Change You Can Believe In

 This is an interesting Twitter thread about the generational divide between Russian and Ukrainian leadership. The average age of Russian leadership is 64, Ukrainian leadership is 44. That's the literal definition of a generational divide. 

There has been a ton of pixels spilt over why Russia has so badly underperformed militarily in Ukraine, while Ukraine has defied early expectations. A lot, obviously, has to do with relative morale and the nature of offensive vs defensive warfare. However, there is a deeper problem in Russian military and political culture: ossified doctrine and leadership. A lot has been made about the inferiority of Russia's non-commissioned officers. The sergeants that make up the backbone of an effective fighting force must be on the younger side, say in their 30s. Russia's military does not create good NCOs and allow them autonomy, because the regime is quintessentially authoritarian and autonomy is not granted "underlings." In a combat environment, adaptability and flexibility are essential. Russia doesn't have that, which is why generals have to be near the frontline and keep getting killed.

The broader implication of the tweet, though, is that this is a problem we saw in the late Soviet period of a decaying gerontocracy. Putin is old and apparently dying of cancer or Parkinsons. He has surrounded himself with a bunch of other older men with ties to the late Soviet period, like himself - the siloviki. His critics, like Navalny, are mostly younger. Since the war broke out, we've seen young, urban, cosmopolitan Russians flee the country in a "brain drain" that has negative implications for regime change in Russia, but also is a real problem in a country with an ongoing demographic crisis of declining birth rates, a declining population and high mortality rates among its male population. (This is one reason why Russia is literally kidnapping Ukrainian children.)

Authoritarianism has a certain appeal for people who feel unmoored during times of great change and turmoil. This was central to Trump's appeal. The entire point of Fox News is to keep GOP voters agitated about the changing world so that they will cede democracy to a Trump/Orban/Bolsanaro type strongman. In the end, though, authoritarianism usually fails as a form of government because it becomes unadaptive. It can't roll with the punches. 

One worry I have at this moment is America's current state of gerontocracy. Biden turns 80 this year; Pelosi is 82, Trump is 75, McConnell is 80, Schumer is 71, Hoyer is 82, Clyburn is 81, Leahy is 81, Durbin is 77, Patty Murray is 71, Stabenow is 72.

The GOP actually has a relatively younger leadership group in McCarthy, Thune, Scalise and Stefanik. I mean, they're awful, but they aren't ancient.

As we've seen with Madison Cawthorn and to a lesser degree Ilhan Omar, there's a certain impetuousness and lack of perspective in younger people. You see it on Twitter all the time. People without appropriate historical perspective and memory can get lost in the moment, because the moment is all they know. There is a place for "wise old heads."

However, Democrats need to begin now to start adding youth to their political leadership. Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker, Chris Murphy, Brian Schatz even Amy Klobuchar at 61 need to be elevated to positions of real leadership.

If not, the Democrats will rely on ancient leaders at the mercy of their 27 year old staffers, and that's the worst of both worlds.

America's Christianist Problem, One In A Series

 Martin Longman explores why fundamentalist parents censoring school materials is bad. If your worldview cannot survive contact with information freedom, that is not a problem with information freedom. It's a problem that your worldview can only exist in a hothouse environment, sheltered from contrary viewpoints and even basic facts.

Fundamentalism is deeply corrosive to a democratic state, in my opinion, precisely because it it rarely interested in open discourse or critical thinking. In fact, one definition of fundamentalism is the belief in the literal truth of ancient religious texts. There is not even an allowable debate on this issue. In a "liberal" political environment, we have to be free to question everything within the limits of reason. Otherwise, the whole thing falls apart...which it currently is doing.

The other definition of fundamentalism is the use of religion as a political ideology. This is seen most clearly in Islamism, which argues that Islam should be the political ideology establishing the political norms of a country. There has historically not been any separation between mosque and state in Islam, so this is easy. Religious pluralism has its deepest roots in the United States, which is one reason why America remains an unusually religiously observant country for a developed economy. Religious pluralism has been a net positive for American religion.

But Christianism, as a fundamentalist ideology to define the workings of the state, rejects religious pluralism. It seeks to create a hothouse environment in which its tenets are immune to challenge. If Leviticus is the revealed word of God and a proper way to organize society, you'd think it would be more robust. Instead, we get the closing of the American Mind in exactly the opposite way that Allan Bloom suggested. (Allan Bloom was a crank.)

I have drifted in and out of faith and religion in my life. There is real wisdom in many religions, but none hold a monopoly on wisdom. Fundamentalism, in both meanings of the word, argues that in fact there is only one valid practice of faith and that should rule our society. And because this is an article of faith, there is no argument than can be advanced to challenge it.

All of this should help inform the ongoing GOP war against public education. It's not about CRT or SEL or specific works in the library. It's about the very project of public education and critical thinking.

This Is Significant

 Monmouth polled people as to what the most important issue in the midterms was. The results were that 26% said the economy. That's not good for Democrats, unless we can defeat Putin in the next month or two and gas prices collapse. But the second more important issue was abortion at 25%, and that's before we start getting tangible horror stories from women who have been persecuted or even died from non-clinical abortions.

I agree with Yglesias that Schumer's "message bill" on codifying Roe was bad. You have to write a bill that does the very least acceptable so that it gets more support. First 15 weeks, health and welfare of the mother, rape and incest. Trying to legislate abortion without restrictions is just stupid.

However, there are credible reasons to think abortion could upend a very bad electoral environment for Democrats.

Crypto

 Looks to be exactly what I - and many others - thought it was: a huge scam and pyramid scheme. 

My only hope is that it only takes down the rubes and not the whole economy. In fact, a crypto crash could plausibly slow inflation, I guess.

Fight The Culture Wars From The Middle

 The rhetorical excesses of "Defund the Police" or "Open Borders" embraced by a few primary candidates in 2020 has led the idea that the Democratic Party has raced to the left of the Berkley faculty. The actual positions of the Democrats on many of these issues is far more moderate than the GOP or the "popularist" critics make it out to be.

There is no question that Republicans think culture war issues surrounding CRT and MS-13 are winners for them. They think Trump and Glenn Youngkin won on those issues. I have serious doubts about that. I would argue that Youngkin won on school closures more than CRT. There is no question that these culture war issues motivate the GOP base, but that's not big enough to win elections.

We won't really know how the Dobbs decision overturning Roe will fare politically. It's unlikely to be popular. However, there are a bunch of other culture war issues that Democrats need to start running on. 

One of them is academic freedom. Mini-Trumps like Ron DeSantis are pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in American politics. He's attacking Disney, which is another culture war issue that Democrats should pounce on, but his attack on academic freedom is one that Democrats need to talk about. Of course, "academic freedom" is a bit niche, in terms of framing. No one gives a shit about a University of Florida professor's work on non-binary genders in classical Greek literature. 

Instead, framing DeSantis' actions as "thought police" attacks on your student's teachers could work. Or the idea that Big Government wants to punish your daughter's teacher for what she says or thinks can switch the narrative. Plus, it ties in to the idea that these self-same "conservatives" want to monitor a woman's uterus.

Culture War Police State can be an all encompassing angle to attack the GOP, but you can't wait until Labor Day to start telling your story.

What He Said

 Jon Chait asks a question that I have been trying to figure out for a while now. Why hasn't Biden repealed Trump's tariffs to combat inflation? Chait correctly identifies inflation as the biggest problem facing Biden and the single greatest threat to his presidency and therefore arguably the future of American democratic governance.

There are two main sources of inflation: energy and the broad issue of "supply chains." Energy is largely beyond his control, unless he can assassinate Vladimir Putin and end the war in Ukraine. Some of the supply chain issues of the lingering pandemic are also beyond his control. He can't control China's lockdowns, for instance.

The tariffs were designed by Trump to "bring jobs back to America." The problem is that bringing jobs back isn't really the problem right now. Employment is high, wages are rising...there is no need to protect American workers, it's American consumers who need help. This is always the double edged sword of global trade: lower wages but also lower prices for consumer goods. Right now, lower wages are not the issue.

The idea that these tariffs are being held hostage to China Hawks seems weird because we still have tariffs (as far as I know) on Canadian lumber, because Trump hated that Ivanka got all hot for Justin Trudeau or something. But it appears that Biden actually INCREASED tariffs on Canadian lumber. Like...doubled them. Right in the middle of a housing crunch. Those tariffs are going down in August, but none of this makes any sense, if you're trying to fight inflation. 

Energy is the biggest driver of inflation right now, and there's not much Biden can do about that. Energy increases add cost to everything that is being transported to markets. But tariffs are making it even harder to bring prices under control.

There's an argument that Biden "overlearned" the lesson of 2008-9 of under-stimulating a recovery and has overstimulated the economy. You could argue that he has, in fact, overlearned the lesson of Clinton, Sanders and Trump - that free trade leads to populist demagogues. Right now we are seeing the limits of that demagoguery. 

Biden needs to address inflation now for it to have an effect on the midterms. There's not enough urgency for my taste.

What Is Chuck Schumer Doing?

 The Senate is poised to vote on a "message bill" codifying some sort of abortion right. It will fail to get cloture, and there is a chance Joe Manchin will vote against cloture, too.

I have to agree with Matthew Yglesias on this one. Right now, somehow preserving access to reproductive health services is the key issue. While the public broadly supports first trimester abortions with exceptions for health of the mother after that, there is way less support for a blanket right to an abortion. What's more, the Clinton Era rhetorical formulation of "safe, legal and rare" is also very popular. 

We are already seeing massive overreach by some Republicans. Louisiana's proposed law is a nightmare. Marsha Blackburn wants to restrict contraception to married people. Missouri wants to restrict people from traveling out of state for an abortion. These are radical, radical positions.

Democrats need to seize the middle ground here. They need to propose an untrammeled right to an abortion in the first trimester, with exceptions for the health of the mother after that. Most importantly, they need to try and create universal access to contraception so that we have fewer abortions.

There are genuinely "pro-life" people who oppose abortion, war and the death penalty. Most anti-choice Americans are enthusiastic supporters of war and the death penalty and efforts to go after contraception will only intensify. Isolate the "forced birth" movement from those opposed to second trimester abortions. If that means a more moderate bill that Manchin, Collins and Murkowski can support then THAT IS A GOOD THING.

UPDATE: Here is my "message bill."

- No restrictions on abortion during the first trimester
- After the first trimester, abortion allowed to protect the life and health of the mother.
- Universal access and funding for contraceptive care
- Universal access and funding for prenatal care

The GOP will vote against this, but that's the point. 

Happy Domestic Suppliers Of Infants Day

Brought to you by the Republican Party.

Whither Republican Women?

 Scott Lemieux gives Kathleen Parker a healthy dose of shit for her willful naivete surrounding Roe v Wade. As he notes, Parker quoted Susan Collins to say that Roe was safe. I saw a Facebook quote from my conservative cousin saying, basically, that abortion to remain safe, legal and rare, with a focus on rare. Which is fine for her.

As we have seen in places like Louisiana, GOP legislatures are absolutely going to take a maximalist approach to abortion. Now, Louisiana's law will die under Governor Edwards' veto pen, but there are states that are going to charge women with murder, you can count on it.

My guess is that many of these GOP women will find a way to wave this reality away. But not all.

Moderating

 Yglesias makes another pitch for "popularism" under a different guise. He analyzes the conflict between the DLC and more liberal elements of the party around the turn of the century.

I honestly do think he's right when it comes to advancing arcane social issue language as a policy agenda. What's more, I think the critical moment for same sex marriage was when they stopped calling it "same sex marriage" and started calling it "marriage equality." The basic idea of couching your agenda in widely held, common values is really important.

What's more, if you ask any committed Democrat right now what the central political issue facing the country, it is the Republican party's open embrace of authoritarianism, not it's ongoing embrace of revanchist racism. The latter is an issue, but the GOP largely says "we aren't racist" while openly embracing political illiberalism and the authoritarian party state.

If you believe that the GOP has gone "Full Orban" (and I think that's the reality) then you should absolutely push towards the center. Part of the appeal of Biden was that he was precisely the most moderate candidate in many ways. How could grandpa be a radical? 

Where I think Yglesias skips over the other reality is that the GOP had some success casting Biden as a Socialist who was going to defund the police. Biden explicitly said he was not going to defund the police. So the environment of misinformation and disinformation does actually matter. He skips over that because there's really nothing that can be done about Fox News. (I would also caution about reading too much into Trump's relative strong showing amongst Hispanics. There's a strong incumbency effect among most demographics.)

The other issue I would suggest is overblown is the idea that Democratic positions are largely unpopular. The GOP got some mileage out of fear-mongering CRT, but you can absolutely read too much into Glenn Youngkin's victory. I would wager it was more about keeping schools remote than teaching them that slavery was bad. In 1994, the NRA took credit for the GOP wave, which was really about the party realignment hitting the South. Same with CRT critics saying they flipped Virginia. Doubtful.

The pandemic and its knock-on effects are still the central issue that have people unhappy (and we can add the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent energy spikes to that list). Inflation and supply chain problems are real. (My son is complaining about how his favorite burrito place is understaffed and out of food. That matters SO much more to people's sense of how "things are" than whether Volkswagen running an ad with gay parents.)

I guess I broadly agree with Yglesias that a lot of socially liberal positions should be placed on the backburner to defend against an authoritarian GOP taking over Congress. Democracy is on the ballot, and while embracing trans representation is important, the recent abortion events have shown how important it is to control Congress. As bad as Joe Manchin is, he still votes for Biden's pro-choice judges. If Democrats lose control of the Senate, McConnell will not confirm ANY judges. So if you support trans rights, maybe now is not the time to say that this is your one issue and you won't vote in November if your demands aren't met. Meanwhile saying that "all people should be treated fairly and accepted for who they are" is a perfectly reasionable stance.

Where I disagree is whether this will matter at all, if the economy is still problematic.

Could Overturning Roe Tip These Senate Races?

 The Times has some polling about the relative support for Roe in various states. I think these numbers might be a bit old, and I imagine there will be some changes once the decision comes down in June.

Let's start where support for Roe exists, but is weakest: Missouri. Roe is barely above water there, but I feel confident that the Missouri GOP will nominate someone awful who might move the needle more. They gave us Todd Akin, then can give us some nutsack.

Next up is Georgia where abortion is roughly +2. Raphael Warnock is running for a full term, and he can likely win minority votes. Peeling off those suburban white women would be huge for him.

North Carolina is an interesting one, where abortion rights are +5. Richard Burr is retiring so it's an open seat like Missouri. I had real hopes that NC would flip in 2020, but I would be happy if it do so in November.

Here's a wild card: Oklahoma. Abortion is pretty popular there at +5. I wouldn't expect that to lead to a Democratic pick up, but that would be hilarious if Alito managed to flip Oklafuckinghoma purple.

Iowa is another state were abortion is largely positive at +7. Chuck Grassley is also ancient and likely non compos mentis. 

Ohio could be the key. Abortion polls at +10 making it a potential huge wedge issue. JD Vance is an odious authoritarian and largely unlikable guy and Tim Ryan has a legit shot at this, if he can play the abortion issue right.

Let's go to Wisconsin where abortion polls at +13,  and Ron Johnson is a simpering moron. You can't gerrymander the entire state, assholes.

Pennsylvania is another state with a competitive election and abortion polls at +13 there, too. 

Same with Arizona, where you have a fairly popular incumbent in Mark Kelly.

A real wildcard is Florida, where abortion polls at +18. Marco Rubio is a godbothering empty suit. Hopefully, Ron DeSantis and abortion combined can flip this cesspool of a state back on to dry land.

Abortion should help Lisa Murkowski hold off the lunatic fringe in Alaska (+25).

Nevada is considered a toss-up but abortion is polling at +32 there.

This is not to say that you can just chirp "pro choice" and waltz to electoral victory. I know that abortion rights activists won't like this, but "safe, legal and rare" remains a really appealing strategy in the wake of the wholesale assault on ALL abortion rights. "Rare" simply means more effective birth control (which the American Taliban are coming for next, mark my words).

I do think that you will find Mitch McConnell looking more fretful than usual is Alito and the Fascistic Four fully remove Roe's protections. 

Pundit Brain

 I haven't "argued" with Yglesias in a while but today he committed a classic pundit brain fallacy. He uses as his jumping off point the meme Elon Musk was throwing around about how the "Left" moved away from him and the "Right" stayed in the same place. This is absurd, of course, but Yglesias focused on how the policy portfolio of the Republican party has, in fact, shifted rightwards. He then falls for the typical "Red-Brown" nonsense about how Trump was secretly to Hillary Clinton's left because he didn't explicitly run on killing Social Security and Medicare. He also focuses on how McCain was a relative moderate on climate compared to Bush or Trump.

This is nonsense on a number of levels, but maybe the idea that "platforms" matter is the most nonsensical. Let's look at McCain's climate moderation. Yes, he ran on cap-and-trade, which qualifies as moderation. That was part of his "maverick" branding. He and Bush were to Romney and Trump's center on immigration. Some of this is simple geography, Bush and McCain were from areas with large Hispanic populations, Romney lives in a bubble of extreme wealth.

Of course, the real tell is that Trump won more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 without having a platform at all. Yglesias has focused on what he calls popularism, which is sort of "don't do things I think are unpopular" but does have some merit, in terms of not committing a bunch of political own goals, like "Defund the Police" or "Open Borders." However, the idea that Trump was some economic moderate gives him way too much credit for measured political calculation. He tried to kill ACA (McCain, Murkowski and Collins helped save it). He slapped tariffs on goods that have contributed to inflation. He passed a series of regressive tax cuts to help the wealthy. 

Mostly, of course, he was a huge fucking bigot. He wasn't the "didn't use Latinx" sort of strawman bigot, but "Mexican immigrants are rapists from a shithole country" sort of bigot. He was a Birther. He was a sexist. He was the guy who was going to let you make "Dumb Blonde" jokes at work again.

Oh, and he was probably the most corrupt president in history.

The idea that Trump won votes by moderating GOP positions like Paul Ryan's evisceration of the welfare state has...some merit? Trump certainly energized a type of WWC voter that typically sits out elections, but was turned off by the more plutocratic elements of the GOP. But the idea that Cletus was analyzing policy positions is absurd.

Mitt Romney lost, because he was personified - justifiably - as a vulture capitalist from Bain. Obama was weakened by the soft recovery, but also the huge racism typified by the Tea Party backlash. Obama gave a bunch of WWC people healthcare and they still hated him because...well, you know.

Trump has no policy positions beyond his instinctive grasp of his fellow racist's grievances. Trump is not programmatic, his splenetic. He's distracted by every chryon rolling underneath Sean Hannity's hate fest. 

It would be nice to believe that American voters vote because of a reasoned analysis of which candidate or party would most improve their lives and the lives of their fellow Americans. 

But that would be bullshit.

Wonky progressives believe that we are voting based on policy, but more often than not, we adopt policy positions based on our partisan identifiers. We prize coalitional politics (something Yglesias extols in other places) over factional preferences. 

People vote their feelings, which is why continued inflation is bad for Democrats, but it's also why overturning Roe is bad for Republicans.  

The Dog That Caught The Car

 By all accounts, the Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe v Wade. The Very Online folks are of course full of hot takes about how this is all the Democrats' fault for not

- abolishing the filibuster to expand the Court
- sitting out the 2016 election, because Bernie didn't get the nomination
- being better at hardball politics
- not somehow forcing Judge Ginsburg to retire sooner
- all/none of the above

This is, of course, a rank example of Murc's Law. With the exception of Joe Manchin - who votes to approve Biden and Obama's pro-choice judges - every Senate Democrat would pass a bill to codify Roe into national law. Let's say that they could somehow overturn the Court's ruling with a bill that would pass 51-50 by getting rid of the filibuster (somehow) by creating a national law that makes abortion legal.

This Court would simply rule that law unconstitutional.

The central problem facing America today are its antiquated, anti-democratic institutions. Chief among these are the Senate and thereby the Electoral College and the Supreme Court. Three of the Justices who are about to overturn 50 years of established law were appointed by a man who failed to win the popular vote and then launched a coup attempt four years later. Two more were nominated by a man who initially won the presidency while losing the popular vote, but who at least had the self-knowledge to wait until he won his "mandate" in 2004 before stacking the Court.

And stacking the Court is very much the long term plan of social conservatives and theocrats since the early 1970s. They have been relentless in this goal and while there have been "institutionalists" on the Court like Anthony Kennedy and John Roberts, the current Gang of Five who are going to overturn Roe are sufficiently inoculated from the public to do whatever the hell they want. I don't necessarily see the angle to overturn the precedents in Obergefell or Lawrence, I also see no reason why they would stop there. I'm guessing that we will overturn Abington this session, too.

The focus will be on Roe, though and rightfully so. This has been an established right for 50 years and it has been the organizing principle of the religious Right for the same time. It has led to the unlikely alliance of conservative Catholics and Evangelicals that upended old political alliances and created the rise of the New Right. The DC politicians mostly couldn't give a shit about abortions - they were probably paying for their mistresses abortions  - but that's where the votes are, and that's what they wanted to do.

By the end of June, maybe half the country will have made abortion illegal thanks to the Court.

Here's where I wonder/hope that things pivot.

Polling on abortion is a bit dependent on how you word it, but Gallup has the following numbers: 

- Abortion should be legal under certain circumstances - 48%
- Abortion should be legal under any circumstances - 32%
- Abortion should be illegal in all circumstances - 19%

Pew words it differently. They find 59% say it should be legal in all or most cases, whereas 39% says it should be illegal in all or most cases.

No matter which way you examine it, there is a supermajority support for abortion with some restrictions. The laws making their way through Red State legislatures are incredibly restrictive, including bans on abortion even in cases of rape and incest. These are unpopular with the median voter even in places like Texas.

For decades, the GOP has been able to make rhetorical hay from the abortion issue without ever having to actually give the theocratic Christianists what they want. They can decry the death of the "preborn" (Jesus...) without having to anger the broad middle of the country that supports reasonable access to reproductive choice.

Now, the GOP has no cover. The theocrats have "won" but at what cost?

The dynamics leading in to the midterm elections are not great for Democrats at the moment. Inflation remains a concern and energy prices are not going to come down anytime soon. The economy is growing but in ways that discomfort in certain sectors.

We know that the GOP's primary attack angles have and will be culture war grievances. They are planning to win the suburbs back with CRT bullshit and Mexican caravans. This moment, however, could tip the culture wars more broadly in the Democrats' favor. This blanket ban on abortion could energize those who see this GOP as responsible for attacks on women's autonomy over their own bodies.

I've long held that the institutional GOP exploits culture war grievances to win elections so that they can reward the rich with tax cuts and deregulation. Trump ripped that open and made the grievances the point and the policy. Now, the bill could be coming due. The Chrisitianists are the dog that caught the car. Let's see how that works out for them.

Mitch McConnell, Super Genius

 There is a long running presumption that the GOP - and by extension, the most important long term leader, Mitch McConnell - is super-terrific at politics, because they are so good at winning narrow elections. The actual reason is that our Congress - and therefore our Electoral College - is extremely biased in favor of rural regions of the country.

Back in 2016, everyone knew that Trump would be a disaster for the party, only to discover that the average GOP and GOP-leaning voters was every bit as racist and sexist as Democrats had been saying they were for years. As a result, Trump won the most unlikely of victories, but eking out narrow victories in the "Blue Wall."

After January 6th, Trump and Trumpism should have been done. However, the Democrats offered the GOP an escape hatch: impeach Trump from power and prohibit him from running from federal office ever again. McConnell passed.

I have no idea what will happen in November. I'm still cautiously optimistic about the Senate, because I think so much partisan voting is baked in to the results. The House chances took a hit when the NY Supreme Court declared their new congressional map contrary to the state constitution, in the sort of unilateral disarmament that people decry about the elected Democratic Party all the time.

Anyway, if Democrats can hold on to or increase their Senate, while possibly losing the House, and the economy largely levels out in the next year, then Biden and Democrats should feel pretty comfortable heading into a rematch with Trump. Biden vs DeSantis could be trickier, simply because Americans are tired of the gerontocracy. 

If McConnell had helped convict Trump in his second impeachment, the GOP could begin to move beyond the chaos of the Trump years and offer DeSantis's "Competent Trumpism." Instead they are married to this moldering fool.

Once Upon A Time

 A number of conservative students at our school had a somewhat legitimate beef with the outside speakers being overwhelmingly "liberal." They wanted to bring in a conservative voice to balance the roster, but they were not suggesting we bring in some MAGA nonsense (this was around the time of the 2016 election). One of the student's parents knew a guy whose children had applied to our schools (in fact, I interviewed their daughter briefly) and was a prominent conservative voice.

That person was Tucker Carlson.

At the time, Carlson was simply MAGA-curious, the bow-tied scion of William F. Buckley who knew how to pander to the white supremacist crowd without ever actually putting on the pointy hood. Since then, he has become, as the Times piece notes, the pre-eminent voice at Fox, by becoming its most racist voice. He has moved from the more coded language to actively using the language of white supremacists.

Tucker is a preppy shithead who struggled for years to find a place for himself on cable news. He bounced from CNN to MSNBC (!) until landing at Fox. Like so many "conservative" voices, he was like a junky who starts out just doing a little Vicodin on a Friday night to take the edge off and two years later, he's scoring heroin and fentanyl in exchange for hand jobs in an Arby's parking lot. By embracing what the "conservative movement" always was - a fear fueled grievance about uppity dark people and women who don't know their place - he has become the star he always wanted to be. 

Last night was "nerd prom," the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Fox News was there. The fact that there was undoubtedly some pearl clutching about gibes about Fox personalities acting as Trump's press operation just goes to show how broken some of the brains in our media are. They circle the wagons around the very people who are working to undermine democracy. This piece in Politico reads like farce.

Tucker Carlson realized that he could make bank by becoming a racist carnival barker, scaring old people about the Brown People under their beds. And he won't pay a price for it.