The first infrastructure that needs dealt with is ridding the congressional leadership of the Party of Dummy’s of everything 20th century, Nancy and Chuckie, and their old ways.
Nancy is no longer capable of controlling her caucus, whether educating/convincing them on their legislative plan, nor exerting her power to achieve her desired out come.
Chuckie has proven too me that he hasn’t the wherewithal to pushback effectively against moscow mitch, hence he too needs to go!
It is my not so humble opinion that changing leadership is a very close second to messaging in order of importance to expanding majorities in both houses.
Top attack point against the candidates of the Party of Liars Cheats and Thieves is LCT state legislatures moving to give the majority party the right to overturn any majority vote they don’t like.
They should have started that attack a couple months ago.
A very rude and obnoxious attack on some incumbent should, needs to lead every evening news broadcast in states where they are passing legislation to over turn election result if the majority doesn’t like the out come.
They should also be answering the question; “will you ever accept that a Party of Dummy’s candidate wins fairly/without cheating?”
There is a reason I’ve tagged them POD’s, it’s a cause they just can’t stop being stupid!
The Democrats face a few problems and some structural political issues.
The first problem that the Democrats face is that they are now the "party in power." In our modern political ecosystem, that almost inevitably means that they are going to lose elections. This is something that history demonstrates to us.
It has little to do with what those governing can do (although that can impact the magnitude of loss) and is mostly about the government (now represented by the Democrats) getting blamed.
The likeability of the candidate and whether or not their party is in power tends to override policy issues in these cases.
The second problem is that people want a lot of things but they want someone else to get the bill or make sacrifices. It is misleading to look at polling data and say that 60% of people support policy X. VERY misleading.
The following questions are all about the same thing, but they would get you VERY different poll results:
A) I believe that we should do more to preserve the environment
B) I believe that we should do more to preserve the environment and that taxes on the rich should be raised to fund that action.
c) I believe that we should do more to preserve the environment and that taxes on everyone should be raised to fund that action.
D) I believe that we should do more to preserve the environment and that I should have to pay $6 per gallon of gas to fund that action.
The further down that list you go, the less likely you are to get majority support. You can do that with pretty much any policy that enjoys "majority" support.
The devil is in the details--it is always in the details. Majority support is ephemeral and largely meaningless when it comes down to brass tacks.
People LOVE broad aspirational ideas. They hate policies that cost them something. This is true whether your aspirational cause is the environment or making America great again. The costs and inconvenience are always meant to be placed on someone else.
The third problem that Democrats face is that, underneath it all, most of us do not like change. The only people REALLY looking for change (particularly large scale change) are the people who are currently being screwed over (or who believe that they are currently being screwed over).
The people at the top definitely do not want change unless they are very sure they will profit from it... and that is rare. The people in the middle are afraid of change because things are at least bearable and who knows how this thing is going to ACTUALLY play out (the old bird in the hand is worth two in the bush perspective). The people on the bottom lack the ability (wealth, power, access) to achieve change--the deck is stacked. This has nothing explicitly to do with racism or sexism (although these get entrained in it).
As soon as the Democrats start putting the details to an aspirational goal and start tying costs to that goal, they lose majority support--particularly in areas that they NEED to win to gain power (because of the nature of our institutions and demographics).
We are faced with a logjam that no one can either figure out how to break or is willing to pay the cost to break.
Bad/stupid rhetoric also does not help the Democrats. Phrases like "defund the police" for example.
Another problem is that people flay out do not believe politicians--they have been burned too many times. They tend to think that they WILL get screwed over, regardles of the goal of the policy.
No, Charlie and Mona, voters aren't turning into fiscal hawks who see spending on infrastructure as a "lurch to the left." People vote on results, not ideology, and the results aren't good right now; pandemic restrictions, shortages, and inflation are putting a crimp in their lives, and when that happens they blame the party in power. Even the education issue in VA can't be understood apart from frustration over school closings and restrictions that affect people's daily lives (CRT matters to a fringe that seeks advantage from it, and in any case identifying mainstream Dems with the woke left is silly--a lot of those people don't like Dems either. If Democratic rule makes people's lives better--even if, as likely they aren't responsible for it--things will get better for Dems.
Charlie, Hillary Clinton and Terry McAuliffe are card-carrying members of the moderate Third-Way movement started by Bill Clinton. They both lost to Trump(ism). Biden is a moderate but he ran on some pretty progressive ideas and beat Trump. Biden also focused on issues while Clinton and McAuliffe both thought not being Trump would be enough to win. They both lost and Biden won.
But you want Biden to more Hillary Clinton and Terry McAuliffe like? Where is this evidence that being a moderate is what will defeat Trumpism? To defeat Trumpism you need clear policies and messages about how you are going to help people and you need to smash Trumpism in the mouth when it rears its ugly head and show voters those guys only pretend to care about you when it's time to get your vote. It's not good enough to just say, "Yo, I ain't that guy . . . vote for me."
A big THANK YOU to Jennifer McDonald and Bulwark for the article on this absurd practice. Having fought this issue in Indiana, both in courts and the political arena, I found the political dynamics of the issue to be interesting. So many of my Democratic friends, supposed champions of civil liberties, had no interest in helping stop civil forfeiture even when shown outrages of the type that have been outlined in media support. The biggest support I received was from conservative Republicans. But even their support was underwhelming. This is an issue that should unite those on the right and left.
Asset forfeiture is a cash cow for police and prosecutors. so, it incentivizes them to abuse the practice. Also, city council and county commissions think they're saving money by offsetting asset forfeitures from law enforcement budgets, but in practice that almost never happens.
I'm getting kind of tired of asking you to explain what policies you want liberals to adhere to. Again, both moderates in Virginia and New Jersey had problems or lost, same as liberals did. It's not clear that popularism is actually popular. If you're going to say 'liberals need to stop trying to do things and instead do other things' you need to be specific as to what you want, Charlie. It's not enough to say 'be more moderate' without defining what it means to be a moderate in 2021. Because again, in Virginia the former governor, a moderate who ran on kitchen table issues, lost to an insurrectionist sympathizer. So unless you're going to say that his method was successful, you're going to need to actually say what you think he and other liberals should run on. Because yelling 'be moderate' doesn't actually mean anything to most people who can only define the term based on where they think their opponents are.
As for CRT, it's clear now that the problem is that most liberals are incapable of grasping that words often do not have esoteric or branching meanings to most people. Example, 'racist' conjures up a very specific image, as does 'racism.' At least, to moderates and conservatives. To liberals, the terms is more open and flowing. For example, racism isn't just men in hoods to them, it's the policies that cause things like increased incarceration against minorities, and the people who support those policies. It's the belief that, if you support things like segregated schools based on wealth, which often means color, you are also a racist, even if you're not directly marching with the tiki torch guys. If you're afraid of willie horton, then you must be a racist.
This extrapolation is everywhere. And in many situations, they come to these conclusions armed with lots of data and ideas. But they're rather terrible at actually making it make sense to those who aren't versed in the liberal nomenclature. Let's put it like this: conservatives have the fox news cinematic universe. Liberals have something similar in regards to words like 'racist' though I don't know what to call it.
The issue of CRT is that it's very easy to be like 'they're trying to make people feel guilty about being white!' which is where liberals say it's an overtly racist dogwhistle against learning history. Part of this comes from certain sections of liberal thought that says the sins of the father are the sins of the son, so to speak. Your ancestors set up these systems, they did so with racist intentions, and so if you defend them you must be racist, because you're defending a system created by and meant for racist reasons. A lot of people would disagree with this, and that's partially why liberals struggle so much. Because people don't see themselves as inheriting a racist system. They see themselves as simply existing in a time when these things were already set up. They didn't make these systems, they don't have the power to change them, so why are you getting mad at them for going along with things, goes the thinking.
We talk a lot about how silence is acceptance, which is why liberals are quick to point fingers at those who talk a lot about how bad fascism is, but not about how bad racism is. If you're mad about systems that enforce or make it easier for fascists to gain power, why aren't you also mad about the same systems that create racist outcomes? Again, you can agree or disagree with this, but that's the thinking.
I think the issue with CRT is that liberals are refusing to say what they really want which is: yes, we are changing how we teach things, because we're doing it better than we did before. The past was complicated, and how we teach kids should reflect that. People are neither good nor evil for the most part, but that doesn't mean there weren't terrible things in the past that we should work towards being better than. If the goal of education is to produce better citizens, then logically we should be striving to not be teaching, say, lost cause narratives in text books, something that still happens in much of the south today for example.
Instead, by trying to say nothing has changed, they've let the CRT moral panic swallow up lots of airtime and define itself as 'actually, the people complaining about racists are the real racists, and also the people who are mad about segregation are the real segregationists.'
One last bit. One issue that the CRT panic is about but which we don't talk a lot about is how, for most of our history, the idea was that there was an arc of progress, that we moved forward, that there was a kind of manifest destiny at work, and that America was a special, blessed place. Reality is not that simple, and there were a lot of people who had to be enslaved and displaced and killed in that whole arc of progress thing. But it's a story that Americans have told ourselves and used to justify ourselves since our creation. Now, people question whether that was actually an arc of progress, and whether it was right or wrong to exterminate people and the like. But they don't have a better story to tell in its place yet, so what ends up happening is a backlash against changing the story.
The same thing happens all the time if you deal with civil war stories. There are lots of people in the south who have stories about how Sherman or the northerners did something to their ancestors when in reality they were nowhere nearby. But that story is more powerful than the truth.
Personally, I think the story liberals should tell is simple: America is not a perfect place. But the point of America is that we understand that we are not perfect people, and that over time we work to create a better place, rather than be stuck in the past, slaves to the ideas of dead men. America is meant to be a dynamic place, both in spirit and character, and the idea that there is one narrative in America is profoundly unamerican. America is not more racist than other countries, we're simply the only ones that actually talk about it like it's a bad thing. In Japan, koreans are second class citizens. In China there are concentration camps for muslims. In the middle east they're still killing each other over different religions. In africa various ethnic groups are still committing genocide. In Europe, islamaphobia drives resentment and hatred towards others. And yet, you'll find no greater dialogue about whether this is good or bad than in America, because we believe, at least on paper, that the color of one's skin shouldn't define a person. That's a rather American idea, even if it's taken a lot of work to get where we are. But it's a specifically American concept.
The left should embrace that, rather than try to define terms that people already have ideas about.
A good post... one of the things that tends to bother me is the underlying assumption by a lot of people (on both the left and right) that there IS some sort of arc or plan--that it is inevitable that progress will be made.
This is something that bleeds into our thinking about history from our religious culture... either directly or through (in the case of the Left) Hegelian perspectives on history.
This determination/belief that it will all work out right in the end (however you might define right) breeds a certain complacency. This regularly bites the progressives in the behind, especially in midterms and more local politics.
There is no arc to history, because "history" is really only a story we come up with to explain why we are where we are. There is only the daily, recurring struggle to make a better life for ourselves and others.
It's very human to think of ourselves in terms of the stories we tell. We like to think that we are progressing somewhere, that we're doing good and that we're moving toward something. It's human to see ourselves as being part of a greater whole. That's just human nature.
One of the issues we now have is that liberals question many of our stories, and not without fault. The founders questioned many of the stories about their own monarchal culture in their own time. The problem is that liberals haven't yet settled on a story they'd like to tell instead. Many of them resemble what can best be thought of as modern day baptists or the like. Very fire and brimstone, very 'the world is fallen and we are sinners, repent lest ye be damned' types. There's plenty of that in American history too.
Much of the problem I think, is that liberals don't seem to every consider that they need to talk with people or explain how they got to conclusions. They simply say the conclusion, assume people will understand the jumps in logic, and as a result, end up making things worse for themselves.
It is the stories we tell that MAKE us human. It is the quintessential difference between human and animal. Animals live in the moment, humans rarely live in the moment--we are most usually in the past or future.
The stories we tell to explain why we are here.
The stories we tell to explain who we are--and, more importantly, that MAKE us what/who we are.
The stories we tell so that we can see where we are going (even though we rarely actually get there).
The jumps in logic are often NOT visible to the person telling the story. The inconsistencies and contradictions--because we tell the stories and rarely think about them or critique them.
It is kind of like trying to teach someone something that you know EXTREMELY well or are EXTREMELY good at... and you can't understand why they aren't getting it (because you left out a LOT of things that you never even think about, though perhaps you once did).
I'm willing to take the Lefties' word for it, that CRT, as such, is not being taught in public schools. I can only assume that, like other segments of Critical Theory, it is couched in the opaque polysyllabic jargon of postmodernism and accessible only to those who've had extensive training in that arcane skill. What parents do see, I'm sure, is the resulting policies pushed by CRT initiates such as the war on excellence seen in di Blasio's effort to abolish the selective schools in NYC or the proposal to "reform" the math curriculum in California to make it conform to DIE objectives. In any case, the insistence that CRT is not in the curriculum, that what's being taught is not CRT, reminds me of the Socialists' reply to criticism based on the record of Socialist regimes, that "real" Socialism has never been tried. (Translation: I have not yet been made the Autocrat of All Creation.)
There is a certain tension when you discriminate against Asian Americans to show how "Anti-racist" you are.
I'm your standard white heterosexual male, and I never used to be bothered by affirmative action policies, even if they meant I'd likely be the one getting the short end of the stick sometimes, because I'm sure my identity markers have accrued to my benefit at times. But when I realized that these sorts of policies come at the expense of other racial minorities, it rather infuriated me.
The problem with most of our affirmative action policies is not intent, it's that they were created at a time and for a country that doesn't look like ours. The intention for affirmative action was to give more opportunities to Black americans after the civil rights act was passed. The country's makeup at that time was very much black versus white in terms of major racial blocs. That isn't the case anymore.
In particular, the massive migration from places like Vietnam and Korea after the wars changed the makeup of our country, and no that's not a moral judgement. It's simply true that post war, lots of people migrated here. Their children, and their children's children, have as a result been competing with other minority groups, because the system that was set up was not designed for lots of different minority groups to exist at once.
So what you end up with is that the very system that exists to help one group ends up harming another. And then you start asking, 'well, what if we just did things on merit?' and we end up back at no affirmative action, and generational decline of populations, which it's meant to combat.
On some level, this is all due to the fact that for various reasons, Asian countries tend to have beliefs towards education that border on the cruel and sadistic; just look at their teen suicide rates. In Japan for example, over half of all people who don't get a job immediately after graduating will never have a job. Places like Singapore and Korea and China all have similar issues with parents overworking their children.
This is less prevalent in America, but it's absolutely true that Asian families often bring their culture with them, same as everyone else. And as a result, lots of Asian students are now competing in quotas against others. Which throws the system into chaos. The purpose of affirmative action was to help those who did not have the resources to get ahead, but it's turned into a question of who gets how much of the pie simply because of how racially diverse our country has become.
Again, I'm not sure there's a real solution to be found. But that's why this problem exists.
I'll buy the issue of intent and the anachronism in application, but add that we need to be careful of too broad generalization. It is one matter to discuss affirmative action (or equity) in pubic high schools, it is an entirely different matter to discuss affirmative action (or holistic admissions) in a private college. One can, with a straight face and clear conscience, support practices for one, but not the other.
A lot of this is a matter of perspective in how the left views race and class and education. The reason why liberals have begun to turn on things like selective schools, is because in practice, what tends to happen is that those with the most money and time are able to tutor their children more, and as a result, produce more 'special' students.
This is not a liberal idea either. Look up "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. He makes a compelling case that what creates the smartest people and most successful people is their access and time. Example: Bill Gates grew up in a very affluent community, whose school could afford a computer before they were everywhere. As a result, he got more time to use it, and thus had longer to develop the skills that would later make him billions. Another example is used with pro hockey players, almost all of whom are born in one part of the year, because that's right before the cutoff for younger players when they start in their teens. Basically, all of them got more time by being younger, and as a result were more likely by a large margin to become pros later in life.
So the liberal issue is this: if what matters is how affluent you are, not how smart you are, then such programs are little more than segregated schools where rich people who can afford to give their kids greater access to resources send their kids. That's not inherently a race thing, but it's undoubtedly true that poorer schools tend to have larger populations of people of color. Thus, fewer people of color end up at these selective schools, because they're poorer, and have to do things like work jobs and whose parents are likely working more hours to support themselves as well. That's where the 'racist' critique comes in.
Last night when I was reading that NYT Editorial, I looked right into my dog's eyes and said, "Oh, shit. They ripped off The Bulwark." Pretty wild to see this editorial coexisting with Charles Blow's column ascribing this week's schlonging to your run-of-the-mill white racial anxiety. Hopefully, the Dems can pivot to a popularist legislative agenda. I don't understand why they don't disaggregate these spending bills and actually SELL voters on them! We should be seeing a series of bills with names like "The Joe Biden Money and Birthday Cake for Children Act" or "Everyone Has Good Roads and Internet and By the Way My Name is Joe Biden and I Did this Act".
I agree entirely on messaging. However, I do not agree on 'popularism.' Mainly, because we just had a popularist candidate in Virginia run on those things, and he lost. Popularism on its own is no way to govern. The technocratic, impartial, alienistic approach to government is not popular.
But you're dead on when to messaging. Most voters don't even know that Biden signed a stimulus this year, and that's his only achievement! Liberals are too focused on data and not enough on feelings.
It's a different kind of feelings. Liberals are focused on how things make individuals feel, rather than how individuals make other individuals feel. Example, it's bad if society causes people to feel oppressed, due to the systems that exist. But they never bother to think about how people might feel in regards to their plans or ideas. They rely too much on data and assume that if people just understood it, that they'd want to join on. The concept that people can do things that aren't in their interest, that people will cut off their noses to spite their face, often eludes them.
When it comes to climate policy, on which I'm essentially a single issue voter, what do you suggest our kids do at this point? They're the ones stuck with the consequences of our bad actions, and the consequences are pretty dire. Manchin is swimming in conflicts of interest on this, and yet he heads the Senate energy committee. I'm open to suggestions, because I agree, confronting Manchin as he disembarks from his yacht is not likely to be helpful. But what is there to do? Does anyone have any ideas?
Here is the truth: There isn't really anything that can be done. Your kids ARE going to be stuck with the consequences. There will be some performance art. resolutions. aspirational goals, lots of negotiations and non-binding declarations. Some programs around the edges that people skim money and tax breaks off of.
Unless there looks to be a major opportunity to make major money or until there is an actual meaningful impact of climate change on rich and powerful people (which is going to take a while), don't expect much.
OK, Charlie. My husband and I are in our seventies and about to get our boosters in 2 weeks. We're going to get them regardless, and especially since we live in Texas, but more details please, on why you were in bed all day! I'd just like to know what we might be facing, especially since we had little reaction to the first 2 shots....
I thought I would look for hope and listened to your podcast with Adam Kinzinger. Bad idea! I am now completely 100% sold the road ends badly here. Even someone as smart and who gets what is at stake can't move beyond partisan politics to be the grown up and fight back against Trumpism. He very clearly stated we have a hierarchy or needs and it starts there. Policy differences come later and we can fight over those in a democratic fashion once the authoritarian moment has passed. However, he then says he can't support the Democrats because of their liberal progressive policies including spending and voting rights. He thinks tinkering at the margins by supporting Evan McMullin types and getting smashed in a Presidential party nomination fight against TFG is going to do it. Wake up! Joe Walsh tried that, him and the very few sane republicans left are trying that and failing miserably. Maybe he needs to step back and take the advice he gives to the Dems and prioritize the most important aspects of the fight himself. I thought he was one of the grown ups left, but I am finally realizing he is just another one of the children running around doing nothing.
I've always been disappointed in Adam. He voted for Trump twice, he votes pretty much his party's line but he did stand up for the Jan 6th committee and for the second impeachment. But when it came time for protect the nation's debt and the peoples' voting rights, he (and Liz) were nowhere to be found.
There were a number of things in those Voting Rights bill that we're not good. Too many to get into right now. Adam said he will support the compromise Voting Rights bill. The trouble is the Democrats obsess about minor changes in voting procedures while ignoring much bigger issues like changes to vote counting and certification. Why are the Democrats doing something about the Electoral count act which needs to be amended?
I meant to say why are the democrats NOT doing something about the electoral count act? The changes to voting procedures they obsess about won't make a minuscule difference. The next presidential election is going to be stolen by state legislatures overriding the will of the people or congress doing that on their end. Yet the Democrats aren't doing a thing to stop this from happening.
Yes, and? Why should the Democrats unilaterally disarm themselves? Kinzinger, other than on Jan 6th, is a conservative republican that supports his party's (non)policies.
It depends on what you want to prioritize. Yes, Kinzinger is a Republican and votes like one. But policy is secondary to resisting authoritarianism, for me at least, and Illinois Democrats don't seem to be taking the threat seriously when they're lighting allies in the fight on fire. There is an alarming pattern of Republicans who stand up against their party's authoritarian impulses vanishing from the scene, ever since Jeff Flake. When Liz Cheney loses reelection next year, who will be left?
If Kinzinger or Cheney were serious about something like voting rights or anti-authoritarianism they could work together to put forward a bill, get a few Democrats to sign onto it. Did they even approach anything like that? Imagine what a coup that would be to get some people in the center to put forward a workable bill.
The only problem is that NONE of these Republicans are remotely in the center or remotely interested in electoral reform or other such issues.
Cheney and Kinzinger are already on the outs, so it isn't like doing something like that would hurt them WRT the GoP much further.
I am not really sure what they are doing, other than simply expressing distaste on a personal level for Trump. They seem to be on board with everything else. Why would Democrats want to keep them around (as others have noted)? No reason to do so.
This makes a number of assumptions. First, that people like Cheney or Kinzinger have any future in GOP politics. If they require help from the democrats to win, they don't have a future, period. The fact that he's retiring says that he understands this: he can't win against his own party, and his own party would destroy him otherwise. He serves no purpose to anyone.
At this point, he's a gangrenous limb on Trumpism. He's not going to be the thing that defeats it, and he wouldn't be the one to rise after it, anymore than someone like Mitt Romney would. There's no hope in him existing as some kind of 'see what you could be, GOP?'
And the reason for that is GOP voters. GOP voters do not want people like Kinzinger. They see what he's selling, and they've chosen against it. They continue to choose against it. the gop voters themselves would prefer a MTG to a Cheney. They would prefer a Josh Hawley to a Mitt Romney. They prefer Trump to everyone. And why? Because the voters do not care one bit about policies anymore. The GOP voter is not motivated by anything resembling actual policy, because decades of GOP messaging about how government is bad and can do no right have borne fruit.
It turns out that if you tell people government is evil and can't help you, people will stop caring about who is in charge. There's no 'allies' in these dead representatives walking, only the slow inevitable defeat. Either they lose in primaries to Trumpy people, or they are redistricted out of existence. But there is zero chance of doing anything on their own.
And at this point, choosing to support Trumpist policies while saying you don't like him is a false choice. To support such things means you support the man, because helping his policies is the same as helping his reelection.
There is no 'well, I was totally on board with the fascists until they started talking crazy' position that you can take. You can choose to join them, you can choose to join their opponents, but you can't support every part of them and then act like you're not with them. That's an untenable position, because they're not going to care what your policies are if you don't support the leader, and your enemies aren't going to support you for supporting everything they hate.
Kinzinger is only an ally on the Jan 6th committee. When it comes to protecting voting rights he is one of the enemies. When it comes to not monkeying around with the nation's debt he is one of the enemies.
I am also old enough to remember that a couple of weeks ago they were talking here about how partied in Europe came together and ignored policy differences in order to beat fascism in their countries. Adam must have missed those articles and podcasts.
I know Charlie and many of his guests are pessimistic about the GOP ever escaping Trumpism, but there is a problem with their position. For a movement inside a political party to be successful it has to 1) stand for something and 2)( WIN general elections. Trumpism has no longer term future as it stands for nothing and is unpopular with the vast majority of people. Worse yet for the movement, Trumpism is strongest among the demographics groups that are fading in influence. Trumpism's strength is with older white voters who live in rural areas. That group of people is losing influence every day.
And let's not forget that Trumpism isn't actually a coherent political philosophy. It's a grievance culture, a "let's be angry" at the other side. Trumpism doesn't actually stand for a coherent set of policies which is necessary for a movement inside a party to exist.
Having said that Trumpism is not going to fade from the GOP overnight. It's going to take losing several more elections. Unfortunately, it seems inevitable that the GOP will win the House in 2022, which the Trumpists will claim, wrongly, is due to their efforts. I think it will probably take until the end of the decade and several other big election losses, for Trumpism to fade. But it will fade.
Thank you. The podcasts are always enjoyable, but I look forward to those with Bill Kristol perhaps even more than the rest.
The first infrastructure that needs dealt with is ridding the congressional leadership of the Party of Dummy’s of everything 20th century, Nancy and Chuckie, and their old ways.
Nancy is no longer capable of controlling her caucus, whether educating/convincing them on their legislative plan, nor exerting her power to achieve her desired out come.
Chuckie has proven too me that he hasn’t the wherewithal to pushback effectively against moscow mitch, hence he too needs to go!
It is my not so humble opinion that changing leadership is a very close second to messaging in order of importance to expanding majorities in both houses.
Top attack point against the candidates of the Party of Liars Cheats and Thieves is LCT state legislatures moving to give the majority party the right to overturn any majority vote they don’t like.
They should have started that attack a couple months ago.
A very rude and obnoxious attack on some incumbent should, needs to lead every evening news broadcast in states where they are passing legislation to over turn election result if the majority doesn’t like the out come.
They should also be answering the question; “will you ever accept that a Party of Dummy’s candidate wins fairly/without cheating?”
There is a reason I’ve tagged them POD’s, it’s a cause they just can’t stop being stupid!
For everyone looking to both-sides the debate on CRT in schools, please make sure you read this first -
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/how-a-conservative-activist-invented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theory
The Democrats face a few problems and some structural political issues.
The first problem that the Democrats face is that they are now the "party in power." In our modern political ecosystem, that almost inevitably means that they are going to lose elections. This is something that history demonstrates to us.
It has little to do with what those governing can do (although that can impact the magnitude of loss) and is mostly about the government (now represented by the Democrats) getting blamed.
The likeability of the candidate and whether or not their party is in power tends to override policy issues in these cases.
The second problem is that people want a lot of things but they want someone else to get the bill or make sacrifices. It is misleading to look at polling data and say that 60% of people support policy X. VERY misleading.
The following questions are all about the same thing, but they would get you VERY different poll results:
A) I believe that we should do more to preserve the environment
B) I believe that we should do more to preserve the environment and that taxes on the rich should be raised to fund that action.
c) I believe that we should do more to preserve the environment and that taxes on everyone should be raised to fund that action.
D) I believe that we should do more to preserve the environment and that I should have to pay $6 per gallon of gas to fund that action.
The further down that list you go, the less likely you are to get majority support. You can do that with pretty much any policy that enjoys "majority" support.
The devil is in the details--it is always in the details. Majority support is ephemeral and largely meaningless when it comes down to brass tacks.
People LOVE broad aspirational ideas. They hate policies that cost them something. This is true whether your aspirational cause is the environment or making America great again. The costs and inconvenience are always meant to be placed on someone else.
The third problem that Democrats face is that, underneath it all, most of us do not like change. The only people REALLY looking for change (particularly large scale change) are the people who are currently being screwed over (or who believe that they are currently being screwed over).
The people at the top definitely do not want change unless they are very sure they will profit from it... and that is rare. The people in the middle are afraid of change because things are at least bearable and who knows how this thing is going to ACTUALLY play out (the old bird in the hand is worth two in the bush perspective). The people on the bottom lack the ability (wealth, power, access) to achieve change--the deck is stacked. This has nothing explicitly to do with racism or sexism (although these get entrained in it).
As soon as the Democrats start putting the details to an aspirational goal and start tying costs to that goal, they lose majority support--particularly in areas that they NEED to win to gain power (because of the nature of our institutions and demographics).
We are faced with a logjam that no one can either figure out how to break or is willing to pay the cost to break.
Bad/stupid rhetoric also does not help the Democrats. Phrases like "defund the police" for example.
Another problem is that people flay out do not believe politicians--they have been burned too many times. They tend to think that they WILL get screwed over, regardles of the goal of the policy.
No, Charlie and Mona, voters aren't turning into fiscal hawks who see spending on infrastructure as a "lurch to the left." People vote on results, not ideology, and the results aren't good right now; pandemic restrictions, shortages, and inflation are putting a crimp in their lives, and when that happens they blame the party in power. Even the education issue in VA can't be understood apart from frustration over school closings and restrictions that affect people's daily lives (CRT matters to a fringe that seeks advantage from it, and in any case identifying mainstream Dems with the woke left is silly--a lot of those people don't like Dems either. If Democratic rule makes people's lives better--even if, as likely they aren't responsible for it--things will get better for Dems.
Charlie, Hillary Clinton and Terry McAuliffe are card-carrying members of the moderate Third-Way movement started by Bill Clinton. They both lost to Trump(ism). Biden is a moderate but he ran on some pretty progressive ideas and beat Trump. Biden also focused on issues while Clinton and McAuliffe both thought not being Trump would be enough to win. They both lost and Biden won.
But you want Biden to more Hillary Clinton and Terry McAuliffe like? Where is this evidence that being a moderate is what will defeat Trumpism? To defeat Trumpism you need clear policies and messages about how you are going to help people and you need to smash Trumpism in the mouth when it rears its ugly head and show voters those guys only pretend to care about you when it's time to get your vote. It's not good enough to just say, "Yo, I ain't that guy . . . vote for me."
A big THANK YOU to Jennifer McDonald and Bulwark for the article on this absurd practice. Having fought this issue in Indiana, both in courts and the political arena, I found the political dynamics of the issue to be interesting. So many of my Democratic friends, supposed champions of civil liberties, had no interest in helping stop civil forfeiture even when shown outrages of the type that have been outlined in media support. The biggest support I received was from conservative Republicans. But even their support was underwhelming. This is an issue that should unite those on the right and left.
Asset forfeiture is a cash cow for police and prosecutors. so, it incentivizes them to abuse the practice. Also, city council and county commissions think they're saving money by offsetting asset forfeitures from law enforcement budgets, but in practice that almost never happens.
I'm getting kind of tired of asking you to explain what policies you want liberals to adhere to. Again, both moderates in Virginia and New Jersey had problems or lost, same as liberals did. It's not clear that popularism is actually popular. If you're going to say 'liberals need to stop trying to do things and instead do other things' you need to be specific as to what you want, Charlie. It's not enough to say 'be more moderate' without defining what it means to be a moderate in 2021. Because again, in Virginia the former governor, a moderate who ran on kitchen table issues, lost to an insurrectionist sympathizer. So unless you're going to say that his method was successful, you're going to need to actually say what you think he and other liberals should run on. Because yelling 'be moderate' doesn't actually mean anything to most people who can only define the term based on where they think their opponents are.
As for CRT, it's clear now that the problem is that most liberals are incapable of grasping that words often do not have esoteric or branching meanings to most people. Example, 'racist' conjures up a very specific image, as does 'racism.' At least, to moderates and conservatives. To liberals, the terms is more open and flowing. For example, racism isn't just men in hoods to them, it's the policies that cause things like increased incarceration against minorities, and the people who support those policies. It's the belief that, if you support things like segregated schools based on wealth, which often means color, you are also a racist, even if you're not directly marching with the tiki torch guys. If you're afraid of willie horton, then you must be a racist.
This extrapolation is everywhere. And in many situations, they come to these conclusions armed with lots of data and ideas. But they're rather terrible at actually making it make sense to those who aren't versed in the liberal nomenclature. Let's put it like this: conservatives have the fox news cinematic universe. Liberals have something similar in regards to words like 'racist' though I don't know what to call it.
The issue of CRT is that it's very easy to be like 'they're trying to make people feel guilty about being white!' which is where liberals say it's an overtly racist dogwhistle against learning history. Part of this comes from certain sections of liberal thought that says the sins of the father are the sins of the son, so to speak. Your ancestors set up these systems, they did so with racist intentions, and so if you defend them you must be racist, because you're defending a system created by and meant for racist reasons. A lot of people would disagree with this, and that's partially why liberals struggle so much. Because people don't see themselves as inheriting a racist system. They see themselves as simply existing in a time when these things were already set up. They didn't make these systems, they don't have the power to change them, so why are you getting mad at them for going along with things, goes the thinking.
We talk a lot about how silence is acceptance, which is why liberals are quick to point fingers at those who talk a lot about how bad fascism is, but not about how bad racism is. If you're mad about systems that enforce or make it easier for fascists to gain power, why aren't you also mad about the same systems that create racist outcomes? Again, you can agree or disagree with this, but that's the thinking.
I think the issue with CRT is that liberals are refusing to say what they really want which is: yes, we are changing how we teach things, because we're doing it better than we did before. The past was complicated, and how we teach kids should reflect that. People are neither good nor evil for the most part, but that doesn't mean there weren't terrible things in the past that we should work towards being better than. If the goal of education is to produce better citizens, then logically we should be striving to not be teaching, say, lost cause narratives in text books, something that still happens in much of the south today for example.
Instead, by trying to say nothing has changed, they've let the CRT moral panic swallow up lots of airtime and define itself as 'actually, the people complaining about racists are the real racists, and also the people who are mad about segregation are the real segregationists.'
One last bit. One issue that the CRT panic is about but which we don't talk a lot about is how, for most of our history, the idea was that there was an arc of progress, that we moved forward, that there was a kind of manifest destiny at work, and that America was a special, blessed place. Reality is not that simple, and there were a lot of people who had to be enslaved and displaced and killed in that whole arc of progress thing. But it's a story that Americans have told ourselves and used to justify ourselves since our creation. Now, people question whether that was actually an arc of progress, and whether it was right or wrong to exterminate people and the like. But they don't have a better story to tell in its place yet, so what ends up happening is a backlash against changing the story.
The same thing happens all the time if you deal with civil war stories. There are lots of people in the south who have stories about how Sherman or the northerners did something to their ancestors when in reality they were nowhere nearby. But that story is more powerful than the truth.
Personally, I think the story liberals should tell is simple: America is not a perfect place. But the point of America is that we understand that we are not perfect people, and that over time we work to create a better place, rather than be stuck in the past, slaves to the ideas of dead men. America is meant to be a dynamic place, both in spirit and character, and the idea that there is one narrative in America is profoundly unamerican. America is not more racist than other countries, we're simply the only ones that actually talk about it like it's a bad thing. In Japan, koreans are second class citizens. In China there are concentration camps for muslims. In the middle east they're still killing each other over different religions. In africa various ethnic groups are still committing genocide. In Europe, islamaphobia drives resentment and hatred towards others. And yet, you'll find no greater dialogue about whether this is good or bad than in America, because we believe, at least on paper, that the color of one's skin shouldn't define a person. That's a rather American idea, even if it's taken a lot of work to get where we are. But it's a specifically American concept.
The left should embrace that, rather than try to define terms that people already have ideas about.
A good post... one of the things that tends to bother me is the underlying assumption by a lot of people (on both the left and right) that there IS some sort of arc or plan--that it is inevitable that progress will be made.
This is something that bleeds into our thinking about history from our religious culture... either directly or through (in the case of the Left) Hegelian perspectives on history.
This determination/belief that it will all work out right in the end (however you might define right) breeds a certain complacency. This regularly bites the progressives in the behind, especially in midterms and more local politics.
There is no arc to history, because "history" is really only a story we come up with to explain why we are where we are. There is only the daily, recurring struggle to make a better life for ourselves and others.
It's very human to think of ourselves in terms of the stories we tell. We like to think that we are progressing somewhere, that we're doing good and that we're moving toward something. It's human to see ourselves as being part of a greater whole. That's just human nature.
One of the issues we now have is that liberals question many of our stories, and not without fault. The founders questioned many of the stories about their own monarchal culture in their own time. The problem is that liberals haven't yet settled on a story they'd like to tell instead. Many of them resemble what can best be thought of as modern day baptists or the like. Very fire and brimstone, very 'the world is fallen and we are sinners, repent lest ye be damned' types. There's plenty of that in American history too.
Much of the problem I think, is that liberals don't seem to every consider that they need to talk with people or explain how they got to conclusions. They simply say the conclusion, assume people will understand the jumps in logic, and as a result, end up making things worse for themselves.
It is the stories we tell that MAKE us human. It is the quintessential difference between human and animal. Animals live in the moment, humans rarely live in the moment--we are most usually in the past or future.
The stories we tell to explain why we are here.
The stories we tell to explain who we are--and, more importantly, that MAKE us what/who we are.
The stories we tell so that we can see where we are going (even though we rarely actually get there).
The jumps in logic are often NOT visible to the person telling the story. The inconsistencies and contradictions--because we tell the stories and rarely think about them or critique them.
It is kind of like trying to teach someone something that you know EXTREMELY well or are EXTREMELY good at... and you can't understand why they aren't getting it (because you left out a LOT of things that you never even think about, though perhaps you once did).
I'm willing to take the Lefties' word for it, that CRT, as such, is not being taught in public schools. I can only assume that, like other segments of Critical Theory, it is couched in the opaque polysyllabic jargon of postmodernism and accessible only to those who've had extensive training in that arcane skill. What parents do see, I'm sure, is the resulting policies pushed by CRT initiates such as the war on excellence seen in di Blasio's effort to abolish the selective schools in NYC or the proposal to "reform" the math curriculum in California to make it conform to DIE objectives. In any case, the insistence that CRT is not in the curriculum, that what's being taught is not CRT, reminds me of the Socialists' reply to criticism based on the record of Socialist regimes, that "real" Socialism has never been tried. (Translation: I have not yet been made the Autocrat of All Creation.)
There is a certain tension when you discriminate against Asian Americans to show how "Anti-racist" you are.
I'm your standard white heterosexual male, and I never used to be bothered by affirmative action policies, even if they meant I'd likely be the one getting the short end of the stick sometimes, because I'm sure my identity markers have accrued to my benefit at times. But when I realized that these sorts of policies come at the expense of other racial minorities, it rather infuriated me.
The problem with most of our affirmative action policies is not intent, it's that they were created at a time and for a country that doesn't look like ours. The intention for affirmative action was to give more opportunities to Black americans after the civil rights act was passed. The country's makeup at that time was very much black versus white in terms of major racial blocs. That isn't the case anymore.
In particular, the massive migration from places like Vietnam and Korea after the wars changed the makeup of our country, and no that's not a moral judgement. It's simply true that post war, lots of people migrated here. Their children, and their children's children, have as a result been competing with other minority groups, because the system that was set up was not designed for lots of different minority groups to exist at once.
So what you end up with is that the very system that exists to help one group ends up harming another. And then you start asking, 'well, what if we just did things on merit?' and we end up back at no affirmative action, and generational decline of populations, which it's meant to combat.
On some level, this is all due to the fact that for various reasons, Asian countries tend to have beliefs towards education that border on the cruel and sadistic; just look at their teen suicide rates. In Japan for example, over half of all people who don't get a job immediately after graduating will never have a job. Places like Singapore and Korea and China all have similar issues with parents overworking their children.
This is less prevalent in America, but it's absolutely true that Asian families often bring their culture with them, same as everyone else. And as a result, lots of Asian students are now competing in quotas against others. Which throws the system into chaos. The purpose of affirmative action was to help those who did not have the resources to get ahead, but it's turned into a question of who gets how much of the pie simply because of how racially diverse our country has become.
Again, I'm not sure there's a real solution to be found. But that's why this problem exists.
I'll buy the issue of intent and the anachronism in application, but add that we need to be careful of too broad generalization. It is one matter to discuss affirmative action (or equity) in pubic high schools, it is an entirely different matter to discuss affirmative action (or holistic admissions) in a private college. One can, with a straight face and clear conscience, support practices for one, but not the other.
A lot of this is a matter of perspective in how the left views race and class and education. The reason why liberals have begun to turn on things like selective schools, is because in practice, what tends to happen is that those with the most money and time are able to tutor their children more, and as a result, produce more 'special' students.
This is not a liberal idea either. Look up "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. He makes a compelling case that what creates the smartest people and most successful people is their access and time. Example: Bill Gates grew up in a very affluent community, whose school could afford a computer before they were everywhere. As a result, he got more time to use it, and thus had longer to develop the skills that would later make him billions. Another example is used with pro hockey players, almost all of whom are born in one part of the year, because that's right before the cutoff for younger players when they start in their teens. Basically, all of them got more time by being younger, and as a result were more likely by a large margin to become pros later in life.
So the liberal issue is this: if what matters is how affluent you are, not how smart you are, then such programs are little more than segregated schools where rich people who can afford to give their kids greater access to resources send their kids. That's not inherently a race thing, but it's undoubtedly true that poorer schools tend to have larger populations of people of color. Thus, fewer people of color end up at these selective schools, because they're poorer, and have to do things like work jobs and whose parents are likely working more hours to support themselves as well. That's where the 'racist' critique comes in.
Last night when I was reading that NYT Editorial, I looked right into my dog's eyes and said, "Oh, shit. They ripped off The Bulwark." Pretty wild to see this editorial coexisting with Charles Blow's column ascribing this week's schlonging to your run-of-the-mill white racial anxiety. Hopefully, the Dems can pivot to a popularist legislative agenda. I don't understand why they don't disaggregate these spending bills and actually SELL voters on them! We should be seeing a series of bills with names like "The Joe Biden Money and Birthday Cake for Children Act" or "Everyone Has Good Roads and Internet and By the Way My Name is Joe Biden and I Did this Act".
I agree entirely on messaging. However, I do not agree on 'popularism.' Mainly, because we just had a popularist candidate in Virginia run on those things, and he lost. Popularism on its own is no way to govern. The technocratic, impartial, alienistic approach to government is not popular.
But you're dead on when to messaging. Most voters don't even know that Biden signed a stimulus this year, and that's his only achievement! Liberals are too focused on data and not enough on feelings.
"Liberals are too focused on data and not enough on feelings."
Which is ironic since we're the ones often accused of being squishy, snowflake crybabies.
It's a different kind of feelings. Liberals are focused on how things make individuals feel, rather than how individuals make other individuals feel. Example, it's bad if society causes people to feel oppressed, due to the systems that exist. But they never bother to think about how people might feel in regards to their plans or ideas. They rely too much on data and assume that if people just understood it, that they'd want to join on. The concept that people can do things that aren't in their interest, that people will cut off their noses to spite their face, often eludes them.
When it comes to climate policy, on which I'm essentially a single issue voter, what do you suggest our kids do at this point? They're the ones stuck with the consequences of our bad actions, and the consequences are pretty dire. Manchin is swimming in conflicts of interest on this, and yet he heads the Senate energy committee. I'm open to suggestions, because I agree, confronting Manchin as he disembarks from his yacht is not likely to be helpful. But what is there to do? Does anyone have any ideas?
Here is the truth: There isn't really anything that can be done. Your kids ARE going to be stuck with the consequences. There will be some performance art. resolutions. aspirational goals, lots of negotiations and non-binding declarations. Some programs around the edges that people skim money and tax breaks off of.
Unless there looks to be a major opportunity to make major money or until there is an actual meaningful impact of climate change on rich and powerful people (which is going to take a while), don't expect much.
OK, Charlie. My husband and I are in our seventies and about to get our boosters in 2 weeks. We're going to get them regardless, and especially since we live in Texas, but more details please, on why you were in bed all day! I'd just like to know what we might be facing, especially since we had little reaction to the first 2 shots....
I didn't have any problem with mine, but, I didn't with the first two either...not even a sore arm
Charlie,
I thought I would look for hope and listened to your podcast with Adam Kinzinger. Bad idea! I am now completely 100% sold the road ends badly here. Even someone as smart and who gets what is at stake can't move beyond partisan politics to be the grown up and fight back against Trumpism. He very clearly stated we have a hierarchy or needs and it starts there. Policy differences come later and we can fight over those in a democratic fashion once the authoritarian moment has passed. However, he then says he can't support the Democrats because of their liberal progressive policies including spending and voting rights. He thinks tinkering at the margins by supporting Evan McMullin types and getting smashed in a Presidential party nomination fight against TFG is going to do it. Wake up! Joe Walsh tried that, him and the very few sane republicans left are trying that and failing miserably. Maybe he needs to step back and take the advice he gives to the Dems and prioritize the most important aspects of the fight himself. I thought he was one of the grown ups left, but I am finally realizing he is just another one of the children running around doing nothing.
I've always been disappointed in Adam. He voted for Trump twice, he votes pretty much his party's line but he did stand up for the Jan 6th committee and for the second impeachment. But when it came time for protect the nation's debt and the peoples' voting rights, he (and Liz) were nowhere to be found.
There were a number of things in those Voting Rights bill that we're not good. Too many to get into right now. Adam said he will support the compromise Voting Rights bill. The trouble is the Democrats obsess about minor changes in voting procedures while ignoring much bigger issues like changes to vote counting and certification. Why are the Democrats doing something about the Electoral count act which needs to be amended?
I meant to say why are the democrats NOT doing something about the electoral count act? The changes to voting procedures they obsess about won't make a minuscule difference. The next presidential election is going to be stolen by state legislatures overriding the will of the people or congress doing that on their end. Yet the Democrats aren't doing a thing to stop this from happening.
Democrats basically redistricted Kinzinger's seat away. After everything he has done, that was an appalling disgrace on Illinois Democrats, IMO.
Yes, and? Why should the Democrats unilaterally disarm themselves? Kinzinger, other than on Jan 6th, is a conservative republican that supports his party's (non)policies.
It depends on what you want to prioritize. Yes, Kinzinger is a Republican and votes like one. But policy is secondary to resisting authoritarianism, for me at least, and Illinois Democrats don't seem to be taking the threat seriously when they're lighting allies in the fight on fire. There is an alarming pattern of Republicans who stand up against their party's authoritarian impulses vanishing from the scene, ever since Jeff Flake. When Liz Cheney loses reelection next year, who will be left?
If Kinzinger or Cheney were serious about something like voting rights or anti-authoritarianism they could work together to put forward a bill, get a few Democrats to sign onto it. Did they even approach anything like that? Imagine what a coup that would be to get some people in the center to put forward a workable bill.
The only problem is that NONE of these Republicans are remotely in the center or remotely interested in electoral reform or other such issues.
Cheney and Kinzinger are already on the outs, so it isn't like doing something like that would hurt them WRT the GoP much further.
I am not really sure what they are doing, other than simply expressing distaste on a personal level for Trump. They seem to be on board with everything else. Why would Democrats want to keep them around (as others have noted)? No reason to do so.
This makes a number of assumptions. First, that people like Cheney or Kinzinger have any future in GOP politics. If they require help from the democrats to win, they don't have a future, period. The fact that he's retiring says that he understands this: he can't win against his own party, and his own party would destroy him otherwise. He serves no purpose to anyone.
At this point, he's a gangrenous limb on Trumpism. He's not going to be the thing that defeats it, and he wouldn't be the one to rise after it, anymore than someone like Mitt Romney would. There's no hope in him existing as some kind of 'see what you could be, GOP?'
And the reason for that is GOP voters. GOP voters do not want people like Kinzinger. They see what he's selling, and they've chosen against it. They continue to choose against it. the gop voters themselves would prefer a MTG to a Cheney. They would prefer a Josh Hawley to a Mitt Romney. They prefer Trump to everyone. And why? Because the voters do not care one bit about policies anymore. The GOP voter is not motivated by anything resembling actual policy, because decades of GOP messaging about how government is bad and can do no right have borne fruit.
It turns out that if you tell people government is evil and can't help you, people will stop caring about who is in charge. There's no 'allies' in these dead representatives walking, only the slow inevitable defeat. Either they lose in primaries to Trumpy people, or they are redistricted out of existence. But there is zero chance of doing anything on their own.
And at this point, choosing to support Trumpist policies while saying you don't like him is a false choice. To support such things means you support the man, because helping his policies is the same as helping his reelection.
There is no 'well, I was totally on board with the fascists until they started talking crazy' position that you can take. You can choose to join them, you can choose to join their opponents, but you can't support every part of them and then act like you're not with them. That's an untenable position, because they're not going to care what your policies are if you don't support the leader, and your enemies aren't going to support you for supporting everything they hate.
Kinzinger is only an ally on the Jan 6th committee. When it comes to protecting voting rights he is one of the enemies. When it comes to not monkeying around with the nation's debt he is one of the enemies.
I am also old enough to remember that a couple of weeks ago they were talking here about how partied in Europe came together and ignored policy differences in order to beat fascism in their countries. Adam must have missed those articles and podcasts.
I know Charlie and many of his guests are pessimistic about the GOP ever escaping Trumpism, but there is a problem with their position. For a movement inside a political party to be successful it has to 1) stand for something and 2)( WIN general elections. Trumpism has no longer term future as it stands for nothing and is unpopular with the vast majority of people. Worse yet for the movement, Trumpism is strongest among the demographics groups that are fading in influence. Trumpism's strength is with older white voters who live in rural areas. That group of people is losing influence every day.
And let's not forget that Trumpism isn't actually a coherent political philosophy. It's a grievance culture, a "let's be angry" at the other side. Trumpism doesn't actually stand for a coherent set of policies which is necessary for a movement inside a party to exist.
Having said that Trumpism is not going to fade from the GOP overnight. It's going to take losing several more elections. Unfortunately, it seems inevitable that the GOP will win the House in 2022, which the Trumpists will claim, wrongly, is due to their efforts. I think it will probably take until the end of the decade and several other big election losses, for Trumpism to fade. But it will fade.