Wednesday, March 23, 2022

BIDEN PROBABLY WOULDN'T GET TO REPLACE A REPUBLICAN SUPREME COURT JUSTICE

How is Clarence Thomas doing? It's not clear.
The Supreme Court declined to say Wednesday whether 73-year-old Justice Clarence Thomas remains in the hospital, though he had been expected to be released by Tuesday evening.

The court said Sunday that Thomas had been admitted to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington on Friday after experiencing “flu-like symptoms,” and he was diagnosed with an infection. His “symptoms are abating,” and he was expected to be released Monday or Tuesday, the court said in a statement at the time. But on Wednesday morning, court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said she had no update to provide....

Thomas did not have COVID-19 and his infection was being treated with intravenous antibiotics, the court has said.
Thomas, like the other justices, is vaccinated and boosted. If he has a breakthrough COVID infection, it seems odd that the Supreme Court would just lie about that. If he and his wife hoped to politicize a COVID infection, you'd think they'd want it known that his vaccination didn't prevent him from getting sick. So I assume he doesn't have COVID, and that leaves a likely diagnosis (hat tip: Allahpundit at Hot Air):


Okay, let's go there: What happens if Thomas is sicker than we were originally told he was? What if he doesn't pull through?

Here's some speculation:


I think the craziness in D.C. would start with a Republican-only statement -- Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and several other Republicans announcing in no uncertain terms that it would be wildly inappropriate for President Biden and Senate Democrats to conduct confirmation hearings this close to an election (yes, in early spring). Or ... maybe they'd wait until they could recruit either Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema.

But isn't there a possible appointee who'd be likely to win Manchin's vote, as well as the votes of several Republicans? Allahpundit thinks so:
Yesterday, at the opening of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing, Lindsey Graham said this:
South Carolina’s senior senator said Monday he’s still upset that President Joe Biden did not nominate federal Judge Michelle Childs to the U.S. Supreme Court and blamed liberal groups for keeping her from getting the high court nod...

Graham repeated Monday that had Childs been the nominee she would have received at least 60 votes in the Senate and had his support and that of another South Carolinan, Sen. Tim Scott.
Manchin reportedly also wanted Childs for the Breyer vacancy. If Thomas were to leave the Court, Biden could nominate her for his seat and dare Graham and Manchin to bork her in order to hold the seat open until after the midterms.
But:
Graham might, since replacing Thomas with a Democrat would upend the ideological balance of power on the Court. But as long as the White House can keep centrist Democrats like Manchin on board, they could get Childs confirmed.
There never would have been 60 votes for Childs -- I believe Republicans would have smeared her the way they're smearing Jackson now, and even Graham and Tim Scott would have ultimately voted against their fellow South Carolinian, despite the fact that she's a moderate.

And if Biden were to pick Childs after picking Jackson, that would be two Black female appointees. Maybe no one in the Senate would dare to say That's not a Court that looks like America!, but many people in the GOP orbit would say it, repeatedly.

And keep in mind that much of the GOP base would believe that Democrats and/or the Deep State had murdered Thomas, just like these Breitbart commenters when news of Thomas's illness was first announced:


I could imagine another January 6 if Biden and Senate Democrats begin the process of replacing a right-wing justice. But Sinema or Manchin will probably agree with McConnell that the seat should be kept open, and that will be that.
Posted by Steve M. at 6:08 PM 0 comments

THEY'RE GOING TO PUT US IN CAMPS

Sorry, I can't let this subject go.

The Washington Post's Greg Sargent read the New York Times Magazine piece I wrote about last night -- "ambitious," he calls it -- and he set out to interview members of the "genuine intellectual movement taking shape behind" what he regards as a "challenge to the GOP" being led by Tucker Carlson and Peter Thiel's candidates for the Senate, J.D. Vance and Blake Masters. Sargent, who's usually smarter than this, takes these folks very, very seriously as Deep Thinkers.

Sargent asked his interviewees:
If you got your dream president and Congress in 2025, what are the first things they should do?
The interviewees don't seem as if they're mounting a serious challenge to the GOP at all. The threat they pose is to the Republican Party's usual enemies -- especially immigrants and people who don't live in traditional heterosexual nuclear families.

First, there's National Review's Nate Hochman, a "national conservative."
His chosen president and Congress would dramatically reduce legal immigration, cutting way down on asylum seekers and refugees. He’d pursue industrial policy such as government incentives for multinational corporations to end manufacturing abroad and punitive actions toward companies that do business in China.

But this nationalism would be paired with robust state power to fight the culture wars. Hochman favors continued state bans on the teaching of critical race theory, and he wants the federal government to aggressively incentivize the formation and health of “traditional” families. That includes policies many Republicans oppose, such as paid family leave and near-universal tax credits for children without work requirements for parents.
I love the "But" that begins the second paragraph. It suggests a stark contrast where what follows is actually more of exactly the same. Yes, Hochman hates immigrants and the Chinese -- but, shockingly, he's also a right-wing culture warrior!

The only thing here that's a mild challenge to Republican orthodoxy is the support for paid family leave and child tax credits. But it doesn't matter. There won't be a Republican majority for these policies anytime in the foreseeable future, and once Republican congressional leaders regain majorities in the House and Senate, they'll use the Hastert rule and other procedures to ensure that no bill ever comes to the floor unless it has a majority of Republican support, even if the bill's sponsors could put together a majority by making common cause with Democrats. So, for instance, future Speaker Kevin McCarthy won't let a small number of "national conservative" Republicans and a large number of Democrats get together to push through a paid family leave bill. It just won't happen.

Meanwhile, we have immigrant-bashing, China-bashing, and the valorization of "traditional" families. That last one will come up a lot, as you'll see.

Next, there's Gladden Pappin.
Pappin, a post-liberal, told me it should be “the policy of the United States” — of the federal government — to “enable the traditional family” to “flourish at the heart of society.” This would include a “nationally instituted family wage” and the state “defending” the “traditional” family in other ways.
Sargent knows what's on your mind as you read this.
You’d think this might lead in an ugly direction, such as going much further in criminalizing certain types of sexual conduct deemed to undermine “traditional” family formation.
Yes, you would, wouldn't you? But not to worry!
... when pressed, Pappin insisted he doesn’t envision coercive policies. Instead, the underlying idea is that people are naturally inclined toward such family formation, so the state should incentivize them to get there.
Oh, I see. People are naturally inclined to find a heterosexual spouse and lots of kiddies, with wifey staying home as God intended. And if you don't want that? No incentives for you! You're a second-class citizen!

Next?
... consider Saurabh Sharma, whose organization, American Moment, is a training ground for policy talent for future administrations. Its top priority is that “the American family, rooted in faith and tradition, is the bedrock of this nation and must be supported.”

This typical conservative extolment of the family is fused with aggressive nationalism. Sharma would implement a 10-year moratorium on all legal immigration to allow immigrants currently here to culturally assimilate, and aggressively bring back global supply chains.
At the top of the piece, Sargent tells us, "This movement is complicated and has various strains," but it seems to have only one strain: a strain that hates immigrants and regards LGBT people, working women, and the childless as bad Americans.

So there's Patrick Deneen:
Deneen wants a president and Congress to model family policies on those of Hungary, which invests extensive resources in incentivizing “traditional” family formation.
Hungary! Drink!
Deneen wants “substantial” federal and state support for mothers of young children, and if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, that would be even better: An end to abortion rights would be seen not just as inherently good, but also the foundation for the state to aggressively promote larger families.
No more abortion, so you sex maniacs will have to either keep your legs closed or have lots and lots of babies! We've moved past Viktor Orban all the way to Ceausescu.

But this is still America, right? There can't really be a legal crackdown on those who live in non-traditional ways, can there? Folks, meet Adrian Vermeule.
An integralist, Vermeule doesn’t identify as a member of the right or a policy expert. He envisions a “common good constitutionalism,” a jurisprudence granting great leeway to deploying the state toward realizing the “common good.”

Judges would be more prone to uphold, say, bans on certain speech and conduct that lawmakers decide would serve the common good. In Vermeule’s vision, judges would grant public authorities a “substantial zone of deference” in determining what morally benefits the whole populace and in legislating against what they deem “corrosive social practices.”
"Corrosive social practices": I'm sure this sounded better in the original German.

This is not an intellectual movement, and it's not a challenge to Republicanism -- it's incipient fascism, and it's been a logical endpoint to Republicanism for more than half a century. Maybe it won't lead to extermination camps for those who reject the "natural," "traditionalist" path and who stubbornly continue to engage in "corrosive social practices," but I hope we never find out.
Posted by Steve M. at 8:06 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

THE NEW YORK TIMES MISSES THE POINT AGAIN

Jason Zengerle of The New York Times Magazine has written a story about evil billionaire Peter Thiel's two 2022 Senate candidates, J.D. Vance of Ohio and Blake Masters of Arizona, that has me wondering whether Zengerle actually lives in America or has spent any time in the past decade observing American politics. Zengerle begins by telling us about what he says are the "aesthetic rules" of American political advertising:
A candidate who’s touting education proposals, for instance, will invariably be shown sitting awkwardly in a kid-size chair, reading to elementary-school students. A promise to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States must be accompanied by footage of the candidate, preferably in a hard hat, nodding meaningfully at someone in a factory. The candidate should always appear with people — talking, listening, shaking hands — except when speaking directly to the viewer, which should be done from a living room, with a credenza cluttered with family photos in the background.
Has Zengerle actually watched a Republican TV ad in the past ten (fifteen? twenty?) years? It seems impossible if he thinks all political ads in America are still built around serious-looking candidates acting forthright, earnest, and adult. Did Zengerle completely miss the moment when Rand Paul took a chainsaw to the U.S. tax code, or Brian Kemp not only wielded a chainsaw but also set off an explosion in his backyard, brandished a shotgun, and claimed he liked to round up "illegals" in his pickup truck?



Does Zengerle not know about right-wing candidates' fondness for shooting things in TV ads? Surely you'd imagine that Zengerle knows about the ad in which right-wing Democrat Joe Manchin shot a cap-and-trade bill, given the fact that Zengerle once wrote a long profile of Manchin.



Nope. Zengerle is shocked to learn that one of the Thiel candidates, Blake Masters, made a series of ads in which he's not nice. Yes, really! A Republican candidate did that!
Blake Masters, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, ignores these rules. In a series of online videos for his campaign, he appears all by himself, far from hearth and home, to make a slew of dire pronouncements. In one, Masters stands in the desert, flanked by cactuses, and declares: “Psychopaths are running the country right now.” In another, he’s in the middle of a hayfield, saying, “Our military leadership is totally incompetent.” In a third, he appears to have just walked out of a forest at twilight to announce, “Our schools are making our kids dumber.”
The only thing "rule-breaking" about the Masters ads is that he's completely lacking in the yee-haw! good-ole-boy spirit of his predecessors. Masters appears to be what you'd get if Kafka's Hunger Artist decided he could distract himself from food cravings by trying to read all of Hayek.



But if you're running for office as a Republican, there's nothing rule-breaking about standing in a field and proclaiming to a camera that all liberals are evil. Zengerle doesn't understand that.

He also seems to believe that there's something remarkable about the fact that Masters and J.D. Vance both sound like Tucker Carlson.

Yes, and? Don't most Republicans sound like Tucker Carlson these days? Zengerle -- who, you'll recall, thinks Republicans as well as Democrats do thoughtful, earnest campaign ads exclusively -- thinks the influence of Carlson on Masters and Vance is unmistakable.
... these campaign videos actually have a different, more prosaically political antecedent: Tucker Carlson’s monologues. Five nights a week, Carlson offers his populist message to more than three million Fox News Channel viewers. He tells them that the people who run our country, namely Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, are “a senile man and an imbecile”; that our military leadership, in the person of Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is “not just a pig, he’s stupid”; and that in our schools, “your children are being taught by some of the most ignorant people in the country.” Now Masters — along with another former Thiel employee, J.D. Vance, who’s running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Ohio — is trying to convert this rhetoric into an actual political campaign.
If I'm reading this correctly, Zengerle believes that Tucker Carlson invented right-wing name-calling. After reading this paragraph, I can only conclude that Zengerle has never heard of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Dinesh D'Souza, Alex Jones, or Laura Ingraham; he completely missed Sarah Palin and, I guess, Donald Trump.

Oh, and did I mention that, according to Zengerle, the thread linking Masters, Vance, and Carlson is ... intellectualism?
Carlson is the rare Fox News host whose words carry weight with conservative intellectuals. He is especially popular with those who identify as “national conservatives,” or NatCons — writers and thinkers who tack hard to the right on culture-war issues, denouncing Critical Race Theory and drag-queen story hours, while sharing a set of economic concerns with the left, supporting child subsidies and industrial policy.
Is this intellectualism? Are these concerns? No and no. These people pay lip service to the economic worries of ordinary citizens, but it's in the service of bashing "elitists" and encouraging the Volk to have more (white) babies.


Carlson and Vance share a fondness for one particular strongman whose policies in this area they praise:


Trust me, if any Orban-loving national conservatives get elected, they'll talk about this when it seems advantageous to them to do so, but they won't find any support in their own party and they'll never make common cause with liberals on any areas of overlap, just as the current class of Republicans refuses to do outreach to liberal critics of Big Tech monopolies despite all their theatrical rage at Facebook and the rest.

Vance didn't go Orbanite because of Carlson, by the way -- Vance is pals with Orban fanboy Rod Dreher, who was present in 2019 when Vance converted to Catholicism. Carlson didn't sit at Orban's feet until two years later.

Zengerle's has a few facts half-right, but his piece is a mess. Why can't The New York Times do better than this?
Posted by Steve M. at 8:18 PM 0 comments

RELAX, POLITICS HAS NO REAL-WORLD CONSEQUENCES!

I was inclined to worry about the conduct of Republicans during the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court nomination. But the "On Politics" newsletter at The New York Times assures me that I should relax -- it's all just a sporting event for four senators on the committee, and what I really need to be truly informed is a scouting report on their strengths and weaknesses as the big game gets underway.
Four Republican senators on the committee have flashed signs of larger aspirations, and they share a lot else in common. All are men who are roughly within a decade of one another in age. All have one or two Ivy League degrees. Each has sought to mold the Republican Party in his own image. And all approach these hearings knowing they are just as much onstage as Jackson is.
So if they smear Jackson, or anyone else, hey, they're just trying to impress the pro scouts -- I mean, 2024 primary voters. What they say has no real-world consequences at all!

The four are Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Ben Sasse, and with the possible exception of Sasse, whose brand is a mild, mostly ineffectual contrarianism, I'd say they've all sought to mold themselves in the image of the increasingly crazed and extremist Republican Party, not the other way around.

But maybe I'm not grasping subtle distinctions. The Times tells me that
Cotton is a foreign policy hawk, particularly on China. But he has also staked out hard-right positions on domestic policy, with calls to restrict legal immigration and roll back criminal justice reforms.
This is in stark contrast to Cruz, who
has gone through three main phases during his time in Washington. First he was a Tea Partier known for defying Republican leaders over government spending. Then he was a presidential candidate who came in second to Trump in 2016 by running as a conservative true believer. And now he’s a beard-sporting Trump ally who preaches “America First” dogma with the zeal of a convert.
Is it just me, or was it difficult to notice any change in Cruz's politics as he was undergoing these allegedly dramatic metamorphoses? Sure, his approach to Donald Trump changed -- he embarrassed himself by momentarily defying Trump and then recanted, slobbering all over Trump's wingtips. But Cruz's overall policy approach? Pretty much the same in all these phases, and the same as Cotton's: Libs are evil, and modern Republicans are the spiritual descendants of the Founding Fathers.

Hawley, age 42, is decribed as "the young upstart" (as opposed to Cotton, age 44, who's "the hard-liner"). You can tell Hawley from the others because he's "an evangelical Christian who promotes traditional values" (just like Cruz). Also he "has carved out a significant following on the right by going after tech companies for what he calls their alliance with the 'radical left'" (more or less exactly like Cruz or Cotton).

Hawley's main distinction, we're told, is that
he’s the only one who has bucked the wishes of Senate Republican leaders by forcefully attacking Jackson’s record. Fact-checkers have found his claims wanting, and the White House called them “toxic.”
But we're told that this is significant not because he's expected to utter somewhat viler smears than the others, but because it might give him a leg up if Trump doesn't run in 2024.
He likely won’t be able to stop her confirmation. But the fact that Hawley is fighting Jackson’s nomination at all could endear him to Republicans who want a brawler in their corner.
Yes, it doesn't matter that he's smearing Jackson in a way that twists the facts. What matters is How will it play in Iowa? Attacking Jackson dishonestly isn't good or bad for the country -- it's just the way the game is played, and that should be your takeaway from all this, New York Times reader. Because who cares if Senator Marsha Blackburn -- who isn't mentioned in the "On Politics" story -- smeared Jackson yesterday with insinuations that she's a sinister agent of Big CRT and Big Trans? Who cares if Cruz used his opening statement to argue that Democrats want to use the Supreme Court to subvert democracy? It doesn't matter. All that matters is the horserace.
Posted by Steve M. at 8:55 AM 0 comments

Monday, March 21, 2022

IF THE SMEARS OF KETANJI BROWN JACKSON BACKFIRED, SOMEONE FORGOT TO TELL THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Steve Benen tells us that GOP senator Josh Hawley made a terrible mistake.
Josh Hawley’s attempt to smear Ketanji Brown Jackson backfires

The Missouri Republican meant to make Judge Jackson look awful. He denigrated himself in the process.

... assurances about the GOP staying away from “the gutter” and approaching [Ketanji Brown] Jackson’s [Supreme Court] nomination in a “respectable” way look ridiculous in the wake of Sen. Josh Hawley’s attempted smear.

The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus highlighted the Missouri Republican’s attack in her latest column:
How desperate can you get? This desperate: Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is pushing the argument that Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is dangerously soft on sex offenders, child pornographers in particular. “I’ve noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children,” Hawley tweeted. “I’m concerned that this [is] a record that endangers our children.”
... The Associated Press said the senator’s claims “don’t stand up to scrutiny.” Fact-check reports from the Washington Post and CNN came to the same conclusion.

... In National Review, a leading conservative publication, Andrew McCarthy concluded that Hawley’s allegation “appears meritless to the point of demagoguery.”

... In other words, the Republican went on the offensive, only to have the attack backfire.
The attack backfired! Boy, I bet Republicans' faces are red now!

Whoops! Apparently not:



Those are tweets from the Republican National Committee. The RNC is proud of these attacks. The RNC wants you to pay attention to them.

Benen writes:
I am, of course, mindful of the larger circumstances. Hawley is an ambitious far-right politician, eager to curry favor with some of the most radical elements of his party. In fact, as my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones explained very well last week, it’s probably not a coincidence that the Missouri senator’s ugly allegations “hew closely to claims we’ve heard from QAnon conspiracy theorists.”
But the Republican National Committee isn't among "the most radical elements" of the GOP. The Republican National Committee is the mainstream of the GOP.

But that's how the party operates. Of course it wants to appeal to QAnoners, while also maintaining the ability to deny that it's doing that. In the GOP, where does the mainstream end and radicalism begin? As Benen notes, Media Matters found the smear being spread by One America News and a QAnon forum called The Great Awakening, but also repeatedly by the supposedly mainstream Fox News.

Benen says that "by mainstream standards, Hawley’s attack backfired." It did nothing of the sort.
Posted by Steve M. at 7:24 PM 0 comments

BETTER DEAD THAN DEMOCRAT!

Jennifer Rubin read the same New York Times symposium on threats to democracy that I wrote about last week, and she was very much taken with one proposal in particular:
Steven Levitsky, co-author of “How Democracies Die,” advocates a “much broader coalition than we’ve put together to date” to combat the MAGA threat.... he called on the “Bush-Cheney network” to work with Democrats in common cause. “It means that lifelong Republicans have to work to elect Democrats,” he says. “And it means the progressives have to set aside a slew of policy issues that they care deeply about so that the ticket is comfortable to right-wing politicians.”
What would this mean? Among other things, Rubin says, it would mean that Democrats shouldn't merely tack to the center right, they should commit a few small suicides -- for the greater good, of course.
Consider the Senate race in Utah, where no Democratic candidate has a chance to win a statewide election. Instead, anti-Trump conservative Evan McMullin is running as an independent against increasingly extreme incumbent Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).

In this and similar races across the country, Democrats should forgo running any candidate. That would allow Bush-Cheney Republicans, independents and Democrats to rally around conceivable anti-Trump candidates such as Evan McMullin. Yes, that means Democrats will need to vote for people who are pro-life and to their right on a great many issues. But the alternative is to throw their votes away on a sure-to-lose Democratic candidate and see incumbent senators such as Mike Lee (R-Utah) remain in office for six more years of MAGA sycophancy.
What's upsetting is that Rubin is probably right, and not just about the occasional race in a red state or district. The Democratic Party has such a terrible image right now -- an image it does nothing to try to improve -- that I can't imagine any Democrat winning the 2024 presidential race. Progressives don't like Democrats. Suburban moderates increasingly dislike Democrats. So do Hispanics. The Beltway media despises them, as always happens when a Democrat is elected president. (The media loved Barack Obama until he began trying to govern. The pattern repeated for Joe Biden.) I'm to the point where I think we might as well just give up and hand the ball to Liz Cheney or some other non-Democratic anti-Trumpist for 2024, because every possible Democratic candidate -- Biden, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- will be mocked and reviled by the mainstream media, while the same press would swoon over Cheney or someone like her. I hate saying this, but I'm just being realistic -- the press won't let a Democrat win two years from now.

Rubin does expect some reciprocal sacrifice on the part of anti-Trump Republicans:
Most important, a pro-democracy coalition requires voters, donors and operatives to get over their allergy to supporting people from opposing parties. If, for example, J.D. Vance or Josh Mandel winds up as the GOP nominee for Senate in Ohio, pro-democracy Republicans of good will — such as former president George W. Bush, former Ohio governor John Kasich and their donors — should back the moderate Democratic contender, Rep. Tim Ryan. Republicans truly dedicated to unshackling their party from the MAGA bloc must be willing to put democracy over party.
George W. Bush? You mean the guy who twice protested Donald Trump's presence on the ballot in the most useless manner possible, by voting for none of the above in 2016 and Condoleezza Rice in 2020? Bush's VP, Dick Cheney, and daughter Liz appeared at a Trump fundraiser in 2020, after watching him in action for four years. Kasich, to be fair, endorsed Biden in 2020 -- but in 2016 Kasich also protested in a pointless manner, by casting his presidential ballot for John McCain. Anti-Trump Republicans might be ready to alienate their party-mates, but for the most part they're not prepared to commit the unpardonable sin of voting for a Democrat.

The most efficient way to save the country from the Trumpists might be to change the two-party system to two Republican parties. It would make Chuck Todd and the New York Times editorial board happy. It would mean that we wouldn't be relying on a pariah/doormat party to be our last bulwark against totalitarianism.

Or Democrats could get up off the floor, have a little self-respect, and beginning telling the country that they're right and the GOP is both wrong and dangerous, proudly and unabashedly.
Posted by Steve M. at 1:47 PM 0 comments

Sunday, March 20, 2022

VICARIOUS RAGE IS NO SURPRISE

Jessica Grose of The New York Times is surprised:
I would have thought that the latest numbers about parental satisfaction [with schools] might be lower because of all the pandemic-related chaos. But according to Gallup, which has tracked school satisfaction annually since 1999, in 2021, “73 percent of parents of school-aged children say they are satisfied with the quality of education their oldest child is receiving.” More parents were satisfied in 2021 than they were in 2013 and 2002, when satisfaction dipped into the 60s....

Digging deeper into the Gallup numbers revealed that the people who seem to be driving the negative feelings toward American schools do not have children attending them: Overall, only 46 percent of Americans are satisfied with schools....

Polling done by the Charles Butt Foundation shows a similar dynamic playing out in Texas.... The third annual poll, which was of 1,154 Texas adults, found:
The share of public school parents giving their local public schools an A or B grade is up 12 percentage points in two years to 68 percent in the latest statewide survey on public education by the Charles Butt Foundation. In contrast with the increase among parents, there’s a decline in school ratings among those without a child currently enrolled in K-12 schools. Forty-eight percent of nonparents now give their local public schools A’s and B's, versus 56 percent a year ago.
... TargetSmart, which bills itself as a Democratic political data and data services firm, analyzed records showing who voted in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election, which has been touted as a win for the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, that was based on unhappiness over the way the previously Democratic-led state handled the pandemic in schools.

TargetSmart found:
Turnout among voters age 75 or older increased by 59 percent, relative to 2017.... Notably, turnout of all other age groups combined (18-74), which would likely include parents of school-aged children, only increased by 9 percent compared to 2017 ... This “silver surge” is an untold story that fundamentally undermines the conventional wisdom that Covid-19 protocols in schools and fears about critical race theory in curriculum determined the outcome of the election.
All of this at least raises the question of whether some of the people driving the outrage, even animus, against schools might not have much skin in the game and might not have any recent experience with teachers or curriculum.
If the people who are angriest about schools aren't parents of school-age children, we shouldn't be surprised. Where is anger about immigration concentrated? Not in cities that have a lot of undocumented immigrants. The anger is largely in suburbs and rural areas where undocumented immigrants are rarely seen. This is also where you find the people who are most upset about cities being burned down in Antifa riots. (Locals aren't happy, but at least they know that, for instance, the entirety of Portland, Orgeon, isn't a smoldering ruin.)

George W. Bush won the 2004 election largely on the basis of his actions in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. But he lost 82%-17% in New York County -- Manhattan -- where the worst attack took place. He lost Arlington County, Virginia, site of the Pentagon, 68%-31%, and lost Washington, D.C., 89%-9%. Bush's support and support for his invasion of Iraq came primarily from people who lived far from the 9/11 attacks and watched them on TV.

Vicarious right-wing rage should never be a surprise. It's easy to gin up because the angry people can't reality-test what they're hearing. If they're inclined to anger, they'll believe whatever they're told. People with first-hand experience of a subject know better.
Posted by Steve M. at 12:03 PM 0 comments

Saturday, March 19, 2022

THE CRAZIES AND THEIR ENABLERS

I'm sure you know Cleek's Law:
Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.
The Atlantic's David French is probably not aware of this law, but he seems to have discovered it independently, although he insists that it's true only of some conservatives:
I want to share with you two remarkably similar numbers....

The first number is 57. That’s the percentage of Republicans who told Yahoo News/YouGov pollsters that the United States should take Ukraine’s side as it defends itself against Russian invasion (28 percent said the U.S. should back neither, and 5 percent said we should back Russia). By contrast, 76 percent of Democrats said the U.S. should back Ukraine.

The second number is 56. That’s the percentage of Republicans who told Kaiser Family Foundation researchers that they were vaccinated. For Democrats, it’s 92 percent. The partisan disparity is so profound that fully 61 percent of all unvaccinated adults are Republican.

Vaccines have nothing to do with Russia, and Russia has nothing to do with vaccines. So why are those two numbers so similar? The answer lies with a phenomenon that afflicts a substantial minority of the right, including a substantial minority of my neighbors. It’s a constant, intense contrarianism rooted in deep antipathy against perceived “elites” or against the “establishment” on the left or the right.

The overlap between various conspiracy theories is simply extraordinary. Find someone who believes Trump truly won the 2020 election, and the overlap with anti-masking activism (especially pre-vaccine) and vaccine skepticism is almost guaranteed. Find someone who believes in the basics of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and you’ll find an election conspiracist and likely a Ukraine skeptic.
French is clearly describing Cleekism here:
If you spend any time watching Tucker Carlson or following the rhetoric of popular far-right voices, such as Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and many, many others, you’ll see a consistent theme—they’ll find what they call “the narrative” (another word for the perceived conventional wisdom in the media or in the political establishment) and simply argue the opposite.

We saw the pattern throughout the pandemic. “The narrative” was that COVID was serious, and so right-wing figures minimized the virus, claiming that it was like the common cold, or that it was merely the flu, or that it would claim only 500 or 5,000 lives.
Some still think COVID is the flu, by the way:


“The narrative” claimed that masks could help limit the spread of the disease, so far-right figures mocked masks, sometimes even referring to them as “face diapers.”

Then as the narrative moved to full-throated support for vaccines, the same cohort held back. If “they” want me to take a vaccine, then something must be wrong.
But French, who lives in rural Tennessee, insists that most of his fellow conservatives don't see the world in a Cleekish way:
Living in the heart of red America, I’ve experienced a rough two-thirds, one-third political dynamic. Two-thirds of my neighbors are part of the coalition of the normal. One-third are full of profound antipathy. But the one-third easily makes two-thirds of the noise online or at the grassroots. They punch well above their numerical weight.

They’ve dominated and intimidated Republican politicians and Republican neighbors. They’ve ruled with fear. They’re so active online that they create the impression that they are the American right.

... if the GOP is going to turn the page, the 57 percent will need to exert their will. Their sanity and clarity are the key to a Republican recovery.
But if French is right and the majority of his party-mates are not contrarian extremists, then why do the contrarian extremists dominate Republican primaries? How have they "ruled with fear"? Were Republican voters really afraid to vote against Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Madison Cawthorn in their primaries in 2020, when they were largely unknown? What about Trump in 2016? Maybe your life as a Republican, or as a neighbor of fellow Republicans, would be ruined if you denounced Trump now, but what was the reason for fear six years ago?

I don't believe the right-wing edgelords rule by fear. I think many if not most members of "the coalition of the normal" share the edgelords' anger at liberals, RINOs, and other members of "the establishment," just not on every issue. Maybe they don't think Anthony Fauci runs bioweapons labs in Ukraine or the Chinese sent bamboo-paper ballots to swing states in order to help Democrats steal the 2020 election, but they think the election was stolen from them -- in fact, there's a "two-thirds, one-third political dynamic" among Republicans on the election, but believers in a Democratic steal are the two-thirds.

They believe Democrats deliberately leave our Southern border "open" (never mind all the arrests of border crossers) in order to fundamentally change America, and they're furious about critical race theory and transsexuals in women's sports -- French is pretty bad on trans people himself -- and about whatever else Fox commentators not named Tucker Carlson are denouncing this week, so they don't see any reason to oppose the Boeberts and Cawthorns and Greenes. "At least he fights" is what so many Republicans say about Trump, and I'm sure they say it about the farthest-right members of Congress as well.

So, no, they're never going to apply "sanity and clarity" to voting, because they'd rather elect a right-wing lunatic than someone they see as a RINO or, God forbid, a Democrat.
Posted by Steve M. at 11:40 AM 0 comments

Friday, March 18, 2022

REPUBLICANS LIVE IN A DISINFORMATION BUBBLE JUST LIKE RUSSIANS

In the real world, a global coalition of nations is aiding Ukraine as it resists Russian aggression, and President Biden is one of the leaders of that coalition.

But in the right-wing information-sphere, Biden has apparently done nothing to help Ukraine. Here's Republican senator Marsha Blackburn:



Here's Sean Hannity on Fox News last night:
We begin with Biden's feckless policy as it relates to the war on Ukraine waged by Vladimir Putin. He dragged his feet on major sanctions. He dragged his feet on blocking Russian oil imports. He dragged his feet on sending the aid, the lethal aid needed by Ukraine. He dragged his feet on resupplying Ukraine's army with ammo, Javelin, Stingers, air defense systems and now he's dragging his feet on the MiG-29 fighter jets that Ukraine desperately needs, that Poland wants to give them. He vetoed it.

As a result, Ukraine is now struggling to defend its skies and thousands of innocent civilians are now being murdered with Russian bombs. Every single day that Joe Biden is dithering and waiting means more innocent men, women and children will die? How many more mass graves do we need to see before we recognize that he's targeting civilians?

Now, we're also witnessing a modern-day genocide at the hands of an evil murdering thug. And why some people defend him? I have no idea, but as Speaker Gingrich … points out, "Biden says no to Ukraine's Zelenskyy and keeps America in the back seat."
And here are Senate Republicans demanding that Biden help Ukraine after they voted against a bill that will do just that:
More than two dozen Senate Republicans are demanding that President Biden do more to aid war-torn Ukraine and arm its forces against Russia’s brutal assault, after voting last week against $13.6 billion in military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine....

“President Biden needs to make a decision TODAY: either give Ukraine access to the planes and antiaircraft defense systems it needs to defend itself, or enforce a no-fly zone to close Ukrainian skies to Russian attacks,” [Florida senator Rick] Scott said in a statement. “If President Biden does not do this NOW, President Biden will show himself to be absolutely heartless and ignorant of the deaths of innocent Ukrainian children and families.”

Last week, Scott was one of 31 Republicans to vote against a sweeping, $1.5 trillion spending bill to fund government agencies and departments through the remainder of the fiscal year, a bill that also included $13.6 billion in assistance for Ukraine. Biden signed the bill into law Tuesday....

... Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), ... who voted against the spending bill with billions for Ukraine, said Wednesday that Biden needs to “step up” and send MiG jet fighters and other weapons to Ukraine, accusing the administration of “dragging its feet.”

... Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who also voted against the spending bill, told MSNBC on Thursday that the United States “can do more” for Ukraine.

... Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) tweeted a clip declaring the importance of assisting Ukraine. “It’s not much of a deterrent when the assistance you provide comes after the invasion,” he wrote. “We need to have President Zelensky’s back and expedite aid to Ukraine.”

Hours later, Cramer voted against the spending bill.
But we have a free press, right? Surely the voters in the states these senators represent will know that the bill provides billions in aid to Ukraine, and that Republicans voted against it. Right?

In the same way that we've come to realize, with astonishment, that Russians simply weren't told that their troops had invaded Ukraine, and didn't believe there was a war, Republican voters, I'm sure, don't believe President Biden is doing anything effective on Ukraine's behalf, and that only Republicans could save Ukraine.

Russian citizens have an excuse for their ignorance: Media outlets that don't toe the Kremlin line are suppressed. In America, it's purely voluntary: Right-wingers simply tune out any media outlets that tells them what they don't want to hear, or assure themselves that those outlets are "fake news." What they don't want to hear is that any Democrat has ever done anything right. What they want to hear is that Democrats seek to destroy America and empower all the evildoers on the planet, among whom they now (temporarily) include Vladimir Putin.

So Republican senators can describe the White House response to Russia's attack on Ukraine in ways that blatantly ignore reality, and they don't have to worry that their voters will doubt their credibility. They can say anything about a Democrat as long as it's bad. No contradictory information penetrates the base's bubble.
Posted by Steve M. at 10:43 AM 0 comments

Thursday, March 17, 2022

REPUBLICANS ARE TOTALLY COOL WITH HYPOCRISY, BUT THEY PROBABLY WON'T NEED IT IF THERE'S ANOTHER COVID SURGE

Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent warn that in the event of another COVID surge -- which seems quite possible -- Republicans will attack Democrats hypocritically.
In recent weeks, mask mandates across the country have been dropped as covid case rates and hospitalizations have fallen with the waning of the omicron wave....

Yet there are signs a new wave could be on its way, now that one is already hitting Europe. Should that happen, Democrats ought to know that they’ll get the blame.

Right now, Democrats don’t appear all that tuned in to this possibility. They seem to think agreeing to relax covid-19 measures everywhere, as Republicans have demanded, has put them on the right side of an issue where they were losing the public.

Even if that’s true (and it’s debatable), if covid comes back, Republicans will spin right around and blame them for it, without being constrained in the slightest by the absurdity of the turnaround.
I'll go out on a limb and predict that Republicans won't attack Democrats in this hypocritical way.

Do I believe that Republicans will refrain from attacking Democrats? Of course not -- Republicans attack Democrats every minute of every day. Do I think Republicans want to avoid looking like hypocrites? No, that's never bothered them before.

But I think their voters are completely invested in the notion that the pandemic is fake, or at least overhyped, and that -- as in the case of mass shootings -- no amount of death and suffering justifies any restrictions on OUR FREEDOMS!!!! Attacking Democrats for rising COVID cases comes dangerously close to suggesting that the virus is a bad thing that requires collective action. On the right, that's heresy.

If you want a sense of what Republicans will do, look at this tweet:


Dr. Fauci says that if there's another surge, we should respond with a "degree of mitigation that is commensurate with what the situation is." That seems like simple common sense, and would probably be regarded as such in a civilized country. But the Republican National Committee posts this as a warning, with a caption that reads, "Fauci: If we see more cases, expect more restrictions!" The worst possible response!

Trumper Katrina Pierson responds to the video with a clown emoji.


That's how Republicans will respond to a surge. Even if -- as I assume -- mitigation measures have now become so politically toxic that the federal government and most localities dare not implement them, the fact that Fauci or anyone else might propose that we should possibly do anything whatsoever about the surge will be described as if the Democrat Party is the second coming of Hitler. And if any state or locality actually does reimpose a mask or vaccine requirement for stores, restaurants, or public events, the yellow stars will come back with a vengeance, as will death threats, armed protests, and even stricter laws against public health measures from GOP governors and legislatures. There'll probably be serious, well-financed truck blockades this time.

Republicans love to attack Democrats -- but I think they'll attack while sticking with their preferred narrative.
Posted by Steve M. at 6:51 PM 0 comments

THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY: NO, DEMOCRATS AREN'T ASKING FOR IT

I had some hope when I started to read this New York Times Magazine symposium on democracy in America. After Steven Levitsky (co-author of How Democracies Die) and Sarah Longwell (executive director of the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project and publisher of The Bulwark) assert that America's democracy crisis is a product of the rise of Donald Trump, Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sets them straight:
I think that it’s really important for us not to begin with Trump. I have repeatedly described Trump as an accelerant. But he was able to accelerate something that already existed. One of the issues that I’ve been most frustrated by is the failure of so many of those who really study democracy, and who see themselves as people who are committed to democracy and democratic ideals, to see the signs that were quite apparent long before Trump came into office. Things like voter suppression against Black voters, or police officers killing unarmed Black people with impunity, were treated as a race issue and not a democracy issue, when if we saw them in any other country, we would recognize them as indicators of something being wrong with a democracy.
Ifill adds:
Our democracy was in terrible trouble when we had a Black president and a Black attorney general.... I remember at the time being in a meeting with President Obama and saying: “Let me explain to you what is happening in Texas. Let me explain to you what’s happening in Alabama.” After the Supreme Court [in 2013] decided the Shelby County v. Holder case, which removed the preclearance provision, a critical provision from the Voting Rights Act, there was this wave of voter-suppression laws that were happening around the country with very explicit statements from Republican leaders of those states, saying, “We’re free and clear now.”
I would add that Republicans were attacking democracy long before the Shelby County case. In 2007, the Bush administration fired U.S. attorneys who wouldn't pursue cases involving (nonexistent) voter fraud. In the run-up to the 2010 census, Republicans sought to increase their advantage in state legislatures in order to engage in partisan gerrymandering. Their success has now made it next to impossible for Democrats to win legislative majorities in many purple states, and has led to grotesque gerrymandering of congressional districts.

But the Times forum had barely touched on pre-Trump Republican efforts to undermine democracy when a couple of Republican voices returned the discussion to conventional wisdom's safe space: Both sides are to blame. Benjamin Ginsberg -- a defender of the 2020 election but, yes, he was one of the GOP's Florida recount lawyers -- criticizes provisions of Democratic voting rights legislation that he says were "designed to gain [Democrats] partisan advantage." And then there's this, from Sarah Longwell, which I need to quote at length:
But I don’t want to let Democrats off the hook entirely here. You know, when I started doing the focus groups, I would ask G.O.P. voters who really didn’t like Trump why they voted for him. And the No. 1 answer you would get was: “I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. I voted against Hillary Clinton.” A lot of that is the longstanding hatred Republicans have for the Clintons and probably a bit of sexism as well. But there is also a reaction to a Democratic Party that is moving left and has a more difficult time appealing to swing voters. It is increasing negative polarization: I hate their side more than I like my side. And the cultural-war stuff is so much of it now. Whether it’s critical race theory, defund the police or the fight over using pronouns, Democrats often sound like aliens to many voters — including Black and Latino voters. Republicans have been increasing their support among minorities, because often these groups are more culturally conservative in ways that wedge them off from the current Democratic Party.
The end of this is the usual critique of the Democrats -- normal people hate them because they've become so woke -- but how does Longwell get to this argument? Via distaste for Hillary Clinton, one of the leading lights in the movement of the Democratic Party away from progressivism starting in the 1990s. If you hate Democrats because they're too far to the left and you also hate Hillary Clinton, then maybe your objections aren't ideological at all. And if you're a pro-democracy, anti-Trump Republican and you elide wokeness and Hillary, maybe you took more sips of the GOP Kool-Aid than you realize.

And what is Longwell saying here? That Democratic policies are so extreme you almost can't blame Republicans for rejecting democracy altogether? Do Democrats get to respond this way to Republican extremism? The Republican Party believes we should do nothing about climate change, or should make it worse ("Drill, baby, drill!"); the Republican Party believes we should do nothing about gun massacres, or make them more likely ("Come and take it"); the Republican Party believes we should do nothing about rising inequality, or we should increase it (every Republican tax bill); the Republican Party thinks cops are never wrong (unless they attack conservatives); and now the Republican Party is making a final push to destroy democracy itself. Have Democrats responded to all this by trying to take the vote away from Republicans? No, we haven't. So what's Republicans' excuse for trying to take it away from Democrats? Pronouns?

Steven Levitsky says:
I think what’s needed in the short term to preserve democracy, to get through the worst of this storm, is a much broader coalition than we’ve put together to date. Something on the lines of true fusion tickets that really brings in Republicans — maybe not a lot of the electorate, but enough to assure that the Trumpist party loses....

And that means something that we have not seen enough of in the last couple of decades, which is real political sacrifice. It means that lifelong Republicans have to work to elect Democrats. And it means the progressives have to set aside a slew of policy issues that they care deeply about so that the ticket is comfortable to right-wing politicians.
But progressives set aside issues that they deeply care about all the time. Who was the last genuine progressive on a Democratic ticket? The nominees and running mates are invariably left-centrists.

And it's never enough. We reject Jesse Jackson in the 1980s or Bernie Sanders in the last two election cycles and Republicans still describe our presidents and members of Congress as commies and radicals. We can't win. And if Democrats have to become Mitt Romney/Liz Cheney Republicans in order to be deemed worthy of the vote, then that won't be democracy at all -- we'll all just be Republicans, which is the same outcome the overt opponents of democracy want.
Posted by Steve M. at 1:53 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

ANDREW CUOMO SHOULD GO AWAY

This is not good:
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is considering a run against his replacement and fellow Democrat, Gov. Kathy Hochul, as part of an attempt at a comeback after resigning in disgrace amid multiple accusations of sexual harassment by former aides, according to people familiar with the matter.

Cuomo, who reluctantly left office last year after denying the harassment allegations, has been fielding calls from supporters about a possible run against his former lieutenant governor. His aides have been conducting their own internal voter polling on a potential matchup, these people explained....

After a recent public poll from Emerson College and The Hill showed Cuomo was a few points behind Hochul, the former governor received calls from allies encouraging him to run against Hochul, a person close to Cuomo said. That survey, which was published last week, showed Cuomo just four points behind Hochul with likely New York Democratic primary voters.
The chair of the state Democratic Party says he doesn't want Cuomo to run (“I think it would be a bad mistake”), but I don't think that will stop Cuomo if he thinks he can win.

A Cuomo run would be embarrassing national news for the Democrats in what's already likely to be a tough year for the party. It would be a problem for Democrats in two key races outside New York.

In Georgia, the all-but-certain Republican Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, has been accused by his ex-wife of physical and psychological violence. She says he threatened to shoot her in the head. Her sister has corroborated this story. In general election polling Walker and the incumbent, Democrat Raphael Warnock, are running neck-and-neck.

In Missouri, the likely Republican Senate candidate, former governor Eric Greitens, has been accused of sexual assault, coerced oral sex, and sexual blackmail by his former hairdresser. Schmitt's main rival for the Republican nomination, the state's attorney general, Eric Schmitt, beats the possible Democratic nominees by double digits, according to polls, but Greitens, who resigned the governorship in disgrace, leads by only single digits, and is tied or effectively tied with the two leading Democratic candidates in a poll from the right-leaning Trafalgar Group. So there's an outside chance that Greitens could win the nomination and lose to a Democrat in this Republican-leaning state.

But it would help a lot if Democrats didn't have a sexual predator running a high-profile campaign. Recall that, after a #MeToo scandal, Al Franken left the Senate just days before a special Senate election in Alabama in which the Republican candidate, Roy Moore, had been credibly accused of predatory behavior toward young girls. Democrat Doug Jones won that election. It was good that the Democratic Party could make a credible case that it wouldn't tolerate sex predators.

Democrats will find it hard to make that case in Georgia and Missouri if Cuomo is running -- especially if he wins his primary. And if Cuomo wins the primary, the likely Republican nominee, Trumpist congressman Lee Zeldin, suddenly has a shot at winning the general election, because even a Trumpist would hammer Cuomo (or use female-voiceover TV ads to hammer Cuomo) for his sexual improprieties. Could a Republican win in New York State? It's often forgotten that in the bluest part of the state, New York City, Democrats lost five straight mayoral elections between 1993 and 2009. Under the right circumstances, a GOP win is possible.

So go away, Andrew. You're a liability.
Posted by Steve M. at 7:16 PM 0 comments

NONE OF THEM CAN GET TRUMP NEAR AN OPEN WINDOW

There was a party in D.C. last night, and two of our best Beltway gossipers have thoughts:


That's the team you expect to be the foundation of a coup that deposes Trump as leader of the Republican Party, Maggie? Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Bill Barr -- all of whom continue to praise Trump even as they criticize him? Two of them, Christie and Barr, have made clear that, heck yeah, they'll vote for him in 2024 if he's the nominee.



And while Rupert Murdoch and his son seem more fearsome, remember that Rupe has always regarded Trump with contempt, but has never been able to stop him. In his 2018 book Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff said that Murdoch had "only ever ridiculed Trump" before Trump was elected in 2016. Murdoch and Fox boss Roger Ailes deployed Megyn Kelly to take out Trump in a 2015 debate. Trump emerged stronger. Kelly became a pariah on the right, and even though she was subsequently given a lucrative deal to switch to NBC, her career has never recovered. On Election Night 2020, according to Wolff, Rupert Murdoch personally given the go-ahead for Fox's early call of Arizona for Joe Biden.
“Lachlan got his father on the phone to ask if he wanted to make the early call. His father, with signature grunt, assented, adding, ‘F--- him,’” Wolff wrote.
But Fox suffered a ratings slide over the next few months, and had to become more Trumpist and conspiratorial in order to fend off rival right-wing news channels. Wolff said in 2021, “Rupert hates Donald Trump. Hates him – but Rupert loves money.” So Fox has continued to defer to Trump.

Although as Yastreblyansky notes, Barr defers to Murdoch even if Trump doesn't.


Barr's book is published by William Morrow, which is an imprint of Murdoch's HarperCollins. Nevertheless, book publishers are supposed to operate with a significant level of autonomy. It's odd when the head of the parent company gets personally involved in an individual book. But it's not odd if the head of the parent company, despite appearing to be a Master of the Universe, has reasons to be afraid of a very prominent person who's the principal subject of the book.

Once again, Murdoch is deploying a lackey to try to take down Trump, when he and his son don't have the cojones to do it themselves on their TV channel, because taking down Trump would mean they'd be slightly less obscenely rich. Sorry, this is not the way you put together a plot to push a despot out an open window.
Posted by Steve M. at 8:49 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

TELL ME YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW REPUBLICAN VOTERS THINK WITHOUT TELLING ME YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW REPUBLICAN VOTERS THINK

Matt Lewis of the Daily Beast thinks that Trump guy is really in political hot water now....
In political campaigns, we are always fighting the last war.

Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was, in no insignificant part, a reaction to the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent years of quagmire.
Actually, that was a very insignificant aspect of Trump's appeal, much less important than the immigrant-bashing, the Hillary-bashing, and the general assholism. (The base found it thrilling to watch him get away with obnoxious, over-the-line comments nearly every day.)
... That was in 2016. But that is no longer the world we live in.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there’s no going back to “America First” as it was. That’s not to say the public is clamoring for a war with Russia. But the Trumpian worldview that embraced Vladimir Putin and threatened to abandon NATO has, for now, been repudiated.
The problem with what Lewis is writing here is that he imagines that ordinary voters think in political science categories. They don't. Average Americans don't divide themselves into internationalist and isolationist camps. Trump voters thrill to the slogan "America First," and cheer when Trump calls the Bushes idiots -- but they also cheered in 2015 when he said of ISIS,
I would bomb the shit out of them.

I would just bomb those suckers, and that's right, I'd blow up the pipes, I'd blow up the refineries, I'd blow up ever single inch, there would be nothing left.

And you know what, you'll get Exxon to come in there, and in two months, you ever see these guys? How good they are, the great oil companies, they'll rebuild it brand new... And I'll take the oil.
They cheered this:


When they hear "America First," they don't hear it as "Let's not get involved in international conflicts." Maybe they hear it as "Who cares about the international order?," but they don't hear it as "Let's withdraw from the world and tend our own garden." They still like the idea of America doling out a nice ass-kicking.

Lewis writes:
Of course, public opinion matters most to people facing competitive races on upcoming ballots. The most loathsome Republicans—Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar (who spoke at the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference, where the audience cheered Putin) and Madison Cawthorn (who called Zelensky a “thug”)—are ensconced in safe districts, and their national infamy hasn’t hurt them at the local level to date.
They're all in districts that are considered safe Republican, but if what they've said about the war is so off-putting, then they should be in deep trouble in their primaries. (Greene, Gosar, and Cawthorn are all facing primary challengers.)

Yet there's no evidence that they've been damaged by their statements about the war. Greene, shrewdly, straddles the issue in a Trumpian way, saying that Trump gave us "peace through strength" when he was president. That's bellicose and anti-war at the same time, and that sits just fine with most Republican voters.

And then there's this take on the war, from the St. Louis Gun Guy, who's now running for a seat in the U.S. Senate:


This is the take on the war that really unites rank-and-file GOP voters. Sure, it's compatible with anti-Putin and pro-Ukraine feelings, but it's primarily America First-ish in its focus on our own territory. Any GOP politician who says this will be roundly cheered. So when Lewis writes that "Trump can’t run again in 2024 by playing his greatest hits," he's wrong about this hit: The fans will be calling for Trump to play "Build the Wall" no matter what's going on in the world. And by 2024, GOP voters will be isolationist or interventionist depending on one thing and one thing only: which stance will be regarded as more lib-owning. Because that's what really matters to GOP voters.
Posted by Steve M. at 7:26 PM 0 comments

TULSI: SHE'S RUNNING! (OR AT LEAST THAT WAS PROBABLY THE IDEA.)

Zach Everson of Forbes reports:
The largest individual donor to former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (D-Hawaii) PAC in 2021 is an apologist for Vladimir Putin who runs a nonprofit that aims to foster cooperation between the U.S. and Russia....

In 1983, towards the end of the Cold War, Sharon Tennison, an American activist, founded the Center for Citizen Initiatives. Its mission is to “begin a series of citizen-to-citizen initiatives and exchanges, buttressed by official media PR and social-media networks across America and across Russia,” according to its website. During its 40 years, the center claims to have set up exchanges, helped launch Alcoholics Anonymous in Russia and taught business skills to Russian entrepreneurs.

While advocating for peace, Tennison has repeatedly championed Russia’s dictator. For example, in 2018, she wrote, “Putin isn’t the problem, friends. The problem is the projection of our own ‘shadow’ on Putin and Russia.” In September 2020, Tennison observed, “Putin seems to ignore detractors and continues efforts to create venues to bring peoples and countries together despite vilifications.” And the day after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Tennison posted, “I am deeply concerned about a NATO country being on Russia’s borders in Ukraine ... As for Putin’s current dilemma, I’m sorry he felt he had to intervene in Ukraine!” Ukraine is not and has never been a NATO member.

The [bulk] of Tennison’s political contributions have gone to Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who’s been a prominent Russian sympathizer. Since July 2016, Tennison has contributed $15,000 to Gabbard’s political committees, including $2,000 last December to Tulsi Aloha, the leadership PAC that emerged from her presidential campaign. Donations in support of Gabbard comprise 69% of Tennison’s total political giving, according to records with the Federal Election Commission.
My first thought when I read this was: Well, of course a Putin apologist is the biggest donor to Tulsi Gabbard's political action committee. My second thought was: Tulsi Gabbard still has a political action committee?

But it's not much of a political action committee. It has a little more than $45,000 on hand. It's given to no federal candidates in 2021 and 2022. In the fall of 2020, when Gabbard converted the fundraising committee for her presidential campaign into this leadership PAC, Honolulu Civic Beat told us,
A leadership PAC is ... basically a prerequisite to becoming a national political leader. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and just about every other political leader operate leadership PACs and use them to donate to their colleagues.

Hawaii Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono also have leadership PACs that have donated more than $400,000 to Democratic campaign committees across the country since Jan. 1, 2019.
Compared to that, Gabbard's PAC seems shabby.

If you go to TulsiGabbard.com, the first thing that greets is a different kind of fund-raising appeal:


For your money here, you get ... um, content. A podcast. Also "ability to engage with the community." It's not connected to the PAC.

I've been assuming that Gabbard could run for president in 2024, hoping to be an additional voice bashing the Democrats while providing a non-Democratic exit ramp to Joe Rogan fans or similar dumbasses who might dislike Donald Trump enough to want to vote against him. What Democrat-hating horseshoeist wouldn't want to be the next Ralph Nader or Jill Stein? I still think this is possible. But Gabbard's political fund-raising seems dormant for now. At the moment she's clearly concentrating on the pro-Putin propaganda, and the PAC seems like an old blog you haven't shut down but haven't posted to for months.

One last thought: The Forbes reporter says Tennison started her organization "in 1983, towards the end of the Cold War" -- but believe me, at the time we really didn't think we were near the end of the Cold War. That was the moment when many of us were sure that Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union were going to lead us into a nuclear war. It was the time of movies like The Day After and Rocky IV, and songs like...



Did Tennison start her organization with good intentions, in a scary time? Maybe, though she seems like a pure propagandist now.
Posted by Steve M. at 8:51 AM 0 comments

Monday, March 14, 2022

IN CASE YOU THOUGHT RON DeSANTIS COULD BEAT DONALD TRUMP IN A HEAD-TO-HEAD MATCHUP

NBC News reports:
Gov. Ron DeSantis is in a strong position to win Florida again, but he could get crushed in a presidential primary if he faces Donald Trump, according to a poll of voters in Miami-Dade, the largest and most diverse county in the state, released Monday.

In a hypothetical primary matchup between Trump and DeSantis, the former president leads his former protégé 55-32 percent among Republicans in the county, the new poll from Bendixen & Amandi International suggests.
This is DeSantis's home turf, but Trump is still the man for GOP voters. In January, The Bulwark's Jonathan Last offered the opinion that it's all about sunk costs:
So you’re a Republican primary voter. You’ve mortgaged your entire political identity to Donald Trump. You left Reaganism. Took the Trump ride. Bought the t-shirt. Wore the hat.

You’ve forced yourself to believe some crazy shit. About QAnon. About the 2020 election being stolen. About COVID being overhyped. About Joe Biden having dementia. All because this was the price of admission to be on Trump’s side.

And now you’re going to chuck all of that and admit you were wrong about Trump in order to throw in with Ron DeSantis?

That’s not how things typically work for people exiting belief systems.
I think Last is a little off base. For one thing, GOP voters don't regard any of that as "crazy shit." Beyond that, in order for DeSantis to beat Trump in a head-to-head matchup, he has to convince Republican voters to vote against the man we libs hate more than anyone else, the guy they believe owns libs more effectively than anyone else ever owned us. It's like expecting Black South Africans to root against Nelson Mandela, or mid-20th-century Boston Irish voters to root against James Michael Curley. He's their messiah. They think he's one of them, except he beat the entire politcal system once (or twice). Voting against him would be letting the libs win.

DeSantis knows how to bring the hate. For example, at a moment when there's a good chance we're about to enter another COVID wave -- possibly just before Floridians begin summer, which is their indoor season -- DeSantis thinks statistics on sickness, hospitalization, and death are a big joke, because treating them that way infuriates the libs:


Stunts like this make him the second-most popular Republican in America. However...


Plus, of course, Trump will tear the hide off DeSantis if DeSantis dares to run against him. Ask Ted Cruz about that.

DeSantis is the heavy favorite if Trump doesn't run. In a Trump-free field, he might win as easily as Trump will if he runs. But Trump won't be beaten in a primary.
Posted by Steve M. at 7:11 PM 0 comments
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