France As Harbinger

 Krugman lays out the dynamics in France, where student protests have roiled the country. Students protesting in France is a "dog bites man" problem; students in France protest. French people, in general, protest.

The deeper problem, as Krugman points out, is that France is facing the same problems that most post-industrial countries are starting to face, which is the collision between retirees and students. The reason students are protesting is because their schools are cheap and falling apart and their classes are too big, because there is no money to hire teachers. 

France has clung stubbornly to a low retirement age (62) as compared to nations as diverse as the US and Denmark (both 67). As someone rapidly hobbling towards retirement, I do not want to see that retirement age creep upwards. However, generous public benefits to retirees are increasingly coming at the expense of benefits for children and working age people. We are robbing the future to pay the past. 

Krugman also points out that France is a bit of an outlier here, and certainly the protests that are France's national pastime are contributing to a lack of political will to make the necessary changes. The bigger problem is that Marine Le Pen's fascist party is always lurking around the edges of winning a national election, and it is unlikely that she suddenly becomes a relatively responsible head of government like Georgia Meloni kind of has. It seems more likely that she will govern like Trump or Milei, which is to say poorly.

France has problems that were created by France being France, but the problem of a greying population is not unique to France.

Gen La-Z

 I hesitate to indulge in generational nonsense where one story becomes an indictment of an entire cohort of people who number in the tens of millions.

Yet...

The story about Mary Peltola that was published recently is ridiculous. Even worse, it makes me agree with Yglesias, and I hate to do that. Basically, Peltola could lose her temper and shout at people. She also had staffers help with personal chores like feeding her pet chameleon. Some of the things she said were what can be termed "problematic" like using the words retard and fag. You can understand why young staffers fresh from college would find that off-putting and troublesome. 

What I can't understand is why the fuck they went to the press. 

If you have a boss that uses language that you don't like, you can confront them, consult someone else in the organization or quit. House members have chiefs of staff; talk to them if you're afraid of your representative. Tattling to the press over something as fundamentally meaningless - in an election year, where Peltola might hold the key to a critical Senate majority - represents a sense of entitlement that is inexcusable.

There's a lot of memes that circulate along the lines of: "I wake up and work 40 hours a week so that I can afford basic goods like food and shelter. Isn't that fucked up?" There's a sense that somehow our jobs should cater to us. Some of this likely comes from remote work during Covid and the realization that a lot of that 40 (or 60) hour work week feels like wasted time. I get it. We are all the main characters in our own story and it sucks to discover that we are background players - NPCs - in the grand scheme of things.

I do wonder if there isn't at least a little merit in the criticism of education - and college education in particular - that we basically coddle these kids and make them feel like oh so special wonderchildren. Then - when they confront the demands of adulthood - they crumble. I suppose that's why, despite the degraded commercialization of many college and even high school sports - there's still a place for sports. Sometimes you lose and it sucks, even when you prepared hard and did everything right.

The whole bonkers Boston Globe story about the lesbian bar that got backlash for ending their mask mandates on Saturday night is an example of people who cannot brook anything that doesn't cater to their personal whims. The world does not bend to your personal preferences - yet many colleges actually do create these sort of country club experiences with luxury dorms and decked out student unions and health clubs that kids come to expect as their due. That's just unrealistic.

I remember seeing a t-shirt that said "Bring Back Reasonable Bullying." Obviously, no, don't bully. However, we have to end the tripwire sense of "harm" that makes every single inconvenience a hate crime - especially those around language - if we want to have people who can actually live in the world and not their fantasy version. 

The Stay-At-Home Voter

 Elliott Morris has been running polls that show something that makes visceral sense. Trump was returned to power in 2024 by low information voters who were broadly unhappy with the state of the economy (and were likely unhappy with a liberal Californian woman of color, but that's my own slant). Those low information voters - Paul Campos calls them Ariana Grande Voters - felt that Trump could magically return us to the economy of 2019. The fact that this was always utter bullshit ties into the fact that these are low information and low engagement voters. I would wager very few of them understood the inflationary pressures that tariffs and deportations would create. 

The Trump-apalooza random rally in Dallas the last two days was designed to motivate those low information voters to get out and vote. I would guess that Republicans are seeing polling that shows the shape of the electorate moving against them. Democrats and unhappy Independents are going to vote; they are extremely motivated. Whereas they are likely seeing that some of their 2024 voters aren't planning to vote.

What Morris is saying is that getting those people to the polls - by centering Trump of all people - is likely to backfire. I certainly hope that's true. I would love it if the GOP did a robust Get Out The Vote effort that wound up turning out voters who vote for Democrats and Independents. 

Still, I really do think that a large factor in the November election will be voters who voted Republican in the last few cycles, but feel (justifiably) betrayed and decide to skip the election entirely. I think that's what the GOP is seeing and why they gambled on using Trump to rally their support. Vulnerable people running for actual office have shunned the event in Texas. Unsurprisingly. Only Trump seems not to understand how unpopular he is.

"Economic Anxiety"

 Krugman looks at the recent local election in Germany that put AfD in power in Saxony-Anholt. He hits on something that has been noted before, but needs to be constantly recalled. There is a LOT of overlap between people who feel economically disadvantaged and people who rely on racism to explain why. In Europe, Orban in Hungary, Le Pen in France and AfD in Germany all rely on anti-immigrant politics to try and win elections. In fact, you can go back to the pre-World War II United States and see a ton of overlap between people who were upset by what they perceived as declining status and a hatred of immigrants.

There is a superficial logic to this, as you can imagine adding workers to a workforce would mean fewer jobs for people who already were in the workforce. Except economics is pretty clear that immigration leads to economic growth. This - not tax cuts for the rich - is the rising tide that lifts all boats. 

What I find interesting is that there have been some clips going around from some Socialist convention held in the US recently, and it's a bunch of weirdo positions on things like "weight loss is health genocide" or "criticizing me is basically slavery." The original criticism of "socialists" like Bernie Sanders was that Democrats had stopped putting the needs of working class voters at the top of their priorities. Now, the DSA has disappeared down the rabbit hole of what James Carville calls "faculty room politics." Basically, if you don't want to put your gender pronouns in your email signature, you're Adolf Hitler.

It would be nice if there really was some sort of magic button we could push that unified everyone against the oligarchs who have enshittified the world. In fact, fear makes people hateful and we shouldn't be surprised that Saxony-Anholt voted for Nazis than we should that the dying small towns of America vote for Trump.

Labor And Capital

 Richardson runs through the founding of Labor Day in the United States (and the backlash to a worker's political movement). One of the enduring mysteries in some quarters is why America never had a "Labour Party" (aside from the weird spelling). The best explanation is that workers had the vote far earlier than their counterparts in Europe and the Anglophone world. As a result, they joined existing parties rather than invest themselves in union movements that then merged with a political party once property restrictions on suffrage were removed.  In fact, the reluctance of Britain to extend the suffrage was likely a fear of the number of working class voters and what their votes might do to Britain. Mostly the result was that everyone get health care.

HCR has a quote from the Times in the 1880s arguing that everyone who works is a worker:

The New York Times denied that workers were any special class in the United States, saying that “[e]very one who works with his brain, who applies accumulated capital to industry, who directs or facilitates the operations of industry and the exchange of its products, is just as truly a laboring man as he who toils with his hands…and each contributes to the creation of wealth and the payment of taxes and is entitled to a share in the fruits of labor in proportion to the value of his service in the production of net results.”

I've seen this argument recently from - of all people - DSA types who want to make sure that their main demographic - college and post-college educated white people - don't feel threatened. "No, no, no, we aren't talking ACTUAL socialism. Just Vibe Socialism." I suppose that's a nice "big tent" approach, but I think it misses the actual issue.

There is a clear schism between people who work for wages and people who work for a salary. A lot of salaried jobs require a college degree, and that salary comes with benefits, usually. Even if you are "only" making a $55,000 a year salary, chances are you get health care and other perks. The whole compensation package is, just that, a package. If you work for $25 an hour, your pay is roughly the same, but you might not get the same benefits package.

Fair enough.

The real divide today though is not between wage earners and salaried employees. It is between wealth and income. You can earn $150,000 a year but not own enough stuff to be truly wealthy, especially if you are young. 

What Richardson did not talk about in her piece was that during the unrest from the laboring classes, one proposal from both Populists and Progressives was a graduated income tax. You earn more, you pay more. This was supposed to retard the growing accumulation of wealth from income.

In 2026, we have abandoned the idea that taxation can address inequality. We still mostly support some spending to address poverty (not most Republicans, but most Americans), but while we have a graduated income tax, we do not tax capital gains in the same aggressively progressive way. 

I don't know if Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax will work. I feel confident the Supreme Court will strike it down, but I also don't know precisely how it will work mechanically. How do you really assess wealth?  How can you tax a home the same as a stock portfolio?

Still, if we are going to arrest and rebuke the slide into oligarchy, we have to start somewhere. Encouragingly, we did it before.

Limits Of The DSA

 A lot has been written about the collapse in support for Tiffany Hong in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. As per usual, a lot of it looks wrong and serves to justify people's priors.

First of all, looking at a Marquette poll from late July, Hong was getting 38% support. On election night, she got...38% of the vote. She had clearly maxed out her ceiling and anyone who hadn't made up their mind seems to have shifted to Crowley.

There was also some sense that the more scrutiny Hong was placed under as the election got closer, the worse she looked. She did not exactly enthuse the usual rainmakers like Bernie or AOC either. 

It seems like Hong captured some imagination among younger voters and the "Fight!" crowd because she was a bit edgy, but some of those edges were natural attack avenues for Republicans. Abolish Thanksgiving? Abolish the police?

As Josh Marshal reminds us - not that we needed reminding - Zohran Mamdani is a very talented politician. He has expertly navigated between the somewhat utopian nature of DSA campaigns and the nuts and bolts nature of being a mayor. He is not "angry" and scary, and a lot of what he proposes are just solid, "improve people's lives" measures. 

There are two hobby horses that DSA flog nearly to death: Medicare for All and Israel. The distance between the DSA and the median Democratic representative in DC on Medicare for All is likely too small to measured with the naked eye. The median Democratic Rep just understands how the Congress works and how math works. On Israel, there is likely much more daylight, but the calculus of support for Israel - at least militarily - is also collapsing. The difference between the DSA candidates and normie Dems is mostly about rhetoric. 

For instance, I don't believe Israel's actions rise to the level of genocide - a word that is being diluted by throwing it around so much. I DO believe that we should cut off military aid and abandon our practice of protecting Israel with a UN veto. Does that make me "anti-Zionist"? No, I think Israel has a right to exist, but I think they have forfeited the right to count on unconditional support from the US. In policy terms, my difference from the DSA is pretty small. 

Where the DSA has been most successful is in overwhelmingly Blue districts where you have the "Fight" dynamic and often a rival who is too old. Not surprisingly, DSA candidates have done best with bougie, urban, college educated white liberals. They are not creating a "class consciousness" among non-college people - precisely the demographic that socialism is supposed to mobilize. A large part of that is because the DSA isn't so much about expanding social programs as bullshit, boutique radicalism like "Defund the Police" or "Open borders" that just repels a lot of people. 

It is absolutely healthy to have a left wing in the Democratic Party pushing for health care expansion as a first priority. But caterwauling about AIPAC or the systemic racism of Thanksgiving isn't helping anyone.

Phew

 It looks like Democrats avoided a very poor choice in Wisconsin last night. David Crowley edged polling favorite and DSA standard bearer Francesca Hong in the race for the Democratic candidate for governor. With Tony Evers term limited, this quintessentially purple state could become the most critical governor's race in the country. The Republican nominee is a rabid election denialist.

Interestingly, another very purple state, Georgia, is also having a gubernatorial election. Holding on to as many governorships as possible has become far more important recently. Not only do governors fill Senate vacancies (with some exceptions) they are also the central figure in maintaining state sovereignty in the face of Trump's assault on democracy. Losing Wisconsin because they nominated someone with the quirky and toxic views of many leftists in a state that seems to teeter back and forth between supporting Democrats and Republicans is not the way forward.

Yglesias has been beating this drum all year, the way he does when he has a juicy bone between his fangs. Yet, he has found a way to see the merits in Abdul El-Sayed's candidacy in Michigan. I do think that he continues to wallow in the Yglesias Fallacy of believing that swing voters really care about policy and not vibes and blunt personality markers. AES' liability is not his ability to finesse his positions on Medicare for All or even Israel. His liability is that he's Muslim in a country that still harbors a LOT of Islamophobia. 

AES has some real charisma and juice (though I wouldn't put him in the same vein as Mamdani, despite some superficial similarities), and Stevens looks like she's going to go all in to help him win. (I wonder if Hong will do the same for Crowley. I have my doubts.)

While there have been some head scratching results from some House primaries, generally a robust sample size of Democratic voters have proven themselves equal to the moment. They are retiring reps who are over 75 - John Larsen lost last night, and that's a good thing - but they aren't always running to some extremes when they do so.

I believe the coming months will see more movement towards Democrats. I think Trump hiding in a catering truck while using the press corps and White House staff as bait on Air Force One is going to have some legs. He's not going to find a way clear of Iran; prices aren't going to fall; corruption isn't going to stop; ICE will kill again. The only thing that can stem the damage for Republicans is Democrats nominating people who will drive Republicans to the polls in negative polarization. The key to winning the Senate is keeping a lot of dispirited MAGA home in November.

Wisconsin understood the assignment. 

Vengeance

 The Incumbency Problem has been stalking global politics since Covid, but really since 2008. The financial crisis brutalized a lot of people, but not the actors most responsible for it happening. As Krugman notes (indirectly), Democrats have let people off the hook far too often when taking power. In Obama's case, Krugman faults him for not prosecuting those who lied us into Iraq, but the stronger argument was in failing to prosecute Wall Street. 

The recovery from 2008 was solid, but tilted initially far more towards Wall Street than Main Street. Biden was not going to get caught in that, and his recovery plan from 2021 was designed to help the average person, as well as forestall an economic contraction. Even more than just "helping", it really does seem like what the average person wants is vengeance. 

Sure, the Covid checks were nice, but they want to blame someone for being afraid, for disrupting their lives. That's why we have these stupid attacks on Fauci. The problem is that there really isn't someone to "blame" for Covid. I would argue that Trump's feckless, moronic leadership made things worse, and the high death rate in the US would seem to back that up. But the virus itself can't be held accountable. It's a virus. So instead, we have the Lab Leak deadenders, the Fauci Jihadists, the Antivaxxer Brigade. None of it really makes sense looking at the evidence, but it does make sense if you understand that people want to blame other people, not the impersonal universe.

This is why incumbent parties lost power all over the world since Covid. People need to blame someone, so they blamed those in charge. Sadly for Democrats, people don't seem to remember who was in charge in 2020. If Covid 19 had been Covid 18, I think Democrats win in 2024. 

All of this brings us back to Trump and his brazen lawlessness. Elliot Morris notes (paywall) that Trump is obviously hated by Democrats, but increasingly hated by Independents, too. What's more, his own supporters are getting more and more disillusioned by him. All of this points to another Blue Wave election - even with the gerrymandering. 

If Democrats do win both Houses, they cannot try and "govern" in the way they typically do when there is divided government. They have to go medieval on Trump's diapered ass. The reason why insurgent candidates are cleaning up in primary elections is not a deep and abiding love for "socialism" whatever that might mean to voters. It's a deeper feeling that Democrats have spend far too much time trying to repair the damage Republican policies have wrought and not enough time putting heads on spikes. Why trust that cadre to do anything different this time?

Presumption of Regularity

 In her recounting of the dismissal of charges against David Hearn, Richardson points out that judges are starting to deny "presumption of regularity" to Department of Justice lawyers. Basically, judges assume that DOJ lawyers aren't lying or otherwise being sketchy (like hiding evidence from a grand jury. Presumption of regularity is based on centuries, really, of precedent that the government is not captured by a patrimonial strongman bent on destroying American democracy to sate the void in his soul. Certainly there have always been DOJ lawyers who fucked around with this principle, but the presumption requires this to be treated as an act of individual malfeasance. Judges are now saying that this is policy.

Joe Biden made two huge mistakes as president. The first, obviously, was deciding to run again at an advanced age with a speech impediment that was getting worse. He simply could not communicate well on a daily basis.

The second was Merrill Garland.

Garland was a judge, not a prosecutor. He had been denied a seat on the Supreme Court by Mitch McConnell (is he dead yet?), and that moment was really a watershed moment in Republican fuckery. Holding a Supreme Court seat open for a full year in order to gamble on a Republican winning the next election was a huge violation of "norms." Garland was supposed to reestablish the professional neutrality of the Justice Department, but in the process  delayed in prosecuting Trump for his many crimes. One has to think that Trump actually being in jail in the winter of 2024 might have made a difference. But "norms" man.

Making Garland Attorney General was not just a consolation prize, it was an effort by Biden and Democrats to reestablish those norms like regularity. Democrats have the burden of defending flawed but critically important institutions in the face of an historical moment when people are strongly anti-institutional. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration can be painfully slow in approving new treatments. However, RFK, Jr deciding that vitamins can cure measles is not a step in correcting this.

There has been talk in some quarters about the need for a Democratic Project 2029. Given the unpopularity of Project 2025, I'm not sure I see the point. However, there are some topics that Democrats need to coalesce around. Some are easy: kill the tariffs, restore America's alliances, raise taxes on the wealthy, undo the GOP's attacks on healthcare, end environmental degradation and his incessant building of monuments to himself. 

When it comes to norms in the Justice Department, this gets trickier. You absolutely need an impartial, professional DOJ. You also need to have real, tangible accountability for the orgy of corruption under Trump. 

Threading that needle - the creation of an independent commission, perhaps - will be an important part of restoring the presumption of regularity, by not engaging in the Garland-style caution about norms and prosecuting those leaving office.

UPDATE: And just on cue, the Republican holdouts against Todd Blanche as Attorney General have caved, because of course they did.

Mainiacs

 I'm not sure I have much to add about the Platner disaster. I think the broad contours are roughly that

- Platner had a superficial charisma that drew in a bunch of pencil necked consultants and cosplay socialists.
- Maine Democrats were gun shy about taking on Collins for reasons that I guess have to do with her electoral overachieving, but really just speak to a certain weakness among elected Democrats that is driving anti-establishment politics on the left.
- That left the choice between Platner and the aging Mills. That choice was made easier by Mills' apparent lack of fire to fundraise and campaign.
- Unsurprisingly, the very green Platner turned out to have a May Day Parade's worth of red flags. I saw a post talking about why are only the worst people running for office. Generally speaking, though, civic minded people run for office, starting with local offices and working their way up. Some recidivist drop-out has never stood before voters and never been put through the ringer and the organic vetting process that comes with running for multiple offices.
- Republicans in the Age of Trump will excuse all the flaws of someone like Platner, if the candidate has an "R" by their name, because they've done it for their Orange Jesus.
- Things Republicans will excuse include Nazi style aesthetics; sexual assault; pig ignorance. Platner should have run as a Republican.
- Platner should have dropped out after the Nazi tattoo and the early raft of sexually predatory allegations. I'm guessing he didn't, because he literally cannot understand why his behavior - "Hey, I was drunk" - constitutes sexual assault. 
- I hope that every leftist podcaster, every online Bernie Bro, every cosplay edge lord who had anything to do with this guy is perma-shunned from Democratic politics. 

In the end, I'm glad his political career seems to be over. (Again, would it shock me if he became a Republican, a la Tulsi Gabbard, another Bernie protege? No, it would not.) Hopefully, there is some Maine Democrat who can bring the energy and independence to beat Collins in what should be a wave year.

Talking Past Each Other

 Yglesias takes issue with Josh Marshall's take on why leftists are winning primaries in safely blue districts. On the one hand, he does make the solid point that Democrats need to run moderates in swing districts. I don't think Marshall would argue any differently. Marshall - and I actually exchanged emails with him on this - is talking more about system vs anti-system politics. 

Two things I would disagree with Yglesias on is first of all the true "pundit's fallacy." He coined that term to describe the fallacy that pundits engage in when they assume that if a candidate just takes their favored policy positions, then they will win. I think the true pundit's fallacy is that voters - especially persuadable voters - really make sophisticated judgments based on policy at all. The American people were so upset about nominal higher prices that they elected a guy whose signature policy - tariffs - was going to be inflationary. 

The second thing I think is false is that the winning of safe blue seats is somehow draining resources to fight Trump. Sure, at the margins, every dollar spent in a primary battle is a dollar that could have been spent in the general election. I don't think that means that holding THOSE seats is going to be a problem, and I doubt that the person giving to Brad Lander was going to give to Mary Peltola anyway.

Where I agree with him is that I think the Left has largely abandoned reason in its politics. Yesterday I briefly engaged in a Twitter exchange (that I finally wised up and walked away from) where I responded to someone saying the Gaza was a litmus test for candidates. My question was "Why, in 2026, is Gaza not just important, but some people's whole personalities?" I can understand being upset by Israel's conduct in Gaza, deeply upset. I can't understand why this has become someone's entire personality, both politically and even socially.

I think we should cut off military aid to Israel. I think we should stop protecting their bad behavior with our veto power in the UN. I think Biden was slow to arrive at the realization that Israel had gone off the rails, but I also think Biden did a lot more to rein in Israel than Trump ever did. I've also noticed that once you go offline, the campus protests and sit-ins have all pretty much ended now that Trump - who is WAY closer to Netanyahu than any Democrat - is president. Weird.

What I don't believe is that Israeli policy in Gaza is a first order issue in the 2026 midterms. One of the crazier - but I think very emblematic - assertions in the Twitter thread was someone saying that the US was directly responsible for the depredations visited upon Gaza. We did that. We bombed them. Not even, we sold weapons that Israel used, but that we were the ones ultimately responsible for the IDF's actions in Gaza. 

Yeah, no. 

Israel is a wholly sovereign country with a very powerful military. They are perfectly capable of setting their own policy and conducting their own operations. To assume that the US is responsible for that is a form of egocentrism bordering on narcissism. It asserts that there are no other actors in the world but us. That means that MY vote for city council is entirely going to determine what Netanyahu does in Gaza.

Attacking Israel has become part of anti-systems politics. We've been overtly allied with Israel since the 1960s at least. To stand against that is stand against the status quo, which is what seems to be motivating a lot of primary voters - in both parties. Trump is anti-systems politics, too. 

UPDATE: Marshall responds.

A Frictionless World Is A Solipsitic World

MIT did a study last year on the use of AI. Unsurprisingly, they found that students who used AI a lot demonstrated very little growth as students, including the use of EEG imaging to determine brain activity. Students who used Google saw some growth, and students who used neither saw the most. Even more striking, the AI using students were helpless when asked to write without AI.

David Brooks expands on this, writing about how people who enjoy mental struggle will really benefit from AI, because they enjoy the process of thinking. For this group, AI becomes another tool, whereas for people who really hate strenuous thinking, AI will degrade their thinking more. Even his middle group, who he calls the Reluctant Optimizers, will eventually be dumbed down by AI. The example of this can be seen with previous technologies. Does anyone really remember phone numbers anymore? Can you find yourself somewhere without GPS? 

This, I believe, feeds into my argument from a few days ago. For the past 30 years, tech companies have worked assiduously to remove "friction" from technology use. If you can think back to the early days of personal computing, a handful of people used computers for things like coding or spreadsheets. Most of us used it for word processing. Then the internet comes along, and your computer is now a mailbox and crude search engine. Here come Google and they come to dominate searches. As computing power speeds up, streaming video emerges, beginning with the microfilms of Vine. 

We've now reached a saturation point where any friction feels like a tragedy. I spent the last few weeks with a Smart TV that was several years old. This effectively makes it a dumb TV, and we spent minutes - WHOLE MINUTES - rebooting, reloading and otherwise dealing with a glitchy streaming system. It was frustrating. What it was NOT was driving to a video store to see what they had in stock. We watched what we wanted, when we wanted (minus a few minutes where we had to de-glitch the TV).

I would argue that this psychological space is proving to be somewhat incompatible with liberal democracy. 

The very structures of the Constitution are designed to be frustrating to power. Among the many outrages that Trump has visited upon the country is his wholesale contempt for the basic structure of the Constitution and the need to treat the other branches as co-equal partners in governing. The President absolutely should not govern by decree; that is deeply contemptuous of the American governing system. It was designed to be frustrating specifically to frustrate imperial aspirants. 

Trump's fundamental pitch to his non-cultists is that he can "run America like a business" (despite his manifest incompetence at running his own businesses). The import of Project 2025 was the force change on a system that created endless friction in the path of change.

What I see happening, though, with young "activists" is that they seem completely incapable of understanding that you simply don't get "what you want" from our system of government. You can - occasionally - get what you need, but the idea that your personal preferences will translate into policy is not just the naivete of youth, it is the defining gestalt of the internet age.

While many people have warned of AI's impact on the job market and the environment, I share Brooks'  and Krugman's concerns about what AI will do to our minds and by extension our culture.

This weekend, Scott Weiner was heckled at a trans event for not being sufficiently deferential to the desires of the Palestinian "lobby". Weiner has been a staunch ally of the LGBTQ communities, yet he was physically confronted and screamed at by people that more than one online commentator described as "mentally deranged." 

Maybe.

Or maybe we've become culturally deranged in our solipsism. We see the world as a toddler does, as lacking purpose and agency beyond the insatiable appetites of a toddler. I want what I want NOW. I will not build a coalition; I will not settle for half measures; I will not bend to time or compromise.

I want my utopia delivered to my door by Tuesday noon. 

DSA On The March

 A slate of candidates endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primaries in NYC last night. As per usual, these results will be flogged to death by everyone who is too invested in internecine conflicts and Republicans looking to scare the rubes.

First, Mamdani is a remarkable political talent. Effusively charismatic and with a keen insight into how to be a visible symbol of effective governance. The scare-mongering that Republicans have tried to inject into coverage of his tenure hasn't worked, because the guy just seems jolly.

That isn't true of each of the candidates he endorsed, especially Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is almost a caricature of leftist politics. She has a history of saying inflammatory things on social media, including "Fuck Kamala Harris" which was a standard position for those on the farther reaches of the Israel-Palestine issue. 

If there was a theme from these elections, it was a dissatisfaction with the Old Guard of NY politics and a rejection of anything even remotely pro-Israel. Chevalier beat incumbent Adriano Espaillat, the Chair of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus. Chevalier won the wealthier areas of the district around Columbia University, whereas Espaillat won the the Bronx. This is the paradox of DSA support: Much of it comes from upper middle class college educated liberals, not the working class voters it purports to serve.

Presumably, these candidates will win their indigo blue districts. The question is whether Republicans will be able to tie someone like Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer trying to flip the conservative NY 21, with the statements of the leftist candidates from the City. If we have learned one thing, it is that Fox News viewers will believe any rancid bullshit placed on their plates. These are people who still believe Democrats are the ones hiding the Epstein Files.

Midterms are referenda on incumbent parties. People are pissed and supporting someone like Chevalier is a good way to express that anger. It may not be the best way to flip marginal seats, but Republicans already believe that Democrats want to require gender reassignment surgery in elementary school, so what will be the movement at the margins?

More interesting, I suppose, is what impact these DSA candidates will have if they win and Democrats win the House, but by a reasonably narrow margin (I think they win a 20-25 seat majority, but gerrymandering could impact that). Will they behave like AOC, another impressive political talent, or like Rashida Tlaib, who doesn't seem to understand that you have to work within the party, even if you sometimes disagree with it. 

Republicans have been calling Democrats communists since the New Deal. At some point that attack falls apart from overuse. However, Democrats do keep nominating people like Platner and Chevalier who seem to be engineered for opposition attack ads. Hopefully a Blue Wave carries everyone along, because, well, we HAVE to have a Democratic Congress by January. 

Platner

 When I first saw video of Graham Platner, the now presumptive nominee to take on Susan Collins in Maine,  I thought he had something. Vibes, I guess. I do believe - very strongly - the Democrats have a vibes problem, and nominating a certain type of guy wins voters that nominating even an extraordinarily qualified woman like Hillary Clinton does not. Sucks to say out loud, but that's what my gut tells me.

Platner, however, proved to be something of an oppo researcher's dream. Incredibly bad statements in his past, a Nazi tattoo, casual misogyny (though again, in the past). Schumer saw this, too, and convinced term limited governor, Janet Mills, to jump into the race. 

She dropped out yesterday citing a lack of funds.

Platner has been gracious, his very online supporters have not. And this is the problem. As Platner's problematic past was exposed, people began to take sides. The Bernie Left loved his faux working class aesthetic (Platner grew up quite comfortable, including an unsuccessful stint at the Hotchkiss school). Those who preferred not to support someone with his past inflammatory statements or, you know, a Totenkopf tattoo saw in Platner the second coming of John Fetterman. Here was someone posing as a working class dude who was big and burly, but really was kind of playing at it. 

Both sides began to dig in. Once that happens, you lose focus on the real goal of all this, which is to finally oust Susan Collins - the only Republican elected Federal official in New England. Mills was a flinty old school Mainer who called out Trump in the Oval Office, famously saying, "I'll see you in court." Platner is several decades younger, at a time when Democrats are exhausted with older politicians. 

Where I land is here: I have some serious doubts about Graham Platner especially within the context of Fetterman's betrayal, but I have zero doubts about Susan Collins. She's objectively horrible, while pretending to be eminently reasonable. The facade of moderation covering a reliable MAGA vote.

The absolute imperative in 2026 is "Vote Blue, No Matter Who." That now includes Graham Platner and all his baggage. As for his embrace by the Bernie Bros and their inevitable crowing over his victory, I think this says less about Center Left vs Far Left, but rather about Young vs Old and the declining salience of rhetorical baggage in the Era of Trump. We can hope that there are no Swallwell sized revelations out there, because winning Maine is an absolute must if Dems are going to get a working majority in the Senate (especially with Fetterman being a supposed Democrat).

Platner has said the right things, even if his online mob has not. Hopefully, he continues to do so and tells that mob to win gracefully, or else we might lose catastrophically in November. 

Broken Politics

 The...whatever it was that happened at the White House Correspondent's Dinner last night...is yet another simply bizarre moment that have become common place since Trump came down the escalator. Yes, I'm "victim blaming." Trump has been targeted previously by people who fit more in the school shooter or John Hinckley/Charles Guiteau category of assassin. Disturbed men who found meaning in killing someone famous or simply wanting to "die famous" themselves. We don't know anything about the motives of the man in custody, but he went to Cal Tech, wasn't a registered Democrat, but gave money to Harris' campaign. He was apparently staying at the hotel, which suggests a degree of planning. Yet the actual attack was hardly a well-thought out plan.

Lots of online voices have suggested that this - like the Butler attempt - were "false flag" actions designed to bolster Trump's sagging popularity. As Paul Campos argues, that's highly improbable. Some of this is post hoc ergo propter hoc, in that the Butler attempt really did give him a boost, and might have tilted the election in his favor. As I said at the time, his defiant fist as he was being rushed off stage was the only time I could see him behaving in a way that would suggest an actual virtue. From the effect, the cause is assumed that the shooting was staged.

Trump never goes to the WHCD because he hates the press. He decides to go, and there's a shooting attempt. This naturally lends itself to conspiracy theories. I would argue that his plan was to pick a nasty fight and give a vitriolic speech as a way to divert attentions from his cratering approval. Picking fights with the press is red meat and it always plays well with MAGA. That makes more sense than some sort of staged attempt on his life.

I think we have to consider two things. The first is that this is an administration that invited a reporter into a war planning chat. It's a president who launched a war against Iran without considering what Iran might do in response. It's an economics team who seems to think foreign countries pay tariffs, especially those damned penguins on the Heard and McDonald Islands. The idea that these clowns could pull off three false flag attacks and the meticulous attention to secrecy and planning that this would require strains belief.

The second is that Trump is a chaos agent. That's a large part of his selling point to the disgruntled people who adore him. They don't care if he can build a better society, they just want the old one torn down. That sort of personality will inspire violence. He will inspire to people to kill him. He will also inspire his followers to assassinate Minnesota legislators, to beat Paul Pelosi nearly to death with a hammer and to stage an insurrection to overthrow the government of the United States. 

Violence - political violence - is a sign that our politics are completely broken. It doesn't mean irrevocably broken, but currently very much broken. Again, we don't know if the shooter was thinking clearly, but he could very well be in the Luigi Mangione camp of a radicalized person who simply snaps and resorts to violence. We know death threats against public officials are on the rise, and we know that Trump uses dehumanizing language to speak about anyone who stands against him. Stochastic violence leads to actual violence, including violence directed against himself.

One more reason this is unlikely to be a false flag, besides the difficulty and danger in pulling it off. This story will largely disappear by Wednesday.  Quick, who was the guy who laid in ambush for Trump at his golf course? What was his name? Hell, I'm only vaguely sure of the name of the Butler shooter. Crooks, I think?

The dysfunction of our political life -  a dysfunction that Trump took and dialed up to a hundred - has led us to this point, where violence is more and more common, and will remain that way until we finally put the era of this malevolent orange creature behind us.

GOP v MAGA

 Morris flags a YouGov/Economist poll that estimates that the Republican electorate is about 50-50 between MAGA and "normal" GOP. What's more, non-MAGA Republicans are finally breaking with Trump over Iran and prices. I'll quote Morris:

Trump’s 2024 coalition was built on four pieces. The core is the roughly 30–35% of Americans who are MAGA on any given policy. But the base alone doesn’t win elections. Trump won by adding three other groups: non-MAGA Republicans who are negatively polarized against Democrats and would never vote for them; swing voters who soured on Kamala Harris for ideological or personal reasons; and voters who were simply fed up with the economy and wanted the other party in charge.

Looking at the polling, Trump has lost a little ground with his base and with the reluctant Republicans. But he’s losing real ground with the Harris-skeptics and the economy voters — and he’s losing it on the issue those groups say matters most.

I think that the narrative is too focused on the last two groups. Yes, Democrats need to win back the Harris-skeptical (misogyny, anyone) and the "but muh eggs r espensive" voters. 

My gut, though, says that the Blue Wave that we need in November has to also benefit from both MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans just staying home out of despondency. 

This, by the way, is why I hate people dunking on people on social media who are saying, "Trump lied to me, I'm ashamed I voted for him." I get it, I do. But the key to saving democracy is getting those people to just stay home and not drag themselves to the polls to vote AGAINST those mean old Democrats who keep pointing out that they were stupid for supporting Trump. 

Just let them sulk and maybe stay home. In close races - and control of the Senate will be defined by close races - 10-15% of MAGA or non-MAGA Republicans just sitting it out is the difference between Sherrod Brown and Mary Peltola winning or losing. 

Cursed

 Krugman makes a clickbaity argument that the US might be suffering from the resource curse. The resource curse take two forms. The one I'm most familiar with is that poorer, developing countries that have abundant mineral wealth are usually autocratic. The reason is the inverse of the old revolutionary slogan, "No taxation with representation." In a resource state, there is no need for taxation so there is no representation. Additionally, control of the government means control of the resource (usually oil), and that means losing control of the government means losing access to all that wealth. 

Krugman does not seem to be argument that for the US, and I would agree, we aren't in that state. Yesterday's No Kings rallies may have had 8,000,000 attendees. I would say that they one I attended was not necessarily better attended than the one in the fall, but that supportive honking by passersby was higher. Protesting is...weird. It does however stand in for civic engagement. 

The reason why the US is not likely to rely on resources to become a petrostate is twofold. The first is that despite being the world's largest oil producer, oil is still a relative small part of our overall economy. If you want to get rich in America, you go to Wall Street or Silicon Valley, not to Washington, DC to extract rents from the oil industry. 

The second reason is that America already has a well-established democracy. Yes, Trump is waging wholescale war on our democratic institutions and norms, but just like his war against Iran, his tactical wins do not mean strategic victory. Part of the "logic" of authoritarianism and the heart of Project 2025 is that you can simply overwhelm the opposition through "strength" and speed of action. Trump has achieved speed of action - again, in both his assaults on America's democratic institutions and Iran's military infrastructure. However, he cannot understand that the opposition gets its say, too. 

American history is not a triumphal march of progress. It is a long and painful conflict between our ideals and our baser instincts. It is messy. Right now, it seems like everything is unravelling. However, as I said a few months ago, as a political scientist, I would argue that you should be afraid. As a historian, I would argue that you should be patient.

No Kings

 I am off to - I think - the third protest I've ever been to. The second one was No Kings this fall. I am not a protest guy, I am not a crowds guy, but this shit is so fucked up and bullshit that it's prompting me to overcome my previous scruples.

Meanwhile, CPAC was sparsely attended and riven by factions. Factionalism is rare on the right, but common within revolutionary movements, which sums up the basic friction between Trumpism and institutional conservatism.

The House Republicans have rejected the bill to reopen DHS except for ICE. Senate Republicans caved because the TSA situation was getting out of hand and perhaps some of them secretly wanted to rein ICE in a bit, too. The House catering to Trump's diktats over not funding TSA means that it could not be any clearer who is behind the chaos in America's airports.

We will see how many people take to the streets to protest Trump's corruption, war mongering, incompetence and authoritarianism. I'm guessing that the numbers will be large (providing people can afford gas to get there). If it's as big as the fall protests - or even larger - then I think it's pretty clear where the energy rests going into the midterms. I think the key to a Blue Tsunami is a combination of extremely motivated anti-Trump voters and dispirited Trump voters who stay home. 

So if you can go today, go.

Incoherent America

 Lots of work is being done around the realization that Americans don't hold truly ideological or even informed opinions about politics. Because the world is complicated, people's opinion of things can shift depending on how you ask them. That's how you get a slim majority rejecting "amnesty" and a sizable majority supporting a "path to citizenship." 

Perhaps one of Trump's political strengths is how well he mirrors this inchoate, unexamined, almost thoughtless approach to politics and policies. Trump's shifting explanations for war against Iran are not going to win him any real converts to his war of choice, but they DO reflect the way many Americans respond to political dilemmas, often taking a position and then retroactively finding a justification. A person could be xenophobic. Why? Jobs! No, access to public goods! No, crime! No, disease! No, actually it's jobs again!

Good policy is not guaranteed by good process. You can have a perfectly reasoned and coherent case for war and it is still likely to be a bad policy. (That doesn't mean having a terrible case will work either.)

What it does suggest is that the most ideological people have a flawed view of other people's politics. If you believe people are as ideologically focused as you are, you will presume that ideological appeals will win their votes. You just need the pitch perfect 12 point plan and suddenly everyone will vote for your program. Take Project 2025 (please). The more these reactionary ideologues wrote down what they were going to do, the less popular it was. The fact that Trump is governing from the blueprint that he expressly disavowed is one reason why he's so far underwater.

Lots of the terminally online Millennials hate Bill Clinton, but there is a reason why he was so popular. Same with Obama. They were capable and pragmatic. Yes, as partisan politicians they had Things They Wanted To Do, but they weren't eager to couch them in ideological terms.

One of the most deleterious developments in American politics has been the severe ideological sorting of the parties since the 1990s. This means that they people at the head of our politics are often captured by ideological thinking in ways that obstruct winning elections. Given that one party has dived headlong into authoritarian patrimonialism if not fascism, I'd say winning elections is important.

Billionaires Are (Mostly) Sociopaths

 Krugman recaps the rise of the "Centi-Billionaires" who dwarf all human wealth from previous eras. He notes that this era compares unfavorably with the Gilded Age in terms of wealth inequality. That's certainly something. This ties into the Citizens United ruling that unlocked the ability of the super-rich to exerts incredible influence on our elections. Would Trump have won had Musk not bought Twitter and turned it into a Nazi echo chamber? What are we to make of Bezos destroying the Post? The Ellisons destroying CBS?

Krugman notes that this is not solely about making money. The utility of spending all that money is not to make marginal gains. Destroying the Post and CBS is NOT good for their bottom lines. It has to be about the deep howling void in the center of their souls. Compare Bezos or even Gates to their ex-wives, who using their divorce riches to actively work to better the world.

When we look at the depredations of Trump and his cronies, it's not simply about getting more loot. Today, I start teaching authoritarianism in Comparative Government and one of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is (the poorly named) phenomenon of rent seeking. Elites use the government to exploit money and other forms of wealth for their own benefit. The make the government buy jets or house them, like Kristi Noem does. They rake in billions in crypto in return for gutting oversight - creating a potential time bomb in the heart of the economy.

When that happens - when Trump makes the IRS pay him $10 billion to settle a meritless lawsuit - the incentive, in fact the prerogative, is to never give up power. You can afford to leave office, because you will lose access to that money and potentially be prosecuted.

For the billionaires who support Trump, they simply cannot accept democratic control of their fortunes. They are self-identified Uber mensch. The rabble cannot touch them or thwart them. For Trump and his ilk, democratic accountability could lead to a reckoning from his many crimes. 

Can they put this into action and end American democracy? We will know in about seven months.