2-3 Democratic Senators and retaining control of the House. If you concentrate your fire at Democrats, you effectively signal that they are the problem, and not a theocratic, proto-fascist Republican Party. If your message is that Democrats are "just as bad" as Republicans, then what happens to voter turnout in November? Why not give in to despair and apathy?

The existing message right now is that Democrats will likely get creamed in November because of inflation. Dobbs has the potential to rewrite that dynamic, but not if you focus all your ire on Biden.

Yglesias is typically like a dog with a bone once he gets an idea stuck in his head, but one idea that he's been advancing that I'm increasingly seeing merit in, is the idea that "activists" - especially online activists - are fundamentally divorced from the reality of how politics works in America. Americans are NOT especially left wing - just the opposite. Individual progressive policy ideas might be popular if presented in certain ways, but there are a lot of "temperamentally conservative" people out there.

Dobbs is not conservative, but deeply reactionary. Trump's White Nationalism is not conservative, but deeply reactionary. Democrats can plausibly and easily move to the center, win elections and then accomplish reasonable left of center policy goals packaged in moderate messaging.

For activists - increasingly young, liberal arts graduates - a policy victory is insufficient (in part because they'll lose fundraising abilities) if it doesn't come with the right messaging. It's not enough to win, you have to WIN. 

Protesting Biden because you are upset with the ruling of the Assembly of Religious Experts is to fundamentally miss the point of this moment in history. America faces a very real threat to democratic governance. Democrats need to win - and win big - until the Republican Party turns its back on authoritarian, blood-and-soil nationalism. Every attack at your allies is a way to undermine efforts to preserve this moment.

What's more, let's say we wind up with a 4 seat majority in the House and a 3 seat majority in the Senate. Roe is "codified" into law.

The Assembly of Religious Experts (formerly known as the Supreme Court) rules it unconstitutional.

What then? You pretty much have to pack the Court, and I think you'd probably need more than 4 and 3 seat margins to do that.

In other words, without substantial Democratic majorities, even codifying Roe won't work. But by all means, continue to yell at Joe Biden.

Strategy Post-Dobbs

Josh Marshall has been making some good points about how to address Dobbs via political means. First, he's trying to get 48 Democratic Senators on the record to end the filibuster to codify Roe. Right now, he's gotten affirmative answers from Dianne Feinstein and Bob Casey. Senators Tester and Coons were "out of office" on break, but the only one they heard nothing back from was Angus King. King and Coons, in particular, have fetishized "bipartisanship" to the point where it seems more important to them than actually making important changes. 

Biden has said, "give me two more Senators and I will codify Roe" so maybe he knows more than we do. 

Secondly, he's addressed concerns about whether codifying Roe would even work. The argument - and it's a sound one - is that the current Assembly of Religious Experts would overturn the pro-choice law using whatever bullshit rationale suited the moment. That's a real concern. 

Marshall's point is that first you codify Roe. If the Court strikes that down, then you expand the Court. That's an understanding of both process and pressure that "do something" Twitter doesn't seem to grok. You have to move people at a pace that reassures them, not sprint at breakneck speed into a brick wall that you could have avoided.

Shinzo Abe

 The assassination of Shinzo Abe is an obvious shock, since Japan is largely free of gun violence. I'm sure, without checking, that the NRA is dunking on gun safety measures, since someone in Japan made a homemade, improvised zipgun to kill a single person. That's just the same as someone spraying an elementary school classroom with military grade bullets.

Programming Note

 I shout into this void every day to keep my writing muscles in shape. If you're reading it and you enjoy it, that makes me very happy, but ultimately this is really just a public-facing writing journal.

Over the next week or two I will be working on a fairly involved project that will have me writing every day. As a result, content on here may suffer. 

I make it a point of pride to write every day, but that may not happen as much this summer, unless major event happen.

Is The Tide Turning?

 Back in 2016, there was some conventional wisdom that Brexit was an omen for Trump. Since Brexit was a Russian funded effort to retreat from the liberal global order and Trump was largely advocating the same idea, the shock of Brexit mirrors the shock of Trump's minority victory a few months later.

Now, we see Boris Johnson - one of the main architects of Brexit - immolate is a political dumpster fire of scandals and personal boorishness. Is that another omen?

The fundamental problem with Brexit is that it was a simplistic and chauvinistic response to a complicated but real problem. The benefits of global liberalism can be largely invisible to the average person in the developed world, because it has become the status quo. However, the Covid-induced supply shocks and the resulting inflationary spiral have demonstrated the importance of free trade. The low cost of living has been part of our economic reality for so long, we don't even remember what inflation looks like. 

Brexit and Trump harnessed the resentment over stagnating wages that was the relative downside of global free trade, but never really replaced it with anything viable. They demagogued immigrants as a simplistic problem that would fix everything. In the US, at least, we now have a paucity of low wage workers that would usually be filled by immigrants. I can't say what is the case in Britain, but inflation there is very high.

Johnson had nothing to offer but Brexit, just as Trump really had nothing to offer but his "big, beautiful wall." Both men abused and broke the law, though Johnson's crimes pale in comparison to Trump's.

Hopefully, we will see these trends wash up in Budapest and Warsaw or even Ankara, and the retreat from the liberal order will itself recede. 

We could use some good news.

The YouTube Reich

 The latest American gun horror - this time in Highland Park, IL - has produced another example of a very dangerous type: the Angry Online White Young Man. While there are pictures of the shooter at a Trump rally, he probably wasn't demonstrably political, or at least ideological. He was not likely advocating for lower marginal tax rates or reduced regulations on industry. What likely attracted him to Trump was Trump's own nihilistic disregard for norms. These are the young men who find Trump "funny" because he upsets their normie teachers or parents. For them, the long-established norms of society are bullshit (because that is true for young people in general) and Trump's wrecking ball was amusing.

We can trace Trump's disastrous policy legacy to the Supreme Court and the further breaking of the Senate, but there is also a way in which Trump - and the nasty, vile politics he unleashed - has created a new style of political engagement. While this culminated on January 6th, it did not start nor end there. One of the things fascists do is attack norms as "jokes" just to press against the boundaries. The "joke" allows them to retreat when they get push back (fascists, like all bullies, are fundamentally cowards).

However, in the dark corners of the internet, there is no one to pushback on those "jokes." So the darkness accelerates until it lands on a troubled soul like...well, pick your mass shooter. 

Now, this sounds like a "mental health is the problem" NRA rant, but these Angry Online White Young Men are everywhere. Only here do we fetishize and facilitate the widespread owning of weapons of war. Reading through the GOP responses to any shooting is an exercise is willful ignorance masquerading as a bluff and boastful masculine caricature. 

It's very difficult not to come to the conclusion that we are having a full blown mental health crisis in all corners of this country. The pandemic and Trump and a thousand other things have shattered our perception of what the world and our country truly are. Now, throw in military grade weaponry and you have not only a sick country but one that is uniquely primed for horrific events like yesterday.

We are all a little broken right now. Young men are naturally fragile for reasons that are too complicated to explain here. Fragile young men often overcompensate into these lethal parodies of masculinity. Then they go online and find "their people" who are just as angry, fragile and damaged as they are.

And so we get Highland Park and Uvalde and Buffalo and Kenosha and Parkland and Newtown and Columbine and on and on and on and on...

What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth Of July?

 Frederick Douglass is doing great work. People are talking.

His conclusion of that epic jeremiad:

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other.

The far-off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it.

God speed the year of jubilee The wide world o’er When from their galling chains set free, Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee, And wear the yoke of tyranny Like brutes no more. That year will come, and freedom’s reign, To man his plundered fights again Restore.

God speed the day when human blood Shall cease to flow! In every clime be understood, The claims of human brotherhood, And each return for evil, good, Not blow for blow; That day will come all feuds to end. And change into a faithful friend Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour, When none on earth Shall exercise a lordly power, Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower; But all to manhood’s stature tower, By equal birth! That hour will com, to each, to all, And from his prison-house, the thrall Go forth.

Until that year, day, hour, arrive, With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive, To break the rod, and rend the gyve, The spoiler of his prey deprive- So witness Heaven! And never from my chosen post, Whate’er the peril or the cost, Be driven.

The Party Of 1861

 Martin Longman is exasperated that legal experts can't wrap their heads around the fact that Trump was not orchestrating a riot on January 6th, he was executing a coup. This was sedition, not a riot. Trying to prove sedition might be difficult, because of First Amendment protections, but the thing about Trumpistan is that they aren't smart and they committed their crimes in the open. Cassidy Hutchinson helped advance a cause we already knew existed.

Conservatives like to think that they are heirs to 1776. Of course, what 1776 meant to different people at the time is what created American politics. 

The Party of Trump is the Party of 1861: a party of White supremacists waging war on the Constitutional government of the United States.

The Myths Of The Founders

 Every Fourth of July, we get a new round of mythologizing the generation of men who founded the country.

For the record, the human reality of these people is that they were...people. Some examples:

John Adams' son became an alcoholic and gambling addict and died young, largely because Adams was a harsh and absent parent.

Benjamin Rush's son wound up an alcoholic and a mental patient and Rush's own asylum.

Alexander Hamilton's son died in a duel, and he was involved in a very messy public adultery case with Maria Reynolds.

Thomas Jefferson fathered illegitimate children with his slave, Sally Hemmings.

George Washington was most likely a serial adulterer, though that's never been proven.

Oddly enough, one of the few people in that generation who appears to be a pretty good father was Aaron Burr, who was otherwise a massive, suppurating asshole.

The Founders' views on slavery can be roughly categorized in the following way.

A few came to feel that it was inhuman or simply incompatible with America's professed ideals (Franklin, Rush, Lafayette, maybe Adams).

A few came to feel it impeded America's progress (Hamilton).

A few felt it was probably bad, but their livelihoods were tied up in it (Washington, Jefferson sort of, Madison, Monroe)

A few felt it was probably bad, but Blacks were so inferior to Whites that emancipation was impossible (Jefferson, Monroe, John Marshall).

Many others felt that slavery was a good thing, because of White Supremacy (Patrick Henry, pretty much anyone from South Carolina).

Probably all but a few knew that slavery would break apart the country, so they buried it. These "men of vision" weren't wrong, but by kicking the can down the country they made the bloodiness of the Civil War inevitable.

They also weren't Supergeniuses. The Madisonian system of government was more or less adequate for the late 18th and early 19th century - Madison himself said it would be a miracle if it lasted 50 years. As the world became more complex, a more active government became more necessary, yet it would take crises and supermajorities to actually enact change.

Very few countries that emerged into democracy after 1850 chose America's democratic institutions. Presidentialism - a president separately elected from a legislature, each checking the other - has very rarely succeeded in creating long lasting democracies in the developing world. South America seems to be finally teetering towards democracy, but Brazil and Venezuela certainly suggest that it's not a completed process. When America installed democracy in Japan and Iraq, we chose a parliamentary system. Even we know it's not great. And no one, I mean NO ONE, chooses an electoral college.

The accomplishments of the Founding Generation are real. They managed through sheer endurance to win independence from the British Empire. They created a true, geographically large republic for the first time. They created the idea of a written constitutions to establish the rules by which to make the rules. They created the idea of true Bill of Rights. These are very important developments.

Finally, the Tea Party/Patriot Front assholes do have roots in the Founding Generations. Many Americans - after the Constitutions was written and order created in the new country - felt that their Freedumb was too threatened by Washington DC. (Sound familiar?) These people moved out beyond the Appalachians to escape mask mandates taxation. They launched a tax revolt and Washington crushed it with an army larger than the one he commanded at Yorktown.

They also routinely threatened secession. The whole reason Jefferson purchased Louisiana was to get New Orleans so this treasonous assholes wouldn't secede. 

Anyway, Happy Fourth.

The Cassidy Hutchinson Revelations

 I haven't commented on the revelations by Cassidy Hutchinson because there has been so much written elsewhere. Anne Laurie does her usual stellar job compiling tweets pertaining to what has shaken out.

Two things that I think are on the table sooner rather than later.

First, I think the DOJ is going to move aggressively against Roger Stone, the Proud Boys and anyone else who has been threatening witnesses. Stone remains arguably one of the worst people in the last half century of American politics. Convicted of seven felonies including witness tampering, Stone saw his sentence commuted by Trump, because of course. There is zero doubt in my mind that Stone used the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers to try and intimidate witnesses - especially those adjacent to the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers. Witness tampering is a fairly straightforward crime and people like Stone lack the profile of Trump, who might skate in a jury trial, because how do you find an impartial jury?

Second, it feels very likely that there will be another Cassidy Hutchinson. Few of these people around Trump are actually true believers. Take Rudy Giuliani (please). Like so many in Trumpistan, Giuliani is a grifter. He was a grifter a decade before Trump came down his escalator. His "security firm" was a scam with people like Bernard Kerik working for it. Giuliani is a clown, but there comes a point where he might decide to save his skin. 

The problem with being a corrupt criminal enterprise like the Trump Administration is that you require people of low moral character to facilitate your criminality and - you might be shocked to learn - people of low moral character are unreliable.

Hutchinson's revelations that Trump wanted to send an armed mob to the Capitol could - and I accentuate "could" - lead to more Republicans finally coming clean. Hell, even Mo Brooks has started to break with Trump.

With the repeal of Roe, we are seeing theofascists coming crawling out of the woodwork and advocating for overturning Griswold and Obergfell. I have a hunch we will see a replay of the Todd Akin phenomenon whereby radical outliers cost the Republican party seats they should otherwise win.

Hopefully, we will see the same process play out with Big Lie Republicans. The revelations of how close we came to full civil war should give voters pause before voting for state officials dedicated to making sure 2024 plays out better for their side.

Maybe...just maybe...things could start turning around.

Promises To The People II

 A few days ago, I wrote about Promises to the People, a platform for Democrats to run on in November. It came from an Yglesias column. In his mailbag, a reader asked for his ten planks. It's not terrible:

1. A national ban on gerrymandering.

2. Age limits for members of Congress.

3. Medicare negotiation of prescription drug prices.

4. An “all of the above” strategy for national energy dominance.

5. A federal cap on credit card interest rates.

6. Free school lunch for everyone.

7. A federal abortion rights floor; no first trimester bans, there must be meaningful health/life of the mother protections for after that.

8. A federal crackdown on interstate gun smuggling.

9. Something like Val Demings’ national initiative to solve more murders.

10. Enact meaningful barriers to underage kids’ ability to access internet porn — if porn sites cannot logistically come up with a way to do age real verification then they going to be shut down.

The better parts here are the age limits as opposed to term limits. I think that's a reform that's long overdue. The framers of the Constitution put a minimum age for federal office, because they valued maturity, but they also didn't really think people would live much over 70, because they didn't. Point 4 is something I agree with Yglesias on, which really becomes important after the West Virginia ruling by the Supreme Court. If the EPA can't regulate greenhouse gasses, then simply replace fossil fuels with more and more renewables and nuclear. That can be done via reconciliation.

Number 5 is...interesting. Kind of left field, but maybe it could be combined with some form of reform of interest in student debt. It would also be interesting to combine student debt relief with community service work. Number 6 is a good way to address childhood poverty in a non-stigmatizing way that is not inflationary. Number 10 is...ok, good idea, but maybe combine that with something about monopolistic tech platforms. I remain convinced that Facebook and Twitter's algorithms are one reason we are disintegrating as a body politic. Outrage drives clicks.

His plan doesn't address the filibuster, which is the main impediment for much of the rest of this agenda. The ban on gerrymandering - as opposed to a broader national voting rights law - has the advantage of focus, but it might not be equal to the moment. The GOP seems intent on destroying democratic accountability and stronger laws are needed than simply ending the filibuster.

The gun trafficking plank also seem unequal to the task, but combined with the murder plank, I suppose it's "popular." Medicare prescription drug negotiation is a good one, but I'm not 100% sure that moves votes. Democrats are largely trusted more on health care issues, so I suppose that helps shape the terrain in Democrats favor some.

All of this is somewhat moot, as platforms and policy don't move many votes. Narratives do, and more protection of women and voting rights is a good narrative for the moment. Some elements to help those who are struggling is, too, but inflation is a global phenomenon. 

It's a start, though. The 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections were distressingly "issue free" as the main "issue" was Trump. That might still be true in 2022 to an extent, but crafting a policy agenda - when the GOP offers nothing - could be helpful.