Protests

I agree with Josh Marshall, that the campus protests are a complicated phenomenon, and that while some of the anti-Zionist rhetoric can be seen as threatening, there has to be a place for protest. 

What I think is really important is that college administrators and professors have prioritized emotional safety, in ways that tend to contradict the idea of a liberal arts education. If you are going to be exposed to different ideas, some of those ideas will challenge and discomfit you. Hell, that was why they killed Socrates, and generally speaking, you shouldn't want to be on the side of the mob who killed Socrates.

What's interesting is that most professors have come out in favor of allowing the students to protest. It's the administrators who have called the cops. Even Jewish professors have supported the right to protest. Now, it seems very likely - especially at Columbia - that there are non-students among the protestors. It also seems apparent that in the age of "engagement" there are bad faith actors on every side simply trying to stir the pot and cause trouble unrelated to the message of the protestors. And it's additionally self-evident that much of the rhetoric from Student for Justice in Palestine can be seen as wanting the destruction of Israel, which would presumably entail the exact same treatment of Israelis that is being meted out to Gazans.

The latter point is one where dialogue and debate would presumably challenge exactly what SJP is saying. But since we no longer debate - we silo ourselves in epistemic bubbles - there's no way to challenge beliefs. It's like the "defund the police" nonsense. When challenged, there were a few police abolitionists, but most were simply hoping to redefine policing. OK, but then why say "defund" because that seems like abolitionism. Absent the intellectual challenge, bad ideas can become dogma.

The decision by many schools to ask local law enforcement to come in a crack skulls is just absolutely the wrong way to do it. I think, as I understand it, Harvard police are checking to make sure that everyone involved in a Harvard student, and if they are, they are leaving them alone. I think it's reasonable to ask protestors not to wear masks for that reason. To flip things around, the Klan's ability to mask was important to its ability to instill fear without repercussions. If some people are saying "Death to Zionists" and supporting Hamas and Hezbollah (which are very much terrorist organizations) then masks can be seen as a sort of threat.

However, the scenes at Texas, Columbia and Emory are just wholly wrong and inappropriate. What's more they are almost guaranteed to backfire and create more sympathy for the protestors who are engaging in what should be constitutionally protected speech.

This brings me back to administrators. It's becoming clear that the many additional layers of administration in education is not designed to further student learning. The proper response to the protests is debate and conversation. I think my college did that, and there have been no reported incidents of disruption there. If we are engaging students as students and challenging them, then we are doing our jobs as educators.

However, that's emotionally charged. It could go wrong and is always subject to the hecklers veto. It's also likely to come crashing up against the idea that universities have leaned into that language is violence. Sorry, but violence is violence. People may not treat you in certain ways but they can believe what they want about you. They can even say what they think about you, right up until it becomes a threat. 

Administrators, in my experience, are primarily concerned about not hearing from angry parents and donors. They are not interested in things that might create more problems. An example: We used to have the flags of every country in the world hanging from the ceiling of our main hallways. Chinese students complained about the presence of a Tibetan flag. We took all the flags down. That struck me as a rank abrogation of our job as educators in favor of privileging student "feelings". That will always been the first priority of administration.

Oh, and by the way, we pay administrators a lot more than actual teachers for this "service".

Yes, we need to stop coddling student feelings, while making sure they feel like their voice matters. If everything becomes subject to an emotional veto, then we will slowly erase the humanities and social sciences as disciplines. And when you start down this road, it invariably leads to the administrators calling the police to beat the shit out of students whose opinions don't align with those who are more powerful. 

Illiberalism begets illiberalism. 

UPDATE: Administrators are bad.

Listen To Him

In an interview with Time (that still exists?), Trump said he would unleash the military on non-citizens and would not commit to a peaceful concession if he loses. 

So, again, for those upset about Biden's support for Israel - and it's understandable to wish things were different - Trump would be sending in the military to scour campus protests for non-citizens to expel them from the country. He also is willing to unleash civil conflict if he loses.

So, yes Colin Jost is right when he says, "The Republican candidate for president owes half a billion in fines for bank fraud and is currently spending his days farting himself awake during a porn star hush money trial and the race is tied? The race is tied. Nothing makes sense anymore." However, Trump can't help himself when it comes to doubling down on his worst impulses.

He's telling you what it's going to be like, and it will be as bad as anything since 1865.

Well, Well, Well

 If it isn't the consequences of my own actions!

Trump has been a bully his whole life, but the attention he's obviously gotten in the last seven years has meant that the backroom bullying he's engaged in is now out for the public to see. He can't change, but the courts are now finally calling him on his bullshit.

We Need To Remind People

 The most horrifying thing in American politics - aside from the Assembly of Religious Experts taking away women's rights - is that Trump and Biden remain in a dead heat. That so many Americans look back on Trump's regency as anything but a chaotic clusterfuck is a testament to the faulty structure of memory.

Biden needs to be filling the airwaves with ads about those first few months of the pandemic under Trump. The food lines, the shuttered businesses, the injecting bleach nonsense, the refrigerator cars full of corpses. Right now, people's memories of Trump are focused on the tail end of the recovery from 2008-9. It was a generally strong economy, but 2020 was obviously not. The baseline of 2020-21 needs to be tied to Trump, so that Biden can benefit from the truly impressive economic gains.

Trump has reminded us that the central conceit of democratic government - that people make reasoned choices based on both self-interest and national needs - is untrue. We need to remind people of what is at stake economically, because that's important, too.

GooGoo is Good

Good government (goo-goo) advocates are largely dismissed as Leslie Knope clones - government nerds who care about things like increasing the hours that Meals on Wheels are available. Really savvy people don't fall for that crap, when there's things like Joe Biden's age to cover.

But this past week has seen some really important goo-goo advances. I for one am ecstatic about the new rules that require airlines to automatically pay you for cancelled flights, lost luggage and absent services. The last year, I've been lucky to travel quite a bit, but last June, American Airlines made the first part of a really phenomenal vacation really unpleasant. They cancelled a flight after we had all gotten on the plane, rescheduled me on a much later flight where I had to run through Dulles to make my connection and then lost my luggage for almost a week. I got some money to buy some clothes and toiletries, but I spent several days unable to get my luggage, despite being able to clearly see where it was because of an AirTag I had in the suitcase. Then a month later, my son had a flight on American canceled on him, too, and wound up sleeping on the floor of the Phoenix airport.

The new rules to disincentivize airlines' terrible customer service is such an unbelievably overdue idea and one that Republicans would simply never entertain. Same goes for expanding overtime rules and especially getting rid of non-compete clauses.

Of the many threats that Donald Trump's return to the White House would encompass, one of the most underrated is his open threat to destroy the federal bureaucracy. Trump wants to cripple the ability of the federal government to work for the average person, because he ultimately wants the government to help the rich and stroke his ego. 

Kings don't care about peasants; democrats do.

Policy

 The primary reason not to send Trump back to the White House is that he will try to end substantive democracy in America. He has already tried once.

The other is that his policies are objectively bad. Of course, understanding this is going to be beyond the analytical experience of most American voters.

Sports Suck

 I have a small gig as the Atlanta Falcons analyst for Draftek. That means I have to pay attention to their games, their roster, their salary cap and divine what they plan to do as a franchise adding personnel to win games.

Last night, Atlanta shocked the world by drafting Michael Penix, Jr. after spending a massive amount of money to add Kirk Cousins as QB1. They used the 8th overall pick on a guy who is going to be QB3 to start the year. In other words, they used scarce resources - money is Cousins' case and a top-10 pick in Penix's case - to fill one position, while leaving other positions wanting.

As someone who both cares about this and spends way too much time thinking about it, it was one of those gut punches that takes the air out of you. This is Atlanta, the 28-3 team. They keep finding new and horrible ways to disappoint their fans.

I'm going to quit writing for Draftek because I simply can't justify making myself feel bad for something I don't have to feel bad about.

On Campus Protests

 George Packer at The Atlantic makes the case that the events at Columbia and elsewhere are a product of the sort of campus illiberalism that Jon Chait has been going on about for years. Packer quotes a student:

I think [the protests] do speak to a certain failing on Columbia’s part, but it’s a failing that’s much more widespread and further upstream. That is, I think universities have essentially stopped minding the store, stopped engaging in any kind of debate or even conversation with the ideologies which have slowly crept in to every bit of university life, without enough people of good conscience brave enough to question all the orthodoxies. So if you come to Columbia believing in “decolonization” or what have you, it’s genuinely not clear to me that you will ever have to reflect on this belief. And after all this, one day the university wakes up to these protests, panics under scrutiny, and calls the cops on students who are practicing exactly what they’ve been taught to do from the second they walked through those gates as freshmen.

I lived through the "political correctness" debates of the late '80s. However, it was a debate. It's unclear to me whether students are allowed to challenge certain orthodoxies. Packer's conclusion from the student letter:

So when, after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Jewish students found themselves subjected to the kind of hostile atmosphere that, if directed at any other minority group, would have brought down high-level rebukes, online cancellations, and maybe administrative punishments, they fell back on the obvious defense available under the new orthodoxy. They said that they felt “unsafe.” They accused pro-Palestinian students of anti-Semitism—sometimes fairly, sometimes not. They asked for protections that other groups already enjoyed. Who could blame them? They were doing what their leaders and teachers had instructed them was the right, the only, way to respond to a hurt.

The retreat into safe spaces has garnered a lot of contempt from right wing critics, and little of that is in good faith. However, the inability of students to accept a challenge to a position that they might have, especially one based on identity, means that they aren't really learning.

I don't know where I heard this, but the "colonization" framework is really just the left wing version of "Blood and Soil" nationalism. I never really bought into the "language is violence" framework, and frankly I would be loath to argue against it. (Actually, that's not true, I love a good argument.) The idea that accidentally or even intentionally misgendering someone constitutes "violence" means that Jewish students can plausibly call chants calling for a Palestinian state as anti-semitism.

Protests are, by definition, provocative. Columbia and the University of Texas have handled these protests about as poorly as they possibly could. The provocation is intended to elicit an overreaction. 

However, the broader pedagogical question of how to be true to the same practices across all parts of the student body is not something the universities have really wrestled with. 

UPDATE: What is happening at Emory and Texas is immoral and, perhaps even worse, a mistake.

What If He's In Jail?

 Martin Longman ponders what would happen if Trump is actually sentenced to jail. The hush money case has always been considered the weakest case, even though - bizarrely - everyone pretty much admits that he's guilty. The application of the law here is somewhat unique though perhaps not as unique as a lot of critics of the case assert. 

First of all, a conviction would - I believe - seal Trump's defeat in November. A sizable portion of Republicans are still unable to choke down his return to the White House - Nikki Haley continues to rack up 15-20% of the vote in primaries - and a felony conviction even without jail time will push the casual voter to either vote for Biden, stay home or possibly vote for Kennedy. In fact, I think Kennedy is going to wind up with a LOT of those Haley protest votes. Trump has never won the popular vote and if he loses 1-15% of REPUBLICANS and independents abandon the convicted felon, then he's toast.

But what about prison? There's a cathartic need to see this odious jackal in an orange jumpsuit. However, if he does escape jail time even if convicted, then that could further enrage the anti-Trump voters. If he were to be sent to the clink, I doubt it would be for very long and it could even be a form of house arrest. 

As David Axelrod points out, Trump's entire political persona is as a "winner" and the bully who will fight the people you despise. Losing in court even with house arrest or a suspended sentence makes him look like a loser. It's not certain that Trump will face more legal peril before election day, but he very well might. His fraud appeal could fail. The Georgia case might go foreword. He could get indicted in Arizona. 

Of course, a hung jury would complicate all this immeasurably. It sounds like the Supreme Court is going to help delay Trump's election interference case even further down the line. 

In the end, Trump will need to be defeated at the ballot box one way or another, but a few months in prison would sure make that easier.

Common Clay Of The New Reich

 Scott Lemieux points out who the real agenda setters are in the GOP: small business owners. I can remember how Clinton and even Obama lauded these hardy emerging capitalists as the backbone of America. However, a sizable number of them really only want to be able to squeeze every penny from the sweat of their worker's brows. 

I was at the gym and the owner of the local pizza place was there in the sauna with me and another guy who runs a small IT company. Pizza Guy (and I love his pizza) was complaining about how minimum wage laws were requiring him to raise his prices which upset his customers. And I'm sure that's true! However, it's precisely because we have minimum wage laws that none of his competitors can undercut his wages and lower prices. (This is leaving aside the argument that a tight labor market means wages would be rising anyway.)

Races to the bottom are a real problem that can lead to deflation and recession. That's why we have labor regulations. The current crop of laws passing through red states are like the abortion laws I wrote about a half an hour ago. They can't help themselves. Prohibiting water breaks in Texas and Florida? What in the chicken fried fuck is that all about? 

In 2016, I described Trump voters as "WWC" which stood for both White Working Class and Whites Without College. I think the latter is a better descriptor. These aren't "working class" in the sense of working for someone else in return for wages. These are reasonably well off people who want to be millionaires and labor laws appear to be standing in their way. They combine with White Evangelicals to create the base of Trumpsitan.

Moths To A Flame

 For all of Matt Yglesias' BS about "policy" determining this election, the reality is that the two biggest issues are Dobbs and January 6th. Trump's many trials more or less revolve around his contempt for democratic norms and practices (maybe not the documents one), but the muddied nature of those trials and whether they even come before a jury before election day, means that Dobbs remains the most salient issue for millions of voters.

Even Trump realizes this, which is why he issued a bullshit anodyne statement about leaving it up to the states, even though we know he would sign a national ban. Republican strategists understand that Dobbs is a millstone around their necks, and as each state takes up more and more draconian measures, any national messaging is going to be drowned out by the reality on the ground in reddish states across the country. We already saw Arizona Republicans gleefully kill efforts to repeal an 1863 territorial law banning almost all abortions. Arizona is a potential tipping point state, and this will matter.

Meanwhile, Idaho is out here arguing that a woman can bleed out in the ER until the point very near death before she can be treated. Now, Idaho will not vote for Joe Biden. However, if the Assembly of Religious Experts rules in their favor - and oral arguments today suggest they are trying to find a way to - Idaho's draconian law will be imitated by other deep red states. Tennessee strikes me as a state that would try this, and again, Tennessee won't vote for Biden, but Georgia is right next door. North Carolina is right next door. Media from Tennessee will cross over.

What's more, Democrats can rightly point to laws in these places as the Republican agenda for winning in November.

The doubling down on the most toxic abortion positions seems to be a temptation that the GOP can't help but embrace. The smarter members of their party (Holy SHIT, does that include Trump?!) know that they have to soft-peddle their extremism, but all these state legislators from gerrymandered districts are zealots. They just can't help themselves, but hopefully it will help Democrats this fall.

A Fool For A Client

 There are two narratives that the Trump legal team appears to be advancing in the hush money trial. The first that's gotten some notice is that his lawyers in opening statements said that it's not a crime to try and influence elections. While this is true, that's not the crime being charged; it's campaign finance laws that were broken. To admit that Trump was trying to influence elections, even in passing, is a very Trumpian move, in that Trump's entire persona is about committing crimes and then basically waiving them away with "everyone does this, I just have the courage to admit it."  Trump's lawyers have to play to both the jury and their client, and this is a great example of how playing to their client will hurt.

The second way they look to be playing to Trump's vanity is that they are going to argue that Trump never had sex with Stormy Daniels. This is one of those assertions that Trump probably feels like he has to make in order to keep Melania from killing him in his sleep and to retain the votes of some wavering evangelicals. However, they will have testimony from Daniels and McDougall and Cohen and likely several others saying that there was sex. Arguing that there wasn't will call into question the credibility of the entire defense. 

This is where Trump the Narcissist and Trump the Candidate is going to ruin the chances of Trump the Defendant. If he could take the stand and directly refute the charges, it would make sense, but that would involve perjuring himself, because he simply could not help himself. His defense team can't possibly put him on the stand, but he may demand it. Otherwise, he's claiming not to do a thing he clearly did, but doing so without taking the stand.

No, I don't think the case is a slam dunk, the way the documents and election cases are. However, Trump's own (lack of) character might be the tipping factor.

Protests Become About The Protestors

 Paul  Campos compares the student protests over Gaza with student protests in 1968 over Vietnam. The similarity is that you have two surprisingly progressive and surprisingly effective veteran politicians as president who are seeing their re-election imperiled by a foreign policy issue.

It would seem self-evident to me that the most obvious distinction between the two is that in 1968, Americans were dying in Vietnam by the thousands and the Tet Offensive had exposed some of the lies that the military and the White House had been spreading about America's progress in Vietnam. The backlash to student protests often came from those Americans who - unlike privileged college students - could not keep their sons and brothers out of Vietnam. The famous hard hat riots were working class Whites venting their anger over the confusing narrative surrounding Vietnam at the protestors whom they saw as being un-American.

Now, I do think there's a real backlash towards a lot of these protests, as several have crossed lines from protesting to harassment. Many of the protestors are either pretty far to the left or Muslim, and it's easy for the same sort of person who supports Trump to see these people as fundamentally un-American, for both racist and ideological reasons. 

However, the real concern is that Gaza protests threaten to disrupt Biden's re-election campaign, including the convention which is in - gulp - Chicago. To me, the primary difference is one of numbers. There is probably a great many Americans who are horrified in the abstract by the civilian suffering in Gaza. It's genuinely awful, but like many international calamities, it is also remote. It is not remote for Palestinian-Americans, but it's unclear how much it's that one very specific ethnic group driving these protests. 

Instead, some of what we are seeing seems to be a form of protest chic. The Trump years, culminating in the George Floyd protests, were a great period for organizing and protesting very real and tangible injustices. Biden's election drained a lot of that energy, at least on the left-of-center. Gaza became a cause celebre for people who really need to belong to a cause. My guess is that a substantial number of non-Muslim protestors had no fucking clue about the situation in Gaza on October 6th. Even many non-Palestinian Muslims probably weren't that tuned into what was going on there or in the West Bank. 

One thing we have seen in the past quarter century is a decline in linkage institutions that bind people together into groups with common goals and values. The protest movement offers that. You're a part of something big and important and moral, and that has a lot of appeal to idealistic young people.

What it does not really offer is a solution.

In 1968, the goal of protestors was to end the war in Vietnam. It is worth noting that they really weren't able to achieve this; Nixon doubled down on the war and as many Americans and Vietnamese died after his election as before. It would be another 5 years before America finally threw in the towel. 

It's less clear what the goal is of these crop of student protestors. A "permanent ceasefire" isn't really a thing; that's called "peace".  What's more, it's unclear how you get peace with neither side able to achieve a strategic victory. Hamas cannot defeat Israel and Israel cannot eradicate Hamas. True, the more extreme protest voices call for the eradication of Israel, but that simply isn't going to happen. That's like coming up with a rhyming chant and thinking you've cured cancer or unlocked nuclear fusion. It's pretty to think you've solved something, but that simply isn't happening.

In the end, protests become about the protestors. The emotional high of belonging to a Glorious Cause needs more and higher doses to achieve the same high. The actions at Columbia and elsewhere are no longer about Gaza, really, they are about constantly needing to be more outrageous on order to retain "engagement" and attention. Gaza is the pretext (unless you're Palestinian yourself), but the real target is "the Man" and currently the Man is Joe Biden. 

Actually policy outcomes are irrelevant, beyond the paradox of "permanent ceasefire". 

I do think that Democrats are right to be worried about protests this summer and into the fall. As Trump faces a possible felony conviction and is apparently sharting into his Depends in the courtroom, the new media will need a bothsides angle to level their coverage, and a handful of egregious, transgressive protestors will allow them to write about Biden promised us a boring presidency, but look at these kids!

However, I also think that the recent decisions by Columbia and Yale to take firmer action means that for a lot of these kids, the Fuck Around period is ending and the Find Out period has begun. Students should absolutely be free to protest, but when that becomes threats and a consistent disruption to student learning and safety, then it's time for Find Out. Hopefully that will induce some reflection on the part of the bulk of these protestors. Hopefully, they will start asking what they realistically hope to accomplish. 

UPDATE: Chait, naturally, takes on this issue.

Some key passages:

It is true that most anti-Israel protesters do not engage in antisemitic harassment. It is also true that the formal demands associated with anti-Israel protests are legitimate (if not policies I’d endorse) and do not require the collective punishment of American Jews. But the reason incidents like these occur over and over is that they are part of the ideological character of the movements that give rise to them. Dismissing this pattern as the actions of “inflammatory individuals” is to evade the question of who is inflaming them.

And:

The main national umbrella group for campus pro-Palestinian protests is Students for Justice in Palestine. SJP takes a violent eliminationist stance toward Israel. In the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks, it issued a celebratory statement instructing its affiliates that all Jewish Israelis are legitimate targets:

Liberation is not an abstract concept. It is not a moment circumscribed to a revolutionary past as it is often characterized. Rather, liberating colonized land is a real process that requires confrontation by any means necessary. In essence, decolonization is a call to action, a commitment to the restoration of Indigenous sovereignty. It calls upon us to engage in meaningful actions that go beyond symbolism and rhetoric. Resistance comes in all forms — armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstrations. All of it is legitimate, and all of it is necessary.

SJP likewise directed its members to join the struggle directly: “This is a moment of mobilization for all Palestinians. We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of Palestinians on the ground.”

When you consider this kind of violent rhetoric in the context of slogans like “Globalize the Intifada,” especially when you consider the lack of authentic Israeli military targets outside of Israel, then the pattern of harassment and violence that follows from this propaganda is inevitable.

And finally:

Many students were attracted to these groups because of the horrendous human toll inflicted by Israel’s counterattack in Gaza. But the groups themselves are very clearly not advocating for “peace.” They are for war. Their objection is not to human suffering but that the wrong humans are suffering.

More broadly, these groups reflect the influence of “settler-colonist” theory, a fashionable school of thought that is being taught at many institutions. (In this sense, the universities themselves are incubating the protests against their own administrations.) Settler-colonist theory is a left-wing version of blood-and-soil nationalism, positing that every ethnic group possesses an inherent attachment to certain lands and is inherently alien to others. The theory has some use in explaining European imperialism, but when applied to the Israel-Palestine conflict, it turns the Jews into a global alien subaltern class.

This ideological framework works in concert with a rhetorical approach that seeks to shrink the mental space between Gaza and the outside world, inviting activists to conceive of themselves as literal participants in the struggle. Their practice of accusing anybody who refuses to endorse their views of murder — hence the otherwise bizarre chants accusing figures like American university professors and administrators of “genocide” — reimagines any dissent from the movement’s demands as a form of literal violence.

There's Power In The Union

 The decision by autoworkers to unionize at Chattanooga's Volkswagen plant is a major development in labor relations. Now, as the link above kind of notes, Volkswagen actively supports unions. They were not the impediment, so much as the South's ingrained resistance to empowering its poorest citizens. Unionizing additional auto plants in the South will prove more difficult.

But maybe not impossible. There seems to be an important moment for unions in this country. After decades of rolling back union membership and watching the gains in the economy funneled up to the very top, workers are fed up. 

The Internet Was A Mistake (He Said, On The Internet)

 Paul Campos notes the growth of online conspiracy theories and the relative degeneration of even reasonably intelligent people. This was in light of the crazed person who lit himself on fire yesterday and died this morning. Embracing conspiracy theories is very common in authoritarian regimes, because you can't trust those in power for accurate news. What we have is something different, I think. We have killed off the gatekeepers like the Times and Walter Cronkite and nothing has taken its place, or perhaps everything everywhere has taken its place. 

There's an argument that losing the authoritative voice has been a blow for human liberty, but I fear we are trending towards a 21st century Thomas Hobbes situation. The levelling nature of knowledge and authority leads to a sort of intellectual and cognitive anarchy that means that all knowledge if treated as equal. 

What's more, the borderline lunatic person like Aaron Rodgers was trapped by these authoritative figures. Now, they are a few clicks away from like-minded people who can amplify the crazy. There was a music video from the '90s by Blind Melon - you'd remember it - with a girl wearing a bee costume wandering around until she finds a bunch of other people in bee costumes. It's great! She found her people!  The internet is really good for that...until your people are similarly deranged. Then, instead of being checked, your cognitive fallacies are effectively multiplied.

Like the impact smart phones are having on your attention spans, I'm not sure there's a solution, but it's not great.

Inflection Point

 This is an astute piece by Nick Kristoff about Biden's support for Israel and, by default, Netanyahu. There were concrete and important reasons to support Israel this fall. However, the current situation has changed and the conditions in Gaza no longer can be left to the Israeli Right. The US helped defend Israel from the Iranian attack and it looks like a massive military aid package for Ukraine and Israel is actually going to pass the House. 

Biden has to use that package to force better behavior from the IDF and open aid corridors into Gaza. What's important in the Kristoff piece is that it's not just disruptive college students who are calling for this, but moderate Democratic Senators like Van Hollen and Kaine. Nancy Pelosi signed off on the letter. 

As Kristoff notes, this is somewhat out of character for Biden, as he usually an empathetic person and suspicious of military force, at least some of the time and in the Middle East especially. 

My hope is that Biden had to wait to condition aid to Israel until after the GOP passed it through the House. If he was threatening to withhold aid, then the bill might not pass. Once the aid leaves Congress and gets to the White House, it can be held up until Israel finally accedes to humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Biden stood on principle to get us out of Afghanistan and paid a price for it, because it was the right thing to do. I understand why he though wrapping his arms around Netanyahu was necessary in November, but I am increasingly baffled as to why he thinks it makes sense now.

Bad Policy

 Look, one of the least important threats that a Trump Restoration would bring is bad policy. Not malicious policy, like weaponizing the government and destroying democratic practices, but just run of the mill bad policies. Chait and Milan Singh take note of what the effects would be. Chait is more focused on the political impact, which is that a tax cut in this environment will send interest rates spiraling upwards. Right now, interest rates are the anchor on the economy, but in a good way. We have a hold on inflation, but it's not tamed. Wages are still rising, which means that inflation will keep rising, especially in rent and anything linked to oil. 

Another tax cut will explode the deficit even more. After a quarter century of not really having to care about the deficit, we kind of have to do. We don't need a lot of austerity, but we have to start claiming more non-wage income from the top 5%. Trump and Republicans oppose this, but if they come back into power and cut taxes, we will either enter massive austerity or we will see interest rates explode where they go from an anchor to a hole in the bottom of the boat.

Democracy and women's rights are the two most important issues in this election, but Republican plans to explode America's fiscal situation is important, too.

Ukraine Aid and House Dysfunction

 There are rumors that Mike Johnson (R-Trump's Pocket) will allow a vote on the aid bill that funds Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The Senate smartly packaged those so that Sinophobes and anti-Palestinian conservatives could find their way towards defying the de facto head of the Republican Party: Vladimir Putin. If there's an up-or-down vote, I would expect the package to pass.

What could happen after that is a motion to vacate that will almost certainly pass...unless Democrats agree to keep Johnson in power for at least a few more weeks. It's unclear how many Republicans will move to vacate the Speaker's Chair and also how much attention Trump can shed on the House while his trial is moving forward (quite briskly, too). 

We have so starved Ukraine of needed aid that the tide of the war is shifting against them. Ideally, provided them with more ammunition can blunt the expected Russian spring offensive. This is a life or death moment for a democracy against an authoritarian ghoul, and it all could come down to whether Trump's hush money trial distracts him enough to allow it to slip through. 

The next question is what concessions Democrats can wring from Johnson - aside from Ukraine - to keep the gavel in his tiny, sweaty hands. 

Data Versus Vibes

 Jon Chait looks at Paul Krugman's case that the economy is actually doing great. Some of the problem - and I'm surprised that Chait didn't go there, because he loves to go there - is that if you are a left wing activist, there is absolutely no yield in arguing that things are good. Chait quotes a few left of left of center people who make the case that the American economy (which is inarguably the strongest in the world right now) is always broken. Liberal economics is fundamentally bad and can never be good.

I do think that inflation is such a long-ago phenomenon that most people simply can't recall what it was like and therefore that the current spike really wasn't all that bad. That inflationary spike was not unique to the US, as it was caused by supply issues surrounding the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The problem is that inflation is a feedback loop. Prices rise, labor is tight so wages rise, so spending keeps pace and price keep rising, albeit at 3%, not 7%.

Where it gets really interesting is at the end when Chait notes that people's opinion of their OWN economic situation is pretty good. Consumer confidence and spending are pretty robust. People think that their own economic situation is sound, but that the economy as a whole is shitty. Some of this is negative polarization, as no Republican is going to say the economy is good with a Democratic president. The other factor is the Eeyore disposition of the American Left. 

It does seem like we are starting to see opinions of the economy change. I'd love to see more Biden ads reminding people of what 2020 was actually like and that it happened under Trump. That seems self-evident, but it is precisely that sort of amnesia that has people saying the economy was better under Trump. 

Game On

 Trump's first trial begins today. Meanwhile, his meme stock has collapsed in value. Also, hey Times? The reason Trump is the first former president to go to trial is that Harding died and Nixon was preemptively pardoned by Ford. 

The hush money trial is going to be an interesting one, as it will test whether he can abide by the judge's gag order (I'm guessing he won't, but will there be consequences) and the credibility of Michael Cohen. If the jury believes Cohen, then Trump is likely found guilty. Then, does he get a prison sentence? If so, how long?

There's part of me that sees some polling of 18-30 year olds having a positive opinion of Trump that suggests they should be running his rallies on TV again, because he's gotten seriously unhinged. Trump actually benefits when he get muzzled, because his words are such rank shit. OTOH, it would be funny if he got a few months in prison for this particular crime, perhaps his least significant.

Proving A Negative

 So, yes, it looks like we will be avoiding World War III in the Middle East. The ability of the US to marshal a multinational coalition on a moment's notice to shoot down almost all of Iran's missiles was indeed a tour de force of American diplomatic and security capabilities. The massive barrage that Iran launched was effectively neutralized not just by US and Israeli weapons, but Jordanian and Saudi weapons, too. 

Needless to say, you have the usual Republican attacks on Biden for "allowing" the attacks to happen, because something something Afghanistan weakness senility something. The reality is that the US's number one goal since October 8th has been to prevent a regional war. It's not something anyone wants, but it is something that could obviously happen. Israel took a huge risk attacking Iranian military figures in Damascus, and the US and its allies saved their butts the other night. I doubt Netanyahu cares, but Israel should.

I Don't THINK We Are On The Verge Of War

 Iran launched a massive attack of missiles and drones against Israel in retaliation for Israel killing military personnel in Syria. The attack was almost entirely thwarted by a combination of Israel's Iron Dome and the military assistance of not only the US and Britain, but some Arab nations, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia. 

In all the sturm and drang over Gaza, it's important to place the events of October 7th and the subsequent invasion within the larger context of the ongoing proxy wars that Iran is fighting in the Middle East. Iran and Saudi Arabia have been fighting through proxies in Iraq, Syria and Yemen since at least 2010. Most Sunni majority countries like Jordan support Saudi Arabia, whereas a country like Iraq is torn and largely hoping to stay out of harm's way.

Hamas is part of the Axis of Resistance that Iran has built along the Shiite Crescent and with the Houthis in Yemen. The IDF striking in Damascus was a strike against this broader coalition and - importantly - something the US was really not on board with. Ever since 10-7, the US's position has been to try and stave off a longer and larger war between Israel and the entire Iranian coalition. We took on the Houthi in order to get this point across (and because they were fucking with international trade).

With every turn in this conflagration, the question always turns back to Netanyahu. He's a desperate man, working to avoid an election that will oust him from power and likely send him to jail. There's an argument that Iran had to respond to Israel's attack, and that - having made the response - Iran will elect not to escalate further. The other argument is that this was not a symbolic attack, but a real one, even if almost all the incoming missiles and drones were shot down. 

So what does Netanyahu do now? He had the support of a number of countries last night, all of whom are doubtless trying to de-escalate the situation. If he goes it alone, how far will America and the Arab states go in support? Biden pretty clearly does not want to get dragged into a war in the Middle East, but he's also been far too supportive of Israel during worse actions in Gaza. OTOH, Iran's government sucks. But attacking Iran would legitimize a regime that doesn't have a lot of legitimacy with most of its population. 

There are massive incentives on all sides to de-escalate. Israel can't afford another front in this war; Iran is fundamentally weak; the US wants no part of this and the Saudis are trying to build a more stable region. But then you have Netanyahu, who's incentives might run the other way. 

If the next few days bring bluster and tough talk, but no more missiles flying over the Jordan River, I think maybe someone finally hammered a good idea into Netanyahu's head.

Betwixt The Horns

 Trump and the GOP - both in Arizona and nationally - are really screwed by the Arizona Supreme Court decision on abortion. We keep coming back to how much GOP politicians really believe the shit they spew on Fox News for the rubes. Abortion is a great example of this. Most Republican pols don't actually care; certainly Donald Trump does not give two shits about abortion. He has almost certainly paid for and pressured women into getting them. 

However, the GOP has wed itself to an electoral strategy that relies on mobilizing a very narrow range of voters. and that very much includes religious fundamentalist theocrats for whom abortion is of paramount importance. As long as Roe was on the books, they could safely pander to their extremes, but now that Dobbs has erased that, we have more and more examples like Arizona, where the Talibangelicals are making things very uncomfortable for elected officials.

Bless their hearts. 

Ecuador

 A fascinating piece in the Post about how the global demand for cocaine has destabilized a once peaceful country, in this case Ecuador. 

What struck me is the basic tension between certain liberal/left positions on decriminalization and - at the extremes - police abolition and damage wrought in places like Ecuador when you stop trying to interdict drugs. As in Nicaragua, the president has responded with something akin to martial law and this has made both men very popular. I'll say again, too many people forget Thomas Hobbes' basic insight that the first responsibility of a state is security. The cosplay revolutionaries think that bringing the system down will free people and led to some sort of "better world" when inevitably it leads to predation of the peaceful by the violent and then a form of repressive police response.

Reading the story, it's very easy to become sympathetic to the notion that Ecuador needs a US Ranger battalion to go down there and exert extreme violence on people who are waging war on their own government. That's an obvious non-starter, but the lack of capacity of Mexican armed forces, for instance, is a huge impediment to stabilizing that country. Hopefully, the Ecuadorian military can regain control. 

But I also get the concerns of human rights' groups who fear the impact of militarizing police functions. It's just so frustrating seeing ostensibly intelligent people look at what's going on in Ecuador (or Mexico or Venezuela or Central America) and think that America needs less police and more legalized drugs. 

A similar dynamic is how legalized gambling in the US has led to increasing problems for many Americans. The Shohei Ohtani spectacle is a good example of how debilitating a gambling problem can be. Similarly, addicts are real. Addiction is a powerful cause of homelessness and poverty. 

When Portugal legalized almost all drugs, things went great for a while. Recently, things have gotten worse. Again, "this time will be different" is one of the great lies we tell ourselves. 

Drugs are bad. Gambling is bad. Sure, in small doses I guess it's OK, but for many people there is no such thing as a small dose. And gangs are REALLY bad and an inevitable byproduct of this shit.

But right now there are people who simultaneously think that Biden building a port in Gaza to alleviate famine is "imperialism" but reducing drug enforcement which is destabilizing Ecuador is enlightened.

Inside The Cult

 Paul Campos looks at a now viral speech by conservative billionaire Thomas Klingenstein, a prominent money guy behind the reactionary Claremont Institute. In it, we get a glimpse at why so many people who would seem otherwise capable of looking at the overwhelming evidence that Trump is manifestly unfit for office have decided that he's the "right man of the job".

In this vision of America, the country teeters on the edge of destruction. In this, Trump's supporters and critics align. For his supporters, if he's not elected, America will collapse; for his critics, if he IS elected, American democracy could end. It is exhausting, of course, to constantly be on the edge of disaster, but that's our moment.

The evidence in support of "Trump is a threat to democracy" seems pretty clear. He worked to overthrow the 2020 election; he routinely violates the laws that as president he is sworn to uphold; he has explicitly promised that he will use his office to punish his enemies; he has worked to strip women of their right to choose and will likely work to strip other rights from groups of Americans he hates. This is in the historical and written record.

What Klingenstein argues (and I defy you to listen to the whiny speech in its entirety) is that America is about to collapse into a Maoist hellscape. "Multiculturalism"/DEI, "socialism" and tyranny are on the march and about to stamp out American freedom. The Left hates America, you see, and wants to destroy it. 

Now, there is a fair amount of "America is uniquely bad" crap on the academic left. However, the argument that "DEI is killing everything good about America" is largely projection. It's projection that is felt extremely keenly by billionaires. Yes, given substantive control of government, Democrats will absolutely raise taxes on billionaires - hopefully by a lot. For a certain brand of billionaire, ALL taxes are theft and raising them on anyone (but especially the billionaires) is just obviously Marxist. 

Where this falls apart is in what Campos terms the "Fascist Contradiction":

The Fascist Contradiction is that the Nation is essentially great and pure and chosen for its world-historical destiny, but simultaneously decadent and depraved and almost past all saving, hence the need for its resurrection via the leadership of the Leader. This is amusingly (or maybe not) captured by Trump’s claims that America had ceased to be great by 2016, became great again for exactly four years, then ceased to be great on January 20th — or perhaps January 6th — 2021, but can become great again in a few months.

You can't have a logical framework for this. It exists beyond cause and effect or the historical record. For instance, Klingenstein's critique that the left thinks that slavery makes America an unredeemable country isn't true (outside a few outliers). However, slavery did put America on a different path that continues to have echoes down to today. So was America great when it had slaves? Jim Crow? If it only became great after Jim Crow ended, was it just great during Reagan's presidency? 

One of Obama's greatest rhetorical flourishes was in pointing out that the American project was about creating a more perfect Union. Democracy, in this framework, is an action verb. This ultimately is the normie liberal position. America is an ongoing project. For Trumpists, America is his rhetorical gambit of "American carnage". 

In the 1960s and '70s, a similar dynamic was roiling our politics. It was an age of assassinations, hyperinflation, unprecedented political corruption and national humiliation. In the end, we came through it. It led to an aging Irishman selling an optimist vision of what America might be and the general ebb and flow of political fortunes, but the country survived and hopefully will again.

Money

 It is said that money is the life's blood of politics. If that is true - and I have some qualms about that - then Trump is bleeding out. My qualms are that money is less a mover of elections than a reflection of support. If Candidate A is kicking ass in her fundraising, it's because a lot of people with the means to give are supporting her. Dark money and PACs have muddied this picture considerably, because they can allow billionaires to funnel money around whatever weak campaign finance laws still exist. 

Trump - who was found guilty of lying about his wealth to scam loans and evade taxes - has said that he raised $50,000,000 in a single night. This was - suspiciously - twice as much as Biden raised at a fundraised a few days earlier. There was also a caveat that suggested that a lot of that money will go to PACs and "affiliated groups". The math is very suspect, as it would require attendees to give more than they can actually give legally. It's Trump; it stinks to high heaven.

We do know two additional things. 

First, Trump is going to strip the RNC and his campaign of funds to stay out of prison. It won't be ALL the money, but sizable amounts - especially this summer - will go to legal fees.

Second, the Trump campaign is going to be threadbare. We've already seen that they are WAY behind on hiring staffers in their state offices. Trump ran his business as a family affair. There were only a few people who made the decisions and implemented his will. That was because, again, Trump was not a builder or developer, but a marketing and licensing firm. He was frustrated by trying to govern because it's complicated and somewhat autonomous from the White House. That's part of his "Deep State" frustration.

For decades, we heard people say "We need to run this country like a business" as if governing was the same as running a retail outlet. Trump tried to run America like his business and couldn't, which is why he's got a plan to strip the government of workers if he get elected. 

As it is, his campaign is going to be understaffed and controlled by lackeys who will do his bidding, as he becomes more and more desperate. 

The smart money is already shorting Truth Social, which has fallen in value by a quarter and seems poised to continue to fall. I would guess the smart money will stay away from Trump, especially if he starts to fall in the polls as his legal troubles mount.

Pretzels

 Josh Marshall examines Kari Lake's response to the Arizona ruling on the 1864 abortion law. It's pretty funny (except not), because Lake and other anti-abortion zealots are realizing just how toxic their anti-abortion positions are. Despite some pushback from certain Talibangelicals, most conservatives are waking up to the reality that Dobbs is killing them. So you wind up with the bizarre statements like Lake's that basically retreat from their own positions on abortion while embracing their own positions while denying that that's what they're doing. 

I found this column from 1941 about "who becomes a Nazi". It's a fascinating historical document, but what the author does is note that there are a handful of "born Nazis" and then a bunch of people who will acquiesce to Nazism out of self-interest or even indifference. So many Republican politicians simply don't care about the things their voters care for. We know in our bones that Trump has paid for abortions; apparently he wanted to abort Tiffany. Yet he also knows he needs the Talibangelicals. We see a similar dynamic with normie Republicans who have embraced America's Worst Person ever since 2016, even though they all know that he's a criminal, an authoritarian, a narcissist, a moral sewer and a con artist. 

There's an old adage that it's so much simpler to tell the truth, because you only need to remember one story, whereas if you lie you have to retain multiple versions of events. Republicans are like those liars who have to keep so many contradictory versions of the world straight in their head that they wind up speaking gibberish.

I Think Democrats Just Won Arizona

Reactionary judges on the Arizona Supreme Court just banned ALL abortions in the state, though I think there's a temporary stay on the ruling.

Total bans are incredibly politically toxic, and this has to help Biden and muddy the waters around Trump's non-answer on the issue yesterday.

The Press Will Screw This Up

 As Josh Marshall notes, Trump's statement on abortion yesterday was nonsensical. He very much wants to avoid talking about abortion, because even the idiots and grifters around him have figured out that abortion is an electoral loser. His statement about "leaving it up to the states" is the sort of rhetorical dodge that Republican appointees to the Supreme Court would resort to in their confirmation hearings. 

Again, as Marshall notes, the real question is whether he would sign a national ban if it reached his desk and would he apply the Comstock Act to the mailing of abortion medications. He never addressed this and he most likely never will. He can't win, because if he takes the popular position - Biden's position - he will lose his evangelical support. If he doesn't, he will lose the debate over Dobbs, which has altered the dynamics of every election since it was ushered from the Assembly of Religious Experts.

Trump does not do normal interviews with actual journalists. He sits down with Fox, OANN and Newsmax for fluff pieces. If he ever should cross paths with an actual journalist, will they try and pin him down? Or will they point to this bullshit non-statement as proof that Trump is a "moderate" for not wanting a national ban, when we all know he will sign one?

Folks like Yglesias continue to argue that Trump in 2016 was a moderate because he opposed Paul Ryan's plans to cut Social Security and Medicare, but I think we all know that if Congress passed such cuts, he would sign them. If a national abortion ban were to pass, he would sign that, too.

The press is unlikely to press him on this, but this is precisely the peril of having a debate with Biden. 

Off To See The Eclipse

 If I'm raptured, I'll be very disapppointed.

The Rot In The Heart Of Corporate America

 I'm old enough to remember when Jack Welch was considered one of the four or five greatest Americans, back in the '90s. He had saved (I guess) GE and was considered a savant of business management. There's a pretty good argument, however, that Welch's "Shareholder Value" school of management has been an unmitigated disaster for American industry, and the best example of this is Boeing.

Fundamentally, orienting your company's performance around increasing stock prices (shareholder value) is mistaking cause and effect. A successful company will grow and prosper over time. If you are consistently working to produce a better product, you should be fine, as long as it can be made at a price point that consumers want. There's a great passage from Henry Ford in a deposition when he was sued by the Dodge brothers, where he says that if you make a good product at a fair price, you can't help but make money. Ford didn't care about share price, he cared about the quality and price of his product. In the process, he incidentally became filthy rich.

Today's very savvy MBAs and corporate managers are all attuned to the price of their stock options. Under the Welch model, you give your executives these options so they are heavily incentivized to increase the short term increase in the price of the stock. You have made them partners in the success of the company. The problem with this theory is that stocks are volatile, and that volatility can warp the incentives of the corporation. 

The clearest outcome of this sort of thinking is seen in the McKinsey/Blackwater school of business. The basic idea is to "reduce costs", which is really just firing workers and shuttering long term investments. Blackwater comes into a company and strips it for parts which can be sold at greater profit as smaller segments than the whole might be worth. This is great for Blackwater, but the company is toast. 

All of this is fundamentally at the root of American inequality. That top 3% are making money - not off producing a superior product at a reasonable price, but by making short term decisions in return for short term gains. Even if that means ending democracy.

The obvious solution would seem to be rewriting the tax code to short circuit the incentives, but that will require a better Congress than the one we have now. 

Affluenza

 This TikTok made the rounds over the last couple of days and was widely and mercilessly mocked, as it should have been. First of all, shout out to her abuse of the filter on her video. I bet she was going for Sandra Bullock, but she looks like a 3D anime character.

The idea that their family is "struggling" is based on their ridiculous consumption habits. On one macro level, having people buy a bunch of stuff they can't afford is a short term boost for the economy. In the long term is can create serious problems (see 2008). What really is inexcusable is the idea that "the economy" is bad when you are leveraging the shit out of your lives in order to drive one of those ridiculous penis extensions. A pickup truck used to be a working person's tool, now it's an exurban status symbol with the price tag to match.

Your inability to budget your money is not a sign of a weak economy, it's a sign of weak self-discipline. Oh, and this goes just as much for people living in Brooklyn and complaining about the rent.

Environmentalists Are A Problem

 Yglesias makes the case for broad based funding for carbon mitigation technologies, and I'm guessing he was prompted by this piece in the Times about spreading microdroplets of water into high clouds to reflect more sunlight away from the planet.

There are certain pre-existing ideas in some environmental circles that have greatly impeded efforts to combat climate change. A legacy resistance to nuclear power is certainly one of them. Opposition to geo-engineering looks to be another one. There are obvious concerns about monkeying around with the atmosphere, but it seems more like the default position of many environmentalists is de-growth and/or punishing oil companies. I have no brief with oil companies, but that would be a knock-on effect rather than a primary cause in my book. If we bankrupt Exxon or not, I don't care. I just don't want the world to cook.

Every Accusation, Etc

 Trump accused Joe Biden of using cocaine during the State of the Union speech.

So we now know that Donald Trump uses cocaine. I think we always suspected it, but this would be confirmation.

Counting The Dead

 Paul Campos links to an Economist study of excess deaths during Covid. Excess deaths are the spike away from the "normal" number of deaths in a given population in a given time period. If an elderly person dies of Covid at home, they might not show up as a Covid statistic, but their death was still caused by Covid. Similarly, if they had a heart attack but couldn't access health care, because ERs were overwhelmed...same difference. 

The basic idea was that during Covid public health officials were either overwhelmed or forbidden from keeping accurate tallies of the dead. The US, despite efforts by people like Ron DeSantis to screw with the numbers, actually kept reasonably accurate tallies of the Covid dead. The official death toll was 1,170,000 (consider that number for a moment), when the the "excess death number" was 1,400,000. 

You can look at the numbers in the Economist, but it's striking how some countries' numbers are just ridiculously skewed. It should come as no surprise that Russia and China lead the way with fake numbers, but India's inclusion is likely simply a lack of capacity in their public health department.

For everyone who said and still says "It's just the flu", please do me a favor and fuck off. There is no doubt that masking and distancing were incredibly traumatic, but so are a million and a half deaths. Oh, and Covid still kills about a 1,000 people a week in the US. That's a Vietnam War's worth of deaths every year.

Hopium Chronicles

 The Times - of all outlets - interviews Simon Rosenberg, the author of the Hopium Chronicles substack, about his prediction that Biden will win in November. 

One thing I think he says that might be worth emphasizing is that we have a sort of "polling industry mindset" that really isn't predictive of much in politics, especially this far out from the election. Nate Silver, Nate Cohn and others have all made us feel like polling experts when we ask to look at crosstabs, sample sizes and screens. The reality is that polling is an approximation of any given moment. Polls are what they are, but they are not elections. Arguments that Trump shocked the world in 2016 so therefore he is going to shock the world in 2024 are fallacious reasoning. It's equally as likely that Biden wins Texas and Florida; polls can be wrong in the other direction. Witness 2022. 

We have started to see some real movement towards Biden as it becomes clear that it will be Biden v Trump. However, it's important to remember that traditionally few professionals used to pay any attention to polling before Labor Day. It was always considered largely noise. 

Zombie Laws

 Every so often there will be a post somewhere about weird laws that remains on the books decades or centuries after they were passed. You can't walk a snake on a leash in Kansas is one of them. You're genuinely curious as to why those laws were passed.

The Comstock Act, on the other hand, was a notorious "Blue Law" that prevented any mailing of materials that could be deemed "obscene". While it was partly aimed at pornography, it also included information on reproduction, including abortifacients. (I've been slowly making my way through HBO's Boardwalk Empire, set in the 1920s, and a small subplot is trying to get a women's health clinic up and running with the Catholic Church censoring everything. Like you couldn't say "pregnant", you had to say "with child.")

The current battleground over abortion is medication abortions through mifepristone and similar drugs. Red states have been able to shutter clinics, but if women can order drugs through the mail, then are they even TRYING to oppress women?!

The Comstock Act is an embarrassment to a 21st century country, especially one that has a culture much more accepting of nudity, sex and foul language than the 19th. If Republicans and Talibangelicals want to run on banning porn along with mifepristone...be my guest.

Lucy And The Football

 For Democrats, the three most elusive states to win are Texas, Florida and North Carolina. If Democrats win those states, it's a wipeout election.

So where do they stand? North Carolina has nominated an absolute freakshow of a gubernatorial candidate. He's on record opposing woman suffrage FFS. Texas has Ted Cruz on the ballot and he's one of the worst people not named Donald Trump. Texas has also been so very, very poorly governed by the GOP, though hating on immigrants does surprisingly well there.

Then there's Florida. Florida has been the site of Democratic heartbreak since 2000. It's also moved to the right since then. However, we have ballot initiatives that might help Biden and Democrats, including the Senate race, if the election is close to begin with. 

Winning a Senate majority could come down to ousting Cruz and Voldemort cosplay enthusiast Rick Scott. If abortion is the issue that makes that happen, so much the better.

Post Fact Environment

 Josh Marshall highlights an op-ed from the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In it, the author says about January 6th: "We all saw it." Here's the nut graph:

This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a years long campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it.

We have taken it as an article of faith that Trumpists are immune to facts and that we live in a post-factual world where nothing really matters. He then invokes Godwin's Law:

As for those who equate Trump and Joe Biden, that’s false equivalency.  Biden has done nothing remotely close to the egregious, anti-American acts of Trump. We can debate the success and mindset of our current president, as we have about most presidents in our lifetimes, but Biden was never a threat to our democracy. Trump is. He is unique among all American presidents for his efforts to keep power at any cost.

Personally, I find it hard to understand how Americans who take pride in our system of government support Trump. All those soldiers who died in World War II were fighting against the kind of regime Trump wants to create on our soil. How do they not see it?

The March 25 edition of the New Yorker magazine offers some insight. It includes a detailed review of a new book about Adolf Hitler, focused on the year 1932. It’s called “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power” and is by historian Timothy W. Ryback. It explains how German leaders – including some in the media -- thought they could use Hitler as a means to get power for themselves and were willing to look past his obvious deficiencies to get where they wanted. In tolerating and using Hitler as a means to an end, they helped create the monstrous dictator responsible for millions of deaths.

How are those German leaders different from people in Congress saying the election was stolen or that Jan. 6 was not an insurrection aimed at destroying our government? They know the truth, but they deny it. They see Trump as a means to an end – power for themselves and their “team” – even if it means repeatedly telling lies.

I guess the hopeful side of me thinks that eventually the memory of January 6th will crowd out the nonsensical memories of things being great under Trump. Trump was president four years ago, when we were huddled in our homes hoping not to die. Trump was president when the George Floyd protests rocked this country. His presidency was a shitshow.

However, while the editorial does make the case of "We all saw it" I think we have to acknowledge that 35% of Americans think it was fine. Which...OK. Trump can't win with 35%. It's really those 10-15% who think it was "bad" but are willing to wave it away in false equivalencies about Biden something something argle bargle. 

The simple truth is that in a sane world, a world based on objective facts, that editorial wouldn't be necessary.