Kamala Harris

 I think that everyone calling for Biden to step aside need to understand that this most likely means that either Kamala Harris will be the nominee or the party will rupture along a million fault lines. So what does that mean if Biden emerges from what I heard was a Camp David summit with his family and closest advisors to determine if he should step aside.

Part of that deliberation is whether Harris is any worse a candidate than Biden. The only poll I've seen is inconclusive.

Now, polling has been wonky, but we do know that comparing apples to apples does tell us something. Why does Biden run behind Senate candidates in the same poll? I think that's important. I would argue that there likely is a solid majority who wants to avoid another Trump presidency, but they also don't want Biden. This poll is apples to apples and it does not suggest that Biden is irreplaceable.

There is a strong anti-incumbent climate throughout the post-Covid world. Argentina elected a lunatic. Modi lost his outright majority in Parliament. The Conservatives will lose power in the coming election and who knows what will happen in France as they vote. 

Does Harris benefit from being a new face or does she get dragged down as a de facto incumbent? How much does the misogyny that sunk Clinton sink her, too? How much does she really benefit in the general from being a woman of color?

Looking at the data, I think it's clear that Generic Democrat polls at around 44%. There is no way the people answering this poll have a clear idea of who Josh Shapiro or Cory Booker is or stands for. 

If Biden makes the decision to step aside, then the question becomes 

A) Who is most likely to improve on the 45% baseline?
B) ...Without rupturing a party that is always on the verge of rupturing?

Now, the unique threat of Trump would likely mean that if the Democrats do nominate someone besides Harris, that Black women will likely vote for her "replacement" but it's not 100% certain that they will in the numbers necessary to win.

Voters don't seem to like ambitious women. That baseline of misogyny will hamper whomever the next woman to run for president is, just as it hamstrung Clinton. I can't count the number of White women who said, four years ago, "There's something about Warren or Harris I just don't like." 

Harris was a prosecutor and could do a much, much better job prosecuting the case against Trump, but in doing so would she activate that misogyny against strident women? 

Yesterday on Twitter, someone was blaming Hillary Clinton for forcing Biden out of the race in 2016. That's nonsense, as Biden was mourning the death of his son. Still, when I pointed this out, someone continued to "blame Hillary." 

I despair about that dynamic as much as I despair about Biden's age. 

The Freak Out

 After Biden's disastrous faceplant in the debate, Josh Marshall pointed out something I'd been feeling and even articulating to myself: the debate felt like election night 2016. You had that same sense of dread and disbelief that this was happening. Of course, it is not election night, and we have seen Biden perform better since then, and Black voters in particular are swarming to support him. 

Even more, we have panels of undecided voters who watching the debate feeling pretty split about who won. Some of this is likely just being reminded why they didn't like Trump four years ago. He's either your Orange Julius Caesar or he's a flaming asshole. As one undecided voter put it, at least Biden tried to provide substantive answers and didn't lie all the time. Snap polls show no movement away from Biden.

However, the freak out will create its own narrative. The Times has been after Biden for months now, but their editorial calling on him to drop out will drive one narrative. The ideal way to respond to this is how Republicans would: rally around Biden. You can still have conversations behind closed doors, but there's almost no plausible way to nominate Johnny Unbeatable. Don't drive the Freak Our narrative.

Secondly, I think a lot of Democrats have been desperate for the relief of finally burying this monstrosity of Trump in the ash heap of history. We thought we had it on election day in 2020, maybe the second impeachment...E.Jean Carroll...fraud convictions...felony convictions...none of it seemed to matter. The hope was that Biden would come in with an Aaron Sorkin moment and everyone would acknowledge that Trump was toast. Ideally he would die of embarrassment right there on the stage.

Biden effectively let the side down, the same way Tim Weah let the USMNT team down a few hours earlier in the same city by drawing an idiotic red card. This was similarly bad. People are pissed at Biden for not giving them the moment that they thought he had given them in 2020. 

Anyway, let's see whether the polls show that the panic narrative and the debate itself have hurt Biden. Maybe the age stuff is baked in?

1968

 Paul Campos pointed to an important historical precedent that we need to consider in the unlikely event that Biden A) fatally damaged his campaign last night and B) he understands that he did so and steps aside. 

I think A) is up for more debate than the overwhelming caterwauling this morning. It's not nothing. Biden's biggest liability is his age, and last night threw a 50 gallon drum of gasoline on that fire. However, debates are pretty awful and Biden will have a chance to turn things around. 

However...

I think you give him a week. Let the polls tell you how much damage was done. Let him sit with the debate film and see if he can see what everyone else saw. I think he's a genuine patriot, in the sense that if he knows he will lose, and there's a credible offramp, he will take it.

Which brings me to B), can he see and understand the information if it comes his way? Other presidents have had disastrous first debates. The problem for Biden is that the nature of this disaster is one that reinforces all the worst aspects of his candidacy.

So, let's presume that A and B are met. What then?

The last time we had something similar was in 1968. Lyndon Johnson - like Joe Biden - had a remarkable record of achievement during his five years in office. His liability, though, was Vietnam. He stepped aside for the good of the party to get a fresh start on the war. The result was a contentious primary that ended with RFK's assassination. If the assassination doesn't happen, then probably things turn out differently, but the Chicago conventions was an absolute disaster. 

The idea of going to an "open" convention is a recipe for similar catastrophe in this summer's convention in....Chicago. The reason why parties have ended contested conventions is that they can tear open intra-party wounds. The Democrats 1980 convention and the Republican 1992 conventions come to mind. 

The good news is that this is not a case of a challenger like Ted Kennedy or Pat Buchanan picking at the intraparty wounds. The bad news is that in 1968, the reason there were riots in Chicago was that the party leadership was going to ram through Hubert Humphrey against the anti-war wing of the party's wishes. If something similar happened in September, which factions would rebel? 

The other parallel is that I think Biden would be able to and want to pick his successor and I think he would land on a very loyal and hardworking Veep that represents a critical part of the electoral coalition. The problem with Harris - indeed the problem with every non-Biden candidate - is that they don't necessarily poll any better than Biden does.

So, unless someone can create a hybrid candidate with Harris' ethnicity and loyalty, Buttigieg's debate skills, Cory Booker's charm and Obama's eloquence, I'm not sure that stepping aside solves the bigger question of "Who can best beat Trump?"

We had that argument in 2020, and it got heated. Having it again without voter input can feel undemocratic. You'd have to be able to line up Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders AND Joe Manchin and Andy Beshear behind this new candidate before the convention. 

Harris herself - the overwhelming favorite to take the reins from Biden - did not exactly cover herself in glory in 2020, however people can change and grow. She's done a solid job as VP, but you immediately run into the latent and not so latent misogyny that sunk Hillary Clinton and the racism that helped launch Trump. There's some energy around Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, but I have no idea what it is beyond the fact that she's won a swing state, is very photogenic and hasn't had to be exposed to opposition research. Same with Gavin Newsome.

There's a separate issue about what might happen to all the money Biden has raised if it's NOT Harris. 

Basically, Biden has a week to right the ship, all the while being told that he is taking on water by people like Barack Obama and his own wife. If he can't, they have to decide what the bigger risk is:

A) keep running a good president but a bad candidate
B) move via consensus to Harris, who has her own set of issues as a candidate
C) open the convention to a potentially compelling spectacle but an acrimonious set of schisms.

That last part also reminds me about how awful the 1968 scenario would be in the age of social media. 

The preference of every Democrat right now is 

D) a new Obama-level political talent emerges that Biden gracefully concedes the floor to. 

Scenario D has been labelled "Johnny Unbeatable" in many sections of the internet. The problem is that we have seen scores of Johnny Unbeatables flame out in the primaries, including Harris herself in 2020. Hell, I can remember being all on board for Gary Hart. Ron DeSantis was going to be the guy this time; Hillary in 2008; McCain in 2000; Mario Cuomo...Scott Walker...

The primaries exist to test a candidates ability to manage a complex organization under intense pressure. You pass on that with either a unity movement to Harris or an open convention.

The rule of thumb is usually that incumbent presidents win, unless they have an strong intraparty challenger: Taft; Carter; Bush or there is a next level catastrophe: Hoover; Trump.

The decision to not challenge Biden drew from that understanding of what happened to Carter and Bush.

BUT...

There was a reason why they drew that challenger. Biden has been a very good president. The issue - his age - is not a catastrophe on the level of the Depression or Covid. In fact, withdrawing for the "good of the country" would underscore the Democratic Party's commitment to democracy and Trump's malignant threat to it. It could create novelty that might energize apathetic voters.

People generally prefer Democratic policies. Democrats win the plurality of the popular vote all the time. Generic Democrat likely wipes the floor with Trump...but maybe not?

What I truly and deeply believe is that simply jettisoning Biden without a very clear plan that has total buy-in from all the factions of the Democratic Party could lead to the same disaster of a Trump Restoration.

It doesn't have to happen this week, hell, it shouldn't. There is also the argument of "quit whining and get to work". I have to think though that discussions will take place with Biden about what happens next. It would be malpractice not to. 

We have all been in a situation where we've leapt before we looked. We've acted without a plan. That can work well, the same way that placing the home on "black" at the roulette wheel can work. 

Better to have a plan.

In Other Terrible News...

 SCOTUS gutted Chevron, basically reducing the ability of government agencies to write rules. Now, if I'm reading this right, courts will decide the limits of what an agency can do without direct Congressional approval. This will create absolute chaos in the regulatory state, which is the goal.

For all the drama over Biden's terrible debate performance, this is the sort of real world consequence that matters and why it's imperative for a Democrat - any Democrat - to win in November.

Josh Marshall has collected emails from readers about last night and this one was interesting. There was one "BIDEN MUST GO, THIS IS THE END" but the rest took variations on this tone:

It’s important to hold fast onto the idea that what happened last night was not anything like the Access Hollywood tape in real life. It was an old man who acted old. He still has the same agenda, the same moral scruples, and the same team he did before. He’ll still do the same stuff if he’s re-elected.

Do I wish we had a better fighter in the fight? Sure! But the reason we don’t is deeply complicated by cross-coalitional pressures that are hard to resolve. You know who else has cross-coalitional pressures that are hard to resolve? The other side! That’s why they’ve got an out-and-out misogynist bigot at the top of their ticket even though not all of them are misogynist bigots. 

So what I’m saying is, have some time pride. Don’t confuse means and ends. Could Biden lose? Of course! But he hasn’t lost yet and he could actually use our help talking our book instead of flailing around helplessly. So like the man says, get up off the floor, dust yourself off, and get back to work.

The next week will be critically important to whether Biden can re-write the narrative about the debate. Debates themselves are really weird and not indicative of how good a job you do as president. They are a decent yardstick of you will do as a candidate, and Biden's performance legitimately calls into question whether he can carry on as a candidate.

The Chevron decision underscores the extent to which this matter beyond the narrow hatred of Trump and the unique threat he brings to American democracy. This is the oligarchic intent of the entire Republican Party right now.

I Learned Nearly Nothing; You Are Learning Nearly Nothing

 I can't say I learned a great deal at my workshop. One concept we returned to was "settled issues" and the idea that all statements must be supported by facts.

Anyway, that seems to be non-operative for tonight's debate.

Now, I don't care for debates anyway. They have pretty much zero to do with how you go about the job of being president. Still, Biden had a job to do. As I'm writing, the overall first impression was that he came out with a hoarse voice and tried to land his prepared talking points. He is - according to my preferred sources - growing into the debate.

What's amazing - and why I don't like these bullshit debates - is that Trump is lying with a remarkable frequency, but Biden got crushed on the optics early. Even if he grows into the world's greatest debater, the first impression will haunt him.

That's simply a terrible way to decide who a president will be.

Nevertheless, expect there to be a lot of calls from the fainting couch for Biden to step aside. That ship, for better or worse, has passed.

How To Teach In Trumpistan

 I'm headed to a three day conference (sort of two days) to learn how to teach in a polarized world. I've done the pre-readings, and they seem inadequate to a world in which one of our two political parties have become an authoritarian cult of personality around a habitual liar.

I'll let you - my imaginary reader - know if I learn anything.

Trump And George Floyd

 Jon Chait makes the case for conservatives (not Conservatives) to support Joe Biden. One thing he notes is the collapse in crime over the past two years. If conservatives care about public order, then Trump oversaw the massive spike in crime that Biden's administration has largely reduced.

I suppose there is a certain slight of hand at play there, because I think the spike in crime from 2020-21 was about more than just Trump or Biden being president.

Chait rightly notes that it was Trump's divisiveness that spurred a lot of the protests in 2020. You had four years of an American president who constantly denigrated more than half of his fellow countrymen and debased America's democratic practices. When Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, it mobilized a very angry population. The reason these were "rainbow" protests is both because the Floyd murder was so awful and brazen and because people were ready to take to the streets. Throw Covid into the mix and you get the spring and summer of 2020.

I lived in LA during the Rodney King riots (it's not fair that they are called that, by the way), and police chief Daryl Gates responded to that outpouring of justified rage by pulling the cops off the street. Anger turned to opportunism as criminals replaced angry protesters to loot what they could. An anxious city that had been disgusted by the verdict was relieved to have the LAPD protecting their homes and businesses again.

That's the textbook move for police misconduct that leads to civil protests. Pull back and let people experience life without the police. Throw in the societal "collapse" of the Covid years and there was a massive spike in crime. It was amazing, in retrospect, how few of the Floyd protests turned violent or destructive. However, reduced policing and the sense that "anything goes" during the pandemic led to a spike in crime. 

The way Trump tore open societal wounds rather than try and bind them was not confined to 2020. The explosion of protest was a built up rage against what this fuckstick was doing to a country that we naively believed has moved past its worst divisions. The "Blue Flu" response to the Floyd protests was a product of Trump's encouragement of the worst sort of policing and then their outrage when it turns out there were consequences for lawlessness under cover of the badge.

When I look at Trumpist outrage online, I see people desperately trying to work themselves and others into a lather over shit that simply isn't happening. Republican pols saying that Joe Biden is a dictator. I know "every accusation is a confession" but how the hell do you look at Biden and see a dictator? How is America - a nation with the best economy in the world right now, a nation that is NOT involved in combat anywhere -  a nation in decline? 

The only thing Biden and Trump have in common is that they are both too old. In every other measure, Biden excels Trump by leagues. Fundamentally, though, the positive reason to elect Biden is because he is not intent on dividing America, pitting against each other. That is very much what Trump wants to do and did. He wants us at war with each other, so that we won't notice his criminality as he loots his office. 

Division, fear, anger: that is the soil that a demagogic authoritarian plants his seeds of despotism in. That is one of the main reasons why the country erupted in protests over the murder of a single man. Floyd's death was not just the product of a terrible policeman and bad police culture; it was the product of Trump's malign divisiveness. 

The Wrong Lesson

 Paul Campos writes about how elites are in denial about what a Trump Restoration would have on American politics and the economy. It obviously goes beyond "elites", because if it was just corporate overlords, Trump would be getting crushed.

He notes the following:

Ultimately the kind of denial Krugman is talking about — that of the complacent elites, who don’t exactly support Trump, but don’t exactly oppose him either (“Despite his buffoon-like persona, and the admitted excesses of some of his followers, we can surely work with him if necessary, especially given the institutional guardrails” blah blah blah) — is playing a key role in ensuring that the authoritarian cult that is Trumpism and the Republican party (these are now exact synonyms) is not recognized for what it is.

I think this bolded part is key. If you listen to Trump or to Project 2025, you should be chilled to the bones as an American. However, Trump didn't succeed in overthrowing democracy the first time, so why should I worry about it the second time?

The answer, of course, is that a wide legion of authoritarian goons are lining up to help Trump actually accomplish an Orban-style conquest of American democracy. In the Trump Administration of the past, there were figures there who deflected some of his worst impulses. Trump will not allow those types of people into his second administration.

Yes, from 2017 to 2021, the guardrails held. However, January 6th and everything Trump has said since then should impress on people that Trump understands this and will do all he can to pull those guardrails down, and the behavior of the institutional GOP should prove that there will be no bipartisan effort to preserve democratic institutions.

We Need Electrical Abundance

 This piece is...whatever. At least it hints at skepticism of our Tech Bro Overlords actually solving this problem.

The issue is that computing centers gobble up a LOT of energy. And, since they use the same grid, that means that so much of our carbon neutral energy that we add is not making the necessary dent in our emissions. In fact, the piece mentions that in the Salt Lake City area, they are keeping open a coal-burning plant that was scheduled to close and there is a new data center that will use the same amount of energy that a large nuclear reactor produces.

The disparity between the greenwashed rhetoric of these tech companies and the actual impact on the power grid seems pretty large and significant to me. Even more, that Microsoft and others are looking at fusion, of all things, to solve their voracious need for electricity means that they are - effectively - not looking for feasible solutions to this problem. This is the "and then a miracle occurs" phase of long term planning.

The bum rush into an AI future has a LOT of problems, and the electrical needs are but one of them. What has to happen yesterday. The good news is...something happened yesterday! One of the big problems we have in decarbonizing our electricity needs is that regulations have made it all but impossible to build new reactors. New legislation has just helped with that. 

It was telling that the only two votes against the bill in the Senate came from Markey and Sanders. That's the old school anti-nuke shit lingering around. It's also interesting that - once again -  Biden was able to shepherd important legislation through a supposedly broken legislative body.

Any feasible solution to climate change that isn't based on wishful thinking would be building nuclear reactors in as many feasible places as possible. Frankly, I think every single sizable military base in the country should have a reactor run by the Corps of Engineers that sells energy at market prices. Help fund the base and produce power without the downsides of needing to cut corners to make a profit.

If we are going to have a future where the planet doesn't cook AND we enjoyed whatever benefits of an increasingly digital world, then we have to aggressively move to harness nuclear and geothermal power because we know that they work and we know how to build them.

"Progressive"

 I think I may have written on this before, but it keeps needling me and no one reads this shit anyway...

Back in the Bush 43 years, those of us left-of-center were dismayed at how "liberal" had been turned into a slur by people like Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove. So, in a triumph of branding over substance, liberals began calling themselves "progressives" as a way to accent that one form of liberalism is about the faith in human progress. Liberals/progressives believe that reason combined with good evidence can lead to better policy outcomes and harkens back to a similar reform movement in the period before and during World War I.

At some point, "progressive" became a term for the further left reaches of American politics. Some of this is simply because they, too, hate "liberals." 

To back up a bit, there are two flavors of "liberal". There's the one above, where people think that generally speaking, policies can be improved for the greater good. The other is a belief in liberty, which when termed "classical liberalism" refers to restricting the power of the state to increase liberty. Prior to about 1870, at least in the US, the state was considered the greater threat to human liberty. Since then, a new form of liberalism identifies plutocracy as the greater threat. Still, "neoliberalism" was the name of the movement to roll back some of the efforts made by the New Deal and Great Society to address economic inequality. 

It's a confusing term. 

What we have now, is a schism between "progressives" and "liberals" like Biden. Many of these "progressives" are quite young, which...whatever. Still, what's interesting to me in 2024 is that the two flavors of "liberal" are merging, and the self-styled leftist/progressive axis is not part of that merger.

To support the Democratic Party today means to support both the OLD progressive/liberal idea of reasoned, utilitarian policy making AND a defense of freedom of expression. I'm taking a workshop next week that addresses some of these issues in academia where it's becoming more and more of a minority of self-styled "progressives" who exercise a heckler's veto over anything that might discomfort them. 

With a dangerous autocratic demagogue having turned one of our two major parties into a cult of personality, I would hope that there would be common cause between the two forms of liberals, because I'm not sure we can count on the "progressives" of 2024.

Die By Suicide

 In wondering where the end of Trumpistan lays, I keep coming back to the inherent contradictions between Old School GOP and MAGA, plus the contradictions between MAGA and reality. At some point, there should be a schism. We are already seeing elite Republicans who no longer are running for office refusing to endorse Trump and a handful saying they will vote for Biden. 

A fascinating example of another schism is playing out in Virginia's primary for the fifth House district. Bob Good represents the very red district in rural Virginia between the I-95 corridor and the Blue Ridge mountains. He was a leader of the Tea Party and the Freedumb Caucus. He's a bomb throwing conservative, but he endorsed Ron DeSantis early on, then switched to Trump when DeSantis dropped out. 

So Trump declared him a traitor, prompting the primary challenge from John McGuire. Now, Good was board with election denial, he thinks Dobbs didn't go far enough, he helped oust Kevin McCarthy. Good is about as far to the right as anyone in Congress, but he briefly flirted with the guy who didn't launch an insurrection to overthrow the 2020 election, despite endorsing the bullshit election fraud claims.

There is literally no rational reason for Good to warrant a serious challenge in VA-5. However, as of writing this, McGuire is leading Good by about 350 votes. (It will be hilarious to see two election denialists fight over "fraud" in an election this close. Also, the folks doing actual fraud are usually Republicans, so if they find a few fraudulent votes...hoo boy.)

McGuire's ascendancy is a perfect encapsulation of where the current GOP is: a cult of personality around Donald Trump - perhaps the worst person in America. At some point, cults of personality collapse under the weight of reality.

That schism is one that can't get here soon enough.

Poetic

 Here's Tom Nichols comparing Biden and Trump in a piece trying to figure out why Trump-world seems to lie so much, when they appear to be winning. 

The Trump campaign has seized on the essential truth that this election is about images and feelings rather than facts or policies. It is working to squeeze every vote it can out of its most extreme supporters by providing them with the high-octane Trumpiness they crave. But the campaign is also resorting to sometimes-desperate ploys in order to cover both candidates in a carefully formulated smog, hoping to obscure the differences between an old man who occasionally stumbles over his words and a nearly-as-old criminal who regularly wanders out of the gates of Fort Reality to go on a walkabout in the wilds of his unstable mind.

That bolded part is poetry.

The Anti-Wonk

 Last week, Trump met with donors and GOP Congresscritters and floated the idea of replacing the income tax with tariffs. As Jon Chait and Matthew Yglesias have pointed out, this is one of those myriad things that would have killed another politician's career.

The reasons are fairly simple. If you wanted to replace the revenues from the income tax with a tariff, you would have to raise tariffs by a LOT. Some of this will come with the idea of zeroing out existing programs, but we've seen time and time again since Reagan that the GOP rails against Big Gubmint, but then can't actually find programs to kill without unacceptable political costs. Think of Trump's efforts to repeal ACA.

So, this massive tariff would function as a de facto national sales tax. At a time when inflation seems to be the biggest concern for everyone, a massive tariff would be hugely inflationary - as would Trump's other dumbass idea: deporting millions of undocumented workers. In fact, this combination of levying a massive tariff to restrict imports and reducing by huge numbers the pool of labor would basically wreck the American (and likely global) economy. It is a catastrophically bad idea.

As Chait points out, this scheme is consistent with the GOP's long running hatred of any form of progressive taxation. Shifting the tax burden away from top earners towards consumers will shift the amount of taxation paid for by people who don't have a lot of money. The idea that this will onshore jobs is also just dumb. No company is going to completely shift its global supply and manufacturing chains for what will likely be a four year window of American protectionism.

That feeds into Yglesias' main point: We simply don't hold Trump accountable for being a terrible president. His ideas are really, really bad. In fact, they were so bad his last time in office that all he really accomplished was massive tax cuts and reshaping the judiciary - which ANY Republican would have done. The uniquely Trumpist ideas all died on the vine. You may have heard that the Big Beautiful Wall was never built nor did Mexico pay for it.

Meanwhile, Biden has done quite a lot. The American economy is the envy of the world, we've made massive investments in clean energy, we are reinvigorating our alliances, and we have reduced the debt burden on millions of Americans. 

Fundamentally, the difference and the baffling reason that this race is so close is that Biden is not a good salesman and that's all Trump ever was - and Trump's sole product was his "brand". Biden's stutter is a bigger liability as he gets older, but Trump's increasingly obvious mental collapse gets waived away because he never really made any sense.

The Biden team has said that "democracy is on the ballot" this fall, and that is literally true. However, in some ways the fact that this race is even close is fundamental indictment of where democracy currently stands. Trump is a felon; Trump tried to overthrow the election; Trump is a sexual predator.  However, simply on the ability of citizens to make a rational decision about which man will do the best job, it's absolutely crazy that anyone who support this gibbering lunatic.

Disorienting

 I'm at my 35 college reunion. I haven't really kept up with anyone from my time in New Hampshire, but still, it's a great place with great people.

It's just that I don't know them.

Like, I recognize their faces. I see their names. We have shared memories of youthful hijinks. 

But I don't know them.

Because the person I was, the people they were, no longer exists. We have become new people. 

I was fairly unhappy in college. Some "imposter syndrome" and just not great and being social (some things never change). I wasn't miserable, but I ducked in and out of depressive episodes. Luckily, I'm not that guy anymore. I have a family that means everything to me; I have a career that gives my life meaning and purpose. I have found peace, and that peace is built on strong foundations, and some of the names on the bricks in that foundation are theirs.  But they also aren't those people any more.

So, I've been struggling with this disorienting sense of disconnection all weekend. Which - when I think about it - is me reliving some of those emotions from 35 years ago.

The Endless Flexibility of the GOP

 Yesterday, Trump returned to the scene of (one of) his crimes. As Marshall and others have noted, it had a very North Korean State Media feel to it. As Trump is wounded more and more by the consequences of his own actions and his increasingly besieged mental state, the Republicans around him go deeper and deeper into Dear Leader mode.

One wonders if there will ever be a breaking point. Are they so "pot committed" to Trump that they will burn down the party with him? Is there even that pivotal moment when his crimes and manifest emotional and mental unfitness for office causes his support to collapse?

When established Republicans have criticized Trump, they have basically signaled the end of their careers - at least to this point. So, it naturally makes sense for any Republican who wants to stay in DC to become a Trumpist sycophant. The more wounded Trump becomes - personally and politically - the more they wrap him in increasingly ludicrous praise.

In the past, racist, nationalist demagogues - Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, George Wallace - have had that moment when it all falls away. So far, Trump seems different.

Can that be permanent?

Yay?

 Legitimately good news that the Assembly of Religious Experts have allowed mifepristone to remain effectively legal. The ruling was exclusively one of standing, rather than the right to access the drug. On some level, the 9-0 ruling suggests that even Alito and Thomas are beginning to feel the pressure that their partisan and corrupt behavior has brought to bear on the Court.

So, good news! The leading manner to terminate an early pregnancy is still legal. However, you have to wonder what happens when a challenge that does have standing comes before them. 

What's more, this was always a bullshit case. Ridiculous on the merits and the law. And yet there has to be an unclinching among advocates for reproductive rights this morning. Remember, that was what it was like with Trump in the White House. What fresh hell is going to be visited upon us today? What flavor of outrage is on the menu? Living in Trumpistan was a constant clinching, and I get (a little) those who thought we had moved irrevocably beyond that with Biden's election. 

But we haven't. Until we beat Trump one last time and send him off to prison, we have to live on the edge a little bit longer.

Motives Do Matter

 Yglesias points out that Biden's new immigration policy is probably about as good as you can get given that Trump killed a better deal. Some of this is the consistent "hippie punching" that Yglesias likes to do, by slagging the activist Left, which, you know, fine by me.

The term "open borders" was an attack line used by the Right that became an article of faith, apparently, on the Left. The idea that Biden's immigration policy is the exact same as Trump's neglects a few facts:

- We really do have a crisis in our asylum system.
- We are utterly dependent on Mexico to squeeze immigration short of the border.
- The only constituency for opening up the border to every asylum seeker is a fringe of the Left.
- As we are seeing, there's no guarantee that even if you could somehow make these people citizens that the Democratic Party would see any electoral advantage out of it.
- There is considerable evidence that "open borders" hurts Democrats among Hispanic voters.
- Yes, Trump would be immeasurably worse.

We need more immigration, but we should be able to pick and choose who we want to enter the country. The problem with the Open Borders caucus is not that - per Trump - it's criminals entering the country, but that unlimited immigration has a really depressive effect on wages - especially in the lower income groups.

If you gave Biden an immigration bill without Republican votes, it would probably have the following:

- A path to citizenship or residency for long time inhabitants who are currently undocumented.
- Citizenship for DREAMers.
- A streamlined and properly funded asylum system.
- More avenues for legal immigration, including guest worker and Green Card expansion.
- And, yes, more border enforcement.

The idea that there is a "human right" to cross a border seems extremely fanciful to me. I know it's electoral poison.

It's A Toss Up

 The 538 Model is up and has the race as a tie, with a very, very slight edge to Biden. That feels right for this time in the race. I think Trump loses ground after Labor Day when disengaged voters realize he's the choice and can't really believe it. I also think Biden's edge with Likely Voters comes into sharper focus.

As Josh Marshall points out, this is important because Democrats have been subjected to a consistent drumbeat of doom over Biden's age and poll numbers. That can lead to despondency and demoralization. Negative partisanship could negate some of that, but Democrats need to believe they can win. That current doubt is why people like Nate Silver keep insisting that Biden drop out. 

Yes, the race shouldn't even be a toss-up. Trump is deranged and unfit for office. Americans are being subjected to a concerted disinformation campaign about who he is and what Biden has done. I do think that changes. 

But we aren't losing. And that's a start.

The Best Economy In The World

 It's interesting that economists think we have the best economy in the world right now - especially since the pandemic - but Americans feel the opposite. From the above article:

What explains this sudden boost in lower- and middle-class wages? The answer lies in the post-pandemic American labor market, which has been unbelievably strong. The unemployment rate—defined as the percentage of workers who have recently looked for a job but don’t have one—has been at or below 4 percent for more than two years, the longest streak since the 1960s. Even that understates just how good the current labor market is. Unemployment didn’t fall below 4 percent at any point during the 1970s, ’80s, or ’90s. In 1984—the year Ronald Reagan declared “It’s morning again in America”—unemployment was above 7 percent; for most of the Clinton boom of the 1990s, it was above 5 percent.

And frankly, if you ask most Americans, they will say that their situation is better, but that overall things are worse. I'm sure that is the same as Americans who think Biden is too old but Trump is a virile young thang. 

The labor market is key:

The obvious upside of low unemployment is that people who want jobs can get them. A more subtle consequence, and arguably a more important one, is a shift in power from employers to workers. When unemployment is relatively high, as it was in the years immediately following the 2008 financial crisis, more workers are competing for fewer jobs, making it easier for employers to demand higher qualifications and offer meager pay. That’s how you end up with stories about college graduates working as baristas for $7.25 an hour. But when unemployment is low and relatively few people are looking for jobs, the relationship inverts: Now employers have to compete against one another to attract workers, often by raising wages. And—this is the crucial part—these dynamics affect all workers, not just people who are out of a job.

A more extreme historical example is the Black Death, which transferred power away from the nobility because labor was so scarce. I think it's also important that efforts to restrict immigration will probably lead to higher wages. 

The one black mark is housing, but there's little Biden can do there in the short run. With interest rates high, the housing market is stuck. Still, I am going to predict that in about five years, the housing crisis will have abated.

I have long felt that it will take a spell before people can acclimate to their new prosperity. Hard times have a tail. The inflationary period was shocking and unfamiliar to a lot of people. It's pretty much over, and household wealth is rising.

If people can figure that out before November, we might just save the Republic.

How To Cover Trump

 There has been an accumulating amount of evidence that many purportedly neutral news outlets are subtly putting their thumbs on the scale against Biden - most notably in their atrocious coverage of the booming economy. The recent import of British tabloid editors to run American newsrooms does not bode well for coverage in 2024. Trump was, indeed, good for circulation and it is in those former Fleet Street editors financial interest to keep Trump viable - even help him win. Reporters maybe be neutral or lean-Democratic, but the editors are the one's writing the atrocious headlines that are all people read.

All of this comes to a head when we look at Trump's recent rallies. As Chait notes, Trump has embraced the January 6th rioters and threatened revenge on the majority of Americans who hate him. Additionally, he's showing very real signs of cognitive decline. His rally speeches are filled with gaffes that if Biden uttered them, would end Biden's campaign. Biden is, in fact, old, but Trump is just about as old chronologically, but seems to be in real mental decline.

So, how do you cover that? The Ariana Grande voter is not a member of Cult 45, but they tend to believe objectively false things, like that we are in a recession. Some of this is the terrible news coverage/headlines that suggest the economy is struggling, when it is actually the best economy in the world right now, albeit one with significant inflation concerns. These voters are not really plugged in. Do they really know how much farther right Trump has moved since January 6th? Do they know how much of his rallies are just word salad?

The problem is that preconceptions are hard to overcome. People remember the Trump years as being good economically, and to a large degree they were - right up until they weren't. They blame Biden for the massive economic hit that took place in the last year of Trump's presidency. They think Biden is the old one, when they are both old. Biden looks to be in more physical decline, because he broke his foot a few years back and his gait reflects that. whereas Trump was always an idiot and is now in the early throws of what appears to be dementia.

So, do you cover Trump the way you did in 2016? Just show his rallies - or at least the "highlights" of his rallies? How much do you keep pointing out Project 2025?  There's a not uncompelling argument that this merely mainstreams and normalizes Trump's fascistic madness. The question is whether enough Americans are immune to that madness.

No big deal. Just the future of democracy around the world is at stake.

The Kids

 One of the disturbing trends of this election is the defection of young people from Biden. It is routinely put on the Gazan War, but I can't help but think it's a combination of vibes and a rampant disinformation campaign, because so many young people get their news from really, really dodgy sources. 

One thing young people claim to care a lot about is climate change, and if they are telling the truth, then they really should not only vote for Biden, but volunteer for his campaign. Of course, you have climate grifters like the Sunrise Movement withholding support from Biden, which kind of encapsulates much of what's wrong with Leftist politics, but it also demonstrates how bullshit narratives warp the debate. (I read about a focus group where someone said they were leaning Trump, "because he will create jobs" which flies in the face of every piece of factual evidence about the current job market - one of the best in US history.)

If the republic dies in November, the cause of death will be that too many people believed some seriously bullshit stuff.

New York Dems

 A couple of days ago, I noted the abject failure of Governor Hochul's congestion pricing for NYC. Today's example of feckless NY Democrats is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Now, I find it hard to believe he extended this invitation for Netanyahu to speak before Congress without approval from the White House, but who knows. Still, Netanyahu is part of a global illiberal Right that is really the opposite of everything the Democratic Party should stand for. And that's leaving aside his war crimes.

I absolutely support Israel's right to exist, but that does not mean I support every Israeli government and especially this one. This is another Own Goal.

Assholes All The Way Down

 Jon Chait points out something that's really painfully obvious to an even casual observer of the American Reich Right. When Democrats praise American values like decency, democracy, the rule of law and fair play, the Right sees it as an attack on them. Some of this is because they are always and only in attack mode and "every accusation is a confession". The deeper reason is that while Trump literally wraps himself in the flag, like so many flag humpers, he's not interested in the values the flag represents, but rather as a culture war totem. Instead, Trump's basic ethos is foundationally un-American. He has always loved dictators - which is why he kept his family business closely held: no accountability. He has been a lifelong white collar criminal who is famous for stiffing his working class vendors. He is actively rooting for Russia.

What's so disturbing is - as Ron Brownstein points out - that Trump's now complete control over the Republican Party means that all of that nasty, un-American ideology is now deeply imbedded in the heart of one of our two parties. 

Back in 2016 I assumed with everyone else that Trump would lose, but I hedged it with "But he is the nominee of one of our two major parties, so..." 

Now, eight years later, Trump has succeeded in turning the GOP into an engine of meanness, corruption and, yes, fascism. 

The Hurdle

 Trying to properly put a price on emissions is really tricky and politically unpopular. One way that has worked overseas is congestion pricing. It's basically a toll on driving into and around cities. New York was considering such a move, but the feckless governor killed it. As an aside, let's take a moment to reflect on just how wretched the New York Democratic Party really is. There is pretty much nothing they can't fuck up. Congestion pricing would've hit Connecticut and New Jersey drivers the hardest and been to the benefit of NYC's transit system, so naturally Hochul killed it.

Aside from the awfulness of NY Dems, this is a great example of how difficult it will be to use market mechanisms to decrease emissions. Anything that raises prices directly - like a tax - is pretty much DOA in an era of inflation worries, but really at any time. Asking people to pay more for something they are already doing for "free" is going to lead to a revolt.

That's why you have to rely on the more cumbersome measures like regulatory action. I think the rush to EVs is a little premature, given our power grid - which itself can be addressed by regulation and direct action - but there is no reason that we can't mandate a move to hybrids and EVs together. Yes, cars will cost more, but ALL cars will cost more and it won't be a tax or a toll that voters see directly.

Also, there is some work on this, but Democrats need to be hammering Trump's tariff plans as being a tax more heavily. It's a tax AND it's inflationary. 

If the criminality of the modern Republican Party can ever sink through and voters reward Democrats with the trifecta in November (and Dems finally kill the filibuster), then I would actually argue for very little new spending. There's a strong case for raising taxes on the rich, limited new programs and a reduction in the deficit.

The one place, though, that they should spend is on carbon-free electrical generation and new transmission lines. The market won't do it fast enough.

Missing The Damned Point

 Paul Campos notes a recent focus group where someone said that Trump reminded him of Walter White in Breaking Bad or Tony Soprano and they find that a positive.

In our school - like most others - students are required to take English every year, math through at least Algebra II, two years of science and two years of history, and the third year of a language. Almost every student takes more science and history than that in four years.

Then they go to college.

In college, they increasingly use the experience as a commodity. Their degree is - somewhat understandably -  a commodity to be leveraged to a better paying career. College is expensive, so I get that. However, that often means that the Humanities are hollowed out. Everyone is taking business/finance classes or STEM classes, because that's where the money is.

The result, though, is the guy like Jonathan, who thinks that Walter White is doing things for anyone other than himself. At least Jonathan understands that White is the anti-hero, that he does bad things. However, the Greek tragedy of Breaking Bad is that Walter is incredibly selfish. He may start cooking meth because he has cancer and wants a nest-egg for his family after he dies, but after the cancer goes into remission, he still cooks. As he says in the end, "I did it for me."

The romance of the outlaw hero is so much bullshit. Dillinger was a psychopathic killer, not a tribune of the people. Walter White did terrible things because he liked the power. Same goes for Trump.

When people stop training their minds in the way that the Humanities train them, they wind up blinkered with a shallower understanding of the world we live in. Trump could not survive in a country that still understood critical thinking skills. (Then again, he IS cratering with those with college degrees.)

Need To Re-Frame Trump

 Jon Chait makes a good point that Trump's support among the billionaire class stands in somewhat stark contradiction to his unearned reputation as a populist champion. Like most populists, Trump doesn't really give a damn about the common clay of the new west. Still, as Josh Marshall says, you can't expect your campaign message to make itself. You REALLY can't trust the press to point out that Trump's policy agenda (aside from ending democracy as we know it) is massively inflationary and tilted towards the 1%. 

One advantage Trump has always had is that he's so freaking egregious in his manifest flaws that you can struggle to pick which flaw to attack. Still, I think I would prioritize the following:

- He's a sexual predator who wants to take away birth control. This is both E. Jean Carroll and Stormy Daniels to a degree, plus Dobbs.

- He's an endlessly corrupt tool of the plutocrats. There are his fraud trials and his frequent promises to do their dirty work in exchange for money.

- He hates America. Just listen to him.

That's a pretty solid three targets that have to be hit over and over again.

Railbird

 I had the great good fortune of going to Railbird music festival in Lexington, Kentucky this past weekend as my Christmas present. It was a helluva an experience. Artists like Noah Kahan, Lord Huron and Hozier put on absolutely killer sets. Counting Crows were weird as hell. But it was the artists I had never heard or even heard of that made it fun: Johnnyswims, Allison Russell, Nolan Taylor; plus artists I had heard but never properly placed like Trampled by Turtles and Sam Barber.

Anyway, it was fun to unplug from the internet for four days. I recommend it.