Center v Left

 So, this is now the entire debate in Washington right now. Some of it is "Insurgent v Establishment" but particularly online, it's really Center v Left. Jon Chait notes how pervasive the argument that more leftwing candidates did great is - even though all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Yglesias, too, has been flogging this basic fact: moderate candidates outperformed more ideologically extreme candidates.

What I do think is interesting is trying to unpack what constitutes Center v Left. For Sanders, all left wing positions are economic. However, Democratic bastion California defeated a proposed one-time wealth tax. This was a direct measure of the appetite of the voting public for a particularly Sanders-like policy, and in the bluest of states. It still failed.

If there is a place where Democrats really understand the need to moderate, it really seems to be on cultural issues. Lots of ballot measures and successful candidates reinforced the idea that this really isn't the moment for aggressive trans-rights positions. That could very well change over time, but it's also worth noting that the entire closing GOP argument was attacking trans people, and that didn't work either. The "moderate" position would seem to be "Let adults express their gender who they want, but maybe leave kids out of it." 

The thing is, I bet Sanders would agree with that. As a committed adherent of leftwing economics, Sanders doesn't exert himself on the sort of cultural issues that animate a large share of VERY progressive spaces. So is Sanders "moderating" by not talking about issues of gender, race or things like gun rights? What exactly do we mean by "Center" and "Left" when we make these huge online arguments?

The uncomfortable reality seems to be that people are indeed pissed about prices and corruption. They don't like the cruelty and the crassness in the Oval Office. Culturally, this isn't a mandate for pronouns in your email signature or revivifying Affirmative Action. But even economically - if we look at California's rejection of the wealth tax - it's unclear that people are clamoring for a more aggressive tax regimen. Then again, people want all of the government programs that they can get without having to pay for it. Not sure how that will work.

There is not a coherent Left, and not just because there has never been a "coherent Left" in the history of the world. Factionalism is the persistent state of left of center politics. The incoherence between a Sanders-style advocacy for a larger welfare state and the sort of cultural progressivism that was rightly or wrongly attached to Kamala Harris is really significant though.

I've argued for years that Trump's political superpower was running against more qualified women, but beating them by energizing a latent misogyny in the electorate. I do wonder, though, if it isn't the sort of vibe-based shorthand at work that reflexively attaches more leftwing social positions to women than men. Harris was triply damaged as a Black Woman From California. You can't get more reflexively culturally left than that - even if her policies were not the caricature that they were made out to be.

The American political system and the American electorate absolutely prefer "moderation" and the "center" but it can be very difficult to pin down what that actually means. Today, I think we can argue that marriage equality is a centrist position, but it certainly wasn't 20 years ago, even 15 years ago. 

Someone like Elizabeth Warren, who is pretty far left on both economic and social issues, would be a terrible spokesperson for the Democratic Party in this environment, which doesn't mean that Chuck Schumer would be the ideal one. The last Democrat who seemed to comfortably straddle both sides of this debate was Obama, and the Left came to hate him for that.

The Missed Opportunity

 Leftists caterwauling about Schumer selling out Angie Nixon as talking nonsense. What's more, the real missed opportunity might have been Louisiana. It will be 746,000 to 720,000. Cheaper market, an especially Trumpy pick that jettisoned an incumbent...what could have been?

Politics Did Not Start in 2016

 Yglesias notes that a lot of "leftists" trace their politics to the arrival of Bernie Sanders on the national stage in the 2016 primary. He points out two historical facts: that the Democratic Party arose from economic populism associated with Andrew Jackson (and Martin van Buren, but Yglesias omits him). He also notes that Bill Clinton and Al Gore ran on broadly Bernie Sounding themes of a middle class being squeezed by the rich. I would add the Woodrow Wilson ran against the predations of great wealth. FDR was explicitly populist in its rhetoric, talking about how "economic royalists" hated him and "I welcome their hatred."

This - broadly speaking - is the problem with the Very Online Politics. So many of the loudest voices online are just young. They think they invented things that long predate them. One example would be nonviolent protest. Basically, the concept of nonviolent civil disobedience traces its origins to Henry David Thoreau and then Mohandas Gandhi and finally Martin Luther King. One of the important concepts of this is that you willingly go to jail. That's a huge part of it. You lay down your body on the gears of injustice and accept the consequences. Many of today's protestors think that they can raise hell and escape the consequences. 

We saw this with the "protest" against Jewish owned businesses in Philadelphia that was pretty anti-Semitic and echoing of Kristallnacht, with which is shared an anniversary. "How could we have known that it was near the anniversary of a Nazi riot against Jewish businesses?" Well, you are responsible for your actions and their impact. 

Bernie and his minions have become an especially toxic force in Democratic politics. This toxicity is linked to the idea that Bernie was some sort of sui generis force in American politics. Bernie did not invent this, and in fact, it has a long tradition in Democratic politics - the longest tradition. Hillary Clinton may have been leaning into policies designed to continue the long and slow recovery from 2008, but her demonization as a "neo-liberal" was largely silly. I remain convinced that a lot of latent misogyny sunk her with a certain segment of Very Online Young Men. They have since dug deeply into this position, with Bernie as their lodestar.

Bernie - it must be said - has accomplished astonishingly little in his long career in the Senate. The actual hard work of legislating has eluded him. Getting a universal or more universal health care system is really, really hard. It will likely happen in the slow incremental way that it has happened so far: Medicare and Medicaid, then decades later you get the ACA. In between, you had Ted Kennedy who famously killed a half-measure in the early '70s in his pursuit of every thing he wanted. He regretted it, which made him a forceful advocate for the ACA. For Berniebros, the ACA is a betrayal of the preferred outcome. The perfect made the enemy of the good.

Finally, we have the stupid kerfuffle over Florida. Angie Nixon was very, very unlikely to win Florida - a state which is tilting further and further right. Schumer decided to prioritize places like Iowa and Mississippi, which are cheaper to win in. Meanwhile, Saint Bernard sat on tens of millions of his PAC money, when - if it's really about money - he might have saved Nixon and proved the perfidy of "establishment Dems."

I've been exposed to a ton of online arguments that are made by people who seem ignorant of basic ideas of government or history. That's not a recipe for long term success.

Florida v Texas

 The dramatic events on last week were definitely highlighted by the collapse in GOP statewide in Texas. To a different degree, Florida became what Texas once was: a high population state that is reliably Republican. 

Why?

The demographic explanation is pretty easy. Hispanics in Texas and other areas swung heavily towards Democrats. In Georgia, Hispanics shifted 36 points to Democrats, voting 72-28. In Texas, Hispanics shifted 46 points to Democrats, 72-27. In North Carolina, there was a 33 point shift; 73-26. In all three states, there are significant Mexican-American populations. 

Compare this to Florida.

Hispanics did shift to Democrats by 21 points, but the overall vote was 54-46. In the Senate race, Moody beat Nixon, 50.9 to 48.0; in the Governor's race, Donalds beat Jolly, 50.0 to 48.7. We can see Jolly running slightly ahead of the self-described Democratic Socialist, Nixon. 

Some of the bleating about replacing Chuck Schumer focuses on his abandoning Florida. First, of all, he didn't, but he did get more "bang for his buck" in Mississippi and Alaska. This wasn't a betrayal of Nixon, it was triage. 

More significantly, Florida's Hispanic population is disproportionally NOT Mexican-American. It's largely Cuban and Venezuelan American. Those populations are deeply skeptical of left wing politics, given what happened in their grandparents' homeland. I think Nixon ran a strong race, but the label "socialist" was going to be a harder lift (see the discrepancy between Nixon and Jolly, not that Jolly won anyway). Florida DID see a broad shift leftwards across all demographics - men, women, Black, White, and Hispanic - but it did not see enough of a shift among Hispanics to erase the 2024 result.

Cementing working class Hispanic votes is important to maintaining these gains. Trump's selection of Temu Nosferatu as Chief of Staff will help fasten Hispanics to the Democratic Party, especially if Democratic governors in places like Texas and Georgia help restrain ICE raids. A brutal public fight between Gina Hinojosa and Stephen Miller will be very helpful to winning Texas again in 2028. There will still need to be efforts to help with all the kitchen table issues that people, including but not limited to Hispanics, are upset about. 

Hispanics have been the emerging political force over the past two decades. Which direction they swing in each election is critically important, but you can't look at the "Hispanic Vote" without differentiating between a Cuban-American in Dade County and a Mexican-American in Dallas.

UPDATE: Krugman wonders if this could be a more or less permanent shift, the way it has been in California. I think this is where the Stephen Miller angle comes in. If they keep pushing Hispanics away from their party... why not?

What Next?

 It remains unclear what the Democratic margins will be, once vote counting ends. As of this writing, it certainly looks like Scott Colom will win in Mississippi and people in the know think that Peltola has a really strong chance to pull ahead with ranked voting. In the House, they could reach 260 seats. They flipped five governorships.

The thing is, these margins are both amazing and irrelevant. I think there was an unnerving scenario were Democrats had 51 seats in the Senate and were held hostage by Fetterman, or the margins in the House were tiny and they were held hostage by The Squad. As it is, Democrats should unify behind Jeffries and Schumer - despite the incessant butthurt of the people who thought Graham Platner was the key to flipping Maine.

What should the agenda be?

First, and most obvious is to investigate all the corruption. This is one of the things voters were most upset by - even more than ICE killing Americans, apparently. Prices and corruption are politically two sides of the same meme coin. Democrats will likely not be able to pass much of anything, but they need to be able to point to the corruption of Trump and therefore Republicans to win the political argument. 

Second, there might be a few areas were a chastened Republican minority in the Senate works with Democrats to pass some actual laws. AI safety feels like one, maybe some "all of the above" energy policy that resurrects solar and wind. 

Krugman notes that Dems should not pass big omnibus bills, but smaller standalones that can focus attention on obstruction from either Trump or Congressional Republicans. But here's where the large margins don't really matter.

Let's say you can get 60 cloture votes for an energy bill. That's not enough to overcome Trump's veto. Now, Trump let a permitting bill become law without signing it, because he's a pissy little asshole. He might do the same thing with an energy bill or AI safety. Especially if there really are margins to override his veto. The Democrats best lever for policy will be the budget, but Trump will veto that and we will have endless government shutdowns.

How do I know?

Because of the Stephen Miller decision. By replacing Susie Wiles with Nosferatu, Trump has signaled that he's going to be more combative. His initial response was tired resignation, but you can count on Miller to double down on all the cruelty and corruption that voters rejected on Tuesday.

This is why Democrats' control of the investigatory power is really the only power that they have. They can try and pass things around the margins, but it's going to be tough with the lunatic in the Oval Office who has Satan himself whispering in his ear.

Theda Skocpol urges Democrats not to fall into infighting (too late, the so-called Progressive Left is already sniping at people who actually know how politics works). Some dipshit Leftist (I think it was Ryan Grim) said that Trump would totally sign a Medicare extension in return for his ballroom. That's a consistent misunderstanding of Trump that has beguiled leftist populists for ten years. 

Skocpol, too, urges Democrats to pass small, focused bills whenever possible. Messaging bills are going to be the order of the day. 

When it comes to Federal policy, things are not going to get better in January. They just aren't. 

It will be about investigating Trump and Republicans. They aren't going to get smarter. Hell, the Dana White fiasco in illuminative. Susie Wiles was trying to get the Pentagon press secretary, Dana White, to become White House press secretary, since she actually knew how to do the job. Trump fired Wiles, because he only fires women. He then asks UFC CEP Dana White to become press secretary.

This is the level of monumental stupidity and incompetence we can look forward to. Miller is both evil and stupid (they often jump together) and so we will get even worse actions from the White House. Trump is mentally diminished and seemed checked out of any policy except his stupid fucking ballroom and arch. Miller is now effectively president.

We have saved American democracy from a Viktor Orban style dictatorship, but we are not out of the woods yet, and it's important politically that people understand that. 

UPDATE: This speech by Talarico is amazing...but then he promises to tackle problems that he will not be able to solve. That's what worries me about shooting for the moon; what is people expect him to achieve that? What happens when he can't?

Let's hope this new wave of Democratic governors and Democratic state assemblies can make tangible change.

Are You Kidding Me?

 We haven't finished counting ballots and already a faction of mostly left-aligned voices are calling to prevent Hakeem Jeffries from becoming Speaker. Some of this is because he took a meeting with Jared Kushner a few months ago, where Kushner likely was trying to head off a jail term. Did Jeffries give Kushner any guarantees? Don't think so. He took a meeting. That's it.

The incredible upsets earlier this week were most notably in South Carolina and apparently Mississippi. That was in large part by a massive turnout from Black voters. Now, a bunch of leftists and "Do Something" people want to deny the first Black Speaker of the House? I had one friend talk about how Jeffries took his name off a healthcare bill when he became leader. My understanding is that Leaders typically do not sponsor legislation. If that is what happened - Jeffries became Minority Leader and took his name off legislation - why is my friend upset about that or even just learning about it in the first place? 

It strikes me that online mis- and disinformation takes this form a lot. It will take something, turn it 90 degrees, then push it through the algorithm until people get pissed over completely normal stuff. The outrage machine gets revved up and crushes any reasoned arguments and ignores any contradictory evidence.

People worried that Jeffries isn't going to investigate Trump and other creatures, OK, yes, he's not. He's the Speaker of the House. But every single Committee Chair is going to go hog wild on subpoenas. Jeffries job as Minority Leader was to win as many races as possible and get the majority. I think it's safe to say that he pulled this off.

I'm less adamant that Schumer become Majority Leader in the Senate, mainly because I don't think we need leadership that's old. Schumer has a touch of "Senate Brain" and while I will write in a bit about what these majorities can actually do at a later date, I don't know if Schumer is the guy for this moment. He did pump money in Mississippi; he did come to El Sayed's help when he needed it; he did recruit guys like Sherrod Brown, Roy Cooper and Mary Peltola. I think he was really judicious with how he saw the map and is a reason we are winning in places like South Carolina. 

Still, that doesn't necessarily make him a wartime consigliere. 

Jeffries, on the other hand, was hand picked by Nancy Pelosi, and that's good enough for me. 

The other thing that people are using against Jeffries is AIPAC money. He has been in various leadership positions and taken money from AIPAC over the years. It looks like he took under $500,000 this cycle. Jeffries then takes that money and spreads it around various races. I've already agreed with Yglesias that AIPAC is largely no longer the force in Democratic politics that it once was. Funneling their money through Jeffries' PAC is...fine. 

AIPAC spent about $135,000,000 on Democratic candidates this cycle, and they spent the most on Haley Stevens, so...yeah. But they also gave a lot to Don Davis, who won his gerrymandered seat in North Carolina. 

I think AIPAC is trash, but until we start seeing Democrats as a whole deciding that Israel is supercool for their behavior in Gaza and the West Bank, maybe keep the circular firing squad in check? It looks like Netanyahu might actually be toast, so we will see if Israel starts behaving better. If they do, good, but that won't be because AIPAC gave money to Jeffries. 

Two More Points on the Tsunami

 The first point is really important going forward. This was "too big to rig", in that these margins are crazy. There's the race in NC-5 that's about 100 votes, but Virginia Foxx - who is a bigot and blowhard - might contest the election within her rights, but there's no way that her seat matters enough to do a January 6th. It also negated both the hundreds of millions that Elon Musk lit on fire to keep Texas and other parts of the country Republican. Gerrymanders - especially in North Carolina - became dummymanders. I don't know if this could be enough to get some sort of bipartisan bill against gerrymanders, but that would be nice.

Also, there were a ton of doomers prepared for Trump to mess with the midterm elections. Soldiers at the polling places, stolen ballot boxes, that sort of thing. Didn't happen. You should always prepare for the worst, but the doomers saying that America is a wholly fascist state can go sit in the corner for awhile. 

The second point is about Israel. Yglesias, who is Jewish, makes the case that AIPAC is done as a political force. The point he makes is that the pro-Israel lobby had two things going for it: money and the fact that people generally saw Israel as a good ally. Netanyahu pretty much scorched the latter. There is zero reason for a Democratic politician to fear that opposing Israel's conduct in Gaza and the West Bank will hurt them politically. In fact, "AIPAC" is now a powerful bludgeon to use against both primary and general election opponents. It looks like Netanyahu's position is in peril, but it also feel unlikely that any post-Netanyahu government will embrace Palestinian statehood. That should be the bright line around any future Democratic support for Israel.

The Republicans fucked themselves by embracing Trump; Israel has done the same by embracing Netanyahu.

Lots of Razor Close Races

 All eyes are understandably on Mississippi and Alaska's Senate races. In Alaska, Mary Peltola is leading by about 650 votes and seems unlikely to get to 50% in this round. In Mississippi, Scott Colom has about a 150 vote lead. Those races are uncalled and unlikely to be called soon. 

However, in the House, there are a crazy number of very, very close races. I'm working off the Times website, but here are a few as of 7:00pm.

In Arizona 1, Republican Eli Crane has 900 vote lead.
In Florida 7, Repub. Ryan Elijah has a 1500 vote lead.
In Florida 9, Dem, Darren Soto has a similar 1500 vote lead.
In Florida 26, Repub. Mario Diaz-Balart has a 1600 vote lead.
In Florida 27, Repub. Maria Salazar has a 1000 vote lead.
In Minnesota 1, Dem. Jake Johnson has an 800 vote lead.
In North Carolina 3, Repub. Greg Murphy has a 230 vote lead.
In North Carolina 5, Dem. Chuck Hubbard has a 100 vote lead.
In Tennessee 4, Dem. Victoria Broderick has a 180 vote lead.
In Tennessee 9, Rep. Brent Taylor has a 1500 vote lead.

There are a host of other uncalled races with margins of around 2000 to 3000 votes standing between candidates. Maine 2 is about 2000 votes, for instance, in favor of Republican Paul LePage, whereas Colorado's Lauren Boebert is trailing by about 2500 votes to her Democratic challenger.

In other words, there is still a lot left to determine, but luckily Democrats have already sewed up 250 seats. I have no doubt that Virginia Foxx in NC 5 is going to cry voter fraud, but it's not like she's going to be eager to launch an insurrection to go sit in the House minority for two years.

If you look at those states, Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee were all states that Republicans gerrymandered to gain seats and now they are seeing what a dummymander looks like. 

Thoughts on the Tsunami

 Waking this morning with a slight hangover, I reflected on my position about there not being a margin large enough to redeem the American electorate for their decision making in 2024. I still kind of feel that way, but maybe I should lighten up. There are still irredeemably cruel people who think that - at best - cruelty isn't important. Vivek Ramaswamy won over 2,000,000 votes in Ohio. Ken Paxton got over 4,000,000 votes. The size and geography of the wave is impressive - apparently the largest margin since the post-Watergate midterm of 1974 - but as wounded as MAGA is, it's not dead. 

It will important to keep an eye on what happens between now and January. Trump has said he will abide by the election results, but the gathering realization of what happened yesterday is going to start eating at him. He picked Graham and Paxton. He installed policies that led to inflation. The Times already has a story out about finger pointing within the GOP. Ideally, Trump - wounded, angry and desperate -turns his ire on the Republicans who he feels didn't support him enough. At least until the new Congress is seated, it's important that Republicans don't coalesce around something like, say, replacing Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. "Confusion to my enemies."

I've seen people, especially on Bluesky, talking about the need to replace Jeffries and Schumer. Uh...no, that's not how this works. Schumer did great work recruiting candidates, even if they didn't always win. Jeffries oversaw a massive reallocation of House seats. That was their job and they did it. People are noting that they tend to say DC things like "We are willing to work with the President to bring down costs." Yes, that's what you say. The idea that Hakeem Jeffries doesn't understand Donald Trump as well as you do is...quite the take.

The most important elections could very well be all the Governor's mansions and state houses that flipped. This will give Democrats an opportunity to actually govern. I really think Mamdani offers some good lessons here. Be cheerful and telegenic, pick high visibility projects that reflect good governance, be present in people's lives. You want to keep the Governor's mansion in Texas? Be good at governing. People are genuinely hungry for it.

If there's one thing that has me optimistic it's that it seems that the nasty, angry politics of MAGA - transgender for everyone! communists! - didn't work. I certainly wouldn't run back to culture war issues if I were the Democrats. Focus on Iran, tariffs and corruption. Rein in ICE. Maybe impeach Hegseth, because I think there's a decent chance enraged Republicans make him the fall guy for Iran. Start to build the case against Trump without filing articles of impeachment on Day One. Have hearing after hearing. Pass a health care bill that dies in the Senate or under Trump's veto pen. Address the things people say they care about.

Well

 It didn't suck.

Looks like 55 votes in the Senate. A massive advantage in the House. 

Came agonizingly close in Florida. Louisiana, Nebraska and Mississippi. Lots of governor's races and state assemblies.

We won't know the aggregate vote until Friday or so, because California counts on their fingers, but it will be interesting to see what that number looks like. It won't be 65%, so that's not great.

I'll take it, though.

Trauma Induced Elections

 In 2000, I was surprised that the electorate tossed over the successful policies of the Clinton Era with Bush's "win." In 2004, I was aghast that after Iraq and Abu Ghraib, we would return the same people to power, but 2006 gave me hope and 2008 was a balm. 

When Trump "won" in 2016, it reminded me a lot of 2000. The Democratic candidate was objectively better suited to the role, but people are fickle and superficial, and it wasn't like it was a landslide. In both cases, the electorate generally preferred the Democrat. 2018, 2020 and even 2022 all gave me hope in the American people.

Then came 2024. Trump had been convicted of multiple felonies. He would have been convicted of more, if Merrick Garland wasn't such a loser. The chaos and incompetence of the Covid pandemic somehow got grafted onto Biden and the Democrats. Trump was obviously diminished and he was vowing authoritarian governance. And for the first time, he won the popular vote.

At that moment, it was hard to have any faith in the American electorate. Fueled up on their algorithmic feed and a weak grasp of chronology and basic economics, they turned to the fucking guy who did January 6th. 

Every single sign - but most notably the signs Republicans themselves are giving off - says that tonight will be a good night for Democrats, and we will inject at least some sort of check on Trump's behavior. 

I can see a clear path to 52-53 Senate seats. I can see a path to 55 seats. 

The pain of the past few elections can also show me a path to 49. 

My wife and I started building our retirement home in a lovely spot in rural Connecticut. If we see another massive failure of democratic accountability today, I wonder if we can really stay in a country that so blithely embraces evil - yes, evil - the way that they have with Donald Fucking Trump.

If it truly is a 56-44 night, that's great. But it should be 65-35 and it won't be and that sucks.

48 Hours

 

Well, in 48 hours, we should have a pretty good idea if we will have guardrails to American democracy in the face of a massively corrupt authoritarian. The final polls all seem to be moving in Democrat's direction, which was not true in years when Trump was actually running. Pundits constant refrain about polls missing Trump voters is true, but only if you look at presidential elections. When Trump says "Imagine I'm on the ballot" this is what he's getting at. He has some weird juice with some weird voters, but they typically don't show in midterms.

Democrats appear to be taking advantage of early voting, locking their votes in. If late breakers move their direction or some simply don't vote, we could be in for the Blue Tsunami we desperately need to avoid the collapse of democracy. 

I know I'll be disappointed though, because Trump and Republicans should be losing in Mississippi and South Carolina, but they likely won't. Anything less feels like a missed opportunity. When Orban went down in Hungary, he went down beyond the ability of his minions to steal the election. Despite Trump's attempts to try and suppress the vote, I think he will fail. Hopefully partisanship isn't so baked in that people can't course correct.

Haley's Vomit

 So, Michigan Senate runner up, Haley Stevens, has endorsed Mike Rogers, the Republican. This take does a bit of bothsidesing it, but I understand why Chait would have qualms about El Sayed. He has said he doesn't share the venomous antisemitism of some of his high profile supporters, but it always comes with a weird lack of enthusiasm. There was the moment when a GOP plant asked him to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, and he did immediately, but then pivoted to nailing down his interlocutor. I get that, and he's good at it. To a certain degree, he's not humoring those attacks on his Muslim faith and identity. 

There's still a glibness to his dismissals that can cause people some pause. Cenk Uygar and Hasan Piker are very much beyond the Pale in their antisemitism and AES has disassociated himself with their ads without entirely calling them out for their antisemitism. 

I get it.

Still, Stevens moving towards Rogers is - as Chait notes - to exchange some implied anti-Jewish bias or lack of vigor in denouncing antisemitism with virulent islamophobia. Naked, seething bigotry. And frankly, if you're going to call out AES for his lack of energy in denying Piker, what are you to do with the entire GOP's embrace of people like Tucker Carlson? Carlson's antisemitism is just as rankling as Piker's. 

With Stevens, there was always a weird manic energy behind her eyes. I remember when the preferred candidate of normies, Mallory McMorrow, failed to catch fire - perhaps because of the ratfuckery of Wedgewood polling fraud. I wanted to see in Stevens a legitimate alternative to AES, who despite some real political skills also has some real liabilities, as noted above. But man, Stevens always gave off a really cuckoo energy. 

Now, it sure looks like her fiancé - who is already mostly a Republican - has leaned on Stevens. This sure feels like "choose me or choose El Sayed." She chose him, which isn't a powerful rejoinder against the antisemitic argument that Jews are controlling American politics from behind the scenes. 

Weirdly, I agree with some commentators that this might actually unify the Democratic Party behind El Sayed. Stevens weird behavior and self-immolation - whoever named her Fetterwoman deserves a Pulitzer - is likely to repel more people from her than drive people to Rogers. 

I, like many others, are sick to fucking death of the internecine online flame wars between "the Left" and the "Democrats." I hated it in Maine with Platner, and this is just a new flavor of the same old bullshit. I imagine El Sayed will win, but underperform relative to the climate. Whitmer or even McMorrow would be ahead by 15 points. The incessant taking of sides, the digging in, the hatred that multiplies over multiple versions of the same tiresome fight is just so sadly typical of leftist politics and really, really not helpful at this moment when the future of American democracy is at stake. 

Anyway, I hope El Sayed wins, and Stevens can fuck all the way off. 

UPDATE: Sure seems like it's the fiancé. 

MAHA and Influencers

 This Atlantic piece profiles a - wait for it - MAHA, socially conservative podcaster and influencer. This is not really another Cleetus Safari, where the Times sends someone to those famous Ohio diners to talk to Real Muricans. This is a profile of a fairly high profile figure in the MAHA space. She's also supposed to be part of the Republican Party's outreach to women.

It's a fascinating and only slightly disturbing read. The disturbing part is really just extrapolating from what she says to find our how she got there and where she's going. Basically, it starts by rejecting a lot of consensus science. Like...A LOT. Sure, there are aspects of MAHA that are common sense. Whole foods are better than processed foods. Critically, there really are some aspects of wellness culture that are probably a needed corrective to "take a pill for the rest of your life." 

But! The pills DO work, and supplements are really a perfectly Republican product, as they largely exist outside of good regulatory oversight. If supplements really do work, we need to know that through rigorous studies, not the anecdotal musings of a podcaster. This is how you get weird shit like the Ivermectin craze. 

The overall vibe from MAHA is that expertise is a conspiracy against them, largely because they are at least ignorant if not outright dumb. Vaccines are the obvious prime example of this. The more evidence you present as to the safety of vaccines, simply proves to them that the conspiracy just goes deeper than they thought.

Living in an evidence-free world is both liberating and deeply imprisoning. At first, you've freed yourself from having to follow advice, but soon you've simply traded the strictures of the "medical establishment" to the fever swamps of conspiratorial nonsense. The thing about conspiratorial thinking is that it is really difficult to unwind. You can't produce evidence that refutes, because the evidence is just part of the conspiracy.

This runs hand in hand with the rise of podcaster/influenced ecosystem. This requires precisely no really expertise. You can just be Joe Rogan "asking questions" and suddenly people are taking a horse antifungal drug to treat a virus. This democratization of knowledge means that experts are wrong because they are experts. It's the perfect complement to MAGA, because of the fervid embrace of ignorance as a virtue. 

Trump's one real success before 2016 was as a reality TV star. Reality TV fakes reality, of course, which again is a perfect metaphor for all this. Trump's authenticity is a scripted sham, that decries expertise on things like economics or military and foreign policy. This is deeply tied to evangelical Christianity and it's own rejection of modern knowledge and the scientific method.

TL;DR: We're fucked as long as these people vote in large numbers. 

Solving Problems

 Kamala Harris and others have come out and said that should Democrats win control of the House and Senate next week, they should not focus on impeachment. The argument is that Democrats will have been elected to fix things, including the War in Iran, tariffs and "affordability." 

There are a host of problems here. The first is that almost all of Trump's deeply unpopular actions have either at their root or branch the connecting issue of corruption. If you want to address his tariff powers, you also have to look at how he's squeezing companies for bribes to repeal tariffs in their specific industries. There is fundamentally no profound distinction between solving affordability and ending Trump's abuse of power.

Next, there is the simple math of what even the most profound of Blue Tsunamis can bring. Let's say that it's just an absolute crushing defeat for Trump. Not just Mississippi and South Carolina, but Arkansas flips Senate seats. Harris and other would note that if you get to, say, 58 Senate seats that this isn't enough to remove Trump from office. This is accurate. However, it's also still not enough to override a presidential veto. What's more, fundamental to Trump's abuse of power is his contempt for laws passed by Congress and his refusal to abide by court decisions. As an autocrat, he cannot work within the separation of powers. Focusing on "affordability" isn't going to lead to "solutions" anymore than impeachment will lead to removal. 

The essential burden that Democrats face is that they are a party devoted to government actually working and our system makes it difficult to make things work. What's more, you can pass a really impressive and beneficial program like the Affordable Care Act or nutrition assistance programs and agent provocateurs can simply gin up some small borderline act of corruption to try and discredit the whole project. The perils of running on "doing something" is that when you have partial power - and the system is set up so that one party always has partial power - you can't actually do anything. If el Sayed and Nixon win their Senate races, they aren't going to be able to pass Medicare for All at least until 2029 and likely not even then.

So arguing that Democrats should not focus on impeachment because it won't actually remove Trump doesn't make sense, because Democrats won't be able to really do anything until 2029.

Finally, people are pissed. The smooth brained swing voters are inherently distrustful of both parties. They are - seemingly - pissed at Trump because things suck. Democrats will not be able to make things magically not suck in January, no matter how many seats they win next week. They will have to show that they are prepared to hold corruption accountable. They will have to investigate everything WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY PASSING BILLS THAT TRUMP WILL VETO OR SIMPLY NOT IMPLEMENT. You can do both! I know Mike Johnson didn't believe in actually having the Congress meet, but you can stay in DC and legislate while ALSO investigating and impeaching.

The criticism from the insurgent left is that institutional Democrats are wimps. El Sayed has some serious political deficits, but he understands the need for combative politics. Even someone as mild mannered as Ossoff gets that. If Harris can't see that and if Chuck Schumer can't see that, then we are right back where we were in spring of 2021, when we let Trump slide for January 6th. 

Impeach him for murdering fishermen in the Caribbean. The impeach him again for accepting bribes. Then impeach him again for Iran or for not supporting Ukraine as required by law. 

MAKE HIM FUCKING MISERABLE.