Here's Hoping...

 This year of 2023 has been a strange one. Crime is falling, inflation is under control, American troops are not (exactly) in combat zones, and yet we all think that everything is awful. Some of that is ongoing tragedy in Gaza, which has done strange things to the minds of young people whose interest in both international affairs and military tactics is not exactly robust. 

Gaza was going to be an awful situation as soon as Hamas attacked. While much of the responsibility falls equally on Hamas and the Netanyahu government, Egypt's refusal to let refugees enter Sinai has made a horrific situation worse. For all of this, Biden gets the blame because of "vibes" and because only America has any agency in international affairs or something. The number of young people saying they won't vote for Biden because Netanyahu is a monster is distressing, but then again, they didn't live through Ralph Nader and Florida 2000.

Like Josh Marshall, I find myself weirdly optimistic about 2024. There's no real reason to feel optimistic. Trump should be at 27% in polls, but his neck and neck with Biden. Talibangelicals have seized control of so many state governments that odds are a woman will die needing an abortion before too long. As Yeats said, "The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity." How can I feel optimistic?

Part of it is that the reason democracy is better than every other form of government tried from time to time is that democracies tend to be self-correcting. I also agree with Schlesinger's idea that history works in cycles. The radicalization of the GOP has been apparent to those willing to see it since 1994, but Trump made it apparent to even "savvy" observers. 

So, here's to hoping I'm right. That a year from now, we will see Trump in prison and boring old normie Joe Biden getting ready for a second term. That the Talibangelicals will cause a seismic shift in voting. That we continue to make slow and steady progress on climate change. Here's to hope...

When They Tell You Who They Are

 Believe them. 

The Republican Party is screaming at the top of their lungs that they are incapable of legislating and therefore governing. They can "rule" as an oligarchy who cede the economy to plutocrats, but they cannot write and pass laws to improve the lives of Americans. 

Trump and Trumpism are obviously a huge problem that we can hopefully defeat in 2024, but the long term health of the Republic involves not letting the GQP control Congress either.

The Originalist Weighs In

 A law professor has argued in the Times that the 14th Amendment's prohibition on insurrectionists was not intended to cover the presidency. The professor - a Federalist Society drone - makes a superficially compelling argument that the framers of the 14th did not want to include the office of the presidency, because they did not include the office of the presidency. Prof. Lash offers this nugget to start:

When Congress passed the 14th Amendment, there wasn’t a person in the Senate or House who worried about loyal Americans electing a former rebel like Jefferson Davis as president. Instead, Republicans feared that the leaders of the rebellion would use their local popularity to disrupt Republican Reconstruction policy in Congress or in the states. Section 3 expressly addressed these concerns and did so without denying loyal Americans their right to choose a president.

OK, why didn't they worry about Americans electing Jefferson Davis or Alexander Stephens president? Because in 1860, the North had proven that they could elect a president without any support from the South. That's a huge reason why the South seceded: they had lost control of the presidency. Instead, the 14th Amendment prohibits electors (in the Electoral College) from being insurrectionists. Presumably, stopping Confederates from becoming electors combined with the North's population advantage would prevent insurrectionists from becoming president.

What's clearer - and I agree with Lash here - is that they dreaded former Confederates allying with Northern Democrats in Congress, because Congress was effectively more powerful than the presidency in the 19th century. The ban on insurrectionists was both specific to the immediate events of the Civil War, but also to the broader fabric of the United States. If there could be one Civil War, there might be another, and if that should happen, future insurrectionists should be banned as well.

What Trump plotted, encouraged and rhetorically participated in on 1/6 was not something the framers of the 14th could have imagined - although the ban on Confederates as electors comes close. The specifics of each case can be unique without the clear intent of the framers having to spell out every contingency.

We have seen the Supreme Court use "Originalism" to strike down Roe and other rulings and laws when it suits them. Basically, originalism ask the justice to channel the spirit of the dead writers to find out what they should do today. A reasonable "originalist" interpretation of the 14th would led one to conclude that Trump engaged in insurrection. The stronger argument, of course, would have been if the GOP Senate had convicted Trump at his second impeachment. That would have solved everything. They, however, are cowards So we are left with the Courts.

Lash is, I'm sure, an Originalist. I doubt they would let him in the Federalist Society if he were not. He has, however, decided to let his own preferences about Trump and the GOP create his interpretation of the intent of Thaddeus Fucking Stephens. Effectively, "the framers of the Constitution turn out to believe what I want them to believe". 

That's Originalism at its finest.

Fruit Of A Poisoned Tree

 Efforts by Republicans to thwart democracy by creating gerrymanders has been aided and abetted by the Supreme Court in Rucho - a case that should stand along side Dobbs and Heller as among the least defensible decisions they have issued. In Georgia, a Federal Court judge ruled that when Georgia Republicans created a partisan gerrymander - nakedly did so in full daylight - that they were within their rights to do so. Based on the Rucho precedent, the judge was probably right. The problem is with Rucho itself.

Frankly, I think the solution is easy. Congress has the right to determine who sits in their chambers. A simple law could make partisan gerrymanders illegal. Until that time, it behooves New York and California to gerrymander the shit out of their districts. California can't and NY was thwarted by the rank stupidity of the NY Democratic establishment.

Anyway, Rucho sucks, the Roberts Court junta sucks so on and so on. Lather, rinse, repeat.

There Are No Good Republican (Politicians)

 My wife and I have argued about whether you can be a good person and a Republican in the year of our Lord 2023. I struggle with the idea that you can see what the GOP has become and voluntarily identify with them. She, however, is a people person and knows some Republicans whom she personally likes. In fact a former student wants to run as a Republican and wants my wife to help her run her campaign. This person is a nice person, but I would want to know the answer to two questions: Would you codify Roe and who won the 2020 election?

I guess we can now ask a third question: What was the cause of the Civil War? Nikki Haley is trying - I think - to position herself as the post-Trump Republican. Whether that comes this year because he's in prison or in 2028, Haley is a fairly "normal" Republican by 2015 standards. However, how the hell do you not mention slavery as the cause of the Civil War?

I grew up in the South in the 1970s and '80s. I grew up not so much in the Lost Cause school of history as the Nikki Haley "Let's not talk about it" school of history. The Civil War somehow happened and then Reconstruction was just as bad and let's move on, OK? 

However, I did not stop learning in 1985. What's more, the last of the Lost Cause books and scholars died off and faded away. Even more importantly is that Haley absolutely knows that slavery was the cause of the Civil War. She was the one who took down the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds after the Emanuel AME shooting in Charleston. There's been a LOT of discourse over the persistent myth that the Civil War was caused by vaguely other causes. Was it JUST slavery? Not exactly, but if the South was willing to see slavery end or even be constrained, then the Civil War would not have happened. Full stop.

How do we evaluate the moral character of someone like Haley, who knows better but cannot admit in a public setting a central historical fact? Sure, she's pandering. But what does that tell us? We've watched Lindsay Graham debase himself time and again for Trump, a man we know he privately loathes. The fact that many of is - but not apparently the media - learned in 2016 that a discomforting number of our countrymen are at least OK with racism if not openly advocating it.

So, again, every Republican running for office needs to answer three basic questions: 

- Would you vote to codify Roe or would you ban abortions?
- Who won the 2020 election?
- Was slavery bad?

The last two...

The Third House Of The Legislative Branch

 Paul Campos examines some of the classic cases of the Warren and Berger Courts and notes that - while we tend to agree with decisions like Griswold and even Roe - there are a number of troubling aspects of those cases. 

The first seems a little pedantic: the Court is basically making up a version of America that really didn't exist. It's arguing that America is a land of freedom and so on, and that something like a ban on interracial marriage is contrary to American ideals (sort of) and history (ha ha...no), and out of this mythologizing, you get the Loving decision. Now, his point is valid, but really seems besides the point. The Supreme Court is not the academy. While Griswold is an important primary source about contraception and what the Court felt about privacy, it's not a peer reviewed historical argument. Obviously, we get junk history all the time from right and the left. Whatever.

The second point is more interesting and important. Since a great many SCOTUS decisions rely on the justices making shit up about history or the law or the Constitution, we have basically created a third legislative body with a five seat majority. This gives us abominations like Bush v Gore and so many voting rights abridgements and the gutting of gun control measures that have typified the Roberts Court. Once you establish the ability of the Court to basically make up laws from the bench, what is "good" (abortion rights, rights of the accused, privacy) can become bad once reactionaries get elevated to the Court. This is the world we live in right now, where I can squint and see a situation where Democrats hold the White House and Senate and win back the House and can't actually govern because the SCOTUS doesn't want shit to happen.

Campos concludes:

But the bottom line here is that the role of the Supreme Court as a quasi-legislature in American politics is becoming increasingly problematic. What ought to be done about this is pretty straightforward: Term limits, an expanded SCOTUS, and the elimination of the Senate taking part in the confirmation process would be a good start.

I would argue that simply ending the filibuster would go a long way towards solving some of these problems. As long as a minority can thwart almost any substantive policy beyond taxing and spending, the Court almost has to legislate. Plus, ending the filibuster would threaten the Court with expansion without actually having to expand it.

Seriously?

 Yesterday, one of the two holiest days in the Christian calendar, the chosen vessel of evangelical American Christians barfed up this hairball on Truth Social:

Merry Christmas to all, including Crooked Joe Biden’s ONLY HOPE, Deranged Jack Smith, the out of control Lunatic who just hired outside attorneys, fresh from the SWAMP (unprecedented!), to help him with his poorly executed WITCH HUNT against ‘TRUMP’ and ‘MAGA,' Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA.MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The reason why Christmas has become almost a universal holiday is not just commercialism, but a lovely message of a humble birth in a quiet stable of a messenger of universal peace and love.

The degree to which evangelical Christianity debases itself for this monster is enough reason for an entire generation to look at all faith traditions as being bankrupt.

Merry Christmas

 Very weird waking up before the boys on Christmas day.

Smart People

 It's "too soon to tell" about everything that hasn't actually happened yet. However, at the risk of jinxing things, it looks like the Biden Team has made a really savvy gamble. A few months ago, they began touting Bidenomics. This came amid his support for the UAW strike and generally touting gains made for working class people.

The reason this was a gamble was that you can't talk about a great economy when people think the economy is shitty. You look "out of touch" which is bad. What they were banking on was continued good economic news, which takes a long time to sink into public consciousness when you are in a long recovery from an economic shock. This is especially true of financial panics which have a long tail. 

Inflation - if properly handled - can be brief. Since the root causes of inflation were the pandemic, the massive stimulus we used to alleviate that crisis and the Ukraine War are partially transient, wise monetary policy can tamp it down. By all estimations we are looking at a robust economy in 2024.

If that is true - if people finally synch their estimations of the overall economy with their personal optimism about their own financial status - then Biden will continue to see improvements in his polling. 

Now all we need is for Jack Smith to get his conviction before June and we can start working on holding the Senate.

Elon

 I remember several debates I have had with students about Elon Musk. To me, he has always been the poster-manchild of Silicon Valley corporate culture toxicity. "Move fast and break things." He's a classic "born on third base and thought he hit a triple" asshole. I think SpaceX has done some decent work and Tesla is a helluva battery company.

It's not a good car company. And as Albert Burneko explains, it's precisely because it's a prime example of Silicon Valley corporate culture toxicity.

Musk has already cratered Twitter as a cultural force. His rockets keep exploding. Now his cars are imploding.

How the fuck is this yegg the richest guy in the world?

Score One For Democracy

 Looks like democracy is coming to Wisconsin. Wisconsin has arguably the most extremely gerrymandered state house in the country. Republicans might still be able to hold the chamber, but post-Dobbs, that seems unlikely. This won't effect the House of Representatives, but every time some small advancement for democracy like this happens, the country is better off.

Nope, Still Not Buying It

 In his newsletter, Jon Chait expands upon his argument that banning Trump from the ballot is a cure worse than the disease...or something. He makes this argument about the XIVth Amendment:

Yes, if Trump were 28 years old, he should be disqualified. But describing his illegitimate attempt to secure an unelected second term as “insurrection,” when the term had most recently been used to mean forming a breakaway republic and waging civil war when the amendment was passed, is not as indisputable as a person’s age. There is some wiggle in the joints. And my judgment is that an action as momentous as throwing a former president off the ballot needs a legal basis that is beyond all rational dispute.

This is historically inaccurate. 

The entire logic of both the Civil War and Reconstruction was that secession was illegal and the Confederacy was never a legal entity. This was the crisis at Ft. Sumter, where Lincoln (and even Buchanan) was saying, "It's federal property and I am going to re-supply it." Then the Confederates opened fire and became the aggressor, mobilizing many in the North who would've waived away the Confederacy and hoped for amicable relations later on.

The central idea that secession - being illegal - never legitimately happened was central to Lincoln and many other Republicans' conception of what the war was about. A "breakaway republic" is a war of independence, and that is how it was typically framed in the South. My Grandmother referred to it as the War for Southern Independence. For the men who wrote the XIVth Amendment, the "rebellion" was an "insurrection" precisely because it was illegal and illegitimate and intended to overthrow the Constitution in the states that seceded. 

In this understanding, Trump's actions are also illegal and illegitimate and intended to overthrow the Constitution everywhere. I freaking hate it when students say "Webster's Dictionary defines 'insurrection' as..." but Webster's Dictionary defines 'insurrection' as "an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or established government." 

The casus belli in the South was the election of a president with zero Southern support who threatened to hem slavery into the states where it already existed, and the presumption that the slave holding South had lost its privileged position in electing national leaders. The reason they thought this was the very election of Lincoln in 1860. The casus belli in the North was the illegitimacy of Southern efforts to overthrow the "civil authority or established government." 

When Lincoln said "we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain...that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth" he meant efforts to overthrow America's system of ABIDING BY ELECTIONS EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T LIKE THE RESULT. 

Insurrection does not require a "breakaway republic". In fact, at no point did those fighting to preserve the Union admit that a "breakaway republic" legally existed. Insurrection is about overthrowing the existing order. The insurrection of 1861-5 was about refusing to acknowledge that the election of 1860 held sway over the slaveholding South. 

Well, Of Course There Are Tapes

 One of Trump's scandals - I lost track of which one, maybe it was all of them - earned them the sobriquet "Stupid Watergate" (as if the original Watergate was perpetrated by geniuses). Anywho, we have just now learned of Trump's efforts to stop the certification of the Michigan voting results and the phone call was taped. One of the people on the call has basically said, "Yup, it's real."

Trump and Ronna McDaniel basically promise the election officials to pay for legal counsel...which sounds like a bribe to me. What's more important is that this is Trump himself engaged in trying to overturn the legitimate election results. To be part of a conspiracy, you have to conspire. There has to be a pattern of behavior. One of the issues that Jack Smith has to overcome is putting Trump in the actual loop of decisions made to disrupt the Electoral College count on January 6th. This sure seems like an important piece of that puzzle.

I found this nugget interesting, too. At several times, Trump spoke of his concern for Monica Palmer - a GOP member of the elections board - and for her "safety". One of Trump's characteristics is a penchant for mob-style speech. "Hey, I sure hope you're safe and nothing happens to put you in danger" is a classic mob threat. Here's the segment, you can draw your own conclusions:

As she was leaving, Trump called out of a "genuine concern for my safety," Palmer told reporters three years ago.

Back then, she described the contents of the Nov. 17, 2020, call with Trump as "Thank you for your service. I’m glad you're safe. Have a good night.”

The Polls Are Moving

 Josh Marshall theorizes why the head-to-head match up with Trump has been moving in Biden's direction a bit, but also why Biden is not crushing Trump (as he should be in a sane universe).

One of his points is really good:

Four: One thing has become more and more clear to me in recent weeks: a big proportion of the voting population believes it is still unclear who the nominees of each major party will be. That puts a big, big question mark over all of these polls. The absolute reality is that the two nominees are Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Any opinion you have before you realize that central salient fact is liable to change and not especially meaningful.

Most people do not live and die politics. There is a GOP primary. Some people would like there to be a different Democratic candidate than Biden (some of which is tied to the poor polling Biden generally has). 

Once they are faced with a choice between Biden and Trump, many will reluctantly vote for Biden. An unenthusiastic vote counts just as much as the rabid support of Cult 45. Many more will crawl over hot lava to vote against Trump.

All of this is true before the possibility of Trump being convicted this spring. If/when that happens, I would guess that Trump's support among those feckless independent/undecided voters will crater.

Brain Worms

 The argument against banning Trump from the ballot tend to fall along one of several different lines.

One argument is that Trump has not been convicted of leading an insurrection. That's probably the strongest argument, and I would think that's one that the Supreme Court will lean on to void Colorado's decision. Of course, the case in Colorado ruled that he had engaged in an insurrection...which is a form of due process conviction. Still, even Jack Smith hasn't charged Trump with insurrection, because that's presumably a higher bar to clear.

The other arguments seem pretty specious to me. The "ripe for abuse" one is just doomposting. For all the very many problems with our Courts, they have generally protected us from Trumpist attacks on democracy. The idea that a conservative judge might bar Biden for running because he visited a picket line and they draw a false equivalency is just nonsense. As odious as the Taliban Six are on the Court, they aren't that tortured in their rulings (unless it's against women).

The single most ridiculous argument is that this actually helps Trump get elected. Again, there's a learned helplessness here, where pundits look at how Trump has survived scandals that would sink any other politician and presume that he succeeds because of those scandals. We will get the same bullshit arguments should a jury find Trump guilty this spring in Smith's January 6th case. But if that happens - please Dog, let it happen - then Trump's support will likely crater among independents and swing voters. Most people don't examine all the evidence surrounding 1/6, but if Trump is in actual prison...how do you vote for that guy unless you're in Cult 45?

There's a final argument that barring Trump from the ballot could unleash right wing terrorism, as his perfervid acolytes respond to their inability to bow before their golden calf by shooting up America. First of all, America is doing a fine job of shooting itself up already, thank you. Secondly, if you refuse to hold the Trumpist Right accountable because you fear violence, then the terrorism has already worked and we don't have a democracy anymore.

I'm Sorry, What?

 Among Americans who disapprove of Biden's handling of the Gaza war you have the following numbers...again, these are Americans who disapprove:

19% think he's too supportive of Israel
16% think he's too supportive of Palestinians
22% think he's "about right"

So the plurality of Americans who disapprove of Biden's handling of the Gaza War think he's properly balanced between the two sides. Perhaps this is simply a case of "This is a bad thing and Biden is president so I'm unhappy, even though I know he's not really to blame." We tend to ascribe all bad news to the president, and this - I fear - is a fundamental flaw in our political system. We elect a single person to be a wizard or even a living god to make us feel good all the time about everything and if he doesn't, screw him. The virtue of a parliamentary system is that the prime minister is mostly understood to be a public servant who can be fired if they do a shit job. 

It's also illuminative of how little Americans really understand about issues, especially foreign policy. So you get "vibes" results like this rather than formulating an actual alternative.

Trump clearly benefits from an unearned nostalgia for the economy of 2017-2021. While he inherited the Obama Recovery and pumped more stimulus into the economy with tax cuts, he also oversaw the compete cratering of the US economy during Covid, an event that would've been immeasurably worse if a Democratic House hadn't pushed massive stimulus onto the country. The economy is miles better today than it was on January 20th, 2021.  Yet somehow Trump benefits from the question "Would be better on the economy."

Shit is fucked up and broken.

Yeah, No

 Jon Chait wants to split legal hairs over last night's decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to ban Trump from the primary ticket for having committed insurrection. His argument is similar to ones made about the case that Alvin Bragg is bringing against him in NY state. "If it wasn't Trump, they wouldn't prosecute this." Of course, not many other politicians launder money to hush women up. What's been striking about Trump is that he has weathered scandals that sink normal politicians. Even in 2020, Cal Cunningham likely lost his bid for the North Carolina Senate over a sex scandal.

The idea that Trump's actions on and before January 6th don't constitute an "according to Hoyle's" insurrection is absurd, because the first legal finding was that he did, in fact, engage in insurrection. If that is accurate, then he shouldn't be on the ballot anymore than someone who wasn't born in this country. 

Trump's election next year would be the end of democratic governance in America and could even lead to civil war. But let's worry about whether he committed a violent act of insurrection or "attempted to secure an unelected second term in office." That's the real issue here.

They're Losing

 The reason quite a few social conservatives have latched onto the bloated shitbag that is Donald Trump is that they are losing the culture war. In their benighted minds, Trump is a "winner" who "pwns the libtards" and defies political gravity. This based entirely on the narrow electoral college win in 2016. I had once hoped that Trump's awfulness would create a generational movement away from the GOP, in much the same way the Civil War booted the Democrats out of the White House for the better part of 65 years. Maybe that does still happen, but it's easy to despair. (Don't.)

The reason to believe that social conservatives are losing the culture war battle is obvious to anyone who has looked at the post-Dobbs landscape and the consistent support for abortion rights as expressed by actual voting. Another potent sign is this news that the Pope is softening some of the anti-LGBTQ positions of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis is such a break from his predecessors, men who overtly thwarted any efforts in liberalization or accountability from the many cases of priestly molestation that took place in the church they ran. He is every bit the Franciscan he started out.

This has led to despair and anger from the far right of the Catholic Church, Christo-fascists like Rod Dreher to piss and moan about the fact that the Catholic Church - HIS CHURCH - is no longer being hateful towards (checks notes) people who love each other. 

The Dobbs decision was handed down to us by a Catholic majority on the Supreme Court. Any effort that Francis can make to soften the edges of one of the most regressive institutions in the world has to be welcomed, as incomplete as it might be.

Seriously?

 As we understand that the 2024 election will be between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, maybe we can understand that while - yes - Joe Biden is old, Donald Trump openly admires dictatorship and wants to have one of his own. And for all those concerned about Biden's stricter border policies or support of Israel, just remember that Trump is straight up playing from the Hitler playbook.

Putin

 There are a number of reasons why Congress needs to pass Ukraine aid yesterday, but defeating Putin and preventing him from annexing large parts of his democratic neighbor is only part of the reason. Putin has been actively undermining American security with the help of Trump and his cabal. He is also part of the revanchist culture war bullshit that so animates the modern Right.

My deceased father used to decry the center left's focus on cultural issues, and I'm sure he would have contorted himself in knots with whataboutism in regards to campus leftists when confronted with an international rightist movement that wants to bring about some sort of Opus Dei monarchical form of government. Naïve kids vs the entire Republican Party and its presidential nominee; exactly the same.

Hilarious

 Rudy Giuliani is guilty of the thing he admitted doing.

Such an awful person, I hope he and Alex Jones have to room together in Hell when they get there.

If The Facts Do Not Conform To The Theory, They Must Be Disposed Of

 I find that various political theories can be helpful in allowing us to understand aspects of the world and organize those observations into coherent world views. However, it's possible both to have a bad theory and/or not allow for the theory to be contradicted by what you observe in the actual world. In general, I find most Leftist theories to have minimal explanatory properties, though there are often helpful correctives to conventional wisdom. I wouldn't start with Marxism or Critical Race Theory, but it's helpful to run things past those theories to see what shakes loose.

Jon Chait's newsletter addressed this. Since I can't really link to it, I'll quote it in full.

Jill Filipovic and Katha Pollitt have both written excellent columns on the refusal of many Western progressives to acknowledge that the October 7 terrorist attacks included rape. In the immediate wake of the attacks, the rape allegation was not conclusive, in part because almost every witness to the attack had been either murdered or abducted. This early period of uncertainty allowed allies of the pro-Palestinian activist movement to tell themselves the rapes hadn’t occurred, and they clung to this position even as proof mounted.

The thought system that produced this denial is a very Western tradition of radical activism. If you have any familiarity with the history of communism, which produced adherents and fellow travelers who denied Soviet atrocities, this is an unsurprising dynamic. Emma Green has an excellent report that explains how these ideas are reproduced, using the words of the activists themselves.

“When I spoke with students involved with S.J.P., they insisted that what’s happening in Gaza is not ‘complicated,’” she reports. This section is especially enlightening:

Sean Eren, another steering-committee member, told me that “S.J.P. is oriented in a special way. The idea is to appeal to people who know nothing.” Chapters start “small, with more tangible, visible elements of the Palestinian struggle,” and link those to prominent historical episodes elsewhere, such as apartheid in South Africa or the oppression of Native Americans in the U.S. “We go from apartheid to understanding what settler colonialism means. And then, from settler colonialism, we move to imperialism. And then, for example, what does Marxism have to do with Palestine?”

Appeal to “people who know nothing,” and then inculcate a simplistic explanation that divides the world into good and evil — well, it’s nothing if not a successful formula.

This is why these activist groups so adamantly resist complication. When you are training your adherents to treat rapists as noble heroes and their victims as oppressors, you cannot allow anything to undermine your moral binary.

If there’s anything to be taken away from the exposure many liberals have gotten to the radical views of pro-Hamas demonstrators, it should be that this worldview is not a naïve or overexuberant version of their own beliefs. It is a fundamentally illiberal ideology that is just as alien to liberal democracy as Trumpism.

I've had a few run-ins with this sort of thinking online. My opinion of Gaza is that it's war crimes all the way down. Hamas committed war crimes in 10/7; they committed more war crimes by intermingling their defensive positions with population centers, refugee camps and hospitals, then Israel committed war crimes by striking those positions, impeding refugee movements and restricting aid. While there are clear victims here, there isn't a clear "good guy". Embracing nuance like that shatters the clear narratives of "genocide" or "colonialism" that simply don't stand up to fair-minded scrutiny.

As Chait has been hammering for years now, this sort of doctrinaire worldview is incompatible with liberal (as in free) thought. 

The Politics Of Futility

 Josh Marshall was making an analysis of attack politics in the age of Trump when he offered this observation with regards to Democrats engaging in attack politics:

I often find myself in the “Okay, but …” mode in these conversations. That is even though in many ways the whole TPM thing was originally based on espousing and modeling a way a more aggressive and confrontational way of approaching politics and political questions. Some of that is characterological. Maybe some of it is age. But most of it is based on the observation that people get themselves riled up about doing X when X actually isn’t possible. They want to pump the balloon full of air. But the balloon has a hole in it. So they’re actually wasting their time. In fact they’re doing more than wasting their time. They’ll riled up about doing X. And when X doesn’t happen they get demoralized. They decide they’re in a club that doesn’t care about filling the balloon. Or maybe their leaders actually want to keep the balloon empty for hidden and sinister reasons? It all leaders to demoralization, enervation, a collective spinning of wheels to no effect.

I think this is really critical in understanding the interest group politics that both feeds and hampers Democratic coalition politics. Currently there is some movement on immigration reform in the Senate. Having a bipartisan immigration bill that is more punitive and restrictive toward undocumented immigrants is a political winner for the White House. I'm sorry but it is. However, if you've decided to blow on the Open Borders balloon, you're going to be pissed. However, if the alternative to a more restrictive immigration plan is Donald Trump as president then you need to get your fucking priorities straight.

2024 In The House of Unrepresentatives

 Martin Longman looks at the chaos surrounding the defense appropriations bill. Basically, the House passed a lunatic bill with all sorts of culture war nonsense in it, the Senate has passed a (mostly) clean NDAA, and now the House will....what exactly?

The ever shrinking margins for the House GOP means that their margin for error is miniscule. If the Chaos Caucus is opposed to more or less everything, then you have to get Democratic votes. So the only way the NDAA gets passed in the House is an up-or-down vote on the Senate version. 

This dynamic will also make passing some sort of budget nearly impossible by the shutdown dates early next year. What will be really interesting is that the House Morons seem intent on an impeachment of Joe Biden, because Trump told them to. However, I could see that failing, which would be hilarious. The Chaos Caucus has made themselves so odious to whatever remains of the institutional Republican Party that I can see a handful of GOP Reps voting against this spurious impeachment bullshit. The resulting finger pointing should be hilarious.

UPDATE: It passed. That didn't take long.

The Long Haul

 Josh Marshall makes an important point about the fight to preserve liberal democracy from creeping authoritarianism - not just here, but globally. The idea that this could be solved via the 2020 election is simply not how conflicts are resolved. Russia didn't conquer Ukraine in February of 2021, nor has Ukraine defeated Russia in the years since. Japan didn't collapse after Guadalcanal, nor did the Nazis after Stalingrad.

This is a generational struggle. It's been going on for at least 8 years, maybe as far back as the Tea Party. There have been victories and defeats, with 2016 being the most notable of the latter, but 2020 was not the final victory over authoritarian threats to American democracy. 

If we can pull out Democratic victories in 2024, I'd offer the following analogy. In 1863, Union forces defeated Confederate forces in Gettysburg. That is roughly analogous to 2020. If we rack up another win in 2024, that would be like the Union victory in Atlanta. The writing will be on the wall, but the fight won't be over.

Stop thinking of this as having an end point. It's going to take years and we have to prepare ourselves for that.

This Is Funny

 Right wing troll and uber-billionaire Elon Musk has created an AI platform for right wing trolls. The only problem is that AI learns from studying the world at large in massive quantities. 

So Musk's AI platform is "woke".

While I'm very concerned about the state of liberal democracy right now, the culture wars are over. They lost. That's why they're waging war on democracy.

Two State Solution

 Good Yglesias is back with his absolutely correct take on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian morass. He can be a little to glib about "realities" but in this case it does help that Israel exists and isn't going anywhere. Hell, even Erik Loomis - a fairly doctrinaire economic leftist - agrees that Israel's existence isn't really negotiable. States exist and they aren't going to commit suicide, which is what would happen to Israel if there were (as Yglesias puts it) some utopian outcome of a single, multi-ethnic state. The vapidity of "to the river to the sea" as a slogan is that you are calling either for the ethnic cleansing of the Jews or a multiethnic state...that would lead to the ethnic cleansing of one or the other group. 

Yglesias covers the numerous missed opportunities for a two-state solution over the past 30 years pretty well. It's probably about 50% Palestinian-40% Israeli-10% sudden departure of Israeli leaders that has prevented it from happening. The framework, however, is there.

The one thing that I do feel pretty strongly about - and this goes back to my anger over Turkish resistance to a Kurdish state in what is now Iraq - is a sort of bullshit zero sum thinking. The existence of Palestine (or Iraqi Kurdistan) is not a defeat for Israel (Turkey). In fact, states are largely more responsible because they have credible "skin in the game". A true Palestinian state - responsible to the Palestinian people - would not attack Israel, because the example of Gaza is real and painful. Hamas is perfectly willing to sacrifice civilians because their moral and political calculus is different. Dead Palestinians are the point if you're Hamas. 

A Palestinian state is not a threat to Israel; non-state entities like Hamas are.  The only way to rescue this conflict from simple moral atrocity is to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank (Gaza TBD later). I worry that America's blank check stance towards Israel - even as it's led by the moral vacuum that is Netanyahu - won't accomplish that.

We Are Going To Die From Vibes

 The perilous possibility that American democracy will end next fall would happen because of vibes. There are basically three reasons why Trump might beat Biden: inflation, crime and Gaza.

With inflation, the data is absolutely clear that we have tamed inflation without triggering a recession. I just saw gas prices under $3 a gallon here in Connecticut. The problem is that it doesn't FEEL like inflation is under control. 

With crime, we have this story about the massive crime wave that coincided with Biden's election (not the pandemic, of course). Turns out it was largely bullshit, too. Retailers are getting hammered for reasons besides mythical crime rings. Hell, grocery stores lose more money by people accidentally screwing up self-checkout than they do by planned theft, but it's still better for them to layoff cashiers and close struggling retail outlets and then blame it on non-existent crime. Crime is falling but it FEELS like it's getting worse.

Finally, with Gaza, Biden's re-election could come down to Michigan and there are a lot of Arab Americans there. The argument that I saw today was that Biden has been worse than Trump.  Yup. Biden has been worse than Trump. That leaves out that Trump greatly escalated drone strikes in Syria that killed - directly, not via Israeli action - thousands of civilians. The number is hard to pin down, but Biden wound down the open-ended war in Afghanistan, which means that America has actively STOPPED killing Muslims. Yet his problematic blank-check support for Israel means that it FEELS like Biden is worse.

There are a lot of troubling aspects of the rise of Trump and Trumpism, but an understated one is how populism destroys the idea of rationally selecting elected officials to work for the good of the country. The key there is "rationally" and we can't do that if we have abandoned actual facts and reasoned choice. There is no universe where Biden is more Islamophobic than Trump. Trump's stated plans for the economy would make inflation measurably worse. His solution for crime is extra-judicial killings.

How the hell is this even a contest?

Messaging Ain't The Problem

 This is a good amalgam post at Balloon Juice by Anne Laurie about the problems that Democrats have with messaging. It's not the actual messaging, it's the fact that Democrats are truly a big tent party with a lot of disparate wings. There is no singular message or messenger that can bridge all those wings. 

Some of this is just typical "JUST DO SOMETHING" but with words. Some of it is that people without real understanding of how politics (or foreign and military policy) works want an outcome without seeing the constraints that prevent that from happening. Student loan relief is a good example of that. Biden has done exceptional work to try and ease the debt load of millions of students. He has been constrained by the courts and a Congress that isn't going to help. He has not eliminated all student debt, however, because he can't. Still, there will be those who resent the fact that only a very small part of their loans were forgiven, when someone else had more. Nor will they necessarily appreciate that Republicans would double their debt out of spite if they could.

Usually, that dynamic relents as we get closer to the binary choice on election day.

Let's hope.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

 For years now, Jon Chait has been a lonely voice extolling the merits of liberalism. In his telling, the sort of leftist campus politics that seek to minimize emotional "trauma" by sanitizing "safe spaces" and policing what can and cannot be said is antithetical to liberal arts education. While I've largely agreed with him - education should be somewhat discomfiting - it seemed a silly thing to focus on during the Era of Trump.

Recently though, he has been vindicated by the plight of three university presidents. Paul Campos thinks this is just theatricality aimed at both three powerful women and elite universities by the objectively awful Elise Stefanik. This all falls, however, under the umbrella of policing speech. When the college presidents sought to contextualize the hypothetical, they were accused of anti-Semitism. How can there be context for genocide? Except Stefanik loaded the hypothetical in such a way that calling for a Palestinian state could conceivably be seen as a call for genocide.

Threats and actions should be grounds for disciplinary actions. However, we have so degraded the language that anything can now be a threat. This is why I get incensed at people calling what Israel is doing "genocide." It's often times a war crime, but that is not necessarily genocide. Once you start calling any civilian casualties "genocide" then any rhetoric in support of the IDF or Palestinian nationhood becomes a threat. "From the river to the sea" can be seen a number of different ways, only a few of them could entail the slaughter of the Jewish people. If everything is genocide, then everything is a threat and there is no education, there is no challenging prior convictions. 

Chait's long running defense of liberalism is a defense of free speech. Not Elon Musk's coddling of Nazis, but rather the idea that complicated and challenging ideas should be discussed openly. Once you start policing what can and cannot be said, then it matters a great deal who is doing the policing. When the Campus Left says you can't say Hispanic, you have to say Latinx, what happens when it's Elise Stefanik expanding on that precedent? You can't fly a Palestinian flag because that's a threat. (Campos elsewhere goes part of the way down that road.)

Students are young people. They are not adults, but rather larval adults. They make mistakes. Mistakes are how you learn. In any number of ways, we are failing students when we don't prepare them to lose and make mistakes productively. We watched The Holdovers last night, and it's a great movie. Paul Giamatti's character is what happens when you take even that idea too far. Still, the purpose of schooling should be to teach students to fail, to learn from those failures and then grapple with that means for the rest of their lives.

The problem with odious gargoyles like Elise Stefanik is that she never learned to learn anything except how to toady up to the most proximate power figure. Devoid of principles, she is only capable of shit like this. However, he very cynicism does allow us to see where these sort of illiberal trends in education can wind up. We can see it in Florida, too.

We have, I suppose to conclude, lost our ability to argue productively. And that has chilling consequences for education and civic life in general. 

Doomerism

 Paul Campos looks at a Paul Krugman column about doomerism on the economy. Krugman is talking about how there's no point in arguing with the Right about economic data because facts don't really exist in that cognitive sphere. What's depressing for Krugman and what Campos picks up on is how it's tough to get the Left to see good news. 

Personally, I am guardedly optimistic that we are a few months away from people starting to realize that the economy is in pretty good shape. People's opinion of their personal economic situation is pretty favorable, but they are convinced that the overall economy stinks. Some of this is the relentless doomerism of the press and the Professional Left. Some of it, though, is the lag we have seen again and again between an economic recovery and people's ability to breath again and feel that the economy has, in fact, recovered.

I also keep coming back to the insights about negative engagement driving social media. For me, personally, I hate that shit. My Tik Tok feed is all about puppies. Literally. Yet for a lot of people, negative stories drive engagement. You also have a lot of younger people who have vague memories of 2008 and a lot more people who have no memory of the late '70s, so they can't conceptualize what a recovery looks like. 

The only factor that's "controllable" is the preference for Leftists to present doomerism as a model for change. Fucking Lenin and his "heightening the contradictions." That almost never works and when it does, it usually unleashes really destructive forces in society. You might get the left wing revolution of your onanistic fantasies, but more likely you will get a right wing coup. In fact, you will get exactly what Trump is threatening for January 2025. 

These philosophical revolutionaries are exactly what leads to right wing authoritarianism. For the moment, it's being held at bay in America, but for the last 150 years, it has been America that has corrected the forces of right wing authoritarianism. It seems kinda important that we not be the problem, but remain the solution.

Border Politics

 Aid for Ukraine is being held up contingent - at least in the Senate - on some sort of border policy. It's unclear what sort of draconian border policy the GOP wants, but Chris Murphy seems to suggest it's a non-starter and "political theater". Surprise, surprise. 

The question becomes what sort of policy is too extreme for Democrats? I think Dems would get behind more Border Patrol officers, for instance. They might even be for building some sections of border barriers. One thing that's clear is that there isn't much appetite for an "open border" even among mainline Democrats. Certainly some sort of reform of the asylum system is needed, whether it's more judges or not, I'm unqualified to say.

What is more interesting is that even a fairly strict border policy would probably be OK with Democrats as a means to possibly neutralize a wedge issue. New immigrants aren't voters, after all, and even Hispanic voters aren't thrilled with a porous border (for some reason). So what the hell are they asking for? I get that legislation only happens behind closed doors, but maybe shedding some light on this would be helpful. 

Given the razor thin margins in the House, a Ukraine/Israel/Border bill that could pass the Senate might also pass the House. It's a curious impasse, unless the GOP is advocating for drone strikes on migrants. And who knows, maybe they are.

Kevin McCarthy Gets The Last Laugh

 McCarthy is retiring in a few weeks; he won't be a Congressman in 2024. 

This will reduce the GOP "majority" even further to two seats after George Santos was expelled. There's no way that the timing of these two events aren't linked. McCarthy was saying he was going to run for re-election in 2024, but as soon as Santos is expelled, he announces his imminent departure. Weaker of the House Mike Johnson now has no cushion with a caucus that is ungovernable under the best of circumstances. 

The realities of a two seat majority means that measures that the Chaos Caucus demands - tanks on the southern border, cutting Medicaid, ending aid for Ukraine - are DOA. In fact, I have zero idea how ANYTHING can get passed, if Johnson tries to do it with Democratic votes.

The GOP is going to give us another year of dysfunction leading into the election.

The Vibecession

 The basic quandary that the Biden re-election team has to face is that the economy is really healthy in many fundamental ways, but people don't like it. You'd like to take credit for Bidenomics, but that's risky when people seem deadset on believing it's a terrible economy. This steadfast belief is true across the world, as incumbents of all types are losing elections (or would if the elections were held today). Some of this is Covid hangover - both economically and politically - but in other countries things are demonstrably worse. Biden and American have done better than just about any comparable economy in recovering from Covid.

It gets weirder when you look at the popularity of incumbent governors in the US. This mirrors something we see with polling about public education. Most people think public education is failing badly, but they also think their school system and teachers are excellent. You can squint and make a case that people liking their governors and hating on Biden are two dynamics. This first is negative polarization (no Republican is going to say they like the economy) and the second is that there is usually a lag between improving economic conditions and politicians getting credit for it.

There's also, though, the "Vibecession" or the fact that things feel bad, regardless of the economic data. On explanation proffered here is that rising minimum wages has created a status problem for bougie middle class people who don't want to concede anything to the working class. The problem I have is that this requires walking into a Five Guys, dropping $50 on lunch and tying that directly to rising wages. People don't understand economics that much.

The Tweet at the top of that thread illuminates something important though. Someone posts a ridiculous, economically illiterate post about the cost of fries (but more about the mark-up of Uber Eats) and then admits they don't know what they're talking about (which is actually refreshing). Still, people liked the post. I think there are two important points here.

The first is that social media thrives on negative engagement. People click on stuff that angers them more than things that make them happy. (Not me, baby. I'm all about Puppy Tik Tok.) The second is a bit more conspiratorial. People get "engagement" for posting fundamentally negative stories like the false idea that fries cost $7. I have to wonder though how much hostile governments are rewarding this cognitive process. Bots can boost a negative message just as much as actual people can, and Tik Tok is owned by China. If you don't like America, a Trump re-election is the best possible thing you could hope for. Tweaking your algorithm to flood social media with negative bullshit doesn't seem implausible and wouldn't be that hard or expensive to do.

There is legitimate outrage over the way Israel has conducted its war on Hamas. They've been brutal, but Hamas knew that would be the response when they launched the attack. The sudden cause celebre of Palestinians would've made sense among, you know, Palestinians and Muslims in general. The total embrace of fucking Hamas by the online Left feels...off. Sure, they are mostly knuckleheads and grifters at the top, but a distressing number of young people get their news from social media. We are already wired to engage with negativity, and if China or Russia wanted to press the issue it would be really easy.

What Stage Capitalism Is This?

 Hamas may have shorted the Israeli economy before 10/7. 

If you want to turn the street radicals against Hamas, point out that they are basically Blackstone with even more torture.

What Is Biden's Platform?

 Alex Shephard at The New Republic asks what Biden will be running on. We know Trump's platform: trample democratic rights and institutions while pursuing vengeance on his enemies.

Shephard proposes codifying Roe, which is a no brainer. Personally, I wonder (hope) if people's opinion of the economy will improve between now and election day. There's a LOT of good news, but people are fundamentally risk averse, and their most recent experience with inflation has them edgy, even if unemployment is low, wages are raising and inflation in most consumer goods has abated. Still, focusing on unions is probably a really sound strategy, as it cuts into Trump's appeal to WWC and would be broadly popular. Unions are about as popular as they've ever been.

Shephard eschews "foreign wars" but that's stupid. We aren't at war with anyone right now. They are trying to make the point that we are expending mostly obsolete weapons so that we don't go to war, but that message isn't getting through the nonsense of political journalism. Then there's this:

On immigration, Biden faces a different problem, especially as he has adopted more and more of his predecessor’s vile, draconian policies in an effort to deflect criticism.

Immigration is a really weird issue. I'm not sure what "vile, draconian policies" Biden is adopting beyond enforcing the fact that America has a border. The constituency for an open border is the sort of Campus Lefty whose political ideas have proven toxic. There certainly is a desperate need for a better asylum process, and Trump will not be the avenue for that happening. Immigration is a cudgel for Republicans to swing, not a problem that they want to solve. I'm sure Fox is ginning up caravan coverage right now.

If I were advising the Biden team I'd make these the pillars of my campaign:

- Protecting a woman's right to make her own health choices.
- Protecting democracy here and abroad.
- Protecting the environment by following through on climate initiatives.
- Protecting paychecks by expanding union membership and raising the minimum wage.
- Protecting measures to reduce student debts.
- And yes, protecting the border through a compassionate approach to immigration that preserves America's borders AND the humanity of those who wish to come here.

Basically, you present Grampa Joe as a temperamentally conservative guy trying to preserve things that people like, in contrast to Trump's braying mob who want to destroy that which makes America unique.

Garbage People

 Jon Chait notes that the "appeal" of Ron DeSantis was that he would give Republicans everything they loved about Trump without all the side drama and dysfunction. That has not been the case, as he has run a dysfunctional campaign himself and has crooks and creeps all up in his shit. 

The conclusion that Chait leaves unstated is that Trump's dysfunction was largely attributed to his own host of personal foibles. What we are seeing from DeSantis' own dumpster fire is that this dysfunction extends beyond Trump's many personal flaws. 

The far right in this country is full of garbage people. They are not fundamentally smart or competent. Many of them are grifters who are simply trying to bilk ignorant cultural warriors of their spare money. Few of the "professionals" in either campaign have real principles; they are there for the lucre. Those that are true believers are largely ignoramuses. 

Anyway, the presidential polling is still neck and neck.

Chait also notes that Nikki Haley is the latest on whom the establishment GOP has bequeathed its mantle. I think this sums it up nicely:

The trouble for Haley is that the faction she is rallying is inherently bounded. The Establishment wing is limited not only in size but also by the intense hostility it inspires among the party’s Trumpier voters. She is following a formula that can propel her into consideration for the vice-presidency, or position her to step in if Trump is felled by heart disease, but gives her little chance to actually defeat the party’s reigning cult leader and self-styled president-in-exile. Whatever you might say about the hapless DeSantis candidacy, it is at least built upon a recognition of the actual state of the Trump-era GOP. Haley’s candidacy is less a way of dealing with the party’s problems than an attempt to pretend they don’t exist.

In a sane world, Biden would have a 20 point lead on Trump. In a sane world, he'd be running against Nikki Haley next year.

Guess what kind of world we live in.

America Has A Christianist Problem

 Paul Campos looks at an interview with Tim Alberta and notes the following:

I believe a massive mistake that many liberals and leftists make is to fail to take into account that tens of millions of Americans support Trump not because they’re “bad people” in some generic psychological/ethical sense. This reduces the deepest structural forces in our society into a matter of defective individual character. Leftists ,of all people, should recognize the absurdity of such an analysis. Rather, a very large number of Trump supporters genuinely hold beliefs about the nature of the world that logically entail unwavering support for Donald Trump.

This is Trump’s white Protestant evangelical base, and these people aren’t going to magically disappear one day, despite their own belief that they actually will. How to co-exist with them is, shall we say, an increasingly complicated problem.

There you have it.

Seriously, WTF?

 Moms For Liberty is yet another one of these astroturf conservative movements designed to rile up the rubes. They are responsible for a lot of the angry school board meetings over the past few years. They gin up outrage over any material in schools that they deem "grooming" or sexually aberrant. 

So, it is with zero surprise that we learn that one of the founder of Moms For Liberty is involved in kinky sex shit and her husband is an accused rapist.